I promised you dragons! Thanks for the reviews and the follows on my story, it is an encouragement to know someone is reading my little excursion from canon.

Saska peered into the dull red light of the sun, and saw an outline on the near horizon, a jagged lump of rock. As they came closer, she was aware of the size of the outlying island, how huge it really was, discerning some of the dark holes she presumed to be weyrs. The red sunlight glittered on domes where the dragon riders and their support crews must grow their food and recycle their water from the green sea surrounding them. Whilst Benden was not inimical to human life, it certainly made it more interesting than some of the other Terrvert worlds, because the terraforming was new and raw on this world, and concentrated on the second continent. Measured by the lifetime of the slow burning red dwarf sun, Terrvert scientists were confident they could eventually make the whole world entirely habitable.

The car stopped at a complex of buildings put down in a seemingly haphazard fashion, but each of them had a frontage onto a street, and appeared to be a shop, and they each had a garden dome on the roof.

"Welcome to Lastchance," Saska's father said dryly as he powered down and reached for his id cards. A tall man in black clothing came over, and glanced at the id cards.

"All three of the Doctors Freeman. Are we honoured?" he drawled, in a cadence Saska found unfamiliar yet with an echo of something she had once heard.

"That I wouldn't know, chief. It depends if you read my message."

"Oh, was that what flashed up on the screen? OK, you can go ahead."

Saska touched her mother's arm, and pointed. Up above the island, shapes darted and dipped.

"Are those - dragons?"

"I'd think so, dear."

The tall man escorted them into the nearest building and studied Saska with open interest.

"You're the young lady who can hear the dragons?"

"I can hear one of them," Saska amended. "If it is a dragon, and not some schizophrenic figment of my mind."

The man grinned at her. "Oh, you can hear them all right, if that's your reaction. It's quite a stunner, isn't it? When you hear them clearly for the first time?"

"Are you - Pernese?"

"Yup. I'm a facilitator here on Benden, I deal with the trading aspect of the interaction of both colonies."

"What do you trade?"

"Food," he replied. "Yes, we can grow our own here, but we can get fresh stuff from Pern in a flash, as well."

"But Pern - it's - a long way away - " Saska finished lamely, realising what she was saying.

"Yes I know." He came and took her arm. "Let me show you, all right? You can call me P'til, by the way, rider of bronze Panath."

She nodded, allowing him to lead her, although she detached her arm without giving offence. She studied the large map on the wall of the sitting area.

"That's like the one as we had at school, but - skewed - more to Pern colonies?"

"It's a variation of all the star maps, because that's what most people can relate to. The dimensions aren't real, of course. This is Rukbat, with its family of planets and moons and asteroids. Those have been progressively mined since the first dragon-ship was made. That's been a boon, because Pern is light on minerals and ores. The moons of these two outer planets are also mined. These two orange dots are the outer worlds the dragon-ships found, after probes sent back accurate enough images for the dragons to be sure they could make landfall."

Saska shivered at the thought of that wild venture. Terrvert had sent out probes, and unmanned craft to make their first bases, Pern had sent dragons and riders.

"Terrvert is over here on this schematic, in Cor Caroli, and these are its three colonies." He touched a blue starred shape. "This is Touch Base, where the two first met."

"Have you been there?"

P'til shook his head. "No need to, really. Where you were studying on that new planet could be another Base, so they say, if the High Council is agreeable to that expansion, and it's safe for dragons and people."

Saska nodded. This was talk she was familiar with, the way Terrvert expanded its colonies. What she was not familiar with was the thought of sentient beings, linked in their minds, venturing out into the vacuum of space.

- it's not at all dangerous. Are you coming to see me? My weyr is very clean, I have brushed it all out for you.

Saska jumped and stared wildly around. P'til looked at her, his eyes seeming to come back into focus.

"Oh my! An invitation to a weyr! That doesn't happen very often, but then Laroth - pushy, very pushy."

"Like rider like dragon?" her father asked dryly.

P'til laughed. "Oh yes, M'tin is very pushy, but he's not Laroth's rider."

"I know that. He's the rider of Wildeth, a blue."

"Yes. I'd forgotten you knew him. I wonder if that's why Laroth can communicate with your daughter? Or why they've started to talk?"

Saska stared at the two of them in bewilderment.

"You know a dragon rider, Dad?"

"I know M'tin, yes, he usually ferries supplies for us when we're out on project work. It can be a lot more reliable than a drone."

"I never saw him?"

"It's not generally done, and enlisting the help of a dragon rider isn't usually part of a project's budget. M'tin and I got to know each other when I was helping with the Weyr, although he wasn't a rider then, just another snotty nosed kid getting in my way."

"Like me," P'til said with a grin. "Then we went back to Pern and Impressed."

A shadow of wonder passed across his face and then he smiled at Saska, who smiled back involuntarily, and wondered why she had done so.

"Can't you Impress here?"

P'til shook his head. "No queens are allowed to travel between the colony worlds," he said. "It's deemed too dangerous for them."

"Lessa took Ramoth back four hundred turns."

"And that nearly killed them both."

