Cochrane heard the clanking of the airlock door.

CHAPTER NINE

He made for the control-room, where the ports offered the highest and widest and best views of everything outside.  When he arrived, Babs and Alicia stood together, staring out and down.  Bell frantically worked a camera.  Jamison gaped at the outer world.  Al the pilot made frustrated gestures, not quite daring to leave his controls while there was even an outside chance the ship’s landing-fins might find flaws in their support.  Jones adjusted something on the new set of controls he had established for the extra Dabney field.  Jones was not wholly normal in some ways.  He was absorbed in technical matters even more fully than Cochrane in his own commercial enterprises.

Cochrane pushed to a port to see.

The ship had landed in a small glade.  There were trees nearby.  The trees had extremely long, lanceolate leaves, roughly the shape of grass-blades stretched out even longer.  In the gentle breeze that blew outside, they waved extravagantly.  There were hills in the distance, and nearby out-croppings of gray rocks.  This sky was blue like the sky of Earth.  It was, of course, inevitable that any colorless atmosphere with dust-particles suspended in it would establish a blue sky.

Holden was visible below, moving toward a patch of reed-like vegetation rising some seven or eight feet from the rolling soil.  He had hopped quickly over the scorched area immediately outside the ship.  It was much smaller than that made by the first landing on the other planet, but even so he had probably damaged his footwear to excess.  But he now stood a hundred yards from the ship.  He made gestures.  He seemed to be talking, as if trying to persuade some living creature to show itself.

“We saw them peeping,” said Babs breathlessly, coming beside Cochrane.  “Once one of them ran from one patch of reeds to another.  It looked like a man.  There are at least three of them in there—­whatever they are!”

“They can’t be men,” said Cochrane grimly.  “They can’t!” Johnny Simms was not in sight.  “Where’s Simms?”

“He has a gun,” said Babs.  “He was going to get one, anyhow, so he could protect Doctor Holden.”

Cochrane glanced straight down.  The airlock door was open, and the end of a weapon peered out.  Johnny Simms might be in a better position there to protect Holden by gun-fire, but he was assuredly safer, himself.  There was no movement anywhere.  Holden did not move closer to the reeds.  He still seemed to be speaking soothingly to the unseen creatures.

“Why can’t there be men here?” asked Babs.  “I don’t mean actually men, but—­manlike creatures?  Why couldn’t there be rational creatures like us?  I know you said so but—­”