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"Oh, you mean instead of mugging the taxpayers and blowing their dough on expensive boondoggles?" A.J. grinned. "Well, you know about the prizes."



"Right. That's some money, and I suppose if you guys manage to have everything work right, that'd finance a good chunk of things."



"So far it's done real well for us. But it only pays for you being first, don't forget. If you have a reason to do things more than once— and we have a number of reasons we have to do multiple launches and landings—you'll start burning through whatever small profit you might make on the prize money after development. So as you imply, we need other sources.



"So first we got people who believed in it enough to be willing to donate money to the cause, work for cheap, and so on, to keep costs down. Then we started looking for angels—investors who wanted to be in on private space ventures."



A.J. leaned back, stretched, and then attacked his calamari for a moment. "Of course, the problem there is that even though a few ventures like Rutan's managed to make space before, they never got a chance to do much with it except some touristy stuff, so there weren't too many angels left. That meant we had to actually promise something."



"You started selling Mars, right? But you don't own the planet, so how can you sell it? That's what I don't get."



Joe held up an admonishing finger. "My dear girl," he said in a pompous tone, "we aren't selling Mars. We are selling the option to own property on Mars on the speculation that we can arrive there first and, therefore, claim that property by virtue of our arrival."



"Isn't that the same thing? And isn't it against international law to begin with?"



"Not exactly," A.J. said defensively. "If you look at it cold-bloodedly, what we're really doing is essentially a legal form of gambling. There's a reason they call the financial section the 'Harriman Division' at Ares. This is land speculation based on the potential opening of a new frontier—something Heinlein mentioned in his story 'The Man Who Sold the Moon.'"



"In other words, it's a hustle." Jackie made no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.



"The fact is," she said forcefully, dropping her innocent pose, "that your scheme is against international law—going back at least to the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. The principles of which, I remind you, were reaffirmed in the treaty regarding use of the moon in 1967. Not to mention about a jillion UN resolutions that the United States is signatory to. What you're gambling on—more precisely, trying to get other people to gamble on—is that if you can land on Mars first, you can get at least some of those treaty provisions lifted."



A.J. and Joe were both looking defensive now—and the term "defensive," in the case of A.J. Baker, was a very difficult one to separate from "belligerent."



Joe, however, responded first. "Yes, Jackie, we're gambling—or asking others to, if you prefer. But what we're gambling on is not whether it will be done, but how quickly it will be done."



"What makes you think it will ever happen at all?"



"Because, to put it bluntly, Mars will eventually be habitable. The engineering to make it livable is already known to be possible, and relatively quickly—unlike the ten-thousand-year job it would be to terraform Venus. Antarctica really isn't, and there's a biosphere already on Earth that you can't risk disrupting in order to make it habitable. The Moon is a useless rock. Basically, those treaties hold because no one wants the areas involved badly enough to kick about it, and because there's no real motivation for lots of people to go there."



He took a bite, savored the flavor. "Mmmm . . . Now, if you want people to live somewhere else, you have to offer them something. And if what you want is for the place to be self-sustaining, you're talking about getting everything from farmers to miners to management people there. History has shown that, especially in frontier locations—and Mars will most definitely be a frontier—one of the big driving forces is the ability to get your own place relatively cheap, or potentially even 'free.' I put little verbal quotes around that because, of course, you'll be working your tail off to live on your land. You'll not be getting the best immigrants if what you do is force a lease or rental agreement on everyone. They will want to own the land, and I think the governments of the world will recognize that a separate habitable planet is an entirely different kettle of fish from some deserted, airless rockball like the Moon."



Jackie nodded. "Okay, it's not quite a con. You're right, it's a gamble. You're betting that the potential of a frontier will cause political pressure, on the one hand; and the thought of the potential profits from owning and exploiting an entire planet, on the other hand, will cause pressure from major industrial and financial interests. And all of it happening fast enough to make a difference in the laws to your benefit."