"No," said Biggs. "Not quite. There's one thing which may save us.
Iapetus' diurnal revolution. It's not simply a matter of _reaching_
the satellite. They must actually beat us to the mining city. If their
calculators have figured _our_ position as we have figured _theirs_,
they may be overconfident and think they've licked us just because they
have an hour's advantage. And--this is risky, Cap, but--"
"Go on!" said the Old Man with rising excitement. Risks don't scare
him. Danger is his bread and butter. "Go on!"
"If we can hold the velocity-intensifier in operation until just before
we effect landing, we'll drop to normal acceleration right smack
over that sector of Iapetus where the mines are, thus cancelling the
sixty-odd minutes of stratosphere cruise the _Gemini_ will have to
make--and dropping us into the cradles at practically the same moment."
"If that happens," I broke in, "who gets the contract, Cap? Is there
any provision for deadlock in the Space Regulations?"
The Skipper fumbled with the loose-leaf pages of his memory.
"Yeah," he finally decided, "there is. The Interplanetary Commerce
Code rules that whenever two companies effect a simultaneous landing,
their product shall be offered the governing board of the newly opened
territory in direct competition."
I snorted loudly. "A hell of a lot of good that does us! It'll be a
matter of choosing seeds against seeds. And if I know those Cosmic
Corporation crooks, they'll bribe the Iapetus governing board blue in
the face."
"Wait!" cried Biggs. "It may not be seeds against seeds. It may be
seeds against--flowers!"
"Huh!" gasped the Old Man. "What was that, boy?"
"My ... er ... horticultural experiment," said Lancelot. "By the time
we arrive there--perhaps by _now_--we may actually have flowers to show
them. Exhibit A of the sort of thing our seeds will produce. It should
provide a clinching argument."
Hanson stared at him bewilderedly. "You mean them seeds you swiped are
growing flowers in three days?"
"That's what I hope," nodded Biggs. "Let's find out. Come down to my
growth chamber and we'll see."
We needed no second invitation. In minus zero seconds the three of
us were galloping down the ramp to the room wherein Lancelot Biggs
had installed his hydroponic tank. We waited breathlessly as he
fumbled with the lock ... then gasped and choked as the door opened
and a steamy mist gushed out to smack us in the pans with an almost
ponderable force. Then regardless of the heat the three of us were
crowding into the narrow cubicle and--
[Illustration: A welter of tropic growths tumbled out of the door.]
"Great snakes!" I gasped.
"Good goddlemitey!" croaked Cap Hanson.
"Oh, my gracious!" bleated Biggs.
For we had stepped not into the metal chamber of a space-craft
bunkroom--but into what seemed the foetid fen of some steamy swampland
jungle!
* * * * *
It's hard to describe what that room looked like. Imagine a Gauguin
painting come to life ... a tropical hothouse gone berserk. That gives
you some idea.
The original tank wherein Biggs had sprinkled the rose seeds was
completely invisible, submerged beneath a crawling octopus of greenery.
Writhing fronds spewed from the container to twist in tumultuous
entanglement beneath our feet ... up the walls ... across the ceiling.
Twining and spiraling around every piece of furniture, every bracket,
any support to which suckered tendrils could cling. A heady perfume
thickened the air; perfume from monstrous growths that no more
resembled a rose than _I_ look like a wasteland Martian.
Cap Hanson had been right. The action of cosmic rays had done weird
things to those original germ cells.[4] _Rosa rugosa_ had--figuratively
and literally--gone crazy with the heat waves. Here triple-headed
roses with spiny petals reared themselves awkwardly out of thick
spongy, palmate foliage ... there a pinkish, cactus-like rose-thing
clung tenaciously to a table leg ... elsewhere gossamer-fine, lavender
petals, propelled by stirring gusts of air, drifted lazily across the
room toward us, dangling epiphytic roots.
[Footnote 4: Science has already discovered that the bombardment of
cosmic rays is at least partially responsible for the creation of
"freaks," "sports," or "mutants," in both the animal and vegetable
world. Life on atmosphere-blanketed planets is not subject to
this bombardment, because of the protective Heaviside energy
layer ... but space-craft must be carefully shielded from such
radiation.--ED.]
