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+THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY 
+ISAAC ASIMOV 
+
+
+Contents 
+
+Introduction 
+
+Foundation 
+
+Foundation and Empire 
+
+Second Foundation 
+
+About the author 
+
+
+THE STORY BEHIND THE "FOUNDATION" 
+
+By ISAAC ASIMOV 
+
+
+The date was August 1, 1941. World War II had been raging for two years. France had fallen, the Battle 
+of Britain had been fought, and the Soviet Union had just been invaded by Nazi Germany. The bombing 
+of Pearl Harbor was four months in the future. 
+
+But on that day, with Europe in flames, and the evil shadow of Adolf Hitler apparently falling over all 
+the world, what was chiefly on my mind was a meeting toward which I was hastening. 
+
+I was 2 1 years old, a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University, and I had been writing 
+science fiction professionally for three years. In that time, I had sold five stories to John Campbell, editor 
+of Astounding, and the fifth story, "Nightfall," was about to appear in the September 1941 issue of the 
+magazine. I had an appointment to see Mr. Campbell to tell him the plot of a new story I was planning to 
+write, and the catch was that I had no plot in mind, not the trace of one. 
+
+I therefore tried a device I sometimes use. I opened a book at random and set up free association, 
+beginning with whatever I first saw. The book I had with me was a collection of the Gilbert and Sullivan 
+plays. I happened to open it to the picture of the Fairy Queen of lolanthe throwing herself at the feet of 
+Private Willis. I thought of soldiers, of military empires, of the Roman Empire - of a Galactic Empire - 
+aha! 
+
+Why shouldn't I write of the fall of the Galactic Empire and of the return of feudalism, written from the 
+viewpoint of someone in the secure days of the Second Galactic Empire? After all, I had read Gibbon's 
+
+
+Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire not once, but twice. 
+
+I was bubbling over by the time I got to Campbell's, and my enthusiasm must have been catching for 
+Campbell blazed up as I had never seen him do. In the course of an hour we built up the notion of a vast 
+series of connected stories that were to deal in intricate detail with the thousand-year period between the 
+First and Second Galactic Empires. This was to be illuminated by the science of psychohistory, which 
+Campbell and I thrashed out between us. 
+
+On August 11, 1941, therefore, I began the story of that interregnum and called it "Foundation." In it, I 
+described how the psychohistorian, Hari Seldon, established a pair of Foundations at opposite ends of the 
+Universe under such circumstances as to make sure that the forces of history would bring about the 
+second Empire after one thousand years instead of the thirty thousand that would be required otherwise. 
+
+The story was submitted on September 8 and, to make sure that Campbell really meant what he said 
+about a series, I ended "Foundation" on a cliff-hanger. Thus, it seemed to me, he would b e forced to buy 
+a second story. 
+
+However, when I started the second story (on October 24), I found that I had outsmarted myself. I 
+quickly wrote myself into an impasse, and the Foundation series would have died an ignominious death 
+had I not had a conversation with Fred Pohl on November 2 (on the Brooklyn Bridge, as it happened). I 
+don't remember what Fred actually said, but, whatever it was, it pulled me out of the hole. 
+
+"Foundation" appeared in the May 1942 issue of As founding and the succeeding story, "Bridle and 
+Saddle," in the June 1942 issue. 
+
+After that there was only the routine trouble of writing the stories. Through the remainder of the decade, 
+John Campbell kept my nose to the grindstone and made sure he got additional Foundation stories. 
+
+"The Big and the Little" was in the August 1944 Astounding, "The Wedge" in the October 1944 issue, 
+and "Dead Hand" in the April 1945 issue. (These stories were written while I was working at the Navy 
+Yard in Philadelphia.) 
+
+On January 26, 1945, 1 began "The Mule," my personal favorite among the Foundation stories, and the 
+longest yet, for it was 50,000 words. It was printed as a two-part serial (the very first serial I was ever 
+responsible for) in the November and December 1945 issues. By the time the second part appeared I was 
+in the army. 
+
+After I got out of the army, I wrote "Now You See It-" which appeared in the January 1948 issue. By this 
+time, though, I had grown tired of the Foundation stories so I tried to end them by setting up, and solving, 
+the mystery of the location of the Second Foundation. Campbell would have none of that, however. He 
+forced me to change the ending, and made me promise I would do one more Foundation story. 
+
+Well, Campbell was the kind of editor who could not be denied, so I wrote one more Foundation story, 
+vowing to myself that it would be the last. I called it "-And Now You Don't," and it appeared as a 
+three-part serial in the November 1949, December 1949, and January 1950 issues of Astounding. 
+
+By then, I was on the biochemistry faculty of Boston University School of Medicine, my first book had 
+just been published, and I was determined to move on to new things. I had spent eight years on the 
+Foundation, written nine stories with a total of about 220,000 words. My total earnings for the series 
+came to $3,641 and that seemed enough. The Foundation was over and done with, as far as I was 
+
+
+
+concerned. 
+
+
+In 1950, however, hardcover science fiction was just coming into existence. I had no objection to earning 
+a little more money by having the Foundation series reprinted in book form. I offered the series to 
+Doubleday (which had already published a science-fiction novel by me, and which had contracted for 
+another) and to Little-Brown, but both rejected it. In that year, though, a small publishing firm, Gnome 
+Press, was beginning to be active, and it was prepared to do the Foundation series as three books. 
+
+The publisher of Gnome felt, however, that the series began too abruptly. He persuaded me to write a 
+small Foundation story, one that would serve as an introductory section to the first book (so that the first 
+part of the Foundation series was the last written). 
+
+In 1951, the Gnome Press edition of Foundation was published, containing the introduction and the first 
+four stories of the series. In 1952, Foundation and Empire appeared, with the fifth and sixth stories; and 
+in 1953, Second Foundation appeared, with the seventh and eighth stories. The three books together 
+came to be called The Foundation Trilogy. 
+
+The mere fact of the existence of the Trilogy pleased me, but Gnome Press did not have the financial 
+clout or the publishing knowhow to get the books distributed properly, so that few copies were sold and 
+fewer still paid me royalties. (Nowadays, copies of first editions of those Gnome Press books sell at $50 
+a copy and up-but I still get no royalties from them.) 
+
+Ace Books did put out paperback editions of Foundation and of Foundation and Empire, but they 
+changed the titles, and used cut versions. Any money that was involved was paid to Gnome Press and I 
+didn't see much of that. In the first decade of the existence of The Foundation Trilogy it may have earned 
+something like $1500 total. 
+
+And yet there was some foreign interest. In early 1961, Timothy Seldes, who was then my editor at 
+Doubleday, told me that Doubleday had received a request for the Portuguese rights for the Foundation 
+series and, since they weren't Doubleday books, he was passing them on to me. I sighed and said, "The 
+heck with it, Tim. I don't get royalties on those books." 
+
+Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the books away from Gnome Press so that 
+Doubleday could publish them instead. He paid no attention to my loudly expressed fears that Doubleday 
+"would lose its shirt on them." In August 1961 an agreement was reached and the Foundation books 
+became Doubleday property. What’s more, Avon Books, which had published a paperback version of 
+Second Foundation, set about obtaining the rights to all three from Doubleday, and put out nice editions. 
+
+From that moment on, the Foundation books took off and began to earn increasing royalties. They have 
+sold well and steadily, both in hardcover and softcover, for two decades so far. Increasingly, the letters I 
+received from the readers spoke of them in high praise. They received more attention than all my other 
+books put together. 
+
+Doubleday also published an omnibus volume, The Foundation Trilogy, for its Science Fiction Book 
+Club. That omnibus volume has been continuously featured by the Book Club for over twenty years. 
+
+Matters reached a climax in 1966. The fans organizing the World Science Fiction Convention for that 
+year (to be held in Cleveland) decided to award a Hugo for the best all-time series, where the series, to 
+qualify, had to consist of at least three connected novels. It was the first time such a category had been 
+
+
+
+set up, nor has it been repeated since. The Foundation series was nominated, and I felt that was going to 
+have to be glory enough for me, since I was sure that Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" would win. 
+
+It didn't. The Foundation series won, and the Hugo I received for it has been sitting on my bookcase in 
+the livingroom ever since. 
+
+In among all this litany of success, both in money and in fame, there was one annoying side-effect. 
+Readers couldn't help but notice that the books of the Foundation series covered only three hundred-plus 
+years of the thousand-year hiatus between Empires. That meant the Foundation series "wasn't finished." I 
+got innumerable letters from readers who asked me to finish it, from others who demanded I finish it, and 
+still others who threatened dire vengeance if I didn't finish it. Worse yet, various editors at Doubleday 
+over the years have pointed out that it might be wise to finish it. 
+
+It was flattering, of course, but irritating as well. Years had passed, then decades. Back in the 1940s, I 
+had been in a Foundation- writing mood. Now I wasn't. Starting in the late 1950s, I had been in a more 
+and more nonfiction-writing mood. 
+
+That didn't mean I was writing no fiction at all. In the 1960s and 1970s, in fact, I wrote two 
+science-fiction novels and a mystery novel, to say nothing of well over a hundred short stories - but 
+about eighty percent of what I wrote was nonfiction. 
+
+One of the most indefatigable nags in the matter of finishing the Foundation series was my good friend, 
+the great science-fiction writer, Lester del Rey. He was constantly telling me I ought to finish the series 
+and was just as constantly suggesting plot devices. He even told Larry Ashmead, then my editor at 
+Doubleday, that if I refused to write more Foundation stories, he, Lester, would be willing to take on the 
+task. 
+
+When Ashmead mentioned this to me in 1973, 1 began another Foundation novel out of sheer 
+desperation. I called it "Lightning Rod" and managed to write fourteen pages before other tasks called me 
+away. The fourteen pages were put away and additional years passed. 
+
+In January 1977, Cathleen Jordan, then my editor at Doubleday, suggested I do "an important book - a 
+Foundation novel, perhaps." I said, "I'd rather do an autobiography," and I did - 640,000 words of it. 
+
+In January 1981, Doubleday apparently lost its temper. At least, Hugh O'Neill, then my editor there, said, 
+"Betty Prashker wants to see you," and marched me into her office. She was then one of the senior 
+editors, and a sweet and gentle person. 
+
+She wasted no time. "Isaac," she said, "you are going to write a novel for us and you are going to sign a 
+contract to that effect." 
+
+"Betty," I said, "I am already working on a big science book for Doubleday and I have to revise the 
+Biographical Encyclopedia for Doubleday and 
+
+"It can all wait," she said. "You are going to sign a contract to do a novel. What's more, we're going to 
+give you a $50,000 advance." 
+
+That was a stunner. I don't like large advances. They put me under too great an obligation. My average 
+advance is something like $3,000. Why not? It's all out of royalties. 
+
+
+
+I said, "That's way too much money, Betty." 
+
+"No, it isn't," she said. 
+
+"Doubleday will lose its shirt," I said. 
+
+"You keep telling us that all the time. It won't." 
+
+I said, desperately, "All right. Have the contract read that I don't get any money until I notify you in 
+writing that I have begun the novel." 
+
+"Are you crazy?" she said. "You'll never start if that clause is in the contract. You get $25,000 on signing 
+the contract, and $25,000 on delivering a completed manuscript." 
+
+"But suppose the novel is no good." 
+
+"Now you're being silly," she said, and she ended the conversation. 
+
+That night, Pat LoBrutto, the science-fiction editor at Doubleday called to express his pleasure. "And 
+remember," he said, "that when we say 'novel' we mean ’science-fiction novel,’ not anything else. And 
+when we say ’science-fiction novel,’ we mean 'Foundation novel' and not anything else." 
+
+On February 5, 1981, 1 signed the contract, and within the week, the Doubleday accounting system 
+cranked out the check for $25,000. 
+
+I moaned that I was not my own master anymore and Hugh O'Neill said, cheerfully, "That’s right, and 
+from now on, we're going to call every other week and say, ’Where’s the manuscript?’" (But they didn't. 
+They left me strictly alone, and never even asked for a progress report.) 
+
+Nearly four months passed while I took care of a vast number of things I had to do, but about the end of 
+May, I picked up my own copy of The Foundation Trilogy and began reading. 
+
+I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and while I remembered the general plot, I 
+did not remember the details. Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel I had to immerse myself 
+in the style and atmosphere of the series. 
+
+I read it with mounting uneasiness. I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All 
+three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No 
+action. No physical suspense. 
