t," Jimenez was saying. "Why that wire looks as
though it had been cut."

"It was cut. Marshal, I'd pull somebody's belt about this, if I were you.
Your men aren't very careful about searching prisoners. One of the Fuzzies
hid a knife out on them." He remembered how Little Fuzzy and Ko-Ko had
burrowed into the bedding in apparently unreasoning panic, and explained
about the little spring-steel knives he had made. "I suppose he palmed it
and hugged himself into a ball, as though he was scared witless, when they
put him in the bag."

"Waited till he was sure he wouldn't get caught before he used it, too,"
the marshal said. "That wire's soft enough to cut easily." He turned to
Jimenez. "You people ought to be glad I'm ineligible for jury duty. Why
don't you just throw it in and let Kellogg cop a plea?"

* * * * *

Gerd van Riebeek stopped for a moment in the doorway and looked into what
had been Leonard Kellogg's office. The last time he'd been here, Kellogg
had had him on the carpet about that land-prawn business. Now Ernst Mallin
was sitting in Kellogg's chair, trying to look unconcerned and not making
a very good job of it. Gus Brannhard sprawled in an armchair, smoking a
cigar and looking at Mallin as he would look at a river pig when he
doubted whether it was worth shooting it or not. A uniformed deputy turned
quickly, then went back to studying an elaborate wall chart showing the
interrelation of Zarathustran mammals--he'd made the original of that
chart himself. And Ruth Ortheris sat apart from the desk and the three
men, smoking. She looked up and then, when she saw that he was looking
past and away from her, she lowered her eyes.

"You haven't found them?" he asked Brannhard.

The fluffy-bearded lawyer shook his head. "Jack has a gang down in the
cellar, working up. Max is in the psychology lab, putting the Company cops
who were on duty last night under veridication. They all claim, and the
veridicator backs them up, that it was impossible for the Fuzzies to get
out of the building."

"They don't know what's impossible, for a Fuzzy."

"That's what I told him. He didn't give me any argument, either. He's
pretty impressed with how they got out of those cages."

Ruth spoke. "Gerd, we didn't hurt them. We weren't going to hurt them at
all. Juan put them in cages because we didn't have any other place for
them, but we were going to fix up a nice room, where they could play
toget