any prosecution against Jack Holloway is illegal.
And to make that contention stick, I shall have to say a great many words,
and produce a great deal of testimony, about the sapience of Fuzzies."

"It'll have to be expert testimony," Rainsford said. "The testimony of
psychologists. I suppose you know that the only psychologists on this
planet are employed by the chartered Zarathustra Company." He drank what
was left of his highball, looked at the bits of ice in the bottom of his
glass and then rose to mix another one. "I'd have done the same as you
did, Jack, but I still wish this hadn't happened."

"_Huh!_" Mamma Fuzzy looked up, startled by the exclamation. "What do you
think Victor Grego's wishing, right now?"

* * * * *

Victor Grego replaced the hand-phone. "Leslie, on the yacht," he said.
"They're coming in now. They'll stop at the hospital to drop Kellogg, and
then they're coming here."

Nick Emmert nibbled a canape. He had reddish hair, pale eyes and a wide,
bovine face.

"Holloway must have done him up pretty badly," he said.

"I wish Holloway'd killed him!" He blurted it angrily, and saw the
Resident General's shocked expression.

"You don't really mean that, Victor?"

"The devil I don't!" He gestured at the recorder-player, which had just
finished the tape of the hearing, transmitted from the yacht at
sixty-speed. "That's only a teaser to what'll come out at the trial. You
know what the Company's epitaph will be? _Kicked to death, along with a
Fuzzy, by Leonard Kellogg._"

Everything would have worked out perfectly if Kellogg had only kept his
head and avoided collision with Holloway. Why, even the killing of the
Fuzzy and the shooting of Borch, inexcusable as that had been, wouldn't
have been so bad if it hadn't been for that asinine murder complaint. That
was what had provoked Holloway's counter-complaint, which was what had
done the damage.

And, now that he thought of it, it had been one of Kellogg's people, van
Riebeek, who had touched off the explosion in the first place. He didn't
know van Riebeek himself, but Kellogg should have, and he had handled him
the wrong way. He should have known what van Riebeek would go along with
and what he wouldn't.

"But, Victor, they won't convict Leonard of murder," Emmert was saying.
"Not for killing one of those little things."

"'Murder shall consist of the deliberate and unjustified killing of any
sapient being, of any