Entry: June 29, 654 A.E.

Evening

The Confrontation

Kellogg was the Chief of Science Division for the Zarathustra Company, and he brought along Ernst Mallin, the chief Company psychologist. From the moment they arrived, I could tell something was wrong. Kellogg was too interested, too eager, asking all the right questions but with the wrong tone. And Mallin—Mallin had this tight, secretive face that told me he'd already made up his mind about something before he even saw the Fuzzies.

They wanted to take the Fuzzies to Mallorysport, to study them "under laboratory conditions." I shut that down immediately. These aren't laboratory animals. They're my family now, and they're staying with me unless they choose otherwise.

The tension was thick. I could see Kellogg and Mallin exchanging glances. They were scared—not of the Fuzzies, but of what the Fuzzies represented. The end of the Company's grip on Zarathustra.

That night, Gerd van Riebeek came to me privately. He'd quit the Company. He told me that Kellogg had found an old Fuzzy grave site while they were out exploring. Instead of being excited about proof of Fuzzy sapience, Kellogg had immediately started talking about how to suppress the information. The Company couldn't afford to let the Fuzzies be recognized as sapient beings.

"They're going to fight this, Jack," Gerd warned me. "They're going to fight it with everything they have."