The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall Page 5

  An oily, ashy drizzle and light winds made the next day’s sailing longer and certainly dirtier. But they managed to pull in to Paradise River’s wide mouth to anchor before darkness fell.

  Jim and Ezra called a meeting to discuss the possibility of splitting the flotilla into several sections to make better progress. The larger ships were constantly having to reef canvas, even to drag sea anchors, to keep from outdistancing the smaller ones. Of course, the cargoes that were destined to be stored here at Paradise River would be off-loaded and the remainder more evenly distributed. The more precarious rafts would be abandoned, having served their purpose. The dolphineers were grateful: their teams had bravely tried to keep their assigned positions in the convoy, and the strain was showing in galls and swollen flesh.

  The decision was made that, as soon as the unloading was done, Ezra would lead the larger craft forward at whatever speed they and two pods of escort dolphins could maintain, while Jim followed with the slower, smaller vessels and the larger number of dolphin escorts. The smallest of the sailing dinghies would be dismantled or towed.

  The bad weather persisted and the seas became too rough for all but the most experienced sailors, so the Paradise River Hold continued to host them.

  On the plus side, the plastics experts, Andi Gomez and Ika Kashima, used the layover to complete manufacture of the sail covers, and doors that could cover open cabin fronts. And Ika came up with an ethnic solution to the problem of protecting the nearly five hundred passengers and crew from Threadfall: plastic headgear, in a wide conical shape, made with wide weals and outward sloping sides—wide enough to cover most shoulders—with a high crown, to fit on the head, tied under the chin. Once the people were in the water, buoyed by the compulsory life vests everyone wore, these conical “coolie hats” would deflect Thread into the water, where it would drown or be consumed by the fish that invariably arrived wherever Thread fell into the seas. Even the dolphins were known to partake of what they considered an unusual food.

  The Paradise River contingent thought Ika’s cone hat a definite improvement over the sheets of metal they were used to using for protection if they were caught out in Fall. Overcome by all the praise, the slender Eurasian insisted that she could not take credit for the design.

  “Well, it’s a bloody good adaptation of a—what did you call it?—coolie hat,” Andi said stoutly, “and it’ll work. Won’t be too hard to turn out once we set the matrix for the design.” And she turned back to that task.

  “We’re lucky we have people of such differing backgrounds,” Jim told the embarrassed Ika kindly. “You never can tell when something as simple as straw hats from rice paddies on Earth can turn out to be life-saving on Pern. Good thinking, Ika! Cheer up, child. You’ve just saved our lives!”

  She managed to send him a shy smile before she retreated once again, but her husband, Ebon Kashima, strutted about the camp as if he had thought of the gear.

  “The next problem will be getting our brave sailors to overcome fear of being out in Threadfall, and having it bang down on their heads,” Ezra said a little grimly, “no matter how clever the hat they’re wearing.”

  “Look, Cap’n,” said one of the Sadrid fishermen. “Push comes to shove and Thread starts falling on you and water’s the only safe place, they’ll jump in. I sure as hell did that time we got caught out in one of the first Falls. ’Sides, there’re an awful lot of fire-lizards flitting about. Between them and the wild ones that congregate whenever there’s Fall, I doubt much Thread’ll hit any hat.”

  “A little practical psychology,” Jim said, “and us as good examples, and they’ll take to it. They’ll have little alternative.”

  “There’s that, too,” Ezra said bleakly.

  “We’ll start some proper chatter where it seems needed,” Ben said, nodding to the other dolphineers. They wandered off to start their brainwashing.

  By the time coolie hats were extruded and ready to be passed around, most of the flotilla was willing to accept the measure.

  “I’d rather be in a sled with a flamethrower,” one of the barge mates confided to a friend within Jim’s hearing.

  “Yeah, but the barge has that slant fore and aft. All we gotta do is hide under that and we’ll be safe enough.”

  Jim and Ezra issued an order that anyone caught without life vest and coolie would be subjected to severe discipline and, if they held any rank, demotion. They also ordered everyone to work a two-hour shift helping produce the protective gear.

