 What gave Starre the right to claim the asteroid as her own when Parker and Queazy arrived?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1945. "Now all we have to do is find out if she's made of tungsten, iron, quartz crystals, and cinnabar! While Queazy—so called because his full name was Quentin Zuyler—dropped the ship straight down to the smooth surface of the asteroid, and clamped it tight with magnetic grapples, Bob flung open the lazarette, brought out two space-suits. Moments later, they were outside the ship, with star-powdered infinity spread to all sides. And yet, if by some chance there was such a rigidly specified asteroid, their financial worries would be over. That they had actually discovered the asteroid, using their mass-detectors in a weight-elimination process, seemed like an incredible stroke of luck. Now that he and Queazy had found the asteroid, they were desperate to get it to its destination, for fear that the Saylor brothers might get wind of what was going on, and try to beat them out of their profits. Now they scuffed along the smooth-plane topside of the asteroid, the magnets in their shoes keeping them from stepping off into space. By the naked eye, they could see iron ore, quartz crystals, cinnabar, but he had the spectroscope and there was no reason why he shouldn't use it. He satisfied himself as to the exterior of the asteroid, and then sent the twin beams deep into its heart. The radiations from the sundered molecules traveled back up the beams to the atomic-whirl spectroscope. He and Queazy caught up with her on the side of the asteroid they hadn't yet examined. About twenty steps away was her small dumbbell-shaped ship, so shiny and unscarred that it reflected starlight in highlights from its curved surface. If we don't take this asteroid to Earth before June 2, we go back to Satterfield City and work the rest of our lives in the glass factories. A few hundred feet away, floating gently toward the asteroid, came another ship—a ship a trifle bigger than their own. "It's—it's very important that this—this asteroid stay right where it is," she said huskily. The big ship had landed, and little blue sparks crackled between the hull and the asteroid as the magnetic clamps took hold. A few seconds later, the airlocks swung down, and five men let themselves down to the asteroid's surface and stood surveying the three who faced them.
 By common law, asteroids up to a certain size belong to whoever happens to be on them.
 She had made a deal with the Interplanetary Commission.  Her grandfather had purchased the asteroid for her.  By common law, asteroids up to a certain size belong to whoever happens to be on them.  She had signed an interplanetary lease agreement.