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.