Darell said: “Why not back here?”

 

 “Perhaps she was being pursued and felt that she had to double off in a new angle, eh?’

 

 Dr. Darell lacked the heart to question further. Well, then, let her be safe on Trantor, or as safe as one could be anywhere in this dark and horrible Galaxy. He groped toward the door, felt Anthor’s light touch on his sleeve, and stopped, but did not turn.

 

 “Mind if I go home with you, Doc?”

 

 “You’re welcome,” was the automatic response.

 

  

 

 By evening, the exteriormost reaches of Dr. Darell’s personality, the ones that made immediate contact with other people had solidified once more. He had refused to eat his evening meal and had, instead, with feverish insistence, returned to the inchwise advance into the intricate mathematics of encephalographic analysis.

 

 It was not till nearly midnight, that he entered the living room again.

 

 Pelleas Anthor was still there, twiddling at the controls of the video. The footsteps behind him caused him to glance over his shoulder.

 

 “Hi. Aren’t you in bed yet? I’ve been spending hours on the video, trying to get something other than bulletins. It seems theF.S. Hober Mallow is delayed in course and hasn’t been heard from”

 

 “Really? What do they suspect?”

 

 “What do you think? Kalganian skulduggery. There are reports that Kalganian vessels were sighted in the general space sector in which theHober Mallow was last heard from?”

 

 Darell shrugged, and Anthor rubbed his forehead doubtfully.

 

 “Look doc,” he said, “why don’t you go to Trantor?”

 

 “Why should I?”

 

 “Because “You’re no good to us here. You’re not yourself. You can’t be. And you could accomplish a purpose by going to Trantor, too. The old Imperial Library with the complete records of the Proceedings of the Seldon Commission are there--”

 

 “No! The Library has been picked clean and it hasn’t helped anyone.”

 

 “It helped Ebling Mis once.”

 

 “How do you know? Yes, hesaid he found the Second Foundation, and my mother killed him five seconds later as the only way to keep him from unwittingly revealing its location to the Mule. But in doing so, she also, you realize, made it impossible ever to tell whether Misreally did know the location. After all, no one else has ever been able to deduce the truth from those records.”

 

 “Ebling Mis, if you’ll remember, was working under the driving impetus of the Mule’s mind.”

 

 “I know that, too, butMis’ mind was, by that very token, in an abnormal state. Do you and I know anything about the properties of a mind under the emotional control of another; about its abilities and shortcomings? In any case, I will not go to Trantor.”

 

 Anthor frowned, “Well, why the vehemence? I merely suggested it as--well, by Space, I don’t understand you. You look ten years older. You’re obviously having a hellish time of it. You’re not doing anything of value here. If I were you, I’d go and get the girl.”

 

 “Exactly! It’s what I want to do, too.That’s why I won’t do it. Look, Anthor, and try to understand. You’re playing--we’re both playing--with something completely beyond our powers to fight. In cold blood, if you have any, you know that, whatever you may think in your moments of quixoticism.

 

 “For fifty years, we’ve known that the Second Foundation is the real descendent and pupil of Seldonian mathematics. What that means, and you know that, too, is that nothing in the Galaxy happens which does not play a part in their reckoning. To us, all life is a series of accidents, to be met with by improvisations To them, all life is purposive and should be met by precalculation.

 

 “But they have their weakness. Their work is statistical and only the mass action of humanity is truly inevitable. Now howI play a part, as an individual, in the foreseen course of history, I don’t know. Perhaps I have no definite part, since the Plan leaves individuals to indeterminacy and free will. But I am important and they--they, you understand--may at least have calculated my probable reaction. So I distrust, my impulses, my desires, my probable reactions.

 

 “I would rather present them with an improbable reaction. I will stay here, despite the fact that I yearn very desperately to leave. “No!Because I yearn very desperately to leave.”

 

 The younger man smiled sourly. “You don’t know your own mind as well asthey might. Suppose that--knowing you--they might count on what you think, merelythink, is the improbable reaction, simply by knowing in advance what your line of reasoning would be.”

 

 “In that case, there is no escape. For if I follow the reasoning you have just outlined and go to Trantor, they may have foreseen that, too. There is an endless cycle of double-double-double-double-crosses. No matter how far I follow that cycle, I can only either go or stay. The intricate act of luring my daughter halfway across the Galaxy cannot be meant to make me stay where I am, since I would most certainly have stayed if they had done nothing. It can only be to make me move, and so I will stay.

 

 “And besides, Anthor, not everything bears the breath of the Second Foundation; not all events are the results of their puppeting. They may have had nothing to do with Arcadia’s leave-taking, and she may be safe on Trantor when all the rest of us are dead.”

 

 “No,” said Anthor, sharply, “now you are off the track.”

 

 “You have an alternative interpretation?”

 

 “I have--if you’ll listen.”

 

 “Oh, go ahead. I don’t lack patience.”

 

 “Well, then--how well do you know your own daughter?”

 

 “How well can any individual know any other? Obviously, my knowledge is inadequate.”

 

 “So is mine on that basis, perhaps even more so--but at least, I viewed her with fresh eyes. Item one: She is a ferocious little romantic, the only child of an ivory-tower academician, growing up in an unreal world of video and book-film adventure. She lives in a weird self-constructed fantasy of espionage and intrigue. Item two: She’s intelligent about it; intelligent enough to outwit us, at any rate. She planned carefully to overhear our first conference and succeeded. She planned carefully to go to Kalgan with Munn and succeeded. Item three: She has an unholy hero-worship of her grandmother--your mother--who defeated the Mule.

 

 “I’m right so far, I think? All right, then. Now, unlike you, I’ve received a complete report from Lieutenant Dirige and, in addition, my sources of information on Kalgan are rather complete, and all sources check. We know, for instance, that Homir Munn, in conference with the Lord of Kalgan was refused admission to the Mule’s Palace, and that this refusal was suddenly abrogated after Arcadia had spoken to Lady Callia, the First Citizen’s very good friend.”

 

 Darell interrupted. “And how do you know all this?”

 

 “For one thing, Munn was interviewed by Dirige as part of the police campaign to locate Arcadia. Naturally, we have a complete transcript of the questions and answers.

 

 “And take Lady Callia herself. It is rumored that she has lost Stettin’s interest, but the rumor isn’t borne out by facts. She not only remains unreplaced; is not only able to mediate the lord’s refusal to Munn into an acceptance; but can even engineer Arcadia’s escape openly. Why, a dozen of the soldiers about Stettin’s executive mansion testified that they were seen together on the last evening. Yet she remains unpunished. This despite the fact that Arcadia was searched for with every appearance of diligence.”

 

 “But what is your conclusion from all this torrent of ill-connection?”

 

 “That Arcadia’s escape was arranged.”

 

 “As I said.”

 

 “With this addition. That Arcadia must have known it was arranged; that Arcadia, the bright little girl who saw cabals everywhere, saw this one and followed your own type of reasoning. They wanted her to return to the Foundation, and so she went to Trantor, instead. But why Trantor?”

 

 “Well, why?”

 

 “Because that is where Bayta, her idolized grandmother, escaped whenshe was in flight. Consciously or unconsciously, Arcadia imitated that. I wonder, then, if Arcadia was fleeing the same enemy.”

 

 “The Mule?” asked Darell with polite sarcasm.

 

 “Of course not. I mean, by the enemy, a mentality that she could not fight. She was running from the Second Foundation, or such influence thereof as could be found on Kalgan.”

 

 “What influence is this you speak of?”

 

 “Do you expect Kalgan to be immune from that ubiquitous menace? We both have come to the conclusion, somehow, that Arcadia’s escape was arranged. Right? She was searched for and found, but deliberately allowed to slip away by Dirige. By Dirige, do you understand? But how was that? Because he was our man. But how did they know that? Were they counting on him to be a traitor? Eh, doc?”

 

 “Now you’re saying that they honestly meant to recapture her. Frankly, you’re tiring me a bit, Anthor. Finish your say; I want to go to bed.”

 

 “My say is quickly finished.” Anthor reached for a small group of photo-records in his inner pocket. It was the familiar wigglings of the encephalograph. “Dirige’s brainwaves,” Anthor said, casually, “taken since he returned.”

 

 It was quite visible to Darell’s naked eye, and his face was gray when he looked up. “He is Controlled.”

 

 “Exactly. He allowed Arcadia to escape not because he was our man but because he was the Second Foundation’s.”

 

 “Even after he knew she was going to Trantor, and not to Terminus.”

 

 Anthor shrugged. “He had been geared to let her go. There was no wayhe could modify that. He was only a tool, you see. It was just that Arcadia followed the least probable course, and is probably safe. Or at least safe until such time as the Second Foundation can modify the plans to take into account this changed state of affairs--”

 

 He paused. The little signal light on the video set was flashing. On an independent circuit, it signified the presence of emergency news. Darell saw it, too, and with the mechanical movement of long habit turned on the video. They broke in upon the middle of a sentence but before its completion, they knew that theHober Mallow, or the wreck thereof, had been found and that, for the first time in nearly half a century, the Foundation was again at war.

 

 Anthor’s jaw was set in a hard line. “All right, doc, you heard that. Kalgan has attacked; and Kalgan is under the control of the Second Foundation. Will you follow your daughter’s lead and move to Trantor?”

 

 “No. I will risk it. Here.”

 

 “Dr. Darell. You are not as intelligent as your daughter. I wonder how far you can be trusted.” His long level stare held Darell for a moment, and then without a word, he left.

 

 And Darell was left in uncertainty and--almost--despair.

 

 Unheeded, the video was a medley of excited sight-sound, as it described in nervous detail the first hour of the war between Kalgan and the Foundation.

 

  

 

  

 

 17War

 

  

 

 The mayor of the Foundation brushed futilely at the picket fence of hair that rimmed his skull. He sighed. “The years that we have wasted; the chances we have thrown away. I make no recriminations, Dr. Darell, but we deserve defeat.”

 

 Darell said, quietly, “I see no reason for lack of confidence in events, sir.”

 

 “Lack of confidence! Lack of confidence! By the Galaxy, Dr. Darell, on what would you base any other attitude? Come here--”

 

 He half-led half-forced Darell toward the limpid ovoid cradled gracefully on its tiny force-field support. At a touch of the mayor’s hand, it glowed within--an accurate three-dimensional model of the Galactic double-spiral.

 

 “In yellow,” said the mayor, excitedly, “we have that region of Space under Foundation control; in red, that under Kalgan.”

 

 What Darell saw was a crimson sphere resting within a stretching yellow fist that surrounded it on all sides but that toward the center of the Galaxy.

 

 “Galactography,” said the mayor, “is our greatest enemy. Our admirals make no secret of our almost hopeless, strategic position. Observe. The enemy has inner lines of communication. He is concentrated; can meet us on all sides with equal ease. He can defend himself with minimum force.

 

 “We are expanded. The average distance between inhabited systems within the Foundation is nearly three times that within Kalgan. To go from Santanni to Locris, for instance, is a voyage of twenty-five hundred parsecs for us, but only eight hundred parsecs for them, if we remain within our respective territories--”

 

 Darell said, “I understand all that, sir.”

 

 “And you do not understand that it may mean defeat.”

