The distress call was sent by Pernese settlers who had just experienced their first Threadfall. A Federation ship answered the call—but not until 49 years later.…

This is an intriguing novella about that ship==the story of its crew unsettling encounter with spaceborn Thread…of a landing party’s visit to the abandoned early settlements on Pern’s southern continent (they assumed the northern continent was uninhabited because their instruments detected no concentration of heat or radio signals from the Holds, which had been built into caves to protect the colonists from Thread) and the would-be rescuers’ startling conclusions about both the planet and the fate of those who had settled there half a century earlier.