“Keep back!” he cried ferociously.  “I don’t care if I kill you!”

And he did not.  It was the stark senselessness which makes juvenile delinquents and Hitlers, and causes thugs and hoodlums and snide lawyers and tricky business men.  It was the pure perversity which makes sane men frustrate.  It was an example of that infinite stupidity which is crime, but is also only stupidity.

Cochrane saw Babs pulling competently at one of the chairs at one of the tables nearby.  He stopped, and Johnny Simms took courage.  Cochrane said icily: 

“Just what the hell do you think we’re here for, anyhow?”

Johnny Simms’ eyes were wide and blank, like the eyes of a small boy in a frenzy of destruction, when he has forgotten what he started out to do and has become obsessed with what damage he is doing.

“I’m not going to be pushed around!” cried Johnny Simms, more ferociously still.  “From now on I’m going to tell you what to do—­”

Babs swung the chair she had slid from its fastenings.  It came down with a satisfying “thunk” on Johnny Simms’ head.  His gun went off.  The bullet missed Cochrane by fractions of an inch.  He plunged ahead.

Some indefinite time later, Babs was pulling desperately at him.  He had Johnny Simms on the floor and was throttling him.  Johnny Simms strangled and tore at his fingers.

Sanity came back to Cochrane with the effect of something snapping.  He got up.  He nodded to Babs and she picked up the gun Johnny Simms had used.

“I think,” said Cochrane, breathing hard, “that you’re a good sample of everything I dislike.  The worst thing you do is make me act like you!  If you touch a gun again on this ship, I’ll probably kill you.  If you get arrogant again, I will beat the living daylights out of you!  Get up!”

Johnny Simms got up.  He looked thoroughly scared.  Then, amazingly, he beamed at Cochrane.  He said amiably: 

“I forgot.  I’m that way.  Alicia’ll tell you.  I don’t blame you for getting mad.  I’m sorry.  But I’m that way!”

He brushed himself off, beaming at Alicia and Jamison and Babs and Cochrane.  Cochrane ground his teeth.  He went to the airlock and looked down outside.

Holden was bent over the creature Johnny Simms had killed.  He straightened up and came back toward the ship.  He went faster when the ground grew hot under his feet.  He fairly leaped into the landing-sling and started it up.

“Not human,” he reported to Cochrane when he slipped from the sling in the airlock.  “There’s no question about it when you are close.  It’s more nearly a bird than anything else.  It was warm-blooded.  It has a beak.  There are penguins on Earth that have been mistaken for men.

“I did a show once,” said Cochrane coldly, “that had clips of old films of cockfighting in it.  There was a kind of gamecock called Cornish Game that was fairly manshaped.  If it had been big enough—­Pull in the sling and close the lock.  We’re moving.”