The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall Read online

  Everyone did have memories of Garben’s spectacular eruption, seen at a safe enough distance to be clear of the pyroclastic debris. It was truly awe-inspiring, and immensely heartbreaking, to see the community that they had achieved in such a short time showered with ash and burning missiles, then disappearing behind dense gray clouds.

  “Did everyone get out?” Theo called from the waters on the starboard side of the Cross.

  “So we were told,” Jim said. “D’you want to come aboard?”

  Theo raised her eyebrows at the already overcrowded sloop.

  “Lord, no, Jim. I’m safer with Dart.” On cue, the dolphin surfaced and pushed her fin against the hand Theo idly circled as she trod water. “See what I mean . . .”

  Her voice dwindled as the sleek little dolphin propelled her farther from the ship and Monaco Bay.

  At last all but a few damaged loads and other debris had been burned or buried by the beach wardens, and Jim allowed the Cross, as the last ship, to leave Monaco Bay.

  “What about the bell?” Ben asked just as the gangplank was being pulled up.

  Jim paused, squinting up at the bell. “Leave it. The dolphins get such a kick out of ringing it.”

  “Even with no one to hear?”

  Jim heaved a sigh. “Frankly, Ben, I don’t have the energy right now to dismantle it.” He looked around at the decks crammed with lashed-down pallets. “Hell, where would we put a thing as big as that?” Then he shook his head. “We can come back for it. Ezra’ll be wanting to check the Aivas interface once the volcanoes have settled.” Then he gave the orders to release the lines forward and aft. “Yeah, we’ll get it next trip.”

  He did note the sadness on Ben’s face as the bell, and the wharf, receded from sight. Not even the gay escort of two pods of dolphins seemed to cheer the man. Paradise River had become Ben’s real home, and now it would have to be abandoned. A lot more than a bell had been left behind at Landing—and yet the bell seemed to symbolize it all. They sailed on, through the murky, reeking atmosphere that Garben and Picchu had made of the once-clear air of Monaco Bay.

  Kahrain was scarcely better organized than the Bay had been, but there were hot baths and decent food available, and a chance to let tired bodies sleep until they were truly rested. The evacuation had gone smoothly enough, thanks to Emily Boll’s foresight. The only casualties had been, unfortunately, one young dragonrider and his bronze dragon, who had collided with a sled—or, as Emily put it in an expressionless voice, attempted to avoid a collision by going between, as the fire-lizards did. The young dragon’s instinct had not been sufficient to bring them back from wherever between was, and the other young dragonriders were suffering from trauma.

  “I told them to take the day off,” she said, clearing her throat authoritatively, ignoring the fact that Sean, de facto leader of the dragonriders, had told her in no uncertain terms that he and his group would not be available for work until the next day.

  “But the dragon actually went between?” Jim asked, amazed.

  Emily nodded briskly, blinking against a sudden moisture in her eyes. “I saw . . . Duluth do it. He and Marco were there, midair, one moment, the sled descending on top of them, and then . . . gone!” She cleared her throat again. “So, if we have to find some good out of the tragedy, there it is. The dragons can do what the fire-lizards can. Now, if their riders can now figure out how to do it on a . . . safe, return basis, we may yet have our aerial force.”

  “Right now, though, it’s the naval forces we must organize,” Paul said, standing up and lighting the screen of his work terminal. “Fortunately, there’s a good warehouse at Paradise River where we can stash nonvital supplies for later runs.”

  “So we do use the small craft again?” Per Pagnesjo, captain of the Perseus, asked.

  Paul nodded. “For one thing, those sailers are intrinsically valuable in themselves and not just for what we can load on them.” He turned to the dolphineers. “How are your friends standing up to this?”

  Theo gave a bark just as Ben snorted. “It’s a nice new game we’ve figured out for them,” Theo answered.

  “Glad someone’s finding some enjoyment out of all this,” Paul said with a grim smile.

  “Trust dolphins for that,” Theo said. Her genuine grin turned Paul’s into one less strained. “Well, we don’t need to rush so much to get to Paradise, do we? That’ll make it easier and safer.”

