Dragon’s Kin

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When men first came to Rukbat, a G-type star in the Sagittarian Sector, they settled upon its third planet and named it Pern. They had set out to create an idyllic, low-tech farmers’ paradise, escaping the ravages of the late Nathi Wars. They paid little attention to Pern’s neighbors, as the entire solar system had been previously surveyed and declared safe for colonization.

Less than eight years—or “Turns” as the Pernese began calling them—after their arrival, Pern’s erratic sister planet, the Red Star, came wheeling in from the outer edges of the solar system.

And then Thread fell from the sky. The thin, silvery wisps looked like no threat at all—until they touched flesh, or foliage, or anything living, including the bare earth. Then the Thread would grow, sucking the nutrients out of anything it could, turning soil into lifeless dirt, searing through flesh to leave nothing more than charred bone. Only metal, bare rock, and water—where Thread drowned—were safe.

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