Toran opened the inner door and closed contact on his blast pistol, thumb hovering over the pressure point. There was the sound of footsteps and then the door swung open, and Magnifico cried out, "It's not the Mule. It's but a man."

 

 The "man" bowed to the clown somberly, "Very accurate. I'm not the Mule." He held his hands apart, "I'm not armed, and I come on a peaceful errand. You might relax and put the blast pistol away. Your hand isn't steady enough for my peace of mind."

 

 "Who are you?" asked Toran, brusquely.

 

 "I might askyou that," said the stranger, coolly, "since you're the one under false pretenses, not I."

 

 "How so?"

 

 "You're the one who claims to be a Foundation citizen when there's not an authorized Trader on the planet."

 

 "That's not so. How would you know?"

 

 "Because Iam a Foundation citizen, and have my papers to prove it. Where are yours?"

 

 "I think you'd better get out."

 

 "I think not. If you know anything about Foundation methods, and despite your imposture you might, you'd know that if I don't return alive to my ship at a specified time, there'll be a signal at the nearest Foundation headquarters so I doubt if your weapons will have much effect, practically speaking."

 

 There was an irresolute silence and then Bayta said, calmly, "Put the blaster away, Toran, and take him at face value. He sounds like the real thing."

 

 "Thank you," said the stranger.

 

 Toran put his gun on the chair beside him, "Suppose you explain all this now."

 

 The stranger remained standing. He was long of bone and large of limb. His face consisted of hard flat planes and it was somehow evident that he never smiled. But his eyes lacked hardness.

 

 He said, "News travels quickly, especially when it is apparently beyond belief. I don't suppose there's a person on Kalgan who doesn't know that the Mule's men were kicked in the teeth today by two tourists from the Foundation. I knew of the important details before evening, and, as I said, there are no Foundation tourists aside from myself on the planet. We know about those things."

 

 "Who are the 'we'?"

 

 "'We' are – 'we'! Myself for one! I knew you were at the Hangar – you had been overheard to say so. I had my ways of checking the registry, and my ways of finding the ship."

 

 He turned to Bayta suddenly, "You're from the Foundation – by birth, aren't you?"

 

 "Am I?"

 

 "You're a member of the democratic opposition – they call it 'the underground.' I don't remember your name, but I do the face. You got out only recently – and wouldn't have if you were more important."

 

 Bayta shrugged, "You know a lot."

 

 "I do. You escaped with a man. That one?"

 

 "Does it matter what I say?"

 

 "No. I merely want a thorough mutual understanding. I believe that the password during the week you left so hastily was 'Seldon, Hardin, and Freedom.' Porfirat Hart was your section leader. "

 

 "Where'd you get that?" Bayta was suddenly fierce. "Did the police get him?" Toran held her back, but she shook herself loose and advanced.

 

 The man from the Foundation said quietly, "Nobody has him. It's just that the underground spreads widely and in queer places. I'm Captain Han Pritcher of Information, and I'm a section leader myself – never mind under what name."

 

 He waited, then said, "No, you don't have to believe me. In our business it is better to overdo suspicion than the opposite. But I'd better get past the preliminaries."

 

 "Yes," said Toran, "suppose you do."

 

 "May I sit down? Thanks." Captain Pritcher swung a long leg across his knee and let an arm swing loose over the back of the chair. "I'll start out by saying that I don't know what all this is about – from your angle. You two aren't from the Foundation, but it's not a hard guess that you're from one of the independent Trading worlds. That doesn't bother me overmuch. But out of curiosity, what do you want with that fellow, that clown you snatched to safety? You're risking your life to hold on to him."

 

 "I can't tell you that."

 

 "Hm-m-m. Well, I didn't think you would. But if you're waiting for the Mule himself to come behind a fanfarade of horns, drums, and electric organs – relax! The Mule doesn't work that way."

 

 "What?" It came from both Toran and Bayta, and in the comer where Magnifico lurked with ears almost visibly expanded, there was a sudden joyful start.

 

 "That's right. I've been trying to contact him myself, and doing a rather more thorough job of it than you two amateurs can. It won't work. The man makes no personal appearance, does not allow himself to be photographed or simulated, and is seen only by his most intimate associates."

 

 "Is that supposed to explain your interest in us, captain?" questioned Toran.

 

 "No. That clown is the key. That clown is one of the very few thathave seen him. I want him. He may be the proof I need – and I need something, Galaxy knows – to awaken the Foundation."

 

 "It needs awakening?" broke in Bayta with sudden sharpness. "Against what? And in what role do you act as alarm, that of rebel democrat or of secret police and provocateur?"

 

 The captain's face set in its hard lines. "When the entire Foundation is threatened, Madame Revolutionary, both democrats and tyrants perish. Let us save the tyrants from a greater, that we may overthrow them in their turn."

 

 "Who's the greater tyrant you speak of?" flared Bayta.

 

 "The Mule! I know a bit about him, enough to have been my death several times over already, if I had moved less nimbly. Send the clown out of the room. This will require privacy."

 

 "Magnifico," said Bayta, with a gesture, and the clown left without a sound.

 

 The captain's voice was grave and intense, and low enough so that Toran and Bayta drew close.

 

 He said, "The Mule is a shrewd operator – far too shrewd not to realize the advantage of the magnetism and glamour of personal leadership. If he gives that up, it's for a reason. That reason must be the fact that personal contact would reveal something that is of overwhelming importance not to reveal."

 

 He waved aside questions, and continued more quickly, "I went back to his birthplace for this, and questioned people who for their knowledge will not live long. Few enough are still alive. They remember the baby born thirty years before – the death of his mother – his strange youth.The Mule is not a human being!"

 

 And his two listeners drew back in horror at the misty implications. Neither understood, fully or clearly, but the menace of the phrase was definite.

 

 The captain continued, "He is a mutant, and obviously from his subsequent career, a highly successful one. I don't know his powers or the exact extent to which he is what our thrillers would call a 'superman,' but the rise from nothing to the conqueror of Kalgan's warlord in two years is revealing. You see, don't you, the danger? Can a genetic accident of unpredictable biological properties be taken into account in the Seldon plan?"

 

 Slowly, Bayta spoke, "I don't believe it. This is some sort of complicated trickery. Why didn't the Mule's men kill us when they could have, if he's a superman?"

 

 "I told you that I don't know the extent of his mutation. He may not be ready, yet, for the Foundation, and it would be a sign of the greatest wisdom to resist provocation until ready. Now let me speak to the clown."

 

 The captain faced the trembling Magnifico, who obviously distrusted this huge, hard man who faced him.

 

 The captain began slowly, "Have you seen the Mule with your own eyes?"

 

 "I have but too well, respected sir. And felt the weight of his arm with my own body as well."

 

 "I have no doubt of that. Can you describe him?"

 

 "It is frightening to recall him, respected sir. He is a man of mighty frame. Against him, even you would be but a spindling. His hair is of a burning crimson, and with all my strength and weight I could not pull down his arm, once extended – not a hair's thickness." Magnifico's thinness seemed to collapse upon itself in a huddle of arms and legs. "Often, to amuse his generals or to amuse only himself, he would suspend me by one finger in my belt from a fearful height, while I chattered poetry. It was only after the twentieth verse that I was withdrawn, and each improvised and each a perfect rhyme, or else start over. He is a man of overpowering might, respected sir, and cruel in the use of his power – and his eyes, respected sir, no one sees."

 

 "What? What's that last?"

 

 "He wears spectacles, respected sir, of a curious nature. It is said that they are opaque and that he sees by a powerful magic that far transcends human powers. I have heard," and his voice was small and mysterious, "that to see his eyes is to see death; that he kills with his eyes, respected sir."

 

 Magnifico's eyes wheeled quickly from one watching face to another. He quavered, "It is true. As I live, it is true. "

 

 Bayta drew a long breath, "Sounds like you're right, captain. Do you want to take over?"

 

 "Well, let's look at the situation. You don't owe anything here? The hangar's barrier above is free?"

 

 "I can leave any time."

 

 "Then leave. The Mule may not wish to antagonize the Foundation, but he runs a frightful risk in letting Magnifico get away. It probably accounts for the hue and cry after the poor devil in the first place. So there may be ships waiting for you upstairs. If you're lost in space, who's to pin the crime?"

 

 "You're right," agreed Toran, bleakly.

 

 "However, you've got a shield and you're probably speedier than anything they've got, so as soon as you're clear of the atmosphere make the circle in neutral to the other hemisphere, then just cut a track outwards at top acceleration."

 

 "Yes," said Bayta coldly, "and when we are back on the Foundation, what then, captain?"

 

 "Why, you are then co-operative citizens of Kalgan, are you not? I know nothing to the contrary, do I?"

 

 Nothing was said. Toran turned to the controls. There was an imperceptible lurch.

 

 It was when Toran had left Kalgan sufficiently far in the rear to attempt his first interstellar jump, that Captain Pritcher's face first creased slightly – for no ship of the Mule had in any way attempted to bar their leaving.

 

 "Looks like he's letting us carry off Magnifico," said Toran. "Not so good for your story."

 

 "Unless," corrected the captain, "he wants us to carry him off, in which case it's not so good for the Foundation."

 

 It was after the last jump, when within neutral-flight distance of the Foundation, that the first hyperwave news broadcast reached the ship.

 

 And there was one news item barely mentioned. It seemed that a warlord – unidentified by the bored speaker – had made representations to the Foundation concerning the forceful abduction of a member of his court. The announcer went on to the sports news.

 

 Captain Pritcher said icily, "He's one step ahead of us after all." Thoughtfully, he added, "He's ready for the Foundation, and he uses this as an excuse for action. It makes things more difficult for us. We will have to act before we are really ready."

 

 

 15. THE PSYCHOLOGIST

 

 There was reason to the fact that the element known as "pure science" was the freest form of life on the Foundation. In a Galaxy where the predominance – and even survival – of the Foundation still rested upon the superiority of its technology – even despite its large access of physical power in the last century and a half – a certain immunity adhered to The Scientist. He was needed, and he knew it.

 

 Likewise, there was reason to the fact that Ebling Mis – only those who did not know him added his titles to his name – was the freest form of life in the "pure science" of the Foundation. In a world where science was respected, he was The Scientist – with capital letters and no smile. He was needed, and he knew it.

 

 And so it happened, that when others bent their knee, he refused and added loudly that his ancestors in their time bowed no knee to any stinking mayor. And in his ancestors' time the mayor was elected anyhow, and kicked out at will, and that the only people that inherited anything by right of birth were the congenital idiots.

 

 So it also happened, that when Ebling Mis decided to allow Indbur to honor him with an audience, he did not wait for the usual rigid line of command to pass his request up and the favored reply down, but, having thrown the less disreputable of his two formal jackets over his shoulders and pounded an odd hat of impossible design on one side of his head, and lit a forbidden cigar into the bargain, he barged past two ineffectually bleating guards and into the mayor's palace.

 

 The first notice his excellence received of the intrusion was when from his garden he heard the gradually nearing uproar of expostulation and the answering bull-roar of inarticulate swearing.

 

 Slowly, Indbur lay down his trowel; slowly, he stood up; and slowly, he frowned. For Indbur allowed himself a daily vacation from work, and for two hours in the early afternoon, weather permitting, he was in his garden. There in his garden, the blooms grew in squares and triangles, interlaced in a severe order of red and yellow, with little dashes of violet at the apices, and greenery bordering the whole in rigid lines. There in his garden no one disturbed him –no one!

 

 Indbur peeled off his soil-stained gloves as he advanced toward the little garden door.

 

 Inevitably, he said, "What is the meaning of this?"

 

 It is the precise question and the precise wording thereof that has been put to the atmosphere on such occasions by an incredible variety of men since humanity was invented. It is not recorded that it has ever been asked for any purpose other than dignified effect.

 

 But the answer was literal this time, for Mis's body came plunging through with a bellow, and a shake of a fist at the ones who were still holding tatters of his cloak.

 

 Indbur motioned them away with a solemn, displeased frown, and Mis bent to pick up his ruin of a hat, shake about a quarter of the gathered dirt off it, thrust it under his armpit and say:

 

 "Look here, Indbur, those unprintable minions of yours will be charged for one good cloak. Lots of good wear left in this cloak." He puffed and wiped his forehead with just a trace of theatricality.

