“Drink before we eat?” he asked.
“Oh, Lord, yes! I’ve just about had it for today.”
He guided her toward one of the bartending machines, inserted his credit key, and put a four-portion jug under the spout, dialing the cocktail they always had when they drank together. As he did, he noticed what she was wearing: short black jacket, lavender neckerchief, light gray skirt. Not her usual vacation get-up.
“School department drag you back?” he asked as the jug filled.
“Juvenile court.” She got a couple of glasses from the shelf under the machine as he picked up the jug. “A fifteen-year-old burglar.”
They found a table at the rear of the room, out of the worst of the cocktail-hour uproar. As soon as he filled her glass, she drank half of it, then lit a cigarette.
“Junktown?” he asked.
She nodded. “Only twenty-five years since this planet was discovered, and we have slums already. I was over there most of the afternoon, with a pair of city police.” She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. “What were you doing today?”
“Ruth, you ought to ask Doc Mallin to drop in on Leonard Kellogg sometime, and give him an unobstrusive going over.”
“You haven’t been having trouble with him again?” she asked anxiously.
He made a face, and then tasted his drink. “It’s trouble just being around that character. Ruth, to use one of those expressions your profession deplores, Len Kellogg is just plain nuts!” He drank some more of his cocktail and helped himself to one of her cigarettes. “Here,” he continued, after lighting it. “A couple of days ago, he told me he’d been getting inquiries about this plague of land-prawns they’re having over on Beta. He wanted me to set up a research project to find out why and what to do about it.”
“Well?”
“I did. I made two screens calls, and then I wrote a report and sent it up to him. That was where I jerked my trigger; I ought to have taken a couple of weeks and made a real production out of it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The facts. The limiting factor on land-prawn increase is the weather. The eggs hatch underground and the immature prawns dig their way out in the spring. If there’s been a lot of rain, most of them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge. According to growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta Piedmont in centuries, so most of them survived, and as they’re parthenogenetic females, they all laid eggs. This spring, it was even drier, so now they have land-prawns all over central Beta. And I don’t know that anything can be done about them.”
“Well, did he think you were just guessing?”
He shook his head in exasperation. “I don’t know what he thinks. You’re the psychologist, you try to figure it. I sent him that report yesterday morning. He seemed quite satisfied with it at the time. Today, just after noon, he sent for me and told me it wouldn’t do at all. Tried to insist that the rainfall on Beta had been normal. That was silly; I referred him to his meteorologists and climatologists, where I’d gotten my information. He complained that the news services were after him for an explanation. I told him I’d given him the only explanation there was. He said he simply couldn’t use it. There had to be some other explanation.”
“If you don’t like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts, dream up some you do like,” she said. “That’s typical rejection of reality. Not psychotic, not even psychoneurotic. But certainly not sane.” She had finished her first drink and was sipping slowly at her second. “You know, this is interesting. Does he have some theory that would disqualify yours?”
“Not that I know of. I got the impression that he just didn’t want the subject of rainfall on Beta discussed at all.”
“That is odd. Has anything else peculiar been happening over on Beta lately?”
“No. Not that I know of,” he repeated. “Of course, that swamp-drainage project over there was what caused the dry weather, last year and this year, but I don’t see…” His own glass was empty, and when he tilted the jug over it, a few drops trickled out. He looked at his watch. “Think we could have another cocktail before dinner?” he asked.
CHAPTER TWO
JACK HOLLOWAY LANDED the manipulator in front of the cluster of prefab huts. For a moment he sat still, realizing that he was tired, and then he climbed down from the control cabin and crossed the open grass to the door of the main living hut, opening it and reaching in to turn on the lights. Then he hesitated, looking up at Darius.
There was a wide ring around it, and he remembered noticing the wisps of cirrus clouds gathering overhead through the afternoon. Maybe it would rain tonight. This dry weather couldn’t last forever. He’d been letting the manipulator stand out overnight lately. He decided to put it in the hangar. He went and opened the door of the vehicle shed, got back onto the machine and floated it inside. When he came back to the living hut, he saw that he had left the door wide open.
