Planet of Adventure Omnibus (8 page)

On the
morning of the third day they saw a fleck of white drifting across the western
sky. Traz flung himself flat behind a low shrub and motioned Reith to do
likewise. “Dirdir! They hunt!”

Reith brought
forth his scanscope, sighted on the object. With elbows on the ground he zoomed
the magnification to fifty diameters, when air vibration began to confuse the
image. He saw a long flat boat-like hull, riding the air on rakish cusps and
odd half-crescents: an aesthetic style, apparently, rather than utilitarian
design. Crouched on the hull were four pale shapes, unidentifiable as Dirdir or
Dirdirmen. The flyer traveled a course roughly parallel to their own, passing
several miles to the west. Reith wondered at Traz’s tension. He asked, “What do
they hunt?”

“Men.”

“For sport?”

“For sport.
For food, as well. They eat man-meat.”

“I’d like to
have that flyer,” mused Reith. He rose to his feet, ignoring Traz’s frantic
protests. But the Dirdir flyer disappeared into the north. Traz relaxed, but
searched the sky. “Sometimes they fly high and look down until they spot a lone
warrior. Then they drop like perriaults, to noose the man, or engage him with
electric swords.”

They walked
on, always north and west. Toward sunset Traz once again became uneasy, for
reasons Reith could not discern, though there was a particularly eerie quality
to the landscape. The sun, obscured by a mist, was small and dim and cast a
light as wan as lymph over the vastness of the steppe. There was nothing to be
seen save their own long shadows behind them, but as Traz walked he looked this
way and that, pausing at times to search the way they had come. Reith finally
asked, “What are you looking for?”

“Something is
following us.”

“Oh?” Reith
turned to look back across the steppe. “How do you know?”

“It is a
feeling I have.”

“What would
it be?”

“Pnumekin,
who travel unseen. Or it might be nighthounds.”

“Pnumekin:
they are men, are they not?”

“Men in a
sense. They are the spies, the couriers of the Pnume. Some say that tunnels run
beneath the steppe, with secret entrance traps, perhaps under that very bush!”

Reith
examined the bush toward which Traz had directed his attention, but it seemed
ordinary enough. “Would they harm us?”

“Not unless
the Pnume wanted us dead. Who knows what the Pnume want? ... More likely the
night-hounds are out early.”

Reith brought
forth his scanscope. He searched the steppe, but discovered nothing.

“Tonight,”
said Traz, “we had best build a fire.”

The sun sank
in a sad display of purple and mauve and brown. Traz and Reith collected a pile
of brush and set a fire.

Traz’s
instinct had been accurate. As dusk deepened to dark a soft wailing sounded to
the east, to be answered by a cry to the north and another to the south. Traz
cocked his catapult. “They’re not afraid of fire,” he told Reith. “But they
avoid the light, from cleverness ... Some say they are a kind of animal Pnume.”

The
night-hounds surrounded them, moving just beyond range of the firelight,
showing as dark shapes, with an occasional flash of lambent white eye-discs.

Traz kept his
catapult ready. Reith brought forth his gun and his energy cell. The first
fired tiny explosive needles, and was accurate to a distance of fifty yards.
The cell was a multiple-purpose device. At one end a crystal emitted either a
beam or a flood of light at the touch of a switch. A socket allowed the
recharging of the scanscope and the transcom. At the other end a trigger
released a gush of raw energy, but seriously depleted the energy available for
future use, and Reith regarded the energy cell as an emergency weapon only.

With
night-hounds circling the fire he kept both weapons ready, determined not to
waste a charge unless it was absolutely necessary. A shape came close; Traz
fired his catapult. The bolt struck home; the black shape bounded high, giving
a contralto call of woe.

Traz
re-cocked the catapult, and put more brush on the fire. The shapes moved
uneasily, then began to run in circles.

Traz said
gloomily, “Soon they will lunge. We are as good as dead. A troop of six men can
hold off night-hounds; five men are almost always killed.”

