“No.  He’s not here.  Why?”

“He’s missing,” said Bell apprehensively.  “Alicia says he took a gun.  A gun’s gone, anyhow.  He’s vanished!”

Cochrane swore under his breath.  A fool asserting his dignity with a gun could be a serious matter indeed.  He switched on the control-room lights.  He was not there.  They went down and hunted over the main saloon.  He was not there.  Then Holden called harshly from the next deck down.

There was Alicia by the inner airlock door.  Her face was deathly pale.  She had opened the door.  The outer door was open too—­and it had not been opened since this last landing by anybody else.  The landing-sling cables were run out.  They swung slowly in the light that fell upon them from the inside of the ship.

A smell came in the opening.  It was the smell of beasts.  It was a musky, ammoniacal smell, somehow not alien even though it was unfamiliar.  There were noises outside in the night.  Grunting sounds.  Snortings.  There were such sounds as a vast concourse of grazing creatures would make in the night-time, when gathered by thousands and myriads for safety and for rest.

“He—­went out,” said Alicia desperately.  “He meant to punish us.  He’s a spoiled little boy.  We weren’t nice to him.  And—­he was afraid of us too!  So he ran away to make us sorry!”

Cochrane went to look out of the lock and to call Johnny Simms back.  He gazed into absolute blackness on the ground.  He felt a queasy giddiness because there was no hand-railing at the outer lock door and he knew the depth of the fall outside.  He raged, within himself.  Johnny Simms would feel triumphant when he was called.  He would require to be pleaded with to return.  He would pompously set terms for returning before he was killed....

Cochrane saw a flash of fire and the short streak of a tracer-bullet’s patch before it hit something.  He heard the report of the gun.  He heard a bellow of agony and then a scream of purest terror from Johnny Simms.

Then, from the ground, arose a truly monstrous tumult.  Every one of the creatures below raised its voice in a horrible, bleating cry.  The volume of sound was numbing—­was agonizing in sheer impact.  There were stirrings and clickings as of horns clashing against each other.

Another scream from Johnny Simms.  He had moved.  It appeared that he was running.  Cochrane saw more gun-flashes, there were more shots.  He clenched his hands and waited for the thunderous vibration that would be all this multitude of animals pounding through the night in blind stampede.

It did not come.  There was only that bleating, horrible outcry as all the beasts bellowed of alarm and created this noise to frighten their assailants away.

Twice more there were shots in the night.  Johnny Simms fired crazily and screamed in hysterical panic.  Each time the shots and screaming were farther away.

There were no portable lights with which to make a search.  It was unthinkable to go blundering among the beasts in darkness.