He was smaller and slighter than Trevize and only two years older. Both were freshmen Councilmen, young and brash, and that must have been the only thing that held them together, for they were different in all other respects.

 

                Where Trevize seemed to radiate a glowering intensity, Compor shone with an almost serene self-confidence. Perhaps it was his blond hair and blue eyes, not at all common among Foundationers. They lent him an almost feminine delicacy that (Branno judged) made him less attractive to women than Trevize was. He was clearly vain of his looks, though, and made the most of them, wearing his hair rather long and making sure that it was carefully waved. He wore a faint blue shadowing under his eyebrows to accentuate the eye color. (Shadowing of various tints had become common among men these last ten years.)

 

                He was no womanizer. He lived sedately with his wife, but had not yet registered parental intent and was not known to have a clandestine second companion. That, too, was different from Trevize, who changed housemates as often as he changed the loudly colored sashes for which he was notorious.

 

                There was little about either young Councilman that Kodell’s department had not uncovered, and Kodell himself sat quietly in one corner of the room, exuding a comfortable good cheer as always.

 

                Branno said, “Councilman Compor, you have done the Foundation good service, but unfortunately for yourself, it is not of the sort that can be praised in public or repaid in ordinary fashion.”

 

                Compor smiled. He had white and even teeth, and Branno idly wondered, for one flashing moment if all the inhabitants of the Sirius Sector looked like that. Compor’s tale of stemming from that particular, rather peripheral, region went back to his maternal grandmother, who had also been blond-haired and blue-eyed and who had maintained thather mother was from the Sirius Sector. According to Kodell, however, there was no hard evidence in favor of that.

 

                Women being what they were, Kodell had said, she might well have claimed distant and exotic ancestry to add to her glamour and her already formidable attractiveness.

 

                “Is that how women are?” Branno had asked drily, and Kodell had smiled and muttered that he was referring to ordinary women, of course.

 

                Compor said, “It is not necessary that the people of the Foundation know of my service--only thatyou do.”

 

                “I know and I will not forget. What I also will not do is to let you assume that your obligations are now over. You have embarked on a complicated course and you must continue. We want more about Trevize.”

 

                “I have told you all I know concerning him.”

 

                “That may be what you would have me believe. That may even be what you truly believe yourself. Nevertheless, answer my questions. Do you know a gentleman named Janov Pelorat?”

 

                For just a moment Compor’s forehead creased, then smoothed itself almost at once. He said carefully, “I might know him if I were to see him, but the name does not seem to cause any association within me.”

 

                “He is a scholar.”

 

                Compor’s mouth rounded into a rather contemptuous but unsounded “Oh?” as though he were surprised that the Mayor would expect him to know scholars.

 

                Branno said, “Pelorat is an interesting person who, for reasons of his own, has the ambition of visiting Trantor. Councilman Trevize will accompany him. Now, since you have been a good friend of Trevize and .perhaps know his system of thinking, tell me-- Do you think Trevize will consent to go to Trantor?”

 

                Compor said, “If you see to it that Trevize gets on the ship, and if the ship is piloted to Trantor, what can he do but go there? Surely you don’t suggest he will mutiny and take over the ship.”

 

                “You don’t understand. He and Pelorat will be alone on the ship and it will be Trevize at the controls.”

 

                “You are asking whether he would go voluntarily to Trantor?”

 

                “Yes, that is what I am asking.”

 

                “Madam Mayor, how can I possibly know what he will do?”

 

                “Councilman Compor, you have been close to Trevize. You know his belief in the existence of the Second Foundation. Has he never spoken to you of his theories as to where it might exist, where it might be found?”

 

                “Never, Madam Mayor.”

 

                “Do you think he will find it?”

 

                Compor chuckled. “I think the Second Foundation, whatever it was and however important it might have been, was wiped out in the time of Arkady Darell. I believe her story.”

 

                “Indeed? In that case, why did you betray your friend? If he were searching for something that does not exist, what harm could he have done by propounding his quaint theories?”

 

                Compor said, “It is not the truth alone that can harm. His theories may have been merely quaint, but they might have succeeded in unsettling the people of Terminus and, by introducing doubts and fears as to the Foundation’s role in the great drama of Galactic history, have weakened its leadership of the Federation and its dreams of a Second Galactic Empire. Clearly you thought this yourself, or you would not have seized him on the floor of the Council, and you would not now be forcing him into exile without trial. Why have you done so, if I may ask, Mayor?”

 

                “Shall we say that I was cautious enough to wonder if there were some faint chance that he might be right, and that the expression of his views might be actively and directly dangerous?”

 

                Compor said nothing.

 

                Branno said, “I agree with you, but I am forced by the responsibilities of my position to consider the possibility. Let me ask you again if you have any indication as to where he might think the Second Foundation exists, and where he might go.”

 

                “I have none.”

 

                “He has never given you any hints in that direction?”

 

                “No, of course not.”

 

                “Never? Don’t dismiss the thought easily. Think! Never?”

 

                “Never,” said Compor firmly.

 

                “No hints? No joking remarks? No doodles? No thoughtful abstractions at moments that achieve significance as you look back on them?”

 

                “None. I tell you, Madam Mayor, his dreams of the Second Foundation are the most nebulous starshine. You know it, and you but waste your time and your emotions in your concern over it.”

 

                “You are not by some chance suddenly changing sides again and protecting the friend you delivered into my hands?”

 

                “No,” said Compor. “I turned him over to you for what seemed to me to be good and patriotic reasons. I have no reason to regret the action, or to change my attitude.”

 

                “Then you can give me no hint as to where he might go once he has a ship at his disposal?”

 

                “As I have already said--”

 

                “And yet, Councilman,” and here the lines of the Mayor’s face so folded as to make her seem wistful, “I would like to know where he goes.”

 

                “In that case, I think you ought to place a hyper-relay on his ship.”

 

                “I have thought of that, Councilman. He is, however, a suspicious man and I suspect he will find it--however cleverly it might be placed. Of course, it might be placed in such a way that he cannot remove it without crippling the ship, and he might therefore be forced to leave it in place--”

 

                “An excellent notion.”

 

                “Except that,” said Branno, “he would then be inhibited. He might not go where he would go if he felt himself free and untrammeled. The knowledge I would gain would be useless to me.”

 

                “In that case, it appears you cannot find out where he will go.”

 

                “I might, for I intend to be very primitive. A person who expects the completely sophisticated and who guards against it is quite apt never to think of the primitive. --I’m thinking of having Trevize followed.”

 

                “Followed?”

 

                “Exactly. By, another pilot in another spaceship. See how astonished you are at the thought? He would be equally astonished. He might not think of scouring space for an accompanying mass and, in any case, we will see to it that his ship is not equipped with our latest mass-detection devices.”

 

                Compor said, “Madam Mayor, I speak with all possible respect, but I must point out that you lack experience in space flight. To have one ship followed by another is never done--because it won’t work. Trevize will escape with the first hyperspatial jump. Even if he doesn’t know he is being followed, that first jump will be his path to freedom. If he doesn’t have a hyper-relay on board ship, he can’t be traced.”

 

                “I admit my lack of experience. Unlike you and Trevize, I have had no naval training. Nevertheless, I am told by my advisers--whohave had such training--that if a ship is observed immediately prior to a jump, its direction, speed, and acceleration make it possible to guess what the jump might be--in a general way. Given a good computer and an excellent sense of judgment, a follower might duplicate the jump closely enough to pick up the trail at the other end --especially if the follower has a good mass-detector.”

 

                “That might happen once,” said Compor energetically, “even twice if the follower is very lucky, but that’s it. You can’t rely on such things.”

 

                “Perhaps we can. --Councilman Compor, you have hyper-raced in your time. You see, I know a great deal about you. You are an excellent pilot and have done amazing things when it comes to following a competitor through a jump.”

 

                Compor’s eyes widened. He almost squirmed in his chair. “I was in college then. I am older now.”

 

                “Not too old. Not yet thirty-five. Consequentlyyou are going to follow Trevize, Councilman. Where he goes, you will follow, and you will report back to me. You will leave soon after Trevize does, and he will be leaving in a few hours. If you refuse the task, Councilman, you will be imprisoned for treason. If you take the ship that we will provide for you, and if you fail to follow, you need not bother coming back. You will be shot out of space if you try.”

 

                Compor rose sharply to his feet. “! have a life to live. I have work to do. I have a wife. I cannot leave it all.”

 

                “You will have to. Those of us who choose to serve the Foundation must be prepared at ail times to serve it in a prolonged and uncomfortable fashion, if that should become necessary.”

 

                “My wife must go with me, of course.”

 

                “Do you take me for an idiot? She stays here,of course .”

 

                “As a hostage?”

 

                “If you like the word. I prefer to say that you will be taking yourself into danger and my kind heart wants her to stay here where she will not be in danger. --There is no room for discussion. You are as much under arrest as Trevize is, and I am sure you understand I must act quickly--before the euphoria enveloping Terminus wears off. I fear my star will soon be in the descendant.”

 

  

 

 4.

 

  

 

 Kodell said, “You were not easy on him, Madam Mayor.”

 

                The Mayor said with a sniff, “Why should I have been? He betrayed a friend.”

 

                “That was useful to us.”

 

                “Yes, as it happened. His next betrayal, however, might not be.”

 

                “Why should there be another?”

 

                “Come, Liono,” said Branno impatiently, “don’t play games with me. Anyone who displays a capacity for double-dealing must forever be suspected of being capable of displaying it again.”

 

                “He may use the capability to combine with Trevize once again. Together, they may--”

 

                “You don’t believe that. With all his folly and naïveté, Trevize goes straight for his goal. He does not understand betrayal and he will never, under any circumstances, trust Compor a second time.”

 

                Kodell said, “Pardon me, Mayor, but let me make sure I follow your thinking. How far, then, canyou trust Compor? How do you know he will follow Trevize and report honestly? Do you count on his fears for the welfare of his wife as a restraint? His longing to return to her?”

 

                “Both are factors, but I don’t entirely rely on that. On Compor’s ship there will be a hyper-relay. Trevize would suspect pursuit and would search for one. However Compor--being the pursuer--will, I assume, not suspect pursuit and will not search for one. --Of course, if he does, and if he finds it, then we must depend on the attractions of his wife.”

 

                Kodell laughed. “To think I once had to give you lessons. And the purpose of the pursuit?”

 

                “A double layer of protection. If Trevize is caught, it may be that

 

                Compor will carry on and give us the information that Trevize will not be able to.”

 

                “One more question. What if, by some chance, Trevize finds the Second Foundation, and we learn of it through him, or through Compor, or if we gain reason to suspect its existence--despite the deaths of both?”

 

                “I’m hoping the Second Foundationdoes exist, Liono,” she said. “In any case, the Seldon Plan is not going to serve us much longer. The great Hari Seldon devised it in the dying days of the Empire, when technological advance had virtually stopped. Seldon was a product of his times, too, and however brilliant this semimythical science of psychohistory must have been, it could not rise out of its roots. It surely would not allow forrapid technological advance. The Foundation has been achieving that, especially in this last century. We have mass-detection devices of a kind undreamed of earlier, computers that can respond to thought, and--most of all--mental shielding. The Second Foundation cannot control us for much longer, if they can do so now. I want, in my final years in power, to be the one to start Terminus on a new path.”

 

                “And if there is, in fact, no Second Foundation?”