Reith
reluctantly took up his energy-cell. He waited. Closer, in from the shadows
danced and spun the night-hounds. Reith aimed, pulled the trigger, turned the
beam halfway around the circle. The surviving night-hounds screamed in horror.
Reith stepped around the fire to complete the job, but the night-hounds were
gone and presently could be heard grieving in the distance.

Traz and
Reith took turns sleeping. Each thought he kept sharp lookout, but in the
morning, when they went to look for corpses, all had been dragged away. “Crafty
creatures!” said Traz in a marveling voice. “Some say they talk to the Pnume,
and report all the events of the steppe.”

“What then?
Do the Pnume act on the information?”

Traz shrugged
doubtfully. “When something terrible happens it is safe to assume that the
Pnume have been at work.”

Reith looked
all around, wondering where Pnume or Pnumekin, or even night-hounds, could
hide. In all directions lay the open steppe, dim in the sepia dawn gloom.

For breakfast
they ate pilgrim pod and drank watak sap. Then once more they began their march
northwest.

Late in the
afternoon they saw ahead an extensive tumble of gray rubble which Traz
identified as a ruined city, where safety from the night-hounds could be had at
the risk of encountering bandits, Green Chasch or Phung. At Reith’s question,
Traz described these latter: a weird solitary species similar to the Pnume,
only larger and characterized by an insane craft which made them terrible even
to the Green Chasch.

As they
approached the ruins Traz told gloomy tales of the Phung and their macabre
habits. “Still, the ruins may be empty. We must approach with caution.”

“Who built
these old cities?” asked Reith.

Traz
shrugged. “No one knows. Perhaps the Old Chasch; perhaps the Blue Chasch.
Perhaps the Gray Men, though no one really believes this.”

Reith sorted
over what he knew of the Tschai races and their human associates. There were
Dirdir and Dirdirmen; Old Chasch, Green Chasch, Blue Chasch and Chaschmen;
Pnume and the human-derived Pnumekin; the yellow marsh-men, the various tribes
of nomads, the fabulous “Golds,” and now the “Gray Men.”

“There are
Wankh and Wankhmen as well,” said Traz. “On the other side of Tschai.”

“What brought
all these races to Tschai?” Reith asked-a rhetorical question, for he knew that
Traz would have no answer; and Traz gave only a shrug in reply.

They came to
mounds of silted-over rubble, slabs of tip-tilted concrete, shards of glass:
the outskirts of the city.

Traz stopped
short, listened, craned his neck uneasily, brought his catapult to the ready.
Reith, looking about, could see nothing threatening; slowly they moved on, into
the heart of the ruins. The old structures, once lofty halls and grand palaces,
were toppled, decayed, with only a few white pillars, posts, pedestals lifting
into the dark Tschai sky. Between were platforms and piazzas of wind-scoured
stone and concrete.

In the central
plaza a fountain bubbled up from an underground spring or aquifer. Traz
approached with great circumspection. “How can there fail to be Phung?” he
muttered. “Even now-” and he scrutinized the tumbled masonry around the plaza
with great care. Reith tasted the water, then drank. Traz, however, hung back. “A
Phung has been here.”

Reith could
see no evidence of the fact. “How do you know?”

Traz gave a
half-diffident shrug, reluctant to expatiate upon a matter so obvious. His
attention was diverted to another more urgent matter; he looked apprehensively
around the sky, sensing something below the threshold of Reith’s perceptions.
Suddenly he pointed. “The Dirdir boat!” They took shelter under an overhanging
slab of concrete; a moment later the flyer skimmed so close above that they
could hear the swish of air from the repulsors.

The flyer
swung in a great circle, returned to hover over the plaza at a height of two
hundred yards.

“Strange,”
whispered Traz. “It’s almost as if they know we’re here.”

“They may be searching
the ground with an infrared screen,” whispered Reith. “On Earth we can track a
man by the warmth of his footprints.”

The flyer
floated off to the west, then gathered speed and disappeared. Traz and Reith
went back out upon the plaza. Reith drank more water, relishing the cold
clarity after three days of watak sap. Traz preferred to hunt the large
roach-like insects which lived among the rubble. These he skinned with a quick
jerk of the fingers and ate with relish. Reith was not sufficiently hungry to
join him.