 

 “There is more than distance to war. I say we cannot lose. It is quite impossible.”

 

 “And why do you say that?”

 

 “Because of my own interpretation of the Seldon Plan.”

 

 “Oh,” the mayor’s lips twisted, and the hands behind his back flapped one within the other, “then you rely, too, on the mystical help of the Second Foundation.”

 

 “No. Merely on the help of inevitability--and of courage and persistence.”

 

 And yet behind his easy confidence, he wondered--

 

 What if--

 

 Well--What if Anthor were right, and Kalgan were a direct tool of the mental wizards. What if it was their purpose to defeat and destroy the Foundation. No! It made no sense!

 

 And yet--

 

 He smiled bitterly. Always the same. Always that peering and peering through the opaque granite which, to the enemy, was so transparent.

 

  

 

 Nor were the galactographic verities of the situation lost upon Stettin.

 

 The Lord of Kalgan stood before a twin of the Galactic model which the mayor and Darell had inspected. Except that where the mayor frowned, Stettin smiled.

 

 His admiral’s uniform glistered imposingly upon his massive figure. The crimson sash of the Order of the Mule awarded him by the former First Citizen whom six months later he had replaced somewhat forcefully, spanned his chest diagonally from right shoulder to waist. The Silver Star with Double Comets and Swords sparkled brilliantly upon his left shoulder.

 

 He addressed the six men of his general staff whose uniforms were only less grandiloquent than his own, and his First Minister as well, thin and gray--a darkling cobweb, lost in the brightness.

 

 Stettin said, “I think the decisions are clear. We can afford to wait. To them, every day of delay will be another blow at their morale. If they attempt to defend all portions of their realm, they will be spread thin and we can strike through in two simultaneous thrusts here and here.” He indicated the directions on the Galactic model--two lances of pure white shooting through the yellow fist from the red ball it inclosed, cutting Terminus off on either side in a tight arc. “In such a manner, we cut their fleet into three parts which can be defeated in detail. If they concentrate, they give up two-thirds of their dominions voluntarily and will probably risk rebellion.”

 

 The First Minister’s thin voice alone seeped through the hush that followed. “In six months,” he said, “the Foundation will grow six months stronger. Their resources are greater, as we all know, their navy is numerically stronger; their manpower is virtually inexhaustible. Perhaps a quick thrust would be safer.”

 

 His was easily the least influential voice in the room. Lord Stettin smiled and made a flat gesture with his hand. “The six months--or a year, if necessary--will cost us nothing. The men of the Foundation cannot prepare; they are ideologically incapable of it. It is in their very philosophy to believe that the Second Foundation will save them. But not this time, eh?”

 

 The men in the room stirred uneasily.

 

 “You lack confidence, I believe,” said Stettin, frigidly. “Is it necessary once again to describe the reports of our agents in Foundation territory, or to repeat the findings of Mr. Homir Munn, the Foundation agent now in our ... uh ... service? Let us adjourn, gentlemen.”

 

 Stettin returned to his private chambers with a fixed smile still on his face. He sometimes wondered about this Homir Munn. A queer water-spined fellow who certainly did not bear out his early promise. And yet he crawled with interesting information that carried conviction with it--particularly when Callia was present.

 

 His smile broadened. That fat fool had her uses, after all. At least, she got more with her wheedling out of Munn than he could, and with less trouble. Why not give her to Munn? He frowned. Callia. She and her stupid jealousy. Space! If he still had the Darell girl--Why hadn’t he ground her skull to powder for that?

 

 He couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason.

 

 Maybe because she got along with Munn. And he needed Munn. It was Munn, for instance, who had demonstrated that, at least in the belief of the Mule, there was no Second Foundation. His admirals needed that assurance.

 

 He would have liked to make the proofs public, but it was better to let the Foundation believe in their nonexistent help. Was it actually Callia who had pointed that out? That’s right. She had said--

 

 Oh, nonsense! She couldn’t have said anything.

 

 And yet--

 

 He shook his head to clear it and passed on.

 

  

 

  

 

 18Ghost of a World

 

  

 

 Trantor was a world in dregs and rebirth. Set like a faded jewel in the midst of the bewildering crowd of suns at the center of the Galaxy--in the heaps and clusters of stars piled high with aimless prodigality--it alternately dreamed of past and future.

 

 Time had been when the insubstantial ribbons of control had stretched out from its metal coating to the very edges of stardom. It had been a single city, housing four hundred billion administrators; the mightiest capital that had ever been.

 

 Until the decay of the Empire eventually reached it and in the Great Sack of a century ago, its drooping powers had been bent back upon themselves and broken forever. In the blasting ruin of death, the metal shell that circled the planet wrinkled and crumpled into an aching mock of its own grandeur.

 

 The survivors tore up the metal plating and sold it to other planets for seed and cattle. The soil was uncovered once more and the planet returned to its beginnings. In the spreading areas of primitive agriculture, it forgot its intricate and colossal past.

 

 Or would have but for the still mighty shards that heaped their massive ruins toward the sky in bitter and dignified silence.

 

  

 

 Arcadia watched the metal rim of the horizon with a stirring of the heart. The village in which the Palvers lived was but a huddle of houses to her--small and primitive. The fields that surrounded it were golden-yellow, wheat-cIogged tracts.

 

 But there, just past the reaching point was the memory of the past, still glowing in unrusted splendor, and burning with fire where the sun of Trantor caught it in gleaming highlights. She had been there once during the months since she had arrived at Trantor. She had climbed onto the smooth, unjointed pavement and ventured into the silent dust-streaked structures, where the light entered through the jags of broken walls and partitions.

 

 It had been solidified heartache. It had been blasphemy.

 

 She had left, clangingly--running until her feet pounded softly on earth once more.

 

 And then she could only look back longingly. She dared not disturb that mighty brooding once more.

 

 Somewhere on this world, she knew, she had been born--near the old Imperial Library, which was the veriest Trantor of Trantor. It was the sacred of the sacred; the holy of holies! Of all the world, it alone had survived the Great Sack and for a century it had remained complete and untouched; defiant of the universe.

 

 There Hari Seldon and his group had woven their unimaginable web. There Ebling Mis pierced the secret, and sat numbed in his vast surprise, until he was killed to prevent the secret from going further.

 

 There at the Imperial Library, her grandparents had lived for ten years, until the Mule died, and they could return to the reborn Foundation.

 

 There at the Imperial Library, her own father returned with his bride to find the Second Foundation once again, but failed. There, she had been born and there her mother had died.

 

 She would have liked to visit the Library, but Preem Palver shook his round head. “It’s thousands of miles, Arkady, and there’s so much to do here. Besides, it’s not good to bother there. You know; it’s a shrine--”

 

 But Arcadia knew that he had no desire to visit the Library; that it was a case of the Mule’s Palace over again. There was this superstitious fear on the part of the pygmies of the present for the relies of the giants of the past.

 

 Yet it would have been horrible to feel a grudge against the funny little man for that. She had been on Trantor now for nearly three months and in all that time, he and she--Pappa and Mamma--had been wonderful to her--

 

 And what was her return? Why, to involve them in the common ruin. Had she warned them that she was marked for destruction, perhaps? No! She let them assume the deadly role of protectors.

 

 Her conscience panged unbearably--yet what choice had she?

 

 She stepped reluctantly down the stairs to breakfast. The voices reached her.

 

  

 

 Preem Palver had tucked the napkin down his shirt collar with a twist of his plump neck and had reached for his poached eggs with an uninhibited satisfaction.

 

 “I was down in the city yesterday, Mamma,” he said, wielding his fork and nearly drowning the words with a capacious mouthful.

 

 “And what is down in the city, Pappa?” asked Mamma indifferently, sitting down, looking sharply about the table, and rising again for the salt.

 

 “Ah, not so good. A ship came in from out Kalgan-way with newspapers from there. It’s war there.”

 

 “War! So! Well, let them break their heads, if they have no more sense inside. Did your pay check come yet? Pappa, I’m telling you again. You warn old man Cosker this isn’t the only cooperative in the world. It’s bad enough they pay you what I’m ashamed to tell my friends, but at least on time they could be!”

 

 “Time; shmime,” said Pappa, irritably. “Look, don’t make me silly talk at breakfast, it should choke me each bite in the throat,” and he wreaked havoc among the buttered toast as he said it. He added, somewhat more moderately, “The fighting is between Kalgan and the Foundation, and for two months, they’ve been at it.”

 

 His hands lunged at one another in mock-representation of a space fight.

 

 “Um-m-m. And what’s doing?”

 

 “Bad for the Foundation. Well, you saw Kalgan; all soldiers. They were ready. The Foundation was not, and so--poof!”

 

 And suddenly, Mamma laid down her fork and hissed, “Fool!”

 

 “Huh?”

 

 “Dumb-head! Your big mouth is always moving and wagging.”

 

 She was pointing quickly and when Pappa looked over his shoulder, there was Arcadia, frozen in the doorway.

 

 She said, “The Foundation is at war?”

 

 Pappa looked helplessly at Mamma, then nodded.

 

 “And they’re losing?”

 

 Again the nod.

 

 Arcadia felt the unbearable catch in her throat, and slowly approached the table. “Is it over?” she whispered.

 

 “Over?” repeated Pappa, with false heartiness. “Who said it was over? In war, lots of things can happen. And ... and--”

 

 “Sit down, darling,” said Mamma, soothingly. “No one should talk before breakfast. You’re not in a healthy condition with no food in the stomach.”

 

 But Arcadia ignored her. “Are the Kalganians on Terminus?”

 

 “No,” said Pappa, seriously. “The news is from last week, and Terminus is still fighting. This is honest. I’m telling the truth. And the Foundation is still strong. Do you want me to get you the newspapers?”

 

 “Yes!”

 

 She read them over what she could eat of her breakfast and her eyes blurred as she read. Santanni and Korell were gone--without a fight. A squadron of the Foundation’s navy had been trapped in the sparsely-sunned Ifni sector and wiped out to almost the last ship.

 

 And now the Foundation was back to the Four-Kingdom core--the original Realm which had been built up under Salvor Hardin, the first mayor. But still it fought--and still there might be a chance-and whatever happened, she must inform her father. She must somehow reach his ear. Shemust!

 

 But how? With a war in the way.

 

 She asked Pappa after breakfast, “Are you going out on a new mission soon, Mr. Palver?”

 

 Pappa was on the large chair on the front lawn, sunning himself. A fat cigar smoldered between his plump fingers and he looked like a beatific pug-dog.

 

 “A mission?” he repeated, lazily. “Who knows? It’s a nice vacation and my leave isn’t up. Why talk about new missions? You’re restless, Arkady?”

 

 “Me? No, I like it here. You’re very good to me, you and Mrs. Palver.”

 

 He waved his hand at her, brushing away her words.

 

 Arcadia said, “I was thinking about the war.”

 

 “But don’t think about it. What canyou do? If it’s something you can’t help, why hurt yourself over it?”

 

 “But I was thinking that the Foundation has lost most of its farming worlds. They’re probably rationing food there.”

