And this is the end for this story. Thank you, all of you, for reviews, favourites and follows, they are much appreciated. We'll raise a cup of klah to the next time around...

Black, blacker, blackest...225 turns forward

Saska opened her eyes and lifted her head from Lord Jaxom's back. Over the last two or three jumps she had rested against him, although she could not feel him.

Starlight glittered in her vision, but below her the ground was dark. She could hear a renewed buzzing in her mind, but if there were dragons, they were keeping silent as Ruth swept down in a spiral and landed on the gravelled courtyard.

Saska took off her mask and took several deep breaths, as she could hear Lord Jaxom doing. She unwound her hands, flexing and stretching them, looking around at the darkness.

"There's no one here," she whispered as Lord Jaxom unfastened himself and climbed down, going to Ruth's head. She clambered down herself, and stood with him in the chilly night air, hearing the sounds of the wind in the bushes and shrubs.

"Where is everybody?" she whispered. "You can't just empty a Weyr like this, can you? In the expectation of - what's that?"

Lord Jaxom had also looked up. Above their heads a shape blotted out the stars. Impossibly, a dragon-ship hovered above Respite Weyr.

"Oh - I am a fool," Saska whispered, aware of tears, gulping back sobs. "I could have directed us to the port."

"What is that?" Lord Jaxom asked, and then there was another shape, and Lateth was landing in front of Ruth. Someone slid off his back and came running, and Saska was engulfed in K'var's hug.

"I told them you weren't lost!" he said fiercely. "I told them - and your parents believed me."

"K'var? Lateth?"

- I am here in my own past, I flew the ship with Modeth

- you are safe, listener to dragons

- I am Ruth, I am Ruth

- the white dragon, the famous white dragon

K'var straightened up and turned to Lord Jaxom.

"Your pardon, m'lord, but we've been so anxious - when they went between and didn't emerge."

"You came back?"

"Yes. Can you follow Lateth to the ship?"

"That - up there - like the Dawn Sisters?"

"Very like it, yes. We've food for all of you, and a long rest you can take."

Lord Jaxom stared up at the dimly seen shape dimming the stars and then helped Saska up, climbed to Ruth's back, and the white dragon followed the bronze in a strong surge upwards and in through the hold doors of the dragon ship being held in place by Modeth, the strongest of the bronze dragons of that era.

Lights blazed, and Saska cringed back as strong arms reached and drew her down, and her parents had her in a strong hug.

"Oh - I should have planned it better - I wasn't thinking - I could have - "

"Hush, love, don't cry. Come and sit down here - this drink. Yes, drink it all, I know it's not very nice."

Saska sat down, gagging at the tart taste of the drink, recovering herself, staring in bewilderment around the hold. Ruth filled nearly half the space, and Saska realised Lateth must have gone to his own place with Modeth. K'var was helping Lord Jaxom, and then S'lul's voice came into the big hold.

"Are they safe? We're going to move, but I've fixed the co ordinates of this place on the computer."

"The doors are shut," K'var said, and Saska felt the ship move and then stop again.

"We found a shelf of land, totally unoccupied except for some very startled wild wherries," K'var said. "I'm going to open the doors."

He did so, and dawn light flooded in, dimming the lights. The air was cool, verging on the chilly, and when Saska glanced out of the doors, she could see snow covered mountains with the sun just picking out the glistening whiteness.

"Dad - where are we?"

"South of anywhere settled at the moment," he replied. "We scouted this out from the maps. No need to give too many people a shock."

"But - 75 turns back in time - the dragon-ships have been in operation for nearly a century!"

"Granted, but it was imperative to get Ruth and Lord Jaxom away from Respite before the people returned."

"They left?"

"Yes, for the two days and nights bracketing your possible arrival," K'var replied.

"It's not written in the histories?"

"No. More's the pity, but there were sufficient clues."

"You went back and left the case?"

"We left cases in a lot of places, once we'd worked on the co ordinates, and looked through the written diaries of the riders and workers at the Weyr. Tai's book as well, had clues."

He came over and stared at her suit, visible under the leather jacket. Saska unfastened it and drew out her case, clutching it to her as she walked across to Lord Jaxom.

"Are you all right? Ruth?"

- I am well. What a place this is with so much metal like the Dawn Sisters

It's a ship like those.

- this is what people use? No dragons?

The dragons move it and themselves and the people on board

- dragons move ships

Lord Jaxom had swallowed the last of his drink and was staring out of the door

"Are we still on Pern?"

"Yes, but a long way south of the Weyr."

"I'll lose the co ordinates."

"No, they're stored for you, and you have the maps and calculations. This is just so that no one sees you."

