Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “It will be ridiculously expensive, Delos. And you don’t even know that you will ever get to the Moon, much less that it will be worth anything after you get there.”

  “We’ll get there! It’ll be more expensive not to establish these claims. Anyhow it need not be very expensive; the proper use of bribe money is a homoeopathic art—you use it as a catalyst. Back in the middle of the last century four men went from California to Washington with $40,000; it was all they had. A few weeks later they were broke—but Congress had awarded them a billion dollars’ worth of railroad right of way. The trick is not to run up the market.”

  Strong shook his head. “Your title wouldn’t be any good anyhow. The Moon doesn’t stay in one place; it passes over owned land certainly—but so does a migrating goose.”

  “And nobody has title to a migrating bird. I get your point—but the Moon always stays over that one belt. If you move a boulder in your garden, do you lose title to it? Is it still real estate? Do the title laws still stand? This is like that group of real estate cases involving wandering islands in the Mississippi, George—the land moved as the river cut new channels, but somebody always owned it. In this case I plan to see to it that we are the ‘somebody’.”

  Strong puckered his brow. “I seem to recall that some of those island-and-riparian cases were decided one way and some another.”

  “We’ll pick the decisions that suit us. That’s why lawyers’ wives have mink coats. Come on, George; let’s get busy.”

  “On what?”

  “Raising the money.”

  “Oh.” Strong looked relieved. “I thought you were planning to use our money.”

  “I am. But it won’t be nearly enough. We’ll use our money for the senior financing to get things moving; in the meantime, we’ve got to work out ways to keep the money rolling in.” He pressed a switch at his desk; the face of Saul Kamens, their legal chief of staff, sprang out at him. “Hey, Saul, can you slide in for a pow-wow?”

  “Whatever it is, just tell them ‘no,’” answered the attorney. “I’ll fix it.”

  “Good. Now come on in—they’re moving Hell and I’ve got an option on the first ten loads.”

  Kamens showed up in his own good time. Some minutes later Harriman had explained his notion for claiming the Moon ahead of setting foot on it. “Besides those dummy corporations,” he went on, “we need an agency that can receive contributions without having to admit any financial interest on the part of the contributor—like the National Geographic Society.”

  Kamens shook his head. “You can’t buy the National Geographic Society.”

  “Damn it, who said we were going to? We’ll set up our own.”

  “That’s what I started to say.”

  “Good. As I see it, we need at least one tax-free, non-profit corporation headed up by the right people—we’ll hang on to voting control, of course. We’ll probably need more than one; we’ll set them up as we need them. And we’ve got to have at least one new ordinary corporation, not tax free—but it won’t show a profit until we are ready. The idea is to let the nonprofit corporations have all of the prestige and all of the publicity—and the other gets all of the profits, if and when. We swap assets around between corporations, always for perfectly valid reasons, so that the non-profit corporations pay the expenses as we go along. Come to think about it, we had better have at least two ordinary corporations, so that we can let one of them go through bankruptcy if we find it necessary to shake out the water. That’s the general sketch. Get busy and fix it up so that it’s legal, will you?”

  Kamens said, “You know, Delos, it would be a lot more honest if you did it at the point of a gun.”

  “A lawyer talks to me of honesty! Never mind, Saul; I’m not actually going to cheat anyone—”

  “Humph!”

  “—and I’m just going to make a trip to the Moon. That’s what everybody will be paying for; that’s what they’ll get. Now fix it up so that it’s legal, that’s a good boy.”

  “I’m reminded of something the elder Vanderbilt’s lawyer said to the old man under similar circumstances: ‘It’s beautiful the way it is; why spoil it by making it legal?’ Okeh, brother gonoph, I’ll rig your trap. Anything else?”

  “Sure. Stick around, you might have some ideas. George, ask Montgomery to come in, will you?” Montgomery, Harriman’s publicity chief, had two virtues in his employer’s eyes: he was personally loyal to Harriman, and, second, he was quite capable of planning a campaign to convince the public that Lady Godiva wore a Caresse-brand girdle during her famous ride . . . or that Hercules attributed his strength to Crunchies for breakfast.

