Operation: Outer Space Part 25

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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed.

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.

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 pa.s.sed 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. .h.i.t 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! n.o.body 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 cla.s.sed 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.

"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 h.e.l.l 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 c.o.c.kfighting in it. There was a kind of gamec.o.c.k called Cornish Game that was fairly manshaped. If it had been big enough--Pull in the sling and close the lock. We're moving."

He turned away. Babs stood by Alicia, offering a handkerchief for Alicia to put to her cheek. Jamison listened unhappily as Johnny Simms explained brightly that he had always been that way. When he got excited he didn't realize what he was doing. He said almost with pride that he hadn't ever been any other way than that. He didn't really mean to kill anybody, but when he got excited--.

"What happened?" demanded Holden.

"Our little psychopath," said Cochrane in a grating voice, "put on an act. He threatened me with a rifle. He hit Alicia first. Jamison, trace that bullet-hole. See if it got through to the skin of the ship."

He started for the stairs again. Then he was startled by the frozen immobility of Holden. Holden's face was deadly. His hands were clenched.

Johnny Simms said with a fine boyish frankness:

"I'm sorry, Cochrane! No hard feelings?"

"Yes," Cochrane snapped. "Hard feelings! I've got them!"

He took Holden's arm. He steered him up the steps. Holden resisted for the fraction of a second, and Cochrane gripped his arm tighter. He got him up to the deck above.

"If I'd been here," said Holden, unsteadily, "I'd have killed him--if he hit Alicia! Psychopath or no psychopath--"

"Shut up," said Cochrane firmly. "He shot at me! And in my small way I'm a psychopath too, Bill. My psychosis is that I don't like his kind of psychosis. I am psychotically devoted to sense and my possibly quaint idea of decency. I am abnormally concerned with the real world--and you'd better come back to it! Look here! I'm pathologically in revolt against such imbecilities as an overcrowded Earth and people being afraid of their jobs and people going crackpot from despair. You don't want me to get cured of that, do you? Then get hold of yourself!"

Bill Holden swallowed. He was still white. But he managed to grimace.

"You're right. Lucky I was outside. You're not a bad psychologist yourself, Jed."