"That's what those spores are like, Olger, and I don't want any part of them, thanks. I don't mind taking a chance on dying from a ray gun but those rhizoids are only worth a hundred thousand credits apiece and I'd want a hundred million before I'd take a chance on dying like that."
"And what if we could show you a chance to make your hundred million?" Bill Olger asked softly.
Mallard's fingers tightened around his glass. "I'm listening."
"You see," Olger began slowly, "the trouble up to now has been that no one could get those stones out of the fungus stumps unless he was protected by a cumbersome glassite suit and the swamp belt is too dense to bring those suits into. That meant they could only pick up a few they found growing around the rim of the belt. There are rumors that the natives have found a way to handle the spores but they regard the fungus as sacred and won't help.
"But, a couple of years back the Galactic Colonization Board finally managed to get one of the plants back to Earth. It isn't generally known but they really did it. They used a low powered force field and finally worked it into a glassite cage. They kept it quiet because they lost three of their men getting the thing caged.
"When they got the fungus stump back to Earth they began to experiment with it. They started coating white rats with different chemicals and coverings, or injecting different drugs in them, and then sending them into the cage with the thing. They used up an awful lot of white rats, Mallard."
George Mallard shuddered. "I can believe that."
"The main thing, though, the thing that matters to us, is that they put D'ulio, here, in charge of the experiments. And D'ulio had ideas of his own. He was just out of the Martian University and he just couldn't see any point in working for Terrans for the rest of his life for a small salary.
"The second week D'ulio worked on the fungus stump he discovered that the spores could be killed as fast as they were released by a plain, ordinary Overton ray. You remember the old Overton ray gun that was used in the war against the Martian desert tribes? The gun was originally meant to be rigged up on a ship but D'ulio made a smaller model that could be carried by two men and it worked on the spores as well as a big gun.
"As soon as D'ulio was sure of his findings he opened the fungus stump, took out the rhizoid from it, then 'accidentally' burned the stump to a crisp. He reported that there was no rhizoid inside it. Sometimes they don't have, you know, just as lots of pearls don't happen to be there when you open the oyster. He was fired for his carelessness. As soon as it was safe he contacted me. He knew I had ways of getting rid of the rhizoid that he didn't have. So, here we are. D'ulio has the equipment we need. We have the money to finance the expedition—and you have the ship. What do you say, Mallard?"