Barry Watson rapped, "Don't leave us there, MacDonald. What happened to him?"
MacDonald explained. "The financial and industrial empire he had built was overextended. A small crisis and it collapsed. Thousands of investors suffered. In brief, he was arrested and found guilty."
Watson was unbelieving. "There is nothing you could do? The whole team! Couldn't you bribe him out? Rescue him by force and get him back to the ship? With all the wealth you characters control—"
Jerry Kennedy laughed shortly. "We were busy bailing ourselves out of our own situations, Watson. You don't know what international finance can be. Besides, he dug his grave ... uh ... that is, he made his bed."
Kennedy signaled the servant for another drink, said, "Let's cut out this dismal talk. How about our progress reports?"
"Progress reports," Barry Watson said. "That's a laugh. You have agents on Texcoco, we have them on Genoa. What's the use of having these conferences at all?"
For the first time, one of the Genoese put in a word. Baron Leonar, son of the original Baron who had met with Amschel Mayer thirty years before, was a man in his mid-forties. He said quietly, "It seems to me the time has arrived when the two planets might profit by intercourse. Surely in this time one has progressed beyond the other in this field, but lagged in that. If I understand the mission of the Pedagogue it is to bring us to as high a technological level as possible in half a century. Already three decades have passed."
The Texcocans studied him thoughtfully, but Jerry Kennedy waved in negation with the hand that held his glass. "You don't get it, Baron. You see, the thing is we wanta find out what system is going to do the most the quickest. If we co-operate with Barry's gang, everything'll get all mixed up."
The Honorable Russ, now a wizened man of at least seventy, but still sharply alert, said, "However, Texcoco and Genoa might both profit."
Kennedy said happily, "What do we care? You gotta take the long view. What we're working out here is going to be used on half a million planets eventually." He tried to snap his fingers. "These two lousy planets don't count that much." He succeeded in snapping them this time. "Not that much."