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]
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—"