Stranger in a Strange Land

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."
                "Touché," 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 sover eign 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