He started for the stairs again. Then he was startled by the frozen immobility of Holden. Holden's face was deadly. His hands were clenched. Johnny Simms said with a fine boyish frankness:
"I'm sorry, Cochrane! No hard feelings?"
"Yes," Cochrane snapped. "Hard feelings! I've got them!"
He took Holden's arm. He steered him up the steps. Holden resisted for the fraction of a second, and Cochrane gripped his arm tighter. He got him up to the deck above.
"If I'd been here," said Holden, unsteadily, "I'd have killed him—if he hit Alicia! Psychopath or no psychopath—"
"Shut up," said Cochrane firmly. "He shot at me! And in my small way I'm a psychopath too, Bill. My psychosis is that I don't like his kind of psychosis. I am psychotically devoted to sense and my possibly quaint idea of decency. I am abnormally concerned with the real world—and you'd better come back to it! Look here! I'm pathologically in revolt against such imbecilities as an overcrowded Earth and people being afraid of their jobs and people going crackpot from despair. You don't want me to get cured of that, do you? Then get hold of yourself!"
Bill Holden swallowed. He was still white. But he managed to grimace.
"You're right. Lucky I was outside. You're not a bad psychologist yourself, Jed."
"I'm better," said Cochrane cynically, "at putting on shows with scrap film-tape and dream-stuff. So I'm going to look at the films Bell took as we landed on this planet, and work out some ideas for broadcasts."
He went up another flight, and Holden went with him in a sort of stilly, unnatural calm. Cochrane ran the film-tape through the reversed camera for examination.