“It neutralizes NFM _p , and it inhibits the glandular action that produces it,” Ybarra was saying. “But we can’t administer it environmentally; we have to supply it to every individual Fuzzy, male and female. Viable births only occur when both parents have gotten plenty of it prior to conception.”

The Fuzzies who lived among humans would get plenty of it, but the ones who tried to shift for themselves in the woods wouldn’t. The very thing he wanted to avoid, dependence on humans, would be selected for genetically, just as a taste for land-prawns had been. The countdown for the Fuzzy race had been going on for a thousand generations, ten little Fuzzies, nine little Fuzzies, eight little Fuzzies. He didn’t know how many more generations until it would be no little Fuzzies if they didn’t do something now.

“Don’t worry about the next generation, Jack,” Ruth said. “Just be glad there’ll be one.”

LESLIE COOMBES LAID his cigarette in the ashtray and picked up his cocktail, sipping slowly. As he did so, he gave an irrationally apprehensive glance at the big globe of the planet floating off the floor on its own contragravity, spotlighted by a simulated sun and rotating slowly, its two satellites, Xerxes and Darius, orbiting about it. Darius still belonged outright to the Company, even after the Pendarvis Decisions. Xerxes never had; it had been reserved by the Federation as a naval base when the old Company had been chartered. The evening shadow-line had just touched the east coast of Alpha Continent and was approaching the spot that represented Mallorysport.

Victor Grego caught the involuntary glance and laughed.

“Still nervous about it, Leslie? It’s had its teeth pulled.”

Yes, after it had been too late, after the Fuzzy Trial, when they had realized that every word spoken in Grego’s private office had been known to Naval Intelligence, and that Henry Stenson, who had built it, had been a Federation undercover agent. There had been a microphone and a midget radio transmitter inside. Stenson had planted a similar set in a bartending robot at the Residency, which was why the former Resident General, Nick Emmert, was now aboard a destroyer bound for Terra, to face malfeasance charges. Coombes wondered how many more of those things Stenson had strewn about Mallorysport; he’d almost dismantled his own apartment looking in vain for one, and he still wasn’t sure.

“It wouldn’t matter, anyhow,” Grego continued. “We’re all friends now. Aren’t we, Diamond?”

The Fuzzy on Grego’s chair-arm snuggled closer to him, pleased at being included in the Big One conversation.

“Tha’s ri’; everybody friend. Pappy Vic, Pappy Jack, Unka Less’ee, Unka Gus, Pappy Ben, Flora, Fauna…” He went on naming all the people, Fuzzies and Big Ones, who were friends. It was a surprising list; only a few months ago nobody but a lunatic would have called Jack Holloway and Bennett Rainsford and Gus Brannhard friends of his and Victor Grego’s. “Everybody friend now. Everything nice.”

“Everything nice,” Coombes agreed. “For the time being, at least. Victor, you’re getting Fuzzyfuzz all over your coat.”

“Who cares? It’s my coat, and it’s my Fuzzy, and besides, I don’t think he’s shedding now.”

“And all bad Big Ones gone to jail-place,” Diamond said. “Not make trouble, anymore. What is like, jail-place? Is like dark dirty place where bad Big Ones put Fuzzies?”

“Something like that,” Grego told the Fuzzy.

The trouble was, they hadn’t put all the bad Big Ones in jail. They hadn’t been able to prove anything against Hugo Ingermann, and that left a bad taste in his mouth. And it reminded him of something.

“Did you find the rest of those sunstones, Victor?”

Grego shook his head. “No. At first I thought the Fuzzies must have lost them in the ventilation system, but we put robo-snoopers through all the ducts and didn’t find anything. Then Harry Steefer thought some of his cops had held out on him, but we questioned everybody under veridication and nobody knew anything. I don’t know where in Nifflheim they are.”

“A quarter-million sols isn’t exactly sparrow-fodder, Victor.”

“Almost. Wait till we get enough men and equipment in at Yellowsand Canyon; we’ll be taking out twice that in a day. My God, Leslie; you ought to see that place! It’s fantastic.”

“All I’d see would be a lot of rock. I’ll take your word for it.”

“There’s this layer of sunstone flint, averaging two hundred feet thick, all along the face of the Divide for eight and a half miles west of the canyon and better than ten miles east of it; it runs back four miles before it tapers out. Of course, there’s a couple of hundred feet of sandstone on top of it that’ll have to be stripped off, but we’ll just shove that down into the canyon. It won’t, really, be as much of a job as draining Big Blackwater was. Are the agreements ready to sign?”

“Yes. The general agreement obligates the Company to continue all the services performed by the old chartered company; in return, the Government agrees to lease us all the unseated public lands declared public domain by the Pendarvis Decisions, except the area north of the Little Blackwater and the north branch of the Snake River, the Fuzzy Reservation. The special agreement gives us a lease on the tract around the Yellowsand Canyon; we pay four-fifty sols for every carat weight of thermofluorescent sunstones we take out, the money to be administered for the Fuzzies by the Government. Both agreements for nine hundred and ninety-nine years.”

“Or until adjudged invalid by the court.”

“Oh, yes; I got that inserted everywhere I could stick it. The only thing I’m worried about now is how much trouble the Terra-side stock-holders of the late Chartered Zarathustra Company may give us.”

“Well, they have an equity of some sort, as individuals,” Grego admitted. “But there simply is no Chartered Zarathustra Company.”

“I can’t be positive. The Chartered Loki Company was dissolved by court order, for violation of Federation law. The stockholders lost completely. The Chartered Uller Company was taken over by the Government after the Uprising, in 526; the Government simply confirmed General von Schlichten as governor-general and payed off the stockholders at face value. And when the Chartered Fenris Company went bankrupt, the planet was taken over by some of the colonists, and the stockholders, I believe, were paid two and a quarter centisols on the sol. Those are the only precedents, and none of them applies here.” He drank some more of his cocktail. “I shall have to go to Terra myself to represent the new Charterless Zarathustra Company, Ltd., of Zarathustra.”

“I’ll hate to see you go.”

“Thank you, Victor. I’m not looking forward to it, myself.” Six months aboard ship would be almost as bad as a jail sentence. And then at least a year on Terra, getting things straightened out and engaging a law firm in Kapstaad or Johannesburg to handle the long litigation that would ensue. “I hope to be back in a couple of years. I doubt if I shall enjoy reaccustoming myself to life on our dear mother planet.” He finished what was in his glass and held it up. “May I have another cocktail, Victor?”

“Why, surely.” Grego finished his own drink. “Diamond, you please go give Unka Less’ee koktel-drinko. Bring koktel-drinko for Pappy Vic, too.”

“Hokay.”

Diamond jumped down from the chair-arm and ran to get the cocktail jug. Leaning forward, Coombes held his glass down where Diamond could reach it; the Fuzzy filled it to the brim without spilling a drop.

“Thank you, Diamond.”

“Welcome, Unka Less’ee,” Diamond replied just as politely, and carried the jug to fill Pappy Vic’s glass.

He didn’t pour a drink for himself. He’d had a drink, once, and had never forgotten the hangover it gave him; he didn’t want another like it. Maybe that was one of the things Ernst Mallin meant when he said Fuzzies were saner than Humans.