 Chapter 1. Jack Holloway found himself squinting the orange sun full in his eyes. He raised a hand to push his hat forward, then lowered it to the controls to alter the pulse rate of the contragravity field generators, and lift the manipulator another hundred feet. For a moment he sat, puffing on the short pipe that had yellowed the corners of his white moustache, and looked down at the red rag tied to a bush against the rock-face of the gorge five hundred yards away. He was smiling in anticipation. There shall be a good one, he told himself aloud, in the manner of men who have long been their own and only company. I want to see this one go up. He always did. He could remember at least a thousand blast shots he had fired back along the years and on more planets than he could name at the moment, including a few thermonuclears. But they were all different, and they were always something to watch, even a little one like this. Flipping the switch, his thumb found the discharger button and sent out a radio impulse. The red rag vanished in an upsurge of smoke and dust that mounted out of the gorge and turned to copper when the sunlight touched it. The big manipulator, weightless on contragravity, fell gently. Falling debris pelted the trees and splashed in the little stream. He waited until the machine stabilized and glided it down to where he had ripped a gash in the cliff with the charge of cataclysmite. Good shot, brought down a lot of sandstone, cracked the vein of flint, and hadn't thrown it around too much. A lot of big slabs were loose. Extending the forward claw-arms he pulled and tugged, and then used the underside grapples to pick up a chunk and drop it on the flat ground between the cliff and the stream. He dropped another chunk on it, breaking both of them, and then another and another, until he had all he could work over the rest of the day. Then he sat down, got the toolbox and the long-handled contragravity lifter, and climbed to the ground where he opened the box, put on gloves and an ice-cream, and got out a micro-ray scanner and a vibro-hammer. The first chunk he cracked off had nothing in it. The scanner gave the uninterrupted pattern of homogeneous structure. Picking it up with the lifter, he swung it and threw it into the stream. On the fifteenth chunk he got an interruption pattern that told him that a sun-stone or something, probably something, was inside. Some fifty million years ago, when the planet that had been called Zarathustra, for the last twenty-five million, was young, there had existed a marine life-form, something like a jellyfish. As these died they had sunk to the sea-bottom ooze, sand had covered the ooze and pressed it tighter and tighter, until it had become glassy-flint, and the entombed jellyfish little beans of dense stone. Some of them, by some ancient biochemical quirk, were intensely thermofluorescent. Worn as gems, they glowed from the wearer's body-heat. On terra or boulder or freya or ishtar a single cut of polished sun-stone was worth a small fortune. Even here they brought respectable prices from the Zarathustra Company's gem-buyers. Keeping his point of expectation safely low, he got a smaller vibra-hammer from the toolbox and began chipping cautiously around the foreign object, until the flint split open and revealed a smooth yellow ellipsoid half an inch long. "'Worth a thousand sols, if it's worth anything,' he commented. A deft tap here, another there, and the yellow bean came loose from the flint. Picking it up he rubbed it between gloved palms. "'I don't think it is.' He rubbed harder, then held it against the hot bowl of his pipe. It still didn't respond,' he dropped it. Another jellyfish that didn't live right. Behind him something moved in the brush with a dry rustling. He dropped the loose glove from his right hand and turned reaching towards his hip. Then he saw what had made the noise, a hard-shelled thing afoot in length, with twelve legs, long antennae, and two pairs of clawed mandibles. He stopped and picked up a shard of flint, throwing it with an oath. Another damned infernal land-prawn. He detested land-prawns, though horrible things, which of course wasn't their fault. More to the point they were destructive. They got into things at camp. They would try to eat anything. They crawled into machinery, possibly finding the lubrication tasty, and caused jams. They cut into electrical insulation, and they got into his bedding, and bit, or rather pinched, painfully. Nobody loved a land-prawn, not even another land-prawn. This one dodged the thrown flint, scuttled off a few feet, and turned, waving its antennae in what looked like derision. Jack reached for his hip again, then checked the motion. Before cartridges cost like crazy, they weren't to be wasted in fits of childish peak. Then he reflected that no cartridge fired at a target is really wasted, and that he hadn't done any shooting recently. Stooping again, he picked up another stone and tossed it afoot short and to the left of the prawn. As soon as it was out of his fingers, his hand went for the butt of the long automatic. It was out, and the safety off before the flint landed, as the prawn fled, he fired from the hip. The quasi-crustacean disintegrated. He nodded pleasantly. All-man Holloway is still hitting things he shoots at. Was a time not so long ago when he took his abilities for granted. Now he was getting old enough to have to verify them. He thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol, then picked up the glove and put it on again. Never saw so blasted many land prawns as this summer. They'd been bad last year, but nothing like this. Even the old-timers who'd been on Zahra Thustra since the first colonization said so. There'd be some simple explanation, of course, something that would amaze him at his own obtuseness for not having seen it at once. Maybe the abnormally dry weather had something to do with it, or increase of something they ate, or decrease of natural enemies. He'd heard that land prawns had no natural enemies. He questioned that. Something killed them. He'd seen crushed prawn shells, some of them close to his camp. Maybe stamped on by something with hooves, and then picked clean by insects. He'd asked Ben Rainsford, Ben Autano. Half an hour later the scanner gave him another interruption pattern. He laid it aside and took up the small vibra-hammer. This time it was a large bean, light pink in colour. He separated it from its matrix of flint and rubbed it, and instantly it began glowing. Ah, this is something like it now. He rubbed harder, warmed further on his pipe-bowl, it fairly blazed. Better than a thousand salt, he told himself. Good colour, too. Getting his gloves off, he drew out the little leather bag from under his shirt, loosening the draw-strings by which he'd hung around his neck. There were a dozen and a half stones inside, all bright as live coals. He looked at them for a moment and dropped the new sun-stone in among them, chuckling happily. Victor Grego, listening to his own recorded voice, rubbed the sun-stone on his left finger with the heel of his right palm and watched it brighten. There was, he noticed, a boastful ring to his voice, not the suave, unemphatic tone considered proper on a message tape. Well, if anybody wondered why, when they played that tape off six months from now in Johannesburg on terror, they could look in the cargo-holes of the ship that had brought it across five hundred light-years of space. Inlets of gold and platinum and gadolinium, furs and biochemicals and brandy, perfumes that defy synthetic imitation, hardwoods no plastic could copy, spices, and a steel coffer full of sun-stones, or most all luxury goods, the only really dependable commodities in interstellar trade. And he had spoken of other things, felt-beast meat, up seven percent from last month, twenty percent from last year, still in demand on a dozen planets unable to produce terrant-type foodstuffs, grain, leather, lumber. And he had added a dozen more items to the lengthening list of what Zarathustra could now produce in adequate quantities and no longer needed to import. Not fish-hawks and boot-buckles either, blasting explosives and propellants, contra-gravity field generator parts, power tools, pharmaceuticals, synthetic textiles. The company didn't need to carry Zarathustra any more, Zarathustra could carry the company and itself. Fifteen years ago, when the Zarathustra company had sent him here, there had been a cluster of log and prefab huts beside an improvised landing-field, almost exactly where this skyscraper now stood. Today Mallory's port was a city of seventy thousand. In all, the planet had a population of nearly a million and it was still growing. There were steel mills and chemical plants and reaction plants and machine-works. They produced all their own fishnables and had recently begun to export a little refined plutonium. They had even started producing colapsium shielding. The recorded voice stopped. He ran back the spool set for sixty speed and transmitted it to the radio-office. In twenty minutes a copy would be aboard the ship that would hyper out for terror that night, while he was finishing his communications screen buzzed. Dr. Kellogg's screening you, Mr. Grego, the girl in the outside office, told him. He nodded. Her hands moved and she vanished in a polychromatic explosion. When it cleared, the chief of the Division of Scientific Study and Research was looking out of the screen instead. Looking slightly upward at the show-back over his own screen, Victor was getting his warm, sympathetic, sincere and slightly too toothy smile on straight. Hello, Leonard! Everything going all right? It either was, and Leonard Kellogg wanted more credit than he deserved, or it wasn't, and he was trying to get somebody else blamed for it before anybody could blame him. Good afternoon, Victor. Just the right shade of deference about using the first name, Big Wheel to Bigger Wheel. As Nick Emmett been talking to you about the Big Blackwater Project today. Nick was the Federation's resident general. On Zarathustra he was, to all intents and purposes, the Terran Federation Government. He was also a large stockholder in the Chartered Zarathustra Company. No, is he likely to? Well, I wondered, Victor. He was on my screen just now. He says there's some adverse talk about the effect on the rainfall in the Piedmont area of Peter Continent. He was worried about it. Well, it would affect the rainfall. After all, we drained half a million square miles of swamp and the prevailing winds are from the west. There'd be less atmospheric moisture to the east of it. Who's talking adversely about it and what worries Nick? Well, Nick's afraid of the effect on public opinion on terror. You know how strong conservation sentiment is. Everybody's very much opposed to any sort of destructive exploitation. Good Lord! The man doesn't call the creation of five hundred thousand square miles of new farmland destructive exploitation, does he? Well, no. Nick doesn't call it that, of course not. But he's concerned about some garble story getting to terror about our upsetting the ecological balance and causing droughts. Fact is, I'm rather concerned myself. He knew what was worrying both of them. Emmett was afraid the Federation colonial office would blame him for drawing fire on them from the conservationists. Kellogg was afraid he'd be blamed for not predicting the effects before his division endorsed the project. As a division chief he had advanced as far as he would in the company hierarchy. Now he was on a Red Queen's racetrack, running like hell to stay in the same place. The rainfall dropped ten percent from last year and fifteen percent from the year before that, Kellogg was saying, and some non-company people have gotten hold of it and so had interworld news. Why, even some of my people are talking about ecological side effects. You know what will happen when a story like that gets back to terror. The conservation fanatics will get hold of it and the company will be criticized. That would hurt Leonard. He identified himself with the company. It was something bigger and more powerful than he was, like God. Victor Grego identified the company with himself. It was something big and powerful, like a vehicle, and he was at the controls. Leonard, a little criticism, won't hurt the company, he said. Not where it matters on the dividends. I'm afraid you're too sensitive to criticism. Where did Emmett get this story, anyhow, from your people? No, absolutely not, Victor. That's what worries him. It was this man, Rainsford, who started it. Rainsford? Dr. Bennet Rainsford, the naturalist, Institute of Zeno-Sciences. I never trusted any of those people. They always poke their noses into things, and the Institute always reports their findings to the Colonial Office. I know who you mean now. Little fellow with red whiskers always looks as though he'd been sleeping in his clothes. Why, of course, the Zeno-Sciences people poke their noses into things, and, of course, they report their findings to the Government. He was beginning to lose patience. I don't see what all this is about, Leonard. This man, Rainsford, just made a routine observation of meteorological