 

 The mayor stood stiff with displeasure, and said haughtily from the peak of his five-foot-two, "It has not been brought to my attention, Mis, that you have requested an audience. You have certainly not been assigned one."

 

 Ebling Mis looked down at his mayor with what was apparently shocked disbelief, "Ga-LAX-y, Indbur, didn't you get my note yesterday? I handed it to a flunky in purple uniform day before. I would have handed it to you direct, but I know how you like formality."

 

 "Formality!" Indbur turned up exasperated eyes. Then, strenuously, "Have you ever heard of proper organization? At all future times you are to submit your request for an audience, properly made out in triplicate, at the government office intended for the purpose. You are then to wait until the ordinary course of events brings you notification of the time of audience to be granted. You are then to appear, properly clothed – properly clothed, do you understand – and with proper respect, too. You may leave."

 

 "What's wrong with my clothes?" demanded Mis, hotly. "Best cloak I had till those unprintable fiends got their claws on it. I'll leave just as soon as I deliver what I came to deliver. "Ga-LAX-y, if it didn't involve a Seldon Crisis, I would leave right now."

 

 "Seldon crisis!" Indbur exhibited first interest. Miswas a great psychologist – a democrat, boor, and rebel certainly, but a psychologist, too. In his uncertainty, the mayor even failed to put into words the inner pang that stabbed suddenly when Mis plucked a casual bloom, held it to his nostrils expectantly, then flipped it away with a wrinkled nose.

 

 Indbur said coldly, "Would you follow me? This garden wasn't made for serious conversation."

 

 He felt better in his built-up chair behind his large desk from which he could look down on the few hairs that quite ineffectually hid Mis's pink scalp-skin. He felt much better when Mis cast a series of automatic glances about him for a non-existent chair and then remained standing in uneasy shifting fashion. He felt best of all when in response to a careful pressure of the correct contact, a liveried underling scurried in, bowed his way to the desk, and laid thereon a bulky, metal-bound volume.

 

 "Now, in order," said Indbur, once more master of the situation, "to make this unauthorized interview as short as possible, make your statement in the fewest possible words."

 

 Ebling Mis said unhurriedly, "You know what I'm doing these days?"

 

 "I have your reports here," replied the mayor, with satisfaction, "together with authorized summaries of them. As I understand it, your investigations into the mathematics of psychohistory have been intended to duplicate Hari Seldon's work and, eventually, trace the projected course of future history, for the use of the Foundation."

 

 "Exactly," said Mis, dryly. "When Seldon first established the Foundation, he was wise enough to include no psychologists among the scientists placed here – so that the Foundation has always worked blindly along the course of historical necessity. In the course of my researches, I have based a good deal upon hints found at the Time Vault."

 

 "I am aware of that, Mis. It is a waste of time to repeat."

 

 "I'm not repeating," blared Mis, "because what I'm going to tell you isn't in any of those reports."

 

 "How do you mean, not in the reports?" said Indbur, stupidly. "How could–"

 

 "Ga-LAX-y, Let me tell this my own way, you offensive little creature. Stop putting words into my mouth and questioning my every statement or I'll tramp out of here and let everything crumble around you. Remember, you unprintable fool, the Foundation will come through because it must, but if I walk out of here now –you won't."

 

 Dashing his hat on the floor, so that clods of earth scattered, he sprang up the stairs of the dais on which the wide desk stood and shoving papers violently, sat down upon a comer of it.

 

 Indbur thought frantically of summoning the guard, or using the built-in blasters of his desk. But Mis's face was glaring down upon him and there was nothing to do but cringe the best face upon it.

 

 "Dr. Mis," he began, with weak formality, "you must–"

 

 "Shut up," said Mis, ferociously, "and listen. If this thing here," and his palm came down heavily on the metal of the bound data, "is a mess of my reports – throw it out. Any report I write goes up through some twenty-odd officials, gets to you, and then sort of winds down through twenty more. That's fine if there's nothing you don't want kept secret. Well, I've got something confidential here. It's so confidential, even the boys working for me haven't got wind of it. They did the work, of course, but each just a little unconnected piece – and I put it together. You know what the Time Vault is?"

 

 Indbur nodded his head, but Mis went on with loud enjoyment of the situation, "Well, I'll tell you anyhow because I've been sort of imagining this unprintable situation for a "Ga-LAX-y, of a long time; I can read your mind, you puny fraud. You've got your hand right near a little knob that'll call in about five hundred or so armed men to finish me off, but you're afraid of what I know – you're afraid of a Seldon Crisis. Besides which, if you touch anything on your desk, I'll knock your unprintable head off before anyone gets here. You and your bandit father and pirate grandfather have been blood-sucking the Foundation long enough anyway."

 

 "This is treason," gabbled Indbur.

 

 "It certainly is," gloated Mis, "but what are you going to do about it? Let me tell you about the Time Vault. That Time Vault is what Hari Seldon placed here at the beginning to help us over the rough spots. For every crisis, Seldon has prepared a personal simulacrum to help – and explain. Four crises so far – four appearances. The first time he appeared at the height of the first crisis. The second time, he appeared at the moment just after the successful evolution of the second crisis. Our ancestors were there to listen to him both times. At the third and fourth crises, he was ignored – probably because he was not needed, but recent investigations– not included in those reports you have – indicate that he appeared anyway, and at the proper times. Get it?"

 

 He did not wait for any answer. His cigar, a tattered, dead ruin was finally disposed of, a new cigar groped for, and lit. The smoke puffed out violently.

 

 He said, "Officially I've been trying to rebuild the science of psychohistory. Well, no one man is going to dothat, and it won't get done in any one century, either. But I've made advances in the more simple elements and I've been able to use it as an excuse to meddle with the Time Vault. What Ihave done, involves the determination, to a pretty fair kind of certainty, of the exact date of the next appearance of Hari Seldon. I can give you the exact day, in other words, that the coming Seldon Crisis, the fifth, will reach its climax. "

 

 "How far off?" demanded Indbur, tensely.

 

 And Mis exploded his bomb with cheerful nonchalance,

 

 "Four months," he said. "Four unprintable months, less two days."

 

 "Four months," said Indbur, with uncharacteristic vehemence. "Impossible."

 

 "Impossible, my unprintable eye."

 

 "Four months? Do you understand what that means? For a crisis to come to a head in four months would mean that it has been preparing for years."

 

 "And why not? Is there a law of Nature that requires the process to mature in the full light of day?"

 

 "But nothing impends. Nothing hangs over us." Indbur almost wrung his hands for anxiety. With a sudden spasmodic recrudescence of ferocity, he screamed, "Willyou get off my desk and let me put it in order? How do you expect me tothink?"

 

 Mis, startled, lifted heavily and moved aside.

 

 Indbur replaced objects in their appropriate niches with a feverish motion. He was speaking quickly, "You have no right to come here like this. If you had presented your theory–"

 

 "It is not atheory."

 

 "I say itis a theory. If you had presented it together with your evidence and arguments, in appropriate fashion, it would have gone to the Bureau of Historical Sciences. There it could have been properly treated, the resulting analyses submitted to me, and then, of course, proper action would have been taken. As it is, you've vexed me to no purpose. Ah, here it is."

 

 He had a sheet of transparent, silvery paper in his hand which he shook at the bulbous psychologist beside him.

 

 "This is a short summary I prepare myself – weekly – of foreign matters in progress. Listen – we have completed negotiations for a commercial treaty with Mores, continue negotiations for one with Lyonesse, sent a delegation to some celebration or other on Bonde, received some complaint or other from Kalgan and we've promised to look into it, protested some sharp trade practices in Asperta and they've promised to look into it – and so on and so on." The mayor's eyes swarmed down the list of coded notations, and then he carefully placed the sheet in its proper place in the proper folder in the proper pigeonhole.

 

 I tell you, Mis, there's not a thing there that breathes anything but order and peace–"

 

 The door at the far, long end opened, and, in far too dramatically coincident a fashion to suggest anything but real life, a plainly-costumed notable stepped in.

 

 Indbur half-rose. He had the curiously swirling sensation of unreality that comes upon those days when too much happens. After Mis's intrusion and wild fumings there now came the equally improper, hence disturbing, intrusion unannounced, of his secretary, who at least knew the rules.

 

 The secretary kneeled low.

 

 Indbur said, sharply, "Well!"

 

 The secretary addressed the floor, "Excellence, Captain Han Pritcher of Information, returning from Kalgan, in disobedience to your orders, has according to prior instructions – your order X20-513 – been imprisoned, and awaits execution. Those accompanying him are being held for questioning. A full report has been filed."

 

 Indbur, in agony, said, "A full report has been received.Well!"

 

 "Excellence, Captain Pritcher has reported, vaguely, dangerous designs on the part of the new warlord of Kalgan. He has been given, according to prior instructions – your order X20-651 – no formal hearing, but his remarks have been recorded and a full report filed."

 

 Indbur screamed, "A full report has been received.Well!"

 

 "Excellence, reports have within the quarter-hour been received from the Salinnian frontier. Ships identified as Kalganian have been entering Foundation territory, unauthorized. The ships are armed. Fighting has occurred."

 

 The secretary was bent nearly double. Indbur remained standing. Ebling Mis shook himself, clumped up to the secretary, and tapped him sharply on the shoulder.

 

 "Here, you'd better have them release this Captain Pritcher, and have him sent here. Get out."

 

 The secretary left, and Mis turned to the mayor, "Hadn't you better get the machinery moving, Indbur? Four months, you know."

 

 Indbur remained standing, glaze-eyed. Only one finger seemed alive – and it traced rapid jerky triangles on the smooth desk top before him.

 

 

 16. CONFERENCE

 

 When the twenty-seven independent Trading worlds, united only by their distrust of the mother planet of the Foundation, concert an assembly among themselves, and each is big with a pride grown of its smallness, hardened by its own insularity and embittered by eternal danger – there are preliminary negotiations to be overcome of a pettiness sufficiently staggering to heartsicken the most persevering.

 

 It is not enough to fix in advance such details as methods of voting, type of representation – whether by world or by population. These are matters of involved political importance. It is not enough to fix matters of priority at the table, both council and dinner, those are matters of involved social importance.

 

 It was the place of meeting – since that was a matter of overpowering provincialism. And in the end the devious routes of diplomacy led to the world of Radole, which some commentators had suggested at the start for logical reason of central position.

 

 Radole was a small world – and, in military potential, perhaps the weakest of the twenty-seven. That, by the way, was another factor in the logic of the choice.

 

 It was a ribbon world – of which the Galaxy boasts sufficient, but among which, the inhabited variety is a rarity for the physical requirements are difficult to meet. It was a world, in other words, where the two halves face the monotonous extremes of heat and cold, while the region of possible life is the girdling ribbon of the twilight zone.

 

 Such a world invariably sounds uninviting to those who have not tried it, but there exist spots, strategically placed – and Radole City was located in such a one.

 

 It spread along the soft slopes of the foothills before the hacked-out mountains that backed it along the rim of the cold hemisphere and held off the frightful ice. The warm, dry air of the sun-half spilled over, and from the mountains was piped the water-and between the two, Radole City became a continuous garden, swimming in the eternal morning of an eternal June.

 

 Each house nestled among its flower garden, open to the fangless elements. Each garden was a horticultural forcing ground, where luxury plants grew in fantastic patterns for the sake of the foreign exchange they brought – until Radole had almost become a producing world, rather than a typical Trading world.

 

 So, in its way, Radole City was a little point of softness and luxury on a horrible planet – a tiny scrap of Eden – and that, too, was a factor in the logic of the choice.

 

 The strangers came from each of the twenty-six other Trading worlds: delegates, wives, secretaries, newsmen, ships, and crews – and Radole's population nearly doubled and Radole's resources strained themselves to the limit. One ate at will, and drank at will, and slept not at all.

 

 Yet there were few among the roisterers who were not intensely aware that all that volume of the Galaxy burnt slowly in a sort of quiet, slumbrous war. And of those who were aware, there were dime classes. First, there were the many who knew little and were very confident.

