Planet of Adventure

When someone sent distress signals to outer space from the planet Tschai, it was Adam Reith's misfortune to be sent from Earth to investigate. Because when his ship came close to Tschai, it was torpedoed-and Adam escaped to the surface with his life and nothing else. On Tschai, a vast, previously unexplored planet, Adam is taken as a slave by humans and learns that there are four other intelligent but nonhuman races dominant on this strange world. To solve the mystery of the distress call and the vicious attack on his ship, he must first gain his freedom, then find safe passage by the city and the alien Chasch and their treacherous cousins, the Blue Chasch. Jack Vance's Tschai novels are considered his masterwork, a constantly changing epic canvas of weird peoples, exotic lands, and surprising extraterrestrial adventures.

Marooned on the strange planet Tschai, Adam Reith agreed to lead an expedition to return the princess Ylin Ylan, the Flower of Cath, to her homeland halfway around the globe. Monsters of land and sea lay before them, as well as beings both human and alien who might rob, kill, or enslave them. Tschai was a large planet, an ancient planet, where four powerful alien races struggled for mastery while humans were treated as pawns; nothing would be easy for Reith on this journey. But the girl's father was enormously wealthy and her homeland technologically sophisticated. If Reith was ever to obtain human aid in returning to Earth, where better than Cath? If only he could get there...Servants of the Wankh, complete in itself, is the second volume of Jack Vance's masterwork interplanetary saga.

Getting back to Earth from the planet Tschai involved either stealing a spaceship or having one built to order-for Tschai was home to several intelligent star-born races, and so they had spaceyards. But Adam Reith's problem was not so simple.He'd already been lucky to escape the Chasch and the Wankh and a dozen different types of humans, and now his course led directly to the Grand Sivishe Spaceyards in the domains of the Dirdir.But the Dirdir were quite different from the other aliens who competed for this world. They were quicker, more sinister, and had an unrelenting thirst for hunting victims like Adam Reith. The closer he came to his objective, the keener their hunting instincts would become.

The Pnume were an ancient race of the planet Tschai, living underground in a vast network of caverns with their human slave-species, the Pnumekin. The Pnume were the historians of Tschai, collecting its past with ruthless and scholarly dedication. Surface dwellers never saw the Pnume-if they were lucky. Adam Reith was not so fortunate. The Pnume had heard rumors of a strange man claiming to have come from the planet Earth, and they wanted him for Foreverness, the museum of Tschai life. Adam Reith was about to become an alien exhibit.This, the fourth and final novel of Jack Vance's classic series of the Planet of Adventure, is complete in itself but presents a surprising and exciting climax to Vance's greatest creation.

Stranded on the distant planet Tschai, young Adam Reith is the sole survivor of a space mission who discovers the world is inhabited - not only by warring alien cultures, but by human slaves as well, taken early in Earth's history. Reith must find a way off the planet to warn Earth of Tschai's deadly existence. Against a backdrop of baroque cities and haunted wastelands, sumptuous palaces and riotous inns, Reith will encounter deadly wastrels and murderous aliens, dastardly villains and conniving scoundrels - and always the random beauty in need of rescue.