effects. I suggest you have your meteorologist check it out, and if it's correct, pass it on to the news-services, along with your other scientific findings. Nick Amhert thinks Rainsford is a Federation undercover agent. That made him laugh. Of course there were undercover agents on Zarathustra, hundreds of them. The company had people here checking on him. He knew and accepted that. So did the big stockholders, like interstellar explorations and the banking cartel, and terror-bold or Marduk space-lines. Nick Amhert had his corps of spies and stool pigeons, and the Terran Federation had people here watching both him and Amhert. Rainsford could be a Federation agent. A roving naturalist would have a wonderful cover occupation. But this big blackwater business was so utterly silly. Nick Amhert had too much graft on his conscience. It was too bad that overloaded consciences couldn't blow fuses. Suppose he is Leonard, what could he report on us? We're a chartered company, and we have an excellent legal department which keeps us safely inside our charter. It's a very liberal charter, too. This is a Class III uninhabited planet. The company owns the whole thing outright. We can do anything we want, as long as we don't violate colonial law or the Federation Constitution. As long as we don't do that, Nick Amhert hasn't anything to worry about. Now forget this whole damn business, Leonard. He was beginning to speak sharply and Kellogg was looking hurt. I know you were concerned about injurious reports getting back to terror, and that was quite commendable, but by the time he got through Kellogg was happy again. Victor blanked the screen, leaned back in his chair, and began laughing. In a moment the screen buzzed again. When he snapped it on, his screen-girls said, Mr. Henry Stenson's on, Mr. Grego? Oh, put him on. He caught himself just before adding that it would be a welcome change to talk to somebody with sense. The face that appeared was elderly and thin, the mouth was tight, and there were squint wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. Well, Mr. Stenson, good of you to call. How are you? Very well, thank you, and you. When he also admitted to good health, the caller continued, How is the globe running? Still in synchronization? Victor looked across the office at his most prized possession, the big globe of Zarathustra that Henry Stenson had built for him, supported six feet from the floor on its own contragravity unit, spotlighted in orange to represent the K. O. Sun, its two satellites circling about it as it revolved slowly. The globe itself is keeping perfect time, and Darius is all right, Xerxes is a few seconds of longitude ahead of true position. That's dreadful, Mr. Grego. Stenson was deeply shocked. I must adjust that the first thing to-morrow. I should have called to check on it long ago, but you know how it is, so many things to do in so little time. I find the same trouble myself, Mr. Stenson. They tattered for a while, and then Stenson apologized for taking up so much of Mr. Grego's valuable time. What he meant was that his own time, just as valuable to him, was wasting. After the screen blanked, Grego sat looking at it for a moment, wishing he had a hundred men like Henry Stenson in his own organization, just men with Stenson's brains and character, wishing for a hundred instrument-makers with Stenson's skills would have been unreasonable, even for wishing. There was only one Henry Stenson, just as there had been only one Antonio Stradivari. Why a man like that worked in a little shop on a frontier planet like Zarathustra? Then he looked pridefully at the globe. Alpha Continent had moved slowly to the right, with the little speck that represented Mallory's port twinkling in the orange light. Darius, the inner moon, where the terror-boulder Marduk space-lines had their least terminal, was almost directly over it, and the other moon, Xerxes, was edging into sight. Xerxes was the one thing about Zarathustra that the company didn't own. The Terran Federation had retained that as a naval base. It was the one reminder that there was something bigger and more powerful than the company. Gerd van Riebik saw Ruth Otherus leave the escalator step aside and stand looking around the cocktail-lounge. He set his glass with its inch of tepid high-ball on the bar. When her eyes shifted in his direction, he waved to her, saw her brighten and wave back, and then went to meet her. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, dodged when he reached for her, and took his arm. Drink before we eat, he asked. Oh, Lord, yes, I've just about had it for today. He guided her toward one of the bartending machines, inserted his credit key, and put a four-portion jug under the spout, dialing the cocktail they always had when they drank together. As he did, he noticed what she was wearing—short black jacket, lavender neckerchief, light grey skirt—not her usual vacation get-up. School department drag you back, he asked, as the jug filled. Juvenile caught. She got a couple of glasses from the shelf under the machine, as he picked up the jug—a fifteen-year-old burglar. They found a table at the rear of the room, out of the worst of the cocktail, our uproar. As soon as he filled her glass, she drank half of it, then lit a cigarette. Junk town, he asked. She nodded. Only twenty-five years since this planet was discovered, and we have slums already. I was over there most of the afternoon with a pair of city police. She didn't seem to want to talk about it. What were you doing to-day? Ruth, you ought to ask Doc Mullen to drop in on Leonard Kellogg some time, and give him an unobtrusive going-over. You haven't been having trouble with him again, she asked anxiously. He made a face, and then tasted his drink. It's trouble just being around that character, Ruth, to use one of those expressions your profession deplores, then Kellogg is just plain nuts. He drank some more of his cocktail and helped himself to one of her cigarettes. Here he continued after lighting it. A couple of days ago he told me he'd been getting inquiries about this plague of land prawns they're having over on Beta. He wanted me to set up a research project to find out why and what to do about it. Well, I did. I made two screen calls, and then I wrote a report and sent it up to him. That was where I joked my trigger. I ought to have taken a couple of weeks and made a real production out of it. What did you tell him? The facts. The limiting factor on land prawn increases the weather. The eggs hatch underground, and the immature prawns dig their way out in the spring. If there's been a lot of rain, most of them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge. According to growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta Piedmont in centuries, so most of them survived, and as their pathogenetic females they all laid eggs. This spring it was even drier, so now they have land prawns all over Central Beta, and I don't know that anything can be done about them. Well, did he think you were just guessing? He shook his head in exasperation. I don't know what he thinks. You're the psychologist. You try to figure it. I sent him that report yesterday morning. He seemed quite satisfied with it at the time. Today, just after noon, he sent for me and told me it wouldn't do at all. Tried to insist that the rainfall on Beta had been normal. That was silly. I referred him to his meteorologists and climatologists, where I'd gotten my information. He complained that the new services were after him for an explanation. I told him I'd given him the only explanation there was. He says he simply couldn't use it. There had to be some other explanation. If you don't like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts, dream up some you do like," she said. That's typical rejection of reality, not psychotic, not even psychoneurotic, but certainly not sane. She had finished her first drink and was sipping slowly at her second. You know, this is interesting. Does he have some theory that would disqualify yours? Not that I know of. I got the impression that he just didn't want the subject of rainfall on Beta discussed at all. That is odd. Has anything else peculiar been happening over on Beta lately? No, not that I know of, he repeated. Of course, that swamp drainage project over there was what caused the dry weather last year and this year, but I don't see. His own glass was empty, and when he tilted the jug over it a few drops trickled out. He looked at his watch. Think we could have another cocktail before dinner, he asked. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Little Fuzzy This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, Chapter 2 Jack Holloway landed the manipulator in front of the cluster of prefab huts. For a moment he sat still, realizing that he was tired, and then he climbed down from the control cabin and crossed the open grass to the door of the main living hut, opening it and reaching in to turn on the lights. Then he hesitated, looking up at Darius. There was a wide ring around it, and he remembered noticing the wisps of cirrus clouds gathering overhead through the afternoon. Maybe it would rain tonight. This dry weather couldn't last forever. He had been letting the manipulator stand out overnight lately. He decided to put it in the hangar. He went and opened the door of the vehicle shed, got back into the machine, and floated it inside. When he came back to the living hut he saw that he'd left the door wide open. Damn fool! he rebuked himself. Place could be crawling with prawns by now. He looked quickly around the living room, under the big combination desk and library table, under the gun rack, under the chairs, back at the communication screen and the view screen, beyond the metal cabinet of the microfilm library, and saw nothing. Then he hung up his hat, took off his pistol, and laid it on the table, and went back to the bathroom to wash his hands. As soon as he put on the light something inside the shower stall said, Heek! in a startled voice. He turned quickly to see two wide eyes staring up at him out of a ball of gold and fur. Whatever it was it had a round head and big ears and a vaguely humanoid face with a little snub nose. It was sitting on its haunches, and in that position it was about a foot high. It had two tiny hands with opposing thumbs. He squatted to have a better look at it. Hello there, little fella! he greeted it. I never saw anything like you before. What are you, anyhow? The small creature looked at him seriously and said, Heek! in a timid voice. Why, sure, you're a little fuzzy, that's what you are. He moved closer, careful to make no alarmingly sudden movements, and kept on talking to it. Bet you slipped in while I left the door open. Well, if a little fuzzy finds a door open, I'd like to know why he shouldn't come in and have a look around. He touched it gently. It started to draw back, then reached out a little hand and felt the material of his shirt sleeve. He stroked it and told it that it had the softest silkiest fur ever. Then he took it on his lap. It yeaked in pleasure and stretched an arm up around his neck. Why, sure, we're going to be good friends, aren't we? Would you like something to eat? Well, suppose you and I go see what we can find. He put one hand under it to support it like a baby. At least he seemed to recall having seen babies supported in that way. Babies were things he didn't fool with if he could help it, and straightened. It weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds. At first it struggled in panic, then quieted, and seemed to enjoy being carried. In the living-room he sat down in his favourite arm-chair, under a standing lamp, and examined his new acquaintance. It was a mammal. There was a fairly large mammalian class on Zarathustra, but beyond that he was stumped. It wasn't a primate in the Terran sense. It wasn't like anything Terran or anything else on Zarathustra. Being a biped put it in a class by itself for this planet. It was just a little fuzzy, and that was the best he could do. That sort of nomenclature was the best anybody could do on a class III planet. On a class IV planet, say Loki or Shesha or Thor, naming animals was a cinch. You pointed to something and asked a native, and he'd gargle a mouthful of syllables at you, which might only mean what you want to know for. And you took it down in phonetic alphabet and the watsits had a name. But on Zarathustra there were no natives to ask, so this was a little fuzzy. What would you like to eat, little fuzzy? he asked. Open your mouth and let Pappy Jack see what you have to chew with. Little fuzzy's dental equipment, allowing for the fact that his jaw was rounder, was very much like his own. You're probably omnivorous. How would you like some nice Terran Federation Space Force's emergency ration, extra-terrestrial? Type III, he asked. Little fuzzy made what sounded like an expression of willingness to try it. It would be safe enough. XD III had been fed to a number of Zarathustran mammals without ill effects. He carried little fuzzy out into the kitchen and put him on the floor, then got out a tin of the field ration and opened it, breaking off a small piece and