"Exhibits A through G, Your Honors. Samples of food and beverages
produced by my clients without raw materials and from the expert
culture of bacteria."
I held up a jar full of mauve fungus. It was the most attractive
example.
"I would hardly call feeding on funguses a sign of a responsible
humanoid race, Mr. Jones."
"Perhaps Your Honor will recall the part played by bacteria in making
milk, cheese, wine, beer, bread."
The Commissioners looked at each other and nodded reluctantly. So I
passed the jars up to them, secure in the knowledge they had been
tested by the Alien Foods Bureau. I watched the Commissioners unscrew
the lids and taste the contents somewhat hesitantly.
"Not bad," confessed the fat Commissioner eventually.
"Quite palatable."
"Of course we already have honey and similar foodstuffs, Mr. Jones."
"Naturally, Your Honor. But Mr. Lood's race can survive without
extraplanetary aid. Provided they have sunshine and water, they can
breed their spores and bacteria with no other resources."
"You mean," said the thin Commissioner with a dark leer, "that almost
any sunny planet would do for them?"
Somewhere along the line my point seemed to have been swept away, so I
added hurriedly:
"I offer this evidence purely to show the high degree of civilization
of my clients' culture, as cause why they should not be deprived of
their native land."
"Oh, yus," my client agreed.
"Mr. Lood," intoned the bald Commissioner, "to stay on your present
asteroid you will have to prove that your race offers something that
cannot be found elsewhere in the Galactic Community. Now have these
funguses of yours any special medicinal values, for example?"
"Please?"
"Can you cure diseases with them?"
"Oh, no."
"Ah," said the thin and fat Commissioners together. "Proceed, Mr.
Jones."
* * * * *
That put Lood somewhere back behind the twentieth-century discoverers
of penicillin and the myecins, and even back behind the pioneer
Pasteur. Five hundred years back, in fact.
"Yes. Well. Let's see how my clients handle housing, Your Honors. I
think you'll find this quite revolutionary. Mr. Lood?"
Lood hopped off the witness seat and trotted up to the long table
normally reserved for attorneys. Lately, I have found my professional
colleagues strangely reluctant to stay in court when I have a case, so
Lood had the entire table to himself.
He pulled a small jar out from under the table and spread a pile of
dust on the tabletop. Then he unscrewed the jar and gently poured
nothing out of it onto the dust. Nothing visible, that is. But I
assumed it was teeming with viruses and such.
"While Mr. Lood gets this started, Your Honors," I said, hoping the
viruses or whatever were not fatal to humans, "may I submit the
usefulness of fungus foods for space-travel and for pioneers on
inhospitable planets?"
"Are we having difficulties with General Food-Concentrates, the
Travelers Capsule Combine and the other ten thousand concerns in this
line, Mr. Jones?" the bald Commissioner asked quietly.
You can't say I didn't try. I shut up and watched Lood fuss with the
dust on the table.
It started moving as if it were bubbling and Lood stood back.
Slowly, the dust on the table formed itself into a brick, a long eight
by six by three inch brick. Lood smiled happily.
"And here, Your Honors," I said triumphantly, "here is automatic
housing."
"One brick does not make a house, Mr. Jones."
"If Your Honors will just watch...."
The brick slowly elongated and split into two perfect bricks, lying on
the table end to end.
"Mass colony action of bacteria," said Lood wisely. "Oh, yus."
The two bricks each split into two further bricks. These divided and
multiplied themselves while we watched, out to the end of the table.
"I would like Your Honors to observe the way these bricks overcome
natural hazards," I said, getting into my stride.
I pointed to the bricks drooping over the end of the table. A brick
fell onto the floor at each end, then built itself up until it joined
the line of bricks on the table, forming a perfect arch at each angle.
The line on the table was now three bricks high, so I walked round and
stood behind the wall.
"You see, Your Honors, suppose I need a house. I merely combine these
suitable microbes and dust. And there we are, a house."
I had to stand on tiptoe to finish the sentence because of the
mathematics involved. Every brick was doubling and redoubling itself in
just under a minute. And the wall was getting quite impressively high.
"Mr. Jones," called one of the Commissioners.
It was not until I tried to walk round the end of the wall that I found
I had been out-flanked.
I ran to the nearest wall of the courtroom but the bricks got there
first. I heard a rending noise that suggested the other end had gone
clean through the opposite wall. As a matter of fact, I saw the
astonished face of an attorney entering the main door of the Justice
Building as the wall advanced towards him. Then he saw me. He grinned
and waved.