  “We’ll have to use personnel who are not slated for the next Threadfall, though,” Paul added, switching his terminal to another setting. “We had to let Maori Lake take its chances, but we’ve got to keep Thread burrows to a minimum.”

  “Even if we’re abandoning the southern continent?” Theo asked.

  “We’re not abandoning the continent, nor entirely removing everyone,” Paul said. “Drake wants to continue; so do the Gallianis, the Logorides; and the Seminole, Key Largo, and Ierne Island groups. Tarvi’s keeping the mines and the smelters going. Since they work underground or in the cement block sheds, they’re reasonably safe from Thread, though food resources may have to be augmented from our supplies.”

  “They may have to come north in the end, if we can’t supply them from our stores,” Emily said sadly.

  “So . . .” Paul said, briskly bringing the meeting back to the matter at hand. “Joel’s got some imperative supplies that ought to be shifted immediately north. Kaarvan, your ship has the biggest capacity: Can you undertake that voyage while the other ships redistribute loads and follow when laden? Desi, can you give him a hand with the manifests?”

  “If I get my crew to it now, we can shift and reload cargo and be ready to sail by the evening tide,” Kaarvan replied with a nod, and left without further comment.

  “Desi, I want manifests of every crate and carton you take, red and orange,” Joel Lilienkamp shouted after his assistant, and received a backhanded wave. “How”—Joel turned to the others, hands upraised in helpless resignation—”are we going to keep track of what is where and . . . everything.”

  For the first time since Jim Tillek had known the able commissary chief, he saw the energetic man at a loss, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. Joel had had everything so neatly cataloged and organized at Landing: he had always known exactly on what shelf in what building any particular item was stored. But even his legendary eidetic memory would be unable to cope with the present confusion. Jim felt a deep sympathy for Joel.

  “Joel,” Emily said firmly but somehow soothingly, “no one but you could have pulled off such a comprehensive evacuation of goods and people.”

  Perhaps only Jim noticed the order of importance implied in her compliment, and he rubbed his face to hide an appreciative grin. In Joel’s lexicon, people could take care of themselves, but goods had to be taken care of, and their location should be known at any time of day or night.

  Joel shrugged. “It’s what’ll happen now that deeply concerns me. There’re materials we have got to have immediate access to, and unless I have the records of all the loads that went out of Landing by sled, as well as those taken by boat from Monaco . . .”

  At that point, Johnny Greene came in, looking jaded but also gloating. “Don’t anyone ever say ‘it can’t be done’ in my presence,” he announced to all. Joel perked up expectantly as Johnny went on. “Got generators up and running, and ten terminals. Programmed to take visual, audio, or recorder inputs and then correlate. Will that do you for now, Joel?”

  “It most certainly will.” Joel bounced to his feet as if he hadn’t just been in the depths of despondency. “Where’ve you got them set up? Lead me.” He got as far as the shelter door before he turned back. “I’ll need personnel.”

  “Whoever isn’t doing something else I hereby authorize you to draft until those records are transferred,” Paul said with a chuckle. But his amusement died as he turned back to his own screens, pursing his lips with two fingers. “We still have some pretty hairy problems. Ezra, can you also put back on your captain’s ha
t? We’ll have to take the smaller craft along the shoreline all the way to Key Largo before we make a final dash across to the northern continent. I can’t see any other way of getting all the people and matériel there. One vast convoy, with dolphin support, keeping one of the bigger ships as guardian, while the others make straight journeys from Kahrain or Paradise to the Fort?”

  “Let’s also count on shifting the convoy guard ship now and again,” Jim said after exchanging a quick glance with Ezra. “Even with decent weather—and that eruption’s going to mess weather patterns past the predictable point—it’s going to be some safari.”

  “But can it be done?” Paul asked.

  Jim twisted one shoulder. “We got here. We’ll get there. Sooner or later.”

  “It’s the later that worries me,” Paul responded.

  Jim hauled his recorder out of his pocket and tapped out a query. “Well, let’s just see what we can do, Paul.” He peered down at Benden quizzically. “You and Em will go north”—he grinned in lazy irony—“to prepare a place for us . . . so d’you want to be admiral of the Pernese Navy, Ez, or do I get the short straw this time?”

