The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall Read Online Free

nearly the length of the end of the wharf, and was traditionally where the dolphineers held conferences with pods or individuals. This was also where the dolphins came to report unusual occurrences to the Bay Watch, or for rare instances when they required medical attention. The end timbers were smoother than the others, due to the dolphins’ habit of rubbing against them.
    Above the float hung the Big Bell, its belfry sturdily attached to a massive six-by-six molded-plastic pylon well footed on the seafloor below. The chain the dolphins yanked to summon humans now idly slapped against the pylon with the action of the light sea.
    “We landfolk have trouble and need dolphin help,” Jim said. He pointed inland, where clouds of white and gray smoke curled ominously into the sky from two of the three previously dormant volcanoes. “We must leave this place and take from here all that can be moved. Do the other pods come?”
    “Big trouble?” Teresa asked, leisurely swimming beyond the bulk of the wharf to check the direction in which Jim had pointed. She raised herself high above the water, turning first one, then the other, eye to assess the situation. Her sides showed the rakings of many years’ contact with both amorous and angry males. “Big smoke. Worse than Young Mountain.”
    “Biggest ever,” Jim said, for a moment wishing that the eternal cheerful expression on dolphin faces did not seem so out of place right now. Not when the colony’s main settlement, with its labs, homes, vital stores, and the work of nearly nine years, was going to be covered in ash, at the very least, or blown completely to bits if they were very unlucky.
    “Where you go?” Teresa reversed her direction and stopped in front of Jim, giving him her complete and seriously cheerful attention. “Back to sick ocean world?”
    “No.” Jim shook his head vigorously. Since the dolphins had passed the fifteen-year journey on the colony ships in cold sleep, they had had no sense of the passage of time. From an installation in the Atlantic Ocean, they had entered their water-filled travel accommodations and had not been awakened until they arrived at the waters of Monaco Bay. “We go north.”
    Teresa ducked her bottlenose, flinging a spray of water at him as if agreeing. Then, dropping her head in the water, she gave forth to the members of her pod a rapid series of word noises too fast for Jim to follow, though over the past eight years on Pern, he’d learned a good deal of dolphin vocabulary.
    Kibby glided to one side of Teresa, and Captiva bobbed up on the other; all three regarded Jim earnestly.
    “Sandman, Oregon,” Captiva said distinctly, “are in West Flow. They turn, return as fast as the flux allows.”
    Then Aleta and Maximillian abruptly arrived, adroitly avoiding a collision with the others. Pha pushed neatly in, too, as he was never one to be left out on the periphery.
    “Echo from Cass. They speed back. New sun see them here,” Pha said, and blew from his hole to emphasize the importance of his report.
    “Yes, they do have the farthest to come,” Jim said. That pod was based in the waters around Young Mountain, helping the seismic team. But dolphins could swim all night, and Cass was one of the oldest and most reliable of the females.
    The waters around the sea end of the Monaco Wharf facility were now so packed with dolphins that, when some of the dolphineers arrived, Theo Force remarked dryly that they could probably have walked on dolphins across the wide mouth of Monaco Bay and never got their feet wet.
    Some of the nine dolphineers and seven apprentices actually took longer to arrive than their marine friends, since the humans had to sled in from their stakeholds. Luckily, both Jim Tillek’s forty-foot sloop, Southern Cross, and Per Pagnesjo’s Perseus yawl were in port. Anders Sejby had radioed that the Mayflower was under full sail and would be there by dusk, while Pete Veranera thought he’d have the Maid in on