"You made for the thermal current right off?" she asked, having figured out just how he had managed to achieve his goal.

"Hmmm." He moved his head to emphasize the agreement.

Vividly blue eyes regarded her with solemn appraisal. His short hair was dark red with sweat, but it curled as much as hers did. She expected that they'd have curly, red-headed children and smiled to be thinking that far ahead right now.

"Only way," he murmured. Then, almost as if he expected her to resist, he ran a wondering finger down her cheek.

"Alaranth hadn't a chance against that technique," she said.

"I didn't intend that she should, ‘Rene," he said with a slow smile, and stroked her cheek again. It was the warm smile she liked so much. "I couldn't let any other rider have you."

She looked up at him quizzically: not "dragon," but "rider" and "you." He meant her, not just what she brought to this union, her dragon and the Weyrleadership.

"Rider?"

He raised himself on his elbows, looking down at her face as if he had to memorize every detail. "You are exceptionally beautiful, you know, and those eyelashes are totally unfair!" That marvelous smile of his again curved his firm mouth.

"But you said you were going to be Weyrleader."

"Oh, I'd've been that one way or another, sooner or later," he said in a blithe tone. He gave her very tender kisses on the edges of her lips.

"Polite"? "Restrained"? She couldn't help smiling up at him, thinking of how very wrong the other women had been and how very glad she was that they were.

"It was always you I ached to have," he said, still memorizing the planes of her face, kissing her cheekbones. "From the moment I saw you Impress Alaranth. But my father had warned me off the queen riders. I had to shadow Admiral Benden in order to get anywhere near you then without having my backside flayed."

"That long ago?" Who had been avoiding whom since? She raised her eyelashes then and swept them teasingly across his forehead. His arms tightened, and there was nothing polite or considerate about his response: a response that had nothing to do with his dragon.

We both have what we wanted, said a dragon in a sleepy satisfied tone.

Try though she would in all the years she and M'hall were the Weyrleaders of Benden, Torene was never sure which dragon had spoken. Or to whom.

"Ma'am?" Ross Vaclav Benden said in a surprised tone. "There's an orange flag on the Rukbat system." He swiveled around toward the Amherst's command chair and the battle cruiser's captain, Anise Fargoe.

The Amherst had been assigned to conduct a determined search of the Sagittarian Sector for any evidence of new incursions by the Nasties. The punitive war of six decades earlier had proved insufficient to dissuade those intruders from continuing to annex remote elements of the Federation. A massive seek-and– destroy operation was now five years in progress; mercifully, only minor infiltration's had been discovered—a few outposts and two space stations, which had been obliterated. But not until all adjoining space and every peripheral system had been investigated and warning devices strategically strewn would the Federation enjoy any sense of security. A second prolonged Nasties Campaign would ruin the already depleted Federation. Quick sharp thrusts now, the Combined Joint Staffs had wisely decided, should suffice.

As the Amherst had so far had a very boring swing through their sector, Lieutenant Benden's unexpected comment roused everyone on the bridge.

"Orange? This far out?" Captain Fargoe asked, her eyes widening in a flare of excitement. "Didn't know we had colonies in this sector."

"Orange" signified that an investigation should be initiated by any vessel close enough to the flagged system to do so.

"I'm accessing files, ma'am." And Benden, suddenly remembering family history, breathlessly awaited the entry. He tapped his thumbs restlessly on the edge of the keyboard and got a quick repressive glance from old Rezmar Dooley Zane, the duty navigator. "Oh," he added, his eagerness deflated as the file header informed him that a distress message had been received from the colony on Pern, Rukbat's only inhabitable planet.

"Well, let's see the message," Captain Fargoe said. Anything to relieve the tedium of the fruitless search through this deserted—almost deserted—sphere of space. "Screen it."

Benden transferred the message to the main screen.

MAYDAY! PERN COLONY IN DESPERATE CONDITION FOLLOWING REPEATED ATTACKS OF AN UNCONTACTED ENEMY INVASION FORCE EMPLOYING UNKNOWN ORGANISM…

"Nasties don't need germ warfare," muttered brash Ensign Cahill Bralin Nev. Someone else snickered.

… WHICH CONSUMES ALL ORGANIC MATTER. MUST HAVE TECHNICAL AND NAVAL SUPPORT OR COLONY FACES TOTAL ANNIHILATION. THERE IS WEALTH HERE. SAVE OUR SOULS. THEODORE TUBBERMAN, COLONY BOTANIST.

There was an almost embarrassed silence.

"Hardly the Nasties then," the captain said dryly. "Probably some old weapon system has been triggered. Perhaps one of the Fifty units we ran into in the Red Sector. I thought only survivor types were chosen to be colonists. Mister Benden, what does Library say about this Pern expedition?"

Ross didn't need to search for the official documentation on the Expedition—he knew most of the tale by heart. But he keyed up the file anyway.

"Captain, a low-tech, agrarian colony was chartered for the third planet of the Rukbat system, under the joint leadership of Admiral Paul Benden and—"

"Your uncle, I believe."

"Yes, Captain," Ross replied, keeping his tone level. Proud though his entire family was of Paul Benden's most honorable service record, Ross had taken a lot of gibing during his first cadet year, when his uncle's victory at Cygnus was telecast as a documentary, and in his third year, when Admiral Benden's strategy was discussed in Tactics.

"A most able strategist and a fine commander." Fargoe's voice registered approval, but her sideways glance warned Benden not to presume on his uncle's sterling record. "Continue, mister."

"Governor Emily Boll of Altair was the other leader. Six thousand-plus colonists, chartered and contracted, were transported in three ships, Yokohama, Buenos Aires, and Bahrain. The only other communication was the regulation report of a successful landing. No further contact was expected."

"Humph. Idealists, were they? Isolating themselves and then screaming for help at the slightest sign of trouble."

Ross Benden gritted his teeth, searching for some polite way to assert that Admiral Benden would not have "screamed for help" and bloody well hadn't sent that craven message.

Fortunately, after a moment's thought, the captain went on. "Not Admiral Benden's style to send a distress message of any kind. So, who's this Theodore Tubberman, Botanist, who affixed his name to the plea? A Mayday should have been authorized by the colony leaders."

"It wasn't a standard capsule," Benden replied, having noted that emendation. "But expertly contrapted. It was also sent to Federation headquarters."

"Federation headquarters?" Fargoe sat forward, frowning. "Why HQ? Why not the Colonial Authority? Or the Fleet? No, if it wasn't signed by Admiral Benden, the Fleet would have shifted it to the CA." Then she sat, chin on one hand, studying the report, scrolling it forward from her armrest keypad. "A nonstandard homing device sent to Federation HQ indicating that the colony was under attack… hmm. And nine years after a successful landing, forty-nine years ago.

"How far are we from the Rukbat system, Mister Benden?"

"Point-oh-four-five from the heliopause, ma'am. Science Officer Ni Morgana wanted a closer look at that Oort cloud. She's interested in cometary reservoirs. That's when I noticed the orange flag on the system."