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Colonial Marshal Max Fane was as heavy as Gus Brannhard and considerablyshorter. Wedged between them on the back seat of the marshal's car, JackHolloway contemplated the backs of the two uniformed deputies on the frontseat and felt a happy smile spread through him. Going to get his Fuzziesback. Little Fuzzy, and Ko-Ko, and Mike, and Mamma Fuzzy, and Mitzi, andCinderella; he named them over and imagined them crowding around him,happy to be back with Pappy Jack.
The car settled onto the top landing stage of the Company's ScienceCenter, and immediately a Company cop came running up. Gus opened thedoor, and Jack climbed out after him.
"Hey, you can't land here!" the cop was shouting. "This is for Companyexecutives only!"
Max Fane emerged behind them and stepped forward; the two deputies piledout from in front.
"The hell you say, now," Fane said. "A court order lands anywhere. Bringhim along, boys; we wouldn't want him to go and bump himself on acommunication screen anywhere."
The Company cop started to protest, then subsided and fell in between thedeputies. Maybe it was beginning to dawn on him that the Federation courtswere bigger than the chartered Zarathustra Company after all. Or maybe hejust thought there'd been a revolution.
Leonard Kellogg's--temporarily Ernst Mallin's--office was on the firstfloor of the penthouse, counting down from the top landing stage. Whenthey stepped from the escalator, the hall was crowded with office people,gabbling excitedly in groups; they all stopped talking as soon as they sawwhat was coming. In the division chief's outer office three or four girlsjumped to their feet; one of them jumped into the bulk of Marshal Fane,which had interposed itself between her and the communication screen. Theywere all shooed out into the hall, and one of the deputies was droppedthere with the prisoner. The middle office was empty. Fane took hisbadgeholder in his left hand as he pushed through the door to the inneroffice.
Kellogg's--temporarily Mallin's--secretary seemed to have preceded them bya few seconds; she was standing in front of the desk sputteringincoherently. Mallin, starting to rise from his chair, froze, hunchedforward over the desk. Juan Jimenez, standing in the middle of the room,seemed to have seen them first; he was looking about wildly as though forsome way of escape.
Fane pushed past the secretary and went up to the desk, showing Mallin hisbadge and then serving the papers. Mallin looked at him in bewilderment.
"But we're keeping those Fuzzies for Mr. O'Brien, the Chief Prosecutor,"he said. "We can't turn them over without his authorization."
"This," Max Fane said gently, "is an order of the court, issued by ChiefJustice Pendarvis. As for Mr. O'Brien, I doubt if he's Chief Prosecutorany more. In fact, I suspect that he's in jail. _And that_," he shouted,leaning forward as far as his waistline would permit and banging on thedesk with his fist, "_is where I'm going to stuff you, if you don't getthose Fuzzies in here and turn them over immediately!_"
If Fane had suddenly metamorphosed himself into a damnthing, it couldn'thave shaken Mallin more. Involuntarily he cringed from the marshal, andthat finished him.
"But I can't," he protested. "We don't know exactly where they are at themoment."
"You don't know." Fane's voice sank almost to a whisper. "You admit you'reholding them here, but you ... don't ... know ... where. _Now start overagain; tell the truth this time!_"
At that moment, the communication screen began making a fuss. RuthOrtheris, in a light blue tailored costume, appeared in it.
"Dr. Mallin, what _is_ going on here?" she wanted to know. "I just came infrom lunch, and a gang of men are tearing my office up. Haven't you foundthe Fuzzies yet?"
"What's that?" Jack yelled. At the same time, Mallin was almost screaming:"Ruth! Shut up! Blank out and get out of the building!"
With surprising speed for a man of his girth, Fane whirled and was infront of the screen, holding his badge out.
"I'm Colonel Marshal Fane. Now, young woman; I want you up here rightaway. Don't make me send anybody after you, because I won't like that andneither will you."
"Right away, Marshal." She blanked the screen.
Fane turned to Mallin. "Now." He wasn't bothering with vocal tricks anymore. "Are you going to tell me the truth, or am I going to run you in andput a veridicator on you? Where are those Fuzzies?"
"But I don't know!" Mallin wailed. "Juan, you tell him; you took charge ofthem. I haven't seen them since they were brought here."
Jack managed to fight down the fright that was clutching at him and gotcontrol of his voice.
"If anything's happened to those Fuzzies, you two are going to envy KurtBorch before I'm through with you," he said.
"All right, how about it?" Fane asked Jimenez. "Start with when you andHam O'Brien picked up the Fuzzies at Central Courts Building last night.
