n half hoping and half afraid would happen."

"You mean an excuse to intervene in that mess down there?" Greibenfeld
asked.

Ybarra looked blankly at him for a moment. "No. No, I meant a case of
borderline sapience; something our sacred talk-and-build-a-fire rule won't
cover. Just how did this come to our attention, Stephen?"

"Well, it was transmitted to us from Contact Center in Mallorysport late
Friday night. There seem to be a number of copies of this tape around; our
agent got hold of one of them and transmitted it to Contact Center, and it
was relayed on to us, with the agent's comments," Aelborg said. "Contact
Center ordered a routine surveillance inside Company House and, to play
safe, at the Residency. At the time, there seemed no reason to give the
thing any beat-to-quarters-and-man-guns treatment, but we got a report on
Saturday afternoon--Mallorysport time, that is--that Leonard Kellogg had
played off the copy of the tape that Juan Jimenez had made for file, and
had alerted Victor Grego immediately.

"Of course, Grego saw the implications at once. He sent Kellogg and the
chief Company psychologist, Ernst Mallin, out to Beta Continent with
orders to brand Rainsford's and Holloway's claims as a deliberate hoax.
Then the Company intends to encourage the trapping of Fuzzies for their
fur, in hopes that the whole species will be exterminated before anybody
can get out from Terra to check on Rainsford's story."

"I hadn't heard that last detail before."

"Well, we can prove it," Aelborg assured him.

It sounded like a Victor Grego idea. He lit his pipe slowly. Damnit, he
didn't want to have to intervene. No Space Navy C.O. did. Justifying
intervention on a Colonial planet was too much bother--always a board of
inquiry, often a courtmartial. And supersession of civil authority was
completely against Service Doctrine. Of course, there were other and more
important tenets of Service Doctrine. The sovereignty of the Terran
Federation for one, and the inviolability of the Federation Constitution.
And the rights of extraterrestrials, too. Conrad Greibenfeld, too, seemed
to have been thinking about that.

"If those Fuzzies are sapient beings, that whole setup down there is
illegal. Company, Colonial administration and all," he said.
"Zarathustra's a Class-IV planet, and that's all you can make out of it."

"We won't intervene unless we're forced to. Pancho, I think the decision
will be largely up to you."

Pan