Poul Anderson - The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century

He checked to be sure that every man was well loaded with firestone sacks, that each dragon was in good color, especially those in from the southern Weyr. Of course, the dragons were fit but the faces of the men still showed evidences of the temporal strains they had endured. He was procrastinating and the Threads would be dropping in the skies of Telgar.

He gave the order to go between . They reappeared above, and to the south of Telgar Hold itself, and were not the first arrivals. To the west, to the north and yes, to the east now, wings arrived until the horizon was patterned with the great V’s of several thousand dragon wings. Faintly he heard the klaxon bell on Telgar Hold Tower as the unexpected dragon strength was acclaimed from the ground.

“Where is she?” F’lar demanded of Mnementh. “We’ll need her presently to relay orders…”

She’s coming, Mnementh interrupted him.

Right above Telgar Hold another wing appeared. Even at this distance, F’lar could see the difference: the golden dragons shone in the bright morning sunlight.

A hum of approval drifted down the dragon ranks and despite his fleeting worry, F’lar grinned with proud indulgence at the glittering sight.

Just then the eastern wings soared straight upwards in the sky as the dragons became instinctively aware of the presence of their ancient foe.

Mnementh raised his head, echoing back the brass thunder of the war cry. He turned his head, even as hundreds of other beasts turned to receive firestone from their riders. Hundreds of great jaws masticated the stone, swallowed it, their digestive acids transforming dry stone into flame-producing gases, igniting on contact with oxygen.

Threads! F’lar could see them clearly now against the spring sky. His pulses began to quicken, not with apprehension, but with a savage joy. His heart pounded unevenly. Mnementh demanded more stone and began to speed up the strokes of his wings in the air, gathering himself to leap upward when commanded.

The leading Weyr already belched gouts of orange-red flame into the pale-blue sky. Dragons winked in and out, flamed and dove.

The great golden queens sped at cliff-skimming height to cover what might have been missed.

Then F’lar gave the command to gain altitude to meet the Threads halfway in their abortive descent. As Mnementh surged upward, F’lar shook his fist defiantly at the winking Red Eye of the Star.

“One day,” he shouted, “we will not sit tamely here, awaiting your fall. We will fall on you, where you spin, and sear you on your own ground.”

By the Egg, he told himself, if we can travel four hundred Turns backwards, and across seas and lands in the blink of an eye, what is travel from one world to another but a different kind of step?

F’lar grinned to himself. He’d better not mention that audacious notion in Lessa’s presence.

Clumps ahead, Mnementh warned him.

As the bronze dragon charged, flaming, F’lar tightened his knees on the massive neck. Mother of us all, he was glad that now, of all times conceivable, he, F’lar, rider of bronze Mnementh, was a Dragonman of Pern!

Anne McCaffrey has been writing science fiction for nearly half a century and published her first novel, Restoree, in 1967. She won acclaim for her third novel, The Ship Who Sang, an influential story of human-machine interface written well before the cyberpunk movement, but is renowned for her bestselling Pern novels, introduced in her Hugo Award–winning story “Weyr Search” and Nebula Award–winning story “Dragonrider” in 1968. The Pern books, which are the chronicle of an Earth colony that is linked symbiotically to a native race of sentient dragons, number more than a dozen, including the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy, The White Dragon, and The Dolphins of Pern. They are complemented by a trio of young adult novels— Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums —set in the same world, as well as the graphic novel rendering Dragonflight. McCaffrey has been praised for her strong female characters, particularly in the Rowan sequence— The Rowan, Damia, The Tower and the Hive. She is also the author of To Ride Pegasus and Pegasus in Flight, a duo concerned with future psychic sleuths, and the Ireta books set on Dinosaur Planet. Her short fiction has been collected in Get Off the Unicorn, and she has edited the anthology Alchemy and Academe.

HARRY TURTLEDOVE was born in Los Angeles in 1949. After flunking out of Caltech, he earned a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA. He has taught ancient and medieval history at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State L.A., and he has published a translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle, as well as several scholarly articles. His alternate-history works have included many short stories, the Civil War classic The Guns of the South , the epic World War I series The Great War, and the Worldwar tetralogy that began with Worldwar: In the Balance . He is a winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History for his novel How Few Remain .

MARTIN H. GREENBERG is a veteran anthologist and book packager with over 700 books to his credit. He lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with his wife, daughter, and four cats.

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“Among Thieves” by Poul Anderson. Copyright © 1957 by Poul Anderson. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Chichak, Inc.

“Second Variety” by Philip K. Dick. Copyright © 1953 by Space Publications. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author’s Estate, the Scovil�Chichak�Galen Literary Agency, Inc.

“Hero” by Joe W. Haldeman. Copyright © 1972 by Joe W. Haldeman. First appeared in Analog magazine, June 1972. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Superiority” by Arthur C. Clarke. Copyright © 1951 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., renewed 1979 by Arthur C. Clarke. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, the Scovil�Chichak�Galen Literary Agency, Inc.

“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. Copyright © 1977 by the Conde Nast Corporation. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Hangman” by David A. Drake. Copyright © 1979 by David Drake for Hammer’s Slammers , Ace, 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Last Article” by Harry Turtledove. Copyright © 1986 by Harry Turtledove. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith. Copyright © 1955 by the Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author’s Estate, the Scott Meredith Literary Agency.

“Night of the Vampyres” by George R. R. Martin. Copyright © 1975 by Ultimate Publishing Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“To the Storming Gulf” by Gregory Benford. Copyright © 1985 by Abbenford Associates. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Wolf Time” by Walter Jon Williams. Copyright © 1987 by Davis Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Scapegoat” by C. J. Cherryh. Copyright © 1985 by C. J. Cherryh in Alien Stars , Baen Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.