+
+What was all the fuss about, then? Why did everyone want more of that stuff? - To be sure, I couldn't 
+help but notice that I was turning the pages eagerly, and that I was upset when I finished the book, and 
+that I wanted more, but I was the author, for goodness' sake. You couldn't go by me. 
+
+I was on the edge of deciding it was all a terrible mistake and of insisting on giving back the money, 
+when (quite by accident, I swear) I came across some sentences by science-fiction writer and critic, 
+
+James Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, "Action and romance have little to do 
+with the success of the Trilogy - virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost 
+invisible - but the stories provide a detective- story fascination with the permutations and reversals of 
+ideas." 
+
+Oh, well, if what was needed were "permutations and reversals of ideas," then that I could supply. Panic 
+
+
+
+receded, and on June 10, 1981, 1 dug out the fourteen pages I had written more than eight years before 
+and reread them. They sounded good to me. I didn't remember where I had been headed back then, but I 
+had worked out what seemed to me to be a good ending now, and, starting page 15 on that day, I 
+proceeded to work toward the new ending. 
+
+I found, to my infinite relief, that I had no trouble getting back into a "Foundation-mood," and, fresh 
+from my rereading, I had Foundation history at my finger-tips. 
+
+There were differences, to be sure: 
+
+1) The original stories were written for a science-fiction magazine and were from 7,000 to 50,000 words 
+long, and no more. Consequently, each book in the trilogy had at least two stories and lacked unity. I 
+intended to make the new book a single story. 
+
+2) I had a particularly good chance for development since Hugh said, "Let the book find its own length, 
+Isaac. We don't mind a long book." So I planned on 140,000 words, which was nearly three times the 
+length of "The Mule," and this gave me plenty of elbow-room, and I could add all sorts of little touches. 
+
+3) The Foundation series had been written at a time when our knowledge of astronomy was primitive 
+compared with what it is today. I could take advantage of that and at least mention black holes, for 
+instance. I could also take advantage of electronic computers, which had not been invented until I was 
+half through with the series. 
+
+The novel progressed steadily, and on January 17, 1982, 1 began final copy. I brought the manuscript to 
+Hugh O'Neill in batches, and the poor fellow went half-crazy since he insisted on reading it in this 
+broken fashion. On March 25, 1982, 1 brought in the last bit, and the very next day got the second half of 
+the advance. 
+
+I had kept "Lightning Rod" as my working title all the way through, but Hugh finally said, "Is there any 
+way of putting 'Foundation' into the title, Isaac?" I suggested Foundations at Bay, therefore, and that may 
+be the title that will actually be used. * 
+
+You will have noticed that I have said nothing about the plot of the new Foundation novel. Well, 
+naturally. I would rather you buy and read the book. 
+
+And yet there is one thing I have to confess to you. I generally manage to tie up all the loose ends into 
+one neat little bow-knot at the end of my stories, no matter how complicated the plot might be. In this 
+case, however, I noticed that when I was all done, one glaring little item remained unresolved. 
+
+I am hoping no one else notices it because it clearly points the way to the continuation of the series. 
+
+It is even possible that I inadvertently gave this away for at the end of the novel, I wrote: "The End (for 
+now)." 
+
+I very much fear that if the novel proves successful, Doubleday will be at my throat again, as Campbell 
+used to be in the old days. And yet what can I do but hope that the novel is very successful indeed. What 
+a quandary ! 
+
+*Editor's note: The novel was published in October 1982 as Foundation's Edge. 
+
+
+
+ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
+
+
+Isaac Asimov was born in the Soviet Union to his great surprise. He moved quickly to correct the 
+situation. When his parents emigrated to the United States, Isaac (three years old at the time) stowed 
+away in their baggage. He has been an American citizen since the age of eight. 
+
+Brought up in Brooklyn, and educated in its public schools, he eventually found his way to Columbia 
+University and, over the protests of the school administration, managed to annex a series of degrees in 
+chemistry, up to and including a Ph.D. He then infiltrated Boston University and climbed the academic 
+ladder, ignoring all cries of outrage, until he found himself Professor of Biochemistry. 
+
+Meanwhile, at the age of nine, he found the love of his life (in the inanimate sense) when he discovered 
+his first science-fiction magazine. By the time he was eleven, he began to write stories, and at eighteen, 
+he actually worked up the nerve to submit one. It was rejected. After four long months of tribulation and 
+suffering, he sold his first story and, thereafter, he never looked back. 
+
+In 1941, when he was twenty-one years old, he wrote the classic short story "Nightfall" and his future 
+was assured. Shortly before that he had begun writing his robot stories, and shortly after that he had 
+begun his Foundation series. 
+
+What was left except quantity? At the present time, he has published over 260 books, distributed through 
+every major division of the Dewey system of library classification, and shows no signs of slowing up. He 
+remains as youthful, as lively, and as lovable as ever, and grows more handsome with each year. You can 
+be sure that this is so since he has written this little essay himself and his devotion to absolute objectivity 
+is notorious. 
+
+He is married to Janet Jeppson, psychiatrist and writer, has two children by a previous marriage, and 
+lives in New York City. 
+
+
+
+ejusir jyj ecows 
+
+
+ASIMOV 
+
+
+THE FOUNDATION NOVELS 
+
+
+FOUNDATION 
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUNDATION 
+ISAAC ASIMOV 
+
+
+Contents 
+
+Introduction 
+
+Part I The Psvchohistorians 
+
+Part II The Encyclopedists 
+
+Part III The Mayors 
+
+Part IV The Traders 
+Part V The Merchant Princes 
+
+
+THE STORY BEHIND THE "FOUNDATION" 
+
+By ISAAC ASIMOV 
+
+
+The date was August 1 , 1941 . World War II had been raging for two years. France had fallen, 
+the Battle of Britain had been fought, and the Soviet Union had just been invaded by Nazi 
+Germany. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was four months in the future. 
+
+But on that day, with Europe in flames, and the evil shadow of Adolf Hitler apparently falling 
+over all the world, what was chiefly on my mind was a meeting toward which I was hastening. 
+
+I was 21 years old, a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University, and I had been 
+writing science fiction professionally for three years. In that time, I had sold five stories to John 
+Campbell, editor of Astounding, and the fifth story, "Nightfall," was about to appear in the 
+September 1941 issue of the magazine. I had an appointment to see Mr. Campbell to tell him 
+the plot of a new story I was planning to write, and the catch was that I had no plot in mind, not 
+the trace of one. 
+
+I therefore tried a device I sometimes use. I opened a book at random and set up free 
+association, beginning with whatever I first saw. The book I had with me was a collection of the 
+Gilbert and Sullivan plays. I happened to open it to the picture of the Fairy Queen of lolanthe 
+throwing herself at the feet of Private Willis. I thought of soldiers, of military empires, of the 
+Roman Empire - of a Galactic Empire - aha! 
+
+
+Why shouldn't I write of the fall of the Galactic Empire and of the return of feudalism, written 
+from the viewpoint of someone in the secure days of the Second Galactic Empire? After all, I 
+had read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire not once, but twice. 
+
+I was bubbling over by the time I got to Campbell's, and my enthusiasm must have been 
+catching for Campbell blazed up as I had never seen him do. In the course of an hour we built 
+up the notion of a vast series of connected stories that were to deal in intricate detail with the 
+thousand-year period between the First and Second Galactic Empires. This was to be 
+illuminated by the science of psychohistory, which Campbell and I thrashed out between us. 
+
+On August 11,1 941 , therefore, I began the story of that interregnum and called it "Foundation." 
+In it, I described how the psychohistorian, Hari Seldon, established a pair of Foundations at 
+opposite ends of the Universe under such circumstances as to make sure that the forces of 
+history would bring about the second Empire after one thousand years instead of the thirty 
+thousand that would be required otherwise. 
+
+The story was submitted on September 8 and, to make sure that Campbell really meant what 
+he said about a series, I ended "Foundation" on a cliff-hanger. Thus, it seemed to me, he would 
+be forced to buy a second story. 
+
+Flowever, when I started the second story (on October 24), I found that I had outsmarted 
+myself. I quickly wrote myself into an impasse, and the Foundation series would have died an 
+ignominious death had I not had a conversation with Fred Pohl on November 2 (on the 
+Brooklyn Bridge, as it happened). I don't remember what Fred actually said, but, whatever it 
+was, it pulled me out of the hole. 
+
+"Foundation" appeared in the May 1942 issue of Astounding and the succeeding story, "Bridle 
+and Saddle," in the June 1942 issue. 
+
+After that there was only the routine trouble of writing the stories. Through the remainder of the 
+decade, John Campbell kept my nose to the grindstone and made sure he got additional 
+Foundation stories. 
+
+"The Big and the Little" was in the August 1944 Astounding, "The Wedge" in the October 1944 
+issue, and "Dead Fland" in the April 1945 issue. (These stories were written while I was working 
+at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia.) 
+
+On January 26, 1945, I began "The Mule," my personal favorite among the Foundation stories, 
+and the longest yet, for it was 50,000 words. It was printed as a two-part serial (the very first 
+serial I was ever responsible for) in the November and December 1945 issues. By the time the 
+second part appeared I was in the army. 
+
+After I got out of the army, I wrote "Now You See It-" which appeared in the January 1948 
+issue. By this time, though, I had grown tired of the Foundation stories so I tried to end them by 
+setting up, and solving, the mystery of the location of the Second Foundation. Campbell would 
+have none of that, however. Fie forced me to change the ending, and made me promise I would 
+do one more Foundation story. 
+
+Well, Campbell was the kind of editor who could not be denied, so I wrote one more Foundation 
+
+
+
+story, vowing to myself that it would be the last. I called it "-And Now You Don't," and it 
+appeared as a three-part serial in the November 1949, December 1949, and January 1950 
+issues of Astounding. 
+
+By then, I was on the biochemistry faculty of Boston University School of Medicine, my first 
+book had just been published, and I was determined to move on to new things. I had spent 
+eight years on the Foundation, written nine stories with a total of about 220,000 words. My total 
+earnings for the series came to $3,641 and that seemed enough. The Foundation was over and 
+done with, as far as I was concerned. 
+
+In 1950, however, hardcover science fiction was just coming into existence. I had no objection 
+to earning a little more money by having the Foundation series reprinted in book form. I offered 
+the series to Doubleday (which had already published a science-fiction novel by me, and which 
+had contracted for another) and to Little-Brown, but both rejected it. In that year, though, a 
+small publishing firm, Gnome Press, was beginning to be active, and it was prepared to do the 
+Foundation series as three books. 
+
+The publisher of Gnome felt, however, that the series began too abruptly. Fie persuaded me to 
+write a small Foundation story, one that would serve as an introductory section to the first book 
+(so that the first part of the Foundation series was the last written). 
+
+In 1951 , the Gnome Press edition of Foundation was published, containing the introduction and 
+the first four stories of the series. In 1 952, Foundation and Empire appeared, with the fifth and 
+sixth stories; and in 1953, Second Foundation appeared, with the seventh and eighth stories. 
+The three books together came to be called The Foundation Trilogy. 
+
+The mere fact of the existence of the Trilogy pleased me, but Gnome Press did not have the 
+financial clout or the publishing knowhow to get the books distributed properly, so that few 
+copies were sold and fewer still paid me royalties. (Nowadays, copies of first editions of those 
+Gnome Press books sell at $50 a copy and up-but I still get no royalties from them.) 
+
+Ace Books did put out paperback editions of Foundation and of Foundation and Empire, but 
+they changed the titles, and used cut versions. Any money that was involved was paid to 
+Gnome Press and I didn't see much of that. In the first decade of the existence of The 
+Foundation Trilogy it may have earned something like $1500 total. 
+
+And yet there was some foreign interest. In early 1961 , Timothy Seldes, who was then my 
+editor at Doubleday, told me that Doubleday had received a request for the Portuguese rights 
+for the Foundation series and, since they weren't Doubleday books, he was passing them on to 
+me. I sighed and said, "The heck with it, Tim. I don't get royalties on those books." 
+
+Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the books away from Gnome Press so that 
+Doubleday could publish them instead. Fie paid no attention to my loudly expressed fears that 
+Doubleday "would lose its shirt on them." In August 1961 an agreement was reached and the 
+Foundation books became Doubleday property. What's more, Avon Books, which had 
+published a paperback version of Second Foundation, set about obtaining the rights to all three 
+from Doubleday, and put out nice editions. 
+
+From that moment on, the Foundation books took off and began to earn increasing royalties. 
+
+
+
+They have sold well and steadily, both in hardcover and softcover, for two decades so far. 