  He arrived with a large portfolio under his arm. “Glad you sent for me, Chief. Get a load of this—” He spread the folder open on Harriman’s desk and began displaying sketches and layouts. “Kinsky’s work—is that boy hot!”

  Harriman closed the portfolio. “What outfit is it for?”

  “Huh? New World Homes.”

  “I don’t want to see it; we’re dumping New World Homes. Wait a minute—don’t start to bawl. Have the boys go through with it; I want the price kept up while we unload. But open your ears to another matter.” He explained rapidly the new enterprise.

  Presently Montgomery was nodding. “When do we start and how much do we spend?”

  “Right away and spend what you need to. Don’t get chicken about expenses; this is the biggest thing we’ve ever tackled.” Strong flinched; Harriman went on, “Have insomnia over it tonight; see me tomorrow and we’ll kick it around.”

  “Wait a sec, Chief. How are you going to sew up all those franchises from the, uh—the Moon states, those countries the Moon passes over, while a big publicity campaign is going on about a trip to the Moon and how big a thing it is for everybody? Aren’t you about to paint yourself into a corner?”

  “Do I look stupid? We’ll get the franchise before you hand out so much as a filler—you’ll get ’em, you and Kamens. That’s your first job.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Montgomery chewed a thumb nail. “Well, all right—I can see some angles. How soon do we have to sew it up?”

  “I give you six weeks. Otherwise just mail your resignation in, written on the skin off your back.”

  “I’ll write it right now, if you’ll help me by holding a mirror.”

  “Damn it, Monty, I know you can’t do it in six weeks. But make it fast; we can’t take a cent in to keep the thing going until you sew up those franchises. If you dilly-dally, we’ll all starve—and we won’t get to the Moon, either.”

  Strong said, “D.D., why fiddle with those trick claims from a bunch of moth-eaten tropical countries? If you are dead set on going to the Moon, let’s call Ferguson in and get on with the matter.”

  “I like your direct approach, George,” Harriman said, frowning. “Mmmm . . . back about 1845 or ’46 an eager-beaver American army officer captured California. You know what the State Department did?”

  “They made him hand it back. Seems he hadn’t touched second base, or something. So they had to go to the trouble of capturing it all over again a few months later. Now I don’t want that to happen to us. It’s not enough just to set foot on the Moon and claim it; we’ve got to validate that claim in terrestrial courts—or we’re in for a peck of trouble. Eh, Saul?”

  Kamens nodded. “Remember what happened to Columbus.”

  “Exactly. We aren’t going to let ourselves be rooked the way Columbus was.”

  Montgomery spat out some thumbnail. “But, Chief—you know damn well those banana-state claims won’t be worth two cents after I do tie them up. Why not get a franchise right from the U.N. and settle the matter? I’d as lief tackle that as tackle two dozen cockeyed legislatures. In fact I’ve got an angle already—we work it through the Security Council and—”

  “Keep working on that angle; we’ll use it later. You don’t appreciate the full mechanics of the scheme, Monty. Of course those claims are worth nothing—except nuisance value. But the
ir nuisance value is all important. Listen: we get to the Moon, or appear about to. Every one of those countries puts up a squawk; we goose them into it through the dummy corporations they have enfranchised. Where do they squawk? To the U.N., of course. Now the big countries on this globe, the rich and important ones, are all in the northern temperate zone. They see what the claims are based on and they take a frenzied look at the globe. Sure enough, the Moon does not pass over a one of them. The biggest country of all—Russia—doesn’t own a spadeful of dirt south of twenty-nine north. So they reject all the claims.

  “Or do they?” Harriman went on. “The U.S. balks. The Moon passes over Florida and the southern part of Texas. Washington is in a tizzy. Should they back up the tropical countries and support the traditional theory of land title or should they throw their weight to the idea that the Moon belongs to everyone? Or should the United States try to claim the whole thing, seeing as how it was Americans who actually got there first?

