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 an inch in diameter.  There must have been some connection current in the ancient ocean that had swirled 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.  “Where 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 farther out into the woods, thought Jack.  Unbuckling his gun and dropping it onto the table, he went out to the kitchen.  Most of the Extee Three 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 sols’ worth of stones today.  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 micro-film 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 athwart it.  He put down more Extee Three and changed the water in the bowl before leaving for the diggings.  That day he found three more sunstones, 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 Extee Three in the kitchen was untouched.

Maybe the little fellow 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’d 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 had 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 had made for himself here, or how empty he was leaving it.