"Seeds," said Lance.
"Huh?"
"Seeds."
I said, "Don't look now, but there must be something wrong with my ears. It keeps sounding like you're saying 'seeds'."
"That's exactly," said Biggs patiently, "what I am saying, Sparks. We're carrying seeds to Iapetus. You know, little round—"
"Doogummies," I finished for him, "with unfledged thingamajiggers in 'em. Yeah, I know what seeds are. But I'll be damned if I know why we're carrying seeds almost a billion miles across space to a hunk of rock so cold and bleak that you have to thaw out the air before you can breathe it."
"That's just it!" explained Biggs excitedly. "You see, until just recently it was thought that the climatic conditions on Iapetus made that world uninhabitable. But recently an exploration party has discovered that after you melt your way through a quarter mile sheathing of ice, the entire planet is honeycombed with a vast, connected, sponge-like series of caverns. Good, warm, habitable caverns with earth to grow things in, and—"
"Ice to cold storage them in," I concluded, "after you've grown 'em. It sounds enticing—in a horrible sort of way. So who wants to live there? Snowmen?"
Biggs said soberly, "Practically everybody who's heard about the discovery. You see, Sparks, they not only learned that Iapetus could sustain human life; they also discovered that the entire planet is one great storehouse of precious mineral ores.