 

 Pappa looked uncomfortable. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

 

 She scarcely listened. “I wish I could carry food to them, that’s what. You know after the Mule died, and the Foundation rebelled, Terminus was just about isolated for a time and General Han Pritcher, who succeeded the Mule for a while was laying siege to it. Food was running awfully low and my father says thathis father told him that they only had dry amino-acid concentrates that tasted terrible. Why, one egg cost two hundred credits. And then they broke the siege just in time and food ships came through from Santanni. It must have been an awful time. Probably it’s happening all over, now.”

 

 There was a pause, and then Arcadia said, “You know, I’ll bet the Foundation would be willing to pay smuggler’s prices for food now. Double and triple and more. Gee, if any co-operative, f’r instance, here on Trantor took over the job, they might lose some ships, but, I’ll bet they’d be war millionaires before it was over. The Foundation Traders in the old days used to do that all the time. There’d be a war, so they’d sell whatever was needed bad and take their chances. Golly, they used to make as much as two million dollars out of one trip--profit. That was just out of what they could carry on one ship, too.”

 

 Pappa stirred. His cigar had gone out, unnoticed. “A deal for food, huh? Hm-m-m--But the Foundation is so far away.”

 

 “Oh, I know. I guess you couldn’t do it from here. If you took a regular liner you probably couldn’t get closer than Massena or Smushyk, and after that you’d have to hire a small scoutship or something to slip you through the lines.”

 

 Pappa’s hand brushed at his hair, as he calculated.

 

 Two weeks later, arrangements for the mission were completed. Mamma railed for most of the time--First, at the incurable obstinacy with which he courted suicide. Then, at the incredible obstinacy with which he refused to allow her to accompany him.

 

 Pappa said, “Mamma, why do you act like an old lady. I can’t take you. It’s a man’s work. What do you think a war is? Fun? Child’s play?”

 

 “Then why doyou go? Areyou a man, you old fool--with a leg and half an arm in the grave. Let some of the young ones go--not a fat bald-head like you?”

 

 “I’m not a bald-head,” retorted Pappa, with dignity. “I got yet lots of hair. And why should it not be me that gets the commission? Why, a young fellow? Listen, this could mean millions?”

 

 She knew that and she subsided.

 

 Arcadia saw him once before he left.

 

 She said, “Are you going to Terminus?”

 

 “Why not? You say yourself they need bread and rice and potatoes. Well, I’ll make a deal with them, and they’ll get it.”

 

 “Well, then--just one thing: If you’re going to Terminus, could you ... would you see my father?”

 

 And Pappa’s face crinkled and seemed to melt into sympathy, “Oh--and I have to wait for you to tell me. Sure, I’ll see him. I’ll tell him you’re safe and everything’s O.K., and when the war is over, I’ll bring you back.”

 

 “Thanks. I’ll tell you how to find him. His name is Dr. Toran Darell and he lives in Stanmark. That’s just outside Terminus City, and you can get a little commuting plane that goes there. We’re at 55 Channel Drive.”

 

 “Wait, and I’ll write it down.”

 

 “No, no,” Arcadia’s arm shot out. “You mustn’t write anything down. You must remember--and find him without anybody’s help.”

 

 Pappa looked puzzled. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “All right, then. It’s 55 Channel Drive in Stanmark, outside Terminus City, and you commute there by plane. All right?”

 

 “One other thing.”

 

 “Yes?”

 

 “Would you tell him something from me?”

 

 “Sure.”

 

 “I want to whisper it to you.”

 

 He leaned his plump cheek toward her, and the little whispered sound passed from one to the other.

 

 Pappa’s eyes were round. “That’s what you want me to say? But it doesn’t make sense.”

 

 “He’ll know what you mean. Just say I sent it and that I said he would know what it means. And you say it exactly the way I told you. No different. You won’t forget it?”

 

 “How can I forget it? Five little words. Look--”

 

 “No, no.” She hopped up and down in the intensity of her feelings. “Don’t repeat it. Don’t ever repeat it to anyone. Forget all about it except to my father. Promise me.”

 

 Pappa shrugged again. “I promise! All right!”

 

 “All right,” she said, mournfully, and as he passed down the drive to where the air taxi waited to take him to the spaceport, she wondered if she had signed his death warrant. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

 

 She scarcely dared to walk into the house again to face the good, kind Mamma. Maybe when it was all over, she had better kill herself for what she had done to them.

 

  

 

  

 

 19End of War

 

  

 

 QUORISTON, BATTLE OFFought on 9, 17, 377 F.E. between the forces of the Foundation and those of Lord Stettin of Kalgan, it was the last battle of consequence during the Interregnum ....

 

  

 

 ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

 

  

 

 Jole Turbor, in his new role of war correspondent, found his bulk incased in a naval uniform, and rather liked it. He enjoyed being back on the air, and some of the fierce helplessness of the futile fight against the Second Foundation left him in the excitement of another sort of fight with substantial ships and ordinary men.

 

 To be sure, the Foundation’s fight had not been remarkable for victories, but it was still possible to be philosophic about the matter. After six months, the hard core of the Foundation was untouched, and the hard core of the Fleet was still in being. With the new additions since the start of the war, it was almost as strong numerically, and stronger technically, than before the defeat at Ifni.

 

 And meanwhile, planetary defenses were being strengthened; the armed forces better trained; administrative efficiency was having some of the water squeezed out of it--and much of the Kalganian’s conquering fleet was being wallowed down through the necessity of occupying the “conquered” territory.

 

 At the moment, Turbor was with the Third Fleet in the outer reaches of the Anacreonian sector. In line with his policy of making this a “little man’s war,” he was interviewing Fennel Leemor, Engineer Third Class, volunteer.

 

 “Tell us a little about yourself, sailor,” said Turbor.

 

 “Ain’t much to tell,” Leemor shuffled his feet and allowed a faint, bashful smile to cover his face, as though he could see all the millions that undoubtedly could see him at the moment. I’m a Locrian. Got a job in an air-car factory; section head and good pay. I’m married; got two kids, both girls. Say, I couldn’t say hello to them, could I--in case they’re listening.”

 

 “Go ahead, sailor. The video is all yours.”

 

 “Gosh, thanks.” He burbled, “Hello, Milla, in case you’re listening, I’m fine. Is Sunni all right? And Tomma? I think of you all the time and maybe I’ll be back on furlough after we get back to port. I got your food parcel but I’m sending it back. We get our regular mess, but they say the civilians are a little tight. I guess that’s all.”

 

 “I’ll look her up next time I’m on Locris, sailor, and make sure she’s not short of food. O.K.?”

 

 The young man smiled broadly and nodded his head. “Thank you, Mr. Turbor. I’d appreciate that.”

 

 “All right. Suppose you tell us, then--You’re a volunteer, aren’t you?”

 

 “Sure am. If anyone picks a fight with me, I don’t have to wait for anyone to drag me in. I joined up the day I heard about theHober Mallow.”

 

 “That’s a fine spirit. Have you seen much action? I notice “You’re wearing two battle stars.”

 

 “Ptah.”The sailor spat. “Those weren’t battles, they were chases. The Kalganians don’t fight, unless they have odds of five to one or better in their favor. Even then they just edge in and try to cut us up ship by ship. Cousin of mine was at Ifni and he was on a ship that got away, the oldEbling Mis. He says it was the same there. They had their Main Fleet against just a wing division of ours, and down to where we only had five ships left, they kept stalking instead of fighting. We got twice as many of their ships atthat fight.”

 

 “Then you think we’re going to win the war?”

 

 Sure bet; now that we aren’t retreating. Even if things got too bad, that’s when I’d expect the Second Foundation to step in. We still got the Seldon Plan--andthey know it, too.”

 

 Turbor’s lips curled a bit. “You’re counting on the Second Foundation, then?”

 

 The answer came with honest surprise. “Well, doesn’t everyone?”

 

  

 

 Junior Officer Tippellum stepped into Turbor’s room after the visicast. He shoved a cigarette at the correspondent and knocked his cap back to a perilous balance on the occiput.

 

 “We picked up a prisoner,” he said.

 

 “Yes?”

 

 “Little crazy fellow. Claims to be a neutral--diplomatic immunity, no less. I don’t think they know what to do with him. His name’s Palvro, Palver, something like that, and he says he’s from Trantor. Don’t know what in space he’s doing in a war zone.”

 

 But Turbor had swung to a sitting position on his bunk and the nap he had been about to take was forgotten. He remembered quite well his last interview with Darell, the day after war had been declared and he was shoving off.

 

 “Preem Palver,” he said. It was a statement.

 

 Tippellum paused and let the smoke trickle out the sides of his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, “how in space did you know?”

 

 “Never mind. Can I see him?”

 

 “Space,I can’t say. The old man has him in his own room for questioning. Everyone figures he’s a spy.”

 

 “You tell the old man that I know him, if he’s who he claims he is. I’II take the responsibility.”

 

  

 

 Captain Dixyl on the flagship of the Third Fleet watched unremittingly at the Grand Detector. No ship could avoid being a source of subatomic radiation--not even if it were lying an inert mass--and each focal point of such radiation was a little sparkle in the three-dimensional field.

 

 Each one of the Foundation’s ships were accounted for and no sparkle was left over, now that the little spy who claimed to be a neutral had been picked up. For a while, that outside ship had created a stir in the captain’s quarters. The tactics might have needed changing on short notice. As it was--

 

 “Are you sure you have it?” he asked.

 

 Commander Cenn nodded. “I will take my squadron through hyperspace: radius, 10.00 parsecs; theta, 268.52 degrees; phi, 84.15 degrees. Return to origin at 1330. Total absence 11.83 hours.”

 

 “Right. Now we are going to count on pin-point return as regards both space and time. Understand?”

 

 “Yes, captain.” He looked at his wrist watch, “My ships will be ready by 0140.”

 

 “Good,” said Captain Dixyl.

 

 The Kalganian squadron was not within detector range now, but they would be soon. There was independent information to that effect. Without Cenn’s squadron the Foundation forces would be badly outnumbered, but the captain was quite confident.Quite confident.

 

  

 

 Preem Palver looked sadly about him. First at the tall, skinny admiral; then at the others, everyone in uniform; and now at this last one, big and stout, with his collar open and no tie--not like the rest--who said he wanted to speak to him.

 

 Jole Turbor was saying: “I am perfectly aware, admiral, of the serious possibilities involved here, but I tell you that if I can be allowed to speak to him for a few minutes, I may be able to settle the current uncertainty.”

 

 “Is there any reason why you can’t question him before me?”

 

 Turbor pursed his lips and looked stubborn. “Admiral,” he said, “while I have been attached to your ships, the Third Fleet has received an excellent press. You may station men outside the door, if you like, and you may return in five minutes. But, meanwhile, humor me a bit, and your public relations will not suffer. Do you understand me?”

 

 He did.

 

 Then Turbor in the isolation that followed, turned to Palver, and said, “Quickly--what is the name of the girl you abducted.”

 

 And Palver could simply stare round-eyed, and shake his head.

 

 “No nonsense,” said Turbor. “If you do not answer, you will be a spy and spies are blasted without trial in war time.”

 

 “Arcadia Darell!” gasped Palver.

 

 “Well!All right, then. Is she safe?”

 

 Palver nodded.

 

 “You had better be sure of that, or it won’t be well for you.”

 

 “She is in good health, perfectly safe,” said Palver, palely.

 

 The admiral returned, “Well?”

