Jack Vance: Planet of Adventure

"That's one small favor."

Looking through scanscopes, they could now observe detail. Below spread a wide plain or a steppe, marked here and there with low relief and vegetation. "No sign of civilization," said Waunder. "Not below, at any rate. Maybe up there, by the horizon-those gray spots ..."

"If we can land the boat, if no one disturbs us while we rebuild the control system, we'll be in good shape ... But these airfoils aren't intended for a fast landing in the rough. We'd better try to stall her down and eject at the last instant."

"Right," said Waunder. He pointed. "That looks like a forest-vegetation of some sort. The ideal spot for a crash."

"Down we go."

The boat slanted down; the landscape expanded. The fronds of a dank black forest reached into the air ahead of them.

"On the count of three: eject," said Reith. He pulled the boat up into a stall, braking its motion. "One-two-three. Eject!"

The ejection ports opened; the seats thrust; out into the air snapped Reith. But where was Waunder? His harness had fouled, or the seat had failed to eject properly; and he dangled helplessly outside the boat. Reith's parachute opened, swung him up pendulum-wise. On the way down he struck a glossy black limb of a tree. The blow dazed him; he swung at the end of his parachute shrouds. The boat careened through the trees, plowed into a bog, Paul Waunder hung motionless in his harness.

There was silence except for the creaking of hot metal, a faint hiss from somewhere under the boat.

Reith stirred, kicked feebly. The motion sent pain tearing through his shoulders and chest; he desisted and hung limp.

The ground was fifty feet below. The sunlight, as he had noted before, seemed rather more dim and yellow than the sunlight of Earth, and the shadows held an amber overtone. The air was aromatic with the scent of unfamiliar resins and oils; he was caught in a tree with glossy black limbs and brittle black foliage which made a rattling sound when he moved. He could look along the broken swath to the bog, where the boat sat almost on an even keel, Waunder hanging head-down from the ejection hatch, his face only inches from the muck. If the boat should settle, he would smother-if he was still alive even now. Reith struggled frantically to untangle himself from his harness. The pain made him dizzy and sick; there was no strength in his hands, and when he raised his arms there were clicking sounds in his shoulders. He was helpless to free himself, let alone assist Waunder. Was he dead? Reith could not be sure. Waunder, he thought, had twitched feebly.

Reith watched intently. Waunder was slipping slowly into the mire. In the ejection seat was a survival kit with weapons and tools. With his broken bones he could not raise his arms to reach the clasp. If he detached himself from the shrouds he would fall and kill himself... No help for it. Broken shoulder, broken collarbone or not, he must open the ejection seat, bring forth the knife and the coil of rope.

There was a sound, not too far distant, of wood striking wood. Reith desisted in his efforts, hung quietly. A troop of men armed with fancifully long rapiers and heavy hand-catapults marched quietly, almost furtively, below.

Reith stared dumbfounded, suspecting hallucination. The cosmos seemed partial to biped races, more or less anthropoid; but these were true men: people with harsh, strong features, honey-colored skin, blond, blond-brown, blond-gray hair and bushy drooping mustaches. They wore complicated garments: loose trousers of striped brown and black cloth, dark blue or dark red shirts, vests of woven metal strips, short black capes. Their hats were black leather, folded and creased with out-turned earflaps, each with a silver emblem four inches across at the front of a tall crown. Reith watched in amazement. Barbarian warriors, a wandering band of cutthroats: but true men, nonetheless, here on this unknown world over two hundred light-years from Earth!

The warriors passed quietly below, stealthy and furtive. They paused in the shadows to survey the boat, then the leader, a warrior younger than the rest, no more than a youth and lacking a mustache, stepped out into the open and examined the sky. He was joined by three older men, wearing globes of pink and blue glass on their helmets, who also searched the sky with great care. Then the youth signaled to the others, and all approached the boat.

Paul Waunder raised his hand in the feeblest of salutes. One of the men with the glass globes snatched up his catapult, but the youth yelled an angry order and the man sullenly turned away. One of the warriors cut the parachute shrouds, let Waunder fall to the ground.

The youth gave other orders; Waunder was picked up and carried to a dry area.

The youth now turned to investigate the space-boat. Boldly he clambered up on the hull and looked in through the ejection ports.

The older men with the pink and blue globes stood back in the shadows, muttering dourly through their drooping whiskers and glowering toward Waunder. One of them clapped his hand to the emblem on his hat as if the object had jerked or made a sound. Then, at once, as if stimulated by the contact, he stalked upon Waunder, drew his rapier, brought it flickering down. To Reith's horror Paul Waunder's head rolled free of his torso, and his blood gushed forth to soak into the black soil.

The youth seemed to sense the act and swung about. He cried out in fury, leaped to the ground, marched over to the murderer. The youth snatched forth his own rapier, flicked it and the flexible end slashed in to cut away the emblem from the man's hat. The youth picked it up, and pulling a knife from his boot hacked savagely at the soft silver, then cast it down at the murderer's feet with a spate of bitter words. The murderer, cowed, picked up the emblem and moved sullenly off to the side.

From a great distance came a throb of sound. The warriors set up a soft hooting, either as a ceremonial response or in fear and mutual admonition, and quickly retreated into the forest.

Low in the sky appeared an aircraft, which first hovered, then settled: a sky-raft fifty feet long, twenty feet wide, controlled from an ornate belvedere at the stern. Forward and aft great lanterns dangled from convolute standards; the bulwarks were guarded by a squat balustrade. Leaning over the balustrade, pushing and jostling, were two dozen passengers, in imminent danger, so it seemed, of falling to the ground.

Reith watched in numb fascination as the craft landed beside the scout-boat. The passengers jumped quickly off: individuals of two sorts, non-human and human, though this distinction was not instantly obvious. The non-human creatures-Blue Chasch, as Reith was to learn-walked on short heavy legs, moving with a stiff-legged strut. The typical individual was massive and powerful, scaled like a pangolin with blue pointed tablets. The torso was wedge-shaped, with exoskeletal epaulettes of chitin curving over into a dorsal carapace. The skull rose to a bony point; a heavy brow jutted over the ocular holes, glittering metallic eyes and the complicated nasal orifice. The men were as similar to the Blue Chasch as breeding, artifice and mannerism allowed. They were short, stocky, with bandy-legs; their faces were blunt and almost chinless, with the features compressed. They wore what appeared to be false craniums which rose to a point and beetled over their foreheads; and their jerkins and trousers were worked with scales.

Chasch and Chaschmen ran to the scout-boat, communicating in fluting glottal cries. Some clambered up the hull, peered into the interior, others investigated the head and torso of Paul Waunder, which they picked up and carried aboard the raft.

From the control belvedere came a bawled alarm. Blue Chasch and Chaschmen looked up into the sky, then hurriedly pushed the raft under the trees and out of sight. Once again the little clearing was deserted.