“Well, when the constabulary get here, you keep quiet,” Mallin was saying.  “Let me do the talking.”

“Intimidating witnesses, Mallin?” Gerd inquired.  “Don’t you know everybody’ll have to testify at the constabulary post under veridication?  And you’re drawing pay for being a psychologist, too.”  Then he saw some of the Fuzzies raise their heads and look toward the southeastern horizon.  “Here come the cops, now.”

However, it was Ben Rainsford’s airjeep, with a zebralope carcass lashed along one side.  It circled the Kellogg camp and then let down quickly; Rainsford jumped out as soon as it was grounded, his pistol drawn.

“What happened, Jack?” he asked, then glanced around, from Goldilocks to Kellogg to Borch to the pistol beside Borch’s body.  “I get it.  Last time anybody pulled a gun on you, they called it suicide.”

“That’s what this was, more or less.  You have a movie camera in your jeep?  Well, get some shots of Borch, and some of Goldilocks.  Then stand by, and if the Fuzzies start doing anything different, get it all.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

Rainsford looked puzzled, but he holstered his pistol and went back to his jeep, returning with a camera.  Mallin began insisting that, as a licensed M.D., he had a right to treat Kellogg’s injuries.  Gerd van Riebeek followed him into the living hut for a first-aid kit.  They were just emerging, van Riebeek’s automatic in the small of Mallin’s back, when a constabulary car grounded beside Rainsford’s airjeep.  It wasn’t Car Three.  George Lunt jumped out, unsnapping the flap of his holster, while Ahmed Khadra was talking into the radio.

“What’s happened, Jack?  Why didn’t you wait till we got here?”

“This maniac assaulted me and murdered that man over there!” Kellogg began vociferating.

“Is your name Jack too?” Lunt demanded.

“My name’s Leonard Kellogg, and I’m a chief of division with the Company—­”

“Then keep quiet till I ask you something.  Ahmed, call the post; get Knabber and Yorimitsu, with investigative equipment, and find out what’s tying up Car Three.”

Mallin had opened the first-aid kit by now; Gerd, on seeing the constabulary, had holstered his pistol.  Kellogg, still holding the sodden tissues to his nose, was wanting to know what there was to investigate.

“There’s the murderer; you have him red-handed.  Why don’t you arrest him?”

“Jack, let’s get over where we can watch these people without having to listen to them,” Lunt said.  He glanced toward the body of Goldilocks.  “That happen first?”

“Watch out, Lieutenant!  He still has his pistol!” Mallin shouted warningly.

They went over and sat down on the contragravity-field generator housing one of the rented airjeeps.  Jack started with Gerd van Riebeek’s visit immediately after noon.

“Yes, I thought of that angle myself,” Lunt said disgustedly.  “I didn’t think of it till this morning, though, and I didn’t think things would blow up as fast as this.  Hell, I just didn’t think!  Well, go on.”