The sky-car lay quiet: a craft different from any Reith had seen heretofore, the product of a sure and sophisticated technology. Five Dirdir stepped to the ground: impressive creatures, harsh, mercurial, decisive. They stood approximately at human height, and moved with sinister quickness, like lizards on a hot day. Their dermal surfaces suggested polished bone; their crania raised into sharp blade-like crests, with incandescent antennae streaming back at either side. The contours of the faces were oddly human, with deep eye-sockets, the scalp crests descending to suggest nasal ridges. They half-hopped, half-loped, like leopards walking erect; it was not hard to see in them the wild creatures which had hunted the hot plains of Sibol.
Three persons approached the Dirdir: the false Lokhar, the Dugbo girl, a man in nondescript gray garments. The Dirdir spoke with the three for several minutes, then brought forth instruments, which they pointed in different directions.
Anacho hissed: "They locate their tell-tales. And the old Lokhar in the alehouse still dawdles over his pot!"
"No matter," said Reith. "As well in the ale-house as anywhere else."
The Dirdir approached the ale-house, moving with their curious half-loping stride. Behind came the three spies.
The old Lokhar chose this moment to lurch from the alehouse. The Dirdir inspected him in puzzlement, and approached by great leaps. The Lokhar drew back in alarm. "What have we here? Dirdir? Don't interfere with me!"
The Dirdir spoke in sibilant lisping voices which suggested the absence of a larynx. "Do you know a man called Adam Reith?"
"Indeed not! Stand aside!"
Zarfo thrust himself forward. "Adam Reith, you say? What of him?"
"Where is he?"
"Why do you ask?"
The false Lokhar stepped forward, muttered to the Dirdir. The Dirdir said. "You know Adam Reith well?"
"Not well. If you have money for him, leave it with me; he would have wanted it so."
"Where is he?"
Zarfo looked out across the sky. "You saw the sky-raft which departed as you arrived?"
"Yes."
"It might be that he and his friends were aboard."
"Who claims this to be true?"
"Not I," said Zarfo. "I offer only the suggestion."
"Nor I," said the old Lokhar who had carried the telltale.
"What is the direction?"
"Pah! You are the great trackers," sneered Zarfo. "Why ask us poor innocents?"
The Dirdir retreated across the compound in long strides. The skycar darted off into the air.
Zarfo confronted the three Dirdir agents, his big face twisted into a malevolent grin. "So here you are in Smargash, violating our laws. Do you not know this is Balul Zac Ag?"
"We committed no violence," stated the false Lokhar, "but merely did our work."
"Dirty work, conducive to violence! You shall all be flogged. Where are the constables? I give these three into custody!"
The three agents were hustled away, protesting and crying and making demands.
Zarfo came to the shed. "Best that you leave at once. The Dirdir will not delay long." He pointed across the compound. "The wagon to the west is ready to depart."
"Where does it take us?"
"Out to the highland rim. Beyond lie the chasms! A grim territory. But if you remain here, you will be taken by the Dirdir. Balul Zac Ag or no."
Reith looked around the compound, at the dusty stone and timber structures of Smargash, at the black and white Lokhars, at the shabby old inn. Here had been the single interim of peace and security he had known on Tschai; now events were forcing him once more into the unknown. In a hollow voice he said, "We need fifteen minutes to collect our gear."
Anacho said in a dismal voice, "The situation does not accord with my hopes ...
But I must make the best of it. Tschai is a world of anguish."
CHAPTER TWO
ZARFO CAME TO the inn with white Seraf robes and spine helmets. "Wear these; conceivably you may win an additional hour or two. Hurry-the wagon is at the point of departure."
"One moment." Reith surveyed the compound. "There may be other spies, watching our every move."
"Well, then, by the back lane. After all, we cannot anticipate every contingency."
Reith made no further comments; Zarfo was becoming peevish and anxious to get them out of Smargash, no matter in what direction.
Silently, each man thinking his own thoughts, they went to the motorwagon terminus. Zarfo told them: "Say nothing to anyone; pretend to meditate: that is the way of the Serafs. At sundown face the east and utter a loud cry:
'Ah-oo-cha!' No one knows what it means but that is the Seraf way. If pressed, state that you come to buy essences. So then: aboard the wagon! May you avoid the Dirdir and succeed in all your future undertakings. And if not, remember that death comes only once!"
"Thank you for the consolation," said Reith.
The motor-wagon trundled off on its eight tall wheels: away from Smargash, out over the plain toward the west. Reith, Anacho and Traz sat alone in the aft passenger cubicle.
Anacho was pessimistic in regard to their chances. "The Dirdir will not be confused for long. The difficulties will only make them keen. Do you know that the Dirdir young are like beasts? They must be tamed, then trained and educated.
The Dirdir spirit remains feral; hunting is a lust."
"Self-preservation is no less a lust with me," Reith stated.
The sun sank behind the rim; gray-brown dust settled over the landscape. The wagon paused at a dismal little village; the passengers stretched their legs, drank brackish water raised from a well, haggled for buns with a withered old crone who asked outrageous prices and laughed wildly at counter-proposals.
The wagon proceeded, leaving the old woman muttering beside her tray of buns.
The dusk faded through umber into darkness. From across the wasteland came a weird hooting: the call of night-hounds. In the east rose the pink moon Az, followed presently by blue Braz. Ahead loomed a jut of rock: an ancient volcanic neck, so Reith surmised. From the summit glowed three wan yellow lights. Looking up through his scanscope* Reith saw the ruins of a castle ... He dozed for an hour and awoke to find the wagon rolling through soft sand beside a river. On the opposite bank psillas stood outlined against the moonlit sky. Presently they passed a many-cupolaed manor-house, apparently uninhabited and in the process of decay.
Half an hour later, at midnight, the wagon rumbled into the compound of a large village, to halt for the right. The passengers composed themselves to sleep on their benches or on top of the wagon.
Carina 4269 finally rose: a cool amber disc only gradually dispelling the morning mist. Vendors brought trays of pickled meats, pastes, strips of boiled bark, toasted pilgrim pod, from which the passengers made a breakfast.
The wagon proceeded to the west toward the Rim Mountains, now jutting high into the sky. Reith occasionally swept the sky with his scanscope but discovered no signs of pursuit.
"Too early yet," said Anacho cheerlessly. "Never fear; it will come."
At noon the wagon reached Siadz, the terminus: a dozen stone huts surrounding a cistern.
To Reith's intense disgust, no transportation, neither motorwagon nor leap-horse, could be hired for transportation onward across the rim.
"Do you know what lies beyond?" demanded the elder of the village. "The chasms."
"Is there no trail, no trade-route?"
"Who would enter the chasms, for trade or otherwise? What sort of folk are you?"