oodlights went
off and the whole thing broke up.

Gus Brannhard came in shortly afterward, starting to undress as soon as he
heeled the door shut after him. When he had his jacket and neckcloth off,
he dropped into a chair, filled a water tumbler with whisky, gulped half
of it and then began pulling off his boots.

"If that drink has a kid sister, I'll take it," Gerd muttered. "What
happened, Gus?"

Brannhard began to curse. "The whole thing's a fake; it stinks from here
to Nifflheim. It would stink _on_ Nifflheim." He picked up a cigar butt he
had laid aside when Fane's call had come in and relighted it. "We found
the woman who called the police. Neighbor; she says she saw Lurkin come
home drunk, and a little later she heard the girl screaming. She says he
beats her up every time he gets drunk, which is about five times a week,
and she'd made up her mind to stop it the next chance she got. She denied
having seen anything that even looked like a Fuzzy anywhere around."

The excitement of the night before had incubated a new brood of Fuzzy
reports; Jack went to the marshal's office to interview the people making
them. The first dozen were of a piece with the ones that had come in
originally. Then he talked to a young man who had something of different
quality.

"I saw them as plain as I'm seeing you, not more than fifty feet away," he
said. "I had an autocarbine, and I pulled up on them, but gosh, I couldn't
shoot them. They were just like little people, Mr. Holloway, and they
looked so scared and helpless. So I held over their heads and let off a
two-second burst to scare them away before anybody else saw them and shot
them."

"Well, son, I'd like to shake your hand for that. You know, you thought
you were throwing away a lot of money there. How many did you see?"

"Well, only four. I'd heard that there were six, but the other two could
have been back in the brush where I didn't see them."

He pointed out on the map where it had happened. There were three other
people who had actually seen Fuzzies; none were sure how many, but they
were all positive about locations and times. Plotting the reports on the
map, it was apparent that the Fuzzies were moving north and west across
the outskirts of the city.

Brannhard showed up for lunch at the hotel, still swearing, but half
amusedly.

"They've exhumed Ham O'Brien, and they've put him to work harassing us,"
he said. "Whole flock of civil suits and dangerous-nuisan