The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online Page B

up, erratic in direction, and therefore especially dangerous to novice sailors, and so full of ash and grit as to make visibility poor.
    If he and Ezra were disappointed by the progress they had made that first day out of Kahrain Cove, they sloughed off queries with any number of logical explanations. No reason to deflate the good morale of the expedition. The early day did give them a chance to check all the cargoes and work on the problem of protecting the ships from Thread. Most of the forty pleasure boats were constructed of fiberglass, with plastic masts and booms, so decks and hulls were Threadproof. But canvas sails and some varieties of sheets and line were not. Two of the colony’s plastics experts had spent their first day afloat designing rigid plastic sail covers that were Threadproof, but they still had to solve the problem of how to protect the people on the smaller craft, some of which did not have enclosed cabin space in which to take shelter. There was also not a sufficient number of breathers to allow passengers to dive under their hulls and remain there during Threadfall.
    So that evening, Ezra and Jim had more conferences on that problem, while all around them, the ill-assorted sailors of their convoy gathered around campfires to cook the fish they had caught during the day. But it had been a very busy day, and by nightfall, there were very few who hadn’t rolled up early in their sleeping bags.
    An oily, ashy drizzle and light winds made the next day’s sailing longer and certainly dirtier. But they managed to pull in to Paradise River’s wide mouth to anchor before darkness fell.
    Jim and Ezra called a meeting to discuss the possibility of splitting the flotilla into several sections to make better progress. The larger ships were constantly having to reef canvas, even to drag sea anchors, to keep from outdistancing the smaller ones. Of course, the cargoes that were destined to be stored here at Paradise River would be off-loaded and the remainder more evenly distributed. The more precarious rafts would be abandoned, having served their purpose. The dolphineers were grateful: their teams had bravely tried to keep their assigned positions in the convoy, and the strain was showing in galls and swollen flesh.
    The decision was made that, as soon as the unloading was done, Ezra would lead the larger craft forward at whatever speed they and two pods of escort dolphins could maintain, while Jim followed with the slower, smaller vessels and the larger number of dolphin escorts. The smallest of the sailing dinghies would be dismantled or towed.
    The bad weather persisted and the seas became too rough for all but the most experienced sailors, so the Paradise River Hold continued to host them.
    On the plus side, the plastics experts, Andi Gomez and Ika Kashima, used the layover to complete manufacture of the sail covers, and doors that could cover open cabin fronts. And Ika came up with an ethnic solution to the problem of protecting the nearly five hundred passengers and crew from Threadfall: plastic headgear, in a wide conical shape, made with wide weals and outward sloping sides—wide enough to cover most shoulders—with a high crown, to fit on the head, tied under the chin. Once the people were in the water, buoyed by the compulsory life vests everyone wore, these conical “coolie hats” would deflect Thread into the water, where it would drown or be consumed by the fish that invariably arrived wherever Thread fell into the seas. Even the dolphins were known to partake of what they considered an unusual food.
    The Paradise River contingent thought Ika’s cone hat a definite improvement over the sheets of metal they were used to using for protection if they were caught out in Fall. Overcome by all the praise, the slender Eurasian insisted that she could not take credit for the design.
    “Well, it’s a bloody good adaptation of a—what did you call it?—coolie hat,” Andi said stoutly, “and it’ll