  “At this point we creep out from under cover. It seems that the Moon ship was owned and the expenses paid by a nonprofit corporation chartered by the U.N. itself—”

  “Hold it,” interrupted Strong. “I didn’t know that the U.N. could create corporations?”

  “You’ll find it can,” his partner answered. “How about it, Saul?” Kamens nodded. “Anyway,” Harriman continued, “I’ve already got the corporation. I had it set up several years ago. It can do most anything of an educational or scientific nature—and brother, that covers a lot of ground! Back to the point—this corporation, this creature of the U.N., asks its parent to declare the lunar colony autonomous territory, under the protection of the U.N. We won’t ask for outright membership at first because we want to keep it simple—”

  “Simple, he calls it!” said Montgomery.

  “Simple. This new colony will be a de facto sovereign state, holding title to the entire Moon, and—listen closely!—capable of buying, selling, passing laws, issuing title to land, setting up monopolies, collecting tariffs, et cetera without end. And we own it.”

  “The reason we get all this is because the major states in the U.N. can’t think up a claim that sounds as legal as the claim made by the tropical states, they can’t agree among themselves as to how to split up the swag if they were to attempt brute force and the other major states aren’t willing to see the United States claim the whole thing. They’ll take the easy way out of their dilemma by appearing to retain title in the U.N. itself. The real title, the title controlling all economic and legal matters, will revert to us. Now do you see my point, Monty?”

  Montgomery grinned. “Damned if I know if it’s necessary, Chief, but I love it. It’s beautiful.”

  “Well, I don’t think so,” Strong grumbled. “Delos, I’ve seen you rig some complicated deals—some of them so devious that they turned even my stomach—but this one is the worst yet. I think you’ve been carried away by the pleasure you get out of cooking up involved deals in which somebody gets double-crossed.”

  Harriman puffed hard on his cigar before answering, “I don’t give a damn, George. Call it chicanery, call it anything you want to. I’m going to the Moon! If I have to manipulate a million people to accomplish it, I’ll do it.”

  “But it’s not necessary to do it this way.”

  “Well, how would you do it?”

  “Me? I’d set up a straightforward corporation. I’d get a resolution in Congress making my corporation the chosen instrument of the United States—”

  “Bribery?”

  “Not necessarily. Influence and pressure ought to be enough. Then I would set about raising the money and make the trip.”

  “And the United States would then own the Moon?”

  “Naturally,” Strong answered a little stiffly.

  Harriman got up and began pacing. “You don’t see it, George, you don’t see it. The Moon was not meant to be owned by a single country, even the United States.”

  “It was meant to be owned by you, I suppose.”

  “Well, if I own it—for a short while—I won’t misuse it and I’ll take care that others don’t. Damnation, nationalism should stop at the stratosphere. Can you see what would happen if the United States lays claim to the Moon? The other nations won’t recognize the claim. It will become a permanent bone of contention in the Security Council—just when we were beginning to get straightened out to the point where a man could do business planning without having his elbow jogged by a war every few years. The other nations—quite rightfully—will be scared to death of the United States. They will be able to look up in the sky any night and see the main atom-bomb rocket base of the United States staring down the backs of their necks. Are they going to hold still for it? No, sirree—they are going to try to clip off a piece of the Moon for their own national use. The Moon is too big to hold, all at once. There will be other bases established there and presently there will be the worst war this planet has ever seen—and we’ll be to blame.

  “No, it’s got to be an arrangement that everybody will hold still for—and that’s why we’ve got to plan it, think of all the angles, and be devious about it until we are in a position to make it work.

  “Anyhow, George, if we claim it in the name of the United States, do you know where we will be, as businessmen?”

  “In the driver’s seat,” answered Strong.

  “In a pig’s eye! We’ll be dealt right out of the game. The Department of National Defense will say ‘Thank you, Mr. Harriman. Thank you, Mr. Strong. We are taking over in the interests of national security; you can go home now.’ And that’s just what we would have to do—go home and wait for the next atom war.