 

 “The man, sir, is not a spy. You may believe what he tells you. I vouch for him.”

 

 “That so?” The admiral frowned. “Then he represents an agricultural co-operative on Trantor that wants to make a trade treaty with Terminus for the delivery of grains and potatoes. Well, all right, but he can’t leave now.”

 

 “Why not?” asked Palver, quickly.

 

 “Because we’re in the middle of a battle. After it is over--assuming we’re still alive--we’ll take you to Terminus.”

 

  

 

 The Kalganian fleet that spanned through space detected the Foundation ships from an incredible distance and were themselves detected. Like little fireflies in each other’s Grand Detectors, they closed in across the emptiness.

 

 And the Foundation’s admiral frowned and said, “This must be their main push. Look at the numbers.” Then, “They won’t stand up before us, though; not if Cenn’s detachment can be counted on.”

 

 Commander Cenn had left hours before--at the first detection of the coming enemy. There was no way of altering the plan now. It worked or it didn’t, but the admiral felt quite comfortable. As did the officers. As did the men.

 

 Again watch the fireflies.

 

 Like a deadly ballet dance, in precise formations, they sparked.

 

 The Foundation fleet edged slowly backwards. Hours passed and the fleet veered slowly off, teasing the advancing enemy slightly off course, then more so.

 

 In the minds of the dictators of the battle plan, there was a certain volume of space that must be occupied by the Kalganian ships. Out from that volume crept the Foundationers; into it slipped the Kalganians. Those that passed out again were attacked, suddenly and fiercely. Those that stayed within were not touched.

 

 It all depended on the reluctance of the ships of Lord Stettin to take the initiative themselves--on their willingness to remain where none attacked.

 

  

 

 Captain Dixyl stared frigidly at his wrist watch. It was 1310, “We’ve got twenty minutes,” he said.

 

 The lieutenant at his side nodded tensely, “It looks all right so far, captain. We’ve got more than ninety percent of them boxed. If we can keep them that way--”

 

 “Yes!If--”

 

 The Foundation ships were drifting forward again--very slowly. Not quick enough to urge a Kalganian retreat and just quickly enough to discourage a Kalganian advance. They preferred to wait.

 

 And the minutes passed.

 

 At 1325, the admiral’s buzzer sounded in seventy-five ships of the Foundation’s line, and they built up to a maximum acceleration towards the front-plane of the Kalganian fleet, itself three hundred strong. Kalganian shields flared into action, and the vast energy beams flicked out. Every one of the three hundred concentrated in the same direction, towards their mad attackers who bore down relentlessly, uncaringly and--

 

 At 1330, fifty ships under Commander Cenn appeared from nowhere, in one single bound through hyperspace to a calculated spot at a calculated time--and were spaced in tearing fury at the unprepared Kalganian rear.

 

 The trap worked perfectly.

 

 The Kalganians still had numbers on their side, but they were in no mood to count. Their first effort was to escape and the formation once broken was only the more vulnerable, as the enemy ships bumbled into one another’s path.

 

 After a while, it took on the proportions of a rat hunt.

 

 Of three hundred Kalganian ships, the core and pride of their fleet, some sixty or less, many in a state of near-hopeless disrepair, reached Kalgan once more. The Foundation loss was eight ships out of a total of one hundred twenty-five.

 

  

 

 Preem Palver landed on Terminus at the height of the celebration. He found the furore distracting, but before he left the planet, he had accomplished two things, and received one request.

 

 The two things accomplished were: 1) the conclusion of an agreement whereby Palver’s co-operative was to deliver twenty shiploads of certain foodstuffs per month for the next year at a war price, without, thanks to the recent battle, a corresponding war risk, and 2) the transfer to Dr. Darell of Arcadia’s five short words.

 

 For a startled moment, Darell had stared wide-eyed at him, and then he had made his request. It was to carry an answer back to Arcadia. Palver liked it; it was a simple answer and made sense. It was: “Come back now. There won’t be any danger.”

 

  

 

 Lord Stettin was in raging frustration. To watch his every weapon break in his hands; to feel the firm fabric of his military might part like the rotten thread it suddenly turned out to be--would have turned phlegmaticism itself into flowing lava. And yet he was helpless, and knew it.

 

 He hadn’t really slept well in weeks. He hadn’t shaved in three days. He had canceled all audiences. His admirals were left to themselves and none knew better than the Lord of Kalgan that very little time and no further defeats need elapse before he would have to contend with internal rebellion.

 

 Lev Meirus, First Minister, was no help. He stood there, calm and indecently old, with his thin, nervous finger stroking, as always, the wrinkled line from nose to chin.

 

 “Well,” shouted Stettin at him, “contribute something. We stand here defeated, do you understand?Defeated! And why? I don’t know why. There you have it. I don’t know why. Doyou know why?”

 

 “I think so,” said Meirus, calmly.

 

 “Treason!” The word came out softly, and other words followed as softly. “You’ve known of treason, and you’ve kept quiet. You served the fool I ejected from the First Citizenship and you think you can serve whatever foul rat replaces me. If you have acted so, I will extract your entrails for it and burn them before your living eyes.”

 

 Meirus was unmoved. “I have tried to fill you with my own doubts, not once, but many times. I have dinned it in your ears and you have preferred the advice of others because it stuffed your ego better. Matters have turned out not as I feared, but even worse. If you do not care to listen now, say so, sir, and I shall leave, and, in due course, deal with your successor, whose first act, no doubt, will be to sign a treaty of peace.”

 

 Stettin stared at him red-eyed, enormous fists slowly clenching and unclenching. “Speak, you gray slug.Speak!”

 

 “I have told you often, sir, that you are not the Mule. You may control ships and guns but you cannot control the minds of your subjects. Are you aware, sir, of who it is you are fighting? You fight the Foundation, which is never defeated--the Foundation, which is protected by the Seldon Plan--the Foundation, which is destined to form a new Empire.”

 

 “There is no Plan. No longer. Munn has said so.”

 

 “Then Munn is wrong. And if he were right, what then? You and I, sir, are not the people. The men and women of Kalgan and its subject worlds believe utterly and deeply in the Seldon Plan as do all the inhabitants of this end of the Galaxy. Nearly four hundred years of history teach the fact that the Foundation cannot be beaten. Neither the kingdoms nor the warlords nor the old Galactic Empire itself could do it.”

 

 “The Mule did it.”

 

 “Exactly, and he was beyond calculation--and you are not. What is worse, the people know that you are not. So your ships go into battle fearing defeat in some unknown way. The insubstantial fabric of the Plan hangs over them so that they are cautious and look before they attack and wonder a little too much. While on the other side, that same insubstantial fabric fills the enemy with confidence, removes fear, maintains morale in the face of early defeats. Why not? The Foundation has always been defeated at first and has always won in the end.

 

 “And your own morale, sir? You stand everywhere on enemy territory. Your own dominions have not been invaded; are still not in danger of invasion--yet you are defeated. You don’t believe in the possibility, even, of victory, because you know there is none.

 

 “Stoop, then, or you will be beaten to your knees. Stoop voluntarily, and you may save a remnant. You have depended on metal and power and they have sustained you as far as they could. You have ignored mind and morale and they have failed you. Now, take my advice. You have the Foundation man, Homir Munn. Release him. Send him back to Terminus and he will carry your peace offers.”

 

 Stettin’s teeth ground behind his pale, set lips. But what choice had he?

 

 On the first day of the new year, Homir Munn left Kalgan again. More than six months had passed since he had left Terminus and in the interim, a war had raged and faded.

 

 He had come alone, but he left escorted. He had come a simple man of private life; he left the unappointed but nevertheless, actual, ambassador of peace.

 

 And what had most changed was his early concern over the Second Foundation. He laughed at the thought of that: and pictured in luxuriant detail the final revelation to Dr. Darell, to that energetic, young competent, Anthor, to all of them--

 

 Heknew. He, Homir Munn, finally knew the truth.

 

  

 

  

 

 20“I Know ...”

 

  

 

 The last two months of the Stettinian war did not lag for Homir. In his unusual office as Mediator Extraordinary, he found himself the center of interstellar affairs, a role he could not help but find pleasing.

 

 There were no further major battles--a few accidental skirmishes that could scarcely count--and the terms of the treaty were hammered out with little necessity for concessions on the part of the Foundation. Stettin retained his office, but scarcely anything else. His navy was dismantled; his possessions outside the home system itself made autonomous and allowed to vote for return to previous status, full independence or confederation within the Foundation, as they chose.

 

 The war was formally ended on an asteroid in Terminus’ own stellar system; site of the Foundation’s oldest naval base. Lev Meirus signed for Kalgan, and Homir was an interested spectator.

 

 Throughout all that period he did not see Dr. Darell, nor any of the others. But it scarcely mattered. His news would keep--and, as always, he smiled at the thought.

 

 Dr. Darell returned to Terminus some weeks after VK day, and that same evening, his house served as the meeting place for the five men who, ten months earlier, had laid their first plans.

 

 They lingered over dinner and then over wine as though hesitating to return again to the old subject.

 

 It was Jole Turbor, who, peering steadily into the purple depths of the wineglass with one eye, muttered, rather than said, “Well, Homir, you are a man of affairs now, I see. You handled matters well.”

 

 “I?” Munn laughed loudly and joyously. For some reason, he had not stuttered in months. “I hadn’t a thing to do with it. It was Arcadia. By the by, Darell, how is she? She’s coming back from Trantor, I heard?”

 

 “You heard correctly,” said Darell, quietly. “Her ship should dock within the week.” He looked, with veiled eyes, at the others, but there were only confused, amorphous exclamations of pleasure. Nothing else.

 

 Turbor said, “Then it’s over, really. Who would have predicted all this ten months ago. Munn’s been to Kalgan and back. Arcadia’s been to Kalgan and Trantor and is coming back. We’ve had a war and won it, by Space. They tell you that the vast sweeps of history can be predicted, but doesn’t it seem conceivable that all that has just happened, with its absolute confusion to those of us who lived through it, couldn’t possibly have been predicted.”

 

 “Nonsense,” said Anthor, acidly. “What makes you so triumphant, anyway? You talk as though we have really won a war, when actually we have won nothing but a petty brawl which has served only to distract our minds from the real enemy.”

 

 There was an uncomfortable silence, in which only Homir Munn’s slight smile struck a discordant note.

 

 And Anthor struck the arm of his chair with a balled and furyfilled fist, “Yes, I refer to the Second Foundation. There is no mention of it and, if I judge correctly, every effort to have no thought of it. Is it because this fallacious atmosphere of victory that palls over this world of idiots is so attractive that you feel you must participate? Turn somersaults then, handspring your way into a wall, pound one another’s back and throw confetti out the window. Do whatever you please, only get it out of your system--and when you are quite done and you are yourselves again, return and let us discuss that problem which exists now precisely as it did ten months ago when you sat here with eyes cocked over your shoulders for fear of you knew not what. Do you really think that the Mind-masters of the Second Foundation are less to be feared because you have beat down a foolish wielder of spaceships.”

 

 He paused, red-faced and panting.

 

 Munn said quietly, “Will you hearme speak now, Anthor? Or do you prefer to continue your role as ranting conspirator?”

