"Vance, Jack - Planet of Adventure 02 - Servants of the Wankh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

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 butte. 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 snatched 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.
"It will live for days, until it dries out," said Traz huskily. "Gradually it
will go stiff."
The Chasch paid the creature no further heed, but at once made ready their
leap-horses. They loaded their gear and five minutes later had trooped off into
the darkness. The head of the Phung mused upon the play of the flames.
For a period the men squatted by the edge of the precipice, looking across
the steppe. Traz and Anacho fell into an argument regarding the nature of the
Phung, Traz declaring them to be products of unnatural union between Pnumekin
and the corpses of Pnume. "The seed waxes in the decay like a barkworm, and
finally breaks out through the skin as a young Phung, not greatly different from
a bald night-hound."
"Sheer idiocy, lad!" said Anacho with easy condescension. "They surely breed
like Pnume: a startling process itself, if what I hear is correct."
Traz, no less proud than the Dirdirman, became taut. "How do you speak with
such assurance? Have you observed the process? Have you seen a Phung with
others, or guarding a cub?" He lowered his lip in a sneer. "No! They go singly,
too mad to breed!"
Anacho made a finger-fluttering gesture of fastidious didacticism. "Rarely
are Pnume seen in groups; rarely do we see a Pnume alone, for that matter. Yet
they flourish in their peculiar fashion. Brash generalizations are suspect. The
truth is that after many long years on Tschai we still know little of either
Phung or Pnume."
Traz gave an inarticulate growl, too wise not to concede the conviction of
Anacho's logic, too proud to abandon abjectly his point of view. And Anacho, in
his turn, made no attempt to push a superficial advantage home. In time, thought
Reith, the two might even learn to respect each other.
In the morning Anacho again tinkered with the engine, while the others
shivered in the cold airs seeping down from the north. Traz gloomily predicted
rain, and presently a high overcast began to form, and fog eased over the tops
of the hills to the north.