 

                “Then we start on a new path at once.”

 

  

 

 5.

 

  

 

 The troubled sleep that had finally come to Trevize did not last long. A touch on his shoulder was repeated a second time.

 

                Trevize started up, bleary and utterly failing to understand why he should be in a strange bed. “What--What--?”

 

                Pelorat said to him apologetically, “I’m sorry, Councilman Trevize. You are my guest and I owe you rest, but the Mayor is here.” He was standing at the side of the bed in flannel pajamas and shivering slightly. Trevize’s senses leaped to a weary wakefulness and he remembered.

 

                The Mayor was in Pelorat’s living room, looking as composed as always. Kodell was with her, rubbing lightly at his white mustache.

 

                Trevize adjusted his sash to the proper snugness and wondered how long the two of them--Branno and Kodell--were ever apart.

 

                Trevize said mockingly, “ Has the Council recovered yet? Are its members concerned over the absence of one of them?”

 

                The Mayor said, “There are signs of life, yes, but not enough to do you any good. There is no question but that I still have the power to force you to leave. You will be taken to Ultimate Spaceport--”

 

                “Not Terminus Spaceport, Madam Mayor? Am I to be deprived of a proper farewell from weeping thousands?”

 

                “I see you have recovered your penchant for teenage silliness, Councilman, and I am pleased. It stills what might otherwise be a certain rising twinge of conscience. At Ultimate Spaceport, you and Professor Pelorat will leave quietly.”

 

                “And never return?”

 

                “And perhaps never return. Of course,” and here she smiled briefly, “if you discover something of so great an importance and usefulness that even I will be glad to have you back with your information, you will return. You may even be treated with honor.”

 

                Trevize nodded casually, “That may happen.”

 

                “Almost anythingmay happen. --In any case, you will be comfortable. You are being assigned a recently completed pocket-cruiser, theFar Star , named for Hober Mallow’s cruiser. One person can handle it, though it will hold as many as three with reasonable comfort.”

 

                Trevize was jolted out of his carefully assumed mood of light irony. “Fully armed?”

 

                “Unarmed but otherwise fully equipped. Wherever you go, you will be citizens of the Foundation and there will always be a consul to whom you can turn, so you will not require arms. You will be able to draw on funds at need. --Not unlimited funds, I might add.”

 

                “You are generous.”

 

                “I know that, Councilman. But, Councilman, understand me. You are helping Professor Pelorat search forEarth . Whatever youthink you are searching for, you are searching for Earth. All whom you meet must understand that. And always remember that theFar Star isnot armed.”

 

                “I am searching for Earth;” said Trevize. “I understand that perfectly.”

 

                “Then you will go now.”

 

                “Pardon me, but surely there is more to all of this than we have discussed. I have piloted ships in my time, but I have had no experience with a late-model pocket-cruiser. What if I cannot pilot it?”

 

                “I am told that theFar Star is thoroughly computerized. --and before you ask, you don’t have to know how to handle a late-model ship’s computer. It will itself tell you anything you need to know. Is there anything else you need?”

 

                Trevize looked down at himself ruefully. “A change of clothing.”

 

                “You will find them on board ship. Including those girdles you wear, or sashes, whichever they are called. The professor is also supplied with what he needs. Everything reasonable is already aboard, although I hasten to add that this doesnot include female companions.”

 

                “Too bad,” said Trevize. “It would be pleasant, but then, I have no likely candidate at the moment, as it happens. Still, I presume the Galaxy is populous and that once away from here I may do as I Please.”

 

                “With regard to companions? Suit yourself.”

 

                She rose heavily. “I will not take you to the spaceport,” she said, “but there are those who will, and you must make no effort to do anything you are not told to do. I believe they will kill you if you make an effort to escape. The fact that I will not be with them will remove any inhibition.”

 

                Trevize said, “I will make no unauthorized effort, Madam Mayor, but one thing--”

 

                “Yes?”

 

                Trevize searched his mind rapidly and finally said with a smile that he very much hoped looked unforced, “The time may come, Madam Mayor, when you willask me for an effort. I will then do as I choose, but I will remember the past two days.”

 

                Mayor Branno sighed. “Spare me the melodrama. If the time comes, it will come, but for now--I amasking for nothing.”

 

  

 

  

 

 4. SPACE

 

  

 

 1.

 

  

 

       THE SHIP LOOKED EVEN MORE IMPRESSIVE THAN TREVIZE--WITH HIS memories of the time when the new cruiser-class had been glowingly publicized--had expected.

 

                It was not the size that was impressive--for it was rather small. It was designed for maneuverability and speed, for totally gravitic engines, and most of all for advanced computerization. It didn’t need size--size would have defeated its purpose.

 

                It was a one-man device that could replace, with advantage, the older ships that required a crew of a dozen or more. With a second or even a third person to establish shifts of duty, one such ship could fight off a flotilla of much larger non-Foundation ships. In addition, it could outspeed and escape from any other ship in existence.

 

                There was a sleekness about it--not a wasted line, not a superfluous curve inside or out. Every cubic meter of volume was used to its maximum, so as to leave a paradoxical aura of spaciousness within. Nothing the Mayor might have said about the importance of his mission could have impressed Trevize more than the ship with which he was asked to perform it.

 

                Branno the Bronze, he thought with chagrin, had maneuvered him into a dangerous mission of the greatest significance. He might not have accepted with such determination had she not so arranged matters that hewanted to show her what he could do.

 

                As for Pelorat, he was transported with wonder. “Would you believe,” he said, placing a gentle finger on the hull before he had climbed inside, “that I’ve never been close to a spaceship?”

 

                “I’ll believe it, of course, if you say so, Professor, but how did you manage it?”

 

                “I scarcely know, to be honest with you, dear fel--, I mean, my dear Trevize. I presume I was overly concerned with my research. When one’s home has a really excellent computer capable of reaching other computers anywhere in the Galaxy, one scarcely needs to budge, you know. --Somehow I expected spaceships to be larger than this.”

 

                “This is a small model, but even so, it’s much larger inside than any other ship of this size.”

 

                “How can that be? You are making fun of my ignorance.”

 

                “No, no. I’m serious. This is one of the first ships to be completely graviticized.”

 

                “What does that mean? --but please don’t explain if it requires extensive physics. I will take your word, as you took mine yesterday in connection with the single species of humanity and the single world of origin.”

 

                “Let’s try, Professor Pelorat. Through all the thousands of years of space flight, we’ve had chemical motors and ionic motors and hyperatomic motors, and all these things have been bulky. The old Imperial Navy had ships five hundred meters long with no more living space in them than would fit into a small apartment. Fortunately the Foundation has specialized in miniaturization through all the centuries of its existence, thanks to its lack of material resources. This ship is the culmination. It makes use of antigravity and the device that makes that possible takes up virtually no space and is actually included in the hull. If it weren’t that we still need the hyperatomic--”

 

                A Security guard approached. “You will have to get on, gentlemen!”

 

                The sky was grooving light, though sunrise was still half an hour off.

 

                Trevize looked about. “Is my baggage loaded?”

 

                “Yes, Councilman, you will find the ship fully equipped.”

 

                “With clothing, I suppose, that is not my size or to my taste.”

 

                The guard smiled, quite suddenly and almost boyishly. “I think it is,” he said. “The Mayor had us working overtime these last thirty or forty hours and we’ve matched what you had closely. Money no object. Listen,” he looked about as though to make sure no one noticed his sudden fraternization, “you two are lucky. Best ship in the world. Fully equipped, except for armament. You’re swimming in cream.”

 

                “Sour cream, possibly,” said Trevize. “Well, Professor, are you ready?”

 

                “With this I am,” Pelorat said and held up a square wafer about twenty centimeters to the side and encased in a jacket of silvery plastic. Trevize was suddenly aware that Pelorat had been holding it since they had left his home, shifting it from hand to hand and never putting it down, even when they had stopped for a quick breakfast.

 

                “What’s that, Professor?”

 

                “My library. It’s indexed by subject matter and origin and I’ve gotten it all intoone wafer. If you think this ship is a marvel, how about this wafer? A whole library! Everything I have collected! Wonderful! Wonderful!”

 

                “Well,” said Trevize, “weare swimming in cream.”

 

  

 

 2.

 

  

 

       Trevize marveled at the inside of the ship. The utilization of space was ingenious. There was a storeroom, with supplies of food, clothing, films, and games. There was a gym, a parlor, and two nearly identical bedrooms.

 

                “This one,” said Trevize, “must be yours, Professor. At least, it contains an FX Reader.”

 

                “Good,” said Pelorat with satisfaction. “What an ass I have been to avoid space flight as I have. I could live here, my dear Trevize, in utter satisfaction.”

 

                “Roomier than I expected,” said Trevize with pleasure.

 

                “And the engines are really in the hull, as you said?”

 

                “The controlling devices are, at any rate. We don’t have to store fuel or make use of it on the spot. We’re making use of the fundamental energy store of the Universe, so that the fuel and the engines are all--out there.” He gestured vaguely.

 

                “Well, now that I think of it--what if something goes wrong?”

 

                Trevize shrugged. “I’ve been trained in space navigation, but not onthese ships. If something goes wrong with the gravitics, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.”

 

                “But can you run this ship? Pilot it?”

 

                “I’m wondering that myself.”

 

                Pelorat said, “Do you suppose this is an automated ship? Might we not merely be passengers? We might simply be expected to sit here.”

 

                “They have such things in the case of ferries between planets and space stations within a stellar system, but I never heard of automated hyperspace travel. At least, not so far. --Not so far.”

 

                He looked about again and there was a trickle of apprehension within him. Had that harridan Mayor managed to maneuver that far ahead of him? Had the Foundation automated interstellar travel, too, and was he going to be deposited on Trantor quite against his will, and with no more to say about it than any of the rest of the furniture aboard ship?

 

                He said with a cheerful animation he didn’t feel, “Professor, you sit down. The Mayor said this ship was completely computerized. If your room has the FX Reader, mine ought to have a computer in it. Make yourself comfortable and let me look around a bit on my own.

 

                Pelorat looked instantly anxious. “Trevize, my dear chap-- You’re not getting off the ship, are you?”

 

                “Not my plan at all, Professor. And if I tried, you can count on my being stopped. It is not the Mayor’s intention to allow me off. All I’m planning to do is to learn what operates theFar Star .” He smiled, “I won’t desert you, Professor.”

 

                He was still smiling as he entered, what he felt to be his own bedroom, but his face grew sober as he closed the door softly behind him. Surely there must be some means of communicating with a planet in the neighborhood of the ship. It was impossible to imagine a ship deliberately sealed off from its surroundings and, therefore, somewhere--perhaps in a wall recess--there would have to be a Reacher. He could use it to call the Mayor’s office to ask about controls.

 

                Carefully he inspected the walls, the headboard of the bed, and the neat, smooth furniture. If nothing turned up here, he would go through the rest of the ship.

 

                He was about to turn away when his eye caught a glint of light on the smooth, light brown surface of the desk. A round circle of light, with neat lettering that read: COMPUTER INSTRUCTIONS.

 

                Ah!

 

                Nevertheless his heart beat rapidly. There were computers and computers, and there were programs that took a long time to master. Trevize had never made the mistake of underestimating his own intelligence, but, on the other hand, he was not a Grand Master. There were those who had a knack for using a computer, and those who had not--and Trevize knew very well into which class he fell.