handing it down. Little fuzzy took the piece of golden brown cake, sniffed at it, gave it a lighted yeek, and crammed the whole piece in his mouth. You never had to live on that stuff and nothing else for a month, that's for sure. He broke the cake in half and broke one half into manageable pieces and put it down on a saucer. Maybe little fuzzy would want a drink, too. He started to fill a pan with water as he would for a dog, then looked at his visitor, sitting on his haunches, eating with both hands, and changed his mind. He rinsed a plastic cup cap from an empty whiskey bottle and put it down beside a deep bowl of water. Little fuzzy was thirsty, and he didn't have to be shown what the cup was for. It was too late to get himself anything elaborate. He found some leftovers in the refrigerator and combined them into a stew. While it was heating, he sat down at the kitchen table and lit his pipe. The spurt of flame from the lighter opened little fuzzy's eyes, but what really awed him was Pappy Jack, blowing smoke. He sat watching this phenomenon, until a few minutes later the stew was hot and the pipe was laid aside. Then little fuzzy went back to nibbling XT3. Suddenly he gave a yeek of petulance and scampered into the living room. In a moment he was back with something elongated and metallic which he laid on the floor beside him. What have you got there, little fuzzy? Let Pappy Jack see. Then he recognized it as his own one-inch wood chisel. He remembered leaving it in the outside shed after doing some work about a week ago and not being able to find it when he'd gone to look for it. That had worried him. People who got absent-minded about equipment didn't last long in the wilderness. After he finished eating and took the dishes to the sink, he went over and squatted beside his new friend. Let Pappy Jack look at it, little fuzzy, he said. Oh, I'm not going to take it away from you. I just want to see it. The edge was dulled and nicked. It had been used for a lot of things wood chisels oughten to be used for. Digging and prying and most likely it had been used as a weapon. It was a handy-sized all-purpose tool for a little fuzzy. He laid it on the floor where he had gotten it and started washing the dishes. Little fuzzy watched him with interest for a while and then he began investigating the kitchen. Some of the things he wanted to investigate had to be taken away from him. At first that angered him, but he soon learned that there were things he wasn't supposed to have. Eventually the dishes got washed. There were more things to investigate in the living-room. One of them was the waste-basket. He found that it could be dumped and promptly dumped it, pulling out everything that hadn't fallen out. He bit a corner off a sheet of paper, chewed on it, and spat it out in disgust. Then he found that crumpled paper could be flattened out, and so he flattened a few sheets, and then discovered that it could also be folded. Then he got himself gleefully tangled in a snarl of worn-out recording tape. Finally he lost interest and started away. Jack caught him and brought him back. No, little fuzzy, he said. You do not dump waste-baskets and then walk away from them. You put things back in. He touched the container and said slowly and distinctly, waste-basket. Then he righted it, doing it as little fuzzy would have to, and picked up a piece of paper, tossing it from little fuzzy's shoulder height. Then he handed little fuzzy a wad of paper and repeated, waste-basket. Little fuzzy looked at him and said something that sounded as though it might be—what's the matter with you, pappy? You crazy or something? After a couple more tries, however, he got it and began throwing things in. In a few minutes he had everything back in, except a brightly-coloured plastic cartridge box and a wide-mouth bottle with a screw cap. He held these up and said, Yes, you can have them. Here, let pappy Jack show you something. He showed little fuzzy how the box could be opened and shut, then holding it where little fuzzy could watch, he unscrewed the cap and then screwed it on again. There now, you try it. Little fuzzy looked up inquiringly, then took the bottle, sitting down and holding it between his knees. Unfortunately he tried twisting it the wrong way and only screwed the cap on tighter. He yeaked plaintively. Oh, go ahead, you can do it. Little fuzzy looked at the bottle again, then he tried twisting the cap the other way and it loosened. He gave a yeak that couldn't possibly be anything but eureka and promptly took it off, holding it up. After being commended he examined both the bottle and the cap, feeling the threads, and then screwed the cap back on again. You know, you're a smart little fuzzy. It took a few seconds to realise just how smart. Little fuzzy had wondered why you twisted the cap one way to take it off and the other way to put it on and he had found out. For pure reasoning ability that topped anything in the way of animal intelligence he'd ever seen. I'm going to tell Ben Rainsford about you. Going to the communication screen he punched out the wavelength combination of the naturalist's camp, seventy miles down Snake River from the mouth of Cold Creek. Rainsford's screen must have been on automatic. It lit as soon as he was through punching. There was a card set up in front of it, littered, a way on trip back the fifteenth, recorder on. Ben, Jack Holloway, he said. I just ran into something interesting. He explained briefly what it was. I hope he stays around until you get back. He's totally unlike anything I've ever seen on this planet. Little fuzzy was disappointed when Jack turned off the screen that had been interesting. He picked him up and carried him over to the armchair, taking him on his lap. Now, he said, reaching for the control panel of the view-screen, watch this, we're going to see something nice. When he put on the screen at random he got a view from close up of the great fires that were raging where the company people were burning off the dead forests on what used to be big blackwater swamp. Little fuzzy cried out in alarm, flung his arms around Pappy Jack's neck and buried his face in the bosom of his shirt. Well, forest fires started from lightning sometimes, and they'd be bad things for little fuzzy. He worked the selector and got another pick-up, this time on the top of company-house in Mallory's Port, three-time zones west, with the city spread out below and the sunset blazing in the west. Little fuzzy stared at it in wonder. It was pretty impressive for a little fella it spent all his life in the big woods. So was the spaceport and a lot of other things he saw, though a view of the planet as a whole from Derrius puzzled him considerably. Then in the middle of a symphony orchestra concert from Mallory's Port Opera House he wriggled loose, dropped to the floor, and caught up his wood-chisel, swinging it back over his shoulder like a two-handed sword. What the devil? Uh-oh! A land-prawn which must have gotten in while the door was open was crossing the living-room. Little fuzzy ran after and passed it, pivoted and brought the corner of the chisel-edge down on the prawn's neck, neatly beheading it. He looked at his victim for a moment, then slid the chisel under it and flipped it over on its back, slapping it twice with the flat and cracking the undershell. Then he began pulling the dead prawn apart, tearing out pieces of meat and eating them delicately. After disposing of the larger chunks he used the chisel to chop off one of the prawn's mandibles to use as a pick to get at the less accessible morsels. When he had finished he licked his fingers clean and started back to the armchair. No! Jack pointed at the prawn-shell, waste-basket. Yeek! Waste-basket! Little fuzzy gathered up the bits of shell, putting them where they belonged. Then he came back and climbed up on Puppy Jack's lap and looked at things in the screen until he fell asleep. Jack lifted him carefully and put him down on the warm chair-seat without wakening him, then went to the kitchen, poured himself a drink, and brought it to the big table where he lit his pipe and began writing up his diary for the day. After a while little fuzzy woke found that the lap he had gone to sleep on had vanished and yeaked disconsolently. A folded blanket in one corner of the bedroom made a satisfactory bed once little fuzzy had assured himself that there were no bugs in it. He brought in his bottle and his plastic box and put them on the floor beside it. Then he ran to the front door in the living-room and yeaked to be let out. Going about twenty feet from the house he used the chisel to dig a small hole and after it had served its purpose he filled it in carefully and came running back. Well, maybe fuzzies were naturally gregarious and were home-makers, den-holes or nests or something like that. Nobody once messes made in the house and when the young ones did it their parents would bang them around to teach them better manners. This was little fuzzy's home now. He knew how he ought to behave in it. The next morning at daylight he was up on the bed trying to dig pappy Jack out from under the blankets. Besides being a most efficient land-proner eradicator he made a first-rate alarm clock. But best of all he was pappy Jack's little fuzzy. He wanted out. This time Jack took his movie-camera and got the whole operation on film. One thing there'd have to be a little door with a spring to hold it shut that little fuzzy could operate himself. That was designed during breakfast. It only took a couple of hours to make and install it. Little fuzzy got the idea as soon as he saw it and figured out how to work it for himself. Jack went back to the workshop, built a fire in the hand-forge and forged a pointed and rather broad blade four inches long on the end of a foot of quarter-inch round tool-steel. It was two-point heavy when finished so he welded a knob on the other end to balance it. Little fuzzy knew what that was for right away. Running outside he dug a couple of practice-holes with it and then began casting about in the grass for land prawns. Jack followed him with the camera and got movies of a couple of prawn killings accomplished with smooth by the number's precision. Little fuzzy hadn't learned that chop-clap-clap routine in the week since he had found the wood-chisel. Going into the shed he hunted for something without more than a general idea of what it would look like and found it where little fuzzy had discarded it when he found the chisel. It was a stock of hardwood to foot long rub down and polish smooth, apparently with sandstone. There was a paddle at one end with enough of an edge to behead a prawn and the other end had been worked to a point. He took it into the living hut and sat down at the desk to examine it with a magnifying glass. Bits of soil embedded in the sharp end that had been used as a pick. The paddle end had been used as a shovel per header and shell-cracker. Little fuzzy had known exactly what he wanted when it started making that thing. He'd kept on until it was as perfect as possible and had stopped short of spoiling it by over refinement. Finally Jack put it away in the top drawer of the desk. He was thinking about what to get for lunch when little fuzzy burst into the living room, clutching his new weapon in yeaking excitedly. What's the matter, kid? You got troubles? He rose and went to the gun-rack, picking down a rifle and checking the chamber. Show, baby Jack, what it is! Little fuzzy followed him to the big door for human-type people, ready to bolt back inside if necessary. The trouble was a harpy, a thing about the size and general design of a Terran Jurassic pterodactyl, big enough to take a little fuzzy at one mouthful. It must have made one swoop at him already and was circling back for another. It ran into a six-millimeter rifle-bullet, went into a backward loop, and dropped like a stone. Little fuzzy made a very surprised remark, looking at the dead harpy for a moment, and then spotted the ejected empty cartridge. He grabbed it and held it up asking if he could have it. When told that he could, he ran back to the bedroom with it. When he returned, Papi Jack picked him up and carried him to the hangar, and up into the control cabin of the manipulator. The throbbing of the contra-gravity field generator and the sense of rising worried him at first. But after they had picked up the harpy with the grapples and risen to five hundred feet, he began to enjoy the ride. They dropped the harpy a couple of miles up what the latest maps were designating as Holloway's run, and then made a wide circle back over the mountains. Little fuzzy thought it was fun. After lunch, little fuzzy had a nap on Papi Jack's bed. Jack took the manipulator up to the diggings, put off a couple more shots, uncovered more flint, and found another sunstone. It wasn't often that he found sunstones on two successive days. When he returned to the camp, little fuzzy was picking another land prawn apart in front of the living hut. After dinner, little fuzzy liked cooked food too if it wasn't too hot, they went into the living room. He remembered having seen a bolt and nut in the desk drawer when he had been putting the wooden prawn-killer