“You won’t hurt any Fuzzies.  Not more than once, anyhow.”

* * * * *

The next morning, during breakfast, Kellogg and Kurt Borch put in an appearance, Borch wearing old clothes and field boots and carrying his pistol on his belt.  They had a list of things they thought they would need for their camp.  Neither of them seemed to have more than the foggiest notion of camp requirements.  Jack made some suggestions which they accepted.  There was a lot of scientific equipment on the list, including an X-ray machine.  He promptly ran a pencil line through that.

“We don’t know what these Fuzzies’ level of radiation tolerance is.  We’re not going to find out by overdosing one of my Fuzzies.”

Somewhat to his surprise, neither of them gave him any argument.  Gerd and Ruth and Kellogg borrowed his airjeep and started north; he and Borch went across the run to make measurements after Rainsford and Jimenez arrived and picked up Mallin.  Borch took off soon after with the boat for Red Hill.  Left alone, he loafed around the camp, and developed the rest of the movie film, making three copies of everything.  Toward noon, Borch brought the boat back, followed by a couple of scowlike farmboats.  In a few hours, the Company construction men from Red Hill had the new camp set up.  Among other things, they brought two more air jeeps.

The two jeeps returned late in the afternoon, everybody excited.  Between them, the parties had seen almost a hundred Fuzzies, and had found three camps, two among rocks and one in a hollow pool-ball tree.  All three had been spotted by belts of filled-in toilet pits around them; two had been abandoned and the third was still occupied.  Kellogg insisted on playing host to Jack and Rainsford for dinner at the camp across the run.  The meal, because everything had been brought ready-cooked and only needed warming, was excellent.

Returning to his own camp with Rainsford, Jack found the Fuzzies finished with their evening meal and in the living room, starting a new construction—­he could think of no other name for it—­with the molecule-model balls and sticks.  Goldilocks left the others and came over to him with a couple of balls fastened together, holding them up with one hand while she pulled his trouser leg with the other.

“Yes, I see.  It’s very beautiful,” he told her.

She tugged harder and pointed at the thing the others were making.  Finally, he understood.

“She wants me to work on it, too,” he said.  “Ben, you know where the coffee is; fix us a pot.  I’m going to be busy here.”

He sat down on the floor, and was putting sticks and balls together when Ben brought in the coffee.  This was more fun than he’d had in a couple of days.  He said so while Ben was distributing Extee Three to the Fuzzies.

“Yes, I ought to let you kick me all around the camp for getting this started,” Rainsford said, pouring the coffee.  “I could make some excuses, but they’d all sound like ‘I didn’t know it was loaded.’”