“You say one of them broke out of his cage and then released the others,” Jack said to Jimenez as they were going down on the escalator. “Do you know which one it was?”
Jimenez shook his head. “We just took them out of the bags and put them into the cages.”
That would be Little Fuzzy; he’d always been the brains of the family. With his leadership, they might have a chance. The trouble was that this place was full of dangers Fuzzies knew nothing about—radiation and poisons and electric wiring and things like that. If they really had escaped. That was a possibility that began worrying Jack.
On each floor they passed going down, he could glimpse parties of Company employees in the halls, armed with nets and blankets and other catching equipment. When they got off Jimenez led them through a big room of glass cases—mounted specimens and articulated skeletons of Zarathustran mammals. More people were there, looking around and behind and even into the cases. He began to think that the escape was genuine, and not just a cover-up for the murder of the Fuzzies.
Jimenez took them down a narrow hall beyond to an open door at the end. Inside, the permanent night light made a blue-white glow; a swivel chair stood just inside the door. Jimenez pointed to it.
“They must have gotten up on that to work the latch and open the door,” he said.
It was like the doors at the camp, spring latch, with a handle instead of a knob. They’d have learned how to work it from watching him. Fane was trying the latch.
“Not too stiff,” he said. “Your little fellows strong enough to work it?”
He tried it and agreed. “Sure. And they’d be smart enough to do it, too. Even Baby Fuzzy, the one your men didn’t get, would be able to figure that out.”
“And look what they did to my office,” Jimenez said, putting on the lights.