"The egg was somewhen for long enough to be brought close to hatching hardness," Lessa went on, her face set with her anger. "It's probably been handled by their candidate. It could have been influenced enough so that the fledgling won't Impress here."

"No one has ever proved how much an egg is influenced by pre-Hatching contact," Robinton was saying in his most persuasive voice. "Or so you've had me understand any number of times. Short of dumping their candidate on top of the egg when it hatches, I can't think their conniving can do them any good or the egg any more harm."

The assembled dragonfolk were still very tense but the initial impetus to rise in wings and destroy the Southern Weyr had cooled considerably with the return of the egg, however mysterious that return was.

"Obviously, we can no longer be complacent," said F'lar, glancing up at the watchdragons, "or secure in the delusion of the inviolability of the Hatching Ground. Any Hatching Ground." Nervously he pushed the hair back from his forehead. "By the First Shell, they've a lot of gall, trying to steal one of Ramoth's eggs."

"The first way to secure this Weyr is to ban those dratted fire-lizards," Lessa said heatedly. "They're little tattlers, worse than useless…"

"Not all of them, Lessa," Brekke said, stepping up beside the Weyrwoman. "Some of them come on legitimate errands and give us a lot of assistance." ,

"Two were playing that game," Robinton said without humor.

Menolly dug Jaxom in the ribs, reminding him that the Harperhall's fire-lizards, hers included, did a lot of assisting.

"I don't care," Lessa told Brekke and glared around at the assembled, looking for fire-lizards. "I don't want to see them about here. Ramoth's not to be pestered by those plaguey things. Something's to be done to keep them where they belong."

"Mark 'em with their colors!" was Brekke's quick reply. "Mark 'em and teach them to speak their name and origin the way dragons do. They're quite capable of learning courtesy. At least the ones who come to Benden by order."

"Have them report to you, Brekke, or Mirrim," Robinton suggested.

"Just keep them away from Ramoth and me!" Lessa peered in at Ramoth and then whipped around. "And someone bring up that wherry that Ramoth didn't eat. She'll be the better for something in her belly right now. We'll discuss this violation of our Weyr later. In detail."

F'lar ordered several dragonmen to get the wherry and then courteously thanked the rest of the assembled for their prompt reply to his summons. He gestured to several of the Weyrleaders and Robinton to join him in the weyr above.

"There's not a fire-lizard in sight," Menolly said to Jaxom. "I told Beauty to stay away. She's answered me scared to her bones."

"So's Ruth," Jaxom said as they crossed the Bowl to him. "He's turned almost gray."

Ruth was more than scared, he was trembling with anxiety.

Something is wrong. Something is not right, he told his rider, his eyes whirling erratically with gray tones.

"Your wing was injured?"

No. Not my wing. Something is wrong in my head. I don't feel right. Ruth shifted from all four legs to his hindquarters, and then back again to all four, rustling his wings.

"Is it because all the fire-lizards have gone? Or the excitement about Ramoth's egg?"

Ruth said it was both and neither. The fire-lizards were all frightened; they remembered something which frightened them.

"Remembered? Huh!" Jaxom felt exasperated with fire-lizards and their associative memories, and their ridiculous images which were making his sensible Ruth miserable.

"Jaxom?" Menolly had detoured to the Lower Caverns and shared with him the handful of meatrolls, she'd cadged from the cooks. "Finder says Robinton wants me to go back to the Harpercrafthall and let them and Fort Hold know what's been happening. I'm also to start marking my fire-lizards. Look!" She pointed to the Weyr rim and the Star Stones. "The watch dragon is chewing firestone. Oh, Jaxom!"

"Dragon against dragon." He shuddered violently.

"Jaxom, it can't come to that," she said in a choked voice.

Neither of them could finish their meatrolls.

Silently they mounted Ruth, who took them aloft.

As Robinton climbed the steps to the queen's weyr, he was thinking faster than he had ever done. Too much was going to depend on what happened now-the whole future course of the planet, if he read reactions correctly. He knew more than he ought about conditions in the Southern Weyr but his knowledge had done him no service today. He berated himself for being so naive, as unseeingly obtuse as any dragonrider for assuming that the Weyrs were inviolable and a Hatching Ground untouchable. He had had warnings from Piemur; but he simply hadn't correlated the information properly. Yet, in light of today's occurrence, he ought to have arrived at the logical conclusion that the desperate Southerners would make this prodigious attempt to revive their failing Weyr with the blood of a new and viable queen. Even if he had reached the proper conclusion, Robinton thought ruefully, how ever would he have been able to persuade Lessa and F'lar that that was what the Southerners planned today. The Weyrleaders would have been properly scornful of such a ridiculous notion.

No one was laughing today. No one at all. Strange that so many people had assumed that the Oldtimers would meekly accept their exile and remain docilely on their continent. They had not been cramped in their accommodation, merely in their hope of a future. T'kul must have been the motivating force-T'ron had lost all his vigor and initiative after that duel with F'lar. Robinton was reasonably certain that the two Weyrwomen, Merika and Mardra, had had no part in the plan; they wouldn't wish to be deposed by a young queen and her rider. Had one of them returned the egg?

No, thought Robinton, it had to be someone with an intimate knowledge of the Benden Weyr Hatching Ground… or someone possessed of the blindest good luck and skill to go between into and out of the cavern.

Robinton relived briefly the compound terror he had experienced during the egg's absence. He winced thinking of Lessa's fury. She was still likely to arouse the Northern dragonriders. She was quite capable of sustaining the unthinking frenzy that had all but dominated the events of the morning. If she continued in her demand for vengeance against the guilty Southerners, it could be as much a disaster for Pern as the first Threadfall had been.

The egg had been returned. Robinton clung to the comforting fact that it was apparently unharmed despite its aging in that elapsed subjective time. Lessa could choose to make its condition an issue. And, if the egg did not hatch an unimpaired queen, there was no doubt in Robinton's mind that Lessa would insist on retribution.

But the egg had been returned! He must drum in that fact, must emphasize that obviously not all Southerners had been party to this heinous action. Some Oldtimers still honored the old codes of conduct. No doubt one of them had been perceptive enough to guess what punitive action would be launched against the criminals and wished, as fervently as Robinton, to avoid such a confrontation.

"This is indeed a black moment," someone with a deep sad voice said. The Harper turned, grateful for the sane support of the Mastersmith. Fandarel's heavy features were etched with worry and, for the first time, Robinton noticed the puffiness of age blurring the man's features, yellowing his eyes. "Such perfidy must be punished-and yet it cannot be!"

The thought of dragon fighting dragon again seared Robinton's mind with terror. "Too much would be lost!" he said to Fandarel.

"They have already lost all they had, being sent into exile. I often wondered why they didn't rebel before."

"They have now. With a vengeance."