While chairs were still being shuffled, Barry Watson said over the table to Gunther, "Jerry?" Martin Gunther shrugged "Jerry's indisposed. As a matter of fact, he's at one of the mountain sanitariums, taking a cure. He'll be all right." "Good," Dick Hawkins said. "We've lost too many." Watson pounded with his gavel. "Let's come to order. Gunther do you have anything to say in the way of preliminaries?" "Not especially. I believe we all know where we stand, including the newcomers from Genoa and Texcoco. In brief, this is the fourth meeting of the Earth teams that were sent to these two planets to bring backward colonists to an industrialized culture. It would seem that we are both succeeding--possibly at different rates. Forty years have passed, ten remain to us." For a moment there was silence. Finally Roberts said, "Possibly you have already discovered this through your agents, but we have released the information on prolonging of life." Peter MacDonald said wryly, "We, too, were pressured into such a step." Baron Leonar said, "And why not?" Taller, across the table from him, nodded. Martin Gunther tapped twice on the table with his gavel. "The basic reason for our meeting is to report progress and to reconsider the possibilities of new elements having entered into the situation which might cause us to re-examine our policies. I think we already have a fairly good idea of each other's development." His voice went wry. "At least our agents do a fairly good job of reporting yours." "And ours, yours," Watson rapped. "However," MacDonald said, "now that we are drawing near the end of our half century, I think it becomes obvious that Amschel Mayer's original contention--that a freely competitive economy grows faster than one restricted by totalitarian bounds--has been proven." Barry Watson snorted amusement. "Do you?" he said. "To the contrary, MacDonald. The proof is otherwise. On Genoa you still have comparative confusion. True enough, several of your nations, particularly those on your southern continent, are greatly advanced and with a high living and cultural standard--when times are good. But at the same time you have other whole peoples who are little, if any, better off, than when you arrived. On the western continent you even have a few feudalistic regimes that are probably worse off--mostly as a result of the wars you've crippled them with."