He stared up at her.

"No one knows, in your time, what happened?"

"I don't know about my future, do I? There, it might be written, but now, in the present, and in the past, it is not."

He shook his head. "AIVAS tried to explain this time paradox to me when he made me move the engines of the Dawn Sisters, but I didn't understand him either!"

"I know. Someone described it as a bow, tied in the ribbon of time."

"I like that analogy. Are you all right? You look dreadfully pale."

"You don't look too good yourself."

He laughed uncertainly and stood up, and K'var indicated Ruth.

"We've food for your dragon, m'lord, and for you."

"Thank you."

Ruth clattered his clawed feet across to the doorway, peered out, and then half flew half hopped down to the ground where Lateth had laid a freshly caught herdbeast. Ruth fell on it with gusto, and K'var nodded.

"Like dragon, like rider. You'll be feeling better now he's filling his stomach."

Lord Jaxom nodded. "You're right, bronze rider. Are you - K'var? You were described to me but - hmm - I'm not sure."

Saska could feel herself blushing and turned away, as K'var smiled easily.

"I'm not an easy man to forget, perhaps. Oh - those dratted fire lizards!"

Two fairs had appeared and were dancing in ecstasy above Ruth who was too busy eating to send them away.

"They always come to Ruth. What a marvellous thing this is - but you don't have passengers in here?"

"No, there's a proper cabin above us for them, this is a forward cargo hold. The dragons flying the ship are in the hold behind you. The dragon-ship captains sit in a cabin above them, monitoring the physical part of the ship."

"Tai and F'lessan," Lord Jaxom murmured. "Their experiments with moving trundle bugs has come to this?"

"It was a logical thing to do," K'var said. "Moving things as well as themselves, the dragons could just as easily go anywhere they wanted. You did, after all."

"Well - I'm not sure I actually wanted to go to the Red Star," Lord Jaxom said ruefully. "But then, as now, Ruth is the obvious dragon to do such things."

Saska had been taking off her leathers and the flying suit and Lord Jaxom did the same, as K'var busied himself with setting out food and drink.

"You've all the time in the world, now, m'lord, to take food and drink and have a proper rest," he said quietly. "Lateth will guide you back to the proper co ordinates, and you can get back safely."

"Thank you. Saska - you said you could have guided us to the port?"

"I wasn't thinking straight," she said as they sat down to eat. "There's a port for the dragon-ships, you see, and I could have plotted us to land there when it was first built."

"That would have been disastrous," her father observed. "Too many people, for a start, seeing you coming and going. Too much chance of hitting buildings, or ships, or dragons."

"Do you think so?"

"I'm sure of it, and anyway, you needed somewhere you'd seen for more than a fleeting minute or two."

"That was why I chose Respite, and that particular bit of it."

K'var nodded. "I remember taking you there often, and you said what a wonderful flower meadow it was, and how you liked the view of those distinctive jagged-edged escarpments in the distance."

"Is that where we are? On a shelf of that land?"

"Yes, but further in, where people haven't come yet. They will do, eventually, I suspect, if only to rock climb and walk in the foot hills."

"Felines?" Lord Jaxom asked.

"There are some left, m'lord, but they aren't a fixed species. They were bred back in the very beginning, but the reasoning now is that because of unstable mutations, they're slowly dying out."

"There were two plagues brought about by their carcases washing up on the Northern Continent."

"Yes, that's a part of it. We put up the feline fences, but the scientists reckon in four or five generations there won't be any left."

Lord Jaxom stared down at his plate and then shook his head.

"I will be sorry, because although they're dangerous, yet they were called into being and had some claim on the lands after that."

He consented to go and sleep, and Saska and her parents went out of the ship to where the three dragons were curled up on the rocky ground, absorbing the sunlight.

"So that is the famous Ruth," her mother said, watching the fire lizards around the white dragon. "Small - about the size of the dragons of our age, would you say?"

"Possibly, but perhaps smaller even than those."

"And he carried both of you? And those panniers?"

"A dragon can carry what it thinks it can carry," Saska replied. "Partly that's true, partly it's an image bolstered by the riders. It serves both ways."

"Did you solve the question of size?" her father asked as they sat down.

"Yes. I would have solved it in our time, but H'rat and Noreth - were out of sorts - and somehow Noreth took the picture of F'lessan from my mind instead of his rider's co ordinates, and we were flung back in time."

Her father nodded. "Toron blames himself very much. The green dragon that rose on a mating flight was one Noreth had flown before, and their riders were mutually attracted. Toron forbade H'rat to join the flight." He paused and looked around. "I don't see them?"

