"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 2 - Other Human Race2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Class-III planet, inhabitable by Terran humans but uninhabited by
any native race of sapient beings, and on that misunderstanding
the Zarathustra Company had been chartered to colonize and
exploit it and had been granted outright ownership of the planet
and one of the two moons, Darius. The other moon, Xerxes, had
been retained as a Federation Navy base, which had been
fortunate, because suddenly Zarathustra had turned into a Class-IV
planet, with a native population.

The members of the native population here present looked up
ex­pectantly as he opened one of the tins and cut the
gingerbread­colored cake into six equal portions. The five
newcomers sniffed at theirs and waited until Little Fuzzy began to
eat. Then, after a tenta­tive nibble, they gobbled avidly, with full-
mouthed sounds of delight.

From the first, he had suspected that they weren't just cute little
animals, but people-sapient beings, like himself and like the eight
other sapient races discovered since Terrans had gone out to the
stars. When Bennett Rainsford, then a field naturalist for the
Institute of Xeno-Sciences, had seen them, he had agreed, and
had named the species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway. They had both been
excited, and very proud of the discovery, and neither of them had
thought, until it was brought forcibly to their attention, of the effect
on the Zarathustra Company's charter.

Victor Grego had thought of that at once; he had fought
desper­ately, viciously, and with all the resources of the company,
to prevent the recognition of the Fuzzies as sapient beings and the
invalidation of the company's charter. The battle had ended in
court, with Jack Holloway charged with murder for shooting a
company gunman and a company executive named Leonard
Kellogg similarly charged for kicking to death a Fuzzy named
Goldilocks. The two cases, tried as one, had hinged on the
question of the sapience of the Fuzzies. On the docket, it had
been People of the Colony of Zarathustra versus Holloway and
Kellogg. His'lawyer, Gus Brannhard, had insisted on referring to it
as Friends of Little Fuzzy versus The Chartered Zarathustra
Company.

Little Fuzzy and his friends had won, and with their sapience
rec­ognized, the company's charter was out the airlock, and so was
the old Class-III Colonial Government, and Space Commodore
Napier, the commandant of Xerxes, Base, had been compelled,
since Zarathustra was without legal government, to proclaim martial
rule and supervise the establishment of a new Class-IV
Government. He had appointed Bennett Rainsford Governor.

And just who do you suppose Ben Rainsford appointed as
Com­missioner of Native Affairs?