Fungal(?) police officer vs. Amoeba con

Question

It's an old humor short story, surely 60s or older.

An alien police officer complains to his buddy (think ansible, or maybe ordinary letters, I don't remember every detail) that his life isn't utter slurk and globbins (sp?) and what a suckhyphae case he just got. He jailed an amoeba con and his human victim? coworker? (not that clear) but the amoeba is clever and permanently annoys him with new judicial frell. The end of the story is that the human orders some salt. Which is perfectly innocent food for a human, but the amoeba plays her last (suicidal?) card - with salt she can divide. And now the offspring claims they are not responsible for the shenanigans of their elter. Last desperate word of the officer to his buddy:

"Why does these aliens always have such complicated and perverted means of procreation - instead of blowing off their spore foot and be done with it?"

I thought this might be Eric Frank Russell or Robert Sheckley.

You've used a lot of made up words here. Are they your own, or are they from the story? — Valorum, Commented Dec 24, 2025 at 12:31
As you see in the answer, I nearly remembered them right :-) ("Suckhyphae" was my own throwaway gag, referring to the fungal form.) — Hauke Reddmann, Commented Dec 25, 2025 at 9:25

Valorum · Accepted Answer · 2025-12-24 13:23:36Z

I'm sure it is Party of the Two Parts by William Tenn, a humoristic science fiction short story

It is about an intergalactic police patrol, who is based on the Solar System and is pursuing a criminal, who is a kind of amoeba. He bemoans his life to his friend, Hoy.

Hoy, the life of a stellar sergeant isn't all gloor and skubbets, no matter what Rear Echelon says.

At some point the criminal is jailed for traffic of pornographic material (images of cellular mitosis) on planet Earth, together with the human to whom the amoeba had sold the images (that were used for a school book about biology). Luckily for the amoeba and the human business partner, they are able to find a legal loophole to avoid being condemned

It's probably true that our ancestor, L'payr, committed all sorts of indiscretions," lisped the two young amoeboids in the cell next to Osborne Blatch, "but what does that have to do with us? L'payr paid for his crimes by dying in childbirth. We are very young and very, very innocent. Surely the big old galaxy doesn't believe in punishing little children for the sins of their parents!"

I also can confirm that the last phrase of the story is exactly as OP remembers:

Personally, Hoy, I'd say that the whole trouble is caused by creatures who insist on odd and colorful methods of continuing their race, instead of doing it sanely and decently by means of spore-pod explosion!

"Personally, Hoy, I'd say that the whole trouble is caused by creatures who insist on odd and colorful methods of continuing their race, instead of doing it sanely and decently by means of spore-pod explosion!" — DavidW, Commented Dec 24, 2025 at 13:07
I've taken the liberty of swapping in quotes from the English-language version of the short story. — Valorum, Commented Dec 24, 2025 at 13:24
Bingo! William Tenn is another titan of SF humor which I loved to read. — Hauke Reddmann, Commented Dec 25, 2025 at 9:29

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