The Chaschman scowled. "What is unnatural about that? We are Chaschmen, the first phase of the great cycle."

"Utter nonsense," said Reith. "You are no more Chasch than the Dirdirman yonder is Dirdir. Both of you are men. The Chasch and theDirdir have enslaved you, plundered your lives. High time that you knew the truth!"

The Chaschwomen halted their keening, the Chaschmen turned blank faces toward Reith.

"So far as I am concerned," said Reith, "you can live as you like. The city of Dadiche is yours-so long as the Blue Chasch do not return."

"What do you mean by that?" quavered the Chaschmen "Precisely what I said. Tomorrow we return to Pera. Dadiche is yours."

"All very well-but what if the Blue Chasch come back, from Saaba, from Dkekme, from the Lizizaudre, as they surely will?"

"Kill them, chase them away! Dadiche is now a city of men! And if you don't believe that the Blue Chasch victimized you, go look into the death- house under the wall. You are told that you are larva, that the imp germinates in your brain. Go examine the brains of dead Chaschmen. You will find no imps, only the brains of men.

"So far as we are concerned, you can return to your homes. The only proscription I put upon you are the false heads. If you wear them we will consider you not men but Blue Chasch and deal with you accordingly."

Reith returned to his own camp; diffidently, as if they could not believe Reith's statement, the erstwhile Chaschmen slipped off through the dusk for their homes.

Anacho spoke to Reith. "I listened to what you said. You know nothing about the Dirdir and the Dirdirmen! Even were your theories valid, we would still remain Dirdirmen! We recognize excellence, superlativity; we aspire to emulate the ineffable-an impossible ideal, since Shade can never out-glow Sun, and men can never surpa.s.s Dirdir."

"For an intelligent man," snapped Reith, "you are extremely obstinate and unimaginative. Someday I am sure you will recognize your error; until then, believe whatever you care to believe."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

BEFORE DAWN THE camp was astir. Drays laden with loot moved off westward, black against the ale-colored sky.

In Dadiche, the Chaschmen, peculiarly bald and gnomish without their false skulls, collected corpses, carried them to a great pit and buried them.

A score of Blue Chasch had been flushed from hiding. The killing l.u.s.t of the Perans having subsided, they were confined in a stockade, from which they stared in stone-eyed bewilderment at the coming and going of the men.

Reith was concerned over the possibility of counterattack from the Blue Chasch cities to the south. Anacho made light of the matter. "They have no stomach for fighting. They menace the Dirdir cities with torpedoes, but only to avoid war. They never challenge, they are content to live in their gardens. They might send Chaschmen to hara.s.s us, but I suspect they will do nothing whatever, unless we threaten them directly."

"Perhaps so." Reith released the captive Blue Chasch. "Go to the cities of the south," he told them. "Inform the Blue Chasch of Saaba and Dkekme that if they molest us we will destroy them."

"It is a long march," croaked the Blue Chasch. "Must we go on foot? Give us one of the rafts!"

"Walk! We owe you nothing!"

The Blue Chasch departed.

Still not wholly convinced that the Blue Chasch would refrain from seeking vengeance, Reith ordered weapons mounted on those nine rafts captured at the Dadiche depot and flew them to secluded areas on the hills.

On the following day, in the company of Traz, Anacho and Derl, he explored Dadiche in a more leisurely fashion. At the Technical Center he once more examined the hulk of his s.p.a.ceboat, with an eye to its ultimate repair. "If I had the full use of this workshop," he said, "and if I had the help of twenty expert technicians, I might be able to build a new drive system. It might be more practical to try to adapt the Chasch drive to the boat but then there would be control problems ... Better to build a whole new boat."

Derl frowned at the quiet s.p.a.ce-boat. "You are so intent, then, on departing Tschai? You have not yet visited Cath. You might wish never to depart."

"Possibly," said Reith. "But you have never visited Earth. You might not want to return to Tschai."

"It must be a very strange world," mused the Flower of Cath. "Are the women of Earth beautiful?""Some of them," Reith replied. He took her hand. "There are beautiful women on Tschai, as well. The name of one of them is-" And he whispered a name in her ear.

Blushing, she put her hand to his mouth. "The others might hear!"

SERVANTS OF THE w.a.n.kH.

CHAPTER ONE.