It was a startling exhibition of Mama Nature gone nuts! Only in two
respects did these fantastic creations resemble the roses from which
they were mutant. Each variation had thorns--as we discovered painfully
when we tried to walk amongst them--and all had some shade or tint or
hue of the fundamental red rose whence they had sprung.
Cap Hanson groaned, "Oh, my golly, what a mess! Of all the--Hey, let me
out of here! Whatever's goin' on, it's gettin' _us_, too! Your faces!"
Biggs cracked indigo lips in what was supposed to be a placating grin
but looked more like a hungry pitcher-plant licking its chops. He
said, "The color means nothing, Captain. It's just a matter of light
refraction."
"Which doesn't alter the fact," I reminded him, "that the experiment's
a flop, Lanse, old boy. I--I guess we might as well call it quits.
Clean this mess up and throw it away. We can't show this stuff to the
Iapetus board. They'd toss us out on our necks."
Biggs nodded dolefully. "I guess you're right, Sparks. This is a bitter
disappointment. I did _so_ want to surprise her."
"Her?" grunted Hanson. "The Board's made up of hims."
"I mean," wailed Biggs plaintively, "Diane. Now she won't get her
anniversary corsage...."
* * * * *
So that was that. The Skipper went back to the bridge to give our
second in command, Lieutenant Dick Todd, the necessary trajectory
instructions, and I stuck around, sweating and swearing, to help Biggs
clean up the aboriginal morass he had created with his experiment.
It was tough going, too. Like I said before, those roses had thorns.
By the time we got done, our fingers looked like First Prize in a
needlework exhibit.
It was just as we were finishing and Biggs was draining the final
rugose drops of fluid from his tank that he loosed a little yelp of
excitement.
"Sparks!"
"Now what?" I asked. "If it's another experiment--"
"Look! This one bred true in spite of the cosmic rays." And with
quivering fingers he held up for my inspection one tiny bud which had
been nestling coyly in a corner of the tank. A small but perfectly
formed, brilliantly scarlet rosebud!
Well, I guess it was the irony of it that got me. I stared at the poor,
pathetic, bedraggled little thing for a minute, then I chuckled.
"Well, there's the love song you were looking for, Biggs."
"Eh? What's that?"
"When you give her that bud," I told him, "you can say to her, '_Roses
are red, violets are blue; the rest went whacky, but this one grew_'."
Biggs said defensively, "Well, anyhow, this proves my theory about
growth stimulation was right. It may not work in open space, but it
will work on a planet where there are atmosphere blankets against
cosmic ray penetration. And Diane _will_ get one rose."
And with painstaking care he transferred the bud to a glass of water.
Poor little pitiful symbol of a noble experiment which flopped.
* * * * *
And that was all until ten hours later. It's a shame to gloss over the
excitement of those next ten hours, but it was mostly technical stuff
you Earth-lubbers wouldn't understand.
The main point is that, though as a botanist Lancelot Biggs may
be a bum Burbank, as an astrogator he is in a class by himself.
His computations proved correct to four decimal places. We held
the _Saturn_ on the V-I unit until we were so close to Iapetus
that the permalloy walls of our space-freighter started humming
with tropospheric pressure, then released to normal acceleration,
and--_bingo!_ There we were, smack-dab over the new and as yet unnamed
mining town. Just as Biggs had predicted.
Our appearance out of seemingly thin air--you understand what I mean
if you know how the velocity-intensifier works--not only created a
sensation on Iapetus; it darned near created an accident in our little
segment of atmosphere. For when we switched over we found ourselves not
more than a quarter mile from the Cosmic Corporation's _Gemini_, which
had been easing into Iapetus complacently unaware that _we_ were within
several thousand miles.
Instantly there was hectic excitement upon both ships. Landing rocket
jets flared, grav clamps growled, and the two of us hurtled groundward
like brickbats.
It was a photo finish. We nosed into one cradle just as they
stern-jetted into a second. And just as Cap Hanson leaped from _our_
airlock, the _Gemini's_ skipper burst from theirs.
Hanson bawled,
"IPS-freighter-_Saturn_-landing-with-a-cargo-of-flower-seeds--"