Gus wanted to busy him with something, so he wouldn’t have to watch what was going on.  The smaller of the two deputies had dropped the bundle from under his arm.  It was a number of canvas sacks.  He sat down at the typewriter, closing his ears to the noises in the room, and wrote the receipt, naming the Fuzzies and describing them, and specifying that they were in good health and uninjured.  One of them tried to climb to his lap, yeeking frantically; it clutched his shirt, but it was snatched away.  He was finished with his work before the invaders were with theirs.  They had three Fuzzies already in sacks.  Khadra was catching Cinderella.  Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy had run for the little door in the outside wall, but Lunt was standing with his heels against it, holding it shut; when they saw that, both of them began burrowing in the bedding.  The third trooper and the smaller of the two deputies dragged them out and stuffed them into sacks.

He got to his feet, still stunned and only half comprehending, and took the receipt out of the typewriter.  There was an argument about it; Lunt told the deputies to sign it or get the hell out without the Fuzzies.  They signed, inked their thumbs and printed after their signatures.  Jack gave the paper to Gus, trying not to look at the six bulging, writhing sacks, or hear the frightened little sounds.

“George, you’ll let them have some of their things, won’t you?” he asked.

“Sure.  What kind of things?”

“Their bedding.  Some of their toys.”

“You mean this junk?” The smaller of the two deputies kicked the ball-and-stick construction.  “All we got orders to take is the Fuzzies.”

“You heard the gentleman.”  Lunt made the word sound worse than son of a Khooghra.  He turned to the two deputies.  “Well, you have them; what are you waiting for?”

Jack watched from the door as they put the sacks into the aircar, climbed in after them and lifted out.  Then he came back and sat down at the table.

“They don’t know anything about court orders,” he said.  “They don’t know why I didn’t stop it.  They think Pappy Jack let them down.”

“Have they gone, Jack?” Brannhard asked.  “Sure?” Then he rose, reaching behind him, and took up a little ball of white fur.  Baby Fuzzy caught his beard with both tiny hands, yeeking happily.

“Baby!  They didn’t get him!”

Brannhard disengaged the little hands from his beard and handed him over.

“No, and they signed for him, too.”  Brannhard downed what was left of his drink, got a cigar out of his pocket and lit it.  “Now, we’re going to go to Mallorysport and get the rest of them back.”

“But....  But the Chief Justice signed that order.  He won’t give them back just because we ask him to.”

Brannhard made an impolite noise.  “I’ll bet everything I own Pendarvis never saw that order.  They have stacks of those things, signed in blank, in the Chief of the Court’s office.  If they had to wait to get one of the judges to sign an order every time they wanted to subpoena a witness or impound physical evidence, they’d never get anything done.  If Ham O’Brien didn’t think this up for himself, Leslie Coombes thought it up for him.”