 

 Such as the young space pilot who wore the Haven cockade on the clasp of his cap, and who managed, in holding his glass before his eyes, to catch those of the faintly smiling Radolian girl opposite. He was saying:

 

 "We came fight through the war-zone to get here-on purpose. We traveled about a light-minute or so, in neutral, right past Horleggor–"

 

 "Horleggor?" broke in a long-legged native, who was playing host to that particular gathering. "That's where the Mule got the guts beat out of him last week, wasn't it?"

 

 "Where'd you hear that the Mule got the guts beat out of him?" demanded the pilot, loftily.

 

 "Foundation radio."

 

 "Yeah? Well, the Mule'sgot Horleggor. We almost ran into a convoy of his ships, and that's where they were coming from. It isn't a gut-beating when you stay where you fought, and the gut-beater leaves in a hurry."

 

 Someone else said in a high, blurred voice, "Don't talk like that. Foundation always takes it on the chin for a while. You watch; just sit tight and watch. Ol' Foundation knows when to come back. And then –pow! " The thick voice concluded and was succeeded by a bleary grin.

 

 "Anyway." said the pilot from Haven, after a short pause, "As I say, we saw the Mule's ships, and they looked pretty good, pretty good. I tell you what – they looked new."

 

 "New?" said the native, thoughtfully. "They build them themselves?" He broke a leaf from an overhanging branch, sniffed delicately at it, then crunched it between his teeth, the bruised tissues bleeding greenly and diffusing a minty odor. He said, "You trying to tell me they beat Foundation ships with homebuilt jobs? Go on."

 

 "We saw them, doc. And I can tell a ship from a comet, too, you know."

 

 The native leaned close. "You know what I think. Listen, don't kid yourself. Wars don't just start by themselves, and we have a bunch of shrewd apples running things. They know what they're doing."

 

 The well-unthirsted one said with sudden loudness, "You watch ol' Foundation. They wait for the last minute, then –pow! " He grinned with vacuously open mouth at the girl, who moved away from him.

 

 The Radolian was saying, "For instance, old man, you think maybe that this Mule guy's running things. No-o-o." And he wagged a finger horizontally. "The way I hear it, and from pretty high up, mind you, he's our boy. We're paying him off, and we probably built those ships. Let's be realistic about it – we probably did. Sure, he can't beat the Foundation in the long run, but he can get them shaky, and when he does –we get in. "

 

 The girl said, "Is that all you can talk about, Klev? The war? You make me tired."

 

 The pilot from Haven said, in an access of gallantry,

 

 "Change the subject. Can't make the girls tired."

 

 The bedewed one took up the refrain and banged a mug to the rhythm. The little groups of two that had formed broke up with giggles and swagger, and a few similar groups of twos emerged from the sun-house in the background.

 

 The conversation became more general, more varied, more meaningless.

 

 Then there were those who knew a little more and were less confident.

 

 Such as the one-armed Fran, whose large bulk represented Haven as official delegated, and who lived high in consequence, and cultivated new friendships – with women when he could and with men when he had to.

 

 It was on the sun platform of the hilltop home, of one of these new friends, that he relaxed for the first of what eventually proved to be a total of two times while on Radole. The new friend was Iwo Lyon, a kindred soul of Radole. Iwo's house was apart from the general cluster, apparently alone in a sea of floral perfume and insect chatter. The sun platform was a grassy strip of lawn set at a forty-five degree angle, and upon it Fran stretched out and fairly sopped up sun.

 

 He said, "Don't have anything like this on Haven."

 

 Iwo replied, sleepily, "Ever seen the cold side. There's a spot twenty miles from here where the oxygen runs like water. "

 

 "Go on.

 

 "Fact."

 

 "Well, I'll tell you, Iwo-In the old days before my arm was chewed off I knocked around, see – and you won't believe this, but" – The story that followed lasted considerably, and Iwo didn't believe it.

 

 Iwo said, through yawns, "They don't make them like in the old days, that's the truth."

 

 "No, guess they don't. Well, now," Fran fired up, "don't say that. I told you about my son, didn't I?He's one of the old school, if you like. He'll make a great Trader, blast it. He's his old man up and down. Up and down, except that he gets married."

 

 "You mean legal contract? With a girl?"

 

 "That's right. Don't see the sense in it myself. They went to Kalgan for their honeymoon."

 

 "Kalgan?Kalgan? When the Galaxy was this?"

 

 Fran smiled broadly, and said with slow meaning, "Just before the Mule declared war on the Foundation."

 

 "That so?"

 

 Fran nodded and motioned Iwo closer with his head. He said, hoarsely, "In fact, I can tell you something, if you don't let it go any further. My boy was sent to Kalgan for a purpose. Now I wouldn't like to let it out, you know, just what the purpose was, naturally, but you look at the situation now, and I suppose you can make a pretty good guess. In any case, my boy was the man for the job. We Traders needed some sort of ruckus." He smiled, craftily. "It's here. I'm not saying how we did it, but – my boy went to Kalgan, and the Mule sent out his ships. My son!"

 

 Iwo was duly impressed. He grew confidential in his turn, "That's good. You know, they say we've got five hundred ships ready to pitch in on our own at the right time. "

 

 Fran said authoritatively, "More than that, maybe. This is real strategy. This is the kind I like." He clawed loudly at the skin of his abdomen. "But don't you forget that the Mule is a smart boy, too. What happened at Horleggor worries me."

 

 "I heard he lost about ten ships."

 

 "Sure, but he had a hundred more, and the Foundation had to get out. It's all to the good to have those tyrants beaten, but not as quickly as all that." He shook his head.

 

 "The question I ask is where does the Mule get his ships? There's a widespread rumor we're making them for him."

 

 "We? The Traders? Haven has the biggest ship factories anywhere in the independent worlds, and we haven't made one for anyone but ourselves. Do you suppose any world is building a fleet for the Mule on its own, without taking the precaution of united action? That's a ... a fairy tale."

 

 "Well, where does he get them?"

 

 And Fran shrugged, "Makes them himself, I suppose. That worries me, too."

 

 Fran blinked at the sun and curled his toes about the smooth wood of the polished foot-rest. Slowly, he fell asleep and the soft burr of his breathing mingled with the insect sibilance.

 

 Lastly, there were the very few who knew considerable and were not confident at all.

 

 Such as Randu, who on the fifth day of the all-Trader convention entered the Central Hall and found the two men he had asked to be there, waiting for him. The five hundred seats were empty – and were going to stay so.

 

 Randu said quickly, almost before he sat down, "We three represent about half the military potential of the Independent Trading Worlds."

 

 "Yes," said Mangin of Iss, "my colleague and I have already commented upon the fact."

 

 "I am ready," said Randu, "to speak quickly and earnestly. I am not interested in bargaining or subtlety. Our position is radically in the worse."

 

 "As a result of–" urged Ovall Gri of Mnemon.

 

 "Of developments of the last hour. Please! From the beginning. First, our position is not of our doing, and but doubtfully of our control. Our original dealings were not with the Mule, but with several others; notably the ex-warlord of Kalgan, whom the Mule defeated at a most inconvenient time for us."

 

 "Yes, but this Mule is a worthy substitute," said Mangin. "I do not cavil at details."

 

 "You may when you knowall the details." Randu leaned forward and placed his hands upon the table palms-up in an obvious gesture.

 

 He said, "A month ago I sent my nephew and my nephew's wife to Kalgan."

 

 "Your nephew!" cried Ovall Gri, in surprise. "I did not know he was your nephew."

 

 "With what purpose," asked Mangin, dryly. "This?" And his thumb drew an inclusive circle high in the air.

 

 "No. If you mean the Mule's war on the Foundation, no. How could I aim so high? The young man knew nothing – neither of our organization nor of our aims. He was told I was a minor member of an intra-Haven patriotic society, and his function at Kalgan was nothing but that of an amateur observer. My motives were, I must admit, rather obscure. Mainly, I was curious about the Mule. He is a strange phenomenon – but that's a chewed cud; I'll not go into it. Secondly, it would make an interesting and educational training project for a man who had experience with the Foundation and the Foundation underground and showed promise of future usefulness to us. You see–"

 

 Ovall's long face fell into vertical lines as he showed his large teeth, "You must have been surprised at the outcome, then, since there is not a world among the Traders, I believe, that does not know that this nephew of yours abducted a Mule underling in the name of the Foundation and furnished the Mule with acasus belli. Galaxy, Randu, you spin romances. I find it hard to believe you had no hand in that. Come, it was a skillful job."

 

 Randu shook his white head, "Not of my doing. Nor, willfully, of my nephew's, who is now held prisoner at the Foundation, and may not live to see the completion of this so-skillful job. I have just heard from him. The Personal Capsule has been smuggled out somehow, come through the war zone, gone to Haven, and traveled from there to here. It has been a month on its travels."

 

 "And?–"

 

 Randu leaned a heavy hand upon the heel of his palm and said, sadly, "I'm afraid we are cast for the same role that the onetime warlord of Kalgan played. The Mule is a mutant!"

 

 There was a momentary qualm; a faint impression of quickened heartbeats. Randu might easily have imagined it.

 

 When Mangin spoke, the evenness of his voice was unchanged, "How do you know?"

 

 "Only because my nephew says so, but he was on Kalgan.

 

 "What kind of a mutant? There are all kinds, you know."

 

 Randu forced the rising impatience down, "All kinds of mutants, yes, Mangin. All kinds! But only one kind of Mule. What kind of a mutant would start as an unknown, assemble an army, establish, they say, a five-mile asteroid as original base, capture a planet, then a system, then a region – and then attack the Foundation, anddefeat them at Horleggor.And all in two or three years!"

 

 Ovall Gri shrugged, "So you think he'll beat the Foundation?"

 

 "I don't know. Suppose he does?"

 

 "Sorry, I can't go that far. Youdon't beat the Foundation. Look, there's not a new fact we have to go on except for the statements of a ... well, of an inexperienced boy. Suppose we shelve it for a while. With all the Mule's victories, we weren't worried until now, and unless he goes a good deal further than he has, I see no reason to change that. Yes?"

 

 Randu frowned and despaired at the cobweb texture of his argument. He said to both, "Have we yet made any contact with the Mule?"

 

 "No," both answered.

 

 "It's true, though, that we've tried, isn't it? It's true that there's not much purpose to our meeting unless we do reach him, isn't it? It's true that so far there's been more drinking than thinking, and more wooing than doing – I quote from an editorial in today's Radole Tribune – and all because we can't reach the Mule. Gentlemen, we have nearly a thousand ships waiting to be thrown into the fight at the proper moment to seize control of the Foundation. I say we should change that. I say, throw those thousand onto the board now –against the Mule."

 

 "You mean for the Tyrant Indbur and the bloodsuckers of the Foundation?" demanded Mangin, with quiet venom.

 

 Randu raised a weary hand, "Spare me the adjectives. Against the Mule, I say, and for I-don't-care-who."

 

 Ovall Gri rose, "Randu, I'll have nothing to do with that, You present it to the full council tonight if you particularly hunger for political suicide."

 

 He left without another word and Mangin followed silently, leaving Randu to drag out a lonely hour of endless, insoluble consideration.

 

 At the full council that night, he said nothing.

 

 But it was Ovall Gri who pushed into his room the next morning; an Ovall Gri only sketchily dressed and who had neither shaved nor combed his hair.

 

 Randu stared at him over a yet-uncleared breakfast table with an astonishment sufficiently open and strenuous to cause him to drop his pipe.

 

 Ovall said baldly, harshly. "Mnemon has been bombarded from space by treacherous attack."

 

 Randu's eyes narrowed, "The Foundation?"

 

 "The Mule!" exploded Ovall. "The Mule!" His words raced, "It was unprovoked and deliberate. Most of our fleet had joined the international flotilla. The few left as Home Squadron were insufficient and were blown out of the sky. There have been no landings yet, and there may not be, for half the attackers are reported destroyed – but it is war – and I have come to ask how Haven stands on the matter."

 

 "Haven, I am sure, will adhere to the spirit of the Charter of Federation. But, you see? He attacks us as well."

 

 "This Mule is a madman. Can he defeat the universe?" He faltered and sat down to seize Randu's wrist, "Our few survivors have reported the Mule's poss ... enemy's possession of a new weapon. A nuclear-field depressor."

 

 "A what?"