"Well, we brought them here. I'd gotten some cages fixed up for them,and--"
Ruth Ortheris came in. She didn't try to avoid Jack's eyes, nor did shetry to brazen it out with him. She merely nodded distantly, as thoughthey'd met on a ship sometime, and sat down.
"What happened, Marshal?" she asked. "Why are you here with thesegentlemen?"
"The court's ordered the Fuzzies returned to Mr. Holloway." Mallin was ina dither. "He has some kind a writ or something, and we don't know wherethey are."
"Oh, _no!_" Ruth's face, for an instant, was dismay itself. "Not when--"Then she froze shut.
"I came in about o-seven-hundred," Jimenez was saying, "to give them foodand water, and they'd broken out of their cages. The netting was brokenloose on one cage and the Fuzzy that had been in it had gotten out and letthe others out. They got into my office--they made a perfect shambles ofit--and got out the door into the hall, and now we don't know where theyare. And I don't know how they did any of it."
Cages built for something with no hands and almost no brains. Ever sinceKellogg and Mallin had come to the camp, Mallin had been hypnotizinghimself into the just-silly-little-animals doctrine. He must havesucceeded; last night he'd acted accordingly.
"We want to see the cages," Jack said.
"Yeah." Fane went to the outer door. "Miguel."
The deputy came in, herding the Company cop ahead of him.
"You heard what happened?" Fane asked.
"Yeah. Big Fuzzy jailbreak. What did they do, make little wooden pistolsand bluff their way out?"
"By God, I wouldn't put it past them. Come along. Bring Chummy along withyou; he knows the inside of this place better than we do. Piet, call in.We want six more men. Tell Chang to borrow from the constabulary if he hasto."
"Wait a minute," Jack said. He turned to Ruth. "What do you know aboutthis?"
"Well, not much. I was with Dr. Mallin here when Mr. Grego--I mean, Mr.O'Brien--called to tell us that the Fuzzies were going to be kept heretill the trial. We were going to fix up a room for them, but till thatcould be done, Juan got some cages to put them in. That was all I knewabout it till o-nine-thirty, when I came in and found everything in anuproar and was told that the Fuzzies had gotten loose during the night. Iknew they couldn't get out of the building, so I went to my office and labto start overhauling some equipment we were going to need with theFuzzies. About ten-hundred, I found I couldn't do anything with it, and myassistant and I loaded it on a pickup truck and took it to Henry Stenson'sinstrument shop. By the time I was through there, I had lunch and thencame back here."
He wondered briefly how a polyencephalographic veridicator would react tosome of those statements; might be a good idea if Max Fane found out.
"I'll stay here," Gus Brannhard was saying, "and see if I can get somemore truth out of these people."
"Why don't you screen the hotel and tell Gerd and Ben what's happened?" heasked. "Gerd used to work here; maybe he could help us hunt."
"Good idea. Piet, tell our re-enforcements to stop at the Mallory on theway and pick him up." Fane turned to Jimenez. "Come along; show us whereyou had these Fuzzies and how they got away."
* * * * *<
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"You say one of them broke out of his cage and then released the others,"Jack said to Jimenez as they were going down on the escalator. "Do youknow which one it was?"
Jimenez shook his head. "We just took them out of the bags and put theminto the cages."
That would be Little Fuzzy; he'd always been the brains of the family.With his leadership, they might have a chance. The trouble was that thisplace was full of dangers Fuzzies knew nothing about--radiation andpoisons and electric wiring and things like that. If they really hadescaped. That was a possibility that began worrying Jack.
On each floor they passed going down, he could glimpse parties of Companyemployees in the halls, armed with nets and blankets and other catchingequipment. When they got off Jimenez led them through a big room of glasscases--mounted specimens and articulated skeletons of Zarathustranmammals. More people were there, looking around and behind and even intothe cases. He began to think that the escape was genuine, and not just acover-up for the murder of the Fuzzies.
Jimenez took them down a narrow hall beyond to an open door at the end.Inside, the permanent night light made a blue-white glow; a swivel chairstood just inside the door. Jimenez pointed to it.
"They must have gotten up on that to work the latch and open the door," hesaid.
It was like the doors at the camp, spring latch, with a handle instead ofa knob. They'd have learned how to work it from watching him. Fane wastrying the latch.
"Not too stiff," he said. "Your little fellows strong enough to work it?"
He tried it and agreed. "Sure. And they'd be smart enough to do it, too.Even Baby Fuzzy, the one your men didn't get, would be able to figure thatout."
"And look what they did to my office," Jimenez said, putting on thelights.
They'd made quite a mess of it. They hadn't delayed long to do it, justthrown things around. Everything was thrown off the top of the desk. Theyhad dumped the wastebasket, and left it dumped. He saw that and chuckled.The escape had been genuine all right.