 

                In his hitch in the Foundation Navy, he had reached the rank of lieutenant and had, on occasion, been officer of the day and had had occasion to use the ship’s computer. He had never been in sole charge of it, however, and he had never been expected to know anything more than the routine maneuvers being officer of the day required.

 

                He remembered, with a sinking feeling, the volumes taken up by a fully described program in printout, and he could recall the behavior of Technical Sergeant Krasnet at the console of the ship’s computer. He played it as though it were the most complex musical instrument in the Galaxy, and did it all with an air of nonchalance, as though he were bored at its simplicity--yet even he had had to consult the volumes at times, swearing at himself in embarrassment.

 

                Hesitantly Trevize placed a finger on the circle of light and at once the light spread out to cover the desk top. On it were the outline of two hands: a right and a left. With a sudden, smooth movement, the desk top tilted to an angle of forty-five degrees.

 

                Trevize took the seat before the desk. No words were necessary. It was clear what he was expected to do.

 

                He placed his hands on the outlines on the desk, which were positioned for him to do so without strain. The desk top seemed soft, nearly velvety, where he touched it--and his hands sank in.

 

                He stared at his hands with astonishment, for they had not sunk in at all. They were on the surface, his eyes told him. Yet to his sense of touch it was as though the desk surface had given way, and as though something were holding his hands softly and warmly.

 

                Was that all?

 

                Now what?

 

                He looked about and then closed his eyes in response to a suggestion.

 

                He had heard nothing. He had heardnothing !

 

                But inside his brain, as though it were a vagrant thought of his own, there was the sentence, “Please close your eyes. Relax. We will make connection.”

 

                Through the hands?

 

                Somehow Trevize had always assumed that if one were going to communicate by thought with a computer, it would be through a hood placed over the head and with electrodes against the eyes and skull.

 

                The hands?

 

                But why not the hands? Trevize found himself floating away, almost drowsy, but with no loss of mental acuity. Why not the hands?

 

                The eyes were no more than sense organs. The brain was no more than a central switchboard, encased in bone and removed from the working surface of the body. It was the hands that were the working surface, the hands that felt and manipulated the Universe.

 

                Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference.

 

                And as he and the computer held hands, their thinking merged and it no longer mattered whether his eyes were open or closed. Opening them did not improve his vision nor did closing them dim it.

 

                Either way, he saw the room with complete clarity--not just in the direction in which he was looking, but all around and above and below.

 

                He saw every room in the spaceship and he saw outside as well. The sun had risen and its brightness was dimmed in the morning mist, but he could look at it directly without being dazzled, for the computer automatically filtered the light waves.

 

                He felt the gentle wind and its temperature, and the sounds of the world about him. He detected the planet’s magnetic field and the tiny electrical charges on the wall of the ship.

 

                He became aware of the controls of the ship, without even knowing what they were in detail. He knew only that if he wanted to lift the ship, or turn it, or accelerate it, or make use of any of its abilities, the process was the same as that of performing the analogous process to his body. He had but to use his will.

 

                Yet his will was not unalloyed. The computer itself could override. At the present moment, there was a formed sentence in his head and he knew exactly when and how the ship would take off. There was no flexibility wherethat was concerned. Thereafter, he knew just as surely, he would himself he able to deride.

 

                He found--as he cast the net of his computer-enhanced consciousness outward--that he could sense the condition of the upper atmosphere; that he could see the weather patterns; that he could detect the other ships that were swarming upward and the others that were settling downward. All of this had to be taken into account and the computerwas taking it into account. If the computer had not been doing so, Trevize realized, he need only desire the computer to do so--and it would be done.

 

                So much for the volumes of programming; there were none. Trevize thought of Technical Sergeant Krasnet and smiled. He had read often enough of the immense revolution that gravities would make in the world, but the fusion of computer and mind was still a state secret. It would surely produce a still greater revolution.

 

                He was aware of time passing. He knew exactly what time it was by Terminus Local and by Galactic Standard.

 

                How did he let go?

 

                And even as the thought entered his mind, his hands were released and the desk top moved back to its original position--and Trevize was left with his own unaided senses.

 

                He felt blind and helpless as though, for a time, he had been held and protected by a superbeing and now was abandoned. Had he not known that he could make contact again at any time, the feeling might have reduced him to tears.

 

                As it was he merely struggled for re-orientation, for adjustment to limits, then rose uncertainly to his feet and walked out of the room.

 

                Pelorat looked up. He had adjusted his Reader, obviously, and he said, “It works very well. It has an excellent Search Program. --Did you find the controls, my boy?”

 

                “Yes, Professor. All is well.”

 

                “In that case, shouldn’t we do something about takeoff? I mean, self-protection? Aren’t we supposed to strap ourselves in or something? I looked about for instructions, but I didn’t find anything and that made me nervous. I had to turn to my library. Somehow when I am at my work--”

 

                Trevize had been pushing his hands at the professor as though to dam and stop the flood of words. Now he had to speak loudly in order to override him. “None of that is necessary, Professor. Antigravity is the equivalent of noninertia. There is no feeling of acceleration when velocity changes, since everything on the ship undergoes the change simultaneously.”

 

                “You mean, we won’t know when we are off the planet and out in space?”

 

                “It’s exactly what I mean, because even as I speak to you, we have taken off. We will be cutting through the upper atmosphere in a very few minutes and within half an hour we will be in outer space.”

 

  

 

 3.

 

  

 

 Pelorat seemed to shrink a little as he stared at Trevize. His long rectangle of a face grew so blank that, without showing any emotion at all, it radiated a vast uneasiness.

 

                Then his eyes shifted right--Left.

 

                Trevize remembered how he had felt on his own first trip beyond the atmosphere.

 

                He said, in as matter-of-fact a manner as he could, “Janov,” (it was the first time he had addressed the professor familiarly, but in this case experience was addressing inexperience and it was necessary to seem the older of the two) “we are perfectly safe here. We are in the metal womb of a warship of the Foundation Navy. We are not fully armed, but there is no place in the Galaxy where the name of the Foundation will not protect us. Even if some ship went mad and attacked, we could move out of its reach in a moment. And I assure you I have discovered that I can handle the ship perfectly.”

 

                Pelorat said, “It is the thought, Go--Golan, of nothingness--”

 

                “Why, there’s nothingness all about Terminus. There’s just a thin layer of very tenuous air between ourselves on the surface and the nothingness just above. Ail we’re doing is to go past that inconsequential layer.”

 

                “It may be inconsequential, but we breathe it.”

 

                “We breathe here, too. The air on this ship is cleaner and purer, and will indefinitely remain cleaner and purer than the natural atmosphere of Terminus.”

 

                “And the meteorites?”

 

                “What about meteorites?”

 

                “The atmosphere protects us from meteorites. Radiation, too, for that matter.”

 

                Trevize said, “Humanity has been traveling through space for twenty millennia, I believe--”

 

                “Twenty-two. If we go by the Hallblockian chronology, it is quite plain that, counting the--”

 

                “Enough! Have you heard of meteorite accidents or of radiation deaths? --I mean, recently? --I mean, in the case of Foundation ships?”

 

                “I have not really followed the news in such matters, but I am a historian, my boy, and--”

 

                “Historically, yes, there have been such things, but technology improves. There isn’t a meteorite large enough to damage us that can possibly approach us before we take the necessary evasive action. Four meteorites--coming at us simultaneously from the four directions drawn from the vertices of a tetrahedron--might conceivably pin us down, but calculate the chances of that and you’ll find that you’ll die of old. age a trillion trillion times over before you will have a fifty-fifty chance of observing so interesting a phenomenon.”

 

                “You mean, if you were at the computer?”

 

                “No,” said Trevize in Scorn. “If I were running the computer on the basis of my own senses and responses, we would be hit before I ever knew what was happening. It is the computer itself that is at work, responding millions of times faster than you or I could.” He held out his hand abruptly. “Janov, come let me show you what the computer can do, and let me show you what space is like.”

 

                Pelorat stared, goggling a bit. Then he laughed briefly. “I’m not sure I wish to know, Golan.”

 

                “Of course you’re not sure, Janov, because you don’t know what it is that is waiting there to be known. Chance it! Come! Into my room!”

 

                Trevize held the other’s hand, half leading him, half drawing him. He said, as he sat down at the computer, “Have you ever seen the Galaxy, Janov? Have you ever looked at it?”

 

                Pelorat said, “You mean in the sky?”

 

                “Yes, certainly. Where else?”

 

                “I’ve seen it. Everyone has seen it. If one looks up, one sees it.”

 

                “Have you ever stared at it on a dark, clear night, when the Diamonds are below the horizon?”

 

                The “Diamonds” referred to those few stars that were luminous enough and close enough to shine with moderate brightness in the night sky of Terminus. They were a small group that spanned a width of no more than twenty degrees, and for large parts of the night they were all below the horizon. Aside from he group, there was a scattering of dim stars just barely visible to the unaided eye. There was nothing more but the faint milkiness of the Galaxy--the view one might expect when one dwelt on a world like Terminus which was at the extreme edge of the outermost spiral of the Galaxy.

 

                “I suppose so, but why stare? It’s a common sight.”

 

                “Of course it’s a common sight,” said Trevize. “That’s why no one sees it. Why see it if you can always see it? But now you’llsee it, and not from Terminus, where the mist and the clouds are forever interfering. You’ll see it as you’d never see it from Terminus--no matter how you stared, and no matter how clear and dark the night. How I wishI had never been in space before, so that--like you--I could see the Galaxy in its bare beauty for the first time.”

 

                He pushed a chair in Pelorat’s direction. “Sit there, Janov. This may take a little time. I have to continue to grow accustomed to the computer. From what I’ve already felt, I know the viewing is holographic, so we won’t need a screen of any sort. It makes direct contact with my brain, but I think I can have it produce an objective image that you will see, too. --Put out the light, will you? --No, that’s foolish of me. I’ll have the computer do it. Stay where you are.”

 

                Trevize made contact with the computer, holding hands warmly and intimately.

 

                The light dimmed, then went out completely, and in the darkness, Pelorat stirred.

 

                Trevize said, “Don’t get nervous, Janov. I may have a little trouble trying to control the computer, but I’ll start easy and you’ll have to be patient with me. Do you see it? The crescent?”

 

                It hung in the darkness before them. A little dim and wavering at first, but getting sharper and brighter.

 

                Pelorat’s voice sounded awed. “Is that Terminus? Are we that far from it?”

 

                “Yes, the ship’s moving quickly.”

 

                The ship was curving into the night shadow of Terminus, which appeared as a thick crescent of bright light. Trevize had a momentary urge to send the ship in a wide arc that would carry them over the daylit side of the planet to show it in all its beauty, but he held back.

 

                Pelorat might find novelty in this, but the beauty would be tame. There were too many photographs, too many reaps, too many globes. Every child knew what Terminus looked like. A water planet more so than most--rich in water and poor in minerals, good in agriculture and poor in heavy industry, but the best in the Galaxy in high technology and in miniaturization.

 

                If he could have the computer use microwaves and translate it into a visible model, they would see every one of Terminus’s ten thousand inhabited islands, together with the only one of them large enough to be considered a continent, the one that bore Terminus City and

 

                Turn away!

 

                It was just a thought, an exercise of the will, but the view shifted at once. The lighted crescent moved off toward the borders of vision and rolled off the edge. The darkness of starless space filled his eyes.