+Increasingly, the letters I received from the readers spoke of them in high praise. They received 
+more attention than all my other books put together. 
+
+Doubleday also published an omnibus volume, The Foundation Trilogy, for its Science Fiction 
+Book Club. That omnibus volume has been continuously featured by the Book Club for over 
+twenty years. 
+
+Matters reached a climax in 1966. The fans organizing the World Science Fiction Convention 
+for that year (to be held in Cleveland) decided to award a Flugo for the best all-time series, 
+where the series, to qualify, had to consist of at least three connected novels. It was the first 
+time such a category had been set up, nor has it been repeated since. The Foundation series 
+was nominated, and I felt that was going to have to be glory enough for me, since I was sure 
+that Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" would win. 
+
+It didn't. The Foundation series won, and the Hugo I received for it has been sitting on my 
+bookcase in the livingroom ever since. 
+
+In among all this litany of success, both in money and in fame, there was one annoying 
+side-effect. Readers couldn't help but notice that the books of the Foundation series covered 
+only three hundred-plus years of the thousand-year hiatus between Empires. That meant the 
+Foundation series "wasn't finished." I got innumerable letters from readers who asked me to 
+finish it, from others who demanded I finish it, and still others who threatened dire vengeance if 
+I didn't finish it. Worse yet, various editors at Doubleday over the years have pointed out that it 
+might be wise to finish it. 
+
+It was flattering, of course, but irritating as well. Years had passed, then decades. Back in the 
+1940s, I had been in a Foundation-writing mood. Now I wasn't. Starting in the late 1950s, I had 
+been in a more and more nonfiction-writing mood. 
+
+That didn't mean I was writing no fiction at all. In the 1960s and 1970s, in fact, I wrote two 
+science-fiction novels and a mystery novel, to say nothing of well over a hundred short stories - 
+but about eighty percent of what I wrote was nonfiction. 
+
+One of the most indefatigable nags in the matter of finishing the Foundation series was my 
+good friend, the great science-fiction writer, Lester del Rey. He was constantly telling me I 
+ought to finish the series and was just as constantly suggesting plot devices. He even told Larry 
+Ashmead, then my editor at Doubleday, that if I refused to write more Foundation stories, he, 
+Lester, would be willing to take on the task. 
+
+When Ashmead mentioned this to me in 1973, I began another Foundation novel out of sheer 
+desperation. I called it "Lightning Rod" and managed to write fourteen pages before other tasks 
+called me away. The fourteen pages were put away and additional years passed. 
+
+In January 1977, Cathleen Jordan, then my editor at Doubleday, suggested I do "an important 
+book - a Foundation novel, perhaps." I said, "I'd rather do an autobiography," and I did- 
+640,000 words of it. 
+
+
+In January 1981, Doubleday apparently lost its temper. At least, Hugh O'Neill, then my editor 
+
+
+
+there, said, "Betty Prashker wants to see you," and marched me into her office. She was then 
+one of the senior editors, and a sweet and gentle person. 
+
+She wasted no time. "Isaac," she said, "you are going to write a novel for us and you are going 
+to sign a contract to that effect." 
+
+"Betty," I said, "I am already working on a big science book for Doubleday and I have to revise 
+the Biographical Encyclopedia for Doubleday and 
+
+"It can all wait," she said. "You are going to sign a contract to do a novel. What's more, we're 
+going to give you a $50,000 advance." 
+
+That was a stunner. I don't like large advances. They put me under too great an obligation. My 
+average advance is something like $3,000. Why not? It's all out of royalties. 
+
+I said, "That's way too much money, Betty." 
+
+"No, it isn't," she said. 
+
+"Doubleday will lose its shirt," I said. 
+
+"You keep telling us that all the time. It won't." 
+
+I said, desperately, "All right. Have the contract read that I don't get any money until I notify you 
+in writing that I have begun the novel." 
+
+"Are you crazy?" she said. "You'll never start if that clause is in the contract. You get $25,000 
+on signing the contract, and $25,000 on delivering a completed manuscript." 
+
+"But suppose the novel is no good." 
+
+"Now you're being silly," she said, and she ended the conversation. 
+
+That night, Pat LoBrutto, the science-fiction editor at Doubleday called to express his pleasure. 
+"And remember," he said, "that when we say 'novel' we mean 'science-fiction novel,' not 
+anything else. And when we say 'science-fiction novel,' we mean 'Foundation novel' and not 
+anything else." 
+
+On February 5, 1981 , I signed the contract, and within the week, the Doubleday accounting 
+system cranked out the check for $25,000. 
+
+I moaned that I was not my own master anymore and Hugh O'Neill said, cheerfully, "That's 
+right, and from now on, we're going to call every other week and say, 'Where's the 
+manuscript?’" (But they didn't. They left me strictly alone, and never even asked for a progress 
+report.) 
+
+Nearly four months passed while I took care of a vast number of things I had to do, but about 
+the end of May, I picked up my own copy of The Foundation Trilogy and began reading. 
+
+I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and while I remembered the 
+general plot, I did not remember the details. Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel 
+I had to immerse myself in the style and atmosphere of the series. 
+
+
+
+I read it with mounting uneasiness. I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever 
+did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of 
+conversations. No action. No physical suspense. 
+
+What was all the fuss about, then? Why did everyone want more of that stuff? - To be sure, I 
+couldn't help but notice that I was turning the pages eagerly, and that I was upset when I 
+finished the book, and that I wanted more, but I was the author, for goodness' sake. You 
+couldn't go by me. 
+
+I was on the edge of deciding it was all a terrible mistake and of insisting on giving back the 
+money, when (quite by accident, I swear) I came across some sentences by science-fiction 
+writer and critic, James Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, "Action and 
+romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy- virtually all the action takes place 
+offstage, and the romance is almost invisible - but the stories provide a detective-story 
+fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas." 
+
+Oh, well, if what was needed were "permutations and reversals of ideas," then that I could 
+supply. Panic receded, and on June 10, 1981, I dug out the fourteen pages I had written more 
+than eight years before and reread them. They sounded good to me. I didn't remember where I 
+had been headed back then, but I had worked out what seemed to me to be a good ending 
+now, and, starting page 15 on that day, I proceeded to work toward the new ending. 
+
+I found, to my infinite relief, that I had no trouble getting back into a "Foundation-mood," and, 
+fresh from my rereading, I had Foundation history at my finger-tips. 
+
+There were differences, to be sure: 
+
+1 ) The original stories were written for a science-fiction magazine and were from 7,000 to 
+50,000 words long, and no more. Consequently, each book in the trilogy had at least two 
+stories and lacked unity. I intended to make the new book a single story. 
+
+2) I had a particularly good chance for development since Flugh said, "Let the book find its own 
+length, Isaac. We don't mind a long book." So I planned on 140,000 words, which was nearly 
+three times the length of "The Mule," and this gave me plenty of elbow-room, and I could add 
+all sorts of little touches. 
+
+3) The Foundation series had been written at a time when our knowledge of astronomy was 
+primitive compared with what it is today. I could take advantage of that and at least mention 
+black holes, for instance. I could also take advantage of electronic computers, which had not 
+been invented until I was half through with the series. 
+
+The novel progressed steadily, and on January 17, 1982, I began final copy. I brought the 
+manuscript to Hugh O'Neill in batches, and the poor fellow went half-crazy since he insisted on 
+reading it in this broken fashion. On March 25, 1982, I brought in the last bit, and the very next 
+day got the second half of the advance. 
+
+I had kept "Lightning Rod" as my working title all the way through, but Hugh finally said, "Is 
+there any way of putting 'Foundation' into the title, Isaac?" I suggested Foundations at Bay, 
+therefore, and that may be the title that will actually be used. * 
+
+
+
+You will have noticed that I have said nothing about the plot of the new Foundation novel. Well, 
+naturally. I would rather you buy and read the book. 
+
+And yet there is one thing I have to confess to you. I generally manage to tie up all the loose 
+ends into one neat little bow-knot at the end of my stories, no matter how complicated the plot 
+might be. In this case, however, I noticed that when I was all done, one glaring little item 
+remained unresolved. 
+
+I am hoping no one else notices it because it clearly points the way to the continuation of the 
+series. 
+
+It is even possible that I inadvertently gave this away for at the end of the novel, I wrote: "The 
+End (for now)." 
+
+I very much fear that if the novel proves successful, Doubleday will be at my throat again, as 
+Campbell used to be in the old days. And yet what can I do but hope that the novel is very 
+successful indeed. What a quandary! 
+
+*Editor's note: The novel was published in October 1982 as Foundation's Edge. 
+
+
+PART I 
+
+THE PSYCHOHISTORIANS 
+
+i. 
+
+HARI SELDON-... bom In the 1 1,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069. The dates are 
+more commonly given In terms of the current Foundational Era as - 79 to the year 1 F.E. Born 
+to middle-class parents on Flelicon, Arcturus sector (where his father, In a legend of doubtful 
+authenticity, was a tobacco grower in the hydroponic plants of the planet), he early showed 
+amazing ability in mathematics. Anecdotes concerning his ability are innumerable, and some 
+are contradictory. At the age of two, he is said to have ... 
+
+... Undoubtedly his greatest contributions were in the field of psychohistory. Seldon found the 
+field little more than a set of vague axioms; he left it a profound statistical science.... 
+
+... The best existing authority we have for the details of his life is the biography written by Gaal 
+Dornick who. as a young man, met Seldon two years before the great mathematician's death. 
+The story of the meeting ... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA* 
+
+* All quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica here reproduced are taken from the 1 1 6th 
+Edition published in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus, with 
+permission of the publishers. 
+
+
+
+
+His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. 
+That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hyper-video, and occasionally in 
+tremendous three-dimensional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a 
+Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a 
+star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization, you see. At that time, no 
+place in the Galaxy was. 
+
+There were nearly twenty-five million inhabited planets in the Galaxy then, and not one but 
+owed allegiance to the Empire whose seat was on Trantor. It was the last halfcentury in which 
+that could be said. 
+
+To Gaal, this trip was the undoubted climax of his young, scholarly life. He had been in space 
+before so that the trip, as a voyage and nothing more, meant little to him. To be sure, he had 
+traveled previously only as far as Synnax's only satellite in order to get the data on the 
+mechanics of meteor driftage which he needed for his dissertation, but space-travel was all one 
+whether one travelled half a million miles, or as many light years. 
+
+He had steeled himself just a little for the Jump through hyper-space, a phenomenon one did 
+not experience in simple interplanetary trips. The Jump remained, and would probably remain 
+forever, the only practical method of travelling between the stars. Travel through ordinary space 
+could proceed at no rate more rapid than that of ordinary light (a bit of scientific knowledge that 
+belonged among the items known since the forgotten dawn of human history), and that would 
+have meant years of travel between even the nearest of inhabited systems. Through 
+hyper-space, that unimaginable region that was neither space nor time, matter nor energy, 
+something nor nothing, one could traverse the length of the Galaxy in the interval between two 
+neighboring instants of time. 
+
+Gaal had waited for the first of those Jumps with a little dread curled gently in his stomach, and 
+it ended in nothing more than a trifling jar, a little internal kick which ceased an instant before 
+he could be sure he had felt it. That was all. 
+
+And after that, there was only the ship, large and glistening; the cool production of 12,000 years 
+of Imperial progress; and himself, with his doctorate in mathematics freshly obtained and an 
+invitation from the great Hari Seldon to come to Trantor and join the vast and somewhat 
+mysterious Seldon Project. 
+
+What Gaal was waiting for after the disappointment of the Jump was that first sight of Trantor. 
+He haunted the View-room. The steel shutter-lids were rolled back at announced times and he 
+was always there, watching the hard brilliance of the stars, enjoying the incredible hazy swarm 
+of a star cluster, like a giant conglomeration of fire-flies caught in mid-motion and stilled forever, 
+At one time there was the cold, blue-white smoke of a gaseous nebula within five light years of 
+the ship, spreading over the window like distant milk, filling the room with an icy tinge, and 
+disappearing out of sight two hours later, after another Jump. 
+
+The first sight of Trantor's sun was that of a hard, white speck all but lost in a myriad such, and 
+recognizable only because it was pointed out by the ship's guide. The stars were thick here 
+near the Galactic center. But with each Jump, it shone more brightly, drowning out the rest, 
+paling them and thinning them out. 
+
+
+
+An officer came through and said, "View-room will be closed for the remainder of the trip. 
+Prepare for landing." 
