The next day he cracked flint, and found three more stones. It really
looked as though he had found the Dying Place of the Jellyfish at that. He
knocked off early that afternoon, and when he came in sight of the camp,
he saw an airjeep grounded on the lawn and a small man with a red beard in
a faded Khaki bush-jacket sitting on the bench by the kitchen door,
surrounded by Fuzzies. There was a camera and some other equipment laid up
where the Fuzzies couldn't get at it. Baby Fuzzy, of course, was sitting
on his head. He looked up and waved, and then handed Baby to his mother
and rose to his feet.
"Well, what do you think of them, Ben?" Jack called down, as he grounded
the manipulator.
"My God, don't start me on that now!" Ben Rainsford replied, and then
laughed. "I stopped at the constabulary post on the way home. I thought
George Lunt had turned into the biggest liar in the known galaxy. Then I
went home, and found your call on the recorder, so I came over here."
"Been waiting long?"
The Fuzzies had all abandoned Rainsford and come trooping over as soon as
the manipulator was off contragravity. He climbed down among them, and
they followed him across the grass, catching at his trouser legs and
yeeking happily.
"Not so long." Rainsford looked at his watch. "Good Lord, three and half
hours is all. Well, the time passed quickly. You know, your little fellows
have good ears. They heard you coming a long time before I did."
"Did you see them killing any prawns?"
"I should say! I got a lot of movies of it." He shook his head slowly.
"Jack, this is almost incredible."
"You're staying for dinner, of course?"
"You try and chase me away. I want to hear all about this. Want you to
make a tape about them, if you're willing."
"Glad to. We'll do that after we eat." He sat down on the bench, and the
Fuzzies began climbing upon and beside him. "This is the original, Little
Fuzzy. He brought the rest in a couple of days later. Mamma Fuzzy, and
Baby Fuzzy. And these are Mike and Mitzi. I call this one Ko-Ko, because
of the ceremonious way he beheads land-prawns."
"George says you call them all Fuzzies. Want that for the official
designation?"
"Sure. That's what they are, isn't it?"
"Well, let's call the order Hollowayans," Rainsford said. "Family,
Fuzzies; genus, Fuzzy. Species, Holloway's Fuzzy--_Fuzzy fuzzy holloway_.
How'll that be?"
That would be all right, he supposed. At least, they didn't try to
Latinize things in extraterrestrial zoology any more.
"I suppose our bumper crop of land-prawns is what brought them into this
section?"
"Yes, of course. George was telling me you thought they'd come down from
the north; about the only place they could have come from. This is
probably just the advance guard; we'll be having Fuzzies all over the
place before long. I wonder how fast they breed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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