The others piled the things they were carrying with Little Fuzzy's steel
weapon and approached hesitantly. He talked to them, and so did Little
Fuzzy--at least it sounded like that--and finally one came over and
fingered his shirt, and then reached up and pulled his mustache. Soon all
of them were climbing onto him, even the female with the baby. It was
small enough to sit on his palm, but in a minute it had climbed to his
shoulder, and then it was sitting on his head.

"You people want dinner?" he asked.

Little Fuzzy yeeked emphatically; that was a word he recognized. He took
them all into the kitchen and tried them on cold roast veldbeest and
yummiyams and fried pool-ball fruit; while they were eating from a couple
of big pans, he went back to the living room to examine the things they
had brought with them. Two of the prawn-killers were wood, like the one
Little Fuzzy had discarded in the shed. A third was of horn, beautifully
polished, and the fourth looked as though it had been made from the
shoulder bone of something like a zebralope. Then there was a small _coup
de poing_ ax, rather low paleolithic, and a chipped implement of flint the
shape of a slice of orange and about five inches along the straight edge.
For a hand the size of his own, he would have called it a scraper. He
puzzled over it for a while, noticed that the edge was serrated, and
decided that it was a saw. And there were three very good flake knives,
and some shells, evidently drinking vessels.

Mamma Fuzzy came in while he was finishing the examination. She seemed
suspicious, until she saw that none of the family property had been taken
or damaged. Baby Fuzzy was clinging to her fur with one hand and holding a
slice of pool-ball fruit, on which he was munching, with the other. He
crammed what was left of the fruit into his mouth, climbed up on Jack and