Now he'd had a fright
great enough and an escape narrow enough to shatter the nerves of a
normal man. To Johnny Simms, the effect was catastrophic.
He could not walk, and the distance was too great to carry him. Holden
reported by walkie-talkie, and Jones proposed to butcher one of the
animals Johnny had killed and put it in a freezer emptied for the
purpose, and then lift the ship and land by the sea. It seemed a
reasonable proposal. Johnny was surely not seriously wounded.
But that meant time to wait. Alicia sat by her husband, soothing him.
Holden moved along the beach, examining the shells that had come ashore.
He picked up one shell more glorious in its coloring than any of the
pearl-making creatures of Earth. This shell grew neither in the flat
spiral nor the cone-shaped form of Earth mollusks. It grew in a
doubly-curved spiral, so that the result was an extraordinary, lustrous,
complex sphere. Bell fairly danced with excitement as he photographed it
with lavish pains to get all the colors just right.
Cochrane and Babs moved along the beach also. It was not possible to be
apprehensive. Cochrane talked largely.
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