  As it happened, all the stores were housed and accounted for, and nearly two-thirds of the necessary Thread shields completed before the weather cleared, so the two sections were able, after all, to set off again together. But the bigger ships, with more sail, made the most of the following wind and soon outdistanced the slower craft.

  “More like the boat people,” Jim remarked to Theo as he tacked back down the strung-out line of his charges.

  “Boat people?”

  “Hmmm, yes. War victims in the twentieth century. They tried to leave their country—Asians, they were—in the most incredibly unseaworthy craft. Junks and sampans, they were called.” He shook his head. “Totally unsuitable. Many died trying to escape. Many arrived at their destinations only to be turned back.”

  “Turned back?” Theo was outraged.

  “I don’t remember the historical-political situation at the time. It was before Earth was really united by outward-bound goals. I don’t think a one of their craft was as good as the worst of these.”

  Theo let out a sigh, pointed to starboard where one of the four-meter slops was flying a distress flag, and dove overboard. When she surfaced, Dart was right beside her, ready to tow her to the crippled ship. Jim entered the matter in his recorder. Broken sheet, he thought, noting the way the boom swung. Lordee, would they have enough line to see them through the constant breakages? He’d better hold another splicing lesson tonight.

  “Ah, it was the Heyerdahl expeditions I was trying to remember,” he told himself, “only he was doing it deliberately in primitive craft he’d built himself. Not the same thing as this at all.” He must remember to tell Theo. He grinned. He enjoyed yarning at her, because she really listened. Occasionally, she responded with stories of her days as a pilot. He rather thought she preferred being a dolphineer, or maybe she was just the sort of person who would make the most of what she had.

  Too bad this feat will only be known to us Pernese, he thought. Our Second Crossing: in many ways far more remarkable than the spatial crossing of fifteen light-years in three elderly but suitable spaceships to reach this deserted corner of the Sagittarian sector.

  They had two more emergencies that day. The first was a slight brush with the following edge of Threadfall. Ezra spotted the now-familiar grayness ahead, and they were faced with a choice of hoving to or giving their emergency gear a trial run. Jim and Ezra conferred with those ships that were on the comlink, and it was unanimously decided to continue, and see just how effective the safety gear was. Better now, when they knew they’d only have to endure a half hour or more of Fall, rather than a longer period.

  So the dolphins and dolphineers spread the command to all the craft not on comlink. Sails were furled and shields put in place; fire-lizards were sent off to collect enough wild ones to help, and the light sea suddenly blossomed with plastic cones.

  Jim, his crew of five, and the four dolphineers, though they could have weathered the Edge in the cabin, decided to provide a good example to the timorous. Donning their head protectors and grabbing plastic safety lines, they jumped into the water. That helped a few of the fearful to follow suit. The four dolphins stayed underwater as long as possible, then made mad rushes out to blow and squee-ee.

  “Much good eating soon,” Dart commented at one point.

  “Don’t overeat, you glutton,” Theo told her warningly. “She likes ’em when they’re bloated with water,” she explained to the others.

  Jim’s shudder went unseen, since his coolie
hat touched the water and obscured his face. Once he tipped the hat up so he could see, but Theo tugged it back down.

  “You’d lose your looks with a Threadscore across that prominent nose of yours,” she said, her words muffled under her own hat.

  Jim felt his nose, which he had never considered as particularly prominent.

  “All there is to see are coolie hats and Thread,” Theo told him.

  “How d’you know?”

  “I’ve already had a look. Thread bores me on the ground. It was much more fun flying sleds through it.” Waves rippled out from her as if she had shrugged.

  “Which do you prefer? I mean, profession—pilot or dolphineer?”

  “I’ve done enough flying, though Threadfall was more exciting than the routine stuff I did,” she told him in a thoughtful voice as her body drifted toward his in the water. Their legs touched; his were much longer than hers, he noted absently in the clear water around them. They had drifted slightly away from the others, having let their safety lines play out to the full length. “Dolphineering’s something else again. Dart’s super,” she said, and Jim could hear the pride and the depth of her friendship for her sea partner. “Sure beats the hell out of the one-sided arrangement you could have with domestic animals. Though I used to be right fond of an old moggie I had once on ol’ Earth. But teaming with Dart’s totally superior to that sort of thing.”

