Amschel Mayer said, "At this stage progress is faster with the generations closer together. A man is pressed when he knows he has only twenty or thirty years of peak efficiency. We on Earth are inclined to settle back and take life as it comes; you younger men are all past the century mark, but none have bothered to get married as yet."
"Plenty of time for that," Watson grinned.
"That's what I mean. But a Texcocan or Genoese feels pressed to wed in his twenties, or earlier, to get his family under way."
"There's another element," Plekhanov muttered. "The more the natives progress the more nearly they'll equal our abilities. I wouldn't want anything to happen to our overall plans. As it is now, their abilities taper off at sixty and they reach senility at seventy or eighty. I think until the end we should keep it this way."
"A cold-blooded view," Kennedy said. "If we extended their life expectancy, their best men would live to be of additional use to planet development."
"But they would not have our dream," Plekhanov rumbled. "Such men might try to subvert us, and, just possibly, might succeed."
"I think Leonid is right," Mayer admitted with reluctance.
Later, in the space lighter heading back for Genoa, Mayer said speculatively, "Did you notice anything about Leonid Plekhanov?"
Kennedy was piloting. "He seems the same irascible old curmudgeon he's always been."