away, and he got it out, showing it to little fuzzy. Little fuzzy studied it for a moment, then ran into the bedroom and came back with his screw-top bottle. He took the top off, put it on again, and then screwed the nut off the bolt holding it up. See, Papi, or yicks to that effect, nothing to it. Then he unscrewed the bottle-top, dropped the bolt inside after replacing the nut, and screwed the cap on again. Eek, he said, with considerable self-satisfaction. He had a right to be satisfied with himself, what he had been doing had been generalizing. Bottle-tops and nuts belong to the general class of things that screwed onto things. To take them off, you turned left, to put them on again, you turned right, after making sure that the threads engaged. And since he could conceive of right and left-handedness, that might mean that he could think of properties apart from objects, and that was forming abstract ideas. Maybe that was going a little far, but... You know, Papi Jax got himself a mighty smart little fuzzy. Are you a grown-up little fuzzy, or are you just a baby little fuzzy? Shucks, I'll bet you're a professor-doctor fuzzy. He wondered what to give the professor, if that was what he was, to work on next, and he doubted the wisdom of teaching him too much about taking things apart just at present. Sometime he might come home and find something important taken apart, or worse, taken apart and put together incorrectly. Finally he went to a closet, rummaging in it until he found a tin canister. By the time he returned, little fuzzy had gotten up on the chair, found his pipe in the ashtray, and was puffing on it and coughing. Hey, I don't think that's good for you. He recovered the pipe, wiped the stem on his shirt sleeve, and put it in his mouth, then placed the canister on the floor, and put little fuzzy on the floor beside it. There were about ten pounds of stones in it. When he had first settled here he'd made a collection of the local minerals, and after learning what he'd wanted to, he'd thrown them out, all but twenty or thirty of the prettiest specimens. He was glad now that he'd kept these. Little fuzzy looked the can over, decided that the lid was a member of the class of things that screwed on to things, and got it off. The inside of the lid was mirror-shiny, and it took him a little thought to discover that what he saw in it was only himself. He yeaked about that, and looked into the can. This he decided belonged to the class of things that can be dumped, like waste baskets, so he dumped it on the floor. Then he began examining the stones and sorting them by colour. Except for an interest in colourful views on the screen, this was the first real evidence that fuzzies possessed colour perception. He proceeded to give further and more impressive proof, laying out the stones by shade in correct spectral order from a lump of amethyst-like quartz to a dark red stone. Well, maybe he'd seen rainbows. Maybe he'd lived near a big misty waterfall where there was always a rainbow when the sun was shining. Or maybe that was just his natural way of seeing colours. Then when he saw what he had to work with, he began making arrangements with them, laying them out in odd circular and spiral patterns. Each time he finished a pattern, he would yeak happily to call attention to it, sit and look at it for a while, and then take it apart and start a new one. Little fuzzy was capable of artistic gratification too. He made useless things, just for the pleasure of making and looking at them. Finally he put the stones back into the tin, put the lid on, and rolled it into the bedroom, writing it beside his bed along with his other treasures. The new weapon he laid on the blanket beside him when he went to bed. The next morning Jack broke up a whole cake of XT3 and put it down, filled the bowl with water, and after making sure he'd left nothing lying about that a little fuzzy could damage or on which he might hurt himself, took the manipulator up to the diggings. He worked all morning, cracking nearly a tonne and a half of flint, and found nothing. Then he set off a string of shots, brought down an avalanche of sandstone and exposed more flint, and sat down under a pool-ball tree to eat his lunch. Half an hour after he went back to work he found the fossil of some jellyfish that hadn't eaten the right things in the right combinations, but a little later he found four nodules, one after another, and two of them were sunstones. Four or five chunks later he found a third. Why, this must be the dying place of the jellyfish. By late afternoon when he had cleaned up all his loose flint he had nine, including one deep red monster and ancient diameter. There must have been some connection current in the ancient ocean that had swelled them all into this one place. He considered setting off some more shots, decided that it was too late and returned to camp. Little Fuzzy, he called, opening the living-room door. Are you, little Fuzzy? Pappy Jack's rich. We're going to celebrate. Silence! he called again. Still no reply or scamper of feet. Probably cleaned up all the prawns around the camp and went hunting further out into the woods, thought Jack. Unbuckling his gun and dropping it onto the table he went out into the kitchen. Most of the X-T-3 was gone. In the bedroom he found that little Fuzzy had dumped the stones out of the biscuit tin and made an arrangement and laid the wood chisel in a neat diagonal across the blanket. After getting dinner assembled and in the oven he went out and called for a while, then mixed a highball and took it into the living-room, sitting down with it to go over his day's findings. Rather incredulously he realized that he had cracked out at least seventy-five thousand souls worth of stones to-day. He put them into the bag and sat sipping the highball and thinking pleasant thoughts until the bell on the stove warned him that dinner was ready. He ate alone. After all the years he had been doing that contentedly it had suddenly become intolerable and in the evening he dialed through his microfilm library finding only books he had read and reread a dozen times or books he kept for reference. Several times he thought he heard the little door open but each time he was mistaken. Finally he went to bed. As soon as he woke he looked across at the folded blanket but the wood chisel was still lying a-thwarted. He put down more X-T-3 and changed the water in the bowl before leaving for the diggings. That day he found three more sun-stones and put them in the bag mechanically and without pleasure. He quit work early and spent over an hour spiraling around the camp but saw nothing. The X-T-3 in the kitchen was untouched. Maybe the little fella ran into something too big for him even with his fine new weapon, a hobthrush or a bush-goblin or another harpy, or maybe he just gotten tired staying in one place and had moved on. No, he'd liked it here, he'd had fun and been happy. He shook his head sadly. Once he too had lived in a pleasant place where he'd had fun and could have been happy if he hadn't thought there was something he'd had to do. So he'd gone away, leaving grieved people behind him. Maybe that was how it was with little fuzzy. Maybe he didn't realize how much of a place he'd made for himself here or how empty he was leaving it. He started for the kitchen to get a drink and checked himself. Take a drink because you pity yourself and then the drink pities you and has a drink and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around. No, he'd have one drink, maybe a little bigger than usual, before he went to bed. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Little Fuzzy This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, Chapter 3 He started awake, rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock. Past twenty-two hundred, now it really was time for a drink and then to bed. He rose stiffly and went out to the kitchen, pouring the whiskey and bringing it into the table-desk where he sat down and got out his diary. He was almost finished with the day's entry when the little door behind him opened and a small voice said, Eek! He turned quickly. Little Fuzzy The small sound was repeated impatiently. Little Fuzzy was holding the door open and there was an answer from outside. Then another fuzzy came in and another, four of them, one carrying a tiny squirming ball of white fur in her arms. They all had prawn killers like the one in the drawer and they stopped just inside the room and gaped about them in bewilderment. Then, laying down his weapon, Little Fuzzy ran to him. Stooping from the chair, he caught him and then sat down on the floor with him. So that's why you ran off and worried, Pappy Jack, you wanted your family here too. The others piled the things they were carrying with Little Fuzzy's steel weapon and approached hesitantly. He talked to them and so did Little Fuzzy, at least it sounded like that. And finally one came over and fingered his shirt and then reached up and pulled his moustache. Soon all of them were climbing on to him, even the female with the baby. It was small enough to sit on his palm, but in a minute it had climbed to his shoulder and then it was sitting on his head. You people want dinner? he asked. Little Fuzzy yicked emphatically, that was a word he recognized. He took them all into the kitchen and tried them on cold roast veldt beast and yummy yams and fried pool-ball fruit. While they were eating from a couple of big pans, he went back to the living-room to examine the things they had brought with them. Two of the prawn killers were wood like the one Little Fuzzy had discarded in the shed. A third was of horn, beautifully polished, and the fourth looked as though it had been made from the shoulder-bone of something like a zebra-lope. Then there was a small coup de poire axe, rather low paleolithic, and a chipped implementer flint, the shape of a slice of orange and about five inches along the straight edge. For a hand the size of his own he would have called it a scraper. He puzzled over it for a while, noticed that the edge was serrated, and decided that it was a saw. And there were three very good flake knives and some shelves, evidently drinking vessels. Momar Fuzzy came in while he was finishing the examination. She seemed suspicious until she saw that none of the family property had been taken or damaged. Baby Fuzzy was clinging to her fur with one hand and holding a slice of pool-ball fruit on which he was munching with the other. He crammed what was left of the fruit into his mouth, climbed up on Jack, and sat down on his head again. Have to do something to break him of that, one of these days he'd be getting too big for it. In a few minutes the rest of the family came in, chasing and pummeling each other and yeaking happily. Momar jumped off his lap and joined the free-for-all, and then Baby took off from his head and landed on Momar's back. And he thought he'd lost his little Fuzzy, and gosh here he had five Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy. When they were tired romping he made beds for them in the living-room and brought out little Fuzzy's bedding and his treasures. One little Fuzzy in the bedroom was just fine. Five and a Baby Fuzzy were a little too much of a good thing. They were swarming over the bed, Baby and all, to awaken him the next morning. The next morning he made a steel chopper-digger for each of them, and half a dozen extras for replacements in case more Fuzzies showed up. He also made a miniature axe with a hardwood handle, a handsaw out of a piece of broken Power-Saw blade, and half a dozen little knives forged in one piece from quarter-inch coil-spring material. He had less trouble trading the Fuzzy's own things away from them than he'd expected. They had a very keen property sense, but they knew a good deal when one was offered. He put the wooden and horn and bone and stone artefacts away in the desk drawer. Started the Holloway collection of Zarathustran Fuzzy weapons and implements. Maybe he'd will it to the Federation Institute of Zeno-Sciences. Of course the family had to try out the new chopper-diggers on land prawns, and he followed them around with the movie-camera. They killed a dozen and a half that morning, and there was very little interest in lunch, though they did sit around nibbling just to be doing what he was doing. As soon as they finished they all went in for a nap on his bed. He spent the afternoon pottering about camp doing odd jobs that he had been postponing for months. The Fuzzies all emerged in the late afternoon for a romp in the grass outside. He was in the kitchen getting dinner when they all came pelting in through the little door into the living-room, making an excited outcry. Little Fuzzy and one of the other males came into the kitchen. Little Fuzzy squatted, put one hand on his lower jaw, with thumb and little finger extended, and the other on his forehead first finger upright. Then he thrust out his right arm stiffly and made a barking noise of a sort he'd never made before. He had to do it a second time before Jack got it. There was a large and unpleasant carnivore called a damn thing, another example of zoological nomenclature on uninhabited planets, which