Eric Flint: Boundary

"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 onceand 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."

"Profit motive and a need for freedom are strong incentives. I think it's worth betting on, and so, apparently, do our investors."

"Fine. And let me tell you what else is true, Mr. Sudden-Expertin-History. Your parallel between the American frontier of the nineteenth century and the Martian frontier of the twenty-first conveniently overlooks the fact that a lot has changed in two centuries. It's not going to be Ye Plucky Pioneer racing his Conestoga in a land rush, it's going to be Ye Megacorporation gouging the hell out of everybody to allow them to go to Mars-on Megacorp's terms. Or do you think every would-be pioneer can build his own version of the Nike? If you ask me, your scheme-even if it works-isn't anything more than a fancy recipe for bringing back indentured servitude. In the name of 'freedom,' no less. And that's true even for American or European or East Asian would-be emigrants, much less-"

She broke off suddenly and took a deep breath. Then, decided she wasn't really in the mood for a full-bore argument. "Ah, never mind," she said, digging into her own food.

Fortunately, A.J. and Joe were just as willing to let it drop.

It was an old argument anyway, and one which in all its permutations the three of them had been bickering over for years.

A.J. and Joe were both libertarians in their political leanings-A.J., flamboyantly so; Joe, moderately so-and Jackie wasn't at all. As far as she was concerned, the splendid-sounding word "libertarianism," when you scratched the surface, all too often just meant "Me-me-meme-me."

On the subject of who really owned Mars-or ought to-Jackie tended to agree with her boss, Dr. Gupta.

"I see, "he'd said to her mildly once, after she explained the Ares Project's scheme." Finance Mars exploration by selling Martian land to wealthy speculators. Well, that will certainly be to the benefit of a billion of my former countrymen. Most of whom can't afford to own an automobile. Or a bicycle, often enough."

It was easy to deride government agencies for being bureaucratic. Jackie had done so herself, many times-and had to deal with NASA's often amazingly stupid decisions and procedures far more directly than A.J. ever did. But, in the end, she didn't really think that handing the world-the whole damn solar system!-over to people with the single-minded and ultimately self-centered focus of A.J. Baker would be any improvement. At all.

The problem wasn't even with people like A.J. anyway, much less Joe. The problem was that the kind of people they'd get to provide them with the sort of financial backing they needed usually did not look at the world the way they did. A.J. might be self-centered in terms of his interests and his personal focus, but he wasn't a damn bean counter. Money, as such, ranked so far down on his list of priorities that it barely made the list at all-and then, only as an afterthought. Allowing for his more practical nature, the same was true of Joe.

Jackie doubted that the Ares Project's fund-raising scheme would really work, in any event. She knew Ares had picked up enough financial backing over and above the prize money to keep their operations running-albeit always on a shoestring budget. But she thought their assessment that a successful landing on Mars would start unraveling almost three-quarters of a century's worth of international treaties forbidding the private exploitation of Antarctica and extraterrestrial bodies was…