Two THOUSAND MILES east of Pera, over the heart of the Dead Steppe, the sky-raft faltered, flew smoothly for a moment, then jerked and bucked in a most ominous fashion. Adam Reith looked aft in dismay, then ran to the control belvedere. Lifting the voluted bronze housing, he peered here and there among the scrolls, floral hatchings, grinning imp faces which almost mischievously camouflaged the engine.* He was joined by the Dirdirman Ankhe at afram Anacho.

Reith asked, "Do you know what's wrong?"

Anacho pinched up his pale nostrils, muttered something about an "antiquated Chasch farrago" and "insane expedition to begin with." Reith, accustomed to the Dirdirman's foibles, realized that he was too vain to admit ignorance, too disdainful to avow knowledge so cra.s.s.

The raft shuddered again. Simultaneously from a four-p.r.o.nged case of black wood to the side of the engine compartment came small rasping noises. Anacho gave it a lordly rap with his knuckles. The groaning and shuddering ceased. "Corrosion," said Anacho. "Electromorphic action across a hundred years or longer. I believe this to be a copy of the unsuccessful Heizakim Bursa, which the Dirdir abandoned two hundred years ago."

"Can we make repairs?"

"How should I know such things? I would hardly dare touch it.

They stood listening. The engine sighed on without further pause. At last Reith lowered the housing. The two returned forward.

Traz lay curled on a settee after standing a night watch. On the green crush-cushioned seat under the ornate bow lantern sat the Flower of Cath, one leg tucked beneath the other, head on her forearms, staring eastward toward Cath. So had she huddled for hours, hair blowing in the wind, speaking no word to anyone. Reith found her conduct perplexing. At Pera she had yearned for Cath; she could talk of nothing else but the ease and grace of Blue Jade Palace, of her father's grat.i.tude if Reith would only bring her home. She had described wonderful b.a.l.l.s, extravaganzas, water- parties, masques according to the turn of the "round." ("Round? What did she mean by 'round'?" asked Reith. Ylin-Ylan, the Flower of Cath, laughed excitedly. "It's just the way things are, and how they become! Everybody must know and the clever ones antic.i.p.ate; that's why they're clever! It's all such fun!") Now that the journey to Cath was actually underway the Flower's mood had altered. She had become pensive, remote, and evaded all questions as to the source of her abstraction. Reith shrugged and turnedaway. Their intimacy was at an end: all for the best, or so he told himself.

Still, the question nagged at him: why? His purpose in flying to Cath was twofold: first, to fulfill his promise to the girl; secondly, to find, or so he hoped, a technical basis to permit the construction of a s.p.a.ceboat, no matter how small or crude. If he could rely upon the cooperation of the Blue Jade Lord, so much the better. Indeed, such sponsorship was a necessity.

The route to Cath lay across the Dead Steppe, south under the Ojza.n.a.lai Mountains, northeast along the Lok Lu Steppe, across the Zhaarken or the Wild Waste, over Achenkin Strait to the city Nerv, then south down the coast of Charchan to Cath. For the raft to fail at any stage of the journey short of Nerv meant disaster. As if to emphasize the point, the raft gave a single small jerk, then once more flew smoothly.

The day pa.s.sed. Below rolled the Dead Steppe, dun and gray in the wan light of Carina 4269. At sunset they crossed the great Yatl River and all night flew under the pink moon Az and the blue moon Braz. In the morning low hills showed to the north, which ultimately would swell and thrust high to become the Ojza.n.a.lais.

At midmorning they landed at a small lake to refill water tanks. Traz was uneasy. "Green Chasch are near." He pointed to a forest a mile south.

"They hide there, watching us."

Before the tanks were full, a band of forty Green Chasch on leap-horses lunged from the forest. Ylin-Ylan was perversely slow in boarding the raft.

Reith hustled her aboard; Anacho thrust over the lift-arm-perhaps too hurriedly. The engine sputtered; the raft pitched and lurched.

Reith ran aft, flung up the housing, pounded the black case. The sputtering stopped; the raft lifted only yards ahead of the bounding warriors and their ten-foot swords. The leap-horses slid to a halt, the warriors aimed catapults and the air streamed with long iron bolts. But the raft was five hundred feet high; one or two of the bolts b.u.mped into the hull at the height of their trajectory and fell away.

The raft, shuddering spasmodically, moved off to the east. The Green Chasch set off in pursuit; the raft, sputtering, pitching, yawing, and occasionally dropping its bow in a sickening fashion gradually left them behind.