had a single horn on its forehead and one on either side of the lower jaw. It was something for Fuzzies and even for human-type people to get excited about. He laid down the paring knife and the yum-yum he'd been peeling, wiped his hands, and went into the living-room, taking a quick nose-count and satisfying himself that none of the family were missing as he crossed to the gun rack. This time, instead of the six millimetre he'd used on the harpy, he lifted down a big twelve point seven double express, making sure that it was loaded and pocketing a few spare rounds. Little Fuzzy followed him outside, pointing around the living-hut to the left. The rest of the family stayed indoors. Stepping out about twenty feet, he started around counter-clockwise. There was no damn thing on the north side, and he was about to go around to the east side when Little Fuzzy came dashing past him, pointing to the rear. He whirled to see the damn thing charging him from behind, head down, and middle-horn lowered. He should have thought of that. Damn things would double and hunt their hunters. He lined the sights instinctively and squeezed. The big rifle roared and banged his shoulder, and the bullet caught the damn thing and hurled all half-ton of it backward. The second shot caught it just below one of the fungoid-looking ears, and the beast gave a spasmodic all over Twitch and was still. He reloaded mechanically, but there was no need for a third shot. The damn thing was as dead as he would have been except for Little Fuzzy's warning. He mentioned that to Little Fuzzy, who was calmly retrieving the empty cartridges. Then, rubbing his shoulder where the big rifle had pounded him, he went in and returned the weapon to the rack. He used the manipulator to carry the damn thing away from the camp and drop it into a treetop, where it would furnish a welcome if puzzling treet for the harpies. There was another alarm in the evening after dinner. The family had come in from their sunset romp and were gathered in the living-room, where Little Fuzzy was demonstrating the principle of things that screwed on to things with the wide-mass bottle and the bolt and nut, when something huge began hooting directly overhead. They all froze looking up at the ceiling and then ran over and got under the gun-rack. This must be something far more serious than a damn thing, and what Pappy Jack would do about it would be nothing short of catastrophic. They were startled to see Pappy Jack merely go to the door, open it, and step outside. After all, none of them had ever heard a constabulary air-car-claxon before. The car settled onto the grass in front of the camp, gave a slight lurch, and went off contra-gravity. Two men in uniform got out, and in the moonlight he recognized both of them, Lieutenant George Lunt and his driver Ahmed Qadra. He called a greeting to them. Anything wrong, he asked. No, we just thought we'd drop in and see how you were making out, Lunt told him. We don't get up this way often. Haven't had any trouble lately, have you? Not since the last time. The last time had been a couple of woods tramps out of work felt-beast herders from the south who'd heard about the little bag he carried around his neck. All the constabulary had needed to do was remove the bodies and write up a report. Come on in and hang up your guns a while. I have something I want to show you. Little Fuzzy had come out and was pulling at his trouser leg. He stooped and picked him up, setting him on his shoulder. The rest of the family, deciding that it must be safe, had come to the door and were looking out. Hey, what the devil are those things, Lunt asked, stopping short halfway from the car. Fuzzies, mean to tell me you've never seen fuzzies before? No, I haven't. What are they? The two constabulary men came closer and Jack stepped back into the house, shooing the fuzzies out of the way. Lunt and Qadra stepped inside the door. I just told you they're fuzzies, that's all the name I know for them. A couple of fuzzies came over and looked up at Lieutenant Lunt. One of them said, They want to know what you are, so that makes it mutual. Lunt hesitated for a moment, then took off his belt and holster, and hung it on one of the pegs inside the door, putting his beret over it. Qadra followed his example promptly. That meant that they considered themselves temporarily off duty, and would accept a drink if one were offered. A fuzzie was pulling at Ahmed Qadra's trouser leg and asking to be noticed, and Mamar Fuzzy was holding baby up to show to Lunt. Qadra rather hesitantly picked up the fuzzie who was trying to attract his attention. Never saw anything like them before, Jack, he said. Where did they come from? Ahmed, you don't know anything about those things, Lunt reproved. They won't hurt me, Lieutenant, they haven't hurt Jack, have they? He sat down on the floor and a couple more came to him. Why don't you get acquainted with them? They're cute. George Lunt wouldn't let one of his men do anything he was afraid to do. He sat down on the floor too, and Mamar brought her baby to him. Immediately the baby jumped onto his shoulder and tried to get onto his head. Relax, George, Jack told him. They're just fuzzies, they want to make friends with you. I'm always worried about strange life forms, Lunt said. You've been around long enough to know some of the things that have happened. They're not a strange life form, they're Zarathustran mammals, the same life form you've had for dinner every day since you came here. They're biochemistries identical with ours. Think they'll give you the polka dot plague or something? He put little fuzzie down on the floor with the others. We've been exploring this planet for twenty-five years, and nobody's found anything like that here. You said it yourself, Lieutenant, Qadra put in. Jack's been around enough to know. Well, they are cute little fellas. Lunt lifted baby down off his head and gave him back to Mamar. Little fuzzie had gotten hold of the chain of his whistle and was trying to find out what was on the other end. Bet there are a lot of company for you. You just get acquainted with them. Make yourselves at home, I'll go rustle up some refreshments. While he was in the kitchen, filling a soda siphon and getting ice out of the refrigerator, a police whistle began shrilling in the living room. He was opening a bottle of whiskey when little fuzzie came dashing out, blowing on it, a couple more of the family pursuing him and trying to get it away from him. He opened a tin of XD3 for the fuzzies, as he did another whistle in the living room began blowing. We have a whole shoebox off them at the post. Lunt yelled to him above the din. We'll just write these two off as expended-in servers. Well, that's real nice of you, George. I want to tell you that the fuzzies appreciate that. Ahmed, suppose you do the bartending while I give the kids their candy. By the time Kadra had the drinks mixed and he had distributed the XD3 to the fuzzies, Lunt had gotten into the easy chair, and the fuzzies were sitting on the floor in front of him, still looking him over curiously. At least the XD3 had taken their minds off the whistles for a while. What I want to know, Jack, is where they came from, Lunt said, taking his drink. I've been up here for five years, and I never saw anything like them before. I've been here five years longer, and I never saw them before either. I think they came down from the north, from the country between the Cordillaris and the West Coast Range. Outside of an air survey at ten thousand feet and a few spot landings here and there, none of that country has been explored. For all anybody knows, it could be full of fuzzies. He began with his first encounter with little fuzzy, and by the time he had gotten as far as the wood chisel and the killing of the land-prawn, Lunt and Cadra were looking at each other in amazement. That's it, Cadra said. I found prawn shells cracked open and the meat picked out just the way you describe it. I always wondered what did that. But they don't all have wood chisels, what you suppose they used ordinarily. Ah! he pulled the drawer open and began getting things out. Here's the one little fuzzy discarded when he found my chisel. The rest of this stuff the others brought in when they came. Lunt and Cadra rose and came over to look at the things. Lunt tried to argue that the fuzzies couldn't have made that stuff. He wasn't even able to convince himself. Having finished their X-T3, the fuzzies were looking expectantly at the view-screen, and it occurred to him that none of them, except little fuzzy, had ever seen it on. Then little fuzzy jumped up on the chair, Lunt advocated, reached over to the control panel, and switched it on. What he got was an empty stretch of moonlit plain to the south, from a pick-up on one of the steel towers the Veltbeest herders used. That wasn't very interesting. He twiddled a selector, and finally got a night's soccer game at Mallory's Port. That was just fine. He jumped down and joined the others in front of the screen. I've seen Terran Monkeys and Fran Kulfs that liked to watch screens, and could turn them on and work the selector, Lunt said. It sounded like the token last salvo before the surrender. Kulfs are smart, Kadra agreed. They used tools. Do they make tools? Or tools to make tools with, like that saw? There was no argument on that. No, nobody does that, except people like us and the fuzzies. It was the first time he'd come right out and said that, the first time he had even consciously thought it. He realised that he'd been convinced of it all along, though, it startled the constabulary lieutenant and trooper. You mean you think Lunt began? They don't talk and they don't build fires, Ahmed Kadra said, as though that settled it. Ahmed, you know better than that. That talk and build a fire rule isn't any scientific test at all. It's a legal test, Lunt supported his subordinate. It's a rule of thumb that was set up so that settlers on new planets couldn't get away with murdering and enslaving the natives by claiming they thought they were only hunting and domesticating wild animals, he said. Anything that talks and builds a fire is a sapient being, yeah. That's the law, but that doesn't mean that anything that doesn't isn't. I haven't seen any of this gang building fires, and as I don't want to come home some time and find myself burned out, I'm not going to teach them. But I'm sure they have means of communication among themselves. Has Ben Rainsford seen them yet? Lunt asked. Ben's off on a trip somewhere. I called him as soon as little fuzzy over there showed up here. He won't be back till Friday. Yes, that's right, I did know that. Lunt was still looking dubiously at the fuzzies. I'd like to hear what he thinks about them. If Ben said they were safe, Lunt would accept that. Ben was an expert and Lunt respected expert testimony. Until then, he wasn't sure. He'd probably order a medical check-up for himself and Kadra, the first thing to-morrow, to make sure they hadn't picked up some kind of bug. The fuzzies took the manipulator quite calmly the next morning. That wasn't any horrible monster. That was just something Pappy Jack took rides in. He found one rather indifferent sunstone in the morning, and two good ones in the afternoon. He came home early and found the family in the living-room. They had dumped the waste-basket and were putting things back into it. Another land-prawn seemed to have gotten into the house. Its picked shell was with the other rubbish in the basket. They had dinner early, and he loaded the lot of them into the air-cheap and took them for a long ride to the south and west. The following day he located the flint-vein on the other side of the gorge and spent most of the morning blasting away the sandstone above it. The next time he went into Mallory's port he decided he was going to shop around for a good power-shovel. He had to blast a channel to keep the little stream from damming up on him. He didn't get any flint cracked at all that day. There was another Pappy circling around the camp when he got back. He chased it with the manipulator and shot it down with his pistol. Pappies probably found fuzzies as tasty as fuzzies found land prawns. The family were all sitting under the gun-rack when he entered the living-room. The next day he cracked flint and found three more stones. It rarely looked as though he had found the dying place of the jellyfish at that. He knocked off early that afternoon, and when he came in sight of the camp he saw an air-cheap grounded on the lawn, and a small man with a red beard in a faded khaki bush-jacket sitting on the bench by the kitchen door, surrounded by fuzzies. There was a camera and some other equipment laid up where the fuzzies couldn't get at it. Baby Fuzzy, of course, was sitting on his head. He looked up and waved and then handed Baby to his mother and rose to his feet. Well, what do you think of them, Ben? Jack called down as he grounded the manipulator. My God! Don't start me on that now! Ben Rainsford replied, and then laughed. I stopped at the constabulary post on the way home. I thought George Lunter turned into the biggest liar in the known galaxy. Then I went home and