In "Time Warp," Theodore Sturgeon wrote:“They won’t take us without a fight,” Will Hawkline said, and he took the meercath heat-thing out of his belt; and wouldn’t you know before I could say another word the door of the compartment crashed open and there stood a meercath guard. Will aimed his weapon and of course nothing happened because I had taken the charges out while he slept. I had neglected, however, to remove one patch of stupidity or his appalling bravery. As the giant meercath opened his mouth to squall, Will Hawkline flung himself across the compartment and shoved the weapon between all those big teeth and into the meercath’s throat. And he didn’t stop with that. With the momentum of his rush he placed a hand on the meercath’s head and vaulted up and around, clamping his legs above and below the meercath’s long snout, forcing its jaws closed. I remembered then that all big lizards, especially the one with long jaws, might have, like a meercath, a bite powerful enough to nip someone my size in two, but the muscles that open the mouth are comparatively weak, and it’s easy to hold the mouth closed. So the guard, scrabbling at Will Hawkline with its clever tiny hands, whimpered and died, and sounded no alarm.
Panting and exultant, Will Hawkline came back. “Help me drag this thing inside.” Well, I helped him. And I thought, how can I tell him, without making him unhappy, that he had just done the worst possible thing he could do? Zados don’t make people unhappy. How could I tell him that if he had let himself be captured, he would have been taken to the commander on the bridge, where we might be able to do something, but that now he has killed a guard, the other guards would bite his silly brave head off? How could I tell him that the most important thing of all was for the Little John not to be discovered, that he couldn’t now be detected except if he were seen, and guards looking for their missing meercath would certainly see him? I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say it. He was so smiling and proud.
“Will,” I said, trying so hard to be gentle, “See Jonna there.” And when he looked I threw the shield around her and she was gone. He gaped and took a step toward where she had been and I took the shield away. “See Little John Five.” And I threw the shield around Five and then removed it and put it around Will Hawkline. “Will,” I said, “you can see Jonna. You can see me. You can see Five. But they can’t see you. Is that right, Jonna? Five?” They nodded their heads and I took down the shield.
“Why are you talking to me as if I were a child?” Will Hawkline asked, so maybe my gentling did not work as well as I thought it would.
I said, “We are going to use the shield. And I want you to understand that no matter how close you come to anyone, they can’t see you. No matter how much you want to attack one of them, you must not. We are going out there and find a search party searching, and we are going to put Little John Five into some place they have just searched, because he has work to do and they can’t detect him anymore. And then the three of us are going to the bridge where the commander is, and we are going to do it without getting our legs torn off and our heads bitten by them. Do you understand?”
“You’re still talking to me as if I were a child,” said Will Hawkline.
“Well,” I said, “I love children. Let’s go.”