It is a matter of record that the American continents were discovered
because ice-boxes were unknown in the fifteenth century. There being no
refrigeration, meat did not keep. But meat was not too easy to come by,
so it had to be eaten, even when it stank. Therefore it was a noble
enterprise, and to the glory of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, to
put up the financial backing for even a crackpot who might get spices
cheaper and thereby make the consumption of slightly spoiled meat less
unpleasant. Which was why Columbus got three ships and crews of
jailbirds for them from a government still busy trying to drive the
Moors out of the last corner of Spain.

This was a precedent for the matter on hand now. Cochrane happened to
know the details about Columbus because he'd checked over the research
when he did a show on the Dikkipatti Hour dealing with him. There were
more precedents. The elaborate bargain by which Columbus was to be made
hereditary High Admiral of the Western Oceans, with a bite of all
revenue obtained by the passage he was to discover--he had to hold out
for such terms to make the package he was selling look attractive.
Nobody buys anything that is underpriced too much. It looks phoney. So
Cochrane made his preliminaries rather more impressive than they need
have been from a strictly practical point of view, in order to make the
enterprise practical from a financial aspect.

There was another precedent he did not intend to follow. Columbus did
not know where he was going when he set sail, he did not know where he
was when he arrived at the end of his voyage, and he didn't know where
he'd been when he got back. Cochrane expected to improve on the
achievement of the earlier explorer's doings in these respects.

He commandeered the legal department of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins, and