depiction of the human race after tens of thousands of years on Tschai aims to show how foreign humanity can become in alien surroundings. Pnume The insect-like Pnume are the original inhabitants of Tschai, with a history that goes back ten million years. They view the invaders as welcome additions to the pageantry on their world stage. They were forced underground by the coming of the more powerful species. Phung Related to the Pnume are the Phung, solitary sentient predators with bizarre habits. The antics of a Phung feature early on in each of the first three books. Wankh (or Wannek) The amphibious Wankh (or Wannek) are comparatively recent arrivals and had warred with the Dirdir in the past, but subsided into an uneasy peace due to their relative military parity. Plot A human ship is sent to investigate a distress signal sent 212 years ago from the previously unknown planet. The mother ship is destroyed and nearly all of the crew killed in a surprise missile attack (in some editions the mother ship and its crew do not appear). Only two scouts survive, crash-landing on Tschai in their damaged scout-boat. After his companion is killed by human nomads early on, Adam Reith is left stranded alone on an unknown world. The four books describe the attempts of a man of singularly strong will and resource to return to Earth: in the first book to recover his damaged spacecraft, in the second to steal one, in the third to build one, and in the fourth to escape the Pnume, by whom he is kidnapped before he can depart Tschai. In the process, he overcomes the obstacles of dealing with four different alien races and various human groups, often profoundly disrupting the societies, human and alien, with which he is forced to deal. Reith acquires two faithful human companions in the course of his travels: Traz Onmale, the dour, proud boy-chieftain of a nomad tribe obsessed with emblems, and a renegade Dirdirman, Ankhe at Afram Anacho, who is loquacious, fastidious and flamboyant. (Vance has said that the novels were commissioned as a juvenile series, which was why he included Traz; but the action is no less 'adult' than in his other works.) Anacho and Traz play lesser roles in the fourth book, which chronicles Reith's adventures in the underground world of the Pnume, and subsequently on the surface with the rescued