A new hero emerges in a divided world as one of sci-fi’s most beloved series—Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern—relaunches with this original adventure from Anne’s daughter, Gigi McCaffrey. In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Dragonriders of Pern series, Gigi does her mother proud, adding to the family tradition of spinning unputdownable tales that recount the adventures of the brave inhabitants of a distant planet who battle the pitiless adversary known as Thread. The last time Thread attacked Pern, the world was unprepared for the fight—until the Oldtimers appeared. These courageous dragonriders arrived from the past, traveling four hundred years to help their descendants survive. But the collision of past and present took its toll. While most of the displaced rescuers adapted to their new reality, others could not abide the jarring change and found themselves in soul-crushing exile, where unhappiness and resentment seethed. Piemur, a journeyman harper, also feels displaced, cast adrift by the loss of his spectacular boyhood voice and uncertain of his future. But when the Masterharper of Pern sees promise in the young man and sends him undercover among the exiled Oldtimers, Piemur senses the looming catastrophe that threatens the balance of power between the Weyrs and Holds of Pern. When the unthinkable happens, Piemur must rise to the challenge to avert disaster and restore honor to the dragons and dragonriders of Pern. Because now, in a world already beset by Thread, another, more insidious danger looms: For the first time in living memory, dragons may be on the verge of fighting dragons. Gigi McCaffrey collaborated with her late mother, Anne McCaffrey, on three short stories collected in the anthologies Great Writers & Kids Write Spooky Stories and Mothers & Daughters . She also contributed an essay to Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern, edited by her brother Todd McCaffrey. She lives in the Devil’s Glen, in Ireland’s Wicklow County, with her husband, their son, and their infamous hound, Sidney. ONE Clouds of warm, dust-laden air billowed down around Piemur and whipped off his floppy hat as hundreds of dragons and their riders lifted off from the ground, steadily filling the sky overhead. Hastily he pulled his tunic over his head to protect his face from flying grit, clamping his mouth shut tight in the process. All the trees and vegetation around the Weyr bucked and buffeted under the huge downdraft generated by the wings of the bronze, brown, blue, and green dragons. Through the protective fabric, Piemur heard the comments the dragonriders called to one another as they took flight; heard, too, the muffled sound of dragons coughing as they rose higher off the ground. Listening, he wondered—not for the first time—what pernicious ailment still afflicted so many of the dragons of Southern Weyr, and why the Weyr Healer couldn’t find a remedy to shift it from their lungs. Only when the sounds receded to almost nothing and he could feel the air settling did he risk uncovering his eyes to look skyward. Piemur watched as the sun shimmered off their soft hides and made their jewel-like, faceted eyes sparkle. There was nothing like the sight of a sky full of dragons, he fancied—even dragons who were not in the full of their health. The fine membrane that made up the sails of the dragons’ wings looked nearly transparent, and he wondered how wings that appeared so delicate could bear the weight of such massive creatures. Today the Oldtimer dragonriders were traveling to harvest a fresh crop of numbweed, which they would later pound and boil into the noxious unction that, once set, would be used as a hallowed salve. Only twoscore riders and their dragons remained behind in the Weyr with the queens, the most senior of whom had just returned from a lone sojourn. A brown dragon was curled up in a wallow, coughing desultorily as if to dislodge a tiny irritant nestled deep inside his vast lungs. His rider rested with him, in the curve of his forelegs. A few other dragons basked in their wallows or relaxed under the ministrations of their riders, while the rest simply slept, their old bones soaking up the plentiful sunshine. Numerous weyrfolk—men and women who lived at the Weyr but were not dragonriders—went about the compound, washing or tending to clothing, preparing food, or assisting the older dragonriders with the task of bathing and oiling their dragon’s soft hides. Nothing was more important than caring for the dragons. With their abilities to fly, teleport, and breathe fire, the dragons were the best and most effective weapon the world had against its mindless enemy, Thread—an insatiable organism that, when the orbit of its host planet was close enough to Pern, would shower down in a fifty-Turn cycle, devouring anything organic in its path. And if the dragons couldn’t char every last Thread from the skies before they touched ground, the deadly strands would burrow und