Saska studied him, running his words through her mind. There was some nuance in there, not a lie, but a prevarication. She did not respond, however, or ask any more questions, instead studying the lists of produce traded between the worlds via the dragon-ships, and wondering how she was going to get out to the Weyr, and if indeed she was going to meet "the big man who was very excited".

Saska was absorbed in reading the detailed ship logs when her father came back in.

"We've clearance to go to the Weyr," he told her. "What's so fascinating about those lists? Anything I've missed?"

"I doubt it," she replied with a smile. "I was just looking at the things passing through to Pern from this Weyr and beyond. Jewels, for one thing. Why such large perfect sapphires?"

"To make a journeyman into a Master," he replied. "I think good quality gems might be getting scarce by now, and since the founding of Pern, a sapphire is for a Master."

"That would make sense, then."

"Don't forget Pern took a different direction - the set up is completely opposite, in a way, to the Terrvert set up."

"But they each had AIVAS?"

"Yes, but Pern lost their AIVAS for a long time, long enough to develop into something - unique."

"I sensed that right from the first time we were taught about it, and about our common heritage."

"There's quite a long distance in time since the Nathi wars."

"Yes. In those three thousand years, Terrvert founded three colonies and a few space stations. Pern made two ventures in only the last three hundred years of Thread-free existence."

"Not many people remember that," her father remarked. "Once the planets were found, and the dragons were confident enough with their identification marks, their initial jumps were practically FTL."

"Pretty amazing all round, given that they came from - well - from pre-industrial to space flight so quickly."

Saska frowning, however, as she closed the interface and followed her father outside and stood looking at the Weyr.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "I've learned your instincts are sometimes uncanny, love. What is it?"

"I - don't know. I mean - I don't know that there's anything wrong, but something doesn't add up about the whole situation. Nothing I can point to and say - that's wrong - or going wrong. My instincts have tripped me up before, Dad. Like not getting that scholarship."

Her father made a grimace.

"That thing! Yes, I made an almighty fuss about that, but you'd moved on to other studies by then, and I think in the end those were better?"

"Yes, I expect they were. I can't tell, can I? How do we get to the Weyr? Is Mother coming?"

"They've found her a whole rock pile to fossick through, so she's happy. We're not on dragon back, I'm afraid! More prosaic - the car's here."

They climbed into the car and were driven into a tunnel that extended from the shore under the sea and out again into the Weyr. Saska was laughing as she climbed out onto an open platform with paths leading to the growing areas. Overhead a few dragons still circled lazily on the updrafts.

"And here I was thinking there might be something exotic about it!"

"Not much exotic about Terrvert," her father said cheerfully. "I don't think they do humour and satire either."

A young man was coming to greet them, and be greeted.

"This is M'tin, rider of blue Wildeth. How are you, M'tin?"

"I'm fine, Prof, thanks. I've been off planet for a while - is it true your daughter can hear dragons? How are you, Doctor?"

"Er - Saska will be fine," she replied, almost overwhelmed by his boyish enthusiasm, responding to his wide beaming smile. "You don't captain a dragon-ship do you?"

"Oh no, only browns and bronzes can do that. But I've been helping out up there."

He jerked a thumb upwards and they looked up to see the sparkle of a space station like a star in the red sky.

"The dragons are getting set to follow a probe," M'tin continued in a more serious tone. "I've been helping get supplies ready for the first jump."

"That's true, then? There's a new viable planet?" Saska's father asked.

"So the High Council determined. But you want to meet Laroth, I expect? She's been insupportable since she discovered you, I'm afraid, Saska!"

Saska laughed, but she was also feeling nervous. The one thing she knew about the dragons of Pern was that they were big. A green would not be as big as a bronze, but nevertheless, it would be large. She followed M'tin and her father into a lift and they were whisked up through what she thought must once have been a natural fissure in the volcanic rock, widened and smoothed to take the lift cage. She marked off the levels as they rose, and then they were coming out into a large hall seemingly filled with people all chattering and laughing at the tops of their voices, the sound soaked up by baffles in the ceiling, but still enough to make her start backwards.

"It's all right! It's just the midday meal!" M'tin said cheerfully, taking her arm. "We'll go through here - G'rat says he fetched food to the weyr so you could talk without having to contend with all the mob."

He led them around the hall, answering greetings, and then they were climbing a set of stone stairs. Saska was pleased to find a thick rope bannister and used it to help herself up.

"Dragons don't use these, surely?"

"Nope. But their riders can run up and down between the dining hall and the weyrs."

Saska eyed the steep stairs and decided she would keep to a dignified walk, even with M'tin running on ahead and then turning back to encourage them.

"Calm down," her father called. "We'll get there in the end, youngster, we don't need to risk life and limb to do it!"

Both Saska and M'tin laughed, because it was one of Professor Freeman's commonest adages.

"Does me good to hear that again," M'tin said, and led the way into a large open space, a space Saska could only describe as a cave.

The smooth black walls were covered in colourful paintings, there was a table and chairs and a sideboard laid with food, and another equally small slight man coming to greet them, and the glimpse of a large head with whirling coloured eyes beyond him as the green dragon tried to poke her head into the weyr.