 

                Pelorat cleared his throat. “I wish you would bring back Terminus, my boy. I feel as though I’ve been blinded.” There was a tightness in his voice.

 

                “You’re not blind. Look!”

 

                Into the field of vision came a filmy fog of pale translucence. It spread and became brighter, until the whole room seemed to glow.

 

                Shrink!

 

                Another exercise of will and the Galaxy drew off, as though seen through a diminishing telescope that was steadily growing more powerful in its ability to diminish. The Galaxy contracted and became a structure of varying luminosity.

 

                Brighten!

 

                It grew more luminous without changing size, and because the stellar system to which Terminus belonged was above the Galactic plane, the Galaxy was not seen exactly edge-on. It was a strongly foreshortened double spiral, with curving dark-nebula rifts streaking the glowing edge of the Terminus side. The creamy haze of the nucleus--far off and shrunken by the distance--looked unimportant.

 

                Pelorat said in an awed whisper, “You are right. I have never seen it like this. I never dreamed it had so much detail.”

 

                “How could you? You can’t see the outer half when Terminus’s atmosphere is between you and it. You can hardly see the nucleus from Terminus’s surface.’’

 

                “What a pity we’re seeing it so nearly head-on.”

 

                “We don’t have to. The computer can show it in any orientation. I just have to express the wish--and not even aloud.”

 

                Shift co-ordinates!

 

                This exercise of will was by no means a precise command. Yet as the image of Galaxy began to undergo a slow change, his mind guided the computer and had it do what he wished.

 

                Slowly the Galaxy was turning so that it could be seen at right angles to the Galactic plane. It spread out like a gigantic, glowing whirlpool, with curves of darkness, and knots of brightness, and a central all-but-featureless blaze.

 

                Pelorat asked, “How can the computer see it from a position in space that must be more than fifty thousand parsecs from this place?” Then he added, in a choked whisper, “Please forgive me that I ask. I know nothing about all this.”

 

                Trevize said, “I know almost as little about this computer as you do. Even a simple computer, however, can adjust co-ordinates and show the Galaxy in any position, starting with what it can sense in the natural position, the one, that is, that would appear from the computer’s local position in space. Of course, it makes use only of the information it can sense to begin with, so when it changes to the broadside view we would find gaps and blurs in what it would show. In this case, though--”

 

                “Yes?”

 

                “We have an excellent view. I suspect that the computer is outfitted with a complete map of the Galaxy and can therefore view it from any angle with equal ease.”

 

                “How do you mean, a complete map?”

 

                “The spatial co-ordinates of every star in it must be in the computer’s memory banks.”

 

                “Everystar?” Pelorat seemed awed.

 

                “Well, perhaps not all three hundred billion. It would include the stars shining down on populated planets, certainly, and probably every star of spectral class K and brighter. That means about seventy-five billion, at least.”

 

                “Everystar of a populated system?”

 

                “I wouldn’t want to be pinned down; perhaps not all. There were, after all, twenty-five million inhabited systems in the time of Hari Seldon--which sounds like a lot but is only one star out of every twelve thousand. And then, in the five centuries since Seldon, the general breakup of the Empire didn’t prevent further colonization. I should think it would have encouraged it. There are still plenty of habitable planets to expand into, so there may be thirty million now. It’s possible that not all the new ones are in the Foundation’s records.”

 

                “But the old ones? Surely they must all be there without exception.”

 

                “I imagine so. I can’t guarantee it, of course, but I would be surprised if any long-established inhabited system were missing from the records. Let me show you something--if my ability to control the computer will go far enough.”

 

                Trevize’s hands stiffened a bit with the effort and they seemed to sink further into the clasp of the computer. That might not have been necessary; he might only have had to think quietly and casually: Terminus!

 

                He did think that and there was, in response, a sparkling red diamond at the very edge of the whirlpool.

 

                “There’s our sun,” he said with excitement. “That’s the star that Terminus circles.”

 

                “Ah,” said Pelorat with a low, tremulous sigh.

 

                A bright yellow dot of light sprang into life in a rich cluster of stars deep in the heart of the Galaxy but well to one side of the central haze. It was rather closer to the Terminus edge of the Galaxy than to the other side.

 

                “And that,” said Trevize, “is Trantor’s sun.”

 

                Another sigh, then Pelorat said, “Are you sure? They always speak of Trantor as being located in the center of the Galaxy.”

 

                “It is, in a way. It’s as close to the center as a planet can get and still be habitable. It’s closer than any other major populated system. The actual center of the Galaxy consists of a black hole with a mass of nearly a million stars, so that the center is a violent place. As far as we know, there is no life in the actual center and maybe there just can’t be any life there. Trantor is in the innermost subring of the spiral arms and, believe me, if you could see its night sky, you would think it was in the center of the Galaxy. It’s surrounded by an extremely rich clustering of stars.”

 

                “Have you been on Trantor, Golan?” asked Pelorat in clear envy.

 

                “Actually no, but I’ve seen holographic representations of its sky.”

 

                Trevize stared at the Galaxy somberly. In the great search for the Second Foundation during the time of the Mule, how everyone had played with Galactic maps--and how many volumes had been written and filmed on the subject

 

                And all because Hari Seldom had said, at the beginning, that the Second Foundation would be established “at the other end of the Galaxy,” calling the place “Star’s End.”

 

                At the other end of the Galaxy! Even as Trevize thought it, a thin blue line sprang into view, stretching from Terminus, through the Galaxy’s central black hole, to the other end. Trevize nearly jumped. He had not directly ordered the line, but he had thought of it quite clearly and that had been enough for the computer.

 

                But, of course, the straight-line route to the opposite side of the Galaxy was not necessarily an indication of the “other end” that Seldom had spoken of. It was Arkady Darell (if one could believe her autobiography) who had made use of the phrase “a circle has no end” to indicate what everyone now accepted as truth

 

                And though Trevize suddenly tried to suppress the thought, the computer was too quick for him. The blue line vanished and was replaced with a circle that neatly rimmed the Galaxy in blue and that passed through the deep red dot of Terminus’s sun.

 

                A circle has no end, and if the circle began at Terminus, then if we searched for the other end, it would merely return to Terminus, and there the Second Foundation had indeed been found, inhabiting the same world as the First.

 

                But if, in reality, it had not been found--if the so-called finding of the Second Foundation had been an illusion--what then? What beside a straight line and a circle would make sense in this connection?

 

                Pelorat said, “Are you creating illusions? Why is there a blue circle?”

 

                “I was just testing my controls. --Would you like to locate Earth?”

 

                There was silence for a moment or two, then Pelorat said, “Are you joking?”

 

                “No. I’ll try.”

 

                He did. Nothing happened.

 

                “Sorry,” said Trevize.

 

                “It’s not there? No Earth?”

 

                “I suppose I might have misthought my command, but that doesn’t seem likely. I suppose it’s more likely that Earth isn’t listed in the computer’s vitals.”

 

                Pelorat said, “It may be listed under another name.”

 

                Trevize jumped at that quickly, “What other name, Janov?”

 

                Pelorat said nothing and, in the darkness, Trevize smiled. It occurred to him that things might just possibly be falling into place. Let it go for a while. Let it ripen. He deliberately changed the subject and said, “I wonder if we can manipulate time.”

 

                “Time! How can we do that?”

 

                “The Galaxy is rotating. It takes nearly half a billion years for Terminus to move about the grand circumference of the Galaxy once. Stars that are closer to the center complete the journey much more quickly, of course. The motion of each star, relative to the central black hole, might be recorded in the computer and, if so, it may be possible to have the computer multiply each motion by millions of times and make the rotational effect visible. I can try to have it done.”

 

                He did and he could not help his muscles tightening with the effort of will he was exerting--as though he were taking hold of the Galaxy and accelerating it, twisting it, forcing it to spin against terrible resistance.

 

                The Galaxy was moving. Slowly, mightily, it was twisting in the direction that should be working to tighten the spiral arms.

 

                Time was passing incredibly rapidly as they watched--a false, artificial time--and, as it did so, stars became evanescent things.

 

                Some of the larger ones--here and there--reddened and grew brighter as they expanded into red giants. And then a star in the central clusters blew up soundlessly in a blinding blaze that, for a tiny fraction of a second, dimmed the Galaxy and then was gone. Then another in one of the spiral arms, then still another not very far away from it.

 

                “Supernovas,” said Trevize a little shakily.

 

                Was it possible that the computer could predict exactly which stars would explode and when? Or was it just using a simplified model that served to show the starry future in general terms, rather than precisely?

 

                Pelorat said in a husky whisper, “The Galaxy looks like a living thing, crawling through space.”

 

                “It does,” said Trevize, “but I’m growing tired. Unless I learn to do this less tensely, I’m not going to be able to play this kind of game for long.”

 

                He let go. The Galaxy slowed, then halted, then tilted, until it was in the view-from-the-side from which they had seen it at the start.

 

                Trevize closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He was aware of Terminus shrinking behind them, with the last perceptible wisps of atmosphere gone from their surroundings. He was aware of all the ships filling Terminus’s near-space.

 

                It did not occur to him to check whether there was anything special about any one of those ships. Was there one that was gravitic like his own and matched his trajectory more closely than chance would allow?

 

  

 

 5. SPEAKER

 

  

 

 1.

 

  

 

       TRANTOR!

 

                For eight thousand years, it was the capital of a large and mighty political entity that spanned an ever-growing union of planetary systems. For twelve thousand years after that, it was the capital of a political entity that spanned the entire Galaxy. It was the center, the heart, theepitome of the Galactic Empire.

 

                It was impossible to think of the Empire without thinking of Trantor.

 

                Trantor did not reach its physical peak until the Empire was far gone in decay. In fact, no one noticed that the Empire had lost its drive, its forward look, because Trantor gleamed in shining metal.

 

                Its growth had peaked at the point where it was a planet-girdling city. Its population was stabilized (by law) at forty-five billion and the only surface greenery was at the Imperial Palace and the Galactic University/Library complex.

 

                Trantor’s land surface was metal-coated. Its deserts and its fertile areas were alike engulfed and made into warrens of humanity, administrative jungles, computerized elaborations, vast storehouses of food and replacement parts. its mountain ranges were beaten down; its chasms filled in. The city’s endless corridors burrowed under the continental shelves and the oceans were turned into huge underground aquacultural cisterns--the only (and insufficient native source of food and minerals.

 

                The connections with the Outer Worlds, from which Trantor obtained the resources it required, depended upon its thousand spaceports, its ten thousand warships, its hundred thousand merchant ships, its million space freighters.

 

                No city so vast was ever recycled so tightly. No planet in the Galaxy had ever made so much use of solar power or went to such extremes to rid itself of waste heat. Glittering radiators stretched up into the thin upper atmosphere upon the nightside and were withdrawn into the metal city on the dayside. As the planet turned, the radiators rose as night progressively fell around the world and sank as day progressively broke. So Trantor always had an artificial asymmetry that was almost its symbol.

 

                At this peak, Trantor ran the Empire?

 

                It ran it poorly, but nothing could have run the Empire well. The Empire was too large to be run from a single world--even under the most dynamic of Emperors. How could Trantor have helped but run it poorly when, in the ages of decay, the Imperial crown was traded back and forth by sly politicians and foolish incompetents and the bureaucracy had become a subculture of corruptibles?

