"You're talking like a paranoiac.
Do you really believe the government of North America would send a
battleship clear out here to do you dirt?"

"Not the whole government. A few men in the right positions is all
that's necessary. I don't know if Hulse was bribed or talked into
this. But probably he agreed as a duty. He's the prim type."

"A duty--to destroy a North American business?"

* * * * *

Chung finished at the intercom in time to answer: "Not permanent
physical destruction, Miss Ziska. As Mike suggested, some corporation
will doubtless inherit the Sword and repair the damage. But a private,
purely asterite business ... yes, I'm afraid Mike's right. We are the
target."

"In mercy's name, why?"

"From the highest motives, of course," Chung sneered bitterly. "You
know what the Social Justice Party thinks of private capitalism.
What's more important, though, is that the Sword is the first Belt
undertaking not tied to Mother Earth's apron strings. We have no
commitments to anybody back there. We can sell our output wherever we
like. It's notorious that the asterites are itching to build up their
own self-sufficient industries. Quite apart from sentiment, we can
make bigger profits in the Belt than back home, especially when you
figure the cost of sending stuff in and out of Earth's gravitational
well. So certainly we'd be doing most of our business out here.

"Our charter can't simply be revoked. First a good many laws would
have to be revised, and that's politically impossible. There is still
a lot of individualist sentiment in North America, as witness the
fact that businesses do get launched and that the Essjays did have a
hard campaign to get elected. What the new government wants is
something like the Eighteenth Century English policy toward America.
Keep the colonies as a source of raw materials and as a market for
manufactured goods, but don't let them develop a domestic industry.
You can't come right out and say that, but you can let the situation
develop naturally.

"Only ... here the Sword is, obviously bound to grow rich and expand
in every direction. If we're allowed to develop, to reinvest our
profits, we'll become the nucleus of independent asterite enterprise.
If, on the other hand, we're wiped out by an unfortunate accident,
there's no nucleus; and a small change in the banking laws is all
that's needed to prevent others from getting started. Q.E.D."

"I dare