 

 Ovall said, "Most of our ships were lost because their nuclear weapons failed them. It could not have happened by either accident or sabotage. It must have been a weapon of the Mule. It didn't work perfectly; the effect was intermittent; there were ways to neutralize – my dispatches are not detailed. But you see that such a tool would change the nature of war and, possibly, make our entire fleet obsolete."

 

 Randu felt an old, old man. His face sagged hopelessly, "I am afraid a monster is grown that will devour all of us. Yet we must fight him."

 

 

 17. THE VISI-SONOR

 

 Ebling Mis's house in a not-so-pretentious neighborhood of Terminus City was well known to the intelligentsia, literati, and just-plain-well-read of the Foundation. Its notable characteristics depended, subjectively, upon the source material that was read. To a thoughtful biographer, it was the "symbolization of a retreat from a nonacademic reality," a society columnist gushed silkily at its "frightfully masculine atmosphere of careless disorder," a University Ph.D. called it brusquely, "bookish, but unorganized," a nonuniversity friend said, "good for a drink anytime and you can put your feet on the sofa," and a breezy newsweekly broadcast, that went in for color, spoke of the "rocky, down-to-earth, no-nonsense living quarters of blaspheming, Leftish, balding Ebling Mis."

 

 To Bayta, who thought for no audience but herself at the moment, and who had the advantage of first-hand information, it was merely sloppy.

 

 Except for the first few days, her imprisonment had been a light burden. Far lighter, it seemed, that this half-hour wait in the psychologist's home – under secret observation, perhaps? She had been with Toran then, at least.

 

 Perhaps she might have grown wearier of the strain, had not Magnifico's long nose drooped in a gesture that plainly showed his own far greater tension.

 

 Magnifico's pipe-stem legs were folded up under a pointed, sagging chin, as if he were trying to huddle himself into disappearance, and Bayta's hand went out in a gentle and automatic gesture of reassurance. Magnifico winced, then smiled.

 

 "Surely, my lady, it would seem that even yet my body denies the knowledge of my mind and expects of others' hands a blow."

 

 "There's no need for worry, Magnifico. I'm with you, and I won't let anyone hurt you."

 

 The clown's eyes sidled towards her, then drew away quickly. "But they kept me away from you earlier – and from your kind husband – and, on my word, you may laugh, but I was lonely for missing friendship."

 

 "I wouldn't laugh at that. I was, too."

 

 The clown brightened, and he hugged his knees closer. He said, "You have not met this man who will see us?" It was a cautious question.

 

 "No. But he is a famous man. I have seen him in the newscasts and heard quite a good deal of him. I think he's a good man, Magnifico, who means us no harm."

 

 "Yes?" The clown stirred uneasily. "That may be, my lady, but he has questioned me before, and his manner is of an abruptness and loudness that bequivers me. He is full of strange words, so that the answers to his questions could not worm out of my throat. Almost, I might believe the romancer who once played on my ignorance with a tale that, at such moments, the heart lodged in the windpipe and prevented speech."

 

 "But it's different now. We're two to his one, and he won't be able to frighten the both of us, will he?"

 

 "No, my lady."

 

 A door slammed somewheres, and the roaring of a voice entered the house. Just outside the room, it coagulated into words with a fierce, "Get the "Ga-LAX-y out of here!" and two uniformed guards were momentarily visible through the opening door, in quick retreat.

 

 Ebling Mis entered frowning, deposited a carefully wrapped bundle on the floor, and approached to shake Bayta's hand with careless pressure. Bayta returned it vigorously, man-fashion. Mis did a double-take as he turned to the clown, and favored the girl with a longer look.

 

 He said, "Married?"

 

 "Yes. We went through the legal formalities."

 

 Mis paused. Then, "Happy about it?"

 

 "So far."

 

 Mis shrugged, and turned again to Magnifico. He unwrapped the package, "Know what this is, boy?"

 

 Magnifico fairly hurled himself out of his seat and caught the multi-keyed instrument. He fingered the myriad knobby contacts and threw a sudden back somersault of joy, to the imminent destruction of the nearby furniture.

 

 He croaked, "A Visi-Sonor – and of a make to distill joy out of a dead man's heart." His long fingers caressed softly and slowly, pressing lightly on contacts with a rippling motion, resting momentarily on one key then another – and in the air before them there was a soft glowing rosiness, just inside the range of vision.

 

 Ebling Mis said, "All right, boy, you said you could pound on one of those gadgets, and there's your chance. You'd better tune it, though. It's out of a museum." Then, in an aside to Bayta, "Near as I can make it, no one on the Foundation can make it talk right."

 

 He leaned closer and said quickly, "The clown won't talk without you. Will you help?"

 

 She nodded.

 

 "Good!" he said. "His state of fear is almost fixed, and I doubt that his mental strength would possibly stand a psychic probe. If I'm to get anything out of him otherwise, he's got to feel absolutely at ease. You understand?"

 

 She nodded again.

 

 "This Visi-Sonor is the first step in the process. He says he can play it; and his reaction now makes it pretty certain that it's one of the great joys of his life. So whether the playing is good or bad, be interested and appreciative. Then exhibit friendliness and confidence in me. Above all, follow my lead in everything." There was a swift glance at Magnifico, huddled in a comer of the sofa, making rapid adjustments in the interior of the instrument. He was completely absorbed.

 

 Mis said in a conversational tone to Bayta, "Ever hear a Visi-Sonor?"

 

 "Once," said Bayta, equally casually, "at a concert of rare instruments. I wasn't impressed."

 

 "Well, I doubt that you came across good playing. There are very few really good players. It's not so much that it requires physical co-ordination – a multi-bank piano requires more, for instance – as a certain type of free-wheeling mentality." Ina lower voice, "That's why our living skeleton there might be better than we think. More often than not, good players are idiots otherwise. It's one of those queer setups that makes psychology interesting."

 

 He added, in a patent effort to manufacture light conversation, "You know how the beblistered thing works? I looked it up for this purpose, and all I've made out so far is that its radiations stimulate the optic center of the brain directly, without ever touching the optic nerve. It's actually the utilization of a sense never met with in ordinary nature. Remarkable, when you come to think of it. What you hear is all right. That's ordinary. Eardrum, cochlea, all that. But –Shh! He's ready. Will you kick that switch. It works better in the dark."

 

 In the darkness, Magnifico was a mere blob, Ebling Mis a heavy-breathing mass. Bayta found herself straining her eyes anxiously, and at first with no effect. There was a thin, reedy quaver in the air, that wavered raggedly up the scale. It hovered, dropped and caught itself, gained in body, and swooped into a booming crash that had the effect of a thunderous split in a veiling curtain.

 

 A little globe of pulsing color grew in rhythmic spurts and burst in midair into formless gouts that swirled high and came down as curving streamers in interfacing patterns. They coalesced into little spheres, no two alike in color – and Bayta began discovering things.

 

 She noticed that closing her eyes made the color pattern all the clearer; that each little movement of color had its own little pattern of sound; that she could not identify the colors; and, lastly, that the globes were not globes but little figures.

 

 Little figures; little shifting flames, that danced and flickered in their myriads; that dropped out of sight and returned from nowhere; that whipped about one another and coalesced then into a new color.

 

 Incongruously, Bayta thought of the little blobs of color that come at night when you close your eyelids till they hurt, and stare patiently. There was the old familiar effect of the marching polka dots of shifting color, of the contracting concentric circles, of the shapeless masses that quiver momentarily. All that, larger, multivaried – and each little dot of color a tiny figure.

 

 They darted at her in pairs, and she lifted her hands with a sudden gasp, but they tumbled and for an instant she was the center of a brilliant snowstorm, while cold light slipped off her shoulders and down her arm in a luminous ski-slide, shooting off her stiff fingers and meeting slowly in a shining midair focus. Beneath it all, the sound of a hundred instruments flowed in liquid streams until she could not tell it from the light.

 

 She wondered if Ebling Mis were seeing the same thing, and if not, what he did see, The wonder passed, and then–

 

 She was watching again. The little figures-were they little figures? –little tiny women with burning hair that turned and bent too quickly for the mind to focus? –seized one another in star-shaped groups that turned – and the music was faint laughter – girls' laughter that began inside the ear.

 

 The stars drew together, sparked towards one another, grew slowly into structure – and from below, a palace shot upward in rapid evolution. Each brick a tiny color, each color a tiny spark, each spark a stabbing light that shifted patterns and led the eye skyward to twenty jeweled minarets.

 

 A glittering carpet shot out and about, whirling, spinning an insubstantial web that engulfed all space, and from it luminous shoots stabbed upward and branched into trees that sang with a music all their own.

 

 Bayta sat inclosed in it. The music welled about her in rapid, lyrical flights. She reached out to touch a fragile tree and blossoming spicules floated downwards and faded, each with its clear, tiny tinkle.

 

 The music crashed in twenty cymbals, and before her an area flamed up in a spout and cascaded down invisible steps into Bayta's lap, where it spilled over and flowed in rapid current, raising the fiery sparkle to her waist, while across her lap was a rainbow bridge and upon it the little figures–

 

 A palace, and a garden, and tiny men and women on a bridge, stretching out as far as she could see, swimming through the stately swells of stringed music converging in upon her–

 

 And then – there seemed a frightened pause, a hesitant, indrawn motion, a swift collapse. The colors fled, spun into a globe that shrank, and rose, and disappeared.

 

 And it was merely dark again.

 

 A heavy foot scratched for the pedal, reached it, and the light flooded in; the flat light of a prosy sun. Bayta blinked until the tears came, as though for the longing of what was gone. Ebling Mis was a podgy inertness with his eyes still round and his mouth still open.

 

 Only Magnifico himself was alive, and he fondled his Visi-Sonor in a crooning ecstasy.

 

 "My lady," he gasped, "it is indeed of an effect the most magical. It is of balance and response almost beyond hope in its delicacy and stability. On this, it would seem I could work wonders. How liked you my composition, my lady?"

 

 "Was it yours?" breathed Bayta. "Your own?"

 

 At her awe, his thin face turned a glowing red to the tip of his mighty nose. "My very own, my lady. The Mule liked it not, but often and often I have played it for my own amusement. It was once, in my youth, that I saw the palace – a gigantic place of jeweled riches that I saw from a distance at a time of high carnival. There were people of a splendor undreamed of – and magnificence more than ever I saw afterwards, even in the Mule's service. It is but a poor makeshift I have created, but my mind's poverty precludes more. I call it, 'The Memory of Heaven.'"

 

 Now through the midst of the chatter, Mis shook himself to active life. "Here," he said, "here, Magnifico, would you like to do that same thing for others?"

 

 For a moment, the clown drew back. "For others?" he quavered.

 

 "For thousands," cried Mis, "in the great Halls of the Foundation. Would you like to be your own master, and honored by all, wealthy, and ... and–" his imagination failed him. "And all that? Eh? What do you say?"

 

 "But how may I be all that, mighty sir, for indeed I am but a poor clown ungiven to the great things of the world?"

 

 The psychologist puffed out his lips, and passed the back of his hand across his brow. He said, "But your playing, man. The world is yours if you would play so for the mayor and his Trading Trusts. Wouldn't you like that?"

 

 The clown glanced briefly at Bayta, "Wouldshe stay with me?"

 

 Bayta laughed, "Of course, silly. Would it be likely that I'd leave you now that you're on the point of becoming rich and famous?"

 

 "It would all be yours," he replied earnestly, "and surely the wealth of Galaxy itself would be yours before I could repay my debt to your kindness."

 

 "But," said Mis, casually, "if you would first help me–"

 

 "What is that?"

 

 The psychologist paused, and smiled, "A little surface probe that doesn't hurt. It wouldn't touch but the peel of your brain."

 

 There was a flare of deadly fear in Magnifico's eyes. "Not a probe. I have seen it used. It drains the mind and leaves an empty skull. The Mule did use it upon traitors and let them wander mindless through the streets, until out of mercy, they were killed." He held up his hand to push Mis away.

 

 "That was a psychic probe," explained Mis, patiently, "and even that would only harm a person when misused. This probe I have is a surface probe that wouldn't hurt a baby. "

 

 "That's right, Magnifico," urged Bayta. "It's only to help beat the Mule and keep him far away. Once that's done, you and I will be rich and famous all our lives."