 

                But even at its worst, there was some self-propelled worth to the machinery. The Galactic Empire could not have been run without Trantor.

 

                The Empire crumbled steadily, but as long as Trantor remained Trantor, a core of the Empire remained and it retained an air of pride, of millennia, of tradition and power and--exaltation.

 

                Only when the unthinkable happened--when Trantor finally fell and was sacked; when its citizens were killed by the millions and left to starve by the billions; when its mighty metal coating was scarred and punctured and fused by the attack of the “barbarian” fleet--only then was the Empireconsidered to have fallen. The surviving remnants on the once-great world undid further what had been left and, in a generation, Trantor was transformed from the greatest planet the human race had ever seen to an inconceivable tangle of ruins.

 

                That had been nearly two and a half centuries ago. In the rest of the Galaxy, Trantor-as-it-had-been still was not forgotten. It would live forever as the favored site of historical novels, the favored symbol and memory of the past, the favored word for sayings such as “All starships land on Trantor,” “Like looking for a person in Trantor,” and “No more alike than this and Trantor.”

 

                In all the rest of the Galaxy--

 

                But that was not true on Trantor itself! Here the old Trantor was forgotten. The surface metal seas gone, almost everywhere. Trantor was now a sparsely settled world of self-sufficient farmers, a place where trading ships rarely came and were not particularly welcome when they did come. The very word “Trantor,” though still in official use, had dropped out of popular speech. By present-day Trantorians, it was called “Name,” which in their dialect was what would be called “Home” in Galactic Standard.

 

                Quindor Shandess thought of all this and much more as he sat quietly in a welcome state of half-drowse, in which he could allow his mind to run along a self-propelled and unorganized stream of thought.

 

                He had been First Speaker of the Second Foundation for eighteen years, and he might well bold on for ten or twelve years more if his mind remained reasonably vigorous and if he could continue to fight the political wars.

 

                He was the analog, the mirror image, of the Mayor of Terminus, who ruled over the First Foundation, but how different they were in every respect. The Mayor of Terminus was known to all the Galaxy and the First Foundation was therefore simply “the Foundation” to all the worlds. The First Speaker of the Second Foundation was known only to his associates.

 

                And yet it was the Second Foundation, under himself and his predecessors, who held the real power. The First Foundation was supreme in the realm of physical power, of technology, of war weapons. The Second Foundation was supreme in the realm of mental power, of the mind, of the ability to control. In any conflict between the two, what would it matter how many ships and weapons the First Foundation disposed of, if the Second Foundation could control the minds of those who controlled the ships and weapons?

 

                But how long could he revel in this realization of secret power?

 

                He was the twenty-fifth First Speaker and his incumbency was already a shade longer than average. Ought he, perhaps, not be too keen on holding on and keeping out the younger aspirants? There was Speaker Gendibal, the keenest and newest at the Table. Tonight they would spend time together and Shandess looked forward to it. Ought he look forward also to Gendibal’s possible accession some day?

 

                The answer to the question was that Shandess had no real thought of leaving his post. He enjoyed it too much.

 

                He sat there, in his old age, still perfectly capable of performing his duties. His hair was gray, but it had always been light in color and he wore it cut an inch long so that the color scarcely mattered. His eyes were a faded blue and his clothing conformed to the drab styling of the Trantorian farmers.

 

                The First Speaker could, if he wished, pass among the Hamish people as one of them, but his hidden power nevertheless existed. He could choose to focus his eyes and mind at any time and they would then act according to his will and recall nothing about it afterward.

 

                It rarely happened. Almost never. The Golden Rule of the Second Foundation was, “Do nothing unless you must, and when you must act--hesitate.”

 

                The First Speaker sighed softly. Living in the old University, with the brooding grandeur of the ruins of the Imperial Palace not too far distant, made one wonder on occasion how Golden the Rule might be.

 

                In the days of the Great Sack, the Golden Rule had been strained to the breaking point. There was no way of saving Trantor without sacrificing the Seldon Plan for establishing a Second Empire. It would have been humane to spare the forty-five billion, but they could not have been spared without retention of the core of the First Empire and that would have only delayed the reckoning. If would have led to a greater destruction some centuries later and perhaps no Second Empire ever

 

                The early First Speakers had worked over the clearly foreseen Sack for decades but had found no solution--no way of assuring both the salvation of Trantor and the eventual establishment of the Second Empire. The lesser evil had to be chosen and Trantor had died!

 

                The Second Foundationers of the time had managed--by the narrowest of margins--to save the University/Library complex and there had been guilt forever after because of that, too. Though no one had ever demonstrated that saving the complex had led to the of the Mule, there was always the intuition that there was a connection.

 

                How nearly that had wrecked everything!

 

                Yet following the decades of the Sack and the Mule came the Golden Age of the Second Foundation.

 

                Prior to that, for over two and a half centuries after Seldon’s death, the Second Foundation had burrowed like moles into the Library, intent only on staying out of the way of the Imperials. They served as librarians in a decaying society that cared less and less for the ever-more-misnamed Galactic Library, which fell into the desuetude that best suited the purpose of the Second Foundationers.

 

                It was an ignoble life. They merely conserved the Plan, while out at the end of the Galaxy, the First Foundation fought for its life against always greater enemies with neither help from the Second Foundation nor any real knowledge of it.

 

                It was the Great Sack that liberated the Second Foundation--another reason (young Gendibal--who had courage--had recently said that it was the chief reason) why the Sack was allowed to proceed.

 

                After the Great Sack, the Empire was gone and, in all the later times, the Trantorian survivors never trespassed on Second Foundation territory uninvited. The Second Foundationers saw to it that the University/Library complex which had survived the Sack also survived the Great Renewal. The ruins of the Palace were preserved, too. The metal was gone over almost all the rest of the world. The great and endless corridors were covered up, filled in, twisted, destroyed, ignored; all under rock and soil--all except here, where metal still surrounded the ancient open places.

 

                It might be viewed as a grand memorial of greatness, the sepulcher of Empire, but to the Trantorians--the Hamish people--these were haunted places, filled with ghosts, not to be stirred. Only the Second Foundationers ever set foot in the ancient corridors or touched the titanium gleam.

 

                And even so, all had nearly come to nothing because of the Mule.

 

                The Mule had actually been on Trantor. What if he had found out the nature of the world he had been standing on? His physical weapons were far greater than those at the disposal of the Second Foundation, his mental weapons almost as great. The Second Foundation would have been hampered always by the necessity of doing nothing but what they must, and by the knowledge that almost any hope of tinning the immediate fight might portend a greater eventual loss.

 

                Had it not been for Banta Darell and her swift moment of action-- And that, too, had been without the help of the Second Foundation?

 

                And then--the Golden ?age, when somehow the First Speakers of the time found ways of becoming active, stopping the Mule in his career of conquest, controlling his mind at last; and then stopping the First Foundation itself whenit grew wary and overcurious concerning the nature and identity of the Second Foundation. There was Preem Palver, nineteenth First Speaker and greatest of them all, who had managed to put an end to all danger--not without terrible sacrifice--and who had rescued the Seldon Plan.

 

                Now, for a hundred and twenty years, the Second Foundation was again as it once had been, hiding in a haunted portion of Trantor. They were hiding no longer from the Imperials, but from the First Foundation still--a First Foundation almost as large as the Galactic Empire had been and even greater in technological expertise.

 

                The First Speaker’s eyes closed in the pleasant warmth and he passed into that never-never state of relaxing hallucinatory experiences that were not quite dreams and not quite conscious thought.

 

                Enough of gloom. All would be well. Trantor wasstill capital of the Galaxy, for the Second Foundation was here and it was mightier and more in control than ever the Emperor had been.

 

                The First Foundation would be contained and guided and would move correctly. However formidable their ships and weapons, they could do nothing as long as key leaders could be, at need, mentally controlled.

 

                And the Second Empire would come, but it would not be like the first. It would be a Federated Empire, with its parts possessing considerable self-rule, so that there would be none of the apparent strength and actual weakness of a unitary, centralized government. The new Empire would be looser, more pliant, more flexible, more capable of withstanding strain, and it would be guided always--always--by the hidden men and women of the Second Foundation. Trantor would then be still the capital, more powerful with its forty thousand psychohistorians than ever it had been with its forty-five billion

 

                The First Speaker snapped awake. The sun was lower in the sky. Had he been mumbling? Had he said anything aloud’

 

                If the Second Foundation had to know much and say little, the ruling Speakers had to know mere and say less, and the First Speaker lead to know mist and say least.

 

                He smiled wryly. It was always so tempting to become a Trantorian patriot--to see the whole purpose of the Second Empire as that of bringing about Trantorian hegemony. Seldon had warned of it; he had foreseen even that, five centuries before it could come to pass.

 

                The First Speaker had not slept too long, however. It was not yet time for Gendibal’s audience.

 

                Shandess was looking forward to that private meeting. Gendibal was young enough to look at the Plan with new eyes, and keen enough to see what others might not. And it was not beyond possibility that Shandess would learn from what the youngster had to say.

 

                No one would ever be certain how much Preem Palver--the great Palver himself--had profited from that day when the young Kol Benjoam, not yet thirty, came to talk to him about possible ways of handling the First Foundation. Benjoam, who was later recognized as the greatest theorist since Seldon, never spoke of that audience in later years, but eventually he became the twenty-first First Speaker. There were some who credited Benjoam, rather than Palver, for the great accomplishments of Palver’s administration.

 

                Shandess amused himself with the thought of what Gendibal might say. It was traditional that keen youngsters, confronting the First Speaker alone for the first time, would place their entire thesis in the first sentence. And surely they would not ask for that precious first audience for something trivial--something that might ruin their entire subsequent career by convincing the First Speaker they were lightweights.

 

                Four hours later, Gendibal faced him. The young man showed no sign of nervousness. He waited calmly for Shandess to speak first.

 

                Shandess said, “You have asked for a private audience, Speaker, on a matter of importance. Could you please summarize the matter for me?”

 

                And Gendibal, speaking quietly, almost as though he were describing what he had just eaten at dinner, said, “First Speaker, the Seldon Plan is meaningless!”

 

  

 

 2.

 

  

 

 Stor Gendibal did not require the evidence of others to give him a sense of worth. He could not recall a time when he did not know himself to be unusual. He had been recruited for the Second Foundation when he was only a ten-year-old boy by an agent who had recognized the potentialities of his mind.

 

                He had then done remarkably well at his studies and had taken to psychohistory as a spaceship responds to a gravitational field. Psychohistory had pulled at him and he had curved toward it, reading Seldon’s text on the fundamentals when others his age were merely trying to handle differential equations.

 

                When he was fifteen, he entered Trantor’s Galactic University (as the University of Trantor had been officially renamed), after an interview during which, when asked what his ambitions were, he had answered firmly, “To be First Speaker before I am forty.”

 

                He had not bothered to aim for the First Speaker’s chair without qualification. To gain it, one way or another, seemed to him to be a certainty. It was to do it in youth that seemed to him to be the goal. Even Preem Palver bad been forty-two on his accession.

 

                The interviewer’s expression had flickered when Gendibal had said that, but the young man already had the feel of psycholanguage and could interpret that flicker. He knew, as certainly as though the interviewer had announced it, that a small notation would go on his records to the effect that he would be difficult to handle.

 

                Well, of course!