"Probably hunting for things they could use as weapons, and doing as muchdamage as they could in the process." There was evidently a pretty widestreak of vindictiveness in Fuzzy character. "I don't think they like you,Juan."
"Wouldn't blame them," Fane said. "Let's see what kind of a houdini theydid on these cages now."
The cages were in a room--file room, storeroom, junk room--behindJimenez's office. It had a spring lock, too, and the Fuzzies had draggedone of the cages over and stood on it to open the door. The cagesthemselves were about three feet wide and five feet long, with plywoodbottoms, wooden frames and quarter-inch netting on the sides and tops. Thetops were hinged, and fastened with hasps, and bolts slipped through thestaples with nuts screwed on them. The nuts had been unscrewed from fiveand the bolts slipped out; the sixth cage had been broken open from theinside, the netting cut away from the frame at one corner and bent back ina triangle big enough for a Fuzzy to crawl through.
"I can't understand that," Jimenez was saying. "Why that wire looks asthough 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 Fuzzieshid a knife out on them." He remembered how Little Fuzzy and Ko-Ko hadburrowed into the bedding in apparently unreasoning panic, and explainedabout the little spring-steel knives he had made. "I suppose he palmed itand hugged himself into a ball, as though he was scared witless, when theyput 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 toJimenez. "You people ought to be glad I'm ineligible for jury duty. Whydon'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 whathad been Leonard Kellogg's office. The last time he'd been here, Kellogghad had him on the carpet about that land-prawn business. Now Ernst Mallinwas sitting in Kellogg's chair, trying to look unconcerned and not makinga very good job of it. Gus Brannhard sprawled in an armchair, smoking acigar and looking at Mallin as he would look at a river pig when hedoubted whether it was worth shooting it or not. A uniformed deputy turnedquickly, then went back to studying an elaborate wall chart showing theinterrelation of Zarathustran mammals--he'd made the original of thatchart himself. And Ruth Ortheris sat apart from the desk and the threemen, smoking. She looked up and then, when she saw that he was lookingpast 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 thecellar, working up. Max is in the psychology lab, putting the Company copswho were on duty last night under veridication. They all claim, and theveridicator backs them up, that it was impossible for the Fuzzies to getout 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'spretty impressed with how they got out of those cages."
Ruth spoke. "Gerd, we didn't hurt them. We weren't going to hurt them atall. Juan put them in cages because we didn't have any other place forthem, but we were going to fix up a nice room, where they could playtogether...." Then she must have seen that he wasn't listening, andstopped, crushing out her cigarette and rising. "Dr. Mallin, if thesepeople haven't any more questions to ask me, I have a lot of work to do."
"You want to ask her anything, Gerd?" Brannhard inquired.
Once he had had something very important he had wanted to ask her. He wasglad, now, that he hadn't gotten around to it. Hell, she was so married tothe Company it'd be bigamy if she married him too.
"No, I don't want to talk to her at all."
She started for the door, then hesitated. "Gerd, I...." she began. Thenshe went out. Gus Brannhard looked after her, and dropped the ash of hiscigar on Leonard Kellogg's--now Ernst Mallin's--floor.
* * * * *
Gerd detested her, and she wouldn't have had any respect for him if hedidn't. She ought to have known that something like this would happen. Italways did, in the business. A smart girl, in the business, never gotinvolved with any one man; she always got herself four or five boyfriends,on all possible sides, and played them off one against another.
She'd have to get out of the Science Center right away. Marshal Fane wasquestioning people under veridication; she didn't dare let him get aroundto her. She didn't dare go to her office; the veridicator was in the labacross the hall, and that's where he was working. And she didn't dare--
Yes, she could do that, by screen. She went into an office down the hall;a dozen people recognized her at once and began bombarding her withquestions about the Fuzzies. She brushed them off and went to a screen,punching a combination. After a slight delay, an elderly man with athin-lipped, bloodless face appeared. When he recognized her, there was abrief look of annoyance on the thin face.
"Mr. Stenson," she began, before he could say anything: "That apparatus Ibrought to your shop this morning--the sensory-response detector--we'vemade a simply frightful mistake. There's nothing wrong with it whatever,and if anything's done with it, it may cause serious damage."
"I don't think I understand, Dr. Ortheris."
"Well, it was a perfectly natural mistake. You see, we're all at our wits'end here. Mr. Holloway and his lawyer and the Colonial Marshal are herewith an order from Judge Pendarvis for the return of those Fuzzies. Noneof us know what we're doing at all. Why the whole trouble with theapparatus was the fault of the operator. We'll have to have it backimmediately, all of it."