 

 Magnifico held out a trembling hand, "Will you hold my hand, then?"

 

 Bayta took it in both her own, and the clown watched the approach of the burnished terminal plates with large eyes.

 

 Ebling Mis rested carelessly on the too-lavish chair in Mayor Indbur's private quarters, unregenerately unthankful for the condescension shown him and watched the small mayor's fidgeting unsympathetically. He tossed away a cigar stub and spat out a shred of tobacco.

 

 "And, incidentally, if you want something for your next concert at Mallow Hall, Indbur," he said, "you can dump out those electronic gadgeteers into the sewers they came from and have this little freak play the Visi-Sonor for you. Indbur – it's out of this world."

 

 Indbur said peevishly, "I did not call you here to listen to your lectures on music. What of the Mule? Tell me that. What of the Mule?"

 

 "The Mule? Well, I'll tell you – I used a surface probe and got little. Can't use the psychic probe because the freak is scared blind of it, so that his resistance will probably blow his unprintable mental fuses as soon as contact is made. But this is what I've got, if you'll just stop tapping your fingernails–

 

 "First place, de-stress the Mule's physical strength. He's probably strong, but most of the freak's fairy tales about it are probably considerably blown up by his own fearful memory, He wears queer glasses and his eyes kill, he evidently has mental powers."

 

 "So much we had at the start," commented the mayor, sourly.

 

 "Then the probe confirms it, and from there on I've been working mathematically."

 

 "So? And how long will all this take? Your word-rattling will deafen me yet."

 

 "About a month, I should say, and I may have something for you. And I may not, of course. But what of it? If this is all outside Seldon's plans, our chances are precious little, unprintable little."

 

 Indbur whirled on the psychologist fiercely, "Now I have you, traitor. Lie! Say you're not one of these criminal rumormongers that are spreading defeatism and panic through the Foundation, and making my work doubly hard."

 

 "I? I?" Mis gathered anger slowly.

 

 Indbur swore at him, "Because by the dust-clouds of space, the Foundation will win – the Foundationmust win."

 

 "Despite the loss at Horleggor?"

 

 "It was not a loss. You have swallowed that spreading lie, too? We were outnumbered and betreasoned–"

 

 "By whom?" demanded Mis, contemptuously.

 

 "By the lice-ridden democrats of the gutter," shouted Indbur back at him. "I have known for long that the fleet has been riddled by democratic cells. Most have been wiped out, but enough remain for the unexplained surrender of twenty ships in the thickest of the swarming fight. Enough to force an apparent defeat.

 

 "For that matter, my rough-tongued, simple patriot and epitome of the primitive virtues, what are your own connections with the democrats?"

 

 Ebling Mis shrugged it off, "You rave, do you know that? What of the retreat since, and the loss of half of Siwenna? Democrats again?"

 

 "No. Not democrats," the little man smiled sharply. "We retreat – as the Foundation has always retreated under attack, until the inevitable march of history turns with us. Already, I see the outcome. Already, the so-called underground of the democrats has issued manifestoes swearing aid and allegiance to the Government. It could be a feint, a cover for a deeper treachery, but I make good use of it, and the propaganda distilled from it will have its effect, whatever the crawling traitors scheme. And better than that–"

 

 "Even better than that, Indbur?"

 

 "Judge for yourself. Two days ago, the so-called Association of Independent Traders declared war on the Mule, and the Foundation fleet is strengthened, at a stroke, by a thousand ships. You see, this Mule goes too far. He finds us divided and quarreling among ourselves and under the pressure of his attack we unite and grow strong. Hemust lose. It is inevitable – as always."

 

 Mis still exuded skepticism, "Then you tell me that Seldon planned even for the fortuitous occurrence of a mutant."

 

 "A mutant! I can't tell him from a human, nor could you but for the ravings of a rebel captain, some outland youngsters, and an addled juggler and clown. You forget the most conclusive evidence of all – your own."

 

 "My own?" For just a moment, Mis was startled.

 

 "Your own," sneered the mayor. "The Time Vault opens in nine weeks. What of that? It opens for a crisis. If this attack of the Mule is not the crisis, where is the 'real' one, the one the Vault is opening for? Answer me, you lardish ball."

 

 The psychologist shrugged, "All tight. If it keeps you happy. Do me a favor, though. Just in case ... just incase old Seldon makes his speech and itdoes go sour, suppose you let me attend the Grand Opening."

 

 "All right. Get out of here. And stay out of my sight for nine weeks."

 

 "With unprintable pleasure, you wizened horror," muttered Mis to himself as he left.

 

 

 18. FALL OF THE FOUNDATION

 

 There was an atmosphere about the Time Vault that just missed definition in several directions at once. It was not one of decay, for it was well-lit and well-conditioned, with the color scheme of the walls lively, and the rows of fixed chairs comfortable and apparently designed for eternal use. It was not even ancient, for three centuries had left no obvious mark. There was certainly no effort at the creation of awe or reverence, for the appointments were simple and everyday – next door to bareness, in fact.

 

 Yet after all the negatives were added and the sum disposed of, something was left – and that something centered about the glass cubicle that dominated half the room with its clear emptiness. Four times in three centuries, the living simulacrum of Hari Seldon himself had sat there and spoken. Twice he had spoken to no audience.

 

 Through three centuries and nine generations, the old man who had seen the great days of universal empire projected himself – and still he understood more of the Galaxy of his great-ultra-great-grandchildren, than did those grandchildren themselves.

 

 Patiently that empty cubicle waited.

 

 The first to arrive was Mayor Indbur III, driving his ceremonial ground car through the hushed and anxious streets. Arriving with him was his own chair, higher than those that belonged there, and wider. It was placed before all the others, and Indbur dominated all but the empty glassiness before him.

 

 The solemn official at his left bowed a reverent head. "Excellence, arrangements are completed for the widest possible sub-etheric spread for the official announcement by your excellence tonight."

 

 "Good. Meanwhile, special interplanetary programs concerning the Time Vault are to continue. There will, of course, be no predictions or speculations of any sort on the subject. Does popular reaction continue satisfactory?"

 

 "Excellence, very much so. The vicious rumors prevailing of late have decreased further. Confidence is widespread."

 

 "Good!" He gestured the man away and adjusted his elaborate neckpiece to a nicety.

 

 It was twenty minutes of noon!

 

 A select group of the great props of the mayoralty – the leaders of the great Trading organizations – appeared in ones and twos with the degree of pomp appropriate to their financial status and place in mayoral favor. Each presented himself to the mayor, received a gracious word or two, took an assigned seat.

 

 Somewhere, incongruous among the stilted ceremony of all this, Randu of Haven made his appearance and wormed his way unannounced to the mayor's seat.

 

 "Excellence!" he muttered, and bowed.

 

 Indbur frowned. "You have not been granted an audience. "

 

 "Excellence, I have requested one for a week."

 

 "I regret that the matters of State involved in the appearance of Seldon have–"

 

 "Excellence, I regret them, too, but I must ask you to rescind your order that the ships of the Independent Traders be distributed among the fleets of the Foundation."

 

 Indbur had flushed red at the interruption. "This is not the time for discussion."

 

 "Excellence, it is the only time," Randu whispered urgently. "As representative of the Independent Trading Worlds, I tell you such a move can not be obeyed. It must be rescinded before Seldon solves our problem for us. Once the emergency is passed, it will be too late to conciliate and our alliance will melt away."

 

 Indbur stared at Randu coldly. "You realize that I am head of the Foundation armed forces? Have I the right to determine military policy or have I not?"

 

 "Excellence, you have, but some things are inexpedient."

 

 "I recognize no inexpediency. It is dangerous to allow your people separate fleets in this emergency. Divided action plays into the hands of the enemy. We must unite, ambassador, militarily as well as politically."

 

 Randu felt his throat muscles tighten. He omitted the courtesy of the opening title. "You feet safe now that Seldon will speak, and you move against us. A month ago you were soft and yielding, when our ships defeated the Mule at Terel. I might remind you, sir, that it is the Foundation Fleet that has been defeated in open battle five times, and that the ships of the Independent Trading Worlds have won your victories for you."

 

 Indbur frowned dangerously, "You are no longer welcome upon Terminus, ambassador. Your return will be requested this evening. Furthermore, your connection with subversive democratic forces on Terminus will be – and has been – investigated."

 

 Randu replied, "When I leave, our ships will go with me. I know nothing of your democrats. I know only that your Foundation's ships have surrendered to the Mule by the treason of their high officers, not their sailors, democratic or otherwise. I tell you that twenty ships of the Foundation surrendered at Horleggor at the orders of their rear admiral, when they were unharmed and unbeaten. The rear admiral was your own close associate – he presided at the trial of my nephew when he first arrived from Kalgan. It is not the only case we know of and our ships and men will not be risked under potential traitors.

 

 Indbur said, "You will be placed under guard upon leaving here."

 

 Randu walked away under the silent stares of the contemptuous coterie of the rulers of Terminus.

 

 It was ten minutes of twelve!

 

 Bayta and Toran had already arrived. They rose in their back seats and beckoned to Randu as he passed.

 

 Randu smiled gently, "You are here after all. How did you work it?"

 

 "Magnifico was our politician," grinned Toran. "Indbur insists upon his Visi-Sonor composition based on the Time Vault, with himself, no doubt, as hero. Magnifico refused to attend without us, and there was no arguing him out of it. Ebling Mis is with us, or was. He's wandering about somewhere." Then, with a sudden access of anxious gravity, "Why, what's wrong, uncle? You don't look well."

 

 Randu nodded, "I suppose not. We're in for bad times, Toran. When the Mule is disposed of, our turn will come, I'm afraid. "

 

 A straight solemn figure in white approached, and greeted them with a stiff bow.

 

 Bayta's dark eyes smiled, as she held out her hand, "Captain Pritcher! Are you on space duty then?"

 

 The captain took the hand and bowed lower, "Nothing like it. Dr. Mis, I understand, has been instrumental in bringing me here, but it's only temporary. Back to home guard tomorrow. What time is it?"

 

 It was three minutes of twelve!

 

 Magnifico was the picture of misery and heartsick depression. His body curled up, in his eternal effort at self-effacement. His long nose was pinched at the nostrils and his large, down-slanted eyes darted uneasily about.

 

 He clutched at Bayta's hand, and when she bent down, he whispered, "Do you suppose, my lady, that all these great ones were in the audience, perhaps, when I ... when I played the Visi-Sonor?"

 

 "Everyone, I'm sure," Bayta assured him, and shook him gently. "And I'm sure they all think you're the most wonderful player in the Galaxy and that your concert was the greatest ever seen, so you just straighten yourself and sit correctly. We must have dignity."

 

 He smiled feebly at her mock-frown and unfolded his long-boned limbs slowly.

 

 It was noon – and the glass cubicle was no longer empty.

 

 It was doubtful that anyone had witnessed the appearance. It was a clean break; one moment not there and the next moment there.

 

 In the cubicle was a figure in a wheelchair, old and shrunken, from whose wrinkled face bright eyes shone, and whose voice, as it turned out, was the livest thing about him. A book lay face downward in his lap, and the voice came softly.

 

 "I am Hari Seldon!"

 

 He spoke through a silence, thunderous in its intensity.

 

 "I am Hari Seldon! I do not know if anyone is here at all by mere sense-perception but that is unimportant. I have few fears as yet of a breakdown in the Plan. For the first three centuries the percentage probability of nondeviation is nine-four point two."

 

 He paused to smile, and then said genially, "By the way, if any of you are standing, you may sit. If any would like to smoke, please do. I am not here in the flesh. I require no ceremony.

 

 "Let us take up the problem of the moment, then. For the first time, the Foundation has been faced, or perhaps, is in the last stages of facing, civil war. Till now, the attacks from without have been adequately beaten off, and inevitably so, according to the strict laws of psychohistory. The attack at present is that of a too-undisciplined outer group of the Foundation against the too-authoritarian central government. The procedure was necessary, the result obvious."

 

 The dignity of the high-born audience was beginning to break. Indbur was half out of his chair.

