Mike; only pipsqueak, second-rate politicians are money hungry - and Douglas, whatever his faults, is no pipsqueak. Quit scowling, Ben, and hope that he never dumps the load on you.
'So I dumped the whole load on Douglas - and now I can go back to my garden. But, as I have said, the money was relatively simple, once I figured it out. It was the Larkin Decision that fretted me.'
Caxton said, 'I thought you had lost your wits on that one, Jubal. That silly business of letting them give Mike sovereign 'honors.' Honors indeed! For God's sake, Jubal, you should simply have had Mike sign over all right, title, and interest, if any, under that ridiculous Larkin theory. You knew Douglas wanted him to - Jill told you.'
'Ben m'boy,' Jubal said gently, 'as a reporter you are hard-working and sometimes readable.'
'Gee, thanks! My fan.'
'But your concepts of strategy are Neanderthal.'
Caxton sighed. 'I feel better, Jubal. For a moment there I thought you had become softly sentimental in your old age.'
'When I do, please shoot me. Captain, how many men did you leave on Mars?'
'Twenty-three.'
'And what is their status, under the Larkin Decision?'
Van Tromp looked troubled. 'I'm not supposed to talk.'
'Then don't,' Jubal reassured him. 'I can deduce it, and so can Ben.'
Dr. Nelson said, 'Skipper, both Stinky and I are civilians again. I shall talk where and how I please-'
'And shall I,' agreed Mahmoud.
'-and if they want to make trouble for me, they know what they can do with my reserve commission. What business has the government, telling us we can't talk? Those chair-warmers didn't go to Mars. We did.'
'Stow it, Sven. I intended to talk - these are our water brothers. But, Ben, I would rather not see this in your column. I would like to command a space ship again.'
'Captain, I know the meaning of 'off the record.' But if you'll feel easier, I'll join Mike and the girls for a while - I want to see Jill anyhow.'
'Please don't leave. But? this is among water brothers. The government is in a stew about that nominal colony we left behind. Every man in it joined in signing away his so-called Larkin rights - assigned them to the government - before we left Earth. Mike's presence when we got to Mars confused things enormously. I'm no lawyer, but I understood that, if Mike did waive his rights, whatever they might be, that would put the administration in the driver's seat when it came to parceling out things of value.'
'What things of value?' demanded Caxton. 'Other than pure science, I mean. Look, Skipper, I'm not running down your achievement, but from all I've seen and heard, Mars isn't exactly valuable real estate for human beings. Or are there assets that are still classified 'drop dead before reading'?'
Van Tromp shook his head. 'No, the scientific and technical reports are all declassified, I believe. But, Ben, the Moon was a worthless hunk of rock when we first got it. Now look at it.'
'Touch,' Caxton admitted. 'I wish my grandpappy had bought Lunar Enterprises instead of Canadian uranium. I don't have Jubal's objections to being rich.' He added, 'But, in any case, Mars is already inhabited.'
Van Tromp looked unhappy. 'Yes. But- Stinky, you tell him.'
Mahmoud said, 'Ben, there is plenty of room on Mars for human colonization? and, so far as I was ever able to find out, the Martians would not interfere. They did not object when we told them we intended to leave a colony behind. Nor did they seem pleased. Not even interested. We're flying our flag and claiming extraterritoriality right now. But our status may be more like that of one of those ant cities under glass one sometimes sees in school rooms. I was never able to grok it.'
Jubal nodded. 'Precisely. Myself, too. This morning I did not have the slightest idea of the true situation? except that I knew that the government was anxious to get those so-called Larkin rights from Mike. Beyond that I was ignorant. So I assumed that the government was equally ignorant and went boldly ahead. 'Audacity, always audacity' - soundest principle of strategy. In practicing medicine I learned that when you are most at loss is the time when you must appear confident. In law I had learned that, when your case seems hopeless, you must impress the jury with your relaxed certainty.'
Jubal grinned. 'Once, when I was a kid in high school, I won a debate on shipping subsidies by quoting an overwhelming argument from the files of the British Colonial Shipping Board. The opposition was totally unable to refute me - because there never was a 'British Colonial Shipping Board.' I had made it up, whole cloth.
