Jubal Resolves the Smith Estate and Martian Rights Crisis

Jubal Harshaw resolves the crisis over Valentine Michael Smith’s inheritance and Mars by converting a dangerous legal claim into a diplomatic fiction the Federation must honor. He admits that he had no reliable grasp of the Martians’ position; instead, he used the government’s desire for Smith’s Larkin rights and its anxiety about a possible deal with Kung to force public recognition of Smith as a sovereign equal, then recast him as an ambassador so the Larkin precedent could be set aside.

The Legal Trap

At the start of the maneuver, Jubal knew only that the government wanted the rights it believed Smith held under the Larkin Decision. He did not know the actual political relationship between the human colony and the Martians. Mahmoud had described the Martians as apparently indifferent to the colonists’ announced plan to remain on Mars: they neither objected nor seemed pleased. The settlers were already flying their flag and claiming extraterritoriality, but Mahmoud could not make sense of their status. Jubal’s own ignorance was therefore substantial; he acted on the assumption that the government was equally uncertain.

That uncertainty became leverage. Jubal reasoned that the administration’s greed for Smith’s rights, combined with its fear that the humans might bargain with Kung, could be turned against it. He used those pressures to obtain an unmistakable public diplomatic acknowledgment that Smith was a sovereign equal of the Federation. The government’s demand for a transfer of rights thus produced a public act that strengthened Smith’s position instead of simply delivering the rights to the administration.

Jubal explains the tactic through examples of deliberate invention. As a schoolboy, he once won a debate by citing an argument from a British Colonial Shipping Board that did not exist. In the negotiations, he again improvised a legal story: sovereign honors could be given either to a sovereign or to that sovereign’s viceroy or ambassador. On that basis he claimed that Smith was not a paper sovereign created by an irrelevant human precedent, but the ambassador of a great Martian nation. The claims were a bluff, and Jubal was frightened that he might be required to prove them.

Why Smith’s Status Matters

The public recognition had immediate consequences even before Jubal supplied his new explanation. Under the government’s own legalistic reading of the Larkin precedent, Smith was now the acknowledged sovereign of Mars and could grant concessions, trading rights, or enclaves. Jubal saw that as a perilous burden for Smith, who was poorly suited to withstand the pressures attached to such power and wealth. Smith could either make the grants himself or abdicate his titular position, allowing his Larkin rights to devolve on the twenty-three men then on Mars, including Douglas.

Neither alternative solved the deeper problem. Both assumed that the Larkin Decision could properly govern an inhabited planet. Jubal objected to letting the human court rule on that premise, and wanted the precedent and all rights claimed under it declared inapplicable to Mars while the issue could still be settled without a High Court decision. His ambassador theory offered a way to preserve the public sovereign honors already conferred on Smith while changing what those honors meant: Smith could be treated as the representative of a Martian polity, rather than as a human claimant empowered to parcel out the planet.

The maneuver depended on witnesses as well as words. Jubal had gambled that Douglas and, especially, Kung would be no more certain of the facts than he was. He also relied on the three water brethren present: if they did not challenge his invented account, he reasoned, Smith could be accepted as the Martian equivalent of an ambassador, leaving the Larkin issue effectively dead. Captain van Tromp then disclosed that he had taken Jubal’s assertions for simple truth, not recognized them as lies. That response makes the bluff’s success depend not on proof but on the authority that diplomatic protocol and the witnesses’ silence give it.

Agreement and Settlement

Jubal’s maneuver does not erase the practical questions surrounding Smith’s property and status; it creates the conditions in which those questions can be handled by agreement rather than by a ruling that would entrench the Larkin claim. After Douglas implements the arrangement already reached, Jubal insists that every copy be witnessed after Smith signs it. He singles out the captain, Sven, and Mahmoud, calls for Miriam’s seal, and asks that Bradley also witness. The care given to copies, seals, and witnesses turns the improvised diplomatic account into a documented settlement.

Smith takes visible pleasure in signing. The process runs long because he forms each letter carefully, with artistic satisfaction, while the remains of the picnic—mostly unopened bottles—are loaded and the hotel bill arrives. Jubal approves the bill on Smith’s behalf, signing as his representative. The small administrative details bring the episode down from sovereign claims to the practical work of executing the agreement: signatures, sealed copies, witnesses, transport, and expenses.

Bluff, Trust, and Consequence

Jubal’s explanation casts the outcome as a product of necessity rather than certainty. He says that the danger lay in allowing Smith either to exercise an unsuitable sovereignty over Mars or to surrender rights that could pass to the human settlers. His solution is audacious because it exploits the gap between what the Federation has publicly acknowledged and what anyone can prove about Martian political life. He does not claim to possess the facts; he wagers that the other parties cannot confidently disprove his account.

The episode also makes the water-brother relationship politically consequential. Jubal’s bluff would have been vulnerable if the three water brethren had contradicted him. Their presence and silence lend the invented ambassadorial status the credibility of personal trust, carrying a private bond into international protocol. The resolution is therefore neither a simple legal victory nor a verified account of Martian government. It is a settlement secured through strategic uncertainty: the public recognition of Smith remains, but the claim that he can transfer Mars under a human property precedent is displaced by Jubal’s claim that he represents a sovereign Martian nation.