"----!" 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.

"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