 

 Bayta leaned forward with troubled eyes. What was the great Seldon talking about? She had missed a few of the words–

 

 "–that the compromise worked out is necessary in two respects. The revolt of the Independent Traders introduces an element of new uncertainty in a government perhaps grown over-confident. The element of striving is restored. Although beaten, a healthy increase of democracy–"

 

 There were raised voices now. Whispers had ascended the scale of loudness, and the edge of panic was in them.

 

 Bayta said in Toran's ear, "Why doesn't he talk about the Mule? The Traders never revolted."

 

 Toran shrugged his shoulders.

 

 The seated figure spoke cheerfully across and through the increasing disorganization:

 

 "–a new and firmer coalition government was the necessary and beneficial outcome of the logical civil war forced upon the Foundation. And now only the remnants of the old Empire stand in the way of further expansion, and in them, for the next few years, at any rate, is no problem. Of course, I can not reveal the nature of the next prob–"

 

 In the complete uproar, Seldon's lips moved soundlessly.

 

 Ebling Mis was next to Randu, face ruddy. He was shouting. "Seldon is off his rocker. He's got the wrong crisis. Were your Traders ever planning civil war?"

 

 Randu said thinly, "We planned one, yes. We called it off in the face of the Mule."

 

 "Then the Mule is an added feature, unprepared for in Seldon's psychohistory. Now what's happened?"

 

 In the sudden, frozen silence, Bayta found the cubicle once again empty. The nuclear glow of the walls was dead, the soft current of conditioned air absent.

 

 Somewhere the sound of a shrill siren was rising and falling in the scale and Randu formed the words with his lips, "Space raid!"

 

 And Ebling Mis held his wrist watch to his ears and shouted suddenly, "Stopped, by the "Ga-LAX-y, is there a watch in the room that is going?" His voice was a roar.

 

 Twenty wrists went to twenty ears. And in far less than twenty seconds, it was quite certain that none were.

 

 "Then," said Mis, with a grim and horrible finality, "something has stopped all nuclear power in the Time Vault – and the Mule is attacking."

 

 Indbur's wail rose high above the noise, "Take your seats! The Mule is fifty parsecs distant."

 

 "He was," shouted back Mis, "a week ago. Right now, Terminus is being bombarded."

 

 Bayta felt a deep depression settle softly upon her. She felt its folds tighten close and thick, until her breath forced its way only with pain past her tightened throat.

 

 The outer noise of a gathering crowd was evident. The doors were thrown open and a harried figure entered, and spoke rapidly to Indbur, who had rushed to him.

 

 "Excellence," he whispered, "not a vehicle is running in the city, not a communication line to the outside is open.

 

 The Tenth Fleet is reported defeated and the Mule's ships are outside the atmosphere. The general staff–"

 

 Indbur crumpled, and was a collapsed figure of impotence upon the floor. In all that hall, not a voice was raised now. Even the growing crowd without was fearful, but silent, and the horror of cold panic hovered dangerously.

 

 Indbur was raised. Wine was held to his lips. His lips moved before his eyes opened, and the word they formed was, "Surrender!"

 

 Bayta found herself near to crying – not for sorrow or humiliation, but simply and plainly out of a vast frightened despair. Ebling Mis plucked at her sleeve. "Come, young lady–"

 

 She was pulled out of her chair, bodily.

 

 "We're leaving," he said, "and take your musician with you." The plump scientist's lips were trembling and colorless.

 

 "Magnifico," said Bayta, faintly. The clown shrank in horror. His eyes were glassy.

 

 "The Mule," he shrieked. "The Mule is coming for me."

 

 He thrashed wildly at her touch. Toran leaned over and brought his fist up sharply. Magnifico slumped into unconsciousness and Toran carried him out potato-sack fashion.

 

 The next day, the ugly, battle-black ships of the Mule poured down upon the landing fields of the planet Terminus. The attacking general sped down the empty main street of Terminus City in a foreign-made ground car that ran where a whole city of atomic cars still stood useless.

 

 The proclamation of occupation was made twenty-four hours to the minute after Seldon had appeared before the former mighty of the Foundation.

 

 Of all the Foundation planets, only the Independent Traders still stood, and against them the power of the Mule – conqueror of the Foundation – now turned itself.

 

 

 19. START OF THE SEARCH

 

 The lonely planet, Haven – only planet of an only sun of a Galactic Sector that trailed raggedly off into intergalactic vacuum – was under siege.

 

 In a strictly military sense, it was certainly under siege, since no area of space on the Galactic side further than twenty parsecs distance was outside range of the Mule's advance bases. In the four months since the shattering fall of the Foundation, Haven's communications had fallen apart like a spiderweb under the razor's edge. The ships of Haven converged inwards upon the home world, and only Haven itself was now a fighting base.

 

 And in other respects, the siege was even closer; for the shrouds of helplessness and doom had already invaded

 

 Bayta plodded her way down the pink-waved aisle past the rows of milky plastic-topped tables and found her seat by blind reckoning. She eased on to the high, armless chair, answered half-heard greetings mechanically, rubbed a wearily-itching eye with the back of a weary hand, and reached for her menu.

 

 She had time to register a violent mental reaction of distaste to the pronounced presence of various cultured-fungus dishes, which were considered high delicacies at Haven, and which her Foundation taste found highly inedible – and then she was aware of the sobbing near her and looked up.

 

 Until then, her notice of Juddee, the plain, snub-nosed, indifferent blonde at the dining unit diagonally across had been the superficial one of the nonacquaintance. And now Juddee was crying, biting woefully at a moist handkerchief, and choking back sobs until her complexion was blotched with turgid red. Her shapeless radiation-proof costume was thrown back upon her shoulders, and her transparent face shield had tumbled forward into her dessert, and there remained.

 

 Bayta joined the three girls who were taking turns at the eternally applied and eternally inefficacious remedies of shoulder-patting, hair-smoothing, and incoherent murmuring.

 

 "What's the matter?" she whispered.

 

 One turned to her and shrugged a discreet, "I don't know." Then, feeling the inadequacy of the gesture, she pulled Bayta aside.

 

 "She's had a hard day, I guess. And she's worrying about her husband."

 

 "Is he on space patrol?"

 

 "Yes".

 

 Bayta reached a friendly hand out to Juddee.

 

 "Why don't you go home, Juddee?" Her voice was a cheerfully businesslike intrusion on the soft, flabby inanities that had preceded.

 

 Juddee looked up half in resentment. "I've been out once this week already–"

 

 "Then you'll be out twice. If you try to stay on, you know, you'll just be out three days next week – so going home now amounts to patriotism. Any of you girls work in her department? Well, then, suppose you take care of her card. Better go to the washroom first, Juddee, and get the peaches and cream back where it belongs. Go ahead! Shoo!"

 

 Bayta returned to her seat and took up the menu again with a dismal relief. These moods were contagious. One weeping girl would have her entire department in a frenzy these nerve-torn days.

 

 She made a distasteful decision, pressed the correct buttons at her elbow and put the menu back into its niche.

 

 The tall, dark girl opposite her was saying, "Isn't much any of us can do except cry, is there?"

 

 Her amazingly full lips scarcely moved, and Bayta noticed that their ends were carefully touched to exhibit that artificial, just-so half-smile that was the current last word in sophistication.

 

 Bayta investigated the insinuating thrust contained in the words with lashed eyes and welcomed the diversion of the arrival of her lunch, as the tile-top of her unit moved inward and the food lifted. She tore the wrappings carefully off her cutlery and handled them gingerly till they cooled.

 

 She said, "Can't you think of anything else to do, Hella?"

 

 "Oh, yes," said Hella. "Ican!" She flicked her cigarette with a casual and expert finger-motion into the little recess provided and the tiny flash caught it before it hit shallow bottom.

 

 "For instance," and Hella clasped slender, well-kept hands under her chin, "I think we could make a very nice arrangement with the Mule and stop all this nonsense. But then I don't have the ... uh ... facilities to manage to get out of places quickly when the Mule takes over."

 

 Bayta's clear forehead remained clear. Her voice was light and indifferent. "You don't happen to have a brother or husband in the fighting ships, do you?"

 

 "No. All the more credit that I see no reason for the sacrifice of the brothers and husbands of others."

 

 "The sacrifice will come the more surely for surrender."

 

 "The Foundation surrendered and is at peace. Our men are away and the Galaxy is against us."

 

 Bayta shrugged, and said sweetly, "I'm afraid it is the first of the pair that bothers you." She returned to her vegetable platter and ate it with the clammy realization of the silence about her. No one in ear-shot had cared to answer Hella's cynicism.

 

 She left quickly, after stabbing at the button which cleared her dining unit for the next shift's occupant.

 

 A new girl, three seats away, stage-whispered to Hella, "Who was she?"

 

 Hella's mobile lips curled in indifference. "She's our coordinator's niece. Didn't you know that?"

 

 "Yes?" Her eyes sought out the last glimpse of disappearing back. "What's she doing here?"

 

 "Just an assembly girl. Don't you know it's fashionable to be patriotic? It's all so democratic, it makes me retch."

 

 "Now, Hella," said the plump girl to her right. "She's never pulled her uncle on us yet. Why don't you lay off?"

 

 Hella ignored her neighbor with a glazed sweep of eyes and lit another cigarette.

 

 The new girl was listening to the chatter of the bright-eyed accountant opposite. The words were coming quickly,

 

 "–and she's supposed to have been in the Vault – actually in the Vault, you know – when Seldon spoke – and they say the mayor was in frothing furies and there were riots, and all of that sort of thing, you know. She got away before the Mule landed, and they say she had the most tha-rilling escape – had to go through the blockade, and all – and I do wonder she doesn't write a book about it, these war books being so popular these days, you know. And she was supposed to be on this world of the Mule's, too – Kalgan, you know – and–"

 

 The time bell shrilled and the dining room emptied slowly. The accountant's voice buzzed on, and the new girl interrupted only with the conventional and wide-eyed, "Really-y-y-y?" at appropriate points.

 

 The huge cave lights were being shielded group-wise in the gradual descent towards the darkness that meant sleep for the righteous and hard-working, when Bayta returned home.

 

 Toran met her at the door, with a slice of buttered bread in his hand.

 

 "Where've you been?" he asked, food-muffled. Then, more clearly, "I've got a dinner of sorts rassled up. If it isn't much, don't blame me."

 

 But she was circling him, wide-eyed. "Torie! Where's your uniform? What are you doing in civvies?"

 

 "Orders, Bay. Randu is holed up with Ebling Mis right now, and what it's all about, I don't know. So there you have everything."

 

 "Am I going?" She moved towards him impulsively.

 

 He kissed her before he answered, "I believe so. It will probably be dangerous."

 

 "What isn't dangerous?"

 

 "Exactly. Oh, yes, and I've already sent for Magnifico, so he's probably coming too."

 

 "You mean his concert at the Engine Factory will have to be cancelled."

 

 "Obviously."

 

 Bayta passed into the next room and sat down to a meal that definitely bore signs of having been "rassled-up." She cut the sandwiches in two with quick efficiency and said:

 

 "That's too bad about the concert. The girls at the factory were looking forward to it. Magnifico, too, for that matter." She shook her head. "He's such a queer thing."

 

 "Stirs your mother-complex, Bay, that's what he does. Some day we'll have a baby, and then you'll forget Magnifico."

 

 'Bayta answered from the depths of her sandwich, "Strikes me that you're all the stirring my mother-complex can stand."

 

 And then she laid the sandwich down, and was gravely serious in a moment.

 

 "Torie."

 

 "M-m-m?"

 

 "Torie, I was at City Hall today – at the Bureau of Production. That is why I was so late today."

 

 "What were you doing there?"

 

 "Well..." she hesitated, uncertainly. "It's been building up. I was getting so I couldn't stand it at the factory. Morale just doesn't exist. The girls go on crying jags for no particular reason. Those who don't get sick become sullen. Even the little mousie types pout. In my particular section, production isn't a quarter what it was when I came, and there isn't a day that we have a full roster of workers."

 

 "All right," said Toran, "tie in the B. of P. What did you do there?"

 

 "Asked a few questions. And it's so, Torie, it's so all over Haven. Dropping production, increasing sedition and disaffection. The bureau chief just shrugged his shoulders – after I had sat in the anteroom an hour to see him, and only got in because I was the co-ordinator's niece – and said it was beyond him. Frankly, I don't think he cared."