 

 “Have your say, Homir,” said Darell, “but let’s all of us refrain from over-picturesqueness of language. It’s a very good thing in its place, but at present, it bores me.”

 

 Homir Munn leaned back in his armchair and carefully refilled his glass from the decanter at his elbow.

 

 “I was sent to Kalgan,” he said, “to find out what I could from the records contained in the Mule’s Palace. I spent several months doing so. I seek no credit for that accomplishment. As I have indicated, it was Arcadia whose ingenuous intermeddling obtained the entry for me. Nevertheless, the fact remains that to my original knowledge of the Mule’s life and times, which, I submit, was not small, I have added the fruits of much labor among primary evidence which has been available to no one else.

 

 “I am, therefore, in a unique position to estimate the true danger of the Second Foundation; much more so than is our excitable friend here.”

 

 “And,” grated Anthor, “what is your estimate of that danger?”

 

 “Why, zero.”

 

 A short pause, and Elvett Semic asked with an air of surprised disbelief, “You mean zero danger?”

 

 “Certainly. Friends,there is no Second Foundation!”

 

  

 

 Anthor’s eyelids closed slowly and he sat there, face pale and expressionless.

 

 Munn continued, aftention-centering and loving it, “And what is more, there was never one.”

 

 “On what,” asked Darell, “do you base this surprising conclusion?”

 

 “I deny,” said Munn, “that it is surprising. You all know the story of the Mule’s search for the Second Foundation. But what do you know of the intensity of that search--of the single-mindedness of it. He had tremendous resources at his disposal and he spared none of it. He was single-minded--and yet he failed. No Second Foundation was found.”

 

 “One could scarcely expect it to be found,” pointed out Turbor, restlessly. “It had means of protecting itself against inquiring minds.”

 

 “Even when the mind that is inquiring is the Mule’s mutant mentality? I think not. But come, you do not expect me to give you the gist of fifty volumes of reports in five minutes. All of it, by the terms of the peace treaty will be part of the Seldon Historical Museum eventually, and you will all be free to be as leisurely in your analysis as I have been. You will find his conclusion plainly stated, however, and that I have already expressed. There is not, and has never been, any Second Foundation.”

 

 Semic interposed, “Well, what stopped the Mule, then?”

 

 “Great Galaxy, whatdo you suppose stopped him? Death did; as it will stop all of us. The greatest superstition of the age is that the Mule was somehow stopped in an all-conquering career by some mysterious entities superior even to himself. It is the result of looking at everything in wrong focus.

 

 “Certainly no one in the Galaxy can help knowing that the Mule was a freak, physical as well as mental. He died in his thirties because his ill-adjusted body could no longer struggle its creaking machinery along. For several years before his death he was an invalid. His best health was never more than an ordinary man’s feebleness. All right, then. He conquered the Galaxy and, in the ordinary course of nature, proceeded to die. It’s a wonder he proceeded as long and as well as he did. Friends, it’s down in the very clearest print. You have only to have patience. You have only to try to look at all facts in new focus.”

 

 Darell said, thoughtfully, “Good, let us try that Munn. It would be an interesting attempt and, if nothing else, would help oil our thoughts. These tampered men--the records of which Anthor brought to us nearly a year ago, what of them? Help us to see them in focus.”

 

 “Easily. How old a science is encephalographic analysis? Or, put it another way, how well-developed is the study of neuronic pathways.”

 

 “We are at the beginning in this respect. Granted,” said Darell.

 

 “Right. How certain can we be then as to the interpretation of what I’ve heard Anthor and yourself call the Tamper Plateau. You have your theories, but how certain can you be. Certain enough to consider it a firm basis for the existence of a mighty force for which all other evidence is negative? It’s always easy to explain the unknown by postulating a superhuman and arbitrary will.

 

 “It’s a very human phenomenon. There have been cases all through Galactic history where isolated planetary systems have reverted to savagery, and what have we learned there? In every case, such savages attribute the to-them-incomprehensible forces of Nature--storms, pestilences, droughts--to sentient beings more powerful and more arbitrary than men.

 

 “It is called anthropomorphism, I believe, and in this respect, we are savages and indulge in it. Knowing little of mental science, we blame anything we don’t know on supermen--those of the Second Foundation in this case, based on the hint thrown us by Seldon.”

 

 “Oh,” broke in Anthor, “then youdo remember Seldon. I thought you had forgotten. Seldon did say there was a Second Foundation. Getthat in focus.

 

 “And areyou aware then of all Seldon’s purposes. Do you know what necessities were involved in his calculations? The Second Foundation may have been a very necessary scarecrow, with a highly specific end in view. How did we defeat Kalgan, for instance? What were you saying in your last series of articles, Turbor?”

 

 Turbor stirred his bulk. “Yes, I see what “You’re driving at. I was on Kalgan towards the end, Darell, and it was quite obvious that morale on the planet was incredibly bad. I looked through their news-records and--well. they expected to be beaten. Actually, they were completely unmanned by the thought that eventually the Second Foundation would take a hand, on the side of the First, naturally.”

 

 “Quite right,” said Munn. “I was there all through the war. I told Stettin there was no Second Foundation and he believed me.He felt safe. But there was no way of making the people suddenly disbelieve what they had believed all their lives, so that the myth eventually served a very useful purpose in Seldon’s cosmic chess game.”

 

 But Anthor’s eyes opened, quite suddenly, and fixed themselves sardonically on Munn’s countenance.“I say you lie.”

 

 Homir turned pale, “I don’t see that I have to accept, much less answer, an accusation of that nature.”

 

 “I say it without any intention of personal offense. You cannot help lying; you don’t realize that you are. But you lie just the same.”

 

 Semic laid his withered hand on the young man’s sleeve. “Take a breath, young fella.”

 

 Anthor shook him off, none too gently, and said, “I’m out of patience with all of you. I haven’t seen this man more than half a dozen times in my life, yet I find the change in him unbelievable. The rest of you have known him for years, yet pass it by. It is enough to drive one mad. Do you call this man you’ve been listening to Homir Munn? He is not the Homir MunnI knew.”

 

 A medley of shock; above which Munn’s voice cried, “You claim me to be an impostor?”

 

 “Perhaps not in the ordinary sense,” shouted Anthor above the din, “but an impostor nonetheless. Quiet, everyone! I demand to be heard.”

 

 He frowned them ferociously into obedience. “Do any of you remember Homir Munn as I do--the introverted librarian who never talked without obvious embarrassment; the man of tense and nervous voice, who stuttered out his uncertain sentences? Doesthis man sound like him? He’s fluent, he’s confident, he’s fun of theories, and, by Space, he doesn’t stutter.Is he the same person?”

 

 Even Munn looked confused, and Pelleas Anthor drove on. “Well, shall we test him?”

 

 “How?” asked Darell.

 

 “Youask how? There is the obvious way. You have his encephalographic record of ten months ago, haven’t you? Run one again, and compare.”

 

 He pointed at the frowning librarian, and said violently, “I dare him to refuse to subject himself to analysis.”

 

 “I don’t object,” said Munn, defiantly. “I am the man I always was.”

 

 “Canyou know?” said Anthor with contempt. “I’ll go further. I trust no one here. I want everyone to undergo analysis. There has been a war. Munn has been on Kalgan; Turbor has been on board ship and all over the war areas. Darell and Semic have been absent, too--I have no idea where. Only I have remained here in seclusion and safety, and I no longer trust any of the rest of you. And to play fair, I’ll submit to testing as well. Are we agreed then? Or do I leave now and go my own way?”

 

 Turbor shrugged and said, “I have no objection.”

 

 “I have already said I don’t,” said Munn.

 

 Semic moved a hand in silent assent, and Anthor waited for Darell. Finally, Darell nodded his head.

 

 “Take me first,” said Anthor.

 

  

 

 The needles traced their delicate way across the cross-hatchings as the young neurologist sat frozen in the reclining seat, with lidded eyes brooding heavily. From the files, Darell removed the folder containing Anthor’s old encephalographic record. He showed them to Anthor.

 

 “That’s your own signature, isn’t it?”

 

 “Yes, yes. It’s my record. Make the comparison.”

 

 The scanner threw old and new on to the screen. All six curves in each recording were there, and in the darkness, Munn’s voice sounded in harsh clarity. “Well, now, look there. There’s a change.”

 

 “Those are the primary waves of the frontal lobe. It doesn’t mean a thing, Homir. Those additional jags you’re pointing to are just anger. It’s the others that count.”

 

 He touched a control knob and the six pairs melted into one another and coincided. The deeper amplitude of primaries alone introduced doubling.

 

 “Satisfied?” asked Anthor.

 

 Darell nodded curtly and took the seat himself. Semic followed him and Turbor followed him. Silently the curves were collected; silently they were compared.

 

 Munn was the last to take his seat. For a moment, he hesitated, then, with a touch of desperation in his voice, he said, “Well now, look, I’m coming in last and I’m under tension. I expect due allowance to be made for that.”

 

 “There will be,” Darell assured him. “No conscious emotion of yours will affect more than the primaries and they are not important.”

 

 It might have been hours, in the utter silence that followed

 

 And then in the darkness of the comparison, Anthor said huskily: “Sure, sure, it’s only the onset of a complex. Isn’t that what he told us? No such thing as tampering; it’s all a silly anthropomorphic notion--but look at it! A coincidence I suppose.”

 

 “What’s the matter?” shrieked Munn.

 

 Darell’s hand was tight on the librarian’s shoulder. “Quiet, Munn--you’ve been handled; you’ve been adjusted bythem.”

 

 Then the light went on, and Munn was looking about him with broken eyes, making a horrible attempt to smile.

 

 “You can’t be serious, surely. There is a purpose to this. You’re testing me.”

 

 But Darell only shook his head. “No, no, Homir. It’s true.”

 

 The librarian’s eyes were filled with tears, suddenly. “I don’t feel any different. I can’t believe it.” With sudden conviction: “You are all in this. It’s a conspiracy.”

 

 Darell attempted a soothing gesture, and his hand was struck aside. Munn snarled, “You’re planning to kill me. By Space, you’re planning to kill me.”

 

 With a lunge, Anthor was upon him. There was the sharp crack of bone against bone, and Homir was limp and flaccid with that look of fear frozen on his face.

 

 Anthor rose shakily, and said, “We’d better tie and gag him. Later, we can decide what to do.” He brushed his long hair back.

 

 Turbor said, “How did you guess there was something wrong with him?”

 

 Anthor turned sardonically upon him. “It wasn’t difficult. You see,I happen to know where the Second Foundation really is.”

 

 Successive shocks have a decreasing effect--

 

 It was with actual mildness that Semic asked, “Are you sure? I mean we’ve just gone through this sort of business with Munn--”

 

 This isn’t quite the same,” returned Anthor. “Darell, the day the war started, I spoke to you most seriously. I tried to have you leave Terminus. I would have told you then what I will tell you now, if I had been able to trust you.”

 

 “You mean you have known the answer for half a year?” smiled Darell.

 

 “I have known it from the time I learned that Arcadia had left for Trantor.”

 

 And Darell started to his feet in sudden consternation. “What had Arcadia to do with it? What are you implying?”

