"
Holden fingered his rifle unhappily. Alicia said nothing. Babs stayed
close beside her. They went on.
They came to another dead animal a quarter-mile away. The ground was
full of the scent and the hoofmarks of the departed herd. Bell
photographed again. They did not stop. Johnny Simms had been this way,
because of the carcass. He wasn't here now.
They topped the next rise in the ground. They saw two other slaughtered
creatures. It was wholly evident, now, that these animals did not charge
but only stood their ground when alarmed. Johnny Simms had fired blindly
when he blundered into their groupings.
The last carcass they saw was barely two hundred yards from the one
patch of woodland visible from the ship. Cochrane said with some
grimness.
"If his eyes had gotten used to the darkness, he might have seen the
forest and tried to get into it to get away from those animals."
And if Johnny Simms had not stopped short instantly he reached the woods
and presumable safety, he would be utterly lost by now. There could be
nothing less hopeful than the situation of a man lost on a strange
planet, not knowing in what direction he had blundered on his first
starting out.
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