Cochrane shook his head.  He believed implicitly that there could not be men on this planet.  On the glacier planet every animal had been separately devised from the creatures of Earth.  There were resemblances, explicable as the result of parallel evolution.  By analogy, there could not be exactly identical mankind on another world because evolution there would be parallel but not the same.  But if there were even a mental equal to men, no matter how unhuman such a creature might appear, if there were a really rational animal anywhere in the cosmos off of Earth, the result would be catastrophic.

“We humans,” Cochrane told her, “live by our conceit.  We demand more than animality of ourselves because we believe we are more than animals—­and we believe we are the only creatures that are!  If we came to believe we were not unique, but were simply a cleverer animal, we’d be finished.  Every nation has always started to destroy itself every time such an idea spread.”

“But we aren’t only clever animals!” protested Babs.  “We are unique!”

Cochrane glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

“Quite true.”

Holden still stood patiently before the patch of reeds, still seemed to talk, still with his hands outstretched in what men consider the universal sign of peace.

There was a sudden movement at the back of the reed-patch, quite fifty yards from Holden.  A thing which did look like a man fled madly for the nearest edge of woodland.  It was the size of a man.  It had the pinkish-tan color of naked human flesh.  It ran with its head down, and it could not be seen too clearly, but it was startlingly manlike in outline.  Up in the control-room Bell fairly yipped with excitement and swung his camera.  Holden remained oblivious.  He still tried to lure something out of concealment.  A second creature raced for the woods.

Tiny gray threads appeared in the air between the airlock and the racing thing.  Smoke.  Johnny Simms was shooting zestfully at the unidentified animal.  He was using that tracer ammunition which poor shots and worse sportsmen adopt to make up for bad marksmanship.

The threads of smoke seemed to form a net about the running things.  They dodged and zig-zagged frantically.  Both of them reached safety.

A third tried it.  And now Johnny Simms turned on automatic fire.  Bullets spurted from his weapon, trailing threads of smoke so that the trails looked like a stream from a hose.  The stream swept through the space occupied by the fugitive.  It leaped convulsively and crashed to earth.  It kicked blindly.

Cochrane swore.  Between the instant of the beginning of the creature’s flight and this instant, less than two seconds had passed.

The threads which were smoke-trails drifted away.  Then a new thread streaked out.  Johnny Simms fired once more at his still-writhing victim.  It kicked violently and was still.