 

                Gendibal intended to be difficult to handle.

 

                He was thirty now. He would be thirty-one in a matter of two months and he was already a member of the Council of Speakers. He had nine years, at most, to become First Speaker and he knew he would make it. This audience with the present First Speaker was crucial to his plans and, laboring to present precisely the proper impression, he had. spared no effort to polish his command of psycholanguage.

 

                When two Speakers of the Second Foundation communicate with each other, the language is like no other in the Galaxy. It is as much a language of fleeting gestures as of words, as much a matter of detected mental-change patterns as anything else.

 

                An outsider would hear little or nothing, but in a short time, much in the way of thought would be exchanged and the communication would be unreportable in its literal form to anyone but still another Speaker.

 

                The language of Speakers had its advantage in speed and in infinite delicacy, but it had the disadvantage of making it almost impossible to mask true opinion.

 

                Gendibal knew his own opinion of the First Speaker. He felt the First Speaker to be a man past his mental prime. The First Speaker--in Gendibal’s assessment--expected no crisis, was not trained to meet one, and lacked the sharpness to deal with one if it appeared. With all Shandess’s goodwill and amiability, he was the stuff of which disaster was made.

 

                All of this Gendibal had to hide not merely from words, gestures, and facial expressions, but even from his thoughts. He knew no way of doing so efficiently enough to keep the First Speaker from catching a whiff of it.

 

                Nor could Gendibal avoid knowing something of the First Speaker’s feeling toward him. Through bonhomie and goodwill--quite apparent and reasonably sincere--Gendibal could feel the distant edge of condescension and amusement, and tightened his own mental grip to avoid revealing any resentment in return--or as little as possible.

 

                The First Speaker smiled and leaned back in his chair. He did not actually lift his feet to the desk top, but he got across just the right mixture of self-assured ease and informal friendship--just enough of each to leave Gendibal uncertain as to the effect of his statement.

 

                Since Gendibal had not been invited to sit down, the actions and attitudes available to him that might be designed to minimize the uncertainty were limited. It was impossible that the First Speaker did not understand this.

 

                Shandess said, “The Seldon Plan is meaningless? What a remarkable statement! Have you looked at the Prime Radiant lately, Speaker Gendibal?”

 

                “I study it frequently, First Speaker. It is my duty to do so and my pleasure as well.”

 

                “Do you, by any chance, study only those portions of it that fall under your purview, now and then? Do you observe it in microfashion--an equation system here, an adjustment rivulet there? Highly important, of course, but I have always thought it an excellent occasional exercise to observe the whole course. Studying the Prime Radiant, acre by acre, has its uses--but observing it as a continent is inspirational. To tell you the truth, Speaker, I have not done it for a long time myself. Would you join me?”

 

                Gendibal dared not pause too long. It had to be done, and it must be done easily and pleasantly or it might as well not be done. “It would be an honor and a pleasure, First Speaker.”

 

                The First Speaker depressed a lever on the side of his desk. T here was one such in the office of every Speaker and the one in Gendibal’s office was in no way inferior to that of the First Speaker. The Second Foundation was an equalitarian society in all its surface manifestations--the unimportant ones. In fact, the onlyofficial prerogative of the First Speaker was that which was explicit in his title he always spoke first.

 

                The room grew dark with the depression of the lever but, almost at once, the darkness lifted into a pearly dimness. Both long walls turned faintly creamy, then brighter and whiter, and finally there appeared neatly printed equations--so small that they could not be easily read.

 

                “If you have no objections,” said the First Speaker, making it quite clear that there would be none allowed, “we will reduce the magnification in order to see as much at one time as we can.”

 

                The neat printing shrank down into fine hairlines, faint black meanderings over the pearly background.

 

                The First Speaker touched the keys of the small console built into the arm of his chair. “We’ll bring it back to the start--to the lifetime of Hari Seldon--and we’ll adjust it to a small forward movement. We’ll shutter it so that we can only see a decade of development at a time. It gives one a wonderful feeling of the flow of history, with no distractions by the details. I wonder if you have ever done this.”

 

                “Never exactly this way, First Speaker.”

 

                “You should. It’s a marvelous feeling. Observe the sparseness of the black tracery at the start. There was not much chance for alternatives in the first few decades. The branch points, however, increase exponentially with time. Were it not for the fact that, as soon as a particular branch is taken, there is an extinction of a vast array of others in its future, all would soon become unmanageable. Of course, in dealing with the future, we must be careful what extinctions we rely upon.”

 

                “I know, First Speaker.” There was a touch of dryness in Gendibal’s response that he could not quire remove.

 

                The First Speaker did not respond to it. “Notice the winding lines of symbols in red. There is a pattern to them. To all appearances, they should exist randomly, as even Speaker earns his place by adding refinements to Seldon’s original Plan. It would seem there is no way, after all, of predicting where a refinement can be added easily or where a particular Speaker will find his interests or his ability tending, and yet I have long suspected that the admixture of Seldon Black and Speaker Red follows a strict law that is strongly dependent on time and on very little else.”

 

                Gendibal watched as the years passed and as the black and red hairlines made an almost hypnotic interlacing pattern. The pattern meant nothing in itself, of course. What counted were the symbols of which it was composed.

 

                Here and there a bright-blue rivulet made its appearance, bellying out; branching, and becoming prominent, then falling in upon itself and fading into the black or red.

 

                The First Speaker said, “Deviation Blue,” and the feeling of distaste, originating in each, filled the space between them. “We catch it over and over, and we’ll be coming to the Century of Deviations eventually.”

 

                They did. One could tell precisely when the shattering phonemenon of the Mule momentarily filled the Galaxy, as the Prime Radiant suddenly grew thick with branching rivulets of blue--more starting than could be closed down--until the room itself seemed to turn blue as the lines thickened and marked the wall with brighter and brighter pollution. (It was the only word.)

 

                It reached its peak and then faded, thinned, and came together for a long century before it trickled to its end at last. When it was gone, and when the Plan had returned to black and red, it was clear that Preem Palver’s hand had been there.

 

                Onward, onward--

 

                “That’s the present,” said the First Speaker comfortably.

 

                Onward, onward--

 

                Then a narrowing into a veritable knot of close-knit black with little red in it.

 

                “That’s the establishment of the Second Empire,” said the First Speaker.

 

                He shut off the Prime Radiant and the room was bathed in ordinary light.

 

                Gendibal said, “That was an emotional experience.”

 

                “Yes,” smiled the First Speaker, “and you are careful not to identify the emotion, as far as you can manage to fail to identify it. It doesn’t matter. Let me make the points I wish to make.

 

                “You will notice, first, the all-but-complete absence of Deviation Blue after the time of Preem Palver--over the last twelve decades, in other words. You will notice that there are no reasonable probabilities of Deviations above the fifth-class over the next five centuries. You will notice, too, that we have begun extending the refinements of psychohistory beyond the establishment of the Second Empire. As you undoubtedly know, Hari Seldon--although a transcendent genius--is not, and could not, be all-knowing. We have improved on him. We know more about psychohistory than he could possibly have known.

 

                “Seldon ended his calculations with the Second Empire and we have continued beyond it. Indeed, if I may say so without offense, the new Hyper-Plan that goes past the establishment of the Second Empire is very largely my doing and has earned me my present post.

 

                “I tell you all this so that you can spare me unnecessary talk. With all this, how do you manage to conclude that the Seldon Plan is meaningless? It is without flaw. The mere fact that it survived the Century of Deviations--with all due respect to Palver’s genius--is the best evidence we have that it is without flaw. Where is its weakness, young man, that you should brand the Plan as meaningless?”

 

                Gendibal stood stiffly upright. “You are right, First Speaker. The Seldon Plan has no flaw.”

 

                “You withdraw your remark, then?”

 

                “No, First Speaker. Its lack of flaw is its flaw. Its flawlessness is fatal!”

 

  

 

 3.

 

  

 

 The First Speaker regarded Gendibal with equanimity. He had learned to control his expressions and it amused him to watch Gendibal’s ineptness in this respect. At every exchange, the young man did his best to hide his feelings, but each time, he exposed them completely.

 

                Shandess studied him dispassionately. He was a thin young man, not much above the middle height, with thin lips and bony, restless hands. He had dark, humorless eyes that tended to smolder.

 

                He would be, the First Speaker knew, a hard person to talk out of his convictions.

 

                “You speak in paradoxes, Speaker,” he said.

 

                “Itsounds like a paradox, First Speaker, because there is so much about Seldon’s Plan that we take for granted and accept in so unquestioning a manner.”

 

                “And what is it you question, then?”

 

                “The Plan’s very basis. We all know that the Plan will not work if its nature--or even its existence--is known to too many of those whose behavior it is designed to predict.”

 

                “I believe Hari Seldon understood that. I even believe he made it one of his two fundamental axioms of psychohistory.”

 

                “He did not anticipate the Mule, First Speaker, and therefore he could not anticipate the extent to which the Second Foundation would become an obsession with the people of the First Foundation, once they had been shown its importance by the Mule.”

 

                “Hari Seldon--” and for one moment, the First Speaker shuddered and fell silent.

 

                Hari Seldon’s physical appearance was known to all the members of the Second Foundation. Reproductions of him in two and in three dimensions, photographic and holographic, in bas-relief and in the round, sitting and standing, were ubiquitous. They all represented him in the last few years of his life. All were of an old and benign man, face wrinkled with the wisdom of the aged, symbolizing the quintessence of well-ripened genius.

 

                But the First Speaker now recalled seeing a photograph reputed to be Seldon as a young man. The photograph was neglected, since the thought of a young Seldon was almost a contradiction in terms. Yet Shandess had seen it, and the thought had suddenly come to him that Stor Gendibal looked remarkably like the young Seldon.

 

                Ridiculous? It was the sort of superstition that afflicted everyone, now and then, however rational they might be. He was deceived by a fugitive similarity. If he had the photograph before him, he would see at once that the similarity was an illusion. Yet why should that silly thought have occurred to himnow ?

 

                He recovered. It had been a momentary quaver--a transient derailment of thought--too brief to be noticed by anyone but a Speaker. Gendibal might interpret it as he pleased.

 

                “Hari Seldon,” he said very firmly the second time, “knew well that there were an infinite number of possibilities he could not foresee, and it was for that reason that he set up the Second Foundation. We did not foresee the Mule either, but tie recognized him once he was upon us and we stopped him. We did not foresee the subsequent obsession of the First Foundation with ourselves, but we saw it when it came and we stopped it. What is it about this that you can possibly find fault with?”

 

                “For one thing,” said Gendibal, “the obsession of the First Foundation with us is not yet over.”

 

                There was a distinct ebb in the deference with which Gendibal had been speaking. He had noted the quaver in the First Speaker’s voice (Shandess decided) and had interpreted it as uncertainty. That had to be countered.

 

                The First Speaker said briskly, “Let me anticipate. There would be people on the First Foundation, who--comparing the hectic difficulties of the first nearly four centuries of existence with the placidity of the last twelve decades--will come to the conclusion that this cannot be unless the Second Foundation is taking good care of the Plan--and, of course, they will be right in so concluding. They will decide that the Second Foundation may not have been destroyed after all--and, of course, they will be right in so deciding. In fact, we’ve received reports that there is a young man on the First Foundation’s capital world of Terminus, an official of their government, who is quite convinced of all this. -I forget his name--”

 

                “Golan Trevize,” said Gendibal softly. “It was I who first noted the matter in the reports, and it was I who directed the matter to your office.”

