Hagerstown is the Maryland destination to which Ben Caxton takes Jill while trying to avoid possible surveillance. Its restaurant becomes the setting for Ben’s explanation of the legal, political, and financial stakes surrounding Valentine Michael Smith, joining a quiet meal to a discussion of power over Mars and Smith’s immense estate.

Arrival and Precautions

After leaving Ben’s apartment, the pair travel to the roof, take a taxi to the Alexandria platform, and change to another cab. Ben chooses a vehicle with a Baltimore serial number and sets its destination for Hagerstown. Only once they are airborne does he relax enough to explain his silence: he suspects his apartment may be bugged, and worries that the authorities could use the same surveillance methods he has used in investigating matters the administration wants concealed. He considers a randomly selected cab safer than one called from his flat, since the Special Service could not equip thousands of vehicles with recording devices.

The Restaurant

The restaurant in Hagerstown offers both good food and deliberately theatrical surroundings. Tables stand on a lawn beside a small lake and among the branches of three enormous old trees; a force-field roof keeps the outdoor dining area in perpetual summer, even in rain or snow. Jill wants to eat in the trees, but Ben instead bribes the maître d’hôtel to place them near the water at a spot he chooses, then has a portable stereo tank brought to their table. Jill objects to being denied the tree tables and made to endure the device, while Ben’s choice reflects the purpose of the stop: he is managing their surroundings as carefully as their route.

Conversation About Mars and Smith

At Hagerstown, Ben answers Jill’s question about why powerful people might want Smith dead. Politically, Smith’s death could extinguish his unusual legal claim to Mars. The pioneer group left there by the Champion might then advance a new claim, perhaps under an arrangement made with the administration before departure. Ben suspects such a deal could leave Secretary General Joseph E. Douglas in control of the resulting concessions, though he stresses that the arrangement might also amount to nothing.

The legal uncertainty turns on whether the Larkin Decision, which concerned uninhabited Luna, can apply to Mars, already inhabited by Martians. Since the Martians have no standing in Earth’s legal system, the High Court could still uphold human claims; alternatively, it might decide that human settlement cannot confer rights over a world with native inhabitants, leaving any claim to be secured from the Martians themselves. Ben sharpens the point by recalling how a papal grant divided the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal despite the presence of Indigenous peoples with their own laws, customs, and ideas of property. Jill objects that the fifteenth century is not the present, but Ben argues that lawyers continue to invoke old legal authorities, making the historical precedent relevant to contemporary adjudication.

Property, Power, and the Setting’s Role

If the High Court rules that the Larkin Decision applies, Ben explains, Smith could grant or withhold Martian concessions worth millions or billions. Transferring his claim to the administration would put Douglas in a position to distribute those benefits, which Ben sees as the outcome Douglas is trying to arrange. The conversation thus makes Hagerstown more than a stopping place: its secluded meal gives Ben room to lay out how uncertain legal recognition could become a source of immense political leverage.

Smith’s financial holdings form the second part of Ben’s answer. A court might invalidate his claim to Mars, but Ben doubts that it could dislodge his ownership of the Lyle Drive and a major share of Lunar Enterprises. Eight wills are public record, and Smith inherits under the three most important whether or not a will exists. If he dies without making one, his fortune might revert to the state, although a thousand supposed cousins could appear to contest it; the Science Foundation has resisted such claimants before. Hagerstown therefore anchors a conversation in which Smith’s life, legal identity, planetary rights, and property are treated as connected sources of power, each vulnerable to a different kind of contest.