Maybe it was, at that.

Sipping his own cocktail, Gerd van Riebeek ignored, for a moment, the conversation in which he had become involved and eavesdropped on his wife and Claudette Pendarvis and Ernst Mallin and Ahmed Khadra and Sandra Glenn.

“Well, we want to keep them here for at least a week before we let people take them away,” the Chief Justice’s wife was saying. “You’ll have to stay with us for a day or so, Ruth, and help us teach them what to expect in their new homes.”

“You’re going to have to educate the people who adopt them,” Sandra Glenn said. “What to expect and what not to expect from Fuzzies. I think, evening classes. Language, for one thing.”

“You know,” Mallin said, “I’d like to take a few Fuzzies around through the other units of the sanatorium, to visit the patients. The patients here would like it. They don’t have an awful lot of fun, you know.”

That was new for Ernst Mallin. He never seemed to recall that Mallin had thought having fun was important, before. Maybe the Fuzzies had taught him that it was.

The group he was drinking with were Science Center and Public Health people. One of them, a woman gynecologist, was wondering what Chris Hoenveld had found out, so far.

“What can he find out?” Raynier, the pathologist, asked. “He only has the one specimen, and it probably isn’t there at all, it’s probably something in the mother’s metabolism. It might be radioactivity, but that would only produce an occasional isolated case, and from what you’ve seen, it seems to be a racial characteristic. I think you’ll find it in the racial dietary habits.”

“Land-prawns,” somebody suggested. “As far as I know, nothing else eats them but Fuzzies; that right, Gerd?”

“Yes. We always thought they had no natural enemies at all, till we found out about the Fuzzies. But it’s been our observation that Fuzzies won’t take anything that’ll hurt them.”

“They won’t take anything that gives them a bellyache or a hangover, no. They can establish a direct relationship there. But whatever caused this defective birth we were investigating, and I agree that that’s probably a common thing with Fuzzies, was something that acted on a level the Fuzzies couldn’t be aware of. I think there’s a good chance that eating land-prawns may be responsible.”

“Well, let’s find out. Put Chris Hoenveld to work on that.”

“You put him to work on it. Or get Victor Grego to; he won’t throw Grego out of his lab. Chris is sore enough about this Fuzzy business as it is.”

“Well, we’ll have to study more than one fetus. We have a hundred and fifty Fuzzies here, we ought to find something out…”

“Isolate all the pregnant females; get Mrs. Pendarvis to withhold them from adoption…”

“… may have to perform a few abortions…”

“… microsurgery; fertilized ova…”

That wasn’t what he and Ruth and Jack Holloway had had in mind, when they’d brought this lot to Mallorysport. But they had to find out; if they didn’t, in a few more generations there might be no more Fuzzies at all. If a few of them suffered, now…

Well, hadn’t poor Goldilocks had to be killed before the Fuzzies were recognized for the people they were?

“TITANIUM,” VICTOR GREGO said. “Now that’s interesting.”

“Is that all you can call it, Mr. Grego?” Dunbar, in the screen, demanded. “I call it impossible. I was checking up. Titanium, on this planet, is damn near as rare as calcium on Uller. It’s present, and that’s all; I’ll bet most of the titanium on Zarathustra was brought here in fabricated form between the time the planet was discovered and seven years ago when we got our steel-mill going.”

That was a big exaggeration, of course. It existed, but it was a fact that they’d never been able to extract it by any commercially profitable process, and on Zarathustra they used light-alloy steel for everything for which titanium was used elsewhere. So a little of it got picked up, as a trace-element, in wheat grown on Terra or on Odin, but it was useless to hope for it in Zarathustran wheat.

“It looks,” he said, “as though we’re stuck, Mal. Do you think Chris Hoenveld could synthesize that molecule? We could add it to the other ingredients…”

“He says he could — in six months to a year. He refuses to try unless you order him categorically to.”

“And by that time, we’ll have all the Extee-Three we want. Well, a lot of Fuzzies, including mine, are going to have to do without, then.”

He blanked the screen and lit a cigarette and looked at the globe of Zarathustra, which Henry Stenson had running on time again and which he could interpret like a clock. Be another hour till Sandra got back from the new Adoption Center; she’d have to pick up Diamond at Government House. And Leslie wouldn’t be in for cocktails this evening; he was over on Epsilon Continent, talking to people about things he didn’t want to discuss by screen. Ben Rainsford had finally gotten around to calling for an election for delegates to a constitutional convention, and they wanted to line up candidates of their own. It looked as though Mr. Victor Grego would have cocktails with the manager-in-chief of the Charterless Zarathustra Company, this evening. Might as well have them here.

Titanium, he thought disgustedly. It would be something like that. What was it they called the stuff? Oh, yes; the nymphomaniac metal; when it gets hot it combines with anything. An idea suddenly danced just out of reach. He stopped, halfway from the desk to the cabinet, his eyes closed. Then he caught it, and dashed for the communication screen, punching Malcolm Dunbar’s call combination.

It was a few minutes before Dunbar answered; he had his hat and coat on.

“I was just going out, Mr. Grego.”

“So I see. That man Vespi, the one who worked for Odin Dietetics; is he still around?”

“Why, no. He left twenty minutes ago, and I don’t know how to reach him right away.”

“No matter; get him in the morning. Listen, the pressure cookers, the ones you use to cook the farina for bulk-matter. What are they made of?”

“Why, light nonox-steel; our manufacture. Why?”

“Ask Vespi what they used for that purpose on Odin. Don’t suggest the answer, but see if it wasn’t titanium.”

Dunbar’s eyes widened. He’d heard about the chemical nymphomania of titanium, too.

“Sure; that’s what they’d use, there. And at Argentine Syntho-Foods, too. Listen, suppose I give the police an emergency-call request; they could find Joe in half an hour.”

“Don’t bother; tomorrow morning’s good enough. I want to try something first.”

He blanked the screen, and called Myra Fallada. She never left the office before he did.

“Myra; call out and get me five pounds of pure wheat farina, and be sure it’s made from Zarathustran wheat. Have it sent up to my apartment, fifteen minutes ago.”

“Fifteen minutes from now do?” she asked. “What’s it for; the Little Monster? All right, Mr. Grego.”

He forgot about the drink he was going to have with Mr. Victor Grego. You had a drink when the work was done, and there was still work to do.

THERE WAS CLATTERING in the kitchenette when Sandra Glenn brought Diamond into the Fuzzy-room. She opened the door between and looked through, and Diamond crowded past her knees for a look, too. Mr. Grego was cooking something, in a battered old stew pan she had never seen around the place before. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Hi, Sandra. Heyo, Diamond; use Fuzzyphone, Pappy Vic no get ear-thing.”

“What make do, Pappy Vic?” Diamond asked.

“That’s what I want to know, too.”

“Sandra, keep your fingers crossed; when this stuff’s done and has cooled off, we’re going to see how Diamond likes it. I think we have found out what’s the matter with that Extee-Three.”

“Estee-fee? You make Estee-fee? Real? Not like other?” Diamond wanted to know.