Excerpt: Shadowriders of Pern

The sands of the Hatching Ground, as they were all over Pern, seared underfoot. A low, sustained, partially sub-sonic thrumming reverberated through the natural cavern, settling its disturbing, but not entirely unpleasant, vibration into the breastbone of everyone present. Spectators jostled one another and leaned in to each other, to comment and point toward the boys and young men standing in a loose circle on that hot sand, waiting, with varying degrees of impatience, and discomfort. Many a finger stabbed toward the objects the boys surrounded, whenever one or the other of them moved energetically enough to be noticed. A smaller group of girls gathered in a loose arc around an egg larger than the rest, and obviously special, somehow, given its prominent placing upon the hot sands.

Dragonriders' eyes lit with a special gleam as their heads turned up, eyes unerringly seeking each rider's own dragon. Those dragons ranged themselves around the rocky cliff surrounding the ground, watching the proceedings with happily-whirling, excited eyes, all the while giving note to that thrum encouraging the young ones to break the confines of their eggs, to hatch, Impress, and join them in their Weyr.

Kaiba Weyr, forgotten in its place to the south of an imposing range of mountains and active volcanoes, had survived and thrived Turns and Turns after the rest of the colonists had fled to the more geologically stable land to the North.