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

same name: Torin. When Esto, the Great Sun, set in the
west, its strong golden light gave way to darkness, then to a
silvery light, six times as strong as the reflected light of
Earth's moon ... the light of Esder ... the Far Sun. It
was possible to read, to hunt, to maneuver a flying machine
by the light of Esder.
Down below on the plain, during Esder light, other
flickering lights clustered at fords and river crossings. In an
old shallow crater a sheet of water threw back the Far Sun's
light oddly; the water steamed and gave off its own
phosphorescent glow. Beyond the northern bank of this~
lake twin peaks rose up, two of the highest in the range, and
below them, on a stone terrace, stood a long oval building.
It was a mild summer night in the year 274 of the New
Age, two hundred and seventy-four Torin years since the
last Torlogan or Great Builder handed power to the
grandees. The only sounds here in the mountains were
natural ones: bird calls, a stone dislodged that rolled down
into a pool. When four Torin hours of darkness had passed
and ten of Esder light, a new sound grew sharply in the
clear air. The flying machine came buzzing in from the
southwest and landed neatly on the terrace. It was strong
and shapely, made of woven, stiffened fabric over a frame
of bent wood. The wingspan was large; there was a
propeller mounted on the nose and four smaller ones on the
wing itself. On the hindmost panel, to the left, there was a
row of painted characters; in the corresponding position to
the right there were block letters: TOMARVAN 11.
A man climbed down out of the machine and reached up
to help down his companion, a young Moruian, an inhabi-

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tant of Torin. They talked softly, as if the silence of the
mountains made them lower their voices, but the man's
voice, his laughter, rang out sometimes. They came down
from the terrace and began walking briskly towards the
lake, just visible through the trees. The light of Esder
picked out quite clearly their sameness and their difference.
The man, Scott Gale, was well-built, broad-shouldered,
muscular, a head taller than his young companion. He wore