“Doctor,” Jubal said gently, “why don’t you just admit that you don’t grok it and save the wear and tear?”

Nelson sighed. “I might as well. Put your clothes on, Michael.”

Somewhat later, Jubal, under the mellowing influence of congenial company and the grape, was unburdening to the three from the Champion his misgivings about his morning’s work. “The financial end was simple enough: just tie up Mike’s money so that a struggle over it couldn’t take place. Not even if he dies, because I’ve let Douglas know privately that Mike’s death ends his stewardship whereas a rumor from a usually reliable source—me, in this case—has reached Kung and several others to the effiect that Mike’s death will give Douglas permanent control. Of course, if I had had magical powers, I would have stripped the boy not only of all political significance but also of every penny of his inheritance. That—”

“Why would you have done that, Jubal?” the captain interrupted.

Harshaw looked surprised. “Are you wealthy, Skipper? I don’t mean: ‘Are your bills paid and enough in the sock to buy any follies your taste runs to?’ I mean rich . . . so loaded that the floor sags when you walk around to take your place at the head of a board-room table.”

“Me?” Van Tromp snorted. “I’ve got my monthly check, a pension eventually, a house with a mortgage—and two girls in college. I’d like to try being wealthy for a while, I don’t mind telling you!”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“Huh! You wouldn’t say that . . . if you had two daughters in school.”

“For the record, I put four daughters through college—and I went in debt to my armpits to do it. One of them justified the investment; she’s a leading light in her profession—which she practices under her husband’s name because I’m a disreputable old bum who makes money writing popular trash instead of having the grace to be only a revered memory in her paragraph in Who’s Who. The other three are nice people who always remember my birthday and don’t bother me otherwise; I can’t say that an education hurt them. But my offspring are not relevant save to show that I understand that a man often needs more than he’s got. But you can fix that easily; you can resign from the service and take a job with some engineering firm that will pay you several times what you’re getting just to put your name on their letterhead. General Atomics. Several others. You’ve had offers—haven’t you?”

“That’s beside the point,” Captain van Tromp answered stiffly. “I’m a professional man.”

“Meaning there isn’t enough money on this planet to tempt you into giving up commanding space ships. I understand that.”

“But I wouldn’t mind having money, too.”

“A little more money won’t do you any good—because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation, regardless of the amount. That’s a widely experienced but previously unformulated law of nature, to be known henceforth as ‘Harshaw’s Law.’ But, Captain, real wealth, on the scale that causes its owner to hire a battery of finaglers to hold down his taxes, would ground you just as certainly as resigning would.”

“Why should it? I would put it all in bonds and just clip coupons.”

“Would you? Not if you were the sort of person who acquires great wealth in the first place. Big money isn’t hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of single-minded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money, to the utter exclusion of all other interests. They say that the age of opportunity has passed. Nonsense! Seven out of ten of the wealthiest men on this planet started life without a shilling—and there are plenty more such strivers on the way up. Such people are not stopped by high taxation nor even by socialism; they simply adapt themselves to new rules and presently they change the rules. But no première ballerina ever works harder, nor more narrowly, than a man who acquires riches. Captain, that’s not your style; you don’t want to make money, you simply want to have money—in order to spend it.”

“Correct, sir! Which is why I can’t see why you should want to take Mike’s wealth away from him.”

“Because Mike doesn’t need it and it would cripple him worse than any physical handicap. Wealth—great wealth—is a curse . . . unless you are devoted to the money-making game for its own sake. And even then it has serious drawbacks.”

“Oh, nonsense! Jubal, you talk like a harem guard trying to convince a whole man of the advantages of being a eunuch. Pardon me.”