“Oh, that.” Descroix’s crooked smile told him exactly how much his reaction to her shot at the Housemans amused her. But then she sobered and twitched one shoulder in a half-shrug.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt at all about its fundamental soundness. One look at a star chart should make that evident enough! And I think the point he’s trying to make is that this is one of those situations where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. What this new terminus does is to fill in a whole arc of the League perimeter. But it doesn’t really come into its own until you connect it with all of the other coverage available to us through the Junction.” She shook her head. “I’m sure Stefan’s people—or Marissa’s people over at the Exchequer—could give us a much better sense of the dollar-and-cents value, but it doesn’t take a financial genius to realize that this can only further enhance the value of our merchant marine.”

“Edward?” High Ridge looked at Janacek.

“I have to agree with Elaine,” Janacek replied. But where Descroix was obviously pleased over the potential she saw, his admission came grudgingly, and High Ridge knew why.

“I realize you were never very happy about the annexation of Basilisk,” the Prime Minister said after a moment, having decided to grasp the dilemma’s horns. “I wasn’t particularly pleased with it either, you know. And I’ve had my own strong doubts about the wisdom of territorial expansion in general, as I’m sure you’re quite aware. For that matter, the consequences we already face as the result of annexing someplace like Trevor’s Star lend added point to the concerns we both share. Nonetheless, I think we would have to agree that this terminus is in a different class from Basilisk.”

“Of course it is,” Descroix said briskly. “There’s no inhabited planet full of alien aborigines for certain political parties to agonize over, for one thing. And it’s not going to help bring us into potential armed conflict with something like the People’s Republic, either, however much the League might prefer for us to stay out of the region. Not to mention the fact, if we’re going to be honest, that Basilisk was on the backside of nowhere when we first discovered it. Everything worthwhile beyond Basilisk has been surveyed and settled only since we opened up the terminus. This terminus gives us direct, immediate access to an already inhabited region and the shipping lanes which serve it. Not to mention the fact that the League’s expansion in Talbott’s direction means that the economic opportunities will grow by leaps and bounds over the next few decades.”

“Elaine is right,” the Earl of North Hollow said. “My senior analysts are still putting the final touches on their survey report, but I’ve seen the rough draft of their conclusions. Basilisk has been an enormous economic boon to the Star Kingdom, whatever the pros and cons of actually annexing the system. But by the most conservative estimate I’ve seen so far, the Talbott Cluster terminus offers us a minimum increase of over a thousand percent over what Basilisk did for us. A thousand percent.” It was his turn to shake his head. “What it boils down to is that this is the most significant single economic event in the history of the Star Kingdom since the original discovery of the Junction itself.”