Jack Vance - Planet of Adventure

One of the Blue Chasch wore a morion with a higher spine than the others. He spoke, in the strangled glottal voice typical of the race. "What do you do here in Pera?"

"I am the chosen chief."

"You are the man who made an unauthorized visit to Dadiche, who visited the District Technical Center."

Reith made no reply.

"Well then," called the Blue Chasch, "what do you say? Do not deny the charge; your scent is individual. In some fashion you entered and departed Dadiche; and made furtive investigations. Why?"

"Because I had never visited Dadiche before," said Reith. "You are now visiting Pera without express authorization; however, you are welcome, so long as you obey our laws. I would like to think that the men of Pera could visit Dadiche on the same basis."

The Chaschmen gave hoarse chuckles; the Blue Chasch stared in gloomy shock. The spokesman said, "You have been espousing a false doctrine, and persuading the men of Pera to folly. Where do you derive these ideas?"

"The ideas are neither 'false doctrine' nor 'folly.' They are self-evident."

"You must come with us to Dadiche," said the Blue Chasch, "and clarify a number of peculiar circumstances. Go aboard the sky-raft."

Reith smilingly shook his head. "If you have questions, ask them now. Then I will ask you my questions."

The Blue Chasch made a signal to the Chaschmen guards. They moved forward to seize Reith. He took a step back, looked up at the upper windows. Down came a fusillade of catapult bolts, piercing the Chaschmen's foreheads and necks. But those bolts aimed at the Blue Chasch swerved aside, diverted by a force-field, and the Blue Chasch stood unscathed. They seized their own weapons, but before they could aim and fire, Reith unfolded his arms. He held his energy cell. In a quick sweep of his arm he burnt off the heads and shoulders of the six Blue Chasch. The bodies sprang into the air by some peculiar reflex, then sprawled to the ground with a multiple thud, where they lay covered by globules of molten silver.

The silence was complete. The onlookers seemed to be holding their breaths. All turned to look from the corpses to Reith; then, as if by single presentiment, all turned to look toward Dadiche.

"What will we do now?" whispered Bruntego the Gray. "We are doomed. They will feed us to their red flowers."

"Precisely," said Reith, "unless we take steps to prevent them." He signaled to Traz; they collected weapons and other gear from the headless Blue Chasch and the Chaschmen; then Reith ordered the bodies carried away and buried.

He went to the sky-raft, climbed aboard. The controls--clusters of pedals, knobs and flexible arms-were beyond his comprehension. Anacho the Dirdirman came up to look casually into the raft. Reith asked, "Do you understand the working of this thing?„ Anacho gave a contemptuous grunt. "Of course. It is the old Daidne System."

Reith looked back along the length of the raft. "What are those tubes? Chasch energetics?"

"Yes. Obsolete, of course, compared to Dirdir weapons."

"What is the range?"

"No great distance. These are low-power tubes."

"Suppose we mounted four or five sand-blasts on the raft. We'd have considerable fire-power."

Anacho gave a curt nod. "Crude and makeshift, but feasible."

On the afternoon of the following day a pair of rafts drifted high above Pera and returned to Dadiche without landing. The next morning a column of wagons came down from Belbal Gap, conveying two hundred Chaschmen and a hundred Blue Chasch officers. Overhead slid four rafts, carrying Blue Chasch gun-crews.

The wagons halted a half-mile from Pera; the troops deployed into four companies, which separated and approached Pera from all four sides, while the rafts floated overhead.

Reith divided the militia into two squads, and sent them sidling through the ruins, to the outskirts of the city on the south and west sides, where the Chasch troops would make first contact.

The militia waited until the Chaschmen and the Blue Chasch, moving warily, had penetrated a hundred yards into the city. Suddenly appearing from concealment, all fired weapons: catapults, sand-blasts, hand-guns from the Goho arsenal, those taken from the Chasch corpses.

Fire was concentrated on the Blue Chasch, and of these two-thirds died in the first five minutes, as well as half the Chaschmen. The remainder faltered, then fled back out onto the open steppe.

The rafts overhead swooped low and began to sweep the ruins with slay-beams. The militia now took shelter while the rafts descended even lower.

High above appeared another raft: that which Reith had armed with sand-blasts, then had taken five miles out on the steppe and hidden under brush. It dropped quietly upon the Chasch rafts, lower, lower, lower ... The men at the sand-blasts and at the energetic beams opened fire. The four rafts dropped like stones. The raft then crossed the city and opened fire on the two companies which were entering the north and east sectors of the city, while the militia opened fire from the flanks. The Chasch troops drew back with heavy losses.

Harassed by the bombardment from the air, they broke ranks and streamed off across the steppe in total disorder, pursued by the Peran militia.

REITH CONFERRED WITH his victory-flushed lieutenants. "We won today because they took us light. They still can bring overwhelming force against us. My guess is that tonight they will organize a strong war party: all their rafts, all their troops. Then tomorrow they will come forth to punish us. Does this sound reasonable?"

No one made dissent.

"Since we are committed to hostilities, best that we take the initiative, and try to arrange a few surprises for the Chasch. They have a poor opinion of men, and we might be able to do them some harm. This means taking our limited fire-power to where it can do the most damage."

Bruntego the Gray shuddered and clasped his hands to his face. "They have a thousand Chaschmen soldiers, and more. They have sky-rafts and energetic weapons-whereas we are only men, armed for the most part with catapults."

"Catapults kill a man just as dead as energy beams," Reith commented.

"But the rafts, the projectiles, the power and intelligence of the Blue Chasch!

They will destroy us totally and reduce Pera to a crater."

Tostig the old nomad demurred. "We have served too well, too cheaply in the past. Why should they rob themselves for the sake of sheer drama?"

"Because that is the Blue Chasch way!"

Tostig shook his head. "Old Chasch perhaps. Blue Chasch no. They will prefer to besiege us, starve us, and take the leaders back to Dadiche for punishment."

"Reasonable," agreed Anacho, "but can we expect even Blue Chasch to behave reasonably? All Chasch are half-mad."

"For this reason," said Reith, "we must match them caprice for caprice!"

Bruntego the Gray said with a sniff, "Caprice is the only quality in which we can match the Blue Chasch."

The discussion continued; proposals were set forth and debated and at last agreement was grudgingly reached. Messengers were sent forth to arouse the population. Amid some small protest and wailing, women, children, the aged and the uncooperative were marshaled aboard drays and sent off through the night, to a dismal gorge twenty miles south, where they would establish a temporary camp.

The militia assembled with all its weapons, then marched off through the night toward Belbal Gap.

Reith, Traz and Anacho remained in Pera. The cage containing the Green Chasch warriors had been swathed in cloth and loaded aboard the raft. At sunrise Anacho took the raft aloft and sent it sliding in that direction toward which the Green Chasch sat staring: north by east. Twenty miles passed beneath, and another twenty; then Traz, who sat watching the Green Chasch through a peephole, cried out, "They are turning, twisting about-toward the west!"