He had flung his gun at something and was weaponless. He lay on
the sand, shrieking. There were four ungainly, monstrous birds like
oversized Cornish Game gamecocks pecking at him. Two ran crazily away at
sight of the humans. Two others remained. Then they fled. One of them
halted, darted back, and took a last peck at Johnny Simms before it fled
again.
Holden fired, and missed. Cochrane ran toward the kicking, shrieking
Johnny Simms. But Alicia got there first.
He was a completely pitiable object. His clothing had been almost
completely stripped away in the brief time since his last burst of
shots. There were wounds on his bare flesh. After all, the beak of a
bird as tall as a man is not a weapon to be despised. Johnny Simms would
have been pecked to death but for the party from the ship. He had been
spotted and harried by a huntingpack of the ostrich-sized creatures at
earliest dawn. A cooler-headed man would have stood still and killed
some of them, then the rest would either have run away or devoured their
slaughtered fellows. But Johnny Simms was not cool-headed. He had made a
career of being a rich man's spoiled little boy.
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