“Damn fool!” he rebuked himself. “Place could be crawling with prawns by now.”
He looked quickly around the living room — under the big combination desk and library table, under the gunrack, under the chairs, back of the communication screen and the viewscreen, beyond the metal cabinet of the microfilm library — and saw nothing. Then he hung up his hat, took off his pistol and laid it on the table, and went back to the bathroom to wash his hands.
As soon as he put on the light, something inside the shower stall said, “Yeeeek!” in a startled voice.
He turned quickly, to see two wide eyes staring up at him out of a ball of golden fur. Whatever it was, it had a round head and big ears and a vaguely humanoid face with a little snub nose. It was sitting on its haunches, and in that position it was about a foot high. It had two tiny hands with opposing thumbs. He squatted to have a better look at it.
“Hello there, little fellow,” he greeted it. “I never saw anything like you before. What are you anyhow?”
The small creature looked at him seriously and said, “Yeek,” in a timid voice.
“Why, sure; you’re a Little Fuzzy, that’s what you are.”
He moved closer, careful to make no alarmingly sudden movements, and kept on talking to it.
“Bet you slipped in while I left the door open. Well, if a Little Fuzzy finds a door open, I’d like to know why he shouldn’t come in and look around.”
He touched it gently. It started to draw back, then reached out a little hand and felt the material of his shirtsleeve. He stroked it, and told it that it had the softest, silkiest fur ever. Then he took it on his lap. It yeeked in pleasure, and stretched an arm up around his neck.
“Why, sure; we’re going to be good friends, aren’t we? Would you like something to eat? Well, suppose you and I go see what we can find.”
He put one hand under it, to support it like a baby — at least, he seemed to recall having seen babies supported in that way; babies were things he didn’t fool with if the could help it — and straightened. It weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds. At first, it struggled in panic, and then quieted and seemed to enjoy being carried. In the living room he sat down in his favorite armchair, under a standing lamp, and examined his new acquaintance.
It was a mammal — there was a fairly large mammalian class on Zarathustra, but beyond that he was stumped. It wasn’t a primate, in the Terran sense. It wasn’t like anything Terran, or anything else on Zarathustra. Being a biped put it in a class by itself for this planet. It was just a Little Fuzzy, and that was the best he could do.
That sort of nomenclature was the best anybody could do on a Class-III planet. On a Class IV planet, say Loki, or Shesha, or Thor, naming animals was a cinch. You pointed to something and asked a native, and he’d gargle a mouthful of syllables at you, which might only mean, “Whaddaya wanna know for?” and you took it down in phonetic alphabet and the whatzit had a name. But on Zarathustra there were no natives to ask. So this was a Little Fuzzy.
“What would you like to eat, Lit
tle Fuzzy?” he asked. “Open your mouth, and let Pappy Jack see what you have to chew with.”
Little Fuzzy’s dental equipment, allowing for the fact that his jaw was rounder, was very much like his own.
“You’re probably omnivorous. How would you like some nice Terran Federation Space Forces Emergency Ration, Extraterrestrial, Type Three?” he asked.
Little Fuzzy made what sounded like an expression of willingness to try it. It would be safe enough; Extee-Three had been fed to a number a Zarathustran mammals without ill effects. He carried Little Fuzzy out into the kitchen and put him on the floor, then got out a tin of the field ration and opened it, breaking off a small piece and handing it down. Little Fuzzy took the piece of golden-brown cake, sniffed at it, gave it a delighted yeek and crammed the whole piece in his mouth.
“You never had to live on that stuff and nothing else for a month, that’s for sure!”
He broke the cake in half and broke one half into manageable pieces and put it down on a saucer. Maybe Little Fuzzy would want a drink, too. He started to fill a pan with water, as he would for a dog, then looked at his visitor sitting on his haunches eating with both hands and changed his mind. He rinsed a plastic cup cap from an empty whisky bottle and put it down beside a deep bowl of water. Little Fuzzy was thirsty, and he didn’t have to be shown what the cup was for.
