aren't our Fuzzies, Gerd. I never saw any of them before."

"Jack, are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" He was indignant. "Don't you think I know my own
Fuzzies? Don't you think they'd know me?"

"Where'd the pussy come from?" the corporal wanted to know.

"God knows. They must have picked it up somewhere. She was carrying it in
her arms, like a baby."

"They're somebody's Fuzzies. They've been fed Extee Three. We'll take them
to the hotel. Whoever it is, I'll bet he misses them as much as I do
mine."

His own Fuzzies, whom he would never see again. The full realization
didn't hit him until he and Gerd were in the car again. There had been no
trace of his Fuzzies from the time they had broken out of their cages at
Science Center. This quartet had appeared the night the city police had
manufactured the story of the attack on the Lurkin girl, and from the
moment they had been seen by the youth who couldn't bring himself to fire
on them, they had left a trail that he had been able to pick up at once
and follow. Why hadn't his own Fuzzies attracted as much notice in the
three weeks since they had vanished?

Because his own Fuzzies didn't exist any more. They had never gotten out
of Science Center alive. Somebody Max Fane hadn't been able to question
under veridication had murdered them. There was no use, any more, trying
to convince himself differently.

"We'll stop at their camp and pick up the blanket and the cushions and the
rest of the things. I'll send the people who lost them checks," he said.
"The Fuzzies ought to have those things."

XIII

The management of the Hotel Mallory appeared to have undergone a change of
heart, or of policy, toward Fuzzies. It might have been Gus Brannhard's
threats of action for racial discrimination and the possibility that the
Fuzzies might turn out to be a race instead of an animal species after
all. The manager might have been shamed by the way the Lurkin story had
crumbled into discredit, and influenced by the revived public sympathy for
the Fuzzies. Or maybe he just decided that the chartered Zarathustra
Company wasn't as omnipotent as he'd believed. At any rate, a large room,
usually used for banquets, was made available for the Fuzzies George Lunt
and Ben Rainsford were bringing in for the trial, and the four strangers
and their black-and-white kitten were installed there. There were a lot of
toys of different sorts, courtesy of the management, and a big view
s