Planet of Adventure Omnibus by Jack Vance Page B

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