* * * * *
Well, I'll hand it to that Governor. He was not only honest; he was so
fair and square you could have used him for a measuring rod. He said
consolingly, "That's too bad, Mr. Biggs. But accidents will happen. Is
there anything further you have to say on behalf of your product?"
"I got plenty to say!" stormed the Skipper. "Just on account of one bud
died don't mean we ain't got--"
"Excuse me, Skipper," interrupted Lancelot Biggs mildly. "I--I think
the time for deceit has passed."
"_What!_ What's that?"
"I think the governor should be told the truth," said Biggs. "We should
confess that our seeds are not a first class product. Might not,
indeed, even flourish in the soil of Iapetus."
"Lanse!" I cried. "Do you know what you're saying? Don't talk like
that!"
"Yes, Governor," nodded Lancelot Biggs sorrowfully, "I'm afraid that's
true. Your colony wouldn't want our seeds. For one thing, they're all
roses. The Cosmic Corporation offers you all kinds of flowers. For
another thing, our seeds are not particularly hardy. Furthermore,
I'm afraid a number of them were spoiled in transit when the leaden
containers were broken, allowing cosmic rays to seep in--"
"_Biggs!_" howled Cap Hanson. "Shut up this minute an' get out of here!
What do you mean by tellin' lies like that? A number of our containers?
It was only _one_ container, and--"
The Governor interrupted him with a smooth lift of the hand.
"Never mind, Captain Hanson. We understand. Er ... thank you, Mr.
Biggs, for your frank statement. Gentlemen of the Council, you have
reached a decision? Yes, I thought so.
"Captain Murgatroyd, it gives me great pleasure to award you, on behalf
of the Iapetus Governing Board, full priority rights to the flower-seed
concession on our new colony, as set forth in Rule 14, Paragraph--"
"_Ruined!_" wailed Cap Hanson. "Sabotaged by a wolf in cheap clothing!
Diane, why did you ever marry that falsifying, good for nothin'--"
He broke down. We led him, babbling incoherently, back to the ship.
* * * * *
But there, Diane, who had held up nobly throughout the proceedings,
turned to her husband curiously.
"Lanse, dear, you know I've always backed you up in everything you've
done, but--but why did you do this? Don't you know the loss of this
monopoly will cost the Company millions, and may cost Daddy his job?"
Lanse nodded. "Yes, I know that would be true, dear ... if there were
not other factors involved."
Cap Hanson lifted his head drearily.
"Other factors?"
"Yes, Skipper. Something amazing has happened. Something so incredible
that even yet I can scarcely credit it. It all turns about something
Sparks said--"
"Who, me?" I gulped. "Now, don't drag _me_ into this."
"You remember that ... er ... love song you suggested to me?" queried
Biggs.
I nodded glumly. "Sure. '_Roses are red, violets are blue, the rest
went whacky_--'"
"But this one--" finished Lancelot Biggs triumphantly--"is _blue_!"
And dramatically he drew from its waxine envelope the rosebud he had
refused to show the Iapetus Governor, tossed it on the table before us.
We all stared at it in gasping bewilderment. For he was right. That
tiny rosebud was a brilliant, penetrating, heavenly, _cobalt blue_!
Cap Hanson choked, "But--but a blue rose! I never seen such a thing
before!"
"Neither," crowed Biggs, "has anyone else. But flower-lovers
have dreamed of them for centuries.[5] Hundreds of thousands of
dollars--perhaps millions--have been spent by botanists in an effort
to create that rare, often wished for but never accomplished example
of beauty, the blue rose. A fortune awaits the first man to put such a
thing on the market. And by luck we have done it!"
[Footnote 5: "Although the attempt has often been made to produce
a blue rose, no one has ever succeeded.... The reason a blue rose
has never been produced is that blue has never arisen spontaneously
in the Genus _Rosa_, and no blue flower of another genus has ever
been found that will ... transfer its blue color to the latter. A
breeder who could do this would ... make a fortune." Gager: _The Plant
World_.--ED.]
"You--you mean people will _buy_ this thing?"
"From now," declared Biggs, "until the end of time! This single mutant
will parent a whole new breed of blue roses, and botanists throughout
the entire solar system will mortgage their hothouses to buy slips from
this parent plant.
"Now you see why I couldn't show it to the governor, I couldn't risk
letting the secret get out until we had taken the bud back to Earth,
patented it in the name of the IPS.
"Incidentally--" He coughed delicately--"our Company should be very
pleased. I think we may anticipate a considerable bonus for our part in
creating this new species."
* * * * *
I said, "But, hey--wait a minute! There's something wrong somewhere. I
seen that bud before. But when I did, it wasn't blue! It was as red as
an old maid's face at a strip-tease!"
"_Looked_ red, you mean," corrected Biggs. "Not _was_ red. That was
a matter of color reflection, Sparks, caused by the Hertzian ray
lamp I had installed in the laboratory. You will remember our faces
were green, our lips purplish. You see, color is a tricky thing. For
instance, when you see a green leaf, what color is that leaf?"
"Why, you just said. Green, of course."
"Ah, no!" said Biggs. "It is _every color but green_! Colors by which
we designate objects are _not_ their true colors. Quite the reverse.
They are the colors those objects reflect.[6] Under the Hertzian wave
this precious bud--" He caressed it fondly--"apparently reflected all
colors save red. We therefore thought it a normal red rose. But now
that we see it under ordinary light, we realize it absorbs the red
range as well as all others save the blue."
[Footnote 6: "Sunlight, as Sir Isaac Newton discovered, is a
combination of the seven colors that compose the spectrum. An object
is red because it is so constituted that it reflects the red rays of
a beam of sunlight but absorbs all others ... a lily is white because
it reflects all the rays ... a buttercup is yellow because it reflects
only the yellow rays, absorbing all others ... an object is black
because it absorbs all the colors of the spectrum." Gager: _The Plant
World_.--ED.]
He shrugged. "So--there you are! And now, darling, if you will allow
me, I would like to give you a little anniversary present. The first
blue rose ever to be grown--"
But Cap Hanson snatched the bud from his hand feverishly.
"Oh, no, you don't! That there thing goes right back into your fish
pond and keeps growin' until we get back to Earth. Which is goin' to be
as quick as we can make it, or maybe more so. If you two gotta have an
anniversary treat, I'll see to it that Slops whips up a special banquet
tonight, complete with champagny-water an' everything. How's that?"
And from the look in Diane's and Lancelot's eyes as they moved toward
each other, I guessed it would probably be all right. For when a man
and a woman feel that way about each other, they don't really need
special dates to celebrate.
Anyhow, Lancelot Biggs had warbled his song of love. "Love sends a
little gift of roses." Yeah--_blue_ roses! But what did you expect?
That whacky wingding of the spaceways never does anything in a normal
way.
Or--does he?