In the darkened control room, Farradyne reached forward and removed the love lotus from her hair. He threw it into the chute that eventually led into the incandescent reaction blast.
She turned and her face was dim in the starlight.
"Why did you do that?" she asked.
Farradyne lied calmly, "Because when I give you your next corsage, it will be a bona fide gardenia if I have to get a pedigree from the guy who grew it."
Her smile was a trifle bitter. "What would you have done if it had worked?"
Farradyne laughed. "I didn't expect it to work."
"But—"
He went on swiftly. "Like several million other people I've been wondering how you can tell a gardenia from a hellflower. Honestly, I expected that you would take one look at the thing and then coldly inform me that you knew the difference. Then I was going to ask you to prove it. I was even going to be indignant over your thinking that I would do such a thing. Upset, fraught with unrequited love and all that bosh. I was prepared to maintain that I had bought the corsage in good faith and that some joker like Cahill had played a gag on me, just for kicks. Sooner or later you'd have told me how one could determine the difference." He laughed bitterly and it was not hard when he thought of Norma Hannon.
"Then," he went on, "you accepted it and put it in your hair, and I know damned well that you can tell them apart. That made me think, and I remembered that there are cases of women being immune. So I found myself sheepishly afraid to explain, and let it go at that. Carolyn, I just couldn't explain last night. But I do want to be honest with you."
He waited, hoping he had done a good job.