  “Did you try for a dragon?”

  “No. You got asked to stand in that circle.” Theo snorted. “They wanted younger riders. Like I said, I’ve done enough flying.”

  “You’re not old . . .”

  Theo’s laugh was genuine amusement. “Maybe not from where you swim, Granddad,” she said, but he took no offense from her teasing. He was, after all, in his sixth decade, twice her age, and should have been a grandfather . . . if he hadn’t chosen a profession that would have denied him most of the pleasures of marriage and children. A month’s home leave after sixteen or seventeen months in space wasn’t enough time for a wife or kids. He’d never tried for any more than casual relationships.

  He felt Thread plunk on the crown of his coolie and inadvertently flinched, but the stuff slid off the slick plastic and hissed into the sea. He swung his legs out of danger as the Thread continued down into the water deep enough to be swallowed by Dart or one of the other dolphins, or some of the schools of fish that flitted about to feast on the manna. Hunger made them fearless, and Jim felt the caress of scales now and then on his bare skin: startling the first time, and producing a knowing laugh from Theo, who was completely accustomed to such contact. The result was that he felt as protected by the sea as by the man-made artifacts. And the fire-lizards. At Theo’s direction, he looked up through the semi-transparency of the cone’s flange to see the first of the fire-lizards flaming around and above them, deflecting Thread from the deck of the Cross. Since the deck was made of teakwood he had imported as part of his allowable weight as Buenos Aires captain, he was particularly happy to see it protected from Threadscore.

  Then, almost too soon, the loud chuffings, squeeeeings, and ecstatic breachings of dolphins told him the danger had passed.

  “We’ll do a quick tour,” Theo told him, holding her hand out in the water for Dart to supply a dorsal fin and the tow. “Peri,” she said to the other dolphineer nearby, “you go to port, I’ll go starboard.”

  “Lemme know if there’s been any scoring, especially any damage to the ships,” Jim called after them.

  Thinking on how well they had survived this recurrent menace, Jim hauled himself back on board, stowed his hat within easy reach, dried off, and ordered sail hoisted again.

  “The enemy has been met and . . . consumed,” he muttered, grinning to himself at his paraphrase as he unlashed the helm that had been set on a course diagonally away from the main Thread rain. But, oddly, he felt the better for that short brush—and for Theo’s company. She was a sort of . . . comfortable person. He grinned again. That was not the sort of compliment a woman would appreciate.

  The second emergency was more life-threatening: a burst plank below the waterline nearly sank a six-meter ketch, save for the quick action of the dolphins, who all but swam it into shore on their own backs. As the cargo of the ketch was mainly irreplaceable orange-coded supplies, its timely rescue was a double blessing.

  They anchored early that day so that they could not only find a replacement plank from those that had been extruded during the layover at Paradise River but also check sails and lines for Threadscore. No human had received injury, and even those who had doubted the efficacy of coolies against Thread had been reassured by the experience.

  Though the ketch crew worked all night with the plastics experts, the flotilla did not make sail until noontime the next day. A good wind helped make up lost time and certainly relieved Jim’s frustrations. He missed Theo’s company in the cockpit, but she had this first watch off and was sleeping. It was a shame she was missing the best part of this fine day. Nothing, but nothing, on any world could be a more stimulating and satisfying occupation than sailing a good ship in a brisk wind down sparkling clear blue-green coastal waters. He wondered if Theo could appreciate that, too.

  The tropical storm, brewing up suddenly as they neared Boca, drove them back toward Sadrid.