 

                “Oh?” said the First Speaker with exaggerated politeness. “And how did your attention come to be focused on him?”

 

                “One of our agents on Terminus sent in a tedious report on the newly elected members of their Council--a perfectly routine matter usually sent to and ignored by all Speakers. This one caught my eye because of the nature of the description of one new Councilman, Golan Trevize. From the description, he seemed unusually self-assured and combative.”

 

                “You recognized a kindred spirit, did you?”

 

                “Not at all,” said Gendibal, stiffly. “He seemed a reckless person who enjoyed doing ridiculous things, a description which does not apply to me. In any case, I directed an in-depth study. It did not take long for me to decide that he would have made good material for us if he had been recruited at an early age.”

 

                “Perhaps,” said the First Speaker, “but you know that we do not recruit on Terminus.”

 

                “I know that well. In any case, even without our training, he has an unusual intuition. It is, of course, thoroughly undisciplined. I was, therefore. not particularly surprised that he had grasped the fact that the Second Foundation still exists. I felt it important enough, however, to direct a memo on the matter to your office.”

 

                “And I take it from your manner that there is a new development?”

 

                “Having grasped the fact that we still exist, thanks to his highly developed intuitive abilities, he then used it in a characteristically undisciplined fashion and has, as a result, been exiled from Terminus.”

 

                The First Speaker lifted his eyebrows. “You stop suddenly. You want me to interpret the significance. Without using my computer, let me mentally apply a rough approximation of Seldon’s equations and guess that a shrewd Mayor, capable of suspecting that the Second Foundation exists, prefers not to have an undisciplined individual shout it to the Galaxy and thus alert said Second Foundation to the danger. I take it Branno the Bronze decided that Terminus is safer with Trevize off the planet.”

 

                “She might have imprisoned Trevize or had him quietly assassinated.”

 

                “The equations are not reliable when applied to individuals, as you well know. They deal only with humanity in mass. Individual behavior is therefore unpredictable and it is possible to assume that the Mayor is a humane individual who feels imprisonment, let alone assassination, is unmerciful.”

 

                Gendibal said nothing for a while. It was an eloquent nothing, and he maintained it just long enough for the First Speaker to grow uncertain of himself but not so long as to induce a defensive anger.

 

                He timed it to the second and then he said, “That is not my interpretation. I believe that Trevize, at this moment, represents the cutting edge of the greatest threat to the Second Foundation in its history--a greater danger even than the Mule!”

 

  

 

 4.

 

  

 

 Gendibal was satisfied. The force of the statement had worked well. The First Speaker had not expected it and was caught off-balance. From this moment, the whip hard was Gendibal’s. If he had any doubt of that at all, it vanished with Shandess’s next remark.

 

                “Does this have anything to do with your contention that Seldon’s Plan is meaningless?”

 

                Gendibal gambled on complete certainty, driving in with a didacticism that would not allow the First Speaker to recover. He said, “First Speaker, it is an article of faith that it was Preem Palver who restored the Plan to its course after the wild aberrance of the Century of Deviations. Study the Prime Radiant and you will see that the Deviations did not disappear till two decades after Palver’s death and that not one Deviation has appeared since. The credit might rest with the First Speakers since Palver, but that is improbable.”

 

                “Improbable? Granted none of us have been Palvers, but--why improbable?”

 

                “Will you allow me to demonstrate, First Speaker? Using the mathematics of psychohistory, I can clearly show that the chances of total disappearance of Deviation are too microscopically small to have taken place through anything the Second Foundation can do. You need not allow me if you lack the time or the desire for the demonstration, which will take half an hour of close attention. I can, as an alternative, call for a full meeting of the Speaker’s Table and demonstrate it there. But that would mean a loss of time for me and unnecessary controversy.”

 

                “Yes, and a possible loss of face for me. --Demonstrate the matter to me now. But a word of warning.” The First Speaker was making a heroic effort to recover. “If what you show me is worthless, I will not forget that.”

 

                “If it proves worthless,” said Gendibal with an effortless pride that overrode the other, “you will have my resignation on the spot.”

 

                It took, actually, considerably more than half an hour, for the First Speaker questioned the mathematics with near-savage intensity.

 

                Gendibal made up some of the time by his smooth use of his MicroRadiant. The device--which could locate any portion of the vast Plan holographically and with required n either wall nor desk sized console--had come into use only a decade ago and the First Speaker had never learned the knack of handling it. Gendibal was aware of that. The First Speaker knew that he was.

 

                Gendibal hooked it over his right thumb and manipulated it with his four fingers, using his hand deliberately as though it were a musical instrument. (Indeed, he had written a small paper on the analogies. )

 

                The equations Gendibal produced (and found with sure ease) moved back and forth snakily to accompany his commentary. He could obtain definitions, if necessary; set up axioms; and produce graphics, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional (to say nothing of projections of multidimensional relationships).

 

                Gendibal’s commentary was clear and incisive and the First Speaker abandoned the game. He was won over and said, “I do not recall having seen an analysis of this nature. Whose work is it?”

 

                “First Speaker, it is my own. I have published the basic mathematics involved.”

 

                “Very clever, Speaker Gendibal. Something like this will put you in line for the First Speakership, should I die--or retire.”

 

                “I have given that matter no thought, First Speaker--but since there’s no chance of your believing that, I withdraw the comment. Ihave given it thought and I hope Iwill be First Speaker, since whoever succeeds to the postmust follow a procedure that only I see clearly.”

 

                “Yes,” said the First Speaker, “inappropriate modesty can be very dangerous. What procedure? Perhaps the present First Speaker may follow it, too. If I am too old to have made the creative leap you have, I am not so old that I cannot follow your direction.”

 

                It was a graceful surrender and Gendibal’s heart warned, rather unexpectedly, toward the older man, even as he realized that this was precisely the First Speaker’s intention.

 

                “Thank you, First Speaker, for I will need your help badly. I cannot expect to sway the Table without your enlightened leadership.” (Grace for grace.) “I assume, then, that you have already seen from what I have demonstrated that it is impossible for the Century of Deviations to have been corrected under our policies or for all Deviations to have ceased since then.”

 

                “This is clear to me,” said the First Speaker. “If your mathematics is correct, then in order for the Plan to have recovered as it did and to work as perfectly as it seems to be working, it would be necessary for us to be able to predict the reactions of small groups of people--even of individuals--with some degree of assurance.”

 

                “Quite so. Since the mathematics of psychohistory does not allow this, the Deviations should not have vanished and, even more so, should not have remained absent. You see, then, what I meant when I said earlier that the flaw in the Seldon Plan was its flawlessness.”

 

                The First Speaker said, “Either the Seldon Plan does possess Deviations, then, or there is something wrong in your mathematics. Since I must admit that the Seldon Plan hasnot shown Deviations in a century and more, it follows that thereis something wrong with your mathematics--except that I detected no fallacies or missteps.”

 

                “You do wrong,” said Gendibal, “to exclude a third alternative. It is quite possible for the Seldon Plan to possess no Deviations and yet for there to be nothing wrong in my mathematics when it predicts that to be impossible.”

 

                “I fail to see the third alternative.”

 

                “Suppose the Seldon Plan is being controlled by means of a psychohistorical method so advanced that the reactions of small groups of people--even perhaps of individual persons--canbe predicted, a method that we of the Second Foundation do not possess. Then, andonly then, my mathematics would predict that the Seldon Plan should indeed experience no Deviations?”

 

                For a while (by Second Foundation standards) the First Speaker made no response. He said, “There is no such advanced psychohistorical method that is known to me or, I am certain from your manner, to you. If you and I know of none, the chance that any other Speaker, or any group of Speakers, has developed such a micropsychohistory--if I may call it that--and has kept it secret from the rest of the Table is infinitesimally small. Don’t you agree?”

 

                “I agree.”

 

                “Then either your analysis is wrong or else micropsychohistory is in the hands of some group outside the Second Foundation.”

 

                “Exactly, First Speaker, the latter alternative must be correct.”

 

                “Can you demonstrate the truth of such a statement?”

 

                “I cannot, in any formal way; but consider-- Has there not already been a person who could affect the Seldon Plan by dealing with individual people?”

 

                “I presume you are referring to the Mule.”

 

                “Yes, certainly.”

 

                “The Mule could only disrupt. The problem here is that the Seldon Plan is working too well, considerably closer to perfection than your mathematics would allow. You would need an Anti-Mule--someone who is as capable of overriding the Plan as the Mule was, but who acts for the opposite motive--overriding not to disrupt but to perfect.”

 

                “Exactly, First Speaker. I wish I had thought of that expression. What was the Mule? A mutant. But where did he come from? How did he come to be? No one really knows. Might there not be more?”

 

                “Apparently not. The one thing that is best known about the Mule is that he was sterile. Hence his name. Or do you think that is a myth?”

 

                “I am not referring to descendants of the Mule. Might it not be that the Mule was an aberrant member of what is--or has now become--a sizable group of people with Mulish powers who--for some reason of their own--are not disrupting the Seldon Plan but supporting it?”

 

                “Why in the Galaxy should they support it?”

 

                “Why dowe support it? We plan a Second Empire in which we --or, rather, our intellectual descendants--will be the decision makers. If, some other group is supporting the Plan even more efficiently than we are, they cannot be planning to leave the decision-making to us.They will make the decisions--but to what end? Ought we not try to find out what kind of a Second Empire they are sweeping us into?”

 

                “And how do you propose to find out?”

 

                “Well, why has the Mayor of Terminus exiled Golan Trevize? By doing so, she allows a possibly dangerous person to move freely about the Galaxy. That she does it out of motives of humanity, I cannot believe. Historically the rulers of the First Foundation have always acted realistically, which means, usually, without regard for ‘morality.’ One of their heroes--Salvor Hardin--counseled against morality, in fact. No, I think the Mayor acted under compulsion from agents of the Anti-Mules, to use your phrase. I think Trevize has been recruited by them and I think he is the spearhead of danger to us. Deadly danger.”

 

                And the First Speaker said, “By Seldon, you may be right. But how will we ever convince the Table of this?”

 

                “First Speaker, you underestimate your eminence.”

 

  

 

 6. EARTH

 

  

 

 1.

 

  

 

       TREVIZE WAS HOT AND ANNOYED. HE AND PELORAT WERE SITTING IN the small dining area, having just completed their midday meal.

 

                Pelorat said, “We’ve only been in space two days and I find myself quite comfortable, although I miss fresh air, nature, and all that. Strange! Never seemed to notice all that sort of thing when it was all round me. Still between my wafer and that remarkable computer of yours, I have my entire library with me--or all that matters, at any rate. And I don’t feel the least bit frightened of being out in space now. Astonishing!”

 

                Trevize made a noncommittal sound. His eyes were inwardly focused.

 

                Pelorat said gently, “I don’t mean to intrude, Golan, but I don’t really think you’re listening. Not that I’m a particularly interesting person always been a hit of a bore, you know. Still, you seem preoccupied in another way. --Are we in trouble? Needn’t be afraid to tell me, you know. Not much I could do, I suppose, but I won’t go into panic, dear fellow.”

 

                “In trouble?” Trevize seemed to come to his senses, frowning slightly.

