r 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--"

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. Sm