Brekke said she has alerted as many as she could, Canth told him.

“Brekke? Why’d you call her? She’s got enough to do.”

She is the best one, Canth replied, ignoring F’nor’s reprimand.

“Are they too late?” F’nor glanced anxiously at the sky and at the dune, willing more men to arrive.

Brekke was wading toward the struggling hatchlings now, her hands extended. The other two were following her example. Who had she brought? Why hadn’t she got more riders? They’d know instantly how to approach the beasts.

Two more dragons appeared in the sky, circled and landed with dizzying speed right on the beach their riders racing in to help. The skyborne green flamed off the insistent wherries, bugling to her fellows to help her.

Brekke has one. And the girl. So does the boy but the beast is hurt. Brekke says that many are dead. Why, wondered F’nor suddenly, if he had only just seen the truth of the legend of fire lizards, did he ache for their deaths? Surely the creatures had been hatching on lonely beaches for centuries, been eaten by wherries and their own peers, unseen and unmourned. The strong survive, said Canth, undismayed.

They saved seven, two badly hurt. The young girl, Mirrim, Brekke’s fosterling, attached three; two greens and a brown seriously injured by gouges on his soft belly. Brekke had a bronze with no mark on him, the green’s rider had a bronze, and the other two riders had blues, one with a wrenched wing which Brekke feared might never heal properly for flight.

“Seven out of over fifty,” said Brekke sadly after they had disposed of the broken bodies with agenothree. A precaution which Brekke suggested as a frustration for the carrion eaters and to prevent other fire lizards from avoiding the beach as dangerous to their kind. “I wonder how many would have survived if you hadn’t called us.”

“She was already far from the others when she discovered us,” F’nor remarked. “Probably the first to hatch, or on top of the others.”

Brekke’d had the wit to bring a full haunch of buck, though the Weyr might eat light that evening. So they had gorged the hatchlings into such a somnolent state that they could be carried, unresisting, back to the Weyr, or to Brekke’s Infirmary.

“You’re to fly home straight,” Brekke told F’nor, in much the way a woman spoke to a rebellious weyrling.

“Yes, ma’am,” F’nor replied, with mock humility, and then smiled because Brekke took him so seriously.

The little queen nestled in his arm sling as contentedly as if she’d found a weyr of her own. “A weyr is where a dragon is no matter how it’s constructed,” he murmured to himself as Canth winged steadily eastward.

When F’nor reached Southern, it was obvious the news had raced through the Weyr. There was such an aura of excitement that F’nor began to worry that it might frighten the tiny creatures between.

No dragon can fly when he is belly-bloated, Canth said. Even a fire lizard. And took himself off to his sun-warmed wallow, no longer interested.

“You don’t suppose he’s jealous, do you?” F’nor asked Brekke when he found her in her Infirmary, splinting the little blue’s wrenched wing.

‘Wirenth was interested, too, until the lizards fell asleep,” Brekke told him, a twinkle in her green eyes as she looked up at him briefly. “And you know how touchy Wirenth is right now. Mercy, F’nor, what is there for a dragon to be jealous of? These are toys, dolls as far as the big ones are concerned. At best, children to be protected and taught like any fosterling.”

F’nor glanced over at Mirrim, Brekke’s foster child. The two green lizards perched asleep on her shoulders. The injured brown, swathed from neck to tail in bandage, was cradled in her lap. Mirrim was sitting with the erect stiffness of someone who dares not move a muscle. And she was smiling with an incredulous joy.

“Mirrim is very young for this,” he said, shaking his head.

“On the contrary, she’s as old as most weyrlings at their first Impression. And she’s more mature in some ways than half a dozen grown women I know with several babes of their own.”

“Oh-ho. The female of the species in staunch defense . . .”

“It’s no teasing matter, F’nor,” Brekke replied with a sharpness that put F’nor in mind of Lessa. “Mirrim will do very well. She takes every responsibility to heart.” The glance Brekke shot her fosterling was anxious as well as tender.

“I still say she’s young . . .”

“Is age a prerequisite for a loving heart? Does maturity always bring compassion? Why are some weyrbred boys left standing on the sand and others, never thought to have a chance, walk off with the bronzes? Mirrim Impressed three, and the rest of us, though we tried, with the creatures dying at our feet, only managed to attach one.”

“And why am I never told what occurs in my own Weyr?” Kylara demanded in a loud voice. She stood on the threshold of the Infirmary, her face suffused with an angry flush, her eyes bright and hard.

“As soon as I finished this splinting, I was coming to tell you,” Brekke replied calmly, but F’nor saw her shoulders stiffen

Kylara advanced on the girl, with such overt menace that F’nor stepped around Brekke, wondering to himself as he did so whether Kylara was armed with more than a bad temper.

“Events moved rather fast, Kylara,” he said, smiling pleasantly. “We were fortunate to save as many of the lizards as we did. Too bad you didn’t hear Canth broadcast the news. You might have Impressed one yourself.”

Kylara halted, the full skirts of her robe swirling around her feet. She glared at him, twitching the sleeve of her dress but not before he saw the black bruise on her arm. Unable to attack Brekke, she turned, spotting Mirrim. She swept up to the girl, staring down in such a way that the child looked appealingly toward Brekke. At this point, the tension in the room roused the lizards. The two greens hissed at Kylara but it was the crystal bugle of the bronze on G’sel’s shoulder that diverted the Weyrwoman’s attention.

“I’ll have the bronze! Of course. The bronze’ll do fine,” she exclaimed. There was something so repellent about the glitter in her eyes and the nasty edge to her laugh that F’nor felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

“A bronze dragon on my shoulder will be most effective I think,” Kylara went on, reaching for G’sel’s bronze lizard.

G’sel put up a warning hand.

“I said they were Impressed, Kylara,” F’nor warned her, quickly signaling the rider to refuse. G’sel was only a green rider and new to this Weyr at that; he was no match for Kylara, particularly not in this mood. “Touch him at your own risk.”

“Impressed, you say?” Kylara hesitated, turning to sneer at F’nor. “Why, they’re nothing but fire lizards.”

“And from what creature on Pern do you think dragons were bred?”

“Not that old nursery nonsense. How could you possibly make a fighting dragon from a fire lizard?” She reached again for the little bronze. It spread its wings, flapping them agitatedly.

“If it bites you, don’t blame G’sel,” F’nor told her in a pleasant drawl though it cost him much to keep his temper. It was too bad you couldn’t beat a Weyrwoman with impunity. Her dragon wouldn’t permit it but a sound thrashing was what Kylara badly needed.

“You can’t be certain they’re that much like dragons,” Kylara protested, glancing suspiciously around at the others. “No one’s ever caught one and you just found them.”

“We’re not certain of anything about them,” F’nor replied, beginning to enjoy himself. It was a pleasure to see Kylara frustrated by a lizard. “However, look at the similarities. My little queen . . .”

“You? Impressed a queen?” Kylara’s face turned livid as F’nor casually drew aside a fold of his sling to expose the sleeping gold lizard.

“She went between when she was frightened. She communicated that fright, plus curiosity, and she evidently received our reassurances. At least she came back. Canth said she’d just hatched. I fed her and she’s still with me. We managed to save only these seven because they got Impressed. The others turned cannibal. Now, how long these will be dependent on us for food and companionship is pure conjecture. But the dragons admit a blood relationship and they have ways of knowing beyond ours.”