  “Let’s stick to being captains and working as a team as we usually do,” Ezra replied in his dry fashion, but he clamped an affectionate hand on Jim’s shoulder as he peered over at the recorder’s data.

  “Not all the stuff’s been lifted out of Landing yet,” Joel said, poking his head in through the door. “I’m organizing all available sleds to bring up the last. Can I get the dra—”

  Emily held up her hand. “They’ll be back on line tomorrow, Joel!”

  Joel scrunched his eyes shut and grimaced. “Sorry. Tomorrow’ll be good enough.” And he was gone again.

  “There was a fleet like this once before,” Jim said to Theo Force, who was the dolphineer on duty at the time the Southern Cross was leading the way out of Kahrain Cove.

  “Like that?” Theo jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the strung-out line of ill-assorted vessels. Dressed in her body wet suit, breather flung over one shoulder to be ready for use instantly, she had stretched out her strong tanned legs on her side of the cockpit. Jim had an eye for a shapely leg, even one generally showing scars from many brushes with underwater obstacles. He was also becoming accustomed to Theo’s subtly attractive face. Well into her third decade, she was not a conventionally pretty woman, but her rather plain features nevertheless indicated her strong character and purposefulness.

  “Yup, something like the odd-bods fleet we have here,” Jim said, squinting at the way the mainsail was filling with a wind that was more capricious than he liked for the beginning of this bizarre escort duty. “Long time back now, but one of those bright moments in human history when people rise to an almost impossible challenge.”

  “Oh?” Theo never found Jim Tillek boring, especially when he started yarning. She knew that he had sailed every sea on old Earth and some on the newer colony planets, as well, in between his interstellar voyages as the captain of a drone freighter. Over the past few days she’d had a chance to admire the qualities of a man she’d barely chatted with before. Now, keeping as watchful an eye on their convoy as he did, she listened with pleasure as he warmed to his tale.

  “Half an army was pinned down on a beach, strafed by enemy aircraft, and likely all would have been killed there if the small-craft skippers of that era hadn’t saved ’em. Dunkirk, that was the name of the beach they were trapped on, with safety across a channel a mere thirty-four kilometers away.”

  “Thirty-four klicks?” Theo repeated in surprise, the dark thick arcs of her eyebrows rising. “Anyone could swim that.”

  Jim grinned at her. “Some athletes did, sort of a rite of passage trial or for the helluvit, but not three hundred thousand troops in full battle gear. And—” He waggled his finger at her. “—no dolphins.”

  “But dolphins have been around for yonks!”

  “Not as we know them, Theo. Let’s see, where was I?”

  Theo scrunched down on the cockpit seat, grinning at the subtle reprimand. His face had a lot of sun wrinkles, which made him look older, but his body in the tank top and shorts was lean, fit, and tanned. As usual on board, his feet were bare, showing long, prehensile toes. Once or twice, she’d seen him hold a line tight with just his toes.

  “Ah, yes, the Germanics had three hundred thousand British troops pinned down on the sands of Dunkirk, which was on the European continent, and since the Brits had no wish to spend the rest of their lives in a prisoner-of-war camp, they needed to be evacuated across the channel to their homeland, England.”

  “How’d they get across the channel in the first place?”

  Jim shrugged. He had broad, bony shoulders, and only a sprinkling of hair on his chest, which she preferred to the full pelt she’d seen on so many other men. “Troopships convoyed ’em over when the hostilities broke out, but those ports were already in the hands of the Germanics. One crucial problem with Dunkirk was that the beach was very shallow for a good distance before it shelved off into deep water. No proper docking or wharves for the big-draft ships to tie up at. Only a long wooden pier, which the Germanics strafed with their warplanes. Men were so desperate that they waded out, swimming the last part to climb up nets put down the sides of the ships to help ’em board. Then, someone had the bright idea of getting all available craft from the island, especially pleasure craft with low drafts, so they could sail further in to the beach to pick up troops. Records have it that even sailing dinghies, no more than three meters long, made the passage successfully. And not just once but time and again until the crews succumbed to exhaustion. But the three hundred thousand men were all evacuated. Quite a feat of seamanship and courage.”

