The sun finally went down, spreading its brilliant aftercolors across the western horizon. As the eastern sky darkened, Wansor put his eye to his instrument, let out a startled cry and nearly fell backward off his bench.
“It can’t be. There is no possible logical explanation for such an arrangement.” He righted himself and looked once again through, the viewer, making delicate adjustments to the focus. “
Master Idarolan had his eye pressed to his own viewer. “I see only the Dawn Sisters in their usual alignment. Just as they have always been.”
“But they can’t be. They are close together. Stars do not congregate so closely. They are always far distant.”
“Here, let me have a look, man.” The Smith was almost dancing in eagerness to have a glimpse through the instrument. Wansor reluctantly gave way to him, repeating the impossibility of what he had just seen.
“N’ton, your eyes are younger!” The Seaman passed his viewer to the bronze rider, who quickly accepted it.
“I see three round objects!” Fandarel announced in a booming voice. “Round metallic objects. Manmade objects. Those are not stars, Wansor,” he said, looking at the distressed Starsmith, “those are things!”
Robinton, almost shoving the Smith’s bulk to one side, bent his eye to the viewer, gasping.
“They are round. They do shine. As metal does. Not as stars do.”
“One thing sure,” Piemur said irreverently in the awed silence, “you have now found traces of our ancestors in the South, Master Robinton.”
“Your observation is eminently correct,” the Harper said in such a curiously muffled tone Jaxom wasn’t certain if the man was suppressing laughter or anger, “but not at all what I had in mind and you know it!”
Everyone was given a chance to peer through Wansor’s device, since Master Idarolan’s was not powerful enough. Everyone concurred with Fandarel’s verdict: the so-called Dawn Sisters were not stars. Equally indisputable was that they were round, metallic objects that apparently hung in a stationary position in the sky. Even the moons had been observed to turn a different side to Pern in the course of their regular cycles.
F’lar and Lessa as well as F’nor were asked to come with all urgency before the nightly appearance of the Dawn Sisters was over. Lessa’s irritation at such a summons evaporated when she saw the phenomenon. F’lar and F’nor monopolized the instrument for the short space of time that the peculiar objects remained visible in the slowly darkening sky.
When Wansor was seen trying to work equations in the Sand, Jaxom and Piemur hurriedly brought out a table and some drawing tools. The Starsmith wrote furiously for some minutes and then studied the result he’d achieved as if this presented a more inscrutable puzzle. Bewildered, he asked Fandarel and N’ton to check his figures for error.
“If there’s no error, what is your conclusion. Master Wansor?” F’lar asked him.
“Those … those things are stationary. They stay in the same position over Pern all the time. As if they were following the planet.”
“That would prove, would it not,” Robinton said, unperturbed, “that they are manmade.”
“My conclusion precisely,” but Wansor did not appear to be reassured. “They were made to stay where they are all the time.”
“And we can’t get from here to there,” F’nor said in a regretful murmur.
“Don’t you dare, F’nor,” Brekke said with such fervor that F’lar and the Harper chuckled.
“They were made to stay there,” Piemur began, “but they couldn’t have been made here, could they, Master Fandarel?”
“I doubt it. The Records give us hints of many marvelous things made by men but no mention was ever made of stationary stars.”
“But the Records say that men came to Pern …” Piemur looked at the Harper for confirmation. “Perhaps they used those things to travel from some other place, some other world, to get here. To Pern!”
“With all the worlds in the heavens to choose from,” Brekke began, breaking the thoughtful silence that followed Piemur’s conclusion, “had they no better place to come to than Pern?”
“If you’d seen as much of it as I have lately,” Piemur said, his spirit undaunted for any appreciable length of time, “you’d know that Pern’s not all that bad a world … if you ignore the danger of Thread!”