The Best of Jack Vance (1976) SSC

Contents are: "Sail 25," "Ullward's Retreat," "The Last Castle," "Abercrombie Station," "The Moon Moth," and "Rumfuddle." "The Last Castle": The Mek was a manlike creature, native to a planet of Etamin. His tough rusty-bronze hide glistened metallically, the spines thrusting back from scalp and neck shone like gold. His sense organs were gathered in clusters at the site of a man's ears, his visage was corrugated muscle, not dissimilar to the look of an uncovered human brain. This was the Mek solitary, a creature intrisically as effective as man, but, working in the mass, by the teeming thousands, he seemed less admirable, less competent: a hybrid of subman and cockroach.. "The Moon Moth": The household had been built to the most exacting standards of Sirenese craftsmanship. The bow bulged like a swan's breast, the stem rising high, then crooking forward to support an iron lantern. The doors were carved from slabs of a mottled black-green wood; the windows were many-sectioned, paned with squares of mica stained rose, blue, pale green and violet. The bow was given to service facilities and quarters for the slaves; amidships were a pair of sleeping cabins, a dining saloon and a parlor saloon, opening upon an observation deck at the stern.