The beautiful planet Pern seemed a paradise to its new colonists—a return to an agrarian way of life—until unimaginable terror turned it into hell. Lethal spores began to fall like silvery thread-like rain from the sky, vaporizing everything—and everyone—in their path. The colony, cut off from Earth and lacking the resources to combat the menace, was doomed. The colonists noticed that small, dragon-like lizards in their new world were joining the fight against Thread, breathing fire on it and teleporting to safety. If only the dragonets were big enough for a human to ride and intelligent enough to work as a team with a rider. With time running out and the colony's destruction imminent, they set their most talented geneticist to work to create the creatures Pern so desperately needed—dragons!