"All right," said Biggs. "Let's have that container. What have we here anyhow? Ah! Rosa rugosa! They should be lovely. Diane will be delighted."
"Oh, hell!" I said. "Did we get the wrong container? Wait a minute. I'll go get one with flower seeds in it."
"No, Sparks. Rosa rugosa is a type of beautiful red rose. These should be exquisite. Here, I've got the seals open. Help me scatter some of these seeds carefully on the surface of the water ... there ... that's it! Now, the radiation—"
He clicked a switch and the lamp turned on. That is, I suppose it turned on. I wouldn't know about that exactly, for it emitted no light. But it must have been emitting something, for it did funny things to the light already existing in the room. It turned things all topsy-turvy.
You know how it is when you stand in front of a photographer's shop where they have those violet incandescents? Your flesh sort of turns bilious green and your lips look like something the cat dragged out of the well? Well, that's what happened now. I looked at Biggs and grinned, and he looked at me and split lavender lips in a blue-fanged, terrifying smile.
"Well!" he said. "There we are. Seventy-two hours from now, when we reach Iapetus, Diane should have a magnificent bouquet of dewy-fresh Earth roses, the first ever to be worn on that outpost."
"And seventy-two seconds from now," I told him, "I'm going to have the screaming meemies from looking at that grass-colored pan of yours. Let's get out of here."
Well, for the next couple of days nothing much happened. The Saturn had been cut over to the V-I unit,[3] of course, and we were jogging along at a very tidy and comfortable rate of 185,000 m.p.h. toward our destination. Having helped Lancelot Biggs to the best of my abilities, I now co-operated in his further efforts (to the betterment of my sanity) by remaining away from his experimental chamber. He, too, remained pretty much in seclusion. The only time I saw him was on the second day after noon mess when he came wandering up to my turret mumbling to himself like a cow in a clover path.