 

 "Now, don't go off base, Bay."

 

 "I don't think he did." She was strenuously fiery. "I tell you there's something wrong. It's that same horrible frustration that hit me in the Time Vault when Seldon deserted us. You felt it yourself."

 

 "Yes, I did."

 

 "Well, it's back," she continued savagely. "And we'll never be able to resist the Mule. Even if we had the material, we lack the heart, the spirit, the will – Torie, there's no use fighting–"

 

 Bayta had never cried in Toran's memory, and she did not cry now. Not really. But Toran laid a light hand on her shoulder and whispered, "Suppose you forget it, baby. I know what you mean. But there's nothing–"

 

 "Yes, there's nothing we can do! Everyone says that – and we just sit and wait for the knife to come down."

 

 She returned to what was left of her sandwich and tea. Quietly, Toran was arranging the beds. It was quite dark outside.

 

 Randu, as newly-appointed co-ordinator – in itself a wartime post – of the confederation of cities on Haven, had been assigned, at his own request, to an upper room, out of the window of which he could brood over the roof tops and greenery of the city. Now, in the fading of the cave lights, the city receded into the level lack of distinction of the shades. Randu did not care to meditate upon the symbolism.

 

 He said to Ebling Mis – whose clear, little eyes seemed to have no further interest than the red-filled goblet in his hand – "There's a saying on Haven that when the cave lights go out, it is time for the righteous and hard-working to sleep."

 

 "Do you sleep much lately?"

 

 "No! Sorry to call you so late, Mis. I like the night better somehow these days. Isn't that strange? The people on Haven condition themselves pretty strictly on the lack of light meaning sleep. Myself, too. But it's different now–"

 

 "You're hiding," said Mis, flatly. "You're surrounded by people in the waking period, and you feel their eyes and their hopes on you. You can't stand up under it. In the sleep period, you're free."

 

 "Do you feel it, too, then? This miserable sense of defeat?"

 

 Ebling Mis nodded slowly, "I do. It's a mass psychosis, an unprintable mob panic. "Ga-LAX-y, Randu, what do you expect? Here you have a whole culture brought up to a blind, blubbering belief that a folk hero of the past has everything all planned out and is taking care of every little piece of their unprintable lives. The thought-pattern evoked has religious characteristics, and you know what that means."

 

 "Not a bit."

 

 Mis was not enthusiastic about the necessity of explanation. He never was. So he growled, stared at the long cigar he rolled thoughtfully between his fingers and said, "Characterized by strong faith reactions. Beliefs can't be shaken short of a major shock, in which case, a fairly complete mental disruption results. Mild cases-hysteria, morbid sense of insecurity. Advanced cases – madness and suicide."

 

 Randu bit at a thumbnail. "When Seldon fails us, in other words, our prop disappears, and we've been leaning upon it so long, our muscles are atrophied to where we can not stand without it."

 

 "That's it. Sort of a clumsy metaphor, but that's it."

 

 "And you, Ebling, what of your own muscles?"

 

 The psychologist filtered a long draught of air through his cigar, and let the smoke laze out. "Rusty, but not atrophied. My profession has resulted in just a bit of independent thinking."

 

 "And you see a way out?"

 

 "No, but there must be one. Maybe Seldon made no provisions for the Mule. Maybe he didn't guarantee our victory. But, then, neither did he guarantee defeat. He's just out of the game and we're on our own. The Mule can be licked."

 

 "How?"

 

 "By the only way anyone can be licked – by attacking in strength at weakness. See here, Randu, the Mule isn't a superman. If he is finally defeated, everyone will see that for himself. It's just that he's an unknown, and the legends cluster quickly. He's supposed to be a mutant. Well, what of that? A mutant means a 'superman' to the ignoramuses of humanity. Nothing of the sort.

 

 "It's been estimated that several million mutants are born in the Galaxy every day. Of the several million, all but one or two percent can be detected only by means of microscopes and chemistry. Of the one or two percent macromutants, that is, those with mutations detectable to the naked eye or naked mind, all but one or two percent are freaks, fit for the amusement centers, the laboratories, and death. Of the few macromutants whose differences are to the good, almost all are harmless curiosities, unusual in some single respect, normal – and often subnormal – in most others. You see that, Randu?"

 

 "I do. But what of the Mule?"

 

 "Supposing the Mule to be a mutant then, we can assume that he has some attribute, undoubtedly mental, which can be used to conquer worlds. In other respects, he undoubtedly has his shortcomings, which we must locate. He would not be so secretive, so shy of others' eyes, if these shortcomings were not apparent and fatal.If he's a mutant."

 

 "Is there an alternative?"

 

 "There might be. Evidence for mutation rests on Captain Han Pritcher of what used to be Foundation's Intelligence. He drew his conclusions from the feeble memories of those who claimed to know the Mule-or somebody who might have been the Mule – in infancy and early childhood. Pritcher worked on slim pickings there, and what evidence he found might easily have been planted by the Mule for his own purposes, for it's certain that the Mule has been vastly aided by his reputation as a mutant-superman."

 

 "This is interesting. How long have you thought that?"

 

 "I never thought that, in the sense of believing it. It is merely an alternative to be considered. For instance, Randu, suppose the Mule has discovered a form of radiation capable of depressing mental energy just as he is in possession of one which depresses nuclear reactions. What then, eh? Could that explain what's hitting us now – and what did hit the Foundation?"

 

 Randu seemed immersed in a near-wordless gloom.

 

 He said, "What of your own researches on the Mule's clown."

 

 And now Ebling Mis hesitated. "Useless as yet. I spoke bravely to the mayor previous to the Foundation's collapse, mainly to keep his courage up – partly to keep my own up as well. But, Randu, if my mathematical tools were up to it, then from the clown alone I could analyze the Mule completely. Then we would have him. Then we could solve the queer anomalies that have impressed me already."

 

 "Such as?"

 

 "Think, man. The Mule defeated the navies of the Foundation at will, but he has not once managed to force the much weaker fleets of the Independent Traders to retreat in open combat. The Foundation fell at a blow; the Independent Traders hold out against all his strength. He first used Extinguishing Field upon the nuclear weapons of the Independent Traders of Mnemon. The element of surprise lost them that battle but they countered the Field. He was never able to use it successfully against the Independents again.

 

 "But over and over again, it worked against Foundation forces. It worked on the Foundation itself. Why? With our present knowledge, it is all illogical. So there must be factors of which we are not aware."

 

 "Treachery?"

 

 "That's rattle-pated nonsense, Randu. Unprintable twaddle. There wasn't a man on the Foundation who wasn't sure of victory. Who would betray a certain-to-win side."

 

 Randu stepped to the curved window and stared unseeingly out into the unseeable. He said, "But we're certain to lose now, if the Mule had a thousand weaknesses; if he were a network of holes–"

 

 He did not turn. It was as if the slump of his back, the nervous groping for one another of the hands behind him that spoke. He said, "We escaped easily after the Time Vault episode, Ebling. Others might have escaped as well. A few did. Most did not. The Extinguishing Field could have been counteracted. It asked ingenuity and a certain amount of labor. All the ships of the Foundation Navy could have flown to Haven or other nearby planets to continue the fight as we did. Not one percent did so. In effect, they deserted to the enemy.

 

 "The Foundation underground, upon which most people here seem to rely so heavily, has thus far done nothing of consequence. The Mule has been politic enough to promise to safeguard the property and profits of the great Traders and they have gone over to him."

 

 Ebling Mis said stubbornly, "The plutocrats have always been against us."

 

 "They always held the power, too. Listen, Ebling. We have reason to believe that the Mule or his tools have already been in contact with powerful men among the Independent Traders. At least ten of the twenty-seven Trading Worlds are known to have gone over to the Mule. Perhaps ten more waver. There are personalities on Haven itself who would not be unhappy over the Mule's domination. It's apparently an insurmountable temptation to give up endangered political power, if that will maintain your hold over economic affairs. "

 

 "You don't think Haven can fight the Mule?"

 

 "I don't think Haven will." And now Randu turned his troubled face full upon the psychologist. "I think Haven is waiting to surrender. It's what I called you here to tell you. I want you to leave Haven."

 

 Ebling Mis puffed up his plump checks in amazement. "Already?"

 

 Randu felt horribly tired. "Ebling, you are the Foundation's greatest psychologist. The real master-psychologists went out with Seldon, but you're the best we have. You're our only chance of defeating the Mule. You can't do that here; you'll have to go to what's left of the Empire."

 

 "To Trantor?"

 

 "That's right. What was once the Empire is bare bones today, but something must still be at the center. They've got the records there, Ebling. You may learn more of mathematical psychology; perhaps enough to be able to interpret the clown's mind. He will go with you, of course."

 

 Mis responded dryly, "I doubt if he'd be willing to, even for fear of the Mule, unless your niece went with him."

 

 "I know that. Toran and Bayta are leaving with you for that very reason. And, Ebling, there's another, greater purpose. Hari Seldon foundedtwo Foundations three centuries ago; one at each end of the Galaxy.You must find that Second Foundation."

 

 

 20. CONSPIRATOR

 

 The mayor's palace – what was once the mayor's palace – was a looming smudge in the darkness. The city was quiet under its conquest and curfew, and the hazy milk of the great Galactic Lens, with here and there a lonely star, dominated the sky of the Foundation.

 

 In three centuries the Foundation had grown from a private project of a small group of scientists to a tentacular trade empire sprawling deep into the Galaxy and half a year had flung it from its heights to the status of another conquered province.

 

 Captain Han Pritcher refused to grasp that.

 

 The city's sullen nighttime quiet, the darkened palace, intruder-occupied, were symbolic enough, but Captain Han Pritcher, just within the outer gate of the palace, with the tiny nuclear bomb under his tongue, refused to understand.

 

 A shape drifted closer – the captain bent his head.

 

 The whisper came deathly low, "The alarm system is as it always was, captain. Proceed! It will register nothing."

 

 Softly, the captain ducked through the low archway, and down the fountain-lined path to what had been Indbur's garden.

 

 Four months ago had been the day in the Time Vault, the fullness of which his memory balked at. Singly and separately the impressions would come back, unwelcome, mostly at night.

 

 Old Seldon speaking his benevolent words that were so shatteringly wrong – the jumbled confusion – Indbur, with his mayoral costume incongruously bright about his pinched, unconscious face – the frightened crowds gathering quickly, waiting noiselessly for the inevitable word of surrender – the young man, Toran, disappearing out of a side door with the Mule's clown dangling over his shoulder.

 

 And himself, somehow out of it all afterward, with his car unworkable.

 

 Shouldering his way along and through the leaderless mob that was already leaving the city – destination unknown.

 

 Making blindly for the various rat holes which were – which had once been – the headquarters for a democratic underground that for eighty years had been failing and dwindling.

 

 And the rat holes were empty.

 

 The next day, black alien ships were momentarily visible in the sky, sinking gently into the clustered buildings of the nearby city. Captain Han Pritcher felt an accumulation of helplessness and despair drown him.

 

 He started his travels in earnest.

 

 In thirty days he had covered nearly two hundred miles on foot, changed to the clothing of a worker in the hydroponic factories whose body he found newly-dead by the side of the road, grown a fierce beard of russet intensity

 

 And found what was left of the underground.

 

 The city was Newton, the district a residential one of one-time elegance slowly edging towards squalor, the house an undistinguished member of a row, and the man a small-eyed, big-boned whose knotted fists bulged through his pockets and whose wiry body remained unbudgingly in the narrow door opening.

 

 The captain mumbled, "I come from Miran."

 

 The man returned the gambit, grimly. "Miran is early this year."

 

 The captain said, "No earlier than last year."

 

 But the man did not step aside. He said, "Who are you?"

 

 "Aren't you Fox?"

 

 "Do you always answer by asking?"

 

 The captain took an imperceptibly longer breath, and then said calmly, "I am Han Pritcher, Captain of the Fleet, and member of the Democratic Underground Party. Will you let me in?"

 

 The Fox stepped aside. He said, "My real name is Orum Palley."

 

 He held out his hand. The captain took it.

 

 The room was well-kept, but not lavish. In one comer stood a decorative book-film projector, which to the captain's military eyes might easily have been a camouflaged blaster of respectable caliber. The projecting lens covered the doorway, and such could be remotely controlled.

