III

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 whisky and bringing it in to 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, “Yeeek.” 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 mustache. Soon all of them were climbing onto 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 yeeked emphatically; that was a word he recognized. He took them all into the kitchen and tried them on cold roast veldbeest and yummiyams 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 zebralope. Then there was a small coup de poing ax, rather low paleolithic, and a chipped implement of 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 shells, evidently drinking vessels.

Mamma 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 yeeking happily. Mamma jumped off his lap and joined the free-for-all, and then Baby took off from his head and landed on Mamma’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 waken 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 ax 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 Fuzzies’ own things away from them than he had 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 artifacts away in the desk drawer. Start of the Holloway Collection of Zarathustran Fuzzy Weapons and Implements. Maybe he’d will it to the Federation Institute of Xeno-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 had never made before. He had to do it a second time before Jack got it.

There was a large and unpleasant carnivore, called a damnthing—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 yummiyam he had 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 gunrack.

This time, instead of the 6-mm he had used on the harpy, he lifted down a big 12.7 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 damnthing 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 damnthing charging him from behind, head down, and middle horn lowered. He should have thought of that; damnthings 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 damnthing 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 damnthing 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 damnthing away from the camp and drop it into a treetop, where it would furnish a welcome if puzzling treat 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-onto-things with the wide-mouthed 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 gunrack. This must be something far more serious than a damnthing, 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 aircar klaxon before.

The car settled onto the grass in front of the camp, gave a slight lurch and went off contragravity. Two men in uniform got out, and in the moonlight he recognized both of them: Lieutenant George Lunt and his driver, Ahmed Khadra. He called a greeting to them.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

“No; 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 veldbeest herders from the south, who had 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 awhile. 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 Khadra stopped 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, “Yeek?”

“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. Khadra followed his example promptly. That meant that they considered themselves temporarily off duty and would accept a drink if one were offered. A Fuzzy was pulling at Ahmed Khadra’s trouser leg and asking to be noticed, and Mamma Fuzzy was holding Baby up to show to Lunt. Khadra, rather hesitantly, picked up the Fuzzy 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 Mamma 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 enough to know some of the things that have happened—”

“They are not a strange life form; they are Zarathustran mammals. The same life form you’ve had for dinner every day since you came here. Their biochemistry’s identical with ours. Think they’ll give you the Polka-Dot Plague, or something?” He put Little Fuzzy 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,” Khadra put in. “Jack’s been around enough to know.”

“Well…. They are cute little fellows.” Lunt lifted Baby down off his head and gave him back to Mamma. Little Fuzzy had gotten hold of the chain of his whistle and was trying to find out what was on the other end. “Bet they’re 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 whisky when Little Fuzzy 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 Extee Three for the Fuzzies, as he did, another whistle in the living room began blowing.

“We have a whole shoebox full of them at the post,” Lunt yelled to him above the din. “We’ll just write these two off as expended in service.”

“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 Khadra had the drinks mixed and he had distributed the Extee Three 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 Extee Three 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 Cordilleras 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 Khadra were looking at each other in amazement.

“That’s it!” Khadra said. “I’ve 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 do 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 Khadra 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 Extee Three, the Fuzzies were looking expectantly at the viewscreen, 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 had vacated, 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 pickup on one of the steel towers the veldbeest herders used. That wasn’t very interesting; he twiddled the selector and finally got a night soccer game at Mallorysport. That was just fine; he jumped down and joined the others in front of the screen.

“I’ve seen Terran monkeys and Freyan Kholphs 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.

“Kholphs are smart,” Khadra agreed. “They use 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 had come right out and said that; the first time he had even consciously thought it. He realized that he had 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 Khadra 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, yes. 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 sometime 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 Khadra the first thing tomorrow, to make sure they hadn’t picked up some kind of bug. Lg4xzcuzaf7ejGHQQJIiC5ht6pMz8wG6zvwhD8sbuBVUQwHTGXlQezLRvEORG88R