Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

My recorded voice ended and the Yankee-grocer voice said, “Were those your words?”

“Huh? Yes.”

“Is the account correct?”

“Yes, but-”

“Is it correct?”

“Yes.”

“Is it complete?”

I wanted to say that it certainly was not-but I was beginning to understand the system. “Yes.”

“Patricia Wynant Reisfeld-”

Peewee’s story started earlier and covered all those days when she had been in contact with wormfaces while I was not. But it was not much longer, for, while Peewee has a sharp eye and a sharper memory, she is loaded with opinions. Opinions were left out.

When Peewee had agreed that her evidence was correct and complete the Yankee voice stated, “All witnesses have been heard, all known facts have been integrated. The three individuals may speak for themselves.”

I think the wormfaces picked a spokesman, perhaps the Wormface, if he was alive and there. Their answer, as translated into English, did not have the guttural accent with which Wormface spoke English; nevertheless it was a wormface speaking. That bone-chilling yet highly intelligent viciousness, as unmistakable as a punch in the teeth, was in every syllable.

Their spokesman was so far away that I was not upset by his looks and after the first stomach-twisting shock of that voice I was able to listen more or less judicially. He started by denying that this court had jurisdiction over his sort. He was responsible only to his mother-queen and she only to their queen-groups-that’s how the English came out.

That defense, he claimed, was sufficient. However, if the “Three Galaxies” confederation existed-which he had no reason to believe other than that he was now being detained unlawfully before this hiveful of creatures met as a kangaroo court-if it existed, it still had no jurisdiction over the Only People, first, because the organization did not extend to his part of space; second, because even if it were there, the Only People had never joined and therefore its rules (if it had rules) could not apply; and third, it was inconceivable that their queen-group would associate itself with this improbable “Three Galaxies” because people do not contract with animals.

This defense was also sufficient.

But disregarding for the sake of argument these complete and sufficient defenses, this trial was a mockery because no offense existed even under the so-called rules of the alleged “Three Galaxies.” They (the wormfaces) had been operating in their own part of space engaged in occupying a useful but empty planet, Earth. No possible crime could lie in colonizing land inhabited merely by animals. As for the agent of Three Galaxies, she had butted in; she had not been harmed; she had merely been kept from interfering and had been detained only for the purpose of returning her where she belonged.

He should have stopped. Any of these defenses might have stood up, especially the last one. I used to think of the human race as “lords of creation”-but things had happened to me since. I was not sure that this assemblage would think that humans had rights compared with wormfaces. Certainly the wormfaces were ahead of us in many ways. When we clear jungle to make farms, do we worry if baboons are there first?

But he discarded these defenses, explained that they were intellectual exercises to show how foolish the whole thing was under any rules, from any point of view. He would now make his defense.

It was an attack.

The viciousness in his voice rose to a crescendo of hatred that made every word slam like a blow. How dared they do this? They were mice voting to bell the cat! (I know-but that’s how it came out in translation.) They were animals to be eaten, or merely vermin to be exterminated. Their mercy would be rejected if offered, no negotiation was possible, their crimes would never be forgotten, the Only People would destroy them!

I looked around to see how the jury was taking it. This almost-empty hall had hundreds of creatures around the three sides and many were close to us. I had been too busy with the trial to do more than glance at them. Now I looked, for the wormface’s blast was so disturbing that I welcomed a distraction.