“Who wants to think what might have happened?” Laura of Ista Weyr demanded, laughing with exaggerated relief.
“For one thing, we wouldn’t have this champagne,” Irene replied. “That’s for damned sure!”
“How’d you get the sparkly out of Hegmon, Vergerin?” G’don wanted to know, cradling his glass lovingly.
“We’re old friends, you might say,” Vergerin replied with a droll grin.
“Did any wing report injuries?” M’shall asked, his expression turning sober.
“Nothing above char burns in mine,” K’vin said. And that was what the other wingleaders reported one after another.
“Well, we’re fragging lucky if that’s all. Though I shudder to think how careless the average rider can get,” M’shall said. “We’ll have to keep them on their toes.”
“And on their dragons,” his weyrmate replied.
“Look at it this way,” B’nurrin said, grinning from ear to ear, “we’ve only 6,649 more falls to attend, give or take a few, before it’s all over for another two hundred years.”
There was a moment of dumbfounded silence as that fact was absorbed, and then B’nurrin ducked away before the wrath of his peers could descend on him.
“But Fall has begun,” K’vin said softly to Zulaya, standing proudly beside him, “and we have met the enemy again.”
“What a time to be alive . . .”
“And riding a dragon!”
And thus began the Second Pass of Thread on Pern!
Anne McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, majoring in Slavonic Languages and Literatures. Before her success as a writer, she was involved in theater. She directed the American premiere of Carl Orff’s Ludus de Nato Infante Mirificus, in which she also played a witch. Her first novel, Restoree, was written as a protest against the absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in science fiction novels in the 50s and early 60s. Ms. McCaffrey is best known, however, for her handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly in her tales of the Talents and the fourteen novels about the Dragonriders of Pern.
McCaffrey lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland. Visit the author online at www.annemccaffrey.org.
Books by Anne McCaffrey
Decision at Doona
Dinosaur Planet Survivors
Get Off the Unicorn
The Lady
Pegasus in Flight
Restorree
The Ship Who Sang
To Ride Pegasus
Nimisha’s Ship
Pegasus in Space
THE CRYSTAL SINGER BOOKS
Crystal Singer
Killashandra
Crystal Line
THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN® BOOKS
Dragonflight
Dragonquest
The White Dragon
Nerilka’s Story
Dragonsdawn
The Renegades of Pern
All the Weyrs of Pern
The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall
The Dolphins of Pern
Dragonseye
The Masterharper of Pern
The Skies of Pern
By Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough:
Powers that Be
Power Lines
Power Play
With Jody Lynn Nye:
The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern
Edited by Anne McCaffrey:
Alchemy and Academe
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To enjoy other great science fiction and fantasy titles visit
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A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 1997 by Anne McCaffrey
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Published in Great Britain under the title Red Star Rising by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd., in 1996.
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-92492
eISBN: 0-345-45400-6
eISBN: 978-0-345-45400-3
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