Jubal grinned boyishly. "So I appealed to a higher court for a decision that would nullify the Larkin precedent - I cited a mythical 'British Colonial Shipping Board.' I lied myself blue in the face to create a new legal theory.  Sovereign honors had been rendered Mike; that was fact, the world had seen it.  But sovereign honors may be rendered to a sovereign... or to a sovereign's alter ego, his viceroy or ambassador.  So I asserted that Mike was no cardboard sovereign under a silly human precedent not in point - but in awful fact the ambassador of the great Martian nation!"