“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 to.  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.  Mamma Fuzzy, and Baby Fuzzy.  And these are Mike and Mitzi.  I call this one Ko-Ko, 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’s 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 advance guard; we’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 set 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 highballs 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 some of his highball, 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 Jimenez?  He’s chief mammalogist with the Company science division; we exchange information.  And there’s another Company man I’d like to have hear it.  Gerd van Riebeek.  He’s a general xeno-naturalist, like me, but he’s especially interested in animal evolution.”

“Why not?  The Fuzzies are a scientific discovery.  Discoveries ought to be reported.”

Little Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzi strolled in from the kitchen.  Little Fuzzy jumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen.  Fiddling with the selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning.  Mike and Mitzi 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.