  “It’s no thirty-four klicks of a channel we have to navigate, Jim Tillek, but the coastline of half a world,” Theo said with some acerbity.

  “Yes, but we don’t have a war going on around us,” Jim said cheerfully.

  “We don’t?” Theo asked and gestured over her shoulder to the east, signifying the menace of Thread.

  “You’ve got a point there,” Jim admitted. “Though it’s not a people-shooting war. But I believe in starting every journey with a high heart and in good spirits—and would you send Dart after that fool sloop with the spotted sail? Where do they think they’re going? They’re to tack right back into position.”

  He finished his remarks to empty air, for Theo had dived as neatly as her dolphin could over the safety rail and into the water, to be towed swiftly toward the miscreant vessel by Dart.

  It was amazing what heights the human spirit could rise to, Jim thought as he did a visual check through his binoculars. Theo and Dart reached their destination, and he could almost hear the blistering reprimand she was issuing. She had her arms over the rim of the craft, gesticulating to leave no doubt in the young skipper’s mind as to where he had erred. He watched as she trod water, one hand lightly on the dolphin’s melon, while the little craft tacked back in line. When he saw her begin to swim back toward the Cross, Dart skipping alongside her, he put the binoculars down.

  Squinting to the fore of the flotilla, he could see the pennon on the mast of the five-meter yawl that had been put at Ezra Keroon’s disposal as convoy leader. Ezra hadn’t much actual sea experience, but he was a superb navigator through any medium. Jim had himself done the sea charts on this coastline and knew the waters intimately. There were no reefs or unexpected dangers to cause problems for the inexperienced. As long as no ships ventured too far out where the Great Eastern Current could catch them, sea hazards were minimal. Once they got to Key Largo, every one of them would be seasoned enough for the open-water run across both the Great Currents to the safety of Fort.

  The coast beyond Sadrid to Boca was not that well known to him, but he was counting on the fishermen at Malay and Sadrid, and on Ju Adjai Benden at Boca, to be familiar with local problems. The sailors at Key Largo Hold had also done a fair bit of charting in their coastal waters. Barring the wea
ther, they should make it, no matter how slowly.

  And the weather, he thought, leaning forward to tap the barometer, could be an acute problem. Volcanic eruptions played havoc with weather conditions. There had already been some freak winds, squalls, and higher-than-normal tides, but Kahrain Cove had sheltered them from the worst. They would probably arrive in the North just in time for the ash fallout that was already beginning to filter into the upper air currents to be pushed around the planet. He wondered if the volcanic activity would have any effect on Threadfall. If one had to find some good out of bad, that would be the option he’d pick—if he had one.

  Two hours later he had to give the orders for the small craft to land and the bigger ships to hove to and anchor in a cove. Winds were picking up, erratic in direction, and therefore especially dangerous to novice sailors, and so full of ash and grit as to make visibility poor.

  If he and Ezra were disappointed by the progress they had made that first day out of Kahrain Cove, they sloughed off queries with any number of logical explanations. No reason to deflate the good morale of the expedition. The early day did give them a chance to check all the cargoes and work on the problem of protecting the ships from Thread. Most of the forty pleasure boats were constructed of fiberglass, with plastic masts and booms, so decks and hulls were Threadproof. But canvas sails and some varieties of sheets and line were not. Two of the colony’s plastics experts had spent their first day afloat designing rigid plastic sail covers that were Threadproof, but they still had to solve the problem of how to protect the people on the smaller craft, some of which did not have enclosed cabin space in which to take shelter. There was also not a sufficient number of breathers to allow passengers to dive under their hulls and remain there during Threadfall.

  So that evening, Ezra and Jim had more conferences on that problem, while all around them, the ill-assorted sailors of their convoy gathered around campfires to cook the fish they had caught during the day. But it had been a very busy day, and by nightfall, there were very few who hadn’t rolled up early in their sleeping bags.