All Lt. Biggs wanted was a shipboard bouquet for
his wife, but the seeds grew a little too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories September 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Well, it's just like I told you. The last time you friends, dopes, and
country hicks lent me your ears I said the _Saturn_ was scheduled for
an ordinary, routine, commonplace cargo shuttle to Uranus. But I also
hunched it that inasmuch as my screwball pal, Lt. Lancelot Biggs, was
treading the bridge almost anything was rather more than likely to
happen.
And I was right. Only even in my wildest nightmares I didn't have any
idea what was going to be chucked at us when we laid our lumbering old
space-freighter down in the cradle at Sun City spaceport.
You see, the _Saturn_ shuttles back and forth between the planets of
the solar system, carrying everything and anything. When you carry
cargoes like that, you often find yourself loaded up with plenty of
trouble, and I don't mean maybe! And with Lancelot Biggs, those cargoes
can _do_ things!
What happened was that Johnston--he's the Interplanetary Corporation's
port clearance official on Mars--came loping over to our jalopy like a
hound in a hamburg orchard and closeted himself with Cap Hanson. For
about a half hour they held privy council, as clubby as moths in an
all-wool suit, and when they appeared again, the hush-hush was so loud
it almost deafened you.
A few minutes later, stevedores started hauling into the _Saturn's_
cargo bins an accumulation of air-tight, leaden containers. These
workmen, too, were furtive as clergymen at a crap game, and all I
could get out of them by way of explanation was the one word sentence,
"Idunnonothinaboutit!"
So I hunted up Lancelot Biggs, who generally knows practically
everything about practically everything, and of course I found him
standing with one gangling arm draped limply about the shoulders of his
brand-new bride, Diane Biggs (_née_ Hanson), staring at a perfectly
commonplace Martian sunset as though it were a gala world premiere
presented especially for his benefit. And I complained, "Hey, Biggs!
What's all the mystery about? What makes with the cargo?"
Biggs said, "Oh, hello, Sparks. Gorgeous evening, isn't it? You know,
this magnificent sunset makes me think of that beautiful old Martian
poem: '_To be with one's love when the scarlet orb._...'"
"Yeah," I said. "It's pretty, but unimportant. What I want to know is,
who's hiding what from who? And if we're toting high explosives to
Uranus, why doesn't the Old Man tell me so I can quit _now_?"
That got him. He snapped out of his trance and stared at me
bewilderedly, his oversized Adam's-apple bobbling up and down in his
throat like an unswallowed electric light bulb.
"What's that, Sparks? High explosives!"
And Diane said, "But that's impossible, Lancelot, dear. You _know_
Daddy would have told us, if--"
That's as far as she got with her iffing, for at that moment the
skipper himself came waddling across the field like a pint-sized
tornado on toes and rasped, "All right, let's get going! Everybody
aboard! Sparks, audio all hands to rocket posts and get your clearance
O.Q. Lancelot, set trajectory for Iapetus--and make it snappy! We're
lifting gravs immediately, if not sooner."
"_Iapetus!_" gasped Diane. "But--but, Daddy, I thought we were
shuttling a cargo to Uranus?"
"_Was!_" snapped the Old Man. "Not is. Orders have been changed. Get
going, everybody!"
* * * * *
Well, there are limits. I planted my tootsies in good old terra firma
and said stubbornly, "Not me, Skipper. I'm not stirring a step till I
know what this is all about. Why this sudden shift of destination? And
what were you and Johnston sneaking around corners to whisper about?
And what are those lead cubes the cradle monks have been storing in our
bin?"
"I ain't got time to explain now," said the Old Man. "Every minute
counts. Now run along and--"
"Ah-hah!" I ah-hahed. "So it is explosives! O.Q., Skipper, consider
me an ex-member of the _Saturn's_ crew, as of two minutes ago. Space
travel's dangerous enough without lousing it up with dynamite which
might or might not. My aim is to sail the spaceways in _peace_ ... not
in _pieces_."
Cap Hanson's beefy face mottled dangerously, and he choked, "Confound
you, Sparks, if there was another bug-pounder available I'd accept your
resignation with whoops of glee. But as it is--Well, I'll tell you this
much. It ain't explosives. It's something perfectly harmless but very
valuable, which it's important we get to Iapetus before the Cosmic
Corporation beats us there. _Now_--will you get goin', or do I have
to--?"
"Oh, goody!" squealed Diane. "A race, eh, Daddy?"
"That's right," growled Hanson. "And a mighty important one, too, with
about a quarter of a million credits hanging on it."
I sniffed. "Is that all? Then what's all the rush about? The race is
not always to the swift."
"Oh, no?" The Skipper glared at me. "Says who?"
"Says a guy named Aesop."
"Well," snorted the Old Man, "all I got to say is that there Ee-sop
friend of your'n didn't never bet on the ponies. Now, get goin',
everybody, before I--"
So we went.
