"Lanse, dear, you know I've always backed you up in everything you've done, but—but why did you do this? Don't you know the loss of this monopoly will cost the Company millions, and may cost Daddy his job?"
Lanse nodded. "Yes, I know that would be true, dear ... if there were not other factors involved."
Cap Hanson lifted his head drearily.
"Other factors?"
"Yes, Skipper. Something amazing has happened. Something so incredible that even yet I can scarcely credit it. It all turns about something Sparks said—"
"Who, me?" I gulped. "Now, don't drag me into this."
"You remember that ... er ... love song you suggested to me?" queried Biggs.
I nodded glumly. "Sure. 'Roses are red, violets are blue, the rest went whacky—'"
"But this one—" finished Lancelot Biggs triumphantly—"is blue!"
And dramatically he drew from its waxine envelope the rosebud he had refused to show the Iapetus Governor, tossed it on the table before us. We all stared at it in gasping bewilderment. For he was right. That tiny rosebud was a brilliant, penetrating, heavenly, cobalt blue!