Orphaned and impecunious, a self-made scholar, Cole had never tasted stomper egg.
The cook slammed an oven door on the fresh bread smell.
"Just thought, Doc. I keep a can or two of stomper egg, squeeze it from cargo for when I got a passenger to feed. How'd you like a mess for chow tonight?"
"Why not?" Cole said, grinning suddenly. "Anything may be data for an ecologist, especially if it's good to eat."
The stomper egg came to the officers' mess table as a heaped platter of bite-sized golden spheres, deep-fried in bittra oil. Their delicate, porous texture hardly required chewing. Their flavor was like—cinnamon? Peppery sandalwood? Yes, yes, and yet unique....
Cole realized in confusion that he had eaten half the platterful and the other six men had not had any. He groped for a lost feeling—was it that he and the others formed a connected biomass and that he could eat for all of them? Ridiculous!
"I'm a pig," he laughed weakly. "Here, Mr. Daley, have some."
Daley, a gingery, spry little man, said "By me" and slid the platter along. It rounded the table and returned to Cole untouched.
"Fall to, Doc," Daley said, grinning.