+
+Gaal had followed after, clutching at the sleeve of the white uniform with the 
+Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire on it. 
+
+He said, "Would it be possible to let me stay? I would like to see Trantor." 
+
+The officer smiled and Gaal flushed a bit. It occurred to him that he spoke with a provincial 
+accent. 
+
+The officer said, "We'll be landing on Trantor by morning." 
+
+"I mean I want to see it from Space." 
+
+"Oh. Sorry, my boy. If this were a space-yacht we might manage it. But we're spinning down, 
+sunside. You wouldn't want to be blinded, burnt, and radiation-scarred all at the same time, 
+would you?" 
+
+Gaal started to walk away. 
+
+The officer called after him, "Trantor would only be gray blur anyway, Kid. Why don't you take a 
+space-tour once you hit Trantor. They're cheap." 
+
+Gaal looked back, "Thank you very much." 
+
+It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a 
+child, and there was a lump in Gaal's throat. He had never seen Trantor spread out in all its 
+incredibility, as large as life, and he hadn't expected to have to wait longer. 
+
+
+2 . 
+
+The ship landed in a medley of noises. There was the far-off hiss of the atmosphere cutting and 
+sliding past the metal of the ship. There was the steady drone of the conditioners fighting the 
+heat of friction, and the slower rumble of the engines enforcing deceleration. There was the 
+human sound of men and women gathering in the debarkation rooms and the grind of the 
+hoists lifting baggage, mail, and freight to the long axis of the ship, from which they would be 
+later moved along to the unloading platform. 
+
+Gaal felt the slight jar that indicated the ship no longer had an independent motion of its own. 
+Ship's gravity had been giving way to planetary gravity for hours. Thousands of passengers had 
+been sitting patiently in the debarkation rooms which swung easily on yielding force-fields to 
+accommodate its orientation to the changing direction of the gravitational forces. Now they 
+were crawling down curving ramps to the large, yawning locks. 
+
+Gaal's baggage was minor. He stood at a desk, as it was quickly and expertly taken apart and 
+put together again. His visa was inspected and stamped. He himself paid no attention. 
+
+This was Trantor! The air seemed a little thicker here, the gravity a bit greater, than on his 
+
+
+
+home planet of Synnax, but he would get used to that. He wondered if he would get used to 
+immensity. 
+
+Debarkation Building was tremendous. The roof was almost lost in the heights. Gaal could 
+almost imagine that clouds could form beneath its immensity. He could see no opposite wall; 
+just men and desks and converging floor till it faded out in haze. 
+
+The man at the desk was speaking again. He sounded annoyed. He said, "Move on, Dornick." 
+He had to open the visa, look again, before he remembered the name. 
+
+Gaal said, "Where- where-" 
+
+The man at the desk jerked a thumb, "Taxis to the right and third left." 
+
+Gaal moved, seeing the glowing twists of air suspended high in nothingness and reading, 
+"TAXIS TO ALL POINTS." 
+
+A figure detached itself from anonymity and stopped at the desk, as Gaal left. The man at the 
+desk looked up and nodded briefly. The figure nodded in return and followed the young 
+immigrant. 
+
+He was in time to hear Gaal's destination. 
+
+Gaal found himself hard against a railing. 
+
+The small siqn said, "Supervisor." The man to whom the siqn referred did not look up. He said, 
+"Where to?" 
+
+Gaal wasn't sure, but even a few seconds hesitation meant men queuing in line behind him. 
+The Supervisor looked up, "Where to?" 
+
+Gaal's funds were low, but there was only this one night and then he would have a job. He tried 
+to sound nonchalant, "A good hotel, please." 
+
+The Supervisor was unimpressed, "They're all good. Name one." 
+
+Gaal said, desperately, "The nearest one, please." 
+
+The Supervisor touched a button. A thin line of light formed along the floor, twisting among 
+others which brightened and dimmed in different colors and shades. A ticket was shoved into 
+Gaal's hands. It glowed faintly. 
+
+The Supervisor said, "One point twelve." 
+
+Gaal fumbled for the coins. He said, "Where do I go?" 
+
+"Follow the light. The ticket will keep glowing as long as you're pointed in the tight direction." 
+
+Gaal looked up and began walking. There were hundreds creeping across the vast floor, 
+following their individual trails, sifting and straining themselves through intersection points to 
+arrive at their respective destinations. 
+
+
+
+His own trail ended. A man in glaring blue and yellow uniform, shining and new in unstainable 
+plasto-textile, reached for his two bags. 
+
+"Direct line to the Luxor," he said. 
+
+The man who followed Gaal heard that. He also heard Gaal say, "Fine," and watched him enter 
+the blunt-nosed vehicle. 
+
+The taxi lifted straight up. Gaal stared out the curved, transparent window, marvelling at the 
+sensation of airflight within an enclosed structure and clutching instinctively at the back of the 
+driver's seat. The vastness contracted and the people became ants in random distribution. The 
+scene contracted further and began to slide backward. 
+
+There was a wall ahead. It began high in the air and extended upward out of sight. It was 
+riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels. Gaal's taxi moved toward one then plunged 
+into it. For a moment, Gaal wondered idly how his driver could pick out one among so many. 
+
+There was now only blackness, with nothing but the past-flashing of a colored signal light to 
+relieve the gloom. The air was full of a rushing sound. 
+
+Gaal leaned forward against deceleration then and the taxi popped out of the tunnel and 
+descended to ground-level once more. 
+
+"The Luxor Hotel," said the driver, unnecessarily. He helped Gaal with his baggage, accepted a 
+tenth-credit tip with a businesslike air, picked up a waiting passenger, and was rising again. 
+
+In all this, from the moment of debarkation, there had been no glimpse of sky. 
+
+
+3 . 
+
+TRANTOR-...At the beginning of the thirteenth millennium, this tendency reached its climax. As 
+the center of the imperial Government for unbroken hundreds of generations and located, as it 
+was, toward the central regions of the Galaxy among the most densely populated and 
+industrially advanced worlds of the system, it could scarcely help being the densest and richest 
+clot of humanity the Race had ever seen. 
+
+Its urbanization, progressing steadily, had finally reached the ultimate. All the land surface of 
+Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was 
+well in excess of forty billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the 
+administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for the complications of 
+the task. (It is to be remembered that the impossibility of proper administration of the Galactic 
+Empire under the uninspired leadership of the later Emperors was a considerable factor in the 
+Fall.) Daily, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought the produce of twenty agricultural 
+worlds to the dinner tables of Trantor.... 
+
+Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made 
+Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, the 
+monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this, and Imperial 
+
+
+
+policy became little more than the protection of Trantor's delicate jugular vein.... 
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Gaal was not certain whether the sun shone, or, for that matter, whether it was day or night. He 
+was ashamed to ask. All the planet seemed to live beneath metal. The meal of which he had 
+just partaken had been labelled luncheon, but there were many planets which lived a standard 
+timescale that took no account of the perhaps inconvenient alternation of day and night. The 
+rate of planetary turnings differed, and he did not know that of Trantor. 
+
+At first, he had eagerly followed the signs to the "Sun Room" and found it but a chamber for 
+basking in artificial radiation. He lingered a moment or two, then returned to the Luxor's main 
+lobby. 
+
+He said to the room clerk, "Where can I buy a ticket for a planetary tour?" 
+
+"Right here." 
+
+"When will it start?" 
+
+"You just missed it. Another one tomorrow. Buy a ticket now and we'll reserve a place for you." 
+
+"Oh." Tomorrow would be too late. He would have to be at the University tomorrow. He said, 
+"There wouldn't be an observation tower - or something? I mean, in the open air." 
+
+"Sure! Sell you a ticket for that, if you want. Better let me check if it's raining or not." He closed 
+a contact at his elbow and read the flowing letters that raced across a frosted screen. Gaal read 
+with him. 
+
+The room clerk said, "Good weather. Come to think of it, I do believe it's the dry season now." 
+He added, conversationally, "I don't bother with the outside myself. The last time I was in the 
+open was three years ago. You see it once, you know and that's all there is to it. Here's your 
+ticket. Special elevator in the rear. It's marked 'To the Tower.' Just take it." 
+
+The elevator was of the new sort that ran by gravitic repulsion. Gaal entered and others flowed 
+in behind him. The operator closed a contact. For a moment, Gaal felt suspended in space as 
+gravity switched to zero, and then he had weight again in small measure as the elevator 
+accelerated upward. Deceleration followed and his feet left the floor. He squawked against his 
+will. 
+
+The operator called out, "Tuck your feet under the railing. Can't you read the sign?" 
+
+The others had done so. They were smiling at him as he madly and vainly tried to clamber back 
+down the wall. Their shoes pressed upward against the chromium of the railings that stretched 
+across the floor in parallels set two feet apart. He had noticed those railings on entering and 
+had ignored them. 
+
+Then a hand reached out and pulled him down. 
+
+He gasped his thanks as the elevator came to a halt. 
+
+He stepped out upon an open terrace bathed in a white brilliance that hurl his eyes. The man, 
+
+
+
+whose helping hand he had just now been the recipient of, was immediately behind him. 
+
+The man said, kindly, "Plenty of seats." 
+
+Gaal closed his mouth; he had been gaping; and said, "It certainly seems so." He started for 
+them automatically, then stopped. 
+
+He said, "If you don't mind, I'll just stop a moment at the railing. I - I want to look a bit." 
+
+The man waved him on, good-naturedly, and Gaal leaned out over the shoulder-high railing 
+and bathed himself in all the panorama. 
+
+He could not see the ground. It was lost in the ever increasing complexities of man-made 
+structures. He could see no horizon other than that of metal against sky, stretching out to 
+almost uniform grayness, and he knew it was so over all the land-surface of the planet. There 
+was scarcely any motion to be seen - a few pleasure-craft lazed against the sky-but all the 
+busy traffic of billions of men were going on, he knew, beneath the metal skin of the world. 
+
+There was no green to be seen; no green, no soil, no life other than man. Somewhere on the 
+world, he realized vaguely, was the Emperor's palace, set amid one hundred square miles of 
+natural soil, green with trees, rainbowed with flowers. It was a small island amid an ocean of 
+steel, but it wasn't visible from where he stood. It might be ten thousand miles away. He did not 
+know. 
+
+Before very long, he must have his tour! 
+
+He sighed noisily, and realized finally that he was on Trantor at last; on the planet which was 
+the center of all the Galaxy and the kernel of the human race. He saw none of its weaknesses. 
+He saw no ships of food landing. He was not aware of a jugular vein delicately connecting the 
+forty billion of Trantor with the rest of the Galaxy. He was conscious only of the mightiest deed 
+of man; the complete and almost contemptuously final conquest of a world. 
+
+He came away a little blank-eyed. His friend of the elevator was indicating a seat next to 
+himself and Gaal took it. 
+
+The man smiled. "My name is Jerril. First time on Trantor?" 
+
+"Yes, Mr. Jerril." 
+
+"Thought so. Jerril's my first name. Trantor gets you if you've got the poetic temperament. 
+Trantorians never come up here, though. They don't like it. Gives them nerves." 
+
+"Nerves! - My name's Gaal, by the way. Why should it give them nerves? It's glorious." 
+
+"Subjective matter of opinion, Gaal. If you're born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and 
+work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing 
+but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown. They make the children come up 
+here once a year, after they're five. I don't know if it does any good. They don't get enough of it, 
+really, and the first few times they scream themselves into hysteria. They ought to start as soon 
+as they're weaned and have the trip once a week." 
+
+
+
+He went on, "Of course, it doesn't really matter. What if they never come out at all? They're 
+happy down there and they run the Empire. How high up do you think we are?" 
+
+He said, "Half a mile?" and wondered if that sounded naive. 
+
+It must have, for Jerril chuckled a little. He said, "No. Just five hundred feet." 
+
+"What? But the elevator took about 
+
+"I know. But most of the time it was just getting up to ground level. Trantor is tunneled over a 
+mile down. It's like an iceberg. Nine-tenths of it is out of sight. It even works itself out a few 
+miles into the sub-ocean soil at the shorelines. In fact, we're down so low that we can make use 
+of the temperature difference between ground level and a couple of miles under to supply us 
+with all the energy we need. Did you know that?" 
+
+"No, I thought you used atomic generators." 
+
+"Did once. But this is cheaper." 
+
+"I imagine so." 
+
+"What do you think of it all?" For a moment, the man's good nature evaporated into 
+shrewdness. He looked almost sly. 
+
+Gaal fumbled. "Glorious," he said, again. 
