Hey, Sean, you need some, too,” one of the medics said, pulling off his helmet to anoint his cheeks. “Got to get you looking spruce. The admiral’s waiting!”

As if her words were a cue, a murmurous silence fell over the plain. The riders converged together and moved forward to the foot of the ramp where Paul Benden, in the full uniform of a fleet admiral, with Ongola and Ezra Keroon similarly attired flanking him, awaited the seventeen young heroes.

In step, the dragonriders walked forward, past people grinning foolishly in their pride. Sean recognized many faces: Pol and Bay looking about to burst with pride; Telgar, tears streaming down his cheeks, Ozzie and Cobber on either side of him; Cherry Duff upheld by two sons, her black eyes gleaming with joy. He caught sight of the Hanrahans, Mairi holding up his small son to see the pageantry. There was no sign of Governor Emily Boll, and Sean felt his heart contract. What Peter Chernoff had said was true, then. This moment would not be the same without her.

They reached the ramp, and somehow the queen riders had dropped a step behind the others and Sean stood in the center. When they halted, he took a step forward and saluted. It seemed the correct thing to do. Admiral Benden, tears in his eyes, proudly returned the salute.

“Admiral Benden, sir,” said Sean, rider of bronze Carenath,” may I present the Dragonriders of Pern?”

Born on April 1, Anne McCaffrey has tried to live up to such an auspicious natal day. Her first novel was created in Latin class and might have brought her instant fame, as well as an A, had she attempted to write in the language. Much chastened, she turned to the stage and became a character actress, appearing in the first successful summer music circus at Lambertville, New Jersey. She studied voice for nine years and, during that time, became intensely interested in the stage direction of opera and operetta, ending this phase of her life with the stage direction of the American premiere of Carl Orff’s Ludus De Nato Infante Mirificus, in which she also played a witch.

By the time the three children of her marriage were comfortably at school most of the day, she had already achieved enough success with short stories to devote full time to writing.

Between her frequent appearances in the United States and England as a lecturer and guest-of-honor at science-fiction conventions, Ms. McCaffrey lives at Dragonhold, in the hills of Wicklow County, Ireland, with two cats, two dogs, and assorted horses. Of herself, Ms. McCaffrey says, “I have green eyes, silver hair, and freckles; the rest changes without notice.”