"They died," Saska replied. "We were caught in Threadfall, some of the last to fall in that Pass, and they died. My shipsuit protected me, being totally inorganic."

Her mother's hand tightened on hers, and then relaxed again.

"How did you guess the 25 year gaps?" Saska asked.

"K'var reasoned that since that was written in legend, that would be logical. He and Lateth did some jumps into the past and by chance they came to Respite 125 years ago when you'd flashed in and out, and it was written down by the watchman. K'var picked up on that, and with the help of the AIVAS star charts, planned to leave cases at Respite for you to find."

"It was - chancy," her mother said, still watching Ruth, and then turned to her daughter. "You might not have found the case, not had copies, not be able to communicate with us."

"We had the help of a journeyman of that time," Saska replied. "It's so strange - just a short while ago I was talking to him and helping him with the computer, and now suddenly - he's dead so long in the past his name probably isn't even recorded anywhere."

She blinked away tears and took a breath, and her father put an arm around her shoulders.

"You aren't going to recover from this in a day," he said. "I'm not going to let any doctors near you, be assured of that."

"I'd like to come out with you, into the jungle, and do some bug-hunting," Saska replied. "The High Council and the Terrvert Committee can have my report, but I want that to be the extent of my involvement with them."

"That seems fair," her father replied. "There's an interesting green slime in one of the rivers of Benden World that would bear investigating."

Saska laughed and hugged him, and her mother laughed as well as she stood up and scanned the ground, picking up some small stones and odd shaped bits and pieces.

The group came together in mid afternoon. Lord Jaxom looked rested and recovered, and Ruth was ready, he said. The two air tanks had been refilled, and food put in the panniers for the stops.

"I've recalculated your route," S'lul said, sitting down at the table with them. "I don't want you popping out of between as you arrive, if you see what I mean? You can hover in the exact same spot, but it will be at a little remove in time. Obviously, you will be twice in the same time frame, but I think you've coped with that before?"

"Yes."

S'lul grinned at him. "So the songs and ballads tell us, m'lord. You should return to your own time at two days into the future, and it's up to you how you explain that to your contemporaries."

Lord Jaxom took a drink of fruit juice and shook his head at the bronze rider.

"I am the Lord Holder of Ruatha," he said mildly. "I don't have to explain anything to anybody."

S'lul grinned at him. "Very convenient for you."

"I've always found it so. And you will leap forward inside this ship?"

"Yes, I've the co ordinates, again at a small remove in time. It will be a longer duration than your leaps, but inside the ship there should be no ill effects." He paused and looked at his notes and then back at the Lord Holder. "This has actually been most instructive, this timing of when as well as where. It might help with founding new colonies, and certainly will be included in training manuals."

"Being able to leap out of the way of things is a trait dragons have learned over the millennia," Lord Jaxom agreed. "You don't train with firestone, to burn Thread, but there must be times when you might meet something equally inimical out there."

"We'll call it Lord Jaxom's manoeuvre," S'lul replied, closing his notes. "K'var and Lateth will escort you to the co ordinates, away from the ship."

Lord Jaxom stood up and Saska fetched his riding gear and the party came out onto the shelf of land.

"Very beautiful," Lord Jaxom said softly. "But then I've seldom found a part of Pern I didn't like. Thank you, Saska. You'll keep the leathers? In case you ride any more - bronze - dragons?"

Saska pretended to scowl at him as she accompanied him to Ruth, the others watching as K'var and Lateth readied themselves. Lord Jaxom turned to her and took her hand.

"My dear Saska, may I say what a pleasure and privilege it has been to know you? We may be separated by too many turns, but I take comfort in the knowledge that Pern will continue and prosper, and your people as well."

He kissed her cheek, and Saska found her eyes burning with unshed tears.

"Thank you," she whispered. "And Ruth - both of you - "

She stood back and watched the two dragons rise into the sky, and then suddenly they had winked between. S'lul had been watching and now put an arm over her shoulders.

"I find those two are every bit as extraordinary as the histories state," he said quietly. "And knowing their future does not alter that conclusion. Now - we'll wait for Lateth - who will time it - yes there he is, naughty man - and we'll all go home."

"Home sounds fine to me," Saska replied as they turned to walk back to the ship. "That was a bit too terrifying to enjoy, but I hope I'll look back on it with pleasure."

"I'm sure you will. And look at the future with joy, as well, I hope, interspersed with - frequent - visits to Respite Weyr?"

He was laughing as they returned to the ship and Saska and her parents went into the lounge to prepare for the long transfer between that would take them safely to their own time and the rest of their lives in the intertwined histories of two extraordinary colonies of Old Earth.