The motion became intolerable. Reith jarred the black case again and again without significant effect. "We've got to make repairs," he told Anacho.

"We can try. First we must land."

"On the steppe? With the Green Chasch behind us?"

"We can't stay aloft."

Traz pointed north, to a spine of hills terminating in a set of isolated b.u.t.tes. "Best that we land on one of those flat-topped peaks."Anacho nudged the raft around to the north, provoking an even more alarming wobble; the bow began to gyrate like an eccentric toy.

"Hang on!" Reith cried out.

"I doubt if we can reach that first hill," muttered Anacho.

"Try for the next one!" yelled Traz. Reith saw that the second of the b.u.t.tes, with sheer vertical walls, was clearly superior to the first-if the raft would stay in the air that long.

Anacho cut speed to a mere drift. The raft wallowed across the intervening s.p.a.ce to the second b.u.t.te, and grounded. The absence of motion was like silence after noise.

The travelers descended from the raft, muscles stiff from tension. Reith looked around the horizon in disgust: hard to imagine a more desolate spot than this, four hundred feet above the center of the Dead Steppe. So much for his hope of an easy pa.s.sage to Cath.

Traz, going to the edge of the b.u.t.te, peered over the cliff. "We may not even be able to get down."

The survival kit which Reith had salvaged from the wrecked scout boat included a pellet gun, an energy cell, an electronic telescope, a knife, antiseptics, a mirror, a thousand feet of strong cord. "We can get down,"

said Reith. "I'd prefer to fly." He turned to Anacho, who stood glumly considering the sky-raft. "Do you think we can make repairs?"

Anacho rubbed his long white hands together in distaste. "You must realize that I have no such training in these matters."

"Show me what's wrong," said Reith. "I can probably fix it."

Anacho's droll face grew even longer. Reith was the living refutation of his most cherished axioms. According to orthodox Dirdir doctrine, Dirdir and Dirdirmen had evolved together in a primeval egg on the Dirdir homeworld Sibol; the only true men were Dirdirmen; all others were freaks. Anacho found it hard to reconcile Reith's competence with his preconceptions, and his att.i.tude was a curious composite of envious disapproval, grudging admiration, unwilling loyalty. Now, rather than allow Reith to excel him in yet another aspect, he hurried to the stern of the skyraft and thrust his long pale clown's face under the housing.

The surface of the b.u.t.te was scoured clean of vegetation, with here and there little channels half-full of coa.r.s.e sand. Ylin-Ylan wandered moodily across the b.u.t.te. She wore the gray steppe dwellers' trousers and blouse, with a black velvet vest; her black slippers were probably the first to walk the rough gray rock, thought Reith ... Traz stood looking to the west. Reith joined him at the edge of the b.u.t.te. He studied the dismal steppe, but saw nothing.

"The Green Chasch," said Traz. "They know we're here."

Reith once more scanned the steppe, from the low black hills in the north to the haze of the south. He could see no flicker of movement, noplume of dust. He brought out his scanscope, a binocular photo-multiplier, and probed the gray-brown murk. Presently he saw bounding black specks, like fleas. "They're out there, for a fact."

Traz nodded without great interest. Reith grinned, amused as always by the boy's somber wisdom. He went to the sky-raft. "How go the repairs?"

Anacho's response was an irritated motion of arms and shoulders. "Look for yourself."

Reith came forward, peered down at the black case, which Anacho had opened, to reveal an intricacy of small components. "Corrosion and sheer age are at fault," said Anacho. "I hope to introduce new metal here and here." He pointed. "It is a notable problem without tools and proper facilities."

"We won't leave tonight then?"

"Perhaps by tomorrow noon."

Reith walked around the periphery of the b.u.t.te, a distance of three or four hundred yards, and was somewhat rea.s.sured. Everywhere the walls were vertical, with fins of rock at the base creating crevices, and grottos.

There seemed no easy method to scale the walls, and he doubted if the Green Chasch would go to vast trouble for the trivial pleasure of slaughtering a few men.

The old brown sun hung low in the west; the shadows of Reith and Traz and Ylin-Ylan stretched long across the top of the b.u.t.te. The girl turned away from her contemplation of the east. She watched Traz and Reith for a moment, then slowly, almost reluctantly, crossed the sandstone surface and joined them. "What are you looking at?"

Reith pointed. The Green Chasch on their leap-horses were visible now to the naked eye: dark motes hopping and bounding in bone-jarring leaps.

