m just as Lunt was saying:

"Jack, Kellogg's made a murder complaint against you. I told him it was
self-defense, but he wouldn't listen. So, according to the book, I have to
arrest you."

"All right." He unbuckled his gun and handed it over. "Now, George, I
herewith make complaint and accusation against Leonard Kellogg, charging
him with the unlawful and unjustified killing of a sapient being, to wit,
an aboriginal native of the planet of Zarathustra commonly known as
Goldilocks."

Lunt looked at the small battered body and the six mourners around it.

"But, Jack, they aren't legally sapient beings."

"There is no such thing. A sapient being is a being on the mental level of
sapience, not a being that has been declared sapient."

"Fuzzies are sapient beings," Rainsford said. "That's the opinion of a
qualified xeno-naturalist."

"Two of them," Gerd van Riebeek said. "That is the body of a sapient
being. There's the man who killed her. Go ahead, Lieutenant, make your
pinch."

"Hey! Wait a minute!"

The Fuzzies were rising, sliding their chopper-diggers under the body of
Goldilocks and lifting it on the steel shafts. Ben Rainsford was aiming
his camera as Cinderella picked up her sister's weapon and followed,
carrying it; the others carried the body toward the far corner of the
clearing, away from the camp. Rainsford kept just behind them, pausing to
photograph and then hurrying to keep up with them.

They set the body down. Mike and Mitzi and Cinderella began digging; the
others scattered to hunt for stones. Coming up behind them, George Lunt
took off his beret and stood holding it in both hands; he bowed his head
as the grass-wrapped body was placed in the little grave and covered.

Then, when the cairn was finished, he replaced it, drew his pistol and
checked the chamber.

"That does it, Jack," he said. "I am now going to arrest Leonard Kellogg
for the murder of a sapient being."

VIII

Jack Holloway had been out on bail before, but never for quite so much. It
was almost worth it, though, to see Leslie Coombes's eyes widen and
Mohammed Ali O'Brien's jaw drop when he dumped the bag of sunstones,
blazing with the heat of the day and of his body, on George Lunt's
magisterial bench and invited George to pick out twenty-five thousand
sols' worth. Especially after the production Coombes had made of posting
Kellogg's bail with one of those precertified Company checks.

He looked at the whisky bottle