 

 “Absolutely nothing that is not plain on the face of all the events we know so well. Arcadia goes to Kalgan and flees in terror to thevery center of the Galaxy, rather than return home. Lieutenant Dirige, our best agent on Kalgan is tampered with. Homir Munn goes to Kalgan andhe is tampered with. The Mule conquered the Galaxy, but, queerly enough, he made Kalgan his headquarters, and it occurs to me to wonder if he was conqueror or, perhaps, tool. At every turn, we meet with Kalgan, Kalgan--nothing but Kalgan, the world that somehow survived untouched all the struggles of the warlords for over a century.”

 

 “Your conclusion, then.”

 

 “Is obvious,” Anthor’s eyes were intense. “The Second Foundation is on Kalgan.”

 

 Turbor interrupted. “I was on Kalgan, Anthor. I was there last week. If there was any Second Foundation on it, I’m mad. Personally, I think you’re mad.”

 

 The young man whirled on him savagely. “Then you’re a fat fool. What do you expect the Second Foundation to be? A grammar school? Do you think that Radiant Fields in tight beams spell out ‘Second Foundation’ in green and purple along the incoming spaceship routes? Listen tome, Turbor. Wherever they are, they form a tight oligarchy. They must be as well hidden on the world on which they exist, as the world itself is in the Galaxy as a whole.”

 

 Turbor’s jaw muscles writhed. “I don’t like your attitude, Anthor.”

 

 “That certainly disturbs me,” was the sarcastic response. “Take a look about you here on Terminus. We’re at the center--the core--the origin of the First Foundation with all its knowledge of physical science. Well, how many of the population are physical scientists? Canyou operate an Energy Transmitting Station? What doyou know of the operation of a hyperatomic motor? Eh? The number of real scientists on Terminus--even on Terminus--can be numbered at less than one percent of the population.

 

 “And what then of the Second Foundation where secrecy must be preserved. There will still be less of the cognoscenti, and these will be hidden even from their own world.”

 

 “Say,” said Semic, carefully. “We just licked Kalgan--”

 

 “So we did. So we did,” said Anthor, sardonically. “Oh, we celebrate that victory. The cities are still illuminated; they are still shooting off fireworks; they are still shouting over the televisors. But now,now, when the search is on once more for the Second Foundation, where is the last place well look; where is the last place anyone will look? Right!” Kalgan!

 

 “We haven’t hurt them, you know; not really. We’ve destroyed some ships, killed a few thousands, torn away their Empire, taken over some of their commercial and economic power--but that all means nothing. I’ll wager that not one member of the real ruling class of Kalgan is in the least discomfited. On the contrary, they are now safe from curiosity. But not frommy curiosity. What do you say, Darell?”

 

 Darell shrugged his shoulders. “Interesting. I’m trying to fit it in with a message I received from Arcadia a few months since.”

 

 “Oh, a message?” asked Anthor. “And what was it?”

 

 “Well, I’m not certain. Five short words. But its interesting.”

 

 “Look,” broke in Semic, with a worried interest, “there’s somethingI don’t understand.”

 

 “What’s that?”

 

 Semic chose his words carefully, his old upper lip lifting with each word as if to let them out singly and reluctantly. “Well, now, Homir Munn was saying just a while ago that Hari Seldon was faking when he said that he had established a Second Foundation. Now you’re saying that it’s not so; that Seldon wasn’t faking, eh?”

 

 “Right, he wasn’t faking. Seldon said he had established a Second Foundation and so he had.”

 

 “All right, then, but he said something else, too. He said he established the two Foundations at opposite ends of the Galaxy. Now, young man, wasthat a fake--because Kalgan isn’t at the opposite end of the Galaxy.”

 

 Anthor seemed annoyed, “That’s a minor point. That part may well have been a cover up to protect them. But after all, think--What real use would it serve to have the Mind-masters at the opposite end of the Galaxy? What is their function? To help preserve the Plan. Who are the main card players of the Plan? We, the First Foundation. Where can they best observe us, then, and serve their own ends? At the opposite end of the Galaxy? Ridiculous! They’re within fifty parsecs, actually, which is much more sensible.”

 

 “I like that argument,” said Darell. “It makes sense. Look here, Munn’s been conscious for some time and I propose we loose him. He can’t do any harm, really.”

 

 Anthor looked rebellious, but Homir was nodding vigorously. Five seconds later he was rubbing his wrists just as vigorously.

 

 “How do you feel?” asked Darell.

 

 “Rotten,” said Munn, sulkily, “but never mind. There’s something I want to ask this bright young thing here. I’ve heard what he’s had to say, and I’d just like permission to wonder what we do next.”

 

 There was a queer and incongruous silence.

 

 Munn smiled bitterly. “Well, suppose Kalganis the Second Foundation.Who on Kalgan are they? How are you going to find them? How are you going to tackle themif you find them, eh?”

 

 “Ah,” said Darell, “I can answer that, strangely enough. Shall I tell you what Semic and I have been doing this past half-year? It may give you another reason, Anthor, why I was anxious to remain on Terminus all this time.”

 

  

 

 “In the first place,” he went on, “I’ve been working on encephalographic analysis with more purpose than any of you may suspect. Detecting Second Foundation minds is a little more subtle than simply finding a Tamper Plateau--and I did not actually succeed. But I came close enough.

 

 “Do you know, any of you, how emotional control works? It’s been a popular subject with fiction writers since the time of the Mule and much nonsense has been written, spoken, and recorded about it. For the most part, it has been treated as something mysterious and occult. Of course, it isn’t. That the brain is the source of a myriad, tiny electromagnetic fields, everyone knows. Every fleeting emotion varies those fields in more or less intricate fashion, and everyone should know that, too.

 

 “Now it is possible to conceive a mind which can sense these changing fields and even resonate with them. That is, a special organ of the cerebrum can exist which can take on whatever field-pattern it may detect. Exactly how it would do this, I have no idea, but that doesn’t matter. if I were blind, for instance, I could still learn the significance of photons and energy quanta and it could be reasonable to me that the absorption of a photon of such energy could create chemical changes in some organ of the body such that its presence would be detectable. But, of course, I would not be able, thereby, to understand color.

 

 “Do all of you follow?”

 

 There was a firm nod from Anthor; a doubtful nod from the others.

 

 “Such a hypothetical Mind Resonating Organ, by adjusting itself to the Fields emitted by other minds could perform what is popularly known as ‘reading emotion’ or even ‘reading minds,’ which is actually something even more subtle. It is but an easy step from that to imagining a similar organ which could actually force an adjustment on another mind. It could orient with its stronger Field the weaker one of another mind--much as a strong magnet will orient the atomic dipoles in a bar of steel and leave it magnetized thereafter.

 

 “I solved the mathematics of Second Foundationism in the sense that I evolved a function that would predict the necessary combination of neuronic paths that would allow for the formation of an organ such as I have just described--but, unfortunately, the function is too complicated to solve by any of the mathematical tools at present known. That is too bad, because it means that I can never detect a Mind-worker by his encephalographic pattern alone.

 

 “But I could do something else. I could, with Semic’s help, construct what I shall describe as a Mental Static device. It is not beyond the ability of modem science to create an energy source that will duplicate an encephalograph-type pattern of electromagnetic field. Moreover, it can be made to shift at complete random, creating, as far as this particular mind-sense is concerned, a sort of ‘noise’ or ‘static’ which masks other minds with which it may be in contact.

 

 “Do you still follow?”

 

 Semic chuckled. He had helped create blindly, but he had guessed, and guessed correctly. The old man had a trick or two left--

 

 Anthor said, “I think I do.”

 

 “The device,” continued Darell, “is a fairly easy one to produce, and I had all the resources of the Foundation under my control as it came under the heading of war research. And now the mayor’s offices and the Legislative assemblies are surrounded with Mental Static. So are most of our key factories. So is this building. Eventually, any place we wish can be made absolutely safe from the Second Foundation or from any future Mule. And that’s it.”

 

 He ended quite simply with a flat-palmed gesture of the hand.

 

 Turbor seemed stunned. “Then it’s all over. Great Seldon, it’s all over.”

 

 “Well,” said Darell, “not exactly.”

 

 “How, not exactly? Is there something more?”

 

 “Yes, we haven’t located the Second Foundation yet!”

 

 “What,” roared Anthor, “are you trying to say--”

 

 “Yes, I am. Kalgan is not the Second Foundation.”

 

 “How doyou know?”

 

 “It’s easy,” grunted Darell. “You seeI happen to know where the Second Foundation really is.”

 

  

 

  

 

 21The Answer That Satisfied

 

  

 

 Turbor laughed suddenly--laughed in huge, windy gusts that bounced ringingly off the walls and died in gasps. He shook his head, weakly, and said, “Great Galaxy, this goes on all night. One after another, we put up our straw men to be knocked down. We have fun, but we don’t get anywhere. Space! Maybe all planets are the Second Foundation. Maybe they have no planet, just key men spread on all the planets. And what does it matter, since Darell says we have the perfect defense?”

 

 Darell smiled without humor. “The perfect defense is not enough, Turbor. Even my Mental Static device is only something that keeps us in the same place. We cannot remain forever with our fists doubled, frantically staring in all directions for the unknown enemy. We must know not onlyhow to win, but whom to defeat. And thereis a specific world on which the enemy exists.”

 

 “Get to the point,” said Anthor, wearily. “What’s your information?”

 

 “Arcadia,” said Darell, “sent me a message, and until I got it, I never saw the obvious. I probably would never have seen the obvious. Yet it was a simple message that went: ‘A circle has no end.’ Do you see?”

 

 “No,” said Anthor, stubbornly, and he spoke, quite obviously, for the others.

 

 “A circle has no end,” repeated Munn, thoughtfully, and his forehead furrowed.

 

 “Well,” said Darell, impatiently, “it was clear to me--What is the one absolute fact we know about the Second Foundation, eh? I’ll tell you! We know that Hari Seldon located it at the opposite end of the Galaxy. Homir Munn theorized that Seldon lied about the existence of the Foundation. Pelleas Anthor theorized that Seldon had told the truth that far, but lied about the location of the Foundation. But I tell you that Hari Seldon lied in no particular; that he told the absolute truth.

 

 “But,what is the other end? The Galaxy is a flat, lens-shaped object. A cross section along the flatness of it is a circle, and a circle had no end--as Arcadia realized. We--we,the First Foundation--are located on Terminus at the rim of that circle. We are at an end of the Galaxy, by definition. Now follow the rim of that circle and find the other end. Follow it, follow it, follow it, and you will find no other end. You will merely come back to your starting point--

 

 “Andthere you will find the Second Foundation.”

 

 “There?” repeated Anthor. “Do you meanhere?”

 

 “Yes, I mean here!” cried Darell, energetically. “Why, where else could it possibly be? You said yourself that if the Second Foundationers were the guardians of the Seldon Plan, it was unlikely that they could be located at the so-called other end of the Galaxy, where they would be as isolated as they could conceivably be. You thought that fifty parsecs distance was more sensible. I tell you that that is also too far. That no distance at all is more sensible. And where would they be safest? Who would look for them here? Oh, it’s the old principle of the most obvious place being the least suspicious.

