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I’m immune to such things.”
    â€œYou’re a liar and I love you for it. I was on police beat three years, Jill; I never got hardened to it.”
    â€œWhat happened to the others?”
    â€œIf we don’t break the bureaucrats loose from that log, we’ll never know—and I am a starry-eyed newsboy who thinks we should. Secrecy begets tyranny.”
    â€œBen, he might be better off if they gypped him out of his inheritance. He’s very . . . uh, unworldly.”
    â€œThe exact word, I’m sure. Nor does he need money; the Man from Mars will never miss a meal. Any government and a thousand-odd universities and institutions would be delighted to have him as a permanent guest.”
    â€œHe’d better sign it over and forget it.”
    â€œIt’s not that easy. Jill, you know the famous case of General Atomics versus Larkin, et al.?”
    â€œUh, you mean the Larkin Decision. I had it in school, same as everybody. What’s it got to do with Smith?”
    â€œThink back. The Russians sent the first ship to the Moon, it crashed. The United States and Canada combine to send one; it gets back but leaves nobody on the Moon. So while the United States and the Commonwealth are getting set to send a colonizing one under the sponsorship of the Federation and Russia is mounting the same deal on their own, General Atomics steals a march by boosting one from an island leased from Ecuador—and their men are there, sitting pretty and looking smug when the Federation vessel shows up—followed by the Russian one.
    â€œSo General Atomics, a Swiss corporation American controlled, claimed the Moon. The Federation couldn’t brush them off and grab it; the Russians wouldn’t have held still. So the High Court ruled that a corporate person, a mere legal fiction, could not own a planet; the real owners were the men who maintained occupation—Larkin and associates. So they recognized them as a sovereign nation and took them into the Federation—with melon slicing for those on the inside and concessions to General Atomics and its daughter corporation, Lunar Enterprises. This did not please anybody and the Federation High Court was not all-powerful then—but it was a compromise everybody could swallow. It resulted in rules for colonizing planets, all based on the Larkin Decision and intended to avoid bloodshed. Worked, too—World War Three did not result from conflict over space travel and such. So the Larkin Decision is law and applies to Smith.”
    Jill shook her head. “I don’t see the connection.”
    â€œThink, Jill. By our laws, Smith is a sovereign nation—and sole owner of the planet Mars.”

V.
    JILL LOOKED round-eyed. “Too many martinis, Ben. I would swear you said that patient owns Mars.”
    â€œHe does. He occupied it the required period. Smith is the planet Mars—King, President, sole civic body, what you will. If the Champion had not left colonists, Smith’s claim might have lapsed. But it did and that continues occupation even though Smith came to Earth. But Smith doesn’t have to split with them; they are mere immigrants until he grants them citizenship.”
    â€œFantastic!”
    â€œBut legal. Honey, you see why people are interested in Smith? And why the administration is keeping him under a rug? What they are doing isn’t legal. Smith is also a citizen of the United States and of the Federation; it’s illegal to hold a citizen, even a convicted criminal, incommunicado anywhere in the Federation. Also, it has been an unfriendly act all through history to lock up a visiting monarch—which he is —and not to let him see people, especially the press, meaning me . You still won’t sneak me?”
    â€œHuh? You’ve got me scared silly. Ben, if they had caught me, what would they have done?”
    â€œMmm . . . nothing rough. Locked you in a padded cell, with a certificate