The wording, of course, allows them to decide how much you can claim.

Anyway, the problem is we've got a lot of good territory, by Martian standards, but only about nine percent of what we hoped to get-which is not 'a really big chunk' to the investors. What would your reaction be to someone who got you to invest in new sensors, and the sensors only did about one-tenth of what they claimed when you invested?"

"But…" A.J. shut up. He knew thathe could clearly differentiate between the scenarios, but what Hank was telling him was, basically, that many other people couldn't, and to them Ares was already a failure. "Let's get to the point, Hank." A.J. jumped. He'd forgotten Anne Calabrio was present. She was the only other Ares board member currently on Earth. "We've ditched the whiners and the guys who somehow ignored all our warnings about speculation and so on," Anne said. "We aren't broke, and we've got, what, five million square miles of mostly prime Martian real estate. We're helping build Phobos Station along with NASA, our own colony is starting up fairly well for something so early in the development stages, so what's the problem?"

"The problem is that we're about to be left out in the cold," Hank said bluntly. As Ares' financial genius, his job had always been to look ahead and find innovative ways to keep the perennially cash-short speculative venture afloat. A.J. couldn't ever recall a meeting where he'd looked more grim. "The presidential election ended just a little before the Mars-Phobos Treaties were finalized, and the president wasn't happy about the results of the treaties. Sure, anyone with sense would have realized that something like it would be the end result, but I think you people know that our president hasn't always been sensible unless what you said agreed with what he wanted. My contacts say he's going to be pulling in the wagons and focusing on purely U.S. interests-which means the government and large businesses.