Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein Read Free Book Online Page B

both his fathers were at least well to do. Brant was a bachelor until just before the expedition; he had ploughed most of his scandalous salary as a pilot on the Moon run back into Lunar Enterprises, Limited. You know how that stuff has boomed-they just declared another three-way stock dividend. Brant had one vice, gambling-but the bloke won regularly and invested that, too. Ward Smith had family money; he was a medical man and scientist by choice. Smith is heir to both of them."
                "Whew!"
                "That ain't half, honey. Smith is heir to the entire crew."
                "Huh?"
                "All eight signed a 'Gentlemen Adventurers' contract, making them all mutually heirs to each other-all of them and their issue. They did it with great care, using as models similar contracts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that had stood up against every effort to break them. Now these were all high-powered people; among them they had quite a lot. Happened to include considerable Lunar Enterprises stock, too, besides what Brant held. Smith might turn out to own a controlling interest, or at least a key bloc in a proxy fight."
                Jill thought about the childlike creature who had made such a touching ceremony out of just a drink of water and felt sorry for him. But Caxton went on: "I wish I could sneak a look at the Envoy's log. I know they recovered it-but I doubt if they'll ever release it."
                "Why not, Ben?"
                "Because it's a nasty story. I got Just enough to be sure before my informant sobered up and clammed up. Dr. Ward Smith delivered his wife of child by Caesarian section-and she died on the table. He seems to have worn his horns complacently until then. But what he did next shows that he knew the score; with the same scalpel he cut Captain Brant's throat- then cut his own. Sorry, hon."
                Jill shivered. "I'm a nurse. I'm immune to such things."
                "You're a liar and I love you for it. I was on police beat for three years, Jill; I never got hardened to it."
                "What happened to the others?"
                "I wish I knew. If we don't break the bureaucrats and high brass loose from that log, we'll never know-and I am enough of a starry-eyed newsboy to think we should know. Secrecy begets tyranny."
                "Ben, he might be better off if they gypped him out of his inheritance. He's very . . . uh, unworldly."
                "The exact word, I'm sure. Nor does he need all that money; the Man from Mars will never miss a meal. Any of the governments and any of a thousand-odd universities and scientific institutions would be delighted to have him as a permanent, privileged guest."
                "He'd better sign it over and forget it."
                "It's not that easy. Jill, you know about the famous case of General Atomics versus Larkin, et al?"
                "Uh, not really. You mean the Larkin Decision. I had to study it in school, same as everybody. But what's it got to do with Smith?"
                "Think back. The Russians sent the first rocket to the Moon, it crashed. The United States and Canada combine to send another one; it gets back but leaves nobody on the Moon. So when the United States and the Commonwealth are getting set to send a colonizing one jointly under the nominal sponsorship of the Federation and Russia is mounting the same deal on their own, General Atomics steals a march by sending one of their own from an island leased from Ecuador-and their men are still there, sitting pretty and looking smug when the Federation vessel shows up . . . followed by the Russian one.
                "You know what happened. General Atomics, a Swiss corporation American controlled, claimed the Moon. The Federation couldn't just brush them off; that would have been