"I see, Dr. Ortheris." The old instrument maker looked worried. "But I'mafraid the apparatus has already gone to the workroom. Mr. Stephenson hasit now, and I can't get in touch with him at present. If the mistake canbe corrected, what do you want done?"
"Just hold it; I'll call or send for it."
She blanked th
e screen. Old Johnson, the chief data synthesist, tried todetain her with some question.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson. I can't stop now. I have to go over to CompanyHouse right away."
* * * * *
The suite at the Hotel Mallory was crowded when Jack Holloway returnedwith Gerd van Riebeek; it was noisy with voices, and the ventilators werelaboring to get rid of the tobacco smoke. Gus Brannhard, Ben Rainsford andBaby Fuzzy were meeting the press.
"Oh, Mr. Holloway!" somebody shouted as he entered. "Have you found themyet?"
"No; we've been all over Science Center from top to bottom. We know theywent down a few floors from where they'd been caged, but that's all. Idon't think they could have gotten outside; the only exit on the groundlevel's through a vestibule where a Company policeman was on duty, andthere's no way for them to have climbed down from any of the terraces orlanding stages."
"Well, Mr. Holloway, I hate to suggest this," somebody else said, "buthave you eliminated the possibility that they may have hidden in a trashbin and been dumped into the mass-energy converter?"
"We thought of that. The converter's underground, in a vault that can beentered only by one door, and that was locked. No trash was disposed ofbetween the time they were brought there and the time the search started,and everything that's been sent to the converter since has been checkedpiece by piece."
"Well, I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Holloway, and I know that everybodyhearing this will be glad, too. I take it you've not given up looking forthem?"
"Are we on the air now? No, I have not; I'm staying here in Mallorysportuntil I either find them or am convinced that they aren't in the city. AndI am offering a reward of two thousand sols apiece for their return to me.If you'll wait a moment, I'll have descriptions ready for you...."
* * * * *
Victor Grego unstoppered the refrigerated cocktail jug. "More?" he askedLeslie Coombes.
"Yes, thank you." Coombes held his glass until it was filled. "As you say,Victor, you made the decision, but you made it on my advice, and theadvice was bad."
He couldn't disagree, even politely, with that. He hoped it hadn't beenruinously bad. One thing, Leslie wasn't trying to pass the buck, andconsidering how Ham O'Brien had mishandled his end of it, he could havedone so quite plausibly.
"I used bad judgment," Coombes said dispassionately, as though discussingsome mistake Hitler had made, or Napoleon. "I thought O'Brien wouldn't tryto use one of those presigned writs, and I didn't think Pendarvis wouldadmit, publicly, that he signed court orders in blank. He's been severelycriticized by the press about that."
He hadn't thought Brannhard and Holloway would try to fight a court ordereither. That was one of the consequences of being too long in a seeminglyirresistible position; you didn't expect resistance. Kellogg hadn'texpected Jack Holloway to order him off his land grant. Kurt Borch hadthought all he needed to do with a gun was pull it and wave it around. AndJimenez had expected the Fuzzies to just sit in their cages.
"I wonder where they got to," Coombes was saying. "I understand theycouldn't be found at all in the building."
"Ruth Ortheris has an idea. She got away from Science Center before Fanecould get hold of her and veridicate her. It seems she and an assistanttook some apparatus out, about ten o'clock, in a truck. She thinks theFuzzies hitched a ride with her. I know that sounds rather improbable, buthell, everything else sounds impossible. I'll have it followed up. Maybewe can find them before Holloway does. They're not inside Science Center,that's sure." His own glass was empty; he debated a refill and votedagainst it. "O'Brien's definitely out, I take it?"
"Completely. Pendarvis gave him his choice of resigning or facingmalfeasance charges."
"They couldn't really convict him of malfeasance for that, could they?Misfeasance, maybe, but--"
"They could charge him. And then they could interrogate him underveridication about his whole conduct in office, and you know what theywould bring out," Coombes said. "He almost broke an arm signing hisresignation. He's still Attorney General of the Colony, of course; Nickissued a statement supporting him. That hasn't done Nick as much harm asO'Brien could do spilling what he knows about Residency affairs.
"Now Brannhard is talking about bringing suit against the Company, andhe's furnishing copies of all the Fuzzy films Holloway has to the newsservices. Interworld News is going hog-wild with it, and even the serviceswe control can't play it down too much. I don't know who's going to beprosecuting these cases; but whoever it is, he won't dare pull anypunches. And the whole thing's made Pendarvis hostile to us. I know, thelaw and the evidence and nothing but the law and the evidence, but theevidence is going to filter into his conscious mind through thishostility. He's called a conference with Brannhard and myself for tomorrowafternoon; I don't know what that's going to be like."