found your call on the recorder, so I came over here. Ben wading along? The fuzzies had all abandoned Rainsford and come trooping over as soon as the manipulator was off contra-gravity. He climbed down among them, and they followed him across the grass, catching at his trouser-leaks and yeaking happily. Not so long! Rainsford looked at his watch. Good Lord! Three and a half hours is all. Well, the time passed quickly. You know your little fellows have good ears. They heard you coming a long time before I did. Did you see them killing any prawns? I should say. I got a lot of movies of it. He shook his head slowly. Jack, this is almost incredible. You're staying for dinner, of course. You try and chase me away. I want to hear all about this. Want you to make a tape about them, if you're willing? Glad too. We'll do that after we eat. He sat down on the bench, and the fuzzies began climbing upon and beside him. This is the original little fuzzy. He brought the rest in a couple of days later. Mama Fuzzy and Baby Fuzzy, and these are Mike and Mitzi. I call this one Coco because of the ceremonious way he beheads land prawns. George says you call them all fuzzies. Want that for the official designation? Sure. That's what they are, isn't it? Well, let's call the order Hollowayans. Rainsford said. Family Fuzzies. Genus Fuzzy. Species. Holloway is Fuzzy. Fuzzy Fuzzy Holloway. How'll that be? That would be all right, he supposed. At least they didn't try to latinize things in extraterrestrial zoology any more. I suppose our bumper crop of land prawns is what brought them into this section. Yes, of course. George was telling me you thought they'd come down from the north, about the only place they could have come from. This is probably just the advanced guard who'll be having fuzzies all over the place before long. I wonder how fast they breed. Not very fast. Three males and two females in this crowd and only one young one. He said Mike and Mitzi off his lap and got to his feet. I'll go start dinner now. While I'm doing that you can look at the stuff they brought in with them. When he had placed the dinner in the oven and taken a couple of high balls into the living room, Rainsford was still sitting at the desk looking at the artifacts. He accepted his drink and sipped it absently, then raised his head. Jack, this stuff is absolutely amazing, he said. It's better than that. It's unique, only collection of native weapons and implements on Zarathustra. Ben Rainsford looked up sharply. You mean what I think you mean? He asked. Yes, you do. He drank down some of his high ball, set down the glass, and picked up the polished horn prawn-killer. Anything, pardon, anybody who does this kind of work is good enough native for me. He hesitated briefly. Why, Jack, this tape you said you'd make. Can I transmit a copy to Juan Jiménez, his chief mnemologist with the Company Science Division? We exchange information, and there's another company man I'd like to have hear it. Gerd van Riebik. He's a general zener naturalist, like me, but is especially interested in animal evolution. Why not? The fuzzies are a scientific discovery. Discoveries ought to be reported. Little Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzy, strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzy jumped up on the armchair and switched on the view-screen. Fiddling with the selector, he got the big black water woods burning. Mike and Mitzy shrieked delightedly like a couple of kids watching a horror show. They knew by now that nothing in the screen could get out and hurt them. Would you mind if they came out here and saw the fuzzies? Why, the fuzzies would love that. They like Company. Mama and Baby and Coco came in, seemed to approve what was on the screen, and sat down to watch it. When the bell on the stove rang, they all got up, and Coco jumped onto the chair and snapped the screen off. Ben Rainsford looked at him for a moment. You know, I have married friends with children who have a hell of a time teaching eight-year-olds to turn off screens when they're through watching them, he commented. It took an hour after dinner to get the whole story from the first little yeek in the shower-stall on tape. When he'd finished, Ben Rainsford made a few remarks and shut off the recorder, then looked at his watch. Twenty-hundred. It'll be seventeen hundred in Mallory's Port, he said. I could catch him in as the science centre if I call now. He usually works a little late. Go ahead. Want to show him some fuzzies? He moved his pistol and some other impediment here off the table and set little fuzzy and mamar fuzzy and baby upon it, then drew up a chair beside it in range of the communication screen and sat down with Mike and Mitzi and Coco. Rainsford punched out a wavelength combination, then he picked up baby fuzzy and set him on his head. In a moment the screen flickered and cleared, and a young man looked out of it with the momentary upward glance of one who wants to make sure his public face is on straight. It was a bland, tranquilised, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face, the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on terror. Why, Benneth, this is a pleasant surprise, he began. I never expected—then he choked—at least he omitted a sound of surprise. What in the name of Daibutsu are those things on the table in front of you? he demanded. I never saw anything. And what is that on your head? Family group of fuzzies, Rainsford said. Mature male, mature female, immature male. He lifted baby fuzzy down and put him in Mama's arms. Species, fuzzy-fuzzy Holloway Zarathustra. The gentleman on my left is Jack Holloway, the Sunstone Operator, who is the original discoverer. Jack won Jimenez. They shook their own hands at one another in the ancient Terran Chinese gesture that was used on communication screens, and assured each other, Jimenez rather absently, that it was a pleasure. He couldn't take his eyes off the fuzzies. Where did they come from, he wanted to know. Are you sure they're indigenous? They're not quite up to spaceships yet, Dr. Jimenez. Fairly early paleolithic, I'd say. Jimenez thought he was joking and laughed, the sort of a laugh that could be turned on and off like a light. Rainsford assured him that the fuzzies were really indigenous. We have everything that's known about them on tape, he said, about an hour of it. Can you take sixty speed? He was making adjustments on the recorder as he spoke. All right, Seton will transmit to you. And can you get hold of Gerd van Reebik? I'd like him to hear it, too. It's as much up his alley as anybody's. When Jimenez was ready, Rainsford pressed the playoff button, and for a minute the recorder gave a high, wavering squeak. The fuzzies all looked startled. Then it ended. I think, when you hear this, the Jew and Gerd will both want to come out and see these little people. If you can, bring somebody who's a qualified psychologist, somebody capable of evaluating the fuzzies' mentation. Jack wasn't kidding about early Paleolithic. If they're not sapient, they only miss it by about one atomic diameter. Jimenez looked almost as startled as the fuzzies had. You surely don't mean that? He looked from Rainsford to Jack Holloway and back. Well, I'll call you back when we've both heard the tape. Your three time zones west of us, aren't you? Then we'll try to make it before your midnight. That'll be twenty-one hundred. He called back half an hour short of that. This time it was from the living-room of an apartment instead of an office. There was a portable record player in the foreground, and a low table with snacks and drinks, and two other people were with him. One was a man of about Jimenez's age, with a good humid, non-life-adjusted, non-group-integrated, and slightly weather-beaten face. The other was a woman with glossy black hair and a Mona leisure-ish smile. The fuzzies had gotten sleepy and had been bribed with X-T-3 to stay up a little longer. Immediately they registered interest. This was more fun than the view-screen. Jimenez introduced his companions as Gerd van Riebik and Ruth Ortheris. Ruth is with Dr. Mallon's section. She's been working with the school department and the juvenile court. She can probably do as well with your fuzzies as a regular zeno-psychologist. Well, I have worked with extra-terrestrials, the woman said. I've been on Loki and Thor and Shesha. Jack nodded. Been on the same planets myself. Are you people coming out here? Oh, yes, van Riebik said. We'll be out by noon to-morrow. We may stay a couple of days, but that won't put you to any trouble. I have a boat that's big enough for the three of us to camp on. Now, how do we get to your place?" Jack told him and gave map coordinates. Van Riebik noted them down. There's one thing, though, I'm going to have to get firm about. I don't want to have to speak about it again. These little people are to be treated with consideration and not as laboratory animals. You will not hurt them or annoy them or force them to do anything they don't want to do. We understand that. We won't do anything with the fuzzies without your approval. Is there anything you'd want us to bring out? Yes, a few things for the camp that I'm short of. I'll pay you for them when you get here. And about three cases of XT3 and some toys. Dr. Ortharis, you heard the tape, didn't you? Or just think what you'd like to have if you were a fuzzy, and bring it. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Of Little Fuzzy This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Little Fuzzy by H. Bean Piper. Chapter 5 Victor Grego crushed out his cigarette slowly and deliberately. Yes, Leonard, he said patiently, it's very interesting and doubtless an important discovery, but I can't see why you're making such a production of it. Are you afraid I'll blame you for letting non-company people beat you to it? Or do you merely suspect that anything Leonard Rainsford's mixed up in is necessarily a diabolical plot against the company and, by consequence, human civilization? Leonard Kellogg looked pained. What I was about to say, Victor, is that both Rainsford and this man Holloway seem convinced that these things they call fuzzies aren't animals at all. They believe them to be sapient beings. Well, that's—he bit that off short as the significance of what Kellogg had just said hit him. Good God, Leonard, I beg your pardon objectively. I don't blame you for taking it seriously. Why, that would make Zarathustra a Class IV inhabited planet. For which the company holds a Class III charter, Kellogg added, for an uninhabited planet. Automatically void if any race of sapient beings were discovered on Zarathustra. You know what'll happen if this is true. Well, I should imagine the charter would have to be renegotiated, and now that the Colonial Office knows what sort of a plan this is, there'll be anything but generous with the company. They won't renegotiate anything, Leonard. The Federation Government will simply take the position that the company has already made an adequate return on the original investments, and they'll award us what we can show is in our actual possession, I hope, and throw the rest into the public domain. The vast plains on Beta and Delta continents with their herds of Veltbeest, all open range, and every beast that didn't carry a company brand or maverick, and all the untapped mineral wealth and the untilled arable land, it would take years of litigation even to make the company's claim to Big Blackwater Stick, and terror bald or marduk's baselines would lose their monopolistic franchise and get sticky about it in the courts, and in any case the company's import-export monopoly would go out the airlock, and the squatters rushing in and swamping everything. Why, we won't be any better off than the Yggdrasil Company, squatting on a guano heap in one continent, he burst out. Five years from now they'll be making more money out of Bat-Dung than we'll be making out of this whole world. And the company's good friend and substantial stockholder, Nick Emmett, would be out too, and a colonial governor-general would move in, with regular army troops and a complicated bureaucracy, elections and a representative parliament, and every Tom, Dick and Harry with a grudge against the company would be trying to get laws passed, and of course a native affairs commission with its nose in everything. But they couldn't just leave us without any kind of a charter, Kellogg insisted, who was he trying to kid besides himself? It wouldn't be fair, as though that clinched it. It isn't our fault. He forced more patience into his voice. Leonard, please try to realise that the Terran Federation Government doesn't give one shrill soprano hoot on Niflheim, whether it's fair or not, or whose fault what is. The Federation Government's been repenting that charter they gave the company ever since they found out what they'd chartered away. Why, this planet is a better world than terror ever was, even before the atomic wars. Now, if they have a chance to get it back with improvements, you think they won't take it? And what will stop them? If those creatures over on Beta Continent are sapient beings, our charter isn't worth the parchment it's embossed on, and