* * * * *
So we went, and of course with Lancelot Biggs on the bridge handling
things it didn't take long to get going. Within a half hour we'd lifted
gravs from Sun City, and in three shakes of a rocket's tail, Biggs
had twisted our crate's nose about and pointed it at Saturn's eighth
satellite, approximately 800,000,000 miles away.
Which left me with nothing to do till Slops gonged the dinner bell,
so I was just sitting there reading the latest edition of _Spaceways
Weekly_ when the door of my turret opened and in walked L. Biggs.
Well, call it "walked" if you want to. That overworked verb neither
accurately nor truthfully describes Lanse Biggs' peculiar style of
locomotion. His method of self-propulsion is a sort of cross between a
sidle and a galumph. Think of a giraffe wading in oiled ball-bearings,
or a Mexican jumping-bean on stalks, and you'll have some idea what I
mean.
Anyhow, he came in, closed the door behind him and grinned at me
triumphantly.
"Well, Sparks," he chortled, "I found out!"
"Yeah?" I snorted. "Well, now if you mosey around and find _in_, too,
you'll have both sides of the swinging door, won't you? Found out what?
What are you talking about?"
"Why, what you wanted to know. I found out what we're carrying to
Iapetus."
My interest revived like a zombie at a Black Mass. "You did?" I
exclaimed. "Finally wormed it out of the Old Man, eh? Well--what is it?"
"Seeds," said Lance.
"Huh?"
"Seeds."
I said, "Don't look now, but there must be something wrong with my
ears. It keeps sounding like you're saying 'seeds'."
"That's exactly," said Biggs patiently, "what I _am_ saying, Sparks.
We're carrying _seeds_ to Iapetus. You know, little round--"
"Doogummies," I finished for him, "with unfledged thingamajiggers in
'em. Yeah, I know what seeds are. But I'll be damned if I know why
we're carrying seeds almost a billion miles across space to a hunk of
rock so cold and bleak that you have to thaw out the air before you can
breathe it."
"That's just it!" explained Biggs excitedly. "You see, until just
recently it was thought that the climatic conditions on Iapetus
made that world uninhabitable. But recently an exploration party
has discovered that after you melt your way through a quarter mile
sheathing of ice, the entire planet is honeycombed with a vast,
connected, sponge-like series of caverns. Good, warm, habitable caverns
with earth to grow things in, and--"
"Ice to cold storage them in," I concluded, "after you've grown 'em.
It sounds enticing--in a horrible sort of way. So who wants to live
there? Snowmen?"
* * * * *
Biggs said soberly, "Practically everybody who's heard about the
discovery. You see, Sparks, they not only learned that Iapetus could
sustain human life; they also discovered that the entire planet is one
great storehouse of precious mineral ores.
"Miners, adventurers, homesteaders ... humans from all over the solar
system are flocking there as fast as they can drive their space-craft.
Iapetus is a boom planet. It's a gold rush that makes Sutter's Mill and
the Klondike seem like a polite game of musical chairs."
I moaned feebly and pawed what by this time ought to be--even if it
ain't--my graying thatch.
"What you're saying," I complained, "begins not to make sense faster
than ever. Thousands of people flocking to the Iapetus mines with picks
and shovels and dreams of wealth ... and we join the gold rush with a
cargo of seeds. Why?"
"But, don't you see?" explained Biggs. "Where there are mines there are
humans. Where there are humans there are communities. Where there are
communities--"
"People get hungry!" I burst in. "Of course! Now I get it. We're
bringing them the seeds to sow vegetables with, is that it?
And--oboyoboy! If we get there first, it'll be worth millions."
Because I had remembered the "most favored company" clause in the
General Space Regulations, the paragraph which grants an eleven
year commercial monopoly on any product to that company which first
introduces any product to a newly-developed outpost of civilization.
These extra-territorial rights are the prizes for which outfits like
ours and the Cosmic Corporation vie eagerly, because when you gain such
a privilege it's just like finding a free pass to an eleven year ride
on the gravy train.
One of the lushest feathers on our company's commercial cap is the
monopoly on electric refrigerators to the Mercurian outpost, just as
the deepest lines were graven on the face of our Board of Directors
when the Cosmic Corporation grabbed the atmosphere-conditioning
privileges on methane-blanketed Uranus.
But my glee was shortlived, for Biggs looked embarrassed. He shuffled
from one foot to another like a cow in a quagmire. And--
"It's--er--they're not vegetable seeds, Sparks," he said meekly.
"Huh?" I gasped. "Then what _are_ they? What other kinds of--?"
"Why--er--" said Lance, "they're flower seeds."
* * * * *
I said, "Flower seeds! Sweet howling serpents of Sirius! Curl my
hair and call me a chrysanthemum! Has the whole darned I.P.S. gone
lah-dee-dah? Why in the name of--"
Biggs said soberly, "Now don't get upset, Sparks. It's not so silly as
it sounds. As a matter of fact, it's one of the most intelligent moves
I've ever known the stuffed sh--I mean, the officials of our company
to make. You see, flower seeds are a great deal more valuable than
vegetable seeds."
