Page:Piper Little Fuzzy (1962).djvu/38

Fuzzies; as he did, another whistle in the living room began blowing.

“We have a whole shoebox full of them at the post,” Lunt yelled to him above the din. “We'll just write these two off as expended in service.”

“Well, that’s real nice of you, George. I want to tell you that the Fuzzies appreciate that. Ahmed, suppose you do the bartending while I give the kids their candy.”

By the time Khadra had the drinks mixed and he had distributed the Extee Three to the Fuzzies, Lunt had gotten into the easy chair, and the Fuzzies were sitting on the floor in front of him, still looking him over curiously. At least the Extee Three had taken their minds off the whistles for a while.

“What I want to know, Jack, is where they came from,” Lunt said, taking his drink. “I’ve been up here for five years, and I never saw anything like them before.”

“I've been here five years longer, and I never saw them before, either. I think they came down from the north, from the country between the Cordilleras and the West Coast Range. Outside of an air survey at ten thousand feet and a few spot landings here and there, none of that country has been explored. For all anybody knows, it could be full of Fuzzies.”

He began with his first encounter with Little Fuzzy, and by the time he had gotten as far as the wood chisel and the killing of the land-prawn, Lunt and Khadra were looking at each other in amazement.

“That's it!” Khadra said. “I’ve found prawn-shells cracked open and the meat picked out, just the way you describe it. I always wondered what did that. But they don’t all have wood chisels. What do you suppose they used ordinarily?”

“Ah!” He pulled the drawer open and began getting things out. “Here’s the one Little Fuzzy discarded when he found my chisel. The rest of this stuff the others brought in when they came.”

Lunt and Khadra rose and came over to look at the things. Lunt tried to argue that the Fuzzies couldn’t have made that stuff. He wasn’t even able to convince himself. Having finished their Extee Three, the Fuzzies were looking expectantly at the viewscreen, and it occurred to him that none of them except Little Fuzzy had ever seen it on. Then Little Fuzzy jumped up on the chair Lunt had vacated, reached over to