w. You're going to get as many tricky patents as you can on
this field, and assign them all to Spaceways. And Spaceways is going to
assign them all to a magnificent Space Development Association, a sort
of Chamber of Commerce for all the outer planets, and all the stuffed
shirts in creation are going to leap madly to get honorary posts on it.
And it will be practically beyond criticism, and it will have the public
interest passionately at its heart, and it will be practically beyond
interference and it will be as inefficient as hell! And the more
inefficient it is, the more it will have to take in to allow for its
inefficiency--and for your patents it has to give us a flat cut of its
gross! And meanwhile we'll get ours from the planets we've landed on and
publicized. We've got customers. We've built up a market for our
planets!"

"Eh?" said Jones in frank astonishment.

"We," said Cochrane, "rate as first inhabitants and therefore
proprietors and governments of the first two planets ever landed on
beyond Earth. When the Moon-colony was formed, there were elaborate laws
made to take care of surviving nation prides and so on. Whoever first
stays on a planet a full rotation is its proprietor and
government--until other inhabitants arrive. Then the government is all
of them, but the proprietorship remains with the first. We own two
planets. Nice planets. Glamorized planets, too! So I've already made
deals for the hotel-concessions on the glacier world."

Holden had listened with increasing uneasiness. Now he said doggedly:

"That's not right, Jed! I don't mind making money, but there are things
that are more important! Millions of people back home--hundreds of
millions of poor devils--spend their lives scared to death of losing
their jobs, not daring to hope for more than bare subsistence! I want to
do something for them! People need hope, Jed, simply to be healthy!
Maybe I'm a fool, but the human race needs hope more than I need money!"

Cochrane looked patient.

"What would you suggest?"

"I think," said Holden heavily, "that we ought to give what we've got to
the world. Let the governments of the world take over and assist
emigration. There's not one but will be glad to do it ..."

"Unfortunately," said Cochrane, "you are perfectly right. They would!
There have been resettlement projects and such stuff for generations.
I'm very much afraid that just what you propose will be done to some
degree somewhere or other