“Mr. Brannhard will be more than happy to oblige, Commander,” Gus said loudly and distinctly.

Coombes sat down hastily.

“Well, Lieutenant Ortheris, this is most interesting, but at the moment, what we’re trying to establish is how these Fuzzies got to Xerxes Naval Base,” the chubby associate justice, Ruiz, put in.

“I’ll try to get them there as quickly as possible, your Honor,” she said.  “On the night of Friday the twenty-second, the Fuzzies were taken from Mr. Holloway and brought into Mallorysport; they were turned over by Mohammed O’Brien to Juan Jimenez, who took them to Science Center and put them in cages in a room back of his office.  They immediately escaped.  I found them, the next morning, and was able to get them out of the building, and to turn them over to Commander Aelborg, who had come down from Xerxes to take personal charge of the Fuzzy operation.  I will not testify as to how I was able to do this.  I am at present and was then an officer of the Terran Federation Armed Forces; the courts have no power to compel a Federation officer to give testimony involving breach of military security.  I was informed, through my contact in Mallorysport, from time to time, of the progress of the work of measuring the Fuzzies’ mental level there; I was able to pass on suggestions occasionally.  Any time any of these suggestions was based on ideas originating with Dr. Mallin, I was careful to give him full credit.”

Mallin looked singularly unappreciative.

Brannhard got up.  “Before this witness is excused, I’d like to ask if she knows anything about four other Fuzzies, the ones found by Jack Holloway up Ferny Creek on Friday.”

“Why, yes; they’re my Fuzzies, and I was worried about them.  Their names are Complex, Syndrome, Id and Superego.”

“Your Fuzzies, Lieutenant?”

“Well, I took care of them and worked with them; Juan Jimenez and some Company hunters caught them over on Beta Continent.  They were kept at a farm center about five hundred miles north of here, which had been vacated for the purpose.  I spent all my time with them, and Dr. Mallin was with them most of the time.  Then, on Monday night, Mr. Coombes came and got them.”

“Mr. Coombes, did you say?” Gus Brannhard asked.

“Mr. Leslie Coombes, the Company attorney.  He said they were needed in Mallorysport.  It wasn’t till the next day that I found out what they were needed for.  They’d been turned loose in front of that Fuzzy hunt, in the hope that they would be killed.”

She looked across at Coombes; if looks were bullets, he’d have been deader than Kurt Borch.

“Why would they sacrifice four Fuzzies merely to support a story that was bound to come apart anyhow?” Brannhard asked.

“That was no sacrifice.  They had to get rid of those Fuzzies, and they were afraid to kill them themselves for fear they’d be charged with murder along with Leonard Kellogg.  Everybody, from Ernst Mallin down, who had anything to do with them was convinced of their sapience.  For one thing, we’d been using those hearing aids ourselves; I suggested it, after getting the idea from Xerxes.  Ask Dr. Mallin about it, under veridication.  Ask him about the multiordinal polyencephalograph experiments, too.”