+
+"Here on vacation? Traveling? Sight-seeing?" 
+
+"No exactly. At least, I've always wanted to visit Trantor but I came here primarily for a job." 
+"Oh?" 
+
+Gaal felt obliged to explain further, "With Dr. Seldon's project at the University of Trantor." 
+"Raven Seldon?" 
+
+"Why, no. The one I mean is Hari Seldon. -The psychohistorian Seldon. I don't know of any 
+Raven Seldon." 
+
+"Hari's the one I mean. They call him Raven. Slang, you know. He keeps predicting disaster." 
+"He does?" Gaal was genuinely astonished. 
+
+"Surely, you must know." Jerril was not smiling. "You're coming to work for him, aren't you?" 
+"Well, yes, I'm a mathematician. Why does he predict disaster? What kind of disaster?" 
+
+"What kind would you think?" 
+
+"I'm afraid I wouldn't have the least idea. I've read the papers Dr. Seldon and his group have 
+published. They're on mathematical theory." 
+
+"Yes, the ones they publish." 
+
+
+
+Gaal felt annoyed. He said, "I think I'll go to my room now. Very pleased to have met you." 
+
+Jerril waved his arm indifferently in farewell. 
+
+Gaal found a man waiting for him in his room. For a moment, he was too startled to put into 
+words the inevitable, "What are you doing here?" that came to his lips. 
+
+The man rose. He was old and almost bald and he walked with a limp, but his eyes were very 
+bright and blue. 
+
+He said, "I am Hari Seldon," an instant before Gaal's befuddled brain placed the face alongside 
+the memory of the many times he had seen it in pictures. 
+
+
+4 . 
+
+PSYCHOHISTORY-.. .Gaal Dornick, using nonmathematical concepts, has defined 
+psychohistory to be that branch of mathematics which deals with the reactions of human 
+conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli.... 
+
+... Implicit in all these definitions is the assumption that the human conglomerate being dealt 
+with is sufficiently large for valid statistical treatment. The necessary size of such a 
+conglomerate may be determined by Seldon 's First Theorem which ...A further necessary 
+assumption is that the human conglomerate be itself unaware of psychohistoric analysis in 
+order that its reactions be truly random ... 
+
+The basis of all valid psychohistory lies in the development of the Seldon. Functions which 
+exhibit properties congruent to those of such social and economic forces as ... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+"Good afternoon, sir," said Gaal. "I- I-" 
+
+"You didn't think we were to meet before tomorrow? Ordinarily, we would not have. It is just that 
+if we are to use your services, we must work quickly. It grows continually more difficult to obtain 
+recruits." 
+
+"I don't understand, sir." 
+
+"You were talking to a man on the observation tower, were you not?" 
+
+"Yes. His first name is Jerril. I know no more about him. " 
+
+"His name is nothing. He is an agent of the Commission of Public Safety. He followed you from 
+the space-port." 
+
+"But why? I am afraid I am very confused." 
+
+"Did the man on the tower say nothing about me?" 
+
+Gaal hesitated, "He referred to you as Raven Seldon." 
+
+
+
+"Did he say why?" 
+
+"He said you predict disaster." 
+
+"I do. What does Trantor mean to you?" 
+
+Everyone seemed to be asking his opinion of Trantor. Gaal felt incapable of response beyond 
+the bare word, "Glorious." 
+
+"You say that without thinking. What of psychohistory?" 
+
+"I haven't thought of applying it to the problem." 
+
+"Before you are done with me, young man, you will learn to apply psychohistory to all problems 
+as a matter of course. -Observe." Seldon removed his calculator pad from the pouch at his 
+belt. Men said he kept one beneath his pillow for use in moments of wakefulness. Its gray, 
+glossy finish was slightly worn by use. Seldon's nimble fingers, spotted now with age, played 
+along the files and rows of buttons that filled its surface. Red symbols glowed out from the 
+upper tier. 
+
+He said, "That represents the condition of the Empire at present." 
+
+He waited. 
+
+Gaal said finally, "Surely that is not a complete representation." 
+
+"No, not complete," said Seldon. "I am glad you do not accept my word blindly. However, this is 
+an approximation which will serve to demonstrate the proposition. Will you accept that?" 
+
+"Subject to my later verification of the derivation of the function, yes." Gaal was carefully 
+avoiding a possible trap. 
+
+"Good. Add to this the known probability of Imperial assassination, viceregal revolt, the 
+contemporary recurrence of periods of economic depression, the declining rate of planetary 
+explorations, the. . ." 
+
+He proceeded. As each item was mentioned, new symbols sprang to life at his touch, and 
+melted into the basic function which expanded and changed. 
+
+Gaal stopped him only once. "I don't see the validity of that set-transformation." 
+
+Seldon repeated it more slowly. 
+
+Gaal said, "But that is done by way of a forbidden sociooperation." 
+
+"Good. You are quick, but not yet quick enough. It is not forbidden in this connection. Let me do 
+it by expansions." 
+
+
+The procedure was much longer and at its end, Gaal said, humbly, "Yes, I see now." 
+
+Finally, Seldon stopped. "This is Trantor three centuries from now. How do you interpret that? 
+
+
+
+Eh?" He put his head to one side and waited. 
+
+Gaal said, unbelievingly, "Total destruction! But - but that is impossible. Trantor has never 
+been -" 
+
+Seldon was filled with the intense excitement of a man whose body only had grown old. "Come, 
+come. You saw how the result was arrived at. Put it into words. Forget the symbolism for a 
+moment." 
+
+Gaal said, "As Trantor becomes more specialized, it be comes more vulnerable, less able to 
+defend itself. Further, as it becomes more and more the administrative center of Empire, it 
+becomes a greater prize. As the Imperial succession becomes more and more uncertain, and 
+the feuds among the great families more rampant, social responsibility disappears. " 
+
+"Enough. And what of the numerical probability of total destruction within three centuries?" 
+
+"I couldn't tell." 
+
+"Surely you can perform a field-differentiation?" 
+
+Gaal felt himself under pressure. He was not offered the calculator pad. It was held a foot from 
+his eyes. He calculated furiously and felt his forehead grow slick with sweat. 
+
+He said, "About 85%?" 
+
+"Not bad," said Seldon, thrusting out a lower lip, "but not good. The actual figure is 92.5%." 
+
+Gaal said, "And so you are called Raven Seldon? I have seen none of this in the journals." 
+
+"But of course not. This is unprintable. Do you suppose the Imperium could expose its 
+shakiness in this manner. That is a very simple demonstration in psychohistory. But some of 
+our results have leaked out among the aristocracy." 
+
+"That's bad." 
+
+"Not necessarily. All is taken into account." 
+
+"But is that why I'm being investigated?" 
+
+"Yes. Everything about my project is being investigated." 
+
+"Are you in danger, sir?" 
+
+"Oh, yes. There is probability of 1 .7% that I will be executed, but of course that will not stop the 
+project. We have taken that into account as well. Well, never mind. You will meet me, I 
+suppose, at the University tomorrow?" 
+
+"I will," said Gaal. 
+
+
+5 . 
+
+
+
+COMMISSION OF PUBLIC SAFETY-... The aristocratic coterie rose to power after the 
+assassination of Cleon I, last of the Entuns. In the main, they formed an element of order during 
+the centuries of instability and uncertainty in the Imperium. Usually under the control of the 
+great families of the Chens and the Divarts, it degenerated eventually into a blind instrument for 
+maintenance of the status quo.... They were not completely removed as a power in the state 
+until after the accession of the last strong Emperor, Cleon H. The first Chief Commissioner.... 
+
+... In a way, the beginning of the Commission's decline can be traced to the trial of Fiari Seldon 
+two years before the beginning of the Foundational Era. That trial is described in Gaal Dornick's 
+biography of Fiari Seldon.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Gaal did not carry out his promise. He was awakened the next morning by a muted buzzer. He 
+answered it, and the voice of the desk clerk, as muted, polite and deprecating as it well might 
+be, informed him that he was under detention at the orders of the Commission of Public Safety. 
+
+Gaal sprang to the door and found it would no longer open. He could only dress and wait. 
+
+They came for him and took him elsewhere, but it was still detention. They asked him questions 
+most politely. It was all very civilized. He explained that he was a provincial of Synnax; that he 
+had attended such and such schools and obtained a Doctor of Mathematics degree on such 
+and such a date. He had applied for a position on Dr. Seldon's staff and had been accepted. 
+Over and over again, he gave these details; and over and over again, they returned to the 
+question of his joining the Seldon Project. How had he heard of it; what were to be his duties; 
+what secret instructions had he received; what was it all about? 
+
+He answered that he did not know. He had no secret instructions. He was a scholar and a 
+mathematician. He had no interest in politics. 
+
+And finally the gentle inquisitor asked, "When will Trantor be destroyed?" 
+
+Gaal faltered, "I could not say of my own knowledge." 
+
+"Could you say of anyone's?" 
+
+"How could I speak for another?" He felt warm; overwarm. 
+
+The inquisitor said, "Has anyone told you of such destruction; set a date?" And, as the young 
+man hesitated, he went on, "You have been followed, doctor. We were at the airport when you 
+arrived; on the observation tower when you waited for your appointment; and, of course, we 
+were able to overhear your conversation with Dr. Seldon." 
+
+Gaal said, "Then you know his views on the matter." 
+
+"Perhaps. But we would like to hear them from you." 
+
+"He is of the opinion that Trantor would be destroyed within three centuries." 
+
+"He proved it, - uh - mathematically?" 
+
+"Yes, he did," - defiantly. 
+
+
+
+"You maintain the - uh - mathematics to be valid, I suppose. 
+
+"If Dr. Seldon vouches for it, it is valid." 
+
+"Then we will return." 
+
+"Wait. I have a right to a lawyer. I demand my rights as an Imperial citizen." 
+
+"You shall have them." 
+
+And he did. 
+
+It was a tall man that eventually entered, a man whose face seemed all vertical lines and so 
+thin that one could wonder whether there was room for a smile. 
+
+Gaal looked up. He felt disheveled and wilted. So much had happened, yet he had been on 
+Trantor not more than thirty hours. 
+
+The man said, "I am Lors Avakim. Dr. Seldon has directed me to represent you." 
+
+"Is that so? Well, then, look here. I demand an instant appeal to the Emperor. I'm being held 
+without cause. I'm innocent of anything. Of anything." He slashed his hands outward, palms 
+down, "You've got to arrange a hearing with the Emperor, instantly." 
+
+Avakim was carefully emptying the contents of a flat folder onto the floor. If Gaal had had the 
+stomach for it, he might have recognized Cellomet legal forms, metal thin and tapelike, adapted 
+for insertion within the smallness of a personal capsule. He might also have recognized a 
+pocket recorder. 
+
+Avakim, paying no attention to Gaal's outburst, finally looked up. He said, "The Commission 
+will, of course, have a spy beam on our conversation. This is against the law, but they will use 
+one nevertheless." 
+
+Gaal ground his teeth. 
+
+"However," and Avakim seated himself deliberately, "the recorder I have on the table, - which 
+is a perfectly ordinary recorder to all appearances and performs it duties well - has the 
+additional property of completely blanketing the spy beam. This is something they will not find 
+out at once." 
+
+"Then I can speak." 
+
+"Of course." 
+
+"Then I want a hearing with the Emperor." 
+
+Avakim smiled frostily, and it turned out that there was room for it on his thin face after all. His 
+cheeks wrinkled to make the room. He said, "You are from the provinces." 
+
+"I am none the less an Imperial citizen. As good a one as you or as any of this Commission of 
+Public Safety." 
+
+"No doubt; no doubt. It is merely that, as a provincial, you do not understand life on Trantor as it 
+
+
+
+is, There are no hearings before the Emperor." 
+
+"To whom else would one appeal from this Commission? Is there other procedure?" 
+
+"None. There is no recourse in a practical sense. Legalistically, you may appeal to the 
+Emperor, but you would get no hearing. The Emperor today is not the Emperor of an Entun 
+dynasty, you know. Trantor, I am afraid is in the hands of the aristocratic families, members of 
+which compose the Commission of Public Safety. This is a development which is well predicted 
+by psychohistory." 
+
+Gaal said, "Indeed? In that case, if Dr. Seldon can predict the history of Trantor three hundred 
+years into the future 
+
+"He can predict it fifteen hundred years into the future." 
