Company
science division; we exchange information. And there's another Company man
I'd like to have hear it. Gerd van Riebeek. He's a general
xeno-naturalist, like me, but he's especially interested in animal
evolution."

"Why not? The Fuzzies are a scientific discovery. Discoveries ought to be
reported."

Little Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzi strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzy
jumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen. Fiddling with
the selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning. Mike and Mitzi
shrieked delightedly, like a couple of kids watching a horror show. They
knew, by now, that nothing in the screen could get out and hurt them.

"Would you mind if they came out here and saw the Fuzzies?"

"Why, the Fuzzies would love that. They like company."

Mamma and Baby and Ko-Ko came in, seemed to approve what was on the screen
and sat down to watch it. When the bell on the stove rang, they all got
up, and Ko-Ko jumped onto the chair and snapped the screen off. Ben
Rainsford looked at him for a moment.

"You know, I have married friends with children who have a hell of a time
teaching eight-year-olds to turn off screens when they're through watching
them," he commented.

* * * * *

It took an hour, after dinner, to get the whole story, from the first
little yeek in the shower stall, on tape. When he had finished, Ben
Rainsford made a few remarks and shut off the recorder, then looked at his
watch.

"Twenty hundred; it'll be seventeen hundred in Mallorysport," he said. "I
could catch Jimenez at Science Center if I called now. He usually works a
little late."

"Go ahead. Want to show him some Fuzzies?" He moved his pistol and some
other impedimenta off the table and set Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and
Baby upon it, then drew up a chair beside it, in range of the
communication screen, and sat down with Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko.
Rainsford punched out a wavelength combination. Then he picked up Baby
Fuzzy and set him on his head.

In a moment, the screen flickered and cleared, and a young man looked out
of it, with the momentary upward glance of one who wants to make sure his
public face is on straight. It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted,
group-integrated sort of face--the face turned out in thousands of copies
every year by the educational production lines on Terra.

"Why, Bennett, this is a pleasant surprise," he began. "I never expec--"
Then he ch