Index: lucene/src/java/org/apache/lucene/util/SmallFloat.java
===================================================================
--- lucene/src/java/org/apache/lucene/util/SmallFloat.java	(revision 1072589)
+++ lucene/src/java/org/apache/lucene/util/SmallFloat.java	(working copy)
@@ -54,7 +54,6 @@
   public static float byteToFloat(byte b, int numMantissaBits, int zeroExp) {
     // on Java1.5 & 1.6 JVMs, prebuilding a decoding array and doing a lookup
     // is only a little bit faster (anywhere from 0% to 7%)
-    if (b == 0) return 0.0f;
     int bits = (b&0xff) << (24-numMantissaBits);
     bits += (63-zeroExp) << 24;
     return Float.intBitsToFloat(bits);
@@ -88,7 +87,6 @@
   public static float byte315ToFloat(byte b) {
     // on Java1.5 & 1.6 JVMs, prebuilding a decoding array and doing a lookup
     // is only a little bit faster (anywhere from 0% to 7%)
-    if (b == 0) return 0.0f;
     int bits = (b&0xff) << (24-3);
     bits += (63-15) << 24;
     return Float.intBitsToFloat(bits);
@@ -116,7 +114,6 @@
   public static float byte52ToFloat(byte b) {
     // on Java1.5 & 1.6 JVMs, prebuilding a decoding array and doing a lookup
     // is only a little bit faster (anywhere from 0% to 7%)
-    if (b == 0) return 0.0f;
     int bits = (b&0xff) << (24-5);
     bits += (63-2) << 24;
     return Float.intBitsToFloat(bits);