+
+"Let it be fifteen thousand. Why couldn't he yesterday have predicted the events of this morning 
+and warned me. -No, I'm sorry." Gaal sat down and rested his head in one sweating palm, "I 
+quite understand that psychohistory is a statistical science and cannot predict the future of a 
+single man with any accuracy. You'll understand that I'm upset." 
+
+"But you are wrong. Dr. Seldon was of the opinion that you would be arrested this morning." 
+"What!" 
+
+"It is unfortunate, but true. The Commission has been more and more hostile to his activities. 
+New members joining the group have been interfered with to an increasing extent. The graphs 
+showed that for our purposes, matters might best be brought to a climax now. The Commission 
+of itself was moving somewhat slowly so Dr. Seldon visited you yesterday for the purpose of 
+forcing their hand. No other reason." 
+
+Gaal caught his breath, "I resent-" 
+
+"Please. It was necessary. You were not picked for any personal reasons. You must realize that 
+Dr. Seldon's plans, which are laid out with the developed mathematics of over eighteen years 
+include all eventualities with significant probabilities. This is one of them. I've been sent here for 
+no other purpose than to assure you that you need not fear. It will end well; almost certainly so 
+for the project; and with reasonable probability for you." 
+
+"What are the figures?" demanded Gaal. 
+
+"For the project, over 99.9%." 
+
+"And for myself?" 
+
+"I am instructed that this probability is 77.2%." 
+
+"Then I've got better than one chance in five of being sentenced to prison or to death." 
+
+"The last is under one per cent." 
+
+"Indeed. Calculations upon one man mean nothing. You send Dr. Seldon to me." 
+
+
+
+"Unfortunately, I cannot. Dr. Seldon is himself arrested." 
+
+The door was thrown open before the rising Gaal could do more than utter the beginning of a 
+cry. A guard entered, walked to the table, picked up the recorder, looked upon all sides of it and 
+put it in his pocket. 
+
+Avakim said quietly, "I will need that instrument." 
+
+"We will supply you with one, Counsellor, that does not cast a static field." 
+
+"My interview is done, in that case." 
+
+Gaal watched him leave and was alone. 
+
+
+6 . 
+
+The trial (Gaal supposed it to be one, though it bore little resemblance legalistically to the 
+elaborate trial techniques Gaal had read of) had not lasted long. It was in its third day. Yet 
+already, Gaal could no longer stretch his memory back far enough to embrace its beginning. 
+
+He himself had been but little pecked at. The heavy guns were trained on Dr. Seldon himself. 
+Hari Seldon, however, sat there unperturbed. To Gaal, he was the only spot of stability 
+remaining in the world. 
+
+The audience was small and drawn exclusively from among the Barons of the Empire. Press 
+and public were excluded and it was doubtful that any significant number of outsiders even 
+knew that a trial of Seldon was being conducted. The atmosphere was one of unrelieved 
+hostility toward the defendants. 
+
+Five of the Commission of Public Safety sat behind the raised desk. They wore scarlet and gold 
+uniforms and the shining, close-fitting plastic caps that were the sign of their judicial function. In 
+the center was the Chief Commissioner Linge Chen. Gaal had never before seen so great a 
+Lord and he watched him with fascination. Chen, throughout the trial, rarely said a word. He 
+made it quite clear that much speech was beneath his dignity. 
+
+The Commission's Advocate consulted his notes and the examination continued, with Seldon 
+still on the stand: 
+
+Q. Let us see, Dr. Seldon. How many men are now engaged in the project of which you are 
+head? 
+
+A. Fifty mathematicians. 
+
+Q. Including Dr. Gaal Dornick? 
+
+A. Dr. Dornick is the fifty-first, 
+
+Q. Oh, we have fifty-one then? Search your memory, Dr. Seldon. Perhaps there are fifty-two or 
+fifty-three? Or perhaps even more? 
+
+
+
+A. Dr. Dornick has not yet formally joined my organization. When he does, the membership will 
+be fifty-one. It is now fifty, as I have said. 
+
+Q. Not perhaps nearly a hundred thousand? 
+
+A. Mathematicians? No. 
+
+Q. I did not say mathematicians. Are there a hundred thousand in all capacities? 
+
+A. In all capacities, your figure may be correct. 
+
+Q. May be? I say it is. I say that the men in your project number ninety-eight thousand, five 
+hundred and seventy-two. 
+
+A. I believe you are counting women and children. 
+
+Q. (raising his voice) Ninety eight thousand five hundred and seventy-two individuals is the 
+intent of my statement. There is no need to quibble. 
+
+A. I accept the figures. 
+
+Q. (referring to his notes) Let us drop that for the moment, then, and take up another matter 
+which we have already discussed at some length. Would you repeat, Dr. Seldon, your thoughts 
+concerning the future of Trantor? 
+
+A. I have said, and I say again, that Trantor will lie in ruins within the next three centuries. 
+
+Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? 
+
+A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. 
+
+Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? 
+
+A. I am. 
+
+Q. On what basis? 
+
+A. On the basis of the mathematics of psychohistory. 
+
+Q. Can you prove that this mathematics is valid'? 
+
+A. Only to another mathematician. 
+
+Q. (with a smile) Your claim then is that your truth is of so esoteric a nature that it is beyond the 
+understanding of a plain man. It seems to me that truth should be clearer than that, less 
+mysterious, more open to the mind. 
+
+A. It presents no difficulties to some minds. The physics of energy transfer, which we know as 
+thermodynamics, has been clear and true through all the history of man since the mythical 
+ages, yet there may be people present who would find it impossible to design a power engine. 
+People of high intelligence, too. I doubt if the learned Commissioners- 
+
+At this point, one of the Commissioners leaned toward the Advocate. His words were not heard 
+
+
+
+but the hissing of the voice carried a certain asperity. The Advocate flushed and interrupted 
+Seldon. 
+
+Q. We are not here to listen to speeches, Dr. Seldon. Let us assume that you have made your 
+point. Let me suggest to you that your predictions of disaster might be intended to destroy 
+public confidence in the Imperial Government for purposes of your own. 
+
+A. That is not so. 
+
+Q. Let me suggest that you intend to claim that a period of time preceding the so-called ruin of 
+Trantor will be filled with unrest of various types. 
+
+A. That is correct. 
+
+Q. And that by the mere prediction thereof, you hope to bring it about, and to have then an 
+army of a hundred thousand available. 
+
+A. In the first place, that is not so. And if it were, investigation will show you that barely ten 
+thousand are men of military age, and none of these has training in arms. 
+
+Q. Are you acting as an agent for another? 
+
+A. I am not in the pay of any man, Mr. Advocate. 
+
+Q. You are entirely disinterested? You are serving science? 
+
+A. I am. 
+
+Q. Then let us see how. Can the future be changed, Dr. Seldon? 
+
+A. Obviously. This courtroom may explode in the next few hours, or it may not. If it did, the 
+future would undoubtedly be changed in some minor respects. 
+
+Q. You quibble, Dr. Seldon. Can the overall history of the human race be changed? 
+
+A. Yes. 
+
+Q. Easily? 
+
+A. No. With great difficulty. 
+
+Q. Why? 
+
+A. The psychohistoric trend of a planet-full of people contains a huge inertia. To be changed it 
+must be met with something possessing a similar inertia. Either as many people must be 
+concerned, or if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be 
+allowed. Do you understand? 
+
+Q. I think I do. Trantor need not be ruined, if a great many people decide to act so that it will 
+not. 
+
+
+A. That is right. 
+
+
+
+Q. As many as a hundred thousand people? 
+
+A. No, sir. That is far too few. 
+
+Q. You are sure? 
+
+A. Consider that Trantor has a population of over forty billions. Consider further that the trend 
+leading to ruin does not belong to Trantor alone but to the Empire as a whole and the Empire 
+contains nearly a quintillion human beings. 
+
+Q. I see. Then perhaps a hundred thousand people can change the trend, if they and their 
+descendants labor for three hundred years. 
+
+A. I'm afraid not. Three hundred years is too short a time. 
+
+Q. Ah! In that case, Dr. Seldon, we are left with this deduction to be made from your 
+statements. You have gathered one hundred thousand people within the confines of your 
+project. These are insufficient to change the history of Trantor within three hundred years. In 
+other words, they cannot prevent the destruction of Trantor no matter what they do. 
+
+A. You are unfortunately correct. 
+
+Q. And on the other hand, your hundred thousand are intended for no illegal purpose. 
+
+A. Exactly. 
+
+Q. (slowly and with satisfaction) In that case, Dr. Seldon- Now attend, sir, most carefully, for we 
+want a considered answer. What is the purpose of your hundred thousand? 
+
+The Advocate's voice had grown strident. He had sprung his trap; backed Seldon into a comer; 
+driven him astutely from any possibility of answering. 
+
+There was a rising buzz of conversation at that which swept the ranks of the peers in the 
+audience and invaded even the row of Commissioners. They swayed toward one another in 
+their scarlet and gold, only the Chief remaining uncorrupted. 
+
+Hari Seldon remained unmoved. He waited for the babble to evaporate. 
+
+A. To minimize the effects of that destruction. 
+
+Q. And exactly what do you mean by that? 
+
+A. The explanation is simple. The coming destruction of Trantor is not an event in itself, isolated 
+in the scheme of human development. It will be the climax to an intricate drama which was 
+begun centuries ago and which is accelerating in pace continuously. I refer, gentlemen, to the 
+developing decline and fall of the Galactic Empire. 
+
+The buzz now became a dull roar. The Advocate, unheeded, was yelling, "You are openly 
+declaring that-" and stopped because the cries of "Treason" from the audience showed that the 
+point had been made without any hammering. 
+
+Slowly, the Chief Commissioner raised his gavel once and let it drop. The sound was that of a 
+
+
+
+mellow gong. When the reverberations ceased, the gabble of the audience also did. The 
+Advocate took a deep breath. 
+
+Q. (theatrically) Do you realize, Dr. Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood 
+for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind 
+it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings? 
+
+A. I am aware both of the present status and the past history of the Empire. Without disrespect, 
+
+I must claim a far better knowledge of it than any in this room. 
+
+Q. And you predict its ruin? 
+
+A. It is a prediction which is made by mathematics. I pass no moral judgements. Personally, I 
+regret the prospect. Even if the Empire were admitted to be a bad thing (an admission I do not 
+make), the state of anarchy which would follow its fall would be worse. It is that state of anarchy 
+which my project is pledged to fight. The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, 
+however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a 
+freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity - a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I 
+have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop. 
+
+Q. Is it not obvious to anyone that the Empire is as strong as it ever was? 
+
+A. The appearance of strength is all about you. It would seem to last forever. However, Mr. 
+Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, 
+has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of 
+the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking. 
+
+Q. (uncertainly) We are not here, Dr. Seldon, to lis— 
+
+A. (firmly) The Empire will vanish and all its good with it. Its accumulated knowledge will decay 
+and the order it has imposed will vanish. Interstellar wars will be endless; interstellar trade will 
+decay; population will decline; worlds will lose touch with the main body of the Galaxy. -And so 
+matters will remain. 
+
+Q. (a small voice in the middle of a vast silence) Forever? 
+
+A. Psychohistory, which can predict the fall, can make statements concerning the succeeding 
+dark ages. The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. 
+The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will 
+rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. 
+We must fight that. 
+
+Q. (recovering somewhat) You contradict yourself. You said earlier that you could not prevent 
+the destruction of Trantor; hence, presumably, the fall; -the so-called fall of the Empire. 
+
+A. I do not say now that we can prevent the fall. But it is not yet too late to shorten the 
+interregnum which will follow. It is possible, gentlemen, to reduce the duration of anarchy to a 
+single millennium, if my group is allowed to act now. We are at a delicate moment in history. 
+The huge, onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little, - just a little - It cannot be 
+much, but it may be enough to remove twenty-nine thousand years of misery from human 
+
+
+
+history. 
+
+Q. How do you propose to do this? 
+
+A. By saving the knowledge of the race. The sum of human knowing is beyond any one man; 
+any thousand men. With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million 
+pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know. They will 
+be helpless and useless by themselves. The bits of lore, meaningless, will not be passed on. 
+They will be lost through the generations. But, if we now prepare a giant summary of all 
+knowledge, it will never be lost. Coming generations will build on it, and will not have to 
+rediscover it for themselves. One millennium will do the work of thirty thousand. 
+
+Q. All this 
+
+A. All my project; my thirty thousand men with their wives and children, are devoting 
+themselves to the preparation of an "Encyclopedia Galactica." They will not complete it in their 
+lifetimes. I will not even live to see it fairly begun. But by the time Trantor falls, it will be 
+complete and copies will exist in every major library in the Galaxy. 
