7

Jaim Twer fidgeted and shuffled his feet. He said, “What’s twisting your face?”

Hober Mallow lifted out of his brooding. “Is my face twisted? It’s not meant so.”

“Something must have happened yesterday,—I mean, besides that feast.” With sudden conviction, “Mallow, there’s trouble, isn’t there?”

“Trouble? No. Quite the opposite. In fact, I’m in the position of throwing my full weight against a door and finding it ajar at the time. We’re getting into this steel foundry too easily.”

“You suspect a trap?”

“Oh, for Seldon’s sake, don’t be melodramatic.” Mallow swallowed his impatience and added conversationally, “It’s just that the easy entrance means there will be nothing to see.”

“Nuclear power, huh?” Twer ruminated. “I’ll tell you. There’s just about no evidence of any nuclear power economy here in Korell. And it would be pretty hard to mask all signs of the widespread effects a fundamental technology such as nucleics would have on everything.”

“Not if it was just starting up, Twer, and being applied to a war economy. You’d find it in the shipyards and the steel foundries only.”

“So if we don’t find it, then—”

“Then they haven’t got it—or they’re not showing it. Toss a coin or take a guess.”

Twer shook his head. “I wish I’d been with you yesterday.”

“I wish you had, too,” said Mallow stonily. “I have no objection to moral support. Unfortunately, it was the Commdor who set the terms of the meeting, and not myself. And what is coming now would seem to be the royal ground-car to escort us to the foundry. Have you got the gadgets?”

“All of them.”