  “I’m not going to do it, George. I’m not going to let the brass hats muscle in. I’m going to set up a lunar colony and then nurse it along until it is big enough to stand on its own feet. I’m telling you—all of you!—this is the biggest thing for the human race since the discovery of fire. Handled right, it can mean a new and braver world. Handle it wrong and it’s a one-way ticket to Armageddon. It’s coming, it’s coming soon, whether we touch it or not. But I plan to be the Man in the Moon myself—and give it my personal attention to see that it’s handled right.”

  He paused. Strong said, “Through with your sermon, Delos?”

  “No, I’m not,” Harriman denied testily. “You don’t see this thing the right way. Do you know what we may find up there?” He swung his arm in an arc toward the ceiling. “People!”

  “On the Moon?” said Kamens.

  “Why not on the Moon?” whispered Montgomery to Strong.

  “No, not on the Moon—at least I’d be amazed if we dug down and found anybody under that airless shell. The Moon has had its day; I was speaking of the other planets—Mars and Venus and the satellites of Jupiter. Even maybe out at the stars themselves. Suppose we do find people? Think what it will mean to us. We’ve been alone, all alone, the only intelligent race in the only world we know. We haven’t even been able to talk with dogs or apes. Any answers we got we had to think up by ourselves, like deserted orphans. But suppose we find people, intelligent people, who have done some thinking in their own way. We wouldn’t be alone anymore! We could look up at the stars and never be afraid again.”

  He finished, seeming a little tired and even a little ashamed of his outburst, like a man surprised in a private act. He stood facing them, searching their faces.

  “Gee whiz, Chief,” said Montgomery, “I can use that. How about it?”

  “Think you can remember it?”

  “Don’t need to—I flipped on your ‘silent steno.’”

  “Well, damn your eyes!”

  “We’ll put it on video—in a play I think.”

  Harriman smiled almost boyishly. “I’ve never acted, but if you think it’ll do any good, I’m game.”

  “Oh, no, not you, Chief,” Montgomery answered in horrified tones. “You’re not the type. I’ll use Basil Wilkes-Booth, I think. With his organlike voice and that beautiful archange
l face, he’ll really send ’em.”

  Harriman glanced down at his paunch and said gruffly, “O.K.—back to business. Now about money. In the first place we can go after straight donations to one of the nonprofit corporations, just like endowments for colleges. Hit the upper brackets, where tax deductions really matter. How much do you think we can raise that way?”

  “Very little,” Strong opined. “That cow is about milked dry.”

  “It’s never milked dry, as long as there are rich men around who would rather make gifts than pay taxes. How much will a man pay to have a crater on the Moon named after him?”

  “I thought they all had names?” remarked the lawyer.

  “Lots of them don’t—and we have the whole back face that’s not touched yet. We won’t try to put down an estimate today; we’ll just list it. Monty, I want an angle to squeeze dimes out of the schoolkids, too. Forty million schoolkids at a dime a head is $4,000,000—we can use that.”

  “Why stop at a dime?” asked Monty. “If you get a kid really interested he’ll scrape together a dollar.”

  “Yes, but what do we offer him for it? Aside from the honor of taking part in a noble venture and so forth?”

  “Mmmm . . .” Montgomery used up more thumbnail. “Suppose we go after both the dimes and the dollars. For a dime he gets a card saying that’s he’s a member of the Moonbeam club—”

  “No, the ‘Junior Spacemen.’”

  “O.K., the Moonbeams will be girls—and don’t forget to rope the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts into it, too. We give each kid a card; when he kicks in another dime, we punch it. When he’s punched out a dollar, we give him a certificate, suitable for framing, with his name and some process engraving, and on the back a picture of the Moon.”

  “On the front,” answered Harriman. “Do it in one print job; it’s cheaper and it’ll look better. We give him something else, too, a steel-clad guarantee that his name will be on the rolls of the Junior Pioneers of the Moon, which same will be placed in a monument to be erected on the Moon at the landing site of the first Moon ship—in microfilm, of course; we have to watch weight.”