"Wilder, Cherry - Torin 01 - The Luck of Brin's Five UC - part 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilder Cherry)

among the tendrils of steam.
I left Odd-Eye without a word and ran back along the
track. Halfway to the rise I cannoned into Brin and Harpei
Roy, coming to relieve me at my post, and blurted out m)
story.
"We saw the fireball!" said Brin. "What's this about i
tent in the air?"
"The Luck!" I gasped. "Don't you see? It will land in th,
take!"

( 12 )






( 13 )

"Odd-Eye called it a glider?" asked Harper Roy.
"Some vessel!" I said. "Some air ship. Oh please
come ... the Luck is in the lake by now. . . ."
They were coming along with me as I babbled, and we
came in sight of the lake. The white tents floated in a tangle
about fifty feet from the shore.
"Something came down . . ." said Harper Roy.
There were shouts and torchlights springing up on the
far bank. The hunting party was trying the steamy water,
to probe the place where the fireball struck. Suddenly there
was a movement near us; I saw the tents and their cordage
wrap against a heavy body, circling slowly in the wide
whirlpool eddies of the warm lake.
"Quickly!" said Brin. "Reef in the cords ... there is
someone bound to them!"
We waded into the warm water until I was swimming
and dragged at the cords and fought with billowing heaps of
warm, wet fabric, soft as silk. There was a grotesque figure
floating in the water: ballooning legs, stiff arms, square
head with one dark, glistening eye, big as a whole face.
Then it came to rest on the shore, and we all saw what it
was ... a kind of body-shaped bag of fine metallic cloth.
The dark eye was a piece of glass. Someone lived inside the
bag, and we knew it must be our Luck.
"Blood . . ." said Harper Roy, ". . . on the sleeve .
From within the helmet there came a feeble gasping cry, for
all the world like that of a hidden child.
Brin struggled with the square helmet while Harper Roy
got to work with his knife on the strangling mess of cords.
He reefed in the two white tents. I could see that Roy did
not mean all that wealth of white silk to go to waste. Brin