Victor Grego crushed out his cigarette slowly and deliberately.

"Yes, Leonard," he said patiently. "It's very interesting, and doubtless
an important discovery, but I can't see why you're making such a
production of it. Are you afraid I'll blame you for letting non-Company
people beat you to it? Or do you merely suspect that anything Bennett
Rainsford's mixed up in is necessarily a diabolical plot against the
Company and, by consequence, human civilization?"

Leonard Kellogg looked pained. "What I was about to say, Victor, is that
both Rainsford and this man Holloway seem convinced that these things they
call Fuzzies aren't animals at all. They believe them to be sapient
beings."

"Well, that's--" He bit that off short as the significance of what Kellogg
had just said hit him. "Good God, Leonard! I beg your pardon abjectly; I
don't blame you for taking it seriously. Why, that would make Zarathustra
a Class-IV inhabited planet."

"For which the Company holds a Class-III charter," Kellogg added. "For an
uninhabited planet."

Automatically void if any race of sapient beings were discovered on
Zarathustra.

"You know what will happen if this is true?"

"Well, I should imagine the charter would have to be renegotiated, and now
that the Colonial Office knows what sort of a planet this is, they'll be