“Would you mind if they came out here and saw the Fuzzies?”

“Why, the Fuzzies would love that.  They like company.”

Mamma and Baby and Ko-Ko 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 Ko-Ko 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 had 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 Mallorysport,” he said.  “I could catch Jimenez at Science Center if I called now.  He usually works a little late.”

“Go ahead.  Want to show him some Fuzzies?” He moved his pistol and some other impedimenta off the table and set Little Fuzzy and Mamma 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 Ko-Ko.  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, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face—­the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.

“Why, Bennett, this is a pleasant surprise,” he began.  “I never expec—­” Then he choked; at least, he emitted a sound of surprise.  “What in the name of Dai-Butsu 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 Mamma’s arms.  “Species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra.  The gentleman on my left is Jack Holloway, the sunstone operator, who is the original discoverer.  Jack, Juan 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.