in his hand, and then reached into the
cupboard for another one. One for Gus Brannhard, and one for the rest of
them. There was a widespread belief that that was why Gustavus Adolphus
Brannhard was practicing sporadic law out here in the boon docks of a
boon-dock planet, defending gun fighters and veldbeest rustlers. It
wasn't. Nobody on Zarathustra knew the reason, but it wasn't whisky.
Whisky was only the weapon with which Gus Brannhard fought off the memory
of the reason.

He was in the biggest chair in the living room, which was none too ample
for him; a mountain of a man with tousled gray-brown hair, his broad face
masked in a tangle of gray-brown beard. He wore a faded and grimy bush
jacket with clips of rifle cartridges on the breast, no shirt and a torn
undershirt over a shag of gray-brown chest hair. Between the bottoms of
his shorts and the tops of his ragged hose and muddy boots, his legs were
covered with hair. Baby Fuzzy was sitting on his head, and Mamma Fuzzy was
on his lap. Mike and Mitzi sat one on either knee. The Fuzzies had taken
instantly to Gus. Bet they thought he was a Big Fuzzy.

"Aaaah!" he rumbled, as the bottle and glass were placed beside him. "Been
staying alive for hours hoping for this."

"Well, don't let any of the kids get at it. Little Fuzzy trying to smoke
pipes is bad enough; I don't want any dipsos in the family, too."

Gus filled the glass. To be on the safe side, he promptly emptied it into
himself.

"You got a nice family, Jack. Make a wonderful impression in court--as
long as Baby doesn't try to sit on the judge's head. Any jury that sees
them and hears that Ortheris girl's story will acquit you from the box,
with a vote of censure for not shooting Kellogg, too."

"I'm not worried about that. What I want is Kellogg convicted."

"You better worry, Jack," Rainsford said. "You saw the combination against
us at the hearing."

Leslie Coombes, the Company's top attorney, had come out from Mallorysport
in a yacht rated at Mach 6, and he must have crowded it to the limit all
the way. With him, almost on a leash, had come Mohammed Ali O'Brien, the
Colonial Attorney General, who doubled as Chief Prosecutor. They had both
tried to get the whole thing dismissed--self-defense for Holloway, and
killing an unprotected wild animal for Kellogg. When that had failed, they
had teamed in flagrant collusion to fight the inclusion of any evidence
about the Fuzzies. After all it was only a co