Holden turned angrily.  There seemed to be shoutings between him and Johnny Simms.  Then Holden trudged around the reed-patch.  There was no longer any sign of life in the still shape on the ground.  But it was normal precaution not to walk into a jungle-like thicket in which unknown, large living things had recently been sighted.  Johnny Simms fired again and again from his post in the airlock.  The smoke which traced his bullets ranged to the woodland.  He shot at imagined targets there.  He fired at his previous victim simply because it was something to shoot at.  He shot recklessly, foolishly.

Alicia, his wife, touched Jamison on the arm and spoke to him urgently.  Jamison followed her reluctantly down the stairs.  She would be going to the airlock.  Johnny Simms, shooting at the landscape, might shoot Holden.  A thread of bullet-smoke passed within feet of Holden’s body.  He turned and shouted back at the ship.

The inner airlock door clanked open.  There was the sound of a shot, and the dead thing was hit again.  The bullet had been fired dangerously close to Holden.  There were voices below.  Johnny Simms bellowed enragedly.

Alicia cried out.

There was silence below, but Cochrane was already plunging toward the stairs.  Babs followed closely.

When they rushed down onto the dining-room deck they found Alicia deathly white, but with a flaming red mark on her cheek.  They found Johnny Simms roaring with rage, waving the weapon he’d been shooting.  Jamison was uneasily in the act of trying to placate him.

“——!” bellowed Johnny Simms.  “I came on this ship to hunt!  I’m going to hunt!  Try and stop me!”

He waved his weapon.

“I paid my money!” he shouted.  “I won’t take orders from anybody!  Nobody can boss me!”

Cochrane said icily: 

“I can!  Stop being a fool!  Put down that gun!  You nearly shot Holden!  You might still kill somebody.  Put it down!”

He walked grimly toward Johnny Simms.  Johnny was near the open airlock door.  The outer door was open, too.  He could not retreat.  He edged sidewise.  Cochrane changed the direction of his advance.  There are people like Johnny Simms everywhere.  As a rule they are not classed as unable to tell right from wrong unless they are rich enough to hire a psychiatrist.  Yet a variable but always-present percentage of the human race ignores rules of conduct at all times.  They are the handicap, the burden, the main hindrance to the maintenance or the progress of civilization.  They are not consciously evil.  They simply do not bother to act otherwise than as rational animals.  The rest of humanity has to defend itself with police, with laws, and sometimes with revolts, though those like Johnny Simms have no motive beyond the indulgence of immediate inclinations.  But for that indulgence Johnny would risk any injury to anybody else.

He edged further aside.  Cochrane was white with disgusted fury.  Johnny Simms went into panic.  He raised his weapon, aiming at Cochrane.