lony altogether."

"You're a liar," said Pete shortly. "The Colonization Board makes no
production demands on the colonies. Nor does it farm out systems for
personal exploitation."

The captain smiled. "The Colonization Board, as you call it, has
undergone a slight reorganization," he said.

"_Reorganization!_ It's a top-level board in the Earth Government!
Nothing could reorganize it but a wholesale--" He broke off, his jaw
sagging as the implication sank in.

"You're rather out on a limb, you see," said the captain coolly. "Poor
communications and all that. The fact is that the entire Earth
Government has undergone a slight reorganization also."

* * * * *

The Dustie knew that something had happened.

Pete didn't know how he knew. The Dusties couldn't talk, couldn't make
_any_ noise, as far as Pete knew. But they always seemed to know when
something unusual was happening. It was wrong, really, to consider them
unintelligent animals. There are other sorts of intelligence than human,
and other sorts of communication, and other sorts of culture. The Baron
IV colonists had never understood the queer perceptive sense that the
Dusties seemed to possess, any more than they knew how many Dusties
there were, or what they ate, or where on the planet they lived. All
they knew was that when they landed on Baron IV, the Dusties were there.

At first the creatures had been very timid. For weeks the men and women,
busy with their building, had paid little attention to the skittering
brown forms that crept down from the rocky hills to watch them with big,
curious eyes. They were about half the size of men, and strangely
humanoid in appearance, not in the sense that a monkey is humanoid (for
they did _not_ resemble monkeys) but in some way the colonists could not
quite pin down. It may have been the way they walked around on their
long, fragile hind legs, the way they stroked their pointed chins as
they sat and watched and listened with their pointed ears lifted
alertly, watching with soft gray eyes, or the way they handled objects
with their little four-fingered hands. They were so remarkably
human-like in their elfin way that the colonists couldn't help but be
drawn to the creatures.

That whole first summer, when the colonists were building the village
and the landing groove for the ships, the Dusties were among them,
trying pathetically to help, so eager for friendship that even
occasiona