Harry Turtledove - The Best military Science Fiction of 20th century

"Strange," Robinton mused. "Once the danger from the Red Star was past, the dragons and riders may have gone between to ease the drain on the Holds. But I simply cannot believe that. Our Craft-records do mention that harvests were bad and that there had been several natural catastrophes…other than the Threads. Men may be gallant and your breed the most gallant of all, but mass suicide? I simply do not accept that explanation…not for dragonmen."

"My thanks," F'lar said with mild irony.

"Don't mention it," Robinton replied graciously.

F'lar chuckled appreciatively. "I see we have been too weyrbound as well as too hidebound."

ROBINTON DRAINED HIS cup, and looked at it mournfully until F'lar refilled it.

"Well, your isolation served some purpose, you know, and you handled that uprising of the Lords magnificently. I nearly choked to death laughing," Robinton remarked, grinning broadly. "Stealing their women in the flash of a dragon's breath!" He chuckled again and suddenly sobered, looking F'lar straight in the eye. "Accustomed as I am to hearing what a man does not say aloud, I suspect there is much you glossed over in that Council Meeting. You may be sure of my discretion…and…you may be sure of my wholehearted support and that of my not ineffectual Craft. To be blunt, how may my Harpers aid you?" and he strummed a vigorous marching air. "Stir men's pulses with ballads of past glories and success?" The tune, under his flashing fingers, changed abruptly to a stern but determined rhythm. "Strengthen their mental and physical sinews for hardship?"

"If all your harpers could stir men as you yourself do, I should have no worries that five hundred or so additional dragons would not immediately end."

"Oho, then despite your brave words and marked charts, the situation is"-a dissonant twang on the guitar accented his final words-"more desperate than you carefully did not say."

"It may be."

"The flamethrowers old Zurg remembered and Fandarel must reconstruct? Will they tip the scales?"

F'lar regarded this clever man thoughtfully, and made a quick decision.

"Even Igen's sandworms will help, but as the world turns and the Red Star nears, the interval between daily attacks shortens and we have only seventy-two new dragons to add to those we had yesterday. One is now dead and several will not fly for several weeks."

"Seventy-two?" Robinton caught him up sharply. "Ramoth hatched but forty and they are still too young to eat firestone."

F'lar outlined F'nor and Lessa's expedition, taking place at that moment. He went on to F'nor's reappearance and warning, as well as the fact that the experiment had been successful in part with the hatching of thirty-two new dragons for Pridith's first clutch.

Robinton caught him up. "How can F'nor already have returned when you haven't heard from Lessa and him that there is a breeding place on the southern continent?"

"Dragons can go between times as well as places. They go easily from a when to a where."

Robinton's eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.

"That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell."

"You can actually jump backwards? How far back?"

"I don't know. Lessa, when I was teaching her to fly Ramoth, inadvertently returned to Ruath Hold, to the dawn twelve Turns ago when Fax's men invaded from the heights. When she returned to the present, I attempted a between times jump of some ten Turns. To the dragons it is a simple matter to go between times or spaces, but there appears to be a terrific drain on the rider. Yesterday, by the time we returned from Nerat and had to go on to Keroon, I felt as though I had been pounded flat and left to dry for a summer on Igen plain." F'lar shook his head. "We have obviously succeeded in sending Kylara, Pridith and the others ten Turns between, because F'nor has already reported to me that he has been there several Turns. The drain on humans, however, is becoming more and more marked. However, even seventy-two more mature dragons will be a help."

"Send a rider ahead in time and see if it is sufficient," Robinton suggested helpfully. "Save you a few days' worrying."

"I don't know how to get some-when which has not yet happened. You must give your dragon reference points, you know. How can you refer him to times which have not yet occurred?"

"You've got an imagination. Project it."

"And perhaps lose a dragon when I have none to spare? No, I must continue…because obviously I have, judging by F'nor's returns…as I decided to start. Which reminds me, I must give orders to start packing. Then I shall go over the time charts with you."

It was just after the noonmeal, which Robinton took with the Weyrleader, before the Masterharper was confident he understood the charts and left to begin their copying. Across a waste of lonely tossing sea, Where no dragonwings had lately spread, Flew a gold and a sturdy brown in spring, Searching if a land be dead.

As Ramoth and Canth bore Lessa and F'nor up to the Star Stone, they saw the first of the Hold Lords and Craftmasters arriving for the Council.

In order to get back to the southern continent of ten Turns ago, Lessa and F'nor had decided it was easiest to transfer first between times to the Weyr of ten Turns back which F'nor remembered. Then they would go between places to a seapoint just off the coast of the neglected southern continent which was as close to it as the Records gave any references.

F'nor put Canth in mind of a particular day he remembered ten Turns back and Ramoth picked up the references from the brown's mind. The awesome cold of between times took Lessa's breath away and it was with intense relief she caught a glimpse of the normal weyr activity before the dragons took them between places to hover over the turgid sea.

Beyond them, smudged purple on this overcast and gloomy day, lurked the southern continent. Lessa felt a new anxiety replace the uncertainty of the temporal displacement. Ramoth beat forward with great sweeps of her wings, making for the distant coast. Canth gallantly tried to maintain a matching speed.

"He's only a brown," Lessa scolded her golden queen.

If he is flying with me, Ramoth replied coolly, he must stretch his wings a little.

Lessa grinned, thinking very privately that Ramoth was still piqued that she had not been able to fight with her weyrmates. All the males would have a hard time with her for a while.

They saw the flock of wherries first and realized that there would have to be some vegetation on the continent. Wherries needed greens to live although they could subsist on a few grubs if necessary.

Lessa had Canth relay questions to his rider. "If the southern continent were rendered barren by the Threads, how did new growth start? Where did the wherries come from?"

"Ever notice the seed pods split open and the flakes carried away by the winds? Ever notice that wherries fly south after the autumn solstice?"

"Yes, but…"

"Yes, but!"

"But the land is thread-bared!"

"In less than four hundred Turns even the scorched hilltops of our continent begin to sprout in the springtime," F'nor replied by way of Canth, "so it is easy to assume the southern continent could revive, too."

Lessa was dubious and berated herself sternly, forcing her mind from F'nor's cryptic warning.

Even at the pace Ramoth set, it took time to reach the jagged shoreline with its forbidding cliffs, stark stone in the sullen light. Lessa groaned inwardly but urged Ramoth higher to see over the masking highlands. All seemed gray and desolate from that altitude.

Suddenly the sun broke through the cloud cover and the gray dissolved into dense greens and browns, living colors, the live greens of lush tropical growth, the browns of vigorous trees and vines. Lessa's cry of triumph was echoed by F'nor's hurrah and the brass voices of the dragons. Wherries, startled by the unusual sound, rose up in alarm from their perches.