that's an end of it. He was silent for a moment. You heard that tape-brains for transmitted to Himeaneth? Did either he or Holloway actually claim, in so many words, that these things really are sapient beings? Well, no, not in so many words. Holloway consistently alluded to them as people, but he's just an ignorant old prospector. Rainsford wouldn't come out and commit himself one way or another, but he left the door wide open for anybody else too. Accepting their account, could these fuzzies be sapient? Accepting the account, yes, Kellogg said in distress, they could be. They probably were, if Leonard Kellogg couldn't wish the evidence out of existence. Then they'll look sapient to these people of yours who went over to Beta this morning, and they'll treat it purely as a scientific question and never consider the legal aspects. Leonard, you'll have to take charge of the investigation before they make any reports everybody will be sorry for. Kellogg didn't seem to like that. It would mean having to exercise authority in getting tough with people, and he hated anything like that. He nodded very reluctantly. Yes, I suppose I will. Let me think about it for a moment, Victor. One thing about Leonard, you handed him something he couldn't delegate or dodge, and he'd go to work on it, maybe not cheerfully, but conscientiously. I'll take Ernst Malin along, he said at length. This man Rainsford has no grounding whatever in any of the psychosciences. He may be able to impose on Ruth or Therris, but not on Ernst Malin. Not after I've talked to Malin first. He thought some more. We'll have to get these fuzzies away from this man Holloway, then we'll issue a report of discovery being careful to give full credit to both Rainsford and Holloway. We'll even accept the designation they've coined for them, but we'll make it very clear that while highly intelligent the fuzzies are not a race of sapient beings, if Rainsford persists in making any such claim, we will brand it as a deliberate hoax. Do you think he's gotten any report off to the Institute of Xeno-Sciences yet?" Kellogg shook his head. I think he wants to trick some of our people into supporting his sapient's claims, at least corroborating his and Holloway's alleged observations. That's why I'll have to get over to Beter as soon as possible. By now Kellogg had managed to convince himself that going over to Beter had been his idea all along, probably also convincing himself that Rainsford's report was nothing but a pack of lies. Well, if he could work better that way, that was his business. He will, before long, if he isn't stopped, and a year from now there'll be a small army of investigators here from Terra. By that time you should have both Rainsford and Holloway thoroughly discredited. Leonard, you get those fuzzies away from Holloway, and I'll personally guarantee they won't be available for investigation by then. Fuzzies, he said reflectively. Fur-bearing animals, I take it. Holloway spoke on the tape of their soft and silky fur. Good. Emphasize that in your report. As soon as it's published the company will offer two thousand souls a piece for fuzzy pelts. By the time Rainsford's report brings anybody here from Terra we may have them all trapped out. Kellogg began to look worried. But, Victor, that's genocide. Nonsense! Genocide is defined as the extermination of a race of sapient beings. These are fur-bearing animals. It's up to you, an Ernst Mallon, to prove that. The fuzzies playing on the lawn in front of the camp froze into immobility their faces turned to the west. Then they all ran to the bench by the kitchen door and scrambled up onto it. Now what? Jack Holloway wondered. They hear the airboat, Rainsford told him. That's the way they acted yesterday when you were coming in with your machine. He looked at the picnic table they'd been spreading under the feather-leaf trees. Everything ready? Everything but lunch. That won't be cooked for an hour yet. I see them now. You have better eyes than I do, Jack. Oh, I see it. I hope the kids put on a good show for them, he said anxiously. It'd been jittery ever since he arrived shortly after breakfast. It wasn't that these people from Mallory's port were so important themselves. Ben had a bigger name in scientific circles than any of this company crowd. He was just excited about the fuzzies. The airboat grew from a barely visible speck and came spiraling down to land in the clearing. When it was grounded and off contra-gravity they started across the grass towards it, and the fuzzies all jumped down from the bench and ran along with them. The three visitors climbed down. Ruth or Therris wore slacks in a sweater, but the slacks were bloused over a pair of ankle boots. Gerd van Riebik had evidently done a lot of fieldwork. His boots were stout, and he wore old-faded car keys and a serviceable-looking sidearm that showed he knew what to expect up here in the piedmont. One hymeneth was in the same sports casuals in which he had appeared on screen last evening. All of them carried photographic equipment. They shook hands all around and exchanged greetings, and then the fuzzies began clamouring to be noticed. Finally all of them, fuzzies and other people, drifted over to the table under the trees. Ruth or Therris sat down in the grass with Mamar and Baby. Immediately Baby became interested in a silver charm which she wore on a chain around her neck, which tinkled fascinatingly. Then he tried to sit on her head. She spent some time gently but firmly discouraging this. One hymeneth was squatting between Mike and Mitzi, examining them alternately and talking into a miniature recorder-phone on his breast, mostly in Latin. Gerd van Riebik dropped himself into a folding chair and took little fuzzy on his lap. You know, this is kind of surprising, he said, not only finding something like this after twenty-five years, but finding something as unique as this. Look, he doesn't have the least vestige of a tail, and there isn't another tailless mammal on the planet. In fact, there isn't another mammal on this planet that has the slightest kinship to him. Take ourselves, we belong to a pretty big family, about fifty-odd genera of primates. But this little fellow hasn't any relatives at all. Eek! And he couldn't care less, could he? Van Riebik pummeled little fuzzy gently. One thing you have the smallest humanoid known. That's one record you can claim. Uh-oh! What goes on? Coco, who had climbed upon Rainsford's lap, jumped suddenly to the ground, grabbed the chopper-digger he had left beside the chair, and started across the grass. Everybody got to their feet, the visitors getting cameras out. The fuzzy seemed perplexed by all the excitement. It was only another land prawn, wasn't it? Coco got in front of it, poked it in the nose to stop it, and then struck a dramatic pose, flourishing his weapon and bringing it down on the prawn's neck. Then, after flopping it over, he looked at it almost in sorrow and hit it a couple of whacks with the flat. He began pulling it apart and eating it. I see why you call him Coco, Ruth said, aiming her camera. Don't the others do it that way? Well, little fuzzy runs along beside them and pivots and gives them a quick chop. Mike and Mitzi flopped theirs over first and behead them on their backs, and Mama takes a swipe at their legs first, but beheading and breaking the under-shell, they all do that. Uh-huh! That's basic, she said, instinctive. The technique is either self-learned or copied, when Baby begins killing his own prawns, see if he doesn't do it the way Mama does. Hey, look! Humaneith cried, his making a lobster pick for himself. Through lunch they talked exclusively about fuzzies, the subjects of the discussion nibbled things that were given to them and yeaked amongst themselves. Goethe Van Riebeck suggested that they were discussing the odd habits of human-type people, while Humaneith looked at him slightly disturbed, as though wondering just how seriously he meant it. You know, what impressed me most in the taped account was the incident of the damn thing, said Ruth Ortherus. Any animal associating with man will try to attract attention if something's wrong, but I never heard of one, not even a fray and cough or a Terran chimpanzee, that would use descriptive pantomime. Little Fuzzy was actually making a symbolic representation by abstracting the distinguishing characteristic of the damn thing. Think that stiff arm gesture and bark might have been intended to represent a rifle, Goethe Van Riebeck asked. It's in you shooting before, hadn't he? I don't think it was anything else. He was telling me, big nasty damn thing outside, shoot it like he did the Harvey, and if he hadn't run past me and pointed back, that damn thing would have killed me. Humaneith hesitantly said, I know I'm speaking from ignorance, you're the fuzzy expert, but isn't it possible that you're over-anthropomorphising, endowing them with your own characteristics and mental traits? One, I'm not going to answer that right now. I don't think I'll answer it at all. You wait until you've been around these fuzzies a little longer, and then ask it again, only ask yourself. So you see, Ernst, that's the problem. Leonard Kellogg laid the words like a paperweight on the other words he had been saying, and waited. Ernst Mallon sat motionless, his elbows on the desk and his chin in his hands. A little pair of wrinkles like parentheses appeared at the corners of his mouth. Yes, I'm not a lawyer, of course, but it's not a legal question, it's a question for a psychologist. That left it back with Ernst Mallon, and he knew it. I'd have to see them before I could express an opinion. You have that tape of hollow ways with you? When Kellogg nodded, Mallon continued, and did either of them make any actual overt claim of sapiens. He answered it as he had when Victor Grego had asked the same question adding, the account consists almost entirely of Holloway's uncorroborated statements concerning things to which he claims to have been the sole witness. Ah! Mallon permitted himself a tight little smile, and he's not a qualified observer. Neither, for that matter, is Rainsford. Regardless of his position as a xenonaturalist, he is complete layman in the psychosciences. It's just taken this other man's statements uncritically. As for what he claims to have observed for himself, how do we know he isn't including a lot of erroneous inferences with his descriptive statements? How do we know he's not perpetrating a deliberate hoax? But, Leonard, that's a pretty serious accusation. It's happened before that fellow who carved a late upland Martian inscription in that cave in Kenya, for instance, or Hellerman's claims to have cross-bred Terran mice with Thoran Tilbury's, or the pilt-down man back in the first century pre-atomic. Mallon nodded. None of us like to think of a thing like that, but, as you say, it's happened. You know, this man Rainsford is just the type to do something like that, too. Fundamentally, an individualistic egoist, badly adjusted personality type. Say he wants to make some sensational discovery which will assure him the position in the scientific world to which he believes himself entitled. He finds this lonely old prospector into whose isolated camps are little animals of strayed. The old man has made pets of them, taught them a few tricks, finally so projected his own personality onto him that he's convinced himself that they're people like himself. This is Rainsford's great opportunity. He'll present himself as the discovery of a new sapient race and bring the whole learned world to his feet. Mallon smiled again. Yes, Leonard, it's altogether possible. Then it's our pain-duty to stop this thing before it develops into another major scientific scandal like Hellerman's hybrids. First we must go over this tape recording and see what we have on our hands. Then we must make a thorough, unbiased study of these animals and show Rainsford in his accomplice that they cannot hope to foist these ridiculous claims on the scientific world with impunity. If we can't convince them privately, there'll be nothing to do but expose them publicly. I've heard the tape already, but let's play it off now. We want to analyze these tricks this man Holloway has taught these animals and see what they show. Yes, of course, we must do that at once, Mallon said. Then we'll have to consider what sort of statement we must issue and what sort of evidence we will need to support it. After dinner was romp time for fuzzies on the lawn, but when dusk came creeping into the ravine they all went inside and were given one of their new toys from Mallory's Port, a big box of many coloured balls and short sticks of transparent plastic. They didn't know that it was a molecule model kit, but they soon found that the sticks would go into holes in the balls and that they could be built into three-dimensional designs. This was much more fun than the coloured stones. They made a few experimental shapes, then dismantled them, and began on a single large design. Several times they tore it down entirely or in part, and began over again, usually with considerable yeaking and gesticulation. They have artistic sense, Van Riebig said. I've seen lots of abstract