At midmorning of a broiling summer day the life of Three Counties Hospital ebbed and flowed like tide currents around an offshore island. Outside the hospital the citizens of Burlington, Pennsylvania, perspired under a ninety-degree shade temperature with 78 per cent humidity. Down by the steel mills and the rail yards, where there was little shade and no thermometers, the reading-if anyone had bothered to take it-would have been a good deal higher. Within the hospital it was cooler than outside, but not much. Among patients and staff only the fortunate or influential escaped the worst of t　

　　　　It was humid inside the small laboratory in spite of the window which was open contrary to all regulations. Outside the sun shone and, but for the absence of foliage on the trees surrounding the squat grey stone buildings which prised the Midlands Biological Research Centre, one would have been forgiven for assuming that summer had already begun. Small birds twittered incessantly as they busied themselves searching for twigs and dry grass with .which to plete the building of their nests. Rooks circled and cawed noisily above a line of tall elms. Another cycle of life had begun.　　...　

　On a ridge above Texas Flat upon a rock shaped like flame, a hand moved upon the lava. The hand moved and then was still. In all that vast beige-gray silence there was no other movement and no sound.　A buzzard swinging in lazy circles above the serrated ridge had glimpsed that moving hand. Swinging lower, he saw a man who lay among the rocks atop the ridge. He was a long-bodied man in worn boots and jeans, a man with wide shoulders and a lean tough face.　It was the face of a hunter but now of a man hunted. A man who lay with his rifle beside him and who wore a belted gun; but the man still l　

　　　As usual, I am indebted to a variety of people for their help and input in writing this volume. Not the least of whom is Master Robinton (aka Frederic H. Robinson) who was quite upset that I had ended his life so abruptly. I would suspect it of a tenor, but for a baritone to insist on another encore is almost unheard of. But I have recently been asked - via the impressive Del Rey Website - to explain certain facts which had not previously been brought to light anent Pern pre-Dragon flight history. As Robinton had a fine Pernese hand in most of it, it behoves me to tell the story from his v　

JACK LIGHTS OUTCHAPTER 1The Alhambra Inn and Gardens1　　　　On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land e together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic. He was twelve years old and tall for his age. The sea-breeze swept back his brown hair, probably too long, from a fine, clear brow. He stood there, filled with the confused and painful emotions he had lived with for the last three months-since the time when his mother had closed their house on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles and, in a flurry of furniture, checks, and real-estate a　

Disclaimer　　　　　　There is more than one reason why the Crown finds this overimaginative work most unacceptable.　　　First and foremost, of course, is that it purports to be about a planet called "Earth" and no such planet exists under that name or its pretended astrographic designation of Blito-P3. Admittedly, it has been cleverly created down to characters and locations. That is the precise danger for the unsuspecting reader.　　　It is also claimed that "Earth" is on the Invasion Timetable and thus scheduled for capture. The Timetable bequeathed by our ancestors has the status of Divine mand. It 　

　On July 16, in the aching torpid heat of the South Florida summer, Terry Whelper stood at the Avis counter at Miami International Airport and rented a bright red Chrysler LeBaron convertible. He had originally signed up for a Dodge Colt, a sensible low-mileage pact, but his wife had told him go on, be sporty for once in your life. So Terry Whelper got the red LeBaron plus the extra collision coverage, in anticipation of Miami drivers. Into the convertible he inserted the family-his wife Gerri, his son Jason, his daughter Jennifer-and bravely set out for the turnpike.　The children, who liked 　

　　Introduction　　Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Covering nearly twelve million square miles, Africa is almost as large as North America and Europe bined. It is nearly twice the size of South America. As we mistake its dimensions, we also mistake its essential nature: the Dark Continent is mostly hot desert and open grassy plains.　In fact, Africa is called the Dark Continent for one reason only: the vast equatorial rain forests of its central region. This is the drainage basin of the Congo River, and on　

Planet Earth rolled on in ever decreasing circles around the sun. As it had been carrying on in this fashion for more years than anyone cared to remember, there seemed no cause for immediate alarm. Not that things were exactly a bundle of laughs down on old terra firma at the present time, oh dear me, no. Things had never been quite the same since, in a moment of gay abandonment, outgoing US president Wayne L. Wormwood had chosen to press the nuclear button just as the New Year bells were gaily chiming in the arrival of the twenty-first century.This generally unwele turn in events had caught 　

　　　　Dusk was beginning to creep down from the mountains when the Witchfinder rode into Craiglowrie. His hunched position in the saddle of the black mare disguised his true height, yet all the same he was tall and terrible, the features beneath the dark broad-brimmed hat seemed like those of a sun-bleached skull from a distance. The grimace that revealed black and broken teeth; the eyes that glowed with the fire of a personal hatred, and seemed to search out each and every one of the peasants who trembled and watched behind the windows of their tumbledown bothies.　　　　They remembered the last t　

　　IT WAS THE PIVOTAL TEACHING of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course-thousands in fact-but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And e　

　　Even before the events in the supermarket, Jim Ironheart should have known trouble was ing. During the night he dreamed of being pursued across a field by a flock of large blackbirds that shrieked around him in a turbulent flapping of wings and tore at him with hooked beaks as precisely honed as surgical scalpels. When he woke and was unable to breathe, he shuffled onto the balcony in his pajama bottoms to get some fresh air.　At nine-thirty in the morning, the temperature, already ninety degrees, only contributed to the sense of suffocation with which he had awakened.　A long shower and a sh　

Dreams and AwakeningsWHY IS IT forbidden to write down specific knowledge of the magics? Perhaps because we all fear that such knowledge would fall into the hands of one not worthy to use it. Certainly there has always been a system of apprenticeship to ensure that specific knowledge of magic is passed only to those trained and judged worthy of such knowledge. While this seems a laudable attempt to protect us from unworthy practitioners of arcane lore, it ignores the fact that the magics are not derived from this specific knowledge. The predilection for a certain type of magic is eithe　

　To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates　From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.　Percy Bysshe Shelley,　Prometheus Unbound　Prologue　False Angels　　JERUSALEM　The wound was their path.　Nathan Lee Swift sat strapped in the belly of the cargo helicopter with a dozen assorted archangels, looking down upon what little remained. The earthquake was visible mostly by what was no longer visible. Cities and villages had simply vanished in puffs of dust. Even his ruins were gone. The map had gone blank.　The air was hot. It was summer. There was no horizon. The sands stretched into haze. He felt 　

　　PREFACE　... And behind the Northern Armies came another army of men. They came by the hundreds, yet each traveled alone. They came on foot, by mule, on horseback, on creaking wagons or riding in handsome chaises. They were of all shapes and sizes and descended from many nationalities. They wore dark suits, usually covered with the gray dust of travel, and dark, broad-brimmed hats to shield their white faces from the hot, unfamiliar sun. And on their back, or across their saddle, or on top of their wagon was the inevitable faded multicolored bag made of worn and ragged remnants of carpet int　

　　-SHELLY, Prometheus Unbound　　　　　　Part One TERRA INCOGNITA　　　　Hell is the place of those who have denied; They find there what they planted and what dug.　　A Lake of Spaces, and a Wood of Nothing, And wander there and drift, and never cease Wailing for substance.　　-W.B. YEATS, The Hour Glass　　　　　　1　　The air was electric the day the thief crossed the city, certain that tonight, after so many weeks of frustration, he would finally locate the card-player. It was not an easy journey. Eighty-five percent of Warsaw had been leveled, either by the months of mortar bombardment that had preceded the R