The starmen

by Leigh Brackett

Trehearne began to run.

The ropy vines that crept and clambered among the crystal trees were like nooses set to catch his feet. He fell, and rose, and ran again, and the spongy ground gave softly under his feet like sand. It was very hot, and he was heavy, heavy with the drag of a heavy world.

Behind him, clear and shrill, came the yap-yap-yaahhh! of Kurat's weasel hounds, racing over a fresh scent. The crystal branches gleamed and sparkled, tipped with star-fire, sharp-tipped like spears. Trehearne stopped and tried to break one and it was like trying to break a bar of steel with his bare hands. He gave it up and fled onward, not knowing where he was or where he was going, only wanting to stay away as long as he could from the lithe white demons that were hunting him. There was a little river, black and warm. He waded upstream in it, splashing to his waist, swimming in the deeper pools. The bitter wine had left him thirsty, and he drank. The water tasted foully of pitch and slime and he spat it out again, gasping. He heard the voice of the pack change to a querulous whining as they checked by the bank of the stream where he had entered it. He sank down to rest and listened to them casting back and forth. He thought he heard a man's voice shouting but he could not be sure. He went on again, striking away from the river and into the forest. The great stars were pounding against his head and his body was leaden with many extra pounds of weight by gravitation.

He prayed for a fallen branch, but there was none. He prayed to find the town and that too was denied him. He ran heavily under the glittering trees and behind him the hounds burst suddenly into full cry, more distant now but as chilling to the blood. It would not be long before they overtook him.

He measured the trees with an eye to climbing one for refuge. They were glassy and badly shaped, and they were low. He remembered the long whipcord bodies of the weasel-like beasts. He thought they could leap as high as they needed to pull him down. He staggered on, and every time he fell it was harder to get up again. A terrible rage was on him, rage against Yann. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to make a man run for his life on a world where he couldn't run. The cry of the pack came closer.

Abruptly, from somewhere ahead of him, rose the challenging voices of other hounds.

Trehearne stopped. He was caught now, between two fires. There was no use in going on. He choked on the acrid gorge of fear that filled his throat and cast about for a weapon, something, anything, to hold in his hands, to kill with, at least a little before he was torn apart.

It came to him that the yelping of the beasts ahead was stationary. It was irritable. They were not hunting. They were chained. Trehearne sobbed. He began to run again.

There was a clearing. He saw it ahead dimly through the starshine and the trees. He strove to reach it, and the pack-cry clamored at his heels. He tripped and pitched headlong and was almost happy, because he had fallen over a tangle of branches left from the breaking and clearing of the crystal trees. He caught one up. It was not long but it was sharp and heavy. It was better than nothing. He plunged forward with it into the edge of the open space, and there the hounds of Kurat bayed him.

Swift and undulant, white as frost in the starlight, they came leaping beautifully between the glistening trees. They cried out once, all together, and then they were still, still as arrows in mid-flight, arching toward him through the air. He set his back against a glassy trunk and swung his broken crystal branch. He struck some of them. But there were fangs set like hot irons in his flesh.