 

 “Why was poor Ebling Mis so surprised and unmanned by his discovery of the location of the Second Foundation? There he was, looking for it desperately in order to warn it of the coming of the Mule, only to find that the Mule had already captured both Foundations at a stroke. And why did the Mule himself fail. in his search? Why not? If one is searching for an unconquerable menace, one would scarcely look among the enemies already conquered. So the Mind-masters, in their own leisurely time, could lay their plans to stop the Mule, and succeeded in stopping him.

 

 “Oh, it is maddeningly simple. For herewe are with our plots and our schemes, thinking that we are keeping our secrecy--when all the time we are in the very heart and core of our enemy’s stronghold. It’s humorous.”

 

 Anthor did not remove the skepticism from his face, “You honestly believe this theory, Dr. Darell?”

 

 “I honestly believe it.”

 

 “Then any of our neighbors, any man we pass in the street might be a Second Foundation superman, with his mind watching yours and feeling the pulse of its thoughts.”

 

 “Exactly.”

 

 “And we have been permitted to proceed all this time, without molestation?”

 

 “Without molestation? Who told you we were not molested? You, yourself, showed that Munn has been tampered with. What makes you think that we sent him to Kalgan in the first place entirely of our own volition--or that Arcadia overheard us and followed him on her own volition? Hah! We have been molested without pause, probably. And after all, why should they do more than they have? It is far more to their benefit to mislead us, than merely to stop us.”

 

 Anthor buried himself in meditation and emerged therefrom with a dissatisfied expression. “Well, then, I don’t like it. Your Mental Static isn’t worth a thought. We can’t stay in the house forever and as soon as we leave, we’re lost, with what we now think we know. Unless you can build a little machine for every inhabitant in the Galaxy.”

 

 “Yes, but we’re not quite helpless, Anthor. These men of the Second Foundation have a special sense which we lack. It is their strength and also their weakness. For instance, is there any weapon of attack that will be effective against a normal, sighted man which is useless against a blind man?”

 

 “Sure,” said Munn, promptly. “A light in the eyes.”

 

 “Exactly,” said Darell. “A good, strong blinding light.”

 

 “Well, what of it?” asked Turbor.

 

 “But the analogy is clear. I have a Mind Static device. It sets up an artificial electromagnetic pattern, which to the mind of a man of the Second Foundation would be like a beam of light to us. But the Mind Static device is kaleidoscopic. It shifts quickly and continuously, faster than the receiving mind can follow. All right then, consider it a flickering light; the kind that would give you a headache, if continued long enough. Now intensify that light or that electromagnetic field until it is blinding--and it will become a pain, an unendurable pain. But only to those with the proper sense;not to the unsensed.”

 

 “Really?” said Anthor, with the beginnings of enthusiasm. “Have you tried this?”

 

 “On whom? Of course, I haven’t tried it. But it will work.”

 

 “Well, where do you have the controls for the Field that surrounds the house? Id like to see this thing.”

 

 “Here.” Darell reached into his jacket pocket. It was a small thing, scarcely bulging his pocket. He tossed the black, knob-studded cylinder to the other.

 

 Anthor inspected it carefully and shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t make me any smarter to look at it. Look Darell, what mustn’t I touch? I don’t want to turn off the house defense by accident, you know.”

 

 “You won’t,” said Darell, indifferently. “That control is locked in place.” He flicked at a toggle switch that didn’t move.

 

 “And what’s this knob?”

 

 “That one varies rate of shift of pattern. Here--this one varies the intensity. It’s that which I’ve been referring to.”

 

 “May I--” asked Anthor, with his finger on the intensity knob. The others were crowding close.

 

 “Why not?” shrugged DarelI. “It won’t affect us.”

 

 Slowly, almost wincingly, Anthor turned the knob, first in one direction, then in another. Turbor was gritting his teeth, while Munn blinked his eyes rapidly. It was as though they were keening their inadequate sensory equipment to locate this impulse which could not affect them.

 

 Finally, Anthor shrugged and tossed the control box back into Darell’s lap. “Well, I suppose we can take your word for it. But it’s certainly hard to imagine that anything was happening when I turned the knob.”

 

 “But naturally, Pelleas Anthor,” said Darell, with a tight smile. “The one I gave you was a dummy. You see I have another.” He tossed his jacket aside and seized a duplicate of the control box that Anthor had been investigating, which swung from his belt.

 

 “You see,” said Darell, and in one gesture turned the intensity knob to maximum.

 

 And with an unearthly shriek, Pelleas Anthor sank to the floor. He rolled in his agony; whitened, gripping fingers clutching and tearing futilely at his hair.

 

 Munn lifted his feet hastily to prevent contact with the squirming body, and his eyes were twin depths of horror. Semic and Turbor were a pair of plaster casts; stiff and white.

 

 Darell, somber, turned the knob back once more. And Anthor twitched feebly once or twice and lay still. He was alive, his breath racking his body.

 

 “Lift him on to the couch,” said Darell, grasping the young man’s head. “Help me here.”

 

 Turbor reached for the feet. They might have been lifting a sack of flour. Then, after long minutes, the breathing grew quieter, and Anthor’s eyelids fluttered and lifted. His face was a horrid yellow; his hair and body was soaked in perspiration, and his voice, when he spoke, was cracked and unrecognizable.

 

 “Don’t,” he muttered, “don’t! Don’t do that again! You don’t know--You don’t know--Oh-h-h.” It was a long, trembling moan.

 

 “We won’t do it again,” said Darell, “if you will tell us the truth. You are a member of the Second Foundation?”

 

 “Let me have some water,” pleaded Anthor.

 

 “Get some, Turbor,” said Darell, “and bring the whiskey bottle.”

 

 He repeated the question after pouring a jigger of whiskey and two glasses of water into Anthor. Something seemed to relax in the young man--

 

 “Yes,” he said, wearily. “I am a member of the Second Foundation.”

 

 “Which,” continued Darell, “is located on Terminus--here?”

 

 “Yes, yes. You are right in every particular, Dr. Darell.”

 

 “Good! Now explain what’s been happening this past half year. Tell us!”

 

 “I would like to sleep,” whispered Anthor.

 

 “Later! Speak now!”

 

 A tremulous sigh. Then words, low and hurried. The others bent over him to catch the sound, “The situation was growing dangerous. We knew that Terminus and its physical scientists were becoming interested in brain-wave patterns and that the times were ripe for the development of something like the Mind Static device. And there was growing enmity toward the Second Foundation. We had to stop it without ruining SeIdon’s Plan.

 

 “We ... we tried to control the movement. We tried to join it. It would turn suspicion and efforts away from us. We saw to it that Kalgan declared war as a further distraction. That’s why I sent Munn to Kalgan. Stettin’s supposed mistress was one of us. She saw to it that Munn made the proper moves--”

 

 “Callia is--” cried Munn, but Darell waved him silent.

 

 Anthor continued, unaware of any interruption, “Arcadia followed. We hadn’t counted on that--can’t foresee everything--so Callia maneuvered her to Trantor to prevent interference. That’s all. Except that we lost.”

 

 “You tried to get me to go to Trantor, didn’t you?” asked Darell.

 

 Anthor nodded, “Had to get you out of the way. The growing triumph in your mind was clear enough. You were solving the problems of the Mind Static device.”

 

 “Why didn’t you put me under control?”

 

 “Couldn’t ... couldn’t. Had my orders. We were working according to a Plan. If I improvised, I would have thrown everything off. Plan only predicts probabilities ... you know that ... like Seldon’s Plan.” He was talking in anguished pants, and almost incoherently. His head twisted from side to side in a restless fever. “We worked with individuals ... not groups ... very low probabilities involved ... lost out. Besides ... if control you ... someone else invent device ... no use ... had to controltimes ... more subtle ... First Speaker’s own plan ... don’t know all angles ... except ... didn’t work a-a-a--” He ran down.

 

 Darell shook him roughly, “You can’t sleep yet. How many of you are there?”

 

 “Huh? Whatjasay ... oh ... not many ... be surprised fifty ... don’t need more.”

 

 “All here on Terminus?”

 

 “Five ... six out in Space ... like Callia ... got to sleep.”

 

 He stirred himself suddenly as though to one giant effort, and his expressions gained in clarity. It was a last attempt at self-justification, at moderating his defeat.

 

 “Almost got you at the end. Would have turned off defenses and seized you. Would have seen who was master. But you gave me dummy controls ... suspected me all along--”

 

 And finally he was asleep.

 

  

 

 Turbor said, in awed tones, “How long did you suspect him, Darell?”

 

 “Ever since he first came here,” was the quiet response. “He came from Kleise, he said. But I knew Kleise; and I knew on what terms we parted. He was a fanatic on the subject of the Second Foundation and I had deserted him. My own purposes were reasonable, since I thought it best and safest to pursue my own notions by myself. But I couldn’t tell Kleise that; and he wouldn’t have listened if I had. To him, I was a coward and a traitor, perhaps even an agent of the Second Foundation. He was an unforgiving man and from that time almost to the day of his death he had no dealings with me. Then, suddenly, in his last few weeks of life, he writes me--as an old friend--to greet his best and most promising pupil as a co-worker and begin again the old investigation.

 

 “It was out of character. How could he possibly do such a thing without being under outside influence, and I began to wonder if the only purpose might not be to introduce into my confidence a real agent of the Second Foundation. Well, it was so--”

 

 He sighed and closed his own eyes for a moment.

 

 Semic put in hesitantly, “What will we do with all of them ... these Second Foundation fellas?”

 

 “I don’t know,” said Darell, sadly. “We could exile them, I suppose. There’s Zoranel, for instance. They can be placed there and the planet saturated with Mind Static. The sexes can be separated, or, better still, they can be sterilized--and in fifty years, the Second Foundation will be a thing of the past. Or perhaps a quiet death for all of them would be kinder.”

 

 “Do you suppose,” said Turbor, “we could learn the use of this sense of theirs. Or are they born with it, like the Mule.”

 

 “I don’t know. I think it is developed through long training, since there are indications from encephalography that the potentialities of it are latent in the human mind. But what do you want that sense for? It hasn’t helpedthem.”

 

 He frowned.

 

 Though he said nothing, his thoughts were shouting.

 

 It had been too easy--too easy. They had fallen, these invincibles, fallen like book-villains, and he didn’t like it.

 

 Galaxy! When can a man know he is not a puppet?How can a man know he is not a puppet?

 

 Arcadia was coming home, and his thoughts shuddered away from that which he must face in the end.

 

  

 

 She was home for a week, then two, and he could not loose the tight check upon those thoughts. How could he? She had changed from child to young woman in her absence, by some strange alchemy. She was his link to life; his fink to a bittersweet marriage that scarcely outlasted his honeymoon.

 

 And then, late one evening, he said as casually as he could, “Arcadia, what made you decide that Terminus contained both Foundations?”

 

 They had been to the theater; in the best seats with private trimensional viewers for each; her dress was new for the occasion, and she was happy.

 

 She stared at him for a moment, then tossed it off. “Oh, I Don’t know, Father. It just came to me.”

 

 A layer of ice thickened about Dr. Darell’s heart.

 

 “Think,” he said, intensely. “This is important. What made you decide both Foundations were on Terminus.”

 

 She frowned slightly. “Well, there was Lady Callia. I knewshe was a Second Foundationer. Anthor said so, too.”

