Read Online The Luck of Brin's Five by Cherry; Wilder - Free Book Online

have been on a distant star. Whatever way he chose to reach them—and by contrast the land of Torin, with its plain and rivers and mountains and the desert, was all finely mapped—he must cross a continent and sail the ocean sea. He turned to Beeth Ulgan with a look of despair and spread his hands in a gesture that said plainly, “What shall I do?”
    The Diviner took one of his hands and looked at the palm lines, then turned it away from her, as if it were a scroll in a strange tongue that she found too fascinating. “Are your people safe in the islands?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIs their tent strong?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIs there food and water?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAre you the leader of this Family?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHave they another air ship?”
    â€œYes, a larger one.”
    â€œThen they will come seeking you!”
    â€œNo,” said Diver sadly. He explained, and finally we grasped his meaning. His people must follow certain rules; they could search around the camp and the sea nearby, but the larger air ship was of no use in the search. It was not an air vessel at all, but a ship for the void where there is no air. It was for taking the man Family back to the space station or larger sky town around Derin. Diver explained that he had done his people a terrible wrong in depriving them of his little ship, which went in the air or out of it, and was meant for short journeys. His people must continue their scholarly tasks, testing the air, numbering the flowers and the creatures, until their time of two hundred days had elapsed and they would return to the space station.
    I found it difficult to believe that they would obey such harsh rules; surely they would continue searching for him and go further afield. His instructions were equally harsh and plain: if he could not return to the party, he must shift for himself.
    Beeth Ulgan stared keenly at Diver. “Your people have flown around Torin. You must know there are cities.”
    Diver nodded. They had reports of inhabited places made some time ago from a great distance. But his people . . . the Biosurvey Team . . . were not envoys; their duty was only to discover how well man might live on Torin.
    Harper Roy laughed aloud. “Great North Wind! You have picked a bad spot. The islands are choking hot, full of fever and poison stings.”
    â€œPerhaps that’s another Diviner’s tale,” grinned Beeth Ulgan.
    Diver smiled and sawed his hand as if to say, “more or less.” “It’s hot.”
    â€œAre you under rule not to find other beings?” asked Beeth. Again Diver sawed the air.
    â€œI flew too far,” he admitted sadly. “I hoped, always, to find . . . others. The ship failed on my second journey.”
    Beeth Ulgan was pacing now, with her long hands pressed together in an attitude of thought. “Escott Garl Brinroyan,” she said formally, translating the name or at least making it easier to pronounce, “what have you in mind?”
    â€œTo find my ship.”
    â€œWill it fly again?”
    â€œMaybe not,” said Diver, “but it has ‘radio’, to speak with my friends in the islands.”
    â€œHa!” said Beeth, “I think this magic is known here. It resembles the voice-wire.”
    â€œThe voice-wire is forbidden in Rintoul,” said Harper Roy.
    â€œStill used in the Fire-Town,” said the Ulgan, “and I could do with one now, though the Winds know it would take a long wire to reach from here to Rintoul. How does your speaking device work, Diver?”
    â€œThe words travel through the air . . . no wire is needed.”
    The Ulgan held up her hands as if she would cry out all the way to Rintoul.
    â€œOh, these things will be known!” she cried triumphantly. “This will indeed be what the charts proclaim . . . a three comet year. There are others; there is a great one in Rintoul who must