The two lawyers had risen hastily when Chief Justice Pendarvis entered; he responded to their greetings and seated himself at his desk, reaching for the silver cigar box and taking out a panatela. Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard picked up the cigar he had laid aside and began on it; Leslie Coombes took a cigarette from his case. They both looked at him, waiting like two weapons—a battle ax and a rapier.  
“Well, gentlemen, as you know, we have a couple of homicide cases and nobody to them,” he began.
 
“Why bother, your Honor?” Coombes asked. “Both charges are completely . One man killed a wild animal, and the other killed a man who was trying to kill him.”
 
“Well, your Honor, I don’t believe my client is guilty of anything, legally or morally,” Brannhard said. “I want that established by an acquittal.” He looked at Coombes. “I should think Mr. Coombes would be just as anxious to have his client cleared of any of murder, too.”
 
“I am quite agreed. People who have been charged with crimes ought to have public if they are innocent. Now, in the first place, I planned to hold the Kellogg trial first, and then the Holloway trial. Are you both satisfied with that arrangement?”
 
“Absolutely not, your Honor,” Brannhard said . “The whole basis of the Holloway is that this man Borch was killed in commission of a felony. We’re prepared to prove that, but we don’t want our case prejudiced by an earlier trial.”
 
Coombes laughed. “Mr. Brannhard wants to clear his client by preconvicting mine. We can’t agree to anything like that.”
 
“Yes, and he is making the same objection to trying your client first. Well, I’m going to remove both objections. I’m going to order the two cases combined, and both tried together.”
 
A glow of unholy glee on Gus Brannhard’s face; Coombes didn’t like the idea at all.
 
“Your Honor, I trust that that suggestion was only made facetiously,” he said.
 
“It wasn’t, Mr. Coombes.”
 
“Then if your Honor will not hold me in contempt for saying so, it is the most shockingly irregular—I won’t go so far as to say improper—trial procedure I’ve ever heard of. This is not a case of charged with the same crime; this is a case of two men charged with different criminal acts, and the conviction of either would mean the almost automatic acquittal of the other. I don’t know who’s going to be named to take Mohammed O’Brien’s place, but I pity him from the bottom of my heart. Why, Mr. Brannhard and I could go off somewhere and play while the would smash the case to pieces.”
 
“Well, we won’t have just one prosecutor, Mr. Coombes, we will have two. I’ll swear you and Mr. Brannhard in as special , and you can prosecute Mr. Brannhard’s client, and he yours. I think that would remove any further objections.”
 
It was all he could do to keep his face grave and unmirthful. Brannhard was almost purring, like a big tiger that had just gotten the better of a young goat; Leslie Coombes’s was beginning to slightly at the edges.
 
“Your Honor, that is a most excellent suggestion,” Brannhard declared. “I will prosecute Mr. Coombes’s client with the greatest pleasure in the universe.”
 
“Well, all I can say, your Honor, is that if the first proposal was the most irregular I had ever heard, the record didn’t last long!”
 
“Why, Mr. Coombes, I went over the law and the rules of jurisprudence very carefully, and I couldn’t find a word that could be as such a procedure.”
 
“I’ll bet you didn’t find any for it either!”
 
Leslie Coombes should have known better than that; in colonial law, you can find a precedent for almost anything.
 
“How much do you bet, Leslie?” Brannhard asked, a gleam in his eye.
 
“Don’t let him take your money away from you. I found, inside an hour, sixteen , from twelve different planetary .”
 
“All right, your Honor,” Coombes capitulated. “But I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re turning a couple of cases of the People of the Colony into a common civil .”
 
Gus Brannhard laughed. “What else is it?” he demanded. “Friends of Little Fuzzy The chartered Zarathustra Company; I’m bringing action as friend of aborigines for recognition of , and Mr. Coombes, on behalf of the Zarathustra Company, is contesting to preserve the Company’s charter, and that’s all there is or ever was to this case.”
 
That was impolite of Gus. Leslie Coombes had wanted to go on to the end pretending that the Company charter had absolutely nothing to do with it.
 
There was an unending stream of reports of Fuzzies seen here and there, often in impossibly distant parts of the city. Some were from seekers and pathological and crackpots; some were the result of honest mistakes or overimaginativeness. There was some reason to suspect that not a few had originated with the Company, to confuse the search. One thing did come to light which heartened Holloway. An intensive if search was being made by the Company police, and by the Mallorysport police department, which the Company controlled.
 
Max Fane was giving every available moment to the hunt. This wasn’t because of ill will for the Company, though that was present, nor because the Chief Justice was riding him. The Colonial Marshal was pro-Fuzzy. So were the Colonial Constabulary, over whom Nick Emmert’s administration seemed to have little if any authority. Colonel Ian Ferguson, the commandant, had his appointment direct from the Colonial Office on Terra. He had called by screen to offer his help, and George Lunt, over on Beta, screened daily to learn what progress was being made.
 
Living at the Hotel Mallory was expensive, and Jack had to sell some sunstones. The Company buyers were barely civil to him; he didn’t try to be civil at all. There was also a noticeable coolness toward him at the bank. On the other hand, on several occasions, Space Navy officers and ratings down from Xerxes Base went out of their way to him, introduce themselves, shake hands with him and give him their best wishes.
 
Once, in one of the weather-domed business centers, an elderly man with white hair showing under his black beret greeted him.
 
“Mr. Holloway I want to tell you how grieved I am to learn about the of those little people of yours,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to help you, but I hope they turn up safely.”
 
“Why, thank you, Mr. Stenson.” He shook hands with the old master instrument . “If you could make me a pocket veridicator, to use on some of these people who claim they saw them, it would be a big help.”
 
“Well, I do make rather small portable veridicators for the constabulary, but I think what you need is an instrument for detection of psychopaths, and that’s slightly beyond science at present. But if you’re still for sunstones, I have an improved micro-ray scanner I just developed, and….”
 
He walked with Stenson to his shop, had a cup of tea and looked at the scanner. From Stenson’s screen, he called Max Fane. Six more people had claimed to have seen the Fuzzies.
 
Within a week, the films taken at the camp had been shown so freq............