Cochrane gave orders.  Jones and Al could not leave the ship.  They were needed to get it back to Earth, with full knowledge of how to make other starships.  Cochrane tried to leave Babs behind, but she would not stay.  Bell had loaded himself with a camera and film-tape besides a weapon, before Cochrane even began his organization.  Holden was needed for an extra gun.  Alicia, tearless and despairing, would not be left behind.  Cochrane turned wryly to Jamison.

“I don’t think Johnny was killed,” he said.  “He’d gotten a long way off before it happened, anyhow.  We’ve got to hunt for him.  With beasts like those of last night, there’ll naturally be other creatures to prey on them.  We might run into anything.  If we don’t get back, you get to the lawyers I’ve had representing Spaceways.  They’ll get rich off the job, but you’ll end up rich, too.”

“The best bet all around,” said Jamison in a low tone, “would be to find him trampled to death.”

“I agree,” said Cochrane sourly.  “But apparently the beasts don’t stampede.  Maybe they don’t even charge, but just form rings to protect their females and young, like musk-oxen.  I’m afraid he’s alive, but I’m also afraid we’ll never find him.”

He marshaled his group.  Jones had walkie-talkies ready, deftly removed for the purpose from space-suits nobody had used since leaving Lunar City—­and Holden took one to keep in touch by.  They went down in the sling, two at a time.

Cochrane regarded the two dead animals near the base of the ship.  They were roughly the size of cattle, and they were shaggy like buffalo.  They had branching, pointed, deadly horns.  They had hoofs, single hoofs, not cloven.  They were not like any Earth animal.  But horns and hoofs will appear in any system of parallel evolution.  It would seem even more certain that proteins and amino acids and such compounds as hemoglobin and fat and muscle-tissue should be identical as a matter of chemical inevitability.  These creatures had teeth and they were herbivorous.  Bell photographed them painstakingly.

“Somehow,” said Cochrane, “I think they’d be wholesome food.  If we can, we’ll empty a freezing-locker and take a carcass for tests.”

Holden fingered his rifle unhappily.  Alicia said nothing.  Babs stayed close beside her.  They went on.

They came to another dead animal a quarter-mile away.  The ground was full of the scent and the hoofmarks of the departed herd.  Bell photographed again.  They did not stop.  Johnny Simms had been this way, because of the carcass.  He wasn’t here now.

They topped the next rise in the ground.  They saw two other slaughtered creatures.  It was wholly evident, now, that these animals did not charge but only stood their ground when alarmed.  Johnny Simms had fired blindly when he blundered into their groupings.

The last carcass they saw was barely two hundred yards from the one patch of woodland visible from the ship.  Cochrane said with some grimness.