"Miners, adventurers, homesteaders ... humans from all over the solar system are flocking there as fast as they can drive their space-craft. Iapetus is a boom planet. It's a gold rush that makes Sutter's Mill and the Klondike seem like a polite game of musical chairs."
I moaned feebly and pawed what by this time ought to be—even if it ain't—my graying thatch.
"What you're saying," I complained, "begins not to make sense faster than ever. Thousands of people flocking to the Iapetus mines with picks and shovels and dreams of wealth ... and we join the gold rush with a cargo of seeds. Why?"
"But, don't you see?" explained Biggs. "Where there are mines there are humans. Where there are humans there are communities. Where there are communities—"
"People get hungry!" I burst in. "Of course! Now I get it. We're bringing them the seeds to sow vegetables with, is that it? And—oboyoboy! If we get there first, it'll be worth millions."
Because I had remembered the "most favored company" clause in the General Space Regulations, the paragraph which grants an eleven year commercial monopoly on any product to that company which first introduces any product to a newly-developed outpost of civilization.
These extra-territorial rights are the prizes for which outfits like ours and the Cosmic Corporation vie eagerly, because when you gain such a privilege it's just like finding a free pass to an eleven year ride on the gravy train.
One of the lushest feathers on our company's commercial cap is the monopoly on electric refrigerators to the Mercurian outpost, just as the deepest lines were graven on the face of our Board of Directors when the Cosmic Corporation grabbed the atmosphere-conditioning privileges on methane-blanketed Uranus.
But my glee was shortlived, for Biggs looked embarrassed. He shuffled from one foot to another like a cow in a quagmire. And—
"It's—er—they're not vegetable seeds, Sparks," he said meekly.