It was too late to get himself anything elaborate; he found some leftovers in the refrigerator and combined them into a stew. While it was heating, he sat down at the kitchen table and lit his pipe. The spurt of flame from the lighter opened Little Fuzzy’s eyes, but what really awed him was Pappy Jack blowing smoke. He sat watching this phenomenon, until, a few minutes later, the stew was hot and the pipe was laid aside; then Little Fuzzy went back to nibbling Extee Three.
Suddenly he gave a yeek of petulance and scampered into the living room. In a moment, he was back with something elongated and metallic which he laid on the floor beside him.
“What have you got there, Little Fuzzy? Let Pappy Jack see?”
Then he recognized it as his own one-inch wood chisel. He remembered leaving it in the outside shed after doing some work about a week ago, and not being able to find it when he had gone to look for it. That had worried him; people who got absent-minded about equipment didn’t last long in the wilderness. After he finished eating and took the dishes to the sink, he went over and squatted beside his new friend.
“Let Pappy Jack look at it, Little Fuzzy,” he said. “Oh, I’m not going to take it away from you. I just want to see it.”
The edge was dulled and nicked; it had been used for a lot of things wood chisel oughtn’t to be used for. Digging, and prying, and most likely, it had been used as a weapon. It was a handy-sized, all-purpose tool for a Little Fuzzy. He laid it on the floor where he had gotten it and started washing the dishes.
Little Fuzzy watched him with interest for a while, and then he began investigating the kitchen. Some of the things he wanted to investigate had to be taken away from him; at first that angered him, but he soon learned that there were things he wasn’t suppose to have. Eventually, the dishes got washed.
There were more things to investigate in the living room. One of them was the wastebasket. He found that it could be dumped, and promptly dumped it, pulling out everything that hadn’t fallen out. He bit a corner off a sheet of paper, chewed on it and spat it out in disgust. Then he found that crumpled paper could be flattened out and so he flatted a few sheets, and then discovered that it could also be folded. Then he got himself gleefully tangled in a snarl of worn-out recording tape. Finally he lost interest and started away. Jack caught him and brought him back.
“No, Little Fuzzy,” he said. “You do not dump wastebaskets and then walk away from them. You put things back in.” He touched the container and said, slowly and distinctly, “Waste… basket.” Then he righted it, doing it as Little Fuzzy would have to, and picked up a piece of paper, tossing it in from Little Fuzzy’s shoulder height. Then he handed Little Fuzzy a wad of paper and repeated, “Waste… basket.”
Little Fuzzy looked at him and said something that sounded as though it might be: “What’s the matter with you, Pappy; you crazy or something?” After a couple more tries, however, he got it, and began throwing things in. In a few minutes, he had everything back in except a brightly colored plastic cartridge box and a wide-mouthed bottle with a screw cap. He held these up and said, “Yeek?”
“Yes, you can have them. Here; let Pappy Jack show you something.”
He showed Little Fuzzy how the box could be opened and shut. Then, holding it where Little Fuzzy could watch, he unscrewed the cap and then screwed it on again.
“There, now. You try it.”
Little Fuzzy looked up inquiringly, then took the bottle, sitting down and holding it between his knees. Unfortunately, he tried twisting it the wrong way and only screwed the cap on tighter. He yeeked plaintively.
“No, go ahead. You can do it.”
Little Fuzzy look at the bottle again. Then he tried twisting the cap the other way, and it loosened. He gave a yeek that couldn’t possibly be anything but “Eureka!” and promptly took it off, holding it up. After being commended, he examined both the bottle and the cap, feeling the threads, and then screwed the cap back on again.
“You know, you’re a smart Little Fuzzy.” It took a few seconds to realize just how smart. Little Fuzzy had wondered why you twist the cap one way to take it off and the other way to put it on, and he had found out. For pure reasoning ability, that topped anything in the way of animal intelligence he’d ever seen. “I’m going to tell Ben Rainsford about you.”