sculpture that wasn't half as good as that job they're doing. Good engineering, too, Jack said. They understand balance and centre of gravity. They're basing it well and not making it top-heavy. Jack, I've been thinking about that question I was supposed to ask myself, he maynus said. You know, I came out here loaded with suspicion. Not that I doubted your honesty. I just thought you'd let your obvious affection for the fuzzies lead you into giving them credit for more intelligence than they possess. Now I think you've consistently understated it. Short of actual sapience I've never seen anything like them. Why short of it, Van Riebig asked? Ruth, you've been pretty quiet this evening. What do you think? Ruth or Therris looked uncomfortable. Gerd, it's too early to form opinions like that. I know the way they're working together looks like cooperation on an agreed-upon purpose, but I simply can't make speech out of that yeek-yeek-yeek. Let's keep the talk and build a fire rule out of it, Van Riebig said. If they're working together on a common project they must be communicating somehow. It isn't communication, it's symbolisation. You simply can't think sapiently, except in verbal symbols. Try it. Not something like changing the spools on a recorder or field-stripping a pistol. They're just learned tricks. I mean ideas. How about Helen Keller? Rainsford asked. Mean to say she only started thinking sapiently after Anna Sullivan taught her what words were. No, of course not. She thought sapiently, and she only thought in sense imagery limited to feeling. She looked at Rainsford reproachfully. He'd knocked a breach in one of her fundamental postulates. Of course, she'd inherited the cerebral neural equipment for sapient thinking. She let that trail off before somebody asked her how she knew that the fuzzies hadn't. I'll suggest, just to keep the argument going, that speech couldn't have been invented without pre-existing sapience, Jack said. Ruth laughed. Now you're taking me back to college. That used to be one of the burning questions in first year psych students' full sessions. By the time we got to be sophomores we'd realise that it was only an egg and chicken argument and dropped it. That's a pity, Ben Rainsford said. It's a good question. It would be if it could be answered. Maybe it can be, Gerd said. There's a clue to it right there. I'll say that those fellows are on the edge of sapience and it's an even money bet which side. I'll bet every some stone in my bag thereover. Well, maybe they're just slightly sapient, he mayn has suggested. Ruth Ortheris hooted at that. That's like talking about being just slightly dead or just slightly pregnant, she said. You either are or you aren't. Gerd van Riebig was talking at the same time. This sapience question is just as important in my field as yours, Ruth. Sapience is the result of evolution by natural selection just as much as a physical characteristic, and it's the most important step in the evolution of any species, our own included. Wait a minute, Gerd, Rainsford said. Ruth, what do you mean by that? Aren't there degrees of sapience? No, there are degrees of mentation, intelligence, if you prefer, just as there are degrees of temperature. When psychology becomes an exact science like physics we'll be able to calibrate mentation like temperature. But sapience is qualitatively different from non-sapience. It's more than just a higher degree of mental temperature. You might call it a sort of mental boiling point. I think that's a damn good analogy, Rainsford said, but what happens when the boiling point is reached? That's what we have to find out, van Riebig told him. That's what I was talking about a moment ago. We don't know any more about how sapience appeared today than we did in the year zero or in the year six hundred and fifty-four pre-atomic, for that matter. Wait a minute, Jack interrupted. Before we go any deeper, let's agree on a definition of sapience. Van Riebig laughed. Ever try to get a definition of life from a biologist, he asked, or a definition of number from a mathematician? That's about it. Ruth looked at the fuzzies who were looking at their colored ball construction as though wondering if they could add anything more without spoiling the design. I'd say a level of mentation qualitatively different from non-sapience, in that it includes ability to symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and ability to form abstract ideas. There, I didn't say a word about talk and build a fire, did I? Little fuzzy symbolizes and generalizes, Jack said. He symbolizes a damn thing by three horns, and he symbolizes a rifle by a long thing that points and makes noises. Rifles kill animals. Harpies and damn things are both animals. If a rifle will kill a harpy, it'll kill a damn thing, too. Juan Jiménez had been frowning in thought. He looked up and asked, what's the lowest known sapient race? Yggdrasil Kugras, Gerd Van Riebig said promptly. Any of you ever been on Yggdrasil? I saw a man shot once on Mimir for calling another man the son of a Kugra, Jack said. The man who shot him had been on Yggdrasil and knew what he was being called. I spent a couple of years among them, Gerd said. They do build fires, I'll give them that. They char points on sticks to make spears, and they talk. I learned their language, all eighty-two words of it. I taught a few of the intelligentsia how to use machetes without maiming themselves, and there was one mental giant I could trust to carry some of my equipment if I kept an eye on him, but I never let him touch my rifle or my camera. Can they generalize? Ruth asked. Honey, they can't do nothing else, but every word in their language is a high-order generalization—prusha, live-thing, nusha, bad-thing, dishta, thing to eat—want me to go on? There are only seventy-nine more of them. Before anybody could stop him, the communication screen got itself into an uproar. The fuzzies all ran over in front of it, and Jack switched it on. The caller was a man in grey semi-formals. He had wavy grey hair and a face that looked like Juan Jiménez twenty years from now. Good evening, Holloway here. Oh, Mr. Holloway, good evening. The caller shook hands with himself, turning on a dazzling smile. I'm Leonard Kellogg, Chief of the Company Science Division. I just heard the tape you made about the—the fuzzies. He looked down at the floor. Are these some of the animals? These are the fuzzies. He hoped it sounded like the correction it was intended to be. Dr. Bennet Reinsford's here with me now, and so are Dr. Jiménez, Dr. Van Riebig, and Dr. Orthairis. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jiménez squirming as though afflicted with ants, Van Riebig getting his pokerface batten down, and Ben Reinsford suppressing a grin. Some of us are out of screen range, and I'm sure you'll want to ask a lot of questions—partness a moment while we close in. He ignored Kellogg's genial protest that that wouldn't be necessary until the chairs were placed facing the screen. As an afterthought he handed fuzzies around, giving little fuzzy to Ben, Coco to Gerd, Mitzi to Ruth, Mike to Jiménez, and taking Mamar and Baby on his own lap. Baby immediately started to climb up onto his head as expected. It seemed to disconcert Kellogg, also as expected. He decided to teach Baby to thumb his nose when given some unobtrusive signal. Now, about that tape I recorded last evening, he began. Yes, Mr. Holloway, Kellogg's smile was getting more mechanical every minute. He was having trouble keeping his eyes off Baby. I must say I was simply astounded at the high order of intelligence claimed for these creatures. And you wanted to see how big a liar I was. I don't blame you. I had trouble believing it myself at first. Kellogg gave a musically blithe laugh showing even more dental equipment. Oh, no, Mr. Holloway, please don't misunderstand me. I never thought anything like that. I hope not, Ben Reinsford said, not too pleasantly. I vouched for Mr. Holloway's statements, if you'll recall. Of course, Bennet, that goes without saying. Permit me to congratulate you upon a most remarkable scientific discovery, an entirely new order of mammals. Which may be the ninth extra solar sapient race, Reinsford added. Good heavens, Bennet! Kellogg jettisoned his smile and slid on a look of shocked surprise. You surely can't be serious. He looked again at the fuzzies, pulled the smile back on, and gave a light laugh. I thought you'd heard that tape, Reinsford said. Of course, and the things reported there most remarkable, but sapiencers, just because they've been taught a few tricks and used sticks and stones for weapons. He got rid of the smile again and quick change to seriousness. Such an extreme claim must only be made after careful study. Well, I won't claim they're sapient, Ruth Ortheris told him, not until the day after to-morrow at the earliest, but they very easily could be. They have learning and reasoning capacity equal to that of any eight-year-old her and human child, and well above that of the adults of some recognizably sapient races. And they have not been taught tricks, they have learned by observation and reasoning. Well, Dr. Kellogg, mentation levels isn't my subject—Himanus took it up—but they do have all the physical characteristics shared by other sapient races. Lower limbs specialised for locomotion and upper limbs for manipulation, erect posture, stereoscopic vision, colour perception, hand with opposing thumb—all the characteristics we consider as prerequisite to the development of sapiens. I think they're sapient myself, Gerd van Reebik said, but that's not as important as the fact that they're on the very threshold of sapiens. This is the first race of this mental level anybody's ever seen. I believe that study of the fuzzies will help us solve the problem of how sapiens developed in any race. Kellogg had been labouring to pump up a head of enthusiasm. Now he was ready to valve it off. But this is amazing! This will make scientific history. Now, of course, you will realise how pricelessly valuable these fuzzies are. They must be brought at once to Mallory's port where they can be studied under laboratory conditions by qualified psychologists and— No. Jack lifted baby Fuzzy off his head and handed him to Mamar and set Mamar on the floor. That was reflex. The thinking part of his brain knew he didn't need to clear for action when arguing with the electronic image of a man twenty-five hundred miles away. Just forget that part of it and start over, he advised. Kellogg ignored him. Gerd, you have your airboat. Fix up some nice comfortable cages. Kellogg. The man in the screen stopped talking instead in amazed indignation. It was the first time in years he'd been addressed by his naked patronimic, and possibly the first time in his life he'd been shouted at. Didn't you hear me the first time, Kellogg? Then stop gibbering about cages. These fuzzies are not being taken anywhere. But Mr. Holloway, don't you realise that these little beings must be carefully studied? Don't you want them given their rightful place in the hierarchy of nature? If you want to study them, come out here and do it. That's so long as you don't annoy them or me. As far as study is concerned, they're being studied now. Dr. Rainsford's studying them, and so are three of your people, and when it comes to that, I'm studying them myself. And I'd like you to clarify that remark about qualified psychologists, Ruth Ortheris added, in a voice approaching Zero Kelvin. You wouldn't be challenging my professional qualifications, would you? Oh, Ruth, you know I didn't mean anything like that. Please don't misunderstand me, Kellogg begged, but this is highly specialised work. Yes, how many fuzzy specialists have you at Science Centre, Leonard? Rainsford wanted to know. The only one I can think of is Jack Holloway here. Well, I'd thought of Dr. Mallon, the company's head psychologist. He can come too, just as long as he understands that he'll have to have my permission for anything he wants to do with the fuzzies, Jack said. When can we expect you? Kellogg thought some time late the next afternoon. He didn't have to ask out to get to the camp. He made a few efforts to restore the conversation to its original note of cordiality, gave that up as a bad job, and blanked out. There was a brief silence in the living room, then he mayneth said reproachfully. You certainly weren't very gracious to Dr. Kellogg, Jack. Maybe you don't realise it, but he's a very important man. He isn't important to me, and I wasn't gracious to him at all. It doesn't pay to be gracious to people like that. If you are, they always try to take advantage of it. Why, I didn't know you knew, Len, Van Riebig said. I never saw the individual before. The species is very common and widely distributed. He turned to Rainsford. You think he and this mallon will be out tomorrow? Of course they will. This is a little too big for underlings and non-company people to be allowed to monkey with. You know, we'll have to watch out or in a year we'll be hearing from Terra about the discovery of a sapient race on Zarathustra, Fuzzy Fuzzy Kellogg. As Juan says, Dr. Kellogg is a very important man. That's how he got important.