Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey Page A

might have been trapped in tidal pools after the previous night’s storm. Delighted, Sorka went off happily with Jacob Chernoff, who, as the oldest, was appointed leader and given a beeper for emergencies.
    “This sand ought to be different, not just the same,” the third member of the group complained as they set off.
    “Chung, oceans grind stones on Pern the same way they do it on Earth and the result has to be the same: sand,” Jacob said amiably. “Where were you from?”
    “Kansas,” Chung replied. “Betcha don’t know where that is.” His mocking glance fell on Sorka.
    “Bounded by the old states of Missouri on the east, Oklahoma on the south, Colorado in the west, and Nebraska on the north,” Sorka replied with studied diffidence. “And you don’t have sand out there. You got dirt!”
    “Say, you know your geography,” Jacob said to Sorka with a smile of admiration. “Where are you from?”
    “Colorado?” Chung demanded sarcastically.
    “Ireland.”
    “Oh, one of those European islands,” Chung said dismissively.
    Sorka pointed to a large purplish branch of weed just ahead of them. “Hey, do they have this one yet?”
    “Don’t touch,” Jacob warned as they reached it. With tongs, he lifted the weed for a closer examination. It had thick leaves that branched irregularly from a central stem.
    “Looks like it grew from the sea bottom,” Sorka remarked, pointing to a clump of tendrils at the base that looked like roots.
    “They didn’t show us anything that big,” Chung said. So they wrapped it in a specimen bag to bring back for study.
    That was almost their only find that afternoon, though they sifted through many piles of already identified sea vegetation. Then they rounded an outcropping of the rough gray stone that punctuated the long crescent beach, and came upon a sizable pool in which were trapped a variety of marine life, things that scurried on multiple legs, a couple of purple bladderlike objects that Sorka was certain would be poisonous, and some finger-long transparent creatures that seemed almost like fish.
    “How can they be almost fish?” Chung demanded when Sorka voiced her opinion. “They’re in the water, aren’t they? That makes them fish.”
    “Not necessarily,” Jacob replied. “And they don’t really look like fish. They look like . . . well, I don’t know what they look like,” he admitted. The life-form seemed to have layers of fins along its side, some of which were in constant motion. “Hairy, they look.”
    “All I know is we didn’t see anything like ’em in the tanks at the hatchery,” Chung said. Taking out a specimen bottle, he lowered himself to the edge of the pool to catch one.
    Though Jacob was able to get one of the bladders into a jar, and three samples of the many-legged species almost leaped into captivity, the finger fish eluded both boys.
    When Sorka’s suggestions for capture were dismissed, she wandered farther down the beach. Around a second pile of boulders, she found a massive outcropping that resembled a man’s heavy-featured head, complete with brow ridges, nose, lips, and chin, though part of the chin was buried in the sand and lashed by the waves. Delighted and awed, Sorka stood in rapt admiration. It was wonderful, and
she
had found it. One of the girls in her own Asian Square had fallen down a hole that turned out to be one of the many entrances to a series of caves to the south and west of Landing. They had been officially named the Catherine Caves after their inadvertent discoverer.
    Sorka’s Head? She murmured the title under her breath. No, people might think it was, her head, and she didn’t look like that at all. As she pondered the question she glanced above the splendidly imposing cliff. It was then that she saw the creature, seemingly suspended in the air. She gasped in wonder, for in that moment the sun caught and dazzled the creature into a golden statue. Abruptly it dove and swooped out of sight, behind