Ylin-Ylan drew her breath. "Are they coming for us?"

"I imagine so."

"Can we fight them off? What of our weapons?"

"We have sandblasts* on the raft. If they climbed the cliffs after dark they might do some damage. During daylight we don't need to worry."

Ylin-Ylan's lips quivered. She spoke in an almost inaudible voice. "If I return to Cath, I will hide in the farthest grotto of the Blue Jade garden and never again appear. If ever I return."

Reith put his arm around her waist; she was stiff and unyielding. "Of course you'll return, and pick up your life where it left off."

"No. Someone else may be Flower of Cath; she is welcome ... So long as she chooses other than Ylin-Ylan for her bouquet."

The girl's pessimism puzzled Reith. Her previous trials she had borne with stoicism; now, with fair prospects of returning home, she had become morose. Reith heaved a deep sigh and turned away.The Green Chasch were no more than a mile distant. Reith and Traz drew back to attract no notice in the event that the Chasch were unaware of their presence. The hope was soon dispelled. The Green Chasch bounded up to the base of the b.u.t.te, then, dismounting from their horses, stood looking up the cliff face. Reith, peering over the side, counted forty of the creatures. They were seven and eight feet tall, ma.s.sive and thick-limbed, with pangolin-scales of metallic green. Under the jut of their crania their faces were small, and, to Reith's eyes, like the magnified visage of a feral insect. They wore leather ap.r.o.ns and shoulder harness; their weapons were swords which, like all the swords of the Tschai, seemed long and unwieldy, and these, eight and ten feet long, even more so. Some of them armed their catapults; Reith ducked back to avoid the flight of bolts. He looked around the b.u.t.te for boulders to drop over the side, but found none.

Certain of the Chasch rode around the b.u.t.te, examining the walls. Traz ran around the periphery, keeping watch.

All returned to the main group, where they muttered and grumbled together. Reith thought that they showed no great zest for the business of scaling the wall. Setting up camp, they tethered their leap-horses, thrust chunks of a dark sticky substance into the pale maws. They built three fires, over which they boiled chunks of the same substance they had fed the leap- horses, and at last hulking down into toad-shaped mounds, joylessly devoured the contents of their cauldrons. The sun dimmed behind the western haze and disappeared. Umber twilight fell over the steppe. Anacho came away from the raft and peered down at the Green Chasch. "Lesser Zants," he p.r.o.nounced. "Notice the protuberances to each side of the head?

They are thus distinguished from the Great Zants and other hordes. These are of no great consequence."

"They look consequential enough to me," said Reith.

Traz made a sudden motion, pointed. In one of the crevices, between two vanes of rock, stood a tall dark shadow. "Phung!"

Reith looked through the scanscope and saw the shadow to be a Phung indeed. From where it had come he could not guess.

It was over eight feet in height, in its soft black hat and black cloak, like a giant gra.s.shopper in magisterial vestments.

Reith studied the face, watching the slow working of chitinous plates around the blunt lower section of the face. It watched the Green Chasch with brooding detachment, though they crouched over their pots not ten yards away.

"A mad thing," whispered Traz, his eyes glittering. "Look, now it plays tricks!"

The Phung reached down its long thin arms, raised a small boulder which it heaved high into the air. The rock dropped among the Chasch, falling squarely upon a hulking back.The Green Chasch sprang up, to glare toward the top of the b.u.t.te. The Phung stood quietly, lost among the shadows. The Chasch which had been struck lay flat on its face, making convulsive swimming motions with arms and legs.

The Phung craftily lifted another great rock, once more heaved it high, but this time the Chasch saw the movement. Venting squeals of fury they seized their swords and flung themselves forward. The Phung took a stately step aside, then leaping in a great flutter of cloak s.n.a.t.c.hed a sword, which it wielded as if it were a toothpick, hacking, dancing, whirling, cutting wildly, apparently without aim or direction. The Chasch scattered; some lay on the ground, and the Phung jumped here and there, slashing and slicing, without discrimination, the Green Chasch, the fire, the air, like a mechanical toy running out of control.

Crouching and shifting, the Green Chasch hulked forward. They chopped, cut; the Phung threw away the sword as if it were hot, and was hacked into pieces. The head spun off the torso, landed on the ground ten feet from one of the fires, with the soft black hat still in place. Reith watched it through the scanscope. The head seemed conscious, untroubled.

The eyes watched the fire; the mouth parts worked slowly.