"--and so, gentlemen, we have placed the cargo right here for your inspection. Look!" With a swift motion he tore the tarpaulin off the Forenzi jars. I looked--and gulped! They were the same jars, all right. Only different! They were no longer a dull, whitish metal. They were a glinting copper color! Biggs patted one of them affectionately. "Ask your appraisers to estimate the value of these, gentlemen. I think they'll find their value to be approximately a quarter of a million dollars. These are--_pure gold_!" It's a good thing I was holding on to Captain Hanson's arm. For just as the committee was exclaiming, "Excellent! Excellent trading, Captain Hanson!" the skipper's nerves gave out. He collapsed like a punctured bulger. I remember shouting, "Water! Water, somebody!" Then I passed out, too! * * * * * Afterward, the three of us were alone in the turret. And Hanson was asking, "But _how_, Biggs? I don't get it at all? How in blazes did it happen?" Biggs blushed and looked uncomfortable. "Why, it's pretty obvious when you come to analyze it, Captain. I can't understand how it is that no one ever discovered it before, in twenty years of space travel. But perhaps it's because ships and bulgers are made of _permalloy_ instead of lead. Or it may be that some enzyme secreted by the rotten vegetables acted as a catalyst. Lab workers will have to study that." "You're still not telling us what happened." "Don't you know? It was transmutation, induced in the lead Forenzi jars by the action of cosmic rays."[1] [Footnote 1: Lead has an atomic weight of 207 plus, and its atomic number is 82. This atomic number corresponds to its net positive nuclear charge. Gold on the other hand, has an atomic weight of 197, with an atomic number of 79. The loss of two alpha particles and the loss of a single beta particle in a molecule of lead, causes that molecule to become an isotopal molecule of gold, with an atomic number 79, and the atomic weight of 199. For all practical commercial purposes, this is the same as true gold.--Author.] Captain Hanson said in an awed tone. "Exposure to cosmic rays done that?" "Yes. Artificial transmutations were caused 'way back in the early 20th Century through bombardment with gamma rays. And cosmic rays are more than ten times as short as gammas. "I began to suspect something strange was happening to the Forenzi jars when I first went out to gather them in. Their color had changed slightly, and their exterior was rather more granular. That's why I came in to borrow Spark's book on radiation. What I saw convinced me that the lead was being transmuted; was then in the _mesolead_ stage; approximately an isotope of thallium. "I decided to wait and see if the transmutation would continue--" Hanson wiped his hand across his forehead. "Suppose there'd been more time? An' suppose'n the transmutation had gone on a step farther? What then?"