About the book: 2005 / Few people love the guardians of the threshold, ugly and avoiding the light. Few people know what they are capable of, other than hunting cave snakes in storerooms and distant corridors. And few people remember that strange and seemingly useless creatures are distant relatives of the beautiful dragons proudly soaring in the skies of Pern. But for miners, whose entire lives are spent under the threat of collapses and underground explosions, these night inhabitants - guardians of the threshold - are irreplaceable, and help theirs is priceless. And the boy Kindan, who at the very beginning of his life was faced with a terrible test, realizes this better than many…