OFFICIALLY, ON ALL the half-thousand human-populated planets of
the Terran Federation, the date was September 14, 654 Atomic Era,
but on Zarathustra it was First Day, Year Zero, Anno Fuzzy.
It wasn’t the day that the Fuzzies were discovered—that
had been in early June, when old Jack Holloway had found a small
and unfamiliar being crouching in his shower stall at his camp up
Cold Creek Valley on Beta Continent. He had made friends with the
uninvited visitor and named him Little Fuzzy. A week later, four
more Fuzzies and a baby Fuzzy had moved in, and Bennett Rainsford,
then a field naturalist for the Institute of Xeno-Sciences, had
seen them. They were completely new to him, too. He named the order
Hollowayans, in honor of their discoverer, and called the genus
Fuzzy and the species Holloway’s Fuzzy: Fuzzy fuzzy
holloway.
Fuzzies were erect bipeds, two feet tall and weighing fifteen to
twenty pounds; their bodies were covered with silky golden fur.
They had five-fingered hands with opposable thumbs, large eyes set
close enough together for stereoscopic vision and vaguely humanoid
features. They seemed to know nothing of fire and, as far as
Holloway and Rainsford were able to determine, they were incapable
of speech. The fact that they spoke in the ultrasonic range was yet
to be discovered. They made a few artifacts, however, and their
reasoning ability amazed both men. As soon as he saw them,
Rainsford insisted that Jack tape an account of them.
Twenty-four hours later, a number of people had heard that tape.
One was Victor Grego, manager-in-chief of the Chartered Zarathustra
Company. If, as seemed probable, these Fuzzies were sapient beings,
Zarathustra automatically became a Class-IV inhabited planet. The
Company’s charter, conferring outright ownership of
Zarathustra as a Class-III uninhabited planet, would be just as
automatically void.
Grego’s instinct was to fight, and he was a resourceful,
resolute and ruthless fighter. He was not stupid, but some of his
subordinates were; a week later, everybody on the planet had heard
of the Fuzzies because a CZC executive named Leonard Kellogg was
facing trial for murder—defined as the unjustified killing of any
sapient being of any race whatsoever—for having kicked to death a
Fuzzy named Goldilocks. Jack Holloway was similarly charged for
having shot a Company gunman who had tried to interfere while he
was administering a beating to Kellogg. Both cases, scheduled to be
tried as one, would hinge on whether Fuzzies were sapient beings or
just cute little animals. On the docket, it was People of the
Colony of Zarathustra versus Kellogg and Holloway, but, beginning
with Holloway’s lawyer, Gus Brannhard, everybody was calling
it Friends of Little Fuzzy versus The Chartered Zarathustra
Company.
Little Fuzzy and his friends won, and when, on September 14,
Chief Justice Frederic Pendarvis rapped with his gavel after
reading what would go down in Federation legal history as the
Pendarvis Decisions, Zarathustra became a Class-IV inhabited
planet. The Space Navy had to take over until a new Colonial
Government could be set up, and Bennett Rainsford was appointed
Governor General. The Zarathustra Company’s charter was as
dead as the Code of Hammurabi.
And Fuzzy fuzzy holloway was now Fuzzy sapiens zarathustra.
OFFICIALLY, ON ALL the half-thousand human-populated planets of
the Terran Federation, the date was September 14, 654 Atomic Era,
but on Zarathustra it was First Day, Year Zero, Anno Fuzzy.
It wasn’t the day that the Fuzzies were discovered—that
had been in early June, when old Jack Holloway had found a small
and unfamiliar being crouching in his shower stall at his camp up
Cold Creek Valley on Beta Continent. He had made friends with the
uninvited visitor and named him Little Fuzzy. A week later, four
more Fuzzies and a baby Fuzzy had moved in, and Bennett Rainsford,
then a field naturalist for the Institute of Xeno-Sciences, had
seen them. They were completely new to him, too. He named the order
Hollowayans, in honor of their discoverer, and called the genus
Fuzzy and the species Holloway’s Fuzzy: Fuzzy fuzzy
holloway.
Fuzzies were erect bipeds, two feet tall and weighing fifteen to
twenty pounds; their bodies were covered with silky golden fur.
They had five-fingered hands with opposable thumbs, large eyes set
close enough together for stereoscopic vision and vaguely humanoid
features. They seemed to know nothing of fire and, as far as
Holloway and Rainsford were able to determine, they were incapable
of speech. The fact that they spoke in the ultrasonic range was yet
to be discovered. They made a few artifacts, however, and their
reasoning ability amazed both men. As soon as he saw them,
Rainsford insisted that Jack tape an account of them.
Twenty-four hours later, a number of people had heard that tape.
One was Victor Grego, manager-in-chief of the Chartered Zarathustra
Company. If, as seemed probable, these Fuzzies were sapient beings,
Zarathustra automatically became a Class-IV inhabited planet. The
Company’s charter, conferring outright ownership of
Zarathustra as a Class-III uninhabited planet, would be just as
automatically void.
Grego’s instinct was to fight, and he was a resourceful,
resolute and ruthless fighter. He was not stupid, but some of his
subordinates were; a week later, everybody on the planet had heard
of the Fuzzies because a CZC executive named Leonard Kellogg was
facing trial for murder—defined as the unjustified killing of any
sapient being of any race whatsoever—for having kicked to death a
Fuzzy named Goldilocks. Jack Holloway was similarly charged for
having shot a Company gunman who had tried to interfere while he
was administering a beating to Kellogg. Both cases, scheduled to be
tried as one, would hinge on whether Fuzzies were sapient beings or
just cute little animals. On the docket, it was People of the
Colony of Zarathustra versus Kellogg and Holloway, but, beginning
with Holloway’s lawyer, Gus Brannhard, everybody was calling
it Friends of Little Fuzzy versus The Chartered Zarathustra
Company.
Little Fuzzy and his friends won, and when, on September 14,
Chief Justice Frederic Pendarvis rapped with his gavel after
reading what would go down in Federation legal history as the
Pendarvis Decisions, Zarathustra became a Class-IV inhabited
planet. The Space Navy had to take over until a new Colonial
Government could be set up, and Bennett Rainsford was appointed
Governor General. The Zarathustra Company’s charter was as
dead as the Code of Hammurabi.
And Fuzzy fuzzy holloway was now Fuzzy sapiens zarathustra.