Going to the communication screen, he punched out the wave-length combination of the naturalist’s camp, seventy miles down Snake River from the mouth of Cold Creek. Rainsford’s screen must have been on automatic; it lit as soon as he was through punching. There was a card set up in front of it, lettered:
away on trip, back the fifteenth. recorder on.
“Ben, Jack Holloway,” he said. “I just ran into something interesting.” He explained briefly what it was. “I hope he stays around till you get back. He’s totally unlike anything I’ve ever seen on this planet.”
Little Fuzzy was disappointed when Jack turned off the screen; that had been interesting. He picked him up and carried him over to the armchair, taking him on his lap.
“Now,” he said, reaching for the control panel of the viewscreen. “Watch this; we’re going to see something nice.”
When he put on the screen, at random, he got a view, from close up, of the great fires that were raging where the Company people were burning off the dead forests on what used to be Big Blackwater Swamp. Little Fuzzy cried out in alarm, flung his arms around Pappy Jack’s neck and buried his face in the bosom of his shirt. Well, forest fires started from lightning sometimes, and they’d be bad things for a Little Fuzzy. He worked the selector and got another pickup, this time on the top of Company House in Mallorysport, three time zones west, with the city spread out below and the sunset blazing in the west. Little Fuzzy stared at it in wonder. It was pretty impressive for a little fellow who’d spent all his life in the big woods.
So was the spaceport, and a lot of other things he saw, though a view of the planet as a whole from Darius puzzled him considerably. Then, in the middle of a symphony orchestra concert from Mallorysport Opera House, he wriggled loose, dropped to the floor and caught up his wood chisel, swinging it back over his shoulder like a two-handed sword.
“What the devil? Oh-oh!”
A land-prawn, which must have gotten in while the door was open, was crossing the living room. Little Fuzzy ran after and past it, pivoted and brought the corner of the chisel edge down on the prawn’s neck, neatly beheading it. He looked at his victim for a moment, then slid the chisel under it and flopped it over on its back, slapping it twice with the flat and cracking the undershell. Then he began pulling the dead prawn apart, tearing pieces of meat and eating them delicat
ely. After disposing of the larger chunks, he used the chisel to chop off one of the prawn’s mandibles to use as a pick to get the less accessible morsels. When he had finished, he licked his fingers clean and started back to the armchair.
“No.” Jack pointed at the prawn shell. “Wastebasket.”
“Yeek?”
“Wastebasket.”
Little Fuzzy gathered up the bits of shell, putting them where they belonged. Then he came back and climbed up on Pappy Jack’s lap, and looked at things in the screen until he fell asleep.
Jack lifted him carefully and put him down on the warm chair seat without wakening him, then went to the kitchen, poured himself a drink and brought it in to the big table, where he lit his pipe and began writing up his diary for the day. After a while, Little Fuzzy woke, found that the lap he had gone to sleep on had vanished, and yeeked disconsolately.
A folded blanket in one corner of the bedroom made a satisfactory bed, once Little Fuzzy had assured himself that there were no bugs in it. He brought in his bottle and his plastic box and put them on the floor beside it. Then he ran to the front door in the living room and yeeked to be let out. Going about twenty feet from the house, he used the chisel to dig a small hole, and after it had served its purpose he filled it in carefully and came running back.
Well, maybe Fuzzies were naturally gregarious, and were homemakers — den-holes, or nests, or something like that. Nobody wants messes made in the house, and when the young ones did it, their parents would bang them around to teach them better manners. This was Little Fuzzy’s home now; he knew how he ought to behave in it.
THE NEXT MORNING at daylight, he was up on the bed, trying to dig Pappy Jack out from under the blankets. Besides being a most efficient land-prawn eradicator, he made a first-rate alarm clock. But best of all, he was Pappy Jack’s Little Fuzzy. He wanted out; this time Jack took his movie camera and got the whole operation on film. One thing, there’d have to be a little door, with a spring to hold it shut, that Little Fuzzy could operate himself. That was designed during breakfast. It only took a couple of hours to make and install it; Little Fuzzy got the whole idea as soon as he saw it, and figured out how to work it for himself.
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