Lunar Enterprises

Lunar Enterprises is a major corporation whose shares become entangled with political calculation and the legal complexities surrounding Valentine Michael Smith. The company links distant pressures: a possible political attack in the Federation Assembly, Becky Vesey’s carefully timed stock trade, and Smith’s enormous but difficult-to-explain inheritance. Its financial value is clear to Earth’s institutions, even as the meaning of owning it is alien to Smith.

Market Position and Political Pressure

When Joseph Douglas reads that Lunar Enterprises has fallen two points at closing, he considers political developments and the likely effects on the company. The same scene places the stock movement amid a contest for votes and a difficult re-election effort: Fosterites are running their own candidate, and Douglas believes he needs Charlie. The corporation’s market price is therefore presented not as an isolated financial fact but as part of a political environment in which public controversy and electoral maneuvering can affect business.

Agnes Douglas anticipates that the Eastern Coalition will exploit the dispute over the real and fabricated Man from Mars, and predicts a vote of confidence in the Assembly. While Douglas turns back to his newspaper and the day’s problems, the company’s falling shares remain in the background as another uncertainty to interpret. The political crisis and the movement in Lunar Enterprises’ stock are not shown as having a confirmed direct cause, but their juxtaposition makes the corporation’s fortunes part of the wider struggle over power and public confidence.

Becky Vesey’s Stock Trade

Becky Vesey converts what she has gathered from her social contacts into a speculative decision. After spending time with Agnes Douglas and considering the fragments of information she has picked up, she calls her stockbroker and orders him to sell Lunar Enterprises short. Her plan is specific: cover the short position when the stock is down ten points, wait for it to turn, buy again after a three-point rally, and sell once it returns to the day’s closing price.

The broker recognizes that the instructions imply unusual knowledge and presses her to explain. Becky answers that the stars tell her. The contrast between her astrological explanation and the precise sequence of trades gives the scene its dry wit: the claim is playful, but the transaction is deliberate and technically specific. The evidence records her instructions and her confidence, not the eventual result of the trade.

Smith’s Shares and the Problem of Ownership

Lunar Enterprises also forms part of Smith’s inheritance. Jubal Harshaw explains that Smith owns more than a million shares in the company, along with the Lyle Drive and other property and securities. Yet telling Smith that he owns these assets is difficult because, within his understanding of the Martian Old Ones, they already own everything. Earth’s legal and commercial categories do not readily translate into his conception of the world.

The difficulty is sharpened by the fact that the original owners are dead. Harshaw observes that this does not make the claim easier for Smith to accept; it makes it worse, because the dead belong to the category of the Old Ones, whose affairs Smith would not interfere with. Thus the shares are not merely a fortune awaiting administration. They expose a conflict between Earth’s inheritance system, which transfers property through legal ownership, and Smith’s reluctance to claim what he understands as belonging to those who came before.

Corporate Institutions and Religious Organization

The novel places Lunar Enterprises beside organizations that turn social relations and public attention into structures of influence. The Church of the New Revelation is described as borrowing from several established forms of organization and from commercial promotion, while its expanding business connections support the church’s public activities. Its layered structure distinguishes an accessible outer church, a prosperous middle church, and a secret inner church whose members hold leadership and policy-making roles.

The Church of All Worlds develops its own organized system around Mike’s public demonstrations and progressive circles of instruction. Patty teaches Martian to beginners and helps train novice members; she and Dawn, both High Priestesses, work to persuade Fosterites that joining Mike’s church need not conflict with their existing faith. At meetings, Mike’s magic and demonstrations attract attention, while the circle structure determines who will be invited to advance. The account of these institutions makes Lunar Enterprises part of a broader world in which financial capital, religious organization, and control of public attention coexist, though the text does not identify the corporation as belonging to either church.

Resilience and Significance

As persecution forces the Church of All Worlds to close, relocate, and reappear under new names, its members treat each disruption as a chance to build a more disciplined core and a network of advanced followers. Sam describes a congregation that has grown from Mike and three untrained priestesses to a substantial Nest in little more than a year. This trajectory contrasts with the exposed vulnerability of a publicly traded corporation: the church seeks continuity through dispersed communities and repeated reorganization, while Lunar Enterprises appears through its share price, market speculation, and inherited ownership.

The corporation’s narrative significance lies in these intersecting measures of value. To Becky Vesey, its stock can be traded according to a calculated pattern; to Smith, the shares are difficult to distinguish from property belonging to the Old Ones; to Harshaw, they are a substantial part of an estate that must somehow be explained. Lunar Enterprises therefore helps dramatize how an asset can be simultaneously a market instrument, a legal inheritance, and a concept that resists the assumptions of the person who possesses it.