 

                “I mean the ship. It’s a new model, so I suppose there could be something wrong:” Pelorat allowed himself a small, uncertain smile.

 

                Trevize shook his head vigorously. “Stupid of me to leave you in such uncertainty, Janov. There’s nothing wrong at all with the ship. It’s working perfectly. It’s just that I’ve been looking for a hyper-relay.”

 

                “Ah, I see. --Except that I don’t. What is a hyper-relay?”

 

                “Well, let me explain, Janov. I am in communication with Terminus. At least, I can be anytime I wish and Terminus can, in reverse, be in communication with us. They know the ship’s location, having observed its trajectory. Even if they had not, they could locate us by scanning near-space for mass, which would warn them of the presence of a ship or, possibly, a meteoroid. But they could further detect an energy pattern, which would not only distinguish a ship from a meteoroid but would identify a particular ship, for no two ships make use of energy in quite the same way. In some way, our pattern remains characteristic, no matter what appliances or instruments we turn on and off. The ship may be unknown, of course, but if it is a ship whose energy pattern is on record in Terminus--as ours is--it can be identified as soon as detected:’

 

                Pelorat said, “It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”

 

                “You may be right. Sooner or later, however, we must move through hyperspace or we will be condemned to remain within a parsec or two of Terminus for the rest of our lives. We will then be unable to engage in interstellar travel to any but the slightest degree. In passing through hyperspace, on the other hand, we undergo a discontinuity in ordinary space. We pass from here to there--and I mean across a gap of hundreds of parsecs sometimes--in an instant of experienced time. We are suddenly enormously far away in a direction that is very difficult to predict and, in a practical sense, we can no longer be detected.”

 

                “I see that. Yes.”

 

                “Unless, of course, they have planted a hyper-relay on board. A hyperrelay sends out a signal through hyperspace--a signal characteristic of this ship--and the authorities on Terminus would know where we are at all times. That answers your question, you see. There would be nowhere in the Galaxy we could hide and no combination of jumps through hyperspace would make it possible for us to evade their instruments:”

 

                “But, Golan,” bald Pelorat softly, “don’t we want Foundation protection?”

 

                “Yes, Janov, but only when we ask for it. You said the advance of civilization meant the continuing restriction of privacy. --Well. I don’t want to be that advanced. I want freedom to move undetected as I wish--unless and until I want protection So I would feel better, a great deal better, if thereweren’t a hyper-relay on board.”

 

                “Have you found one, Golan?”

 

                “No, I have not. If I had, I might be able to render it inoperative somehow.”

 

                “Would you know one if you saw it?”

 

                “That’s one of the difficulties. I might not be able to recognize it. I know what a hyper-relay looks like generally and I know ways of testing a suspicious object--but this is a late-model ship, designed for special tasks. A hyper-relay may have been incorporated into its design in such a way as to show no signs of its presence.”

 

                “On the other hand, maybe there is no hyper-relay present and that’s why you haven’t found it.”

 

                “I don’t dare assume that and I don’t like the thought of making a jump until I know.”

 

                Pelorat looked enlightened. “That’s why we’ve just been drifting through space. I’ve been wondering why we haven’t jumped. I’ve heard about jumps, you know. Been a little nervous about it, actually--been wandering when you’d order me to strap myself in or take a pill or something like that.”

 

                Trevize managed a smile. “No need for apprehension. These aren’t ancient times. On a ship like this, you just leave it all to the computer. You give it your instructions and it does the rest. You won’t know that anything has happened at all, except that the view of space will suddenly change. If you’ve ever seen a slide show, you’ll know what happens when one slide is suddenly projected in place of another. Well, that’s what the jump will seem like.”

 

                “Dear me. One won’t feel anything? Odd! I find that somewhat disappointing.”

 

                “I’venever felt anything and the ships I’ve been in haven’t been as advanced as this baby of ours. --but it’s not because of the hyperrelay that we haven’t jumped. We have to get a bit further away from Terminus--and from the sun, too. The farther we are from any massive abject, the easier to control the jump, to make re-emergence into space at exactly desired co-ordinates. In an emergency, you might risk a jump when you’re only two hundred kilometers off she surface of a planet and just trust to luck that you’ll end up safely. Since there is much mete safe than unsafe volume in the Galaxy, you can reasonably count on safety. Still, there’s always the possibility that random factors will cause you to re-emerge within a few million kilometers of a large star or in the Galactic core--and you will find yourself fried before you can blink. The further away you are from mass, the smaller those factors and the less likely it is that anything untoward will happen.”

 

                “In that case, I commend your caution. We’re not in a tearing hurry,”

 

                “Exactly. --Especially since I would dearly love to find the hyperrelay before I make a move. --or find a way of convincing myself there is no hyper-relay.”

 

                Trevize seemed to drift off again into his private concentration and Pelorat said, raising his voice a little to surmount the preoccupation barrier, “How much longer do we have?”

 

                “What?”

 

                “I mean, when would you make the jump if you had no concerns over the hyper-relay, my dear chap?”

 

                “At our present speed and trajectory, I should say on our fourth day out. I’ll work out the proper time on the computer.”

 

                “Well, then, you still have two days for your search. May I make a suggestion?”

 

                “Go ahead.”

 

                “I have always found in my own work--quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize--that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind--not laboring under the weight of concentrated thought--may solve the problem for you.”

 

                Trevize looked momentarily annoyed and then laughed. “Well, why not? --Tell me, Professor, what got you interested in Earth? What brought up this odd notion of a particular planet from which we all started?”

 

                “Ah!” Pelorat nodded his head reminiscently. “That’s going back a while. Over thirty years. I planned to be a biologist when I was going to college. I was particularly interested in the variation of species on different worlds. The variation, as you know--well, maybe you don’t know, so you won’t mind if I tell you--is very small. All forms of life throughout the Galaxy--at least all that we have yet encountered--share a water-based protein/nucleic acid chemistry.”

 

                Trevize said, “I went to military college, which emphasized nucleonics and gravities, but I’m not exactly a narrow specialist. I know a bit about the chemical basis of life. We were taught that water, proteins, and nucleic acids are the only possible basis for life.”

 

                “That, I think, is an unwarranted conclusion. It is safer to say that no other form of life has yet been found--or, at any rate, been recognized--and let it go at that. What is more surprising is that indigenous species--that is, species found on only a single planet and no other--are few in number. Most of the species that exist, includingHomo sapiens in particular, are distributed through all or most of the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy and are closely related biochemically, physiologically, and morphologically. The indigenous species, on the other hand, are widely separated in characteristics from both the widespread forms and from each other.”

 

                “Well, what of that?”

 

                “The conclusion is that one world in the Galaxy--oneworld--is different from the rest. Tens of millions of worlds in the Galaxy--no one knows exactly how many--have developed life. It was simple life, sparse life, feeble life--not very variegated, not easily maintained, and not easily spread. One world,one world alone, developed life in millions of species--easily millions--some of it very specialized, highly developed, very prone to multiplication and to spreading, and includingus . We were intelligent enough to form a civilization, to develop hyperspatial flight, and to colonize the Galaxy--and, in spreading through the Galaxy, we took many other forms of lifeforms related to each other and to ourselves--along with us.”

 

                “If you stop to think of it,” said Trevize rather indifferently, “I suppose that stands to reason. I mean, here we are in a human Galaxy. If we assume that it all started on some one world, then that one world would have to be different. But why not? The chances of life developing in that riotous fashion must be very slim indeed--perhaps one in a hundred million--so the chances are that it happened in one life-bearing world out of a hundred million. It had to be one.”

 

                “But what is it that made that particular one world so different from the others?” said Pelorat excitedly. “What were the conditions that made it unique?”

 

                “Merely chance, perhaps. After all, human beings and the lifeforms they brought with them now exist on tens of millions of planets, all of which can support life, so all those worlds must be good enough.”

 

                “No! Once the human species had evolved, once it had developed a technology, once it had toughened itself in the hard struggle for survival, it could then adapt to life on any world that is in the least hospitable--on Terminus, for instance. But can you imagine intelligent life havingdeveloped on Terminus? When Terminus was first occupied by human beings in the days of the EncycIopedists, the highest form of plant life it produced was a mosslike growth on rocks; the highest forms of animal life were small coral-like growths in the ocean and insectlike flying organisms on land. We just about wiped them out and stocked sea and land with fish and rabbits and goats and grass and grain and trees and so on. We have nothing left of the indigenous life, except for what exists in zoos and aquaria.”

 

                “Hmm,” said Trevize.

 

                Pelorat stared at him for a full minute, then sighed and said, “You don’t really care, do you? Remarkable! I find no one who does, somehow. My fault, I think. I cannot make it interesting, even though it interestsme so much.”

 

                Trevize said, “It’s interesting. It is. But--but--so what?”

 

                “It doesn’t strike you that it might be interesting scientifically to study a world that gave rise to the only really flourishing indigenous ecological balance the Galaxy has ever seen?”

 

                “Maybe, if you’re a biologist. --I’m not, you see. You must forgive me.”

 

                “Of course, dear fellow. It’s just that I never found any biologists who were interested, either. I told you I was a biology major. I took it up with my professor andhe wasn’t interested. He told me to turn to some practical problem. That so disgusted me I took up history instead--which had been rather a hobby of mine from my teenage years, in any case--and tackled the ‘Origin Question’ from that angle.”

 

                Trevize said, “But at least it has given you a lifework, so you must be pleased that your professor was so unenlightened.”

 

                “Yes, I suppose one might look at it that way. And the lifework is an interesting one, of which I have never tired. --but I do wish it interestedyou . I hate this feeling of forever talking to myself.”

 

                Trevize leaned his bead back and laughed heartily.

 

                Pelorat’s quiet face took or: a trace of hurt. “Why are you laughing at me?”

 

                “Not you, Janov,” said Trevize. “I was laughing at my own stupidity, Where you’re concerned, I am completely grateful. You were perfectly right, you know,”

 

                “To take up the importance of human origins?”

 

                “No, no. --Well, yes, that too. --but 1 meant you were right to tell me to stop consciously thinking of my problem and to turn my mind elsewhere. It worked. When you were talking about the manner in which life evolved, it finally occurred to me that I knew how to find that hyperrelay--if it existed.”

 

                “Oh, that!”

 

                “Yes, that! That’smy monomania at the moment. I’ve been looking for that hyper-relay as though I were on my old scow of a training ship, studying every part of the ship by eye, looking for something that stood out from the rest. I had forgotten that this ship is a developed product of thousands of years of technological evolution. Don’t you see?”

 

                “No, Golan.”

 

                “We have a computer aboard. How could I have forgotten?”

 

                He waved his hand and passed into his own room, urging Pelorat along with him.

 

                “I need only try to communicate,” he said, placing his hands onto the computer contact.

 

                It was a matter of trying to reach Terminus, which was now some thousands of kilometers behind.

 

                Reach! Speak! It was as though nerve endings sprouted and extended, reaching outward with bewildering speed--the speed of light, of course--to make contact.

 

                Trevize felt himself touching--well, not quite touching, but sensing--well, not quite sensing, but--it didn’t matter, for there wasn’t a word for it.

 

                He wasaware of Terminus within reach and, although the distance between himself and it was lengthening by some twenty kilometers per second, contact persisted as though planet and ship were motionless and separated by a few meters.

 

                He said nothing. He clamped shut. He was merely testing theprinciple of communication; he was not actively communicating.