+
+The Chief Commissioner's gavel rose and fell. Hari Seldon left the stand and quietly took his 
+seat next to Gaal. 
+
+He smiled and said, "How did you like the show?" 
+
+Gaal said, "You stole it. But what will happen now?" 
+
+"They'll adjourn the trial and try to come to a private agreement with me." 
+
+"How do you know?" 
+
+Seldon said, "I'll be honest. I don't know. It depends on the Chief Commissioner. I have studied 
+him for years. I have tried to analyze his workings, but you know how risky it is to introduce the 
+vagaries of an individual in the psychohistoric equations. Yet I have hopes." 
+
+
+7 . 
+
+Avakim approached, nodded to Gaal, leaned over to whisper to Seldon. The cry of adjournment 
+rang out, and guards separated them. Gaal was led away. 
+
+The next day's hearings were entirely different. Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick were alone with 
+the Commission. They were seated at a table together, with scarcely a separation between the 
+five judges and the two accused. They were even offered cigars from a box of iridescent plastic 
+which had the appearance of water, endlessly flowing. The eyes were fooled into seeing the 
+motion although the fingers reported it to be hard and dry. 
+
+Seldon accepted one; Gaal refused. 
+
+Seldon said, "My lawyer is not present." 
+
+A Commissioner replied, "This is no longer a trial, Dr. Seldon. We are here to discuss the safety 
+
+
+
+of the State. 
+
+
+Linge Chen said, "I will speak," and the other Commissioners sat back in their chairs, prepared 
+to listen. A silence formed about Chen into which he might drop his words. 
+
+Gaal held his breath. Chen, lean and hard, older in looks than in fact, was the actual Emperor 
+of all the Galaxy. The child who bore the title itself was only a symbol manufactured by Chen, 
+and not the first such, either. 
+
+Chen said, "Dr. Seldon, you disturb the peace of the Emperor's realm. None of the quadrillions 
+living now among all the stars of the Galaxy will be living a century from now. Why, then, should 
+we concern ourselves with events of three centuries distance?" 
+
+"I shall not be alive half a decade hence," said Seldon, and yet it is of overpowering concern to 
+me. Call it idealism. Call it an identification of myself with that mystical generalization to which 
+we refer by the term, 'humanity.'" 
+
+"I do not wish to take the trouble to understand mysticism. Can you tell me why I may not rid 
+myself of you, and of an uncomfortable and unnecessary three-century future which I will never 
+see by having you executed tonight?" 
+
+"A week ago," said Seldon, lightly, "you might have done so and perhaps retained a one in ten 
+probability of yourself remaining alive at year's end. Today, the one in ten probability is scarcely 
+one in ten thousand." 
+
+There were expired breaths in the gathering and uneasy stirrings. Gaal felt the short hairs 
+prickle on the back of his neck. Chen's upper eyelids dropped a little. 
+
+"How so?" he said. 
+
+"The fall of Trantor," said Seldon, "cannot be stopped by any conceivable effort. It can be 
+hastened easily, however. The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. 
+Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no 
+promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that 
+political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that 
+only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men 
+will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the 
+decay of the worlds. Have me killed and Trantor will fall not within three centuries but within fifty 
+years and you, yourself, within a single year." 
+
+Chen said, "These are words to frighten children, and yet your death is not the only answer 
+which will satisfy us." 
+
+He lifted his slender hand from the papers on which it rested, so that only two fingers touched 
+lightly upon the topmost sheet. 
+
+"Tell me," he said, "will your only activity be that of preparing this encyclopedia you speak of?" 
+"It will." 
+
+"And need that be done on Trantor?" 
+
+
+
+"Trantor, my lord, possesses the Imperial Library, as well as the scholarly resources of the 
+University of Trantor." 
+
+"And yet if you were located elsewhere- , let us say upon a planet where the hurry and 
+distractions of a metropolis will not interfere with scholastic musings; where your men may 
+devote themselves entirely and single-mindedly to their work; -might not that have 
+advantages?" 
+
+"Minor ones, perhaps." 
+
+"Such a world had been chosen, then. You may work, doctor, at your leisure, with your hundred 
+thousand about you. The Galaxy will know that you are working and fighting the Fall. They will 
+even be told that you will prevent the Fall." Fie smiled, "Since I do not believe in so many things, 
+it is not difficult for me to disbelieve in the Fall as well, so that I am entirely convinced I will be 
+telling the truth to the people. And meanwhile, doctor, you will not trouble Trantor and there will 
+be no disturbance of the Emperor's peace. 
+
+"The alternative is death for yourself and for as many of your followers as will seem necessary. 
+Your earlier threats I disregard. The opportunity for choosing between death and exile is given 
+you over a time period stretching from this moment to one five minutes hence." 
+
+"Which is the world chosen, my lord?" said Seldon. 
+
+"It is called, I believe, Terminus," said Chen. Negligently, he turned the papers upon his desk 
+with his fingertips so that they faced Seldon. "It is uninhabited, but quite habitable, and can be 
+molded to suit the necessities of scholars. It is somewhat secluded-" 
+
+Seldon interrupted, "It is at the edge of the Galaxy, sir." 
+
+"As I have said, somewhat secluded. It will suit your needs for concentration. Come, you have 
+two minutes left." 
+
+Seldon said, "We will need time to arrange such a trip. There are twenty thousand families 
+involved." 
+
+"You will be given time." 
+
+Seldon thought a moment, and the last minute began to die. Fie said, "I accept exile." 
+
+Gaal's heart skipped a beat at the words. For the most part, he was filled with a tremendous joy 
+for who would not be, to escape death. Yet in all his vast relief, he found space for a little regret 
+that Seldon had been defeated. 
+
+
+8 . 
+
+For a long while, they sat silently as the taxi whined through the hundreds of miles of worm-like 
+tunnels toward the University. And then Gaal stirred. Fie said: 
+
+"Was what you told the Commissioner true? Would your execution have really hastened the 
+
+
+
+Fall? 
+
+
+Seldon said, "I never lie about psychohistoric findings. Nor would it have availed me in this 
+case. Chen knew I spoke the truth. He is a very clever politician and politicians by the very 
+nature of their work must have an instinctive feeling for the truths of psychohistory." 
+
+"Then need you have accepted exile," Gaal wondered, but Seldon did not answer. 
+
+When they burst out upon the University grounds, Gaal's muscles took action of their own; or 
+rather, inaction. He had to be carried, almost, out of the taxi. 
+
+All the University was a blaze of light. Gaal had almost forgotten that a sun could exist. 
+
+The University structures lacked the hard steel-gray of the rest of Trantor. They were silvery, 
+rather. The metallic luster was almost ivory in color. 
+
+Seldon said, "Soldiers, it seems." 
+
+"What?" Gaal brought his eyes to the prosaic ground and found a sentinel ahead of them. 
+
+They stopped before him, and a soft-spoken captain materialized from a near-by doorway. 
+
+He said, "Dr. Seldon?" 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"We have been waiting for you. You and your men will be under martial law henceforth. I have 
+been instructed to inform you that six months will be allowed you for preparations to leave for 
+Terminus." 
+
+"Six months!" began Gaal, but Seldon's fingers were upon his elbow with gentle pressure. 
+"These are my instructions," repeated the captain. 
+
+He was gone, and Gaal turned to Seldon, "Why, what can be done in six months? This is but 
+slower murder." 
+
+"Quietly. Quietly. Let us reach my office." 
+
+It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so. Spy-beams 
+trained upon it received neither a suspicious silence nor an even more suspicious static. They 
+received, rather, a conversation constructed at random out of a vast stock of innocuous 
+phrases in various tones and voices. 
+
+"Now," said Seldon, at his ease, "six months will be enough." 
+
+"I don't see how." 
+
+"Because, my boy, in a plan such as ours, the actions of others are bent to our needs. Have I 
+not said to you already that Chen's temperamental makeup has been subjected to greater 
+scrutiny than that of any other single man in history. The trial was not allowed to begin until the 
+time and circumstances were fight for the ending of our own choosing." 
+
+
+
+"But could you have arranged-" 
+
+"-to be exiled to Terminus? Why not?" He put his fingers on a certain spot on his desk and a 
+small section of the wall behind him slid aside. Only his own fingers could have done so, since 
+only his particular print-pattern could have activated the scanner beneath. 
+
+"You will find several microfilms inside," said Seldon. "Take the one marked with the letter, T." 
+
+Gaal did so and waited while Seldon fixed it within the projector and handed the young man a 
+pair of eyepieces. Gaal adjusted them, and watched the film unroll before his eyes. 
+
+He said, "But then-" 
+
+Seldon said, "What surprises you?" 
+
+"Have you been preparing to leave for two years?" 
+
+"Two and a half. Of course, we could not be certain that it would be Terminus he would choose, 
+but we hoped it might be and we acted upon that assumption-" 
+
+"But why, Dr. Seldon? If you arranged the exile, why? Could not events be far better controlled 
+here on Trantor?" 
+
+"Why, there are some reasons. Working on Terminus, we will have Imperial support without 
+ever rousing fears that we would endanger Imperial safety." 
+
+Gaal said, "But you aroused those fears only to force exile. I still do not understand." 
+
+"Twenty thousand families would not travel to the end of the Galaxy of their own will perhaps." 
+
+"But why should they be forced there?" Gaal paused, "May I not know?" 
+
+Seldon said, "Not yet. It is enough for the moment that you know that a scientific refuge will be 
+established on Terminus. And another will be established at the other end of the Galaxy, let us 
+say," and he smiled, "at Star's End. And as for the rest, I will die soon, and you will see more 
+than I. -No, no. Spare me your shock and good wishes. My doctors tell me that I cannot live 
+longer than a year or two. But then, I have accomplished in life what I have intended and under 
+what circumstances may one better die." 
+
+"And after you die, sir?" 
+
+"Why, there will be successors - perhaps even yourself. And these successors will be able to 
+apply the final touch in the scheme and instigate the revolt on Anacreon at the right time and in 
+the right manner. Thereafter, events may roll unheeded." 
+
+"I do not understand." 
+
+"You will." Seldon's lined face grew peaceful and tired, both at once, "Most will leave for 
+Terminus, but some will stay. It will be easy to arrange. -But as for me," and he concluded in a 
+whisper, so that Gaal could scarcely hear him, "I am finished." 
+
+
+
+PART II 
+
+THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS 
+
+i. 
+
+TERMINUS-... Its location (see map) was an odd one for the role It was called upon to play In 
+Galactic history, and yet as many writers have never tired of pointing out, an Inevitable one. 
+Located on the very fringe of the Galactic spiral, an only planet of an Isolated sun, poor In 
+resources and negligible In economic value, it was never settled In the five centuries after Its 
+discovery, until the landing of the Encyclopedists.... 
+
+It was inevitable that as a new generation grew, Terminus would become something more than 
+an appendage of the psychohistorians of Trantor. With the Anacreonian revolt and the rise to 
+power of Salvor Hardin, first of the great line of... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Lewis Pirenne was busily engaged at his desk in the one well-lit comer of the room. Work had 
+to be co-ordinated. Effort had to be organized. Threads had to be woven into a pattern. 
+
+Fifty years now; fifty years to establish themselves and set up Encyclopedia Foundation 
+Number One into a smoothly working unit. Fifty years to gather the raw material. Fifty years to 
+prepare. 
+
+It had been done. Five more years would see the publication of the first volume of the most 
+monumental work the Galaxy had ever conceived. And then at ten-year intervals - regularly - 
+like clockwork - volume after volume. And with them there would be supplements; special 
+articles on events of current interest, until— 
+
+Pirenne stirred uneasily, as the muted buzzer upon his desk muttered peevishly. Fie had almost 
+forgotten the appointment. Fie shoved the door release and out of an abstracted comer of one 
+eye saw the door open and the broad figure of Salvor FHardin enter. Pirenne did not look up. 
+
+Hardin smiled to himself. He was in a hurry, but he knew better than to take offense at 
+Pirenne's cavalier treatment of anything or anyone that disturbed him at his work. He buried 
+himself in the chair on the other side of the desk and waited. 
+
+Pirenne's stylus made the faintest scraping sound as it raced across paper. Otherwise, neither 
+motion nor sound. And then Hardin withdrew a two-credit coin from his vest pocket. He flipped 
+it and its stainless-steel surface caught flitters of light as it tumbled through the air. He caught it 
+and-flipped it again, watching the flashing reflections lazily. Stainless steel made good medium 
+of exchange on a planet where all metal had to be imported. 
