World War III

World War III is the conflict that postpones humanity’s return to Mars after the loss of the Envoy. In the interval it creates, a planned immediate response gives way to a later, more capable expedition; the war also forms part of the historical background to the planetary-colonization rules applied to Valentine Michael Smith’s claim to Mars.

Delay in the Mars Expedition

The robotic probe Zombie found evidence that Mars’s apparent canals were engineered works and that features on the planet could be interpreted as city ruins. Those discoveries might have prompted a large, rapid crewed expedition, but World War III intervened and prevented that response. The war thus interrupts the movement from scientific evidence to human exploration, leaving Mars unvisited by people for a quarter of an Earth century.

A Stronger Return

The delay had a consequential, if unintended, effect on the next expedition: it was stronger and safer than the lost Envoy mission. The Federation ship Champion crossed under the Lyle Drive in nineteen days, carrying eighteen experienced spacemen and more than that number of male pioneers. Captain Willem van Tromp directed the ship to land south of Lacus Soli while searching for the Envoy. The expedition reported to Earth by radio each day, and its first dispatch confirmed that the Envoy had been found with no survivors.

War and Planetary Law

The novel also places World War III within a history of disputes over extraterrestrial settlement. The Larkin Decision had established rules for colonizing planets after competing claims to the Moon were resolved through recognition of the people who had maintained occupation, rather than a corporation, as its sovereign owners. These rules were intended to avert bloodshed, and the account explicitly notes that the Third World War did not arise from conflict over space travel. By the time the law is applied to Valentine Michael Smith, the Larkin Decision has become an established part of planetary law: Smith is treated as a sovereign nation in himself and the sole owner of Mars. The war is therefore both an interruption to exploration and a historical boundary against which the story distinguishes the causes of terrestrial conflict from the later legal struggle over Mars.