 

 “But she was on Kalgan,” insisted Darell.“What made you decide on Terminus?”

 

 And now Arcadia waited for several minutes before she answered. Whathad made her decide? What had made her decide?

 

 She had the horrible sensation of something slipping just beyond her grasp.

 

 She said, “She knew about things--Lady Callia did--and must have had her information from Terminus. Doesn’t that sound right, Father?

 

 But he just shook his head at her.

 

 “Father,” she cried, “Iknew. The more I thought, the surer I was. It just madesense.”

 

 There was that lost look in her father’s eyes, “It’s no good, Arcadia. Its no good. Intuition is suspicious when concerned with the Second Foundation. You see that, don’t you? Itmight have been intuition--and it might have been control!”

 

 “Control! You mean they changed me? Oh, no. No, they couldn’t.” She was backing away from him. “But didn’t Anthor say I was right? He admitted it. He admitted everything. And you’ve found the whole bunch right here on Trantor. Didn’t you? Didn’t you?” She was breathing quickly.

 

 “I know, but--Arcadia, will you let me make an encephalographic analysis of your brain?’

 

 She shook her head violently, “No, no! I’m too scared.”

 

 “Of me, Arcadia? There’s nothing to be afraid of. But we must know. You see that, don’t you?”

 

  

 

 She interrupted him only once, after that. She clutched at his arm just before the last switch was thrown. “What if Iam different, Father? What will you have to do?”

 

 “I won’t have to do anything, Arcadia. If you’re different, well leave. Well go back to Trantor, you and I, and ... and we won’t care about anything else in the Galaxy.”

 

 Never in Darell’s life had an analysis proceeded so slowly, cost him so much, and when it was over, Arcadia huddled down and dared not look. Then she heard him laugh and that was information enough. She jumped up and threw herself into his opened arms.

 

 He was babbling wildly as they squeezed one another, “The house is under maximum Mind Static and your brain-waves are normal. We really have trapped them, Arcadia, and we can go back to living.”

 

 “Father,” she gasped, “can we let them give us medals now?”

 

 “How did you know I’d asked to be left out of it?” He held her at arm’s mind; you know everything. All right, you can have your medal on a platform, with speeches.”

 

 “And Father?”

 

 “Yes?”

 

 “Can you call me Arkady from now on.”

 

 “But--Very well, Arkady.”

 

 Slowly the magnitude of the victory was soaking into him and saturating him. The Foundation--the First Foundation--now the only Foundation--was absolute master of the Galaxy. No further barrier stood between themselves and the Second Empire--the final fulfillment of Seldon’s Plan.

 

 They had only to reach for it--

 

 Thanks to--

 

  

 

  

 

 22The Answer That Was True

 

  

 

 An unlocated room on an unlocated world!

 

 And a man whose plan had worked.

 

 The First Speaker looked up at the Student, “Fifty men and women,” he said. “Fifty martyrs! They knew it meant death or permanent imprisonment and they could not even be oriented to prevent weakening--since orientation might have been detected. Yet they did not weaken. They brought the plan through, because they loved the greater Plan.”

 

 “Might they have been fewer?” asked the Student, doubtfully.

 

 The First Speaker slowly shook his head, “It was the lower limit. Less could not possibly have carried conviction. In fact, pure objectivism would have demanded seventy-five to leave margin for error. Never mind. Have you studied the course of action as worked out by the Speakers’ Council fifteen years ago?”

 

 “Yes, Speaker.”

 

 “And compared it with actual developments?”

 

 “Yes, Speaker.” Then, after a pause--

 

 “I was quite amazed, Speaker.”

 

 “I know. There is always amazement. If you knew how many men labored for how many months--years, in fact--to bring about the polish of perfection, you would be less amazed. Now tell me what happened--in words. I want your translation of the mathematics.”

 

 “Yes, Speaker.” The young man marshaled his thoughts. “Essentially, it was necessary for the men of the First Foundation to be thoroughly convinced that they had locatedand destroyed the Second Foundation. In that way, there would be reversion to the intended original. To all intents, Terminus would once again know nothing about us; include us in none of their calculations. We are hidden once more, and safe--at the cost of fifty men.”

 

 “And the purpose of the Kalganian war?”

 

 “To show the Foundation that they could beat a physical enemy--to wipe out the damage done to their self-esteem and self-assuredness by the Mule.”

 

 “There you are insufficient in your analysis. Remember, the population of Terminus regarded us with distinct ambivalence. They hated and envied our supposed superiority; yet they relied on us implicitly for protection. If we had been ‘destroyed’ before the Kalganian war, it would have meant panic throughout the Foundation. They would then never have had the courage to stand up against Stettin, when hethen attacked; and he would have. Only in the full flush of victory could the ‘destruction’ have taken place with minimum ill-effects. Even waiting a year, thereafter, might have meant a too-great cooling off spirit for success.”

 

 The Student nodded. “I see. Then the course of history will proceed without deviation in the direction indicated by the Plan.”

 

 “Unless,” pointed out the First Speaker, “further accidents, unforeseen and individual, occur.”

 

 “And for that,” said the Student, “westill exist. Except--Except--One facet of the present state of affairs worries me, Speaker. The First Foundation is left with the Mind Static device--a powerful weapon against us. That, at least, is not as it was before.”

 

 “A good point. But they have no one to use it against. It has become a sterile device; just as without the spur of our own menace against them, encephalographic analysis will become a sterile science. Other varieties of knowledge will once again bring more important and immediate returns. So this first generation of mental scientists among the First Foundation will also be the last--and, in a century, Mind Static will be a nearly forgotten item of the past.”

 

 “Well--” The Student was calculating mentally. “I suppose you’re right.”

 

 But what I want you most to realize, young man, for the sake of your future in the Council is the consideration given to the tiny intermeshings that were forced into our plan of the last decade and a half simply because we dealt with individuals. There was the manner in which Anthor had to create suspicion against himself in such a way that it would mature at the right time, but that was relatively simple.

 

 “There was the manner in which the atmosphere was so manipulated that to no one on Terminus would it occur, prematurely, that Terminus itself might be the center they were seeking. That knowledge had to be supplied to the young girl, Arcadia, who would be heeded by no one but her own father. She had to be sent to Trantor, thereafter, to make certain that there would be no premature contact with her father. Those two were the two poles of a hyperatomic motor; each being inactive without the other. And the switch had to be thrown--contact had to be made--at just the right moment. I saw to that!

 

 “And the final battle had to be handled properly. The Foundation’s fleet had to be soaked in self-confidence, while the fleet of Kalgan made ready to run. I saw to that, also!”

 

 Said the Student, “It seems to me, Speaker, that you ... I mean, all of us ... were counting on Dr. Darell not suspecting that Arcadia was our tool. According tomy check on the calculations, there was something like a thirty percent probability that hewould so suspect. What would have happened then?”

 

 “We had taken care of that. What have you been taught about Tamper Plateaus? What are they? Certainly not evidence of the introduction of an emotional bias. That can be done without any chance of possible detection by the most refined conceivable encephalographic analysis. A consequence of Leffert’s Theorem, you know. It is the removal, the cutting-out, of previous emotional bias, that shows. Itmust show.

 

 “And, of course, Anthor made certain that Darell knew all about Tamper Plateaus.

 

 “However--When can an individual be placed under Control without showing it? Where there is no previous emotional bias to remove. In other words, when the individual is a new-born infant with a blank slate of a mind. Arcadia Darell was such an infant here on Trantor fifteen years ago, when the first line was drawn into the structure of the plan. She will never know that she has been Controlled, and will be all the better for it, since her Control involved the development of a precocious and intelligent personality.”

 

 The First Speaker laughed shortly, “In a sense, it is the irony of it all that is most amazing. For four hundred years, so many men have been blinded by Seldon’s words ‘the other end of the Galaxy.’ They have brought their own peculiar, physical-science thought to the problem, measuring off the other end with protractors and rulers, ending up eventually either at a point in the periphery one hundred eighty degrees around the rim of the Galaxy, or back at the original point.

 

 “Yet our very greatest danger lay in the fact that therewas a possible solution based on physical modes of thought. The Galaxy, you know, is not simply a flat ovoid of any sort; nor is the periphery a closed curve. Actually, it is a double spiral, with at least eighty percent of the inhabited planets on the Main Arm. Terminus is the extreme outer end of the spiral arm, and we are at the other--since, what is the opposite end of a spiral? Why, the center.

 

 “But that is trifling. It is an accidental and irrelevant solution. The solution could have been reached immediately, if the questioners had but remembered that Hari Seldon was a social scientist not a physical scientist and adjusted their thought processes accordingly. Whatcould ‘opposite ends’ mean to a social scientist? Opposite ends on the map? Of course not. That’s the mechanical interpretation only.

 

 “The First Foundation was at the periphery, where the original Empire was weakest, where its civilizing influence was least, where its wealth and culture were most nearly absent. And where is thesocial opposite end of the Galaxy? Why, at the place where the original Empire was strongest, where its civilizing influence was most, where its wealth and culture were most strongly present.

 

 “Here! At the center! At Trantor, capital of the Empire of Seldon’s time.

 

 “And it is so inevitable. Hari Seldon left the Second Foundation behind him to maintain, improve, and extend his work That has been known, or guessed at, for fifty years. But where could that best be done? At Trantor, where Seldon’s group had worked, and where the data of decades had been accumulated. And it was the purpose of the Second Foundation to protect the Plan against enemies. That, too, was known! And where was the source of greatest danger to Terminus and the Plan?

 

 “Here! Here at Trantor, where the Empire dying though it was, could, for three centuries, still destroy the Foundation, if it could only have decided to do so.

 

 “Then when Trantor fell and was sacked and utterly destroyed, a short century ago,we were naturally able to protect our headquarters, and, on all the planet, the Imperial Library and the grounds about it remained untouched. This was well-known to the Galaxy, but even that apparently overwhelming hint passed them by.

 

 “It was here at Trantor that Ebling Mis discovered us; and here that we saw to it that he did not survive the discovery. To do so, it was necessary to arrange to have a normal Foundation girl defeat the tremendous mutant powers of the Mule. Surely, such a phenomenon might have attracted suspicion to the planet on which it happened--It was here that we first studied the Mule and planned his ultimate defeat. It was here that Arcadia was born and the train of events begun that led to the great return to the Seldon Plan.

 

 “And all those flaws in our secrecy; those gaping holes; remained unnoticed because Seldon had spoken of ‘the other end’ in his way, and they had interpreted it in their way.”

 

 The First Speaker had long since stopped speaking to the Student. It was an exposition to himself, really, as he stood before the window, looking up at the incredible blaze of the firmament, at the huge Galaxy that was now safe forever.

 

 “Hari Seldon called Trantor, ‘Star’s End,’” he whispered, “and why not that bit of poetic imagery. All the universe was once guided from this rock; all the apron strings of the stars led here. ‘All roads lead to Trantor,’ says the old proverb, ‘and that is where all stars end.’“

 

 Ten months earlier, the First Speaker had viewed those same crowding stars--nowhere as crowded as at the center of that huge cluster of matter Man calls the Galaxy--with misgivings; but now there was a somber satisfaction on the round and ruddy face of Preem Palver--First Speaker.