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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.
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 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 race,  he quoted.  That s the law. If they can prove in
court that the Fuzzies are sapient beings& .
Then, some morning, a couple of deputy marshals would take Leonard Kellogg
out in the jail yard and put a bullet through the back of his head, which, in
itself, would be no loss. The trouble was,they would also be shooting an
irreparable hole in the Zarathustra Company s charter. Maybe Kellogg could be
kept out of court, at that. There wasn t a ship blasted off from Darius
without a couple of drunken spacemen being hustled aboard at the last moment;
with the job Holloway must have done, Kellogg should look just right as a
drunken spaceman. The twenty-five thousand sols bond could be written off;
that was pennies to the Company. No, that would still leave them stuck with
the Holloway trial.
 You want me out of here when the others come, Victor? Emmert asked, popping
another canape into his mouth.
 No, no; sit still. This will be the last chance we ll have to get everybody
together; after this, we ll have to avoid anything that ll look like
collusion.
 Well, anything I can do to help; you know that, Victor, Emmert said.
Yes, he knew that. If worst came to utter worst and the Company charter were
invalidated, he could still hang on here, doing what he could to salvage
something out of the wreckage if not for the Company, then for Victor Grego.
But if Zarathustra were reclassified, Nick would be finished. His title, his
social position, his sinecure, his grafts and perquisites, his alias-shrouded
Company expense account all out the airlock. Nick would be counted upon to do
anything he could however much that would be.
He looked across the room at the levitated globe, revolving imperceptibly in
the orange spotlight. It was full dark on Beta Continent now, where Leonard
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Kellogg had killed a Fuzzy named Goldilocks and Jack Holloway had killed a
gunman named Kurt Borch. That angered him, too; hell of a gunman! Clear shot
at the broad of a man sback, and still got himself killed. Borch hadn t been
any better choice than Kellogg himself. What was the matter with him; couldn t
he pick men for jobs any more? And Ham O Brien! No, he didn t have to blame
himself for O Brien. O Brien was one of Nick Emmert s boys. And he hadn t
picked Nick, either.
The squawk-box on the desk made a premonitory noise, and a feminine voice
advised him that Mr. Coombes and his party had arrived.
 All right; show them in.
Coombes entered first, tall suavely elegant, with a calm, untroubled face.
Leslie Coombes would wear the same serene expression in the midst of a
bombardment or an earthquake. He had chosen Coombes for chief attorney, and
thinking of that made him feel better. Mohammed Ali O Brien wasneither tall,
elegant nor calm . His skin was almost black he d been born on Agni, under a
hot B3 sun. His bald head glistened, and a big nose peeped over the ambuscade [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]