“Damned if I can.  You hear that, kids?” he asked Mike and Mitzi, who had come over in hope that there might be goodies for them.  “Uncle Ben says you’re sapient.”

“Yeek?”

“They want to know if it’s good to eat.  What’ll happen now?”

“Nothing, for about a year.  Six months from now, when the ship gets in, the Institute will release it to the press, and then they’ll send an investigation team here.  So will any of the other universities or scientific institutes that may be interested.  I suppose the government’ll send somebody, too.  After all, subcivilized natives on colonized planets are wards of the Terran Federation.”

He didn’t know that he liked that.  The less he had to do with the government the better, and his Fuzzies were wards of Pappy Jack Holloway.  He said as much.

Rainsford picked up Mitzi and stroked her.  “Nice fur,” he said.  “Fur like that would bring good prices.  It will, if we don’t get these people recognized as sapient beings.”

He looked across the run at the new camp and wondered.  Maybe Leonard Kellogg saw that, too, and saw profits for the Company in Fuzzy fur.

* * * * *

The airjeeps returned in the middle of the afternoon, first Mallin’s, and then Kellogg’s.  Everybody went inside.  An hour later, a constabulary car landed in front of the Kellogg camp.  George Lunt and Ahmed Khadra got out.  Kellogg came outside, spoke with them and then took them into the main living hut.  Half an hour later, the lieutenant and the trooper emerged, lifted their car across the run and set it down on the lawn.  The Fuzzies ran to meet them, possibly expecting more whistles, and followed them into the living room.  Lunt and Khadra took off their berets, but made no move to unbuckle their gun belts.

“We got your package off all right Ben,” Lunt said.  He sat down and took Goldilocks on his lap; immediately Cinderella jumped up, also.  “Jack, what the hell’s that gang over there up to anyhow?”

“You got that, too?”

“You can smell it on them for a mile, against the wind.  In the first place, that Borch.  I wish I could get his prints; I’ll bet we have them on file.  And the whole gang’s trying to hide something, and what they’re trying to hide is something they’re scared of, like a body in a closet.  When we were over there, Kellogg did all the talking; anybody else who tried to say anything got shut up fast.  Kellogg doesn’t like you, Jack and he doesn’t like Ben, and he doesn’t like the Fuzzies.  Most of all he doesn’t like the Fuzzies.”

“Well, I told you what I thought this morning,” Rainsford said.  “They don’t want outsiders discovering things on this planet.  It wouldn’t make them look good to the home office on Terra.  Remember, it was some non-Company people who discovered the first sunstones, back in ’Forty-eight.”

George Lunt looked thoughtful.  On him, it was a scowl.