 

 The Fox followed his bearded guest's eyes, and smiled tightly. He said, "Yes! But only in the days of Indbur and his lackey-hearted vampires. It wouldn't do much against the Mule, eh? Nothing would help against the Mule. Are you hungry?"

 

 The captain's jaw muscles tightened beneath his beard, and he nodded.

 

 "It'll take a minute if you don't mind waiting." The Fox removed cans from a cupboard and placed two before Captain Pritcher. "Keep your finger on it, and break them when they're hot enough. My heat-control unit's out of whack. Things like that remind you there's a war on – or was on, eh?"

 

 His quick words had a jovial content, but were said in anything but a jovial tone – and his eyes were coldly thoughtful. He sat down opposite the captain and said, "There'll be nothing but a burn-spot left where you're sitting, if there's anything about you I don't like. Know that?"

 

 The captain did not answer. The cans before him opened at a pressure.

 

 The Fox said, shortly, "Stew! Sorry, but the food situation is short."

 

 "I know," said the captain. He ate quickly; not looking up.

 

 The Fox said, "I once saw you. I'm trying to remember, and the beard is definitely out of the picture."

 

 "I haven't shaved in thirty days." Then, fiercely, "What do you want? I had the correct passwords. I have identification."

 

 The other waved a hand, "Oh, I'll grant you're Pritcher all right. But there are plenty who have the passwords, and the identifications, and theidentities – who are with the Mule. Ever hear of Levvaw, eh?"

 

 "Yes."

 

 "He's with the Mule."

 

 "What? He–"

 

 "Yes. He was the man they called 'No Surrender.'" The Fox's lips made laughing motions, with neither sound nor humor. "Then there's Willig. With the Mule! Garre and Noth. With the Mule! Why not Pritcher as well, eh? How would I know?"

 

 The captain merely shook his head.

 

 "But it doesn't matter," said the Fox, softly. "They must have my name, if Noth has gone over – so if you're legitimate, you're in more new danger than I am over our acquaintanceship."

 

 The captain had finished eating. He leaned back, "If you have no organization here, where can I find one? The Foundation may have surrendered, but I haven't."

 

 "So! You can't wander forever, captain. Men of the Foundation must have travel permits to move from town to town these days. You know that? Also identity cards. You have one? Also, all officers of the old Navy have been requested to report to the nearest occupation headquarters. That's you, eh?"

 

 "Yes." The captain's voice was hard. "Do you think I run through fear. I was on Kalgan not long afterits fall to the Mule. Within a month, not one of the old warlord's officers was at large, because they were the natural military leaders of any revolt. It's always been the underground's knowledge that no revolution can be successful without the control of at least part of the Navy. The Mule evidently knows it, too."

 

 The Fox nodded thoughtfully, "Logical enough. The Mule is thorough."

 

 "I discarded the uniform as soon as I could. I grew the beard. Afterwards there may be a chance that others have taken the same action."

 

 "Are you married?"

 

 "My wife is dead. I have no children.

 

 "You're hostage-immune, then."

 

 "Yes."

 

 "You want my advice?"

 

 "If you have any."

 

 A don't know what the Mule's policy is or what he intends, but skilled workers have not been harmed so far. Pay rates have gone up. Production of all sorts of nuclear weapons is booming."

 

 "Yes? Sounds like a continuing offensive."

 

 "I don't know. The Mule's a subtle son of a drab, and he may merely be soothing the workers into submission. If Seldon couldn't figure him out with all his psychohistory, I'm not going to try. But you're wearing work clothes. That suggests something, eh?"

 

 "I'm not a skilled worker."

 

 "You've had a military course in nucleics, haven't you?"

 

 "Certainly."

 

 "That's enough. The Nuclear-Field Bearings, Inc., is located here in town. Tell them you've had experience. The stinkers who used to run the factory for Indbur are still running it – for the Mule. They won't ask questions, as long as they need more workers to make their fat hunk. They'll give you an identity card and you can apply for a room in the Corporation's housing district. You might start now."

 

 In that manner, Captain Han Pritcher of the National Fleet became Shield-man Lo Moro of the 45 Shop of Nuclear-Field Bearings, Inc. And from an Intelligence agent, he descended the social scale to "conspirator"– a calling which led him months later to what had been Indbur's private garden,

 

 In the garden, Captain Pritcher consulted the radometer in the palm of his hand. The inner warning field was still in operation, and he waited. Half an hour remained to the life of the nuclear bomb in his mouth. He rolled it gingerly with his tongue.

 

 The radometer died into an ominous darkness and the captain advanced quickly.

 

 So far, matters had progressed well.

 

 He reflected objectively that the life of the nuclear bomb was his as well; that its death was his death – and the Mule's death.

 

 And the grand climacteric of a four-month's private war would be reached; a war that had passed from flight through a Newton factory

 

 For two months, Captain Pritcher wore leaden aprons and heavy face shields, till all things military had been frictioned off his outer bearing. He was a laborer, who collected his pay, spent his evenings in town, and never discussed politics.

 

 For two months, he did not see the Fox.

 

 And then, one day, a man stumbled past his bench, and there was a scrap of paper in his pocket. The word "Fox" was on it. He tossed it into the nuclear chamber, where it vanished in a sightless puff, sending the energy output up a millimicrovolt – and turned back to his work.

 

 That night he was at the Fox's home, and took a hand in a game of cards with two other men he knew by reputation and one by name and face.

 

 Over the cards and the passing and repassing tokens, they spoke.

 

 The captain said, "It's a fundamental error. You live in the exploded past. For eighty years our organization has been waiting for the correct historical moment. We've been blinded by Seldon's psychohistory, one of the first propositions of which is that the individual does not count, does not make history, and that complex social and economic factors override him, make a puppet out of him." He adjusted his cards carefully, appraised their value and said, as he put out a token. "Why not kill the Mule?"

 

 "Well, now, and what good would that do?" demanded the man at his left, fiercely.

 

 "You see," said the captain, discarding two cards, "that's the attitude. What is one man – out of quadrillions. The Galaxy won't stop rotating because one man dies. But the Mule is not a man, he is a mutant. Already, he had upset Seldon's plan, and if you'll stop to analyze the implications, it means that he – one man – one mutant – upset all of Seldon's psychohistory. If he had never lived, the Foundation would not have fallen. If he ceased living, it would not remain fallen.

 

 "Come, the democrats have fought the mayors and the traders for eighty years by connivery. Let's try assassination."

 

 "How?" interposed the Fox, with cold common sense.

 

 The captain said, slowly, "I've spent three months of thought on that with no solution. I came here and had it in five minutes." He glanced briefly at the man whose broad, pink melon of a face smiled from the place at his right. "You were once Mayor Indbur's chamberlain. I did not know you were of the underground,"

 

 "Nor I, that you were."

 

 "Well, then, in your capacity as chamberlain you periodically checked the working of the alarm system of the palace."

 

 "I did."

 

 "And the Mule occupies the palace now."

 

 "So it has been announced – though he is a modest conqueror who makes no speeches, proclamations nor public appearances of any sort."

 

 "That's an old story, and affects nothing. You, my ex-chamberlain, are all we need."

 

 The cards were shown and the Fox collected the stakes. Slowly, he dealt a new hand.

 

 The man who had once been chamberlain picked up his cards, singly. "Sorry, captain. I checked the alarm system, but it was routine. I know nothing about it."

 

 "I expected that, but your mind carries an eidetic memory of the controls if it can be probed deeply enough – with a psychic probe."

 

 The chamberlain's ruddy face paled suddenly and sagged. The cards in his hand crumpled under sudden fist-pressure, "A psychic probe?"

 

 "You needn't worry," said the captain, sharply. "I know how to use one. It will not harm you past a few days' weakness. And if it did, it is the chance you take and the price you pay. There are some among us, no doubt, who from the controls of the alarm could determine the wavelength combinations. There are some among us who could manufacture a small bomb under time-control and I myself will carry it to the Mule."

 

 The men gathered over the table.

 

 The captain announced, "On a given evening, a riot will start in Terminus City in the neighborhood of the palace. No real fighting. Disturbance – then flight. As long as the palace guard is attracted ... or, at the very least, distracted–"

 

 From that day for a month the preparations went on, and Captain Han Pritcher of the National Fleet having become conspirator descended further in the social scale and became an "assassin."

 

 Captain Pritcher, assassin, was in the palace itself, and found himself grimly pleased with his psychology. A thorough alarm system outside meant few guards within. In this case, it meant none at all.

 

 The floor plan was clear in his mind. He was a blob moving noiselessly up the well-carpeted ramp. At its head, he flattened against the wall and waited.

 

 The small closed door of a private room was before him. Behind that door must be the mutant who had beaten the unbeatable. He was early – the bomb had ten minutes of life in it.

 

 Five of these passed, and still in all the world there was no sound. The Mule had five minutes to live – So had Captain Pritcher–

 

 He stepped forward on sudden impulse. The plot could no longer fail. When the bomb went, the palace would go with it – all the palace. A door between – ten yards between – was nothing. But he wanted to see the Mule as they died together.

 

 In a last, insolent gesture, he thundered upon the door.

 

 And it opened and let out the blinding light.

 

 Captain Pritcher staggered, then caught himself. The solemn man, standing in the center of the small room before a suspended fish bowl, looked up mildly.

 

 His uniform was a somber black, and as he tapped the bowl in an absent gesture, it bobbed quickly and the feather-finned, orange and vermilion fish within darted wildly.

 

 He said, "Come in, captain!"

 

 To the captain's quivering tongue the little metal globe beneath was swelling ominously – a physical impossibility, the captain knew. But it was in its last minute of life.

 

 The uniformed man said, "You had better spit out the foolish pellet and free yourself for speech. It won't blast."

 

 The minute passed and with a slow, sodden motion the captain bent his head and dropped the silvery globe into his palm. With a furious force it was flung against the wall. It rebounded with a tiny, sharp clangor, gleaming harmlessly as it flew.

 

 The uniformed man shrugged. "So much for that, then. It would have done you no good in any case, captain. I am not the Mule. You will have to be satisfied with his viceroy."

 

 "How did you know?" muttered the captain, thickly.

 

 "Blame it on an efficient counter-espionage system. I can name every member of your little gang, every step of their planning–"

 

 "And you let it go this far?"

 

 "Why not? It has been one of my great purposes here to find you and some others. Particularly you. I might have had you some months ago, while you were still a worker at the Newton Bearings Works, but this is much better. If you hadn't suggested the main outlines of the plot yourself, one of my own men would have advanced something of much the same sort for you. The result is quite dramatic, and rather grimly humorous."

 

 The captain's eyes were hard. "I find it so, too. Is it all over now?"

 

 "Just begun. Come, captain, sit down. Let us leave heroics for the fools who are impressed by it. Captain, you are a capable man. According to the information I have, you were the first on the Foundation to recognize the power of the Mule. Since then you have interested yourself, rather daringly, in the Mule's early life. You have been one of those who carried off his clown, who, incidentally, has not yet been found, and for which there will yet be full payment. Naturally, your ability is recognized and the Mule is not of those who fear the ability of his enemies as long as he can convert it into the ability of a new friend."

 

 "Is that what you're hedging up to? Oh, no!"

 

 "Oh, yes! It was the purpose of tonight's comedy. You are an intelligent man, yet your little conspiracies against die Mule fail humorously. You can scarcely dignify it with the name of conspiracy. Is it part of your military training to waste ships in hopeless actions?"

 

 "One must first admit them to be hopeless."

 

 "One will," the viceroy assured him, gently. "The Mule has conquered the Foundation, It is rapidly being turned into an arsenal for accomplishment of his greater aims."

 

 "What greater aims?"

 

 "The conquest of the entire Galaxy. The reunion of all the tom worlds into a new Empire. The fulfillment, you dull-witted patriot, of your own Seldon's dream seven hundred years before he hoped to see it. And in the fulfillment, you can help us."

 

 "I can, undoubtedly. But I won't, undoubtedly."

 

 "I understand," reasoned the viceroy, "that only three of the Independent Trading Worlds yet resist. They will not last much longer. It will be the last of all Foundation forces. You still hold out."

 

 "Yes."