"Oh, yeah! Sure! That's easy to prove, too. When a man's starving, just
give him his choice between a loaf of bread and an orchid corsage--"
"No, Sparks, that's not the situation at all. You see, the problem here
is not one of feeding the Iapetan colonists. They have plenty to eat.
The satellite is so near its mother planet that edible supplies can be
imported in great quantities. And even though food concentrates are not
always particularly tempting to the palate--"
"Like," I told him, "dead fish ain't always particularly pleasing to
the nostrils--"
"Nevertheless," continued Lancelot Biggs, "the Iapetan miners will have
plenty of food. But to borrow an expression from a wise old book, 'Man
does not live by bread alone.' There is such a thing, you know, as
maintaining public morale, and one of the best ways of doing this is
to offer people some small but tender fragment of beauty. Something to
delight the eye with its color, soften the air with its fragrance. In
short--flowers.
"You know, it's like some old Indian philosopher said way back in the
20th Century: If a man has but two coins in his pocket, he should take
one of them and buy 'hyacinths wherewith to feed the soul'."
"Nevertheless--" I interrupted doggedly.
"So," pursued Biggs, "our company is being very clever in hurrying this
shipment of flower seeds to Iapetus. Not only because the people will
love them, buy them, plant them eagerly for the pure, sensual pleasure
of watching something grow--but also because there is big money in it.
"Didn't you ever hear of the famous Holland Tulip Market where fabulous
prices were paid for unusual buds?[1] Who knows but that something
like that might happen on Iapetus, and our company might make
millions!"
[Footnote 1: "Every reader possibly knows of the 'Tulip Mania' in
Holland (1634 to about 1638 A.D.) when speculation in bulbs became as
wild as speculation has been at other times on the Stock Market. A
record price of 13,000 florins (equal to about 260,000 florins today,
or $104,000 American money) is reported to have been paid during the
mania for one bulb of the variety _Semper Augustus_." Gager: _The Plant
World_.--ED.]
"Out of which," I conceded grudgingly, "we might even collect a half
day's pay as bonus. Well, maybe you've got something there, Lance.
Maybe it _is_ a good idea. But when I signed up for space service I
never thought I'd end up as flower boy to a cosmic wedding."
* * * * *
This last comment elicited an unexpected result. At the word "wedding,"
Biggs stiffened like the feature attraction at a post-mortem. A
frenzied look glazed his eyes.
"Oh!" he gulped. "Wedding! Sparks, thanks a million. I had almost
forgotten."
"Forgotten what?" I demanded.
"Why, my anniversary."
"Anniversary! Are you off your beam? Why, you and Diane have only been
married--"
"Two months," nodded Lancelot Biggs. "Day after tomorrow is our third
anniversary." He swallowed sort of shyly, which is hard to do when
your emotion exhibits itself in the frenzied leaping of a laryngial
elevator. "Diane and I--well, we celebrate our wedding every month on
the anniversary of the day we were married."
"And no quicker road to the poor-house," I sniffed, "was ever
macadamized. So what are you going to do by way of celebration, Romeo?
Take her to the observation deck and treat her to a view of the starry
firmament revolving in its courses? That's about all the excitement
there is available on this crate."
Biggs had been thinking furiously, a process which is always
demonstrated by the way he shuffles from one foot to another. Now he
snapped his fingers.
"No--I've got it, Sparks. Something unusual. A real surprise.
Something that will startle and delight her."
"I know," I hazarded. "A new frock. You're going to whip it up in your
spare time out of tarpaulin and old tablecloths."
"No, Sparks, I'm going to give Diane--" He paused
dramatically--"flowers. Fresh flowers!"
I stared at him stupidly. And no cracks about how I couldn't very well
do anything else.
"Flowers?" I repeated. "But where in blazes are you going to get fresh
flowers out here in the middle of space?"
Biggs jerked a knuckly thumb in the general direction of the ship's
hold. "Why, down there, of course. From our cargo bin."
I stared at him disgustedly. "Oh, sure," I drawled. "Pardon me all
to hell. I plumb forgot about them. But look: aren't you overlooking
one tiny detail? Those blossoms are in what is technically known as
the 'papoose' stage. Which means they're only about six weeks shy of
blooming. Not to mention the fact that at present they're planted in
air-tight lead containers."
* * * * *
Biggs shrugged easily. "Oh, _that_!" he scoffed. "A mere nothing.
Haven't you ever heard of hydroponic culture, Sparks?"
"Hydro-whichic-whature?"
"Hydroponic culture," he repeated. "It's a method of growing plants
artificially in tanks of water chemically treated with the constituents
necessary to growth. It's very old. Over three hundred years."
"Maybe so," I granted. "But those seeds are very young. And you've only
got seventy-two hours to work in. Even with artificial culture, how are
you going to bring them to full bloom in three days?"
Biggs said happily, "That's the most wonderful part of it, Sparks.
It so happens that only recently I have been conducting a series
of experiments on plant culture. If my theories are right, I think
I have discovered a way to speed up the growth of living vegetation
tremendously. Of course, my ideas are still only in the experimental
stage, but I'm practically certain they will work."