“Oh, surely!” said Cochrane cynically.  “And you’ll have tax-payers objecting because you make money.  You’ll be regulated out of existence.  Were you thinking that Spaceways would run this transportation system you’re planning, without cutting anybody else in on even the glory of it?”

Jones looked at him, dead-pan.  But he was annoyed.

“I want some money,” he said.  “I thought we could get this thing set up, and then I could get myself a ship and facilities for doing some really original work.  I’d like to work something out and not have to sell the publicity-rights to it!”

“I’ll arrange it,” promised Cochrane.  “I’ve got our lawyers setting up a deal right now.  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 ...”