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"Ruth, keep your mouth shut!" Mallin ordered. "The thing at-tacked Leonard; it
might have given him a serious wound."
"It did!" Still holding the wad of tissue to his nose with one hand, Kellogg
pulled up his trouser leg with the other and showed a scar on his shin. It
looked like a briar scratch. "You saw it yourself."
'Yes, I saw it. I saw you kick her and jump on her. And all she wanted was to
show you her new jingle."
Jack was beginning to regret that he hadn't shot Kellogg as soon as he saw
what was going on. The other
Fuzzies had been trying to get Goldilocks onto her feet. When they realized
that it was no use, they let the body down again and crouched in a circle
around it, making soft, lamenting sounds.
"Well, when the constabulary get here, you keep quiet," Mallin was saying.
"Let me do the talking."
"Intimidating witnesses, Mallin?" Gerd inquired. "Don't you know everybody'll
have to testify at the constabulary post under veridication? And you're
drawing pay for being a psychologist, too." Then he
saw some of the Fuzzies raise their heads and look toward the south-eastern
horizon. "Here come the cops, now."
However, it was Ben Rainsford's airjeep, with a zebralope carcass lashed along
one side. It circled the
Kellogg camp and then let down quickly; Rainsford jumped out as soon as it was
grounded, his pistol drawn.
"What happened, Jack?" he asked, then glanced around, from Goldilocks to
Kellogg to Borch to the pistol beside Borch's body. "I get it. Last time
anybody pulled a gun on you, they called it suicide."
"That's what this was, more or less. You have a movie camera in your jeep?
Well, get some shots of
Borch, and some of Goldilocks. Then stand by, and if the Fuzzies start doing
anything different, get it all.
I don't think you'll be disappointed."
Rainsford looked puzzled, but he holstered his pistol and went back to his
jeep, returning with a camera.
Mallin began insisting that, as a licensed M.D., he had a right to treat
Kellogg's injuries. Gerd van
Riebeek followed him into the living hut for a first-aid kit. They were just
emerging, van RiebeeMs automatic in the small of Mallin's back, when a
constabulary car grounded beside Rainsford's airjeep. It wasn't Car Three.
George Lunt jumped out, unsnapping the flap of his holster, while Ahmed Khadra
was talking into the radio.
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"What's happened, Jack? Why didn't you wait till we got here?"
"This maniac assaulted me and murdered that man over therel" Kellogg began
vociferating.
"Is your name Jack too?" Lunt demanded.
'My name's Leonard Kellogg, and I'm a chief of division with the Company."
"Then keep quiet till I ask you something. Ahmed, call the post; get Knabber
and Yorimitsu, with investigative equipment, and find Out what's tying up Car
Three."
Mallin had opened the first-aid kit by now; Gerd, on seeing the constabulary,
had holstered his pistol.
Kellogg, still holding the sod-den tissues to his nose, was wanting to know
what there was to in-vestigate.
"There's the murderer; you have him red-handed. Why don't you arrest him?"
"Jack, let's get over where we can watch these people without hav-ing to
listen to them," Lunt said. He glanced toward the body of Goldilocks. "That
happen first?"
"Watch out, Lieutenant! He still has his pistol!" Mallin shouted warningly.
They went over and sat down on the contragravity-field generator housing one
of the rented airjeeps.
Jack started with Gerd van Rie-beek's visit immediately after noon.
"Yes, I thought of that angle myself," Lunt said disgustedly. "I didn't think
of it till this morning, though, and I didn't think things would blow up as
fast as this. Hell, I just didn't think! Well, go on."
He interrupted a little later to ask: "Kellogg was stamping on the Fuzzy when
you hit him. You were trying to stop him?"
"That's right. You can veridicate me on that if you want to."
"I will; I'll veridicate this whole damn gang. And this guy Borch had his
heater out when you turned around? Nothing to it, Jack. We'll have to have
some kind of a hearing, but it's just plain self-defense.
Think any of this gang will tell the truth here, without taking them in and
putting them under veridication?"
"Ruth Ortheris will, I think."
"Send her over here, will you."
She was still with the Fuzzies, and Ben Rainsford was standing be-side her,
his camera ready. The
Fuzzies were still swaying and yeek-ing plaintively. She nodded and rose
without speaking, going over to where Lunt waited.
"Just what did happen, Jack?" Rainsford wanted to know. "And whose side is he
on?" He nodded toward van Riebeek, standing guard over Kellogg and Mallin, his
thumbs in his pistol belt.
"Ours. He's quit the Company."
Just as he was finishing, Car Three put in an appearance; he had to tell the
same story over again. The area in front of the Kellogg camp was getting
congested; he hoped Mike Hennen's labor gang would stay away for a while. Lunt
talked to van Riebeek when he had finished with Ruth, and then with Jimenez
and
Mallin and Kellogg. Then he and one of the men from Car Three came over to
where Jack and Rainsford were standing. Gerd van Riebeek joined them just as
Lunt was saying:
"Jack, Kellogg's made a murder complaint against you. I told him it was
self-defense, but he wouldn't listen. So, according to the book, I have to
arrest you."
"All right." He unbuckled his gun and handed it over. "Now, George, I herewith
make complaint and accusation against Leonard Kellogg, charging him with the
unlawful and unjustified killing of a sapient being, to wit, an aboriginal
native of the planet of Zarathustra commonly known as Goldilocks."
Lunt looked at the small battered body and the six mourners around it.
"But, Jack, they aren't legally sapient beings."
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"There is no such thing. A sapient being is a being on the mental level of
sapience, not a being that has been declared sapient."
"Fuzzies are sapient beings," Rainsford said. "That's the opinion of a
qualified xeno-naturalist."
"Two of them," Gerd van Riebeek said. "That is the body of a sapient being.
There's the man who killed her. Go ahead, Lieutenant, make your pinch."
"Hey! Wait a minute!"
The Fuzzies were rising, sliding their chopper-diggers under the body of
Goldilocks and lifting it on the steel shafts. Ben Rainsford was aiming his
camera as Cinderella picked up her sister's weapon and followed, carrying it;
the others carried the body toward the far corner of the clearing, away from
the camp. Rainsford kept just behind them, pausing to photograph and then
hurrying to keep up with them.
They set the body down. Mike and Mitzi and Cinderella began digging; the
others scattered to hunt for stones. Coming up behind them, George Lunt took [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]