“Well,” said Vernadsky, “eat it. Put it in your mouth. I’ve tasted it and it’s good.”
He crammed his mouth and chewed. He kept on chewing. “Tough, but good.”
Fawkes said, gloomily, “It’ll probably kill us.”
“Nuts,” said Vernadsky. “The rats have been living on it for two weeks.”
“Two weeks isn’t much,” said Novee.
Rodriguez said, “Well, one bite won’t kill. Say, it is good.”
And it was. They all agreed, eventually. So far, it seemed that whenever Junior’s life could be eaten at all, it was good. The grains were almost impossible to grind into flour, but that done, a protein-high cake could be baked. There was some on the table now; dark and heavy. It wasn’t bad, either.
Fawkes had studied the herb life on Junior and come to the conclusion that an acre of Junior’s surface, properly seeded and watered, could support ten times the number of grazing animals that an acre of Earthly alfalfa could.
Sheffield had been impressed; spoke of Junior as the granary of a hundred worlds, but Fawkes dismissed his own statements with a shrug.
He said, “Sucker bait.”