  Jim’s nautical instinct had been warning him since early morning as they sailed westward on the gentle swells. One of the Sadrid fishermen had reminded him only the night before of the suddenness of squalls on this stretch of coast. So he was watching for those little signs the experienced sailor knows: a smudge on the horizon that wasn’t Thread, the sudden drop of the barometer, a change in the color of the water, a sultry feeling of pressure in the air around him. Then he noticed the alteration from blue-green to grayish green and the rippling change of the wave patterns.

  He turned to Theo, who was back in the cockpit with him. “Theo, I think—”

  The storm struck with a ferocity and abruptness he had rarely encountered on any previous sea. He had the impression of black suit and bare legs going over the side into the suddenly heavy sea as he tightened his hold on the helm. He didn’t even have time to get the bow turned into the huge comber bearing down on them, but he did manage to avoid meeting the four- and five-meter waves broadside. His crew struggled to get the sails down and reefed, fighting the waves that tried to wash them off the deck—in some cases only the life rails prevented them from going overboard. Young Steve Duff, struggling to tie down the boom, was barely missed by the lightning that flashed across the ship, slicing through the mast two-thirds of the way up its length, snapping the mainstays into lethal lashes until they fell over the life rail. Jim barely managed to keep the bow turned into the towering seas as once again the Cross thudded into a trough left by the latest monumental wave. Worry about the more vulnerable small craft of his fleet drove terror into Jim’s heart—until the more immediate threat to the lives of himself and his crew banished all thought but that of survival.

  Now and then, during the brief but thoroughly devastating squall, he caught sight of dolphins, hurtling in midair across a seething watery surface, purpose evident in every line of the sleek bodies. Sometimes their partners clung to the dorsal fins; other times the dolphins seemed to be acting independently, but always in accordance with their training.

  Twice the Cross’s crew threw lines and hauled people rescued by the dolphins out of the water to the dubious safety of the plunging deck. Once they overran the upturned hull of a capsized ship, feeling the grind as their keel sliced across the plastic hull.

  As abruptly as it began, the storm vanished in the distance, a roiling dark vortex pierced by bolts of lightning.

  Exhausted and somewhat amazed to be alive, Jim was suddenly aware that his right arm was broken and he was bleeding from a variety of cuts on both arms, chest, and bare legs. None of his crew was totally unscathed. One rescued girl had a broken leg, and a boy was concussed, his face badly contused, and a long wound giving his hair a
new parting. In the sea, which was still heavy from the agitation of the squall, survivors clung to spars, half-sunk hulks, or pallets in an expanse of destruction that nearly reduced Jim to tears.

  Ignoring his own wounds and his crew’s urgings to attend to them, Jim scrabbled for the bullhorn in the cockpit and released it from its brackets. He gave the order to start up engines that, to conserve fuel, were rarely used. Ranging up and down wherever flotsam could be seen, he shouted encouragements and orders, directing dolphineer rescues even as he wondered if all under his command could still be alive. And what cargo could be salvaged.

  “It came up out of nowhere,” Jim reported in an almost lifeless voice when Fort com, manned by Zi Ongola, answered his Mayday. By then they had managed to get a lot of the shipwrecked to the sandy beach. The dolphin teams were still searching the wreckage, but he needed assistance as soon as possible. He gazed with eyes that dared not focus too long on the human jetsam and the wreckage flung up on the long narrow strand that was the nearest landfall. His Southern Cross, five of the larger yawls and ketches, and two small sloops had ridden out the storm. “I was warned about the way squalls brew up in this area, so I was on guard. Not that it did me any good. It hit out of nowhere. A change of the wave color and pattern and then—bang! We’d no time to do anything except hope we’d survive. Some never had enough time to lower sail and steer into the wind. If it hadn’t been for the dolphins, we’d’ve lost people, too.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Yeah, too many,” Jim said, absently smoothing the gelicast that bound the broken arm he had no recollection of breaking. Only one of his cuts had needed stapling, and Theo had done that, as well as apply the gelicast. Then he’d applied sealant to the scratches on Theo’s bare legs and arms, earned while she tried to squeeze into wrecked cabins to aid survivors. They’d separated, first-aid kits in hand, to attend the needs of others to the best of their abilities . . .