The sun sank
behind broken columns and shattered arches; a peach-colored haze hung over the
steppe which Traz thought to be a portent of changing weather. For fear of
rain, Reith wished to take shelter under a slab, but Traz would not hear of it.
“The Phung! They would sniff us out!” He selected a pedestal rising thirty feet
above a crumbled staircase as a secure place to pass the night. Reith looked
glumly at a bank of clouds coming up from the south but made no further
protest. The two carried up armloads of twigs and fronds for a bed.

The sun sank;
the ancient city became dim. Into the plaza wandered a man, reeling with
fatigue. He rushed to the fountain and drank greedily.

Reith brought
out his scanscope. The man was tall, slender, with long legs and arms, a long
sallow head quite bald, round eyes, a small button nose, minute ears. He wore
the tatters of a once-elegant garment of pink and blue and black; on his head
was an extravagant confection of pink puffs and black ribbons. “Dirdirman,” whispered
Traz, and bringing forth his catapult, took aim.

“Wait!”
protested Reith. “What do you do?”

“Kill him, of
course.”

“He is not
harming us! Why not give the poor devil his life?”

“He only
lacks the opportunity,” grumbled Traz, but he put aside the catapult. The
Dirdirman, turning away from the fountain, looked carefully around the plaza.

“He seems to
be lost,” muttered Reith. “I wonder if the Dirdir boat was seeking him. Could
he be a fugitive?”

Traz
shrugged. “Perhaps; who knows?”

The Dirdirman
came wearily across the plaza and took shelter only a few yards from the foot
of the pedestal, where he wrapped himself in his tattered garments and bedded
himself down. Traz grumbled under his breath and lay back into the twigs and
seemed to go instantly to sleep. Reith looked out across the old city and mused
upon his extraordinary destiny ... Az appeared in the east, glowing pale pink
through the haze to send a strange light along the ancient avenues. The vista
was one of eerie fascination: a scene unreal, the stuff of strange dreams. Now
Braz lifted into the sky; the broken columns and toppled structures cast double
shadows. One particular shape at the end of an avenue resembled a brooding
statue. Reith wondered why he had not noticed it previously. It was a
gaunt-man-shaped figure seven or eight feet tall, legs somewhat apart, head
bowed as if in intense concentration, one hand under the chin, the other behind
the back. The head was covered by a soft hat with a drooping brim; a cloak hung
from the shoulders; the legs seemed encased in boots. Reith looked more
intently. A statue? Why did it not move?

Reith brought
forth his scanscope. The creature’s visage was in dark shadow; but, adjusting
focus, zoom and gain, Reith was able to glimpse a long, gaunt countenance. The
gnarled halfhuman, half-insect features were set in a frozen grimace; as Reith
watched, the mouth-parts worked slowly, moving in and out ... The creature
moved, taking a single long stealthy step forward, again freezing into
position. It held a long arm aloft in a minatory gesture, for no purpose
comprehensible to Reith. Traz had awakened; he followed Reith’s gaze. “Phung!”

The creature
whirled about as if it had heard the sound and danced two great strides to the
side.

“They are
insane,” whispered Traz. “Mad demons.”

The Dirdirman
was not yet aware of the Phung. He fretfully moved his cloak, trying to make
himself comfortable. The Phung made a gesture of gleeful surprise, and gave
three bounds which took him to a spot only six feet from the Dirdirman, who
still fidgeted with his cloak. The Phung stood looking down, again nonmoving.
It stooped, picked up several small bits of gravel. Holding its long arm over
the Dirdirman, it dropped one of the pebbles.

The Dirdirman
gave a fretful jerk, but, still not seeing the Phung, settled himself again.
Reith winced and called out: “Hey!„

Traz hissed
in consternation. The effect upon the Phung was comical. It gave a great leap
back, turned to stare toward the pedestal, arms outspread in extravagant
surprise. The Dirdirman, on his knees, discovered the Phung, and could not move
for horror.