'I was equally shameless this morning. The administration wanted Mike's 'Larkin rights' and was scared silly that we might make a deal with Kung or somebody. So I used their greed and worry to wring out of them that ultimate logical absurdity of their fantastic legal theory, a public acknowledgment in unmistakable diplomatic protocol that Mike was a sovereign equal of the Federation itself - and must be treated accordingly!' Jubal looked smug.
'Thereby,' Ben said dryly, 'putting yourself up the well-known creek without a paddle.'
'Ben, Ben,' Jubal said chidingly. 'Wrong metaphor. Not a canoe, but a tiger. Or a throne. By their own logic they had publicly crowned Mike. Need I point out that, despite the old saw about uneasy heads and crowns, it is nevertheless safer to be publicly a king than it is to be a pretender in hiding? A king can usually abdicate to save his neck; a pretender may renounce his pretensions but it makes his neck no safer - less so, in fact; it leaves him naked to his enemies. No, Ben, Kung saw that Mike's position had been enormously strengthened by a few bars of music and an old sheet, even if you did not - and Kung did not like it a bit.
'But I acted through necessity, not choice, and, while Mike's position was improved, it was still not an easy one. Mike was, for the nonce, the acknowledged sovereign of Mars under the legalistic malarky of the Larkin precedent? and, as such, was empowered to hand out concessions, trading rights, enclaves, ad nauseam. He must either do these things himself? and thus be subjected to pressures even worse than those attendant on great wealth and for which he is even less fitted - or he must abdicate his titular position and allow his Larkin rights to devolve on those twenty-three men now on Mars, i.e., to Douglas.'
Jubal looked pained. 'I disliked these alternatives almost equally, since each was based on the detestable doctrine that the Larkin Decision could apply to inhabited planets. Gentlemen, I have never met any Martians, I have no vocation to be their champion - but I could not permit a client of mine to be trapped into such a farce. The Larkin Decision itself had to be rendered void, and all 'rights' under it, with respect to the planet Mars - while the matter was still in our hands and without giving the High Court a chance to rule.'
Jubal grinned boyishly. 'So I appealed to a higher court for a decision that would nullify the Larkin precedent - I cited a mythical 'British Colonial Shipping Board.' I lied myself blue in the face to create a new legal theory. Sovereign honors had been rendered Mike; that was fact, the world had seen it. But sovereign honors may be rendered to a sovereign? or to a sovereign's alter ego, his viceroy or ambassador. So I asserted that Mike was no cardboard sovereign under a silly human precedent not in point - but in awful fact the ambassador of the great Martian nation!'
Jubal sighed. 'Sheer bluff? and I was scared silly that I would be required to prove my claims. But I was staking my bluff on my hope and strong belief that others - Douglas, and in particular, Kung - would be no more certain of the facts than was I.' Jubal looked around him. 'But I ventured to risk that bluff because you three were sitting with us, were Mike's water brethren. If you three sat by and did not challenge my lies, then Mike must be accepted as the Martian equivalent of ambassador - and the Larkin Decision was a dead issue.'
'I hope it is,' Captain van Tromp said soberly, 'but I did not take your statements as lies, Jubal; I took them as simple truth.'
'Eh? But I assure you they were not. I was spinning fancy words, extemporizing.'
'No matter. Inspiration or deduction - I think you told the truth.' The skipper of the Champion hesitated. 'Except that I would not call Mike an ambassador - I think he's an expeditionary force.'
Caxton's jaw dropped. Harshaw did not dispute him but answered with equal soberness. 'In what way, sir?'
Van Tromp said, 'I'll amend that. It would be better to say that I think he's a scout for an expeditionary force, reconnoitering us for his Martian masters. It is even possible that they are in telepathic contact with him at all times, that he doesn't even need to report back. I don't know - but I do know that, after visiting Mars, I find such ideas much easier to swallow? and I know this: everybody seems to take it for granted that, finding a human being on Mars, we would of course bring him home and that he would be anxious to come home. Nothing could be further from the truth. Eh, Sven?'