+
+Pirenne looked up and blinked. "Stop that!" he said querulously. 
+
+"Eh?" 
+
+
+
+"That infernal coin tossing. Stop it." 
+
+"Oh." Hardin pocketed the metal disk. "Tell me when you're ready, will you? I promised to be 
+back at the City Council meeting before the new aqueduct project is put to a vote." 
+
+Pirenne sighed and shoved himself away from the desk. "I'm ready. But I hope you aren't going 
+to bother me with city affairs. Take care of that yourself, please. The Encyclopedia takes up all 
+my time." 
+
+"Have you heard the news?" questioned Hardin, phlegmatically. 
+
+"What news?" 
+
+"The news that the Terminus City ultrawave set received two hours ago. The Royal Governor of 
+the Prefect of Anacreon has assumed the title of king." 
+
+"Well? What of it?" 
+
+"It means," responded Hardin, "that we're cut off from the inner regions of the Empire. We've 
+been expecting it but that doesn't make it any more comfortable. Anacreon stands square 
+across what was our last remaining trade route to Santanni and to Trantor and to Vega itself. 
+Where is our metal to come from? We haven't managed to get a steel or aluminum shipment 
+through in six months and now we won't be able to get any at all, except by grace of the King of 
+Anacreon." 
+
+Pirenne tch-tched impatiently. "Get them through him, then." 
+
+"But can we? Listen, Pirenne, according to the charter which established this Foundation, the 
+Board of Trustees of the Encyclopedia Committee has been given full administrative powers. I, 
+as Mayor of Terminus City, have just enough power to blow my own nose and perhaps to 
+sneeze if you countersign an order giving me permission. It's up to you and your Board then. 
+
+I'm asking you in the name of the City, whose prosperity depends upon uninterrupted 
+commerce with the Galaxy, to call an emergency meeting-" 
+
+"Stop! A campaign speech is out of order. Now, Hardin, the Board of Trustees has not barred 
+the establishment of a municipal government on Terminus. We understand one to be 
+necessary because of the increase in population since the Foundation was established fifty 
+years ago, and because of the increasing number of people involved in non-Encyclopedia 
+affairs. But that does not mean that the first and only aim of the Foundation is no longer to 
+publish the definitive Encyclopedia of all human knowledge. We are a State-supported, 
+scientific institution, Hardin. We cannot - must not -will not interfere in local politics." 
+
+"Local politics! By the Emperor's left toe, Pirenne, this is a matter of life and death. The planet, 
+Terminus, by itself cannot support a mechanized civilization. It lacks metals. You know that. It 
+hasn't a trace of iron, copper, or aluminum in the surface rocks, and precious little of anything 
+else. What do you think will happen to the Encyclopedia if this watchmacallum King of 
+Anacreon clamps down on us?" 
+
+"On us? Are you forgetting that we are under the direct control of the Emperor himself? We are 
+not part of the Prefect of Anacreon or of any other prefect. Memorize that! We are part of the 
+
+
+
+Emperor's personal domain, and no one touches us. The Empire can protect its own." 
+
+"Then why didn't it prevent the Royal Governor of Anacreon from kicking over the traces? And 
+only Anacreon? 
+
+At least twenty of the outermost prefects of the Galaxy, the entire Periphery as a matter of fact, 
+have begun steering things their own way. I tell you I feel damned uncertain of the Empire and 
+its ability to protect us." 
+
+"Hokum! Royal Governors, Kings - what's the difference? The Empire is always shot through 
+with a certain amount of politics and with different men pulling this way and that. Governors 
+have rebelled, and, for that matter, Emperors have been deposed, or assassinated before this. 
+But what has that to do with the Empire itself? Forget it, Hardin. It's none of our business. We 
+are first of all and last of all-scientists. And our concern is the Encyclopedia. 
+
+Oh, yes, I'd almost forgotten. Hardin!" 
+
+"Well?" 
+
+"Do something about that paper of yours!" Pirenne's voice was angry. 
+
+"The Terminus City Journal? It isn't mine; it's privately owned. What's it been doing?" 
+
+"For weeks now it has been recommending that the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of 
+the Foundation be made the occasion for public holidays and quite inappropriate celebrations." 
+
+"And why not? The computoclock will open the Vault in three months. I would call this first 
+opening a big occasion, wouldn't you?" 
+
+"Not for silly pageantry, Hardin. The Vault and its opening concern the Board of Trustees alone. 
+Anything of importance will be communicated to the people. That is final and please make it 
+plain to the Journal." 
+
+"I'm sorry, Pirenne, but the City Charter guarantees a certain minor matter known as freedom of 
+the press." 
+
+"It may. But the Board of Trustees does not. I am the Emperor's representative on Terminus, 
+Hardin, and have full powers in this respect." 
+
+Hardin's expression became that of a man counting to ten, mentally. He said, grimly: "in 
+connection with your status as Emperor's representative, then, I have a final piece of news to 
+give you." 
+
+"About Anacreon?" Pirenne's lips tightened. He felt annoyed. 
+
+"Yes. A special envoy will be sent to us from Anacreon. In two weeks." 
+
+"An envoy? Here? From Anacreon?" Pirenne chewed that. "What for?" 
+
+Hardin stood up, and shoved his chair back up against the desk. "I give you one guess." And 
+he left - quite unceremoniously. 
+
+
+
+2 . 
+
+
+Anselm haut Rodric - "haut" itself signifying noble blood -Sub-prefect of Pluema and Envoy 
+Extraordinary of his Highness of Anacreon-plus half a dozen other titleswas met by Salvor 
+Hardin at the spaceport with all the imposing ritual of a state occasion. 
+
+With a tight smile and a low bow, the sub-prefect had flipped his blaster from its holster and 
+presented it to Hardin butt first. Hardin returned the compliment with, a blaster specifically 
+borrowed for the occasion. Friendship and good will were thus established, and if Hardin noted 
+the barest bulge at Haut Rodric's shoulder, he prudently said nothing. 
+
+The ground car that received them then - preceded, flanked, and followed by the suitable cloud 
+of minor functionaries - proceeded in a slow, ceremonious manner to Cyclopedia Square, 
+cheered on its way by a properly enthusiastic crowd. 
+
+Sub-prefect Anselm received the cheers with the complaisant indifference of a soldier and a 
+nobleman. 
+
+He said to Hardin, "And this city is all your world?" 
+
+Hardin raised his voice to be heard above the clamor. "We are a young world, your eminence. 
+
+In our short history we have had but few members of the higher nobility visiting our poor planet. 
+Hence, our enthusiasm." 
+
+It is certain that "higher nobility" did not recognize irony when he heard it. 
+
+He said thoughtfully: "Founded fifty years ago. Hm-m-m! You have a great deal of unexploited 
+land here, mayor. You have never considered dividing it into estates?" 
+
+"There is no necessity as yet. We're extremely centralized; we have to be, because of the 
+Encyclopedia. Someday, perhaps, when our population has grown-" 
+
+"A strange world! You have no peasantry?" 
+
+Hardin reflected that it didn't require a great deal of acumen to tell that his eminence was 
+indulging in a bit of fairly clumsy pumping. He replied casually, "No - nor nobility." 
+
+Haut Rodric's eyebrows lifted. "And your leader -the man I am to meet?" 
+
+"You mean Dr. Pirenne? Yes! He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees - and a personal 
+representative of the Emperor." 
+
+"Doctor? No other title? A scholar? And he rates above the civil authority?" 
+
+"Why, certainly," replied Hardin, amiably. "We're all scholars more or less. After all, we're not so 
+much a world as a scientific foundation - under the direct control of the Emperor." 
+
+There was a faint emphasis upon the last phrase that seemed to disconcert the sub-prefect. He 
+remained thoughtfully silent during the rest of the slow way to Cyclopedia Square. 
+
+
+
+If Hardin found himself bored by the afternoon and evening that followed, he had at least the 
+satisfaction of realizing that Pirenne and Haut Rodric - having met with loud and mutual 
+protestations of esteem and regard - were detesting each other's company a good deal more. 
+
+Haut Rodric had attended with glazed eye to Pirenne's lecture during the "inspection tour" of 
+the Encyclopedia Building. With polite and vacant smile, he had listened to the latter's rapid 
+patter as they passed through the vast storehouses of reference films and the numerous 
+projection rooms. 
+
+It was only after he had gone down level by level into and through the composing departments, 
+editing departments, publishing departments, and filming departments that he made the first 
+comprehensive statement. 
+
+"This is all very interesting," he said, "but it seems a strange occupation for grown men. What 
+good is it?" 
+
+It was a remark, Hardin noted, for which Pirenne found no answer, though the expression of his 
+face was most eloquent. 
+
+The dinner that evening was much the mirror image of the events of that afternoon, for Haut 
+Rodric monopolized the conversation by describing - in minute technical detail and with 
+incredible zest - his own exploits as battalion head during the recent war between Anacreon 
+and the neighboring newly proclaimed Kingdom of Smyrno. 
+
+The details of the sub-prefect's account were not completed until dinner was over and one by 
+one the minor officials had drifted away. The last bit of triumphant description of mangled 
+spaceships came when he had accompanied Pirenne and Hardin onto the balcony and relaxed 
+in the warm air of the summer evening. 
+
+"And now," he said, with a heavy joviality, "to serious matters." 
+
+"By all means," murmured Hardin, lighting a long cigar of Vegan tobacco - not many left, he 
+reflected - and teetering his chair back on two legs. 
+
+The Galaxy was high in the sky and its misty lens shape stretched lazily from horizon to 
+horizon. The few stars here at the very edge of the universe were insignificant twinkles in 
+comparison. 
+
+"Of course," said the sub-prefect, "all the formal discussions - the paper signing and such dull 
+technicalities, that is - will take place before the - What is it you call your Council?" 
+
+"The Board of Trustees," replied Pirenne, coldly. 
+
+"Queer name! Anyway, that's for tomorrow. We might as well clear away some of the 
+underbrush, man to man, right now, though. Hey?" 
+
+"And this means-" prodded Hardin. 
+
+"Just this. There's been a certain change in the situation out here in the Periphery and the 
+status of your planet has become a trifle uncertain. It would be very convenient if we succeeded 
+in coming to an understanding as to how the matter stands. By the way, mayor, have you 
+
+
+
+another one of those cigars?" 
+
+Hardin started and produced one reluctantly. 
+
+Anselm haut Rodric sniffed at it and emitted a clucking sound of pleasure. "Vegan tobacco! 
+Where did you get it?" 
+
+"We received some last shipment. There's hardly any left. Space knows when we'll get more - 
+if ever." 
+
+Pirenne scowled. He didn't smoke - and, for that matter, detested the odor. "Let me understand 
+this, your eminence. Your mission is merely one of clarification?" 
+
+Haut Rodric nodded through the smoke of his first lusty puffs. 
+
+"In that case, it is soon over. The situation with respect to the Encyclopedia Foundation is what 
+it always has been." 
+
+"Ah! And what is it that it always has been?" 
+
+"Just this: A State-supported scientific institution and part of the personal domain of his august 
+majesty, the Emperor." 
+
+The sub-prefect seemed unimpressed. He blew smoke rings. "That's a nice theory, Dr. Pirenne. 
+I imagine you've got charters with the Imperial Seal upon it - but what's the actual situation? 
+How do you stand with respect to Smyrno? You're not fifty parsecs from Smyrno's capital, you 
+know. And what about Konom and Daribow?" 
+
+Pirenne said: "We have nothing to do with any prefect. As part of the Emperor's-" 
+
+"They're not prefects," reminded Haut Rodric; "they're kingdoms now." 
+
+"Kingdoms then. We have nothing to do with them. As a scientific institution-" 
+
+"Science be damned!" swore the other. "What the devil has that got to do with the fact that 
+we're liable to see Terminus taken over by Smyrno at any time?" 
+
+"And the Emperor? He would just sit by?" 
+
+Haut Rodric calmed down and said: "Well, now, Dr. Pirenne, you respect the Emperor's 
+property and so does Anacreon, but Smyrno might not. Remember, we've just signed a treaty 
+with the Emperor - I'll present a copy to that Board of yours tomorrow - which places upon us 
+the responsibility of maintaining order within the borders of the old Prefect of Anacreon on 
+behalf of the Emperor. Our duty is clear, then, isn't it?" 
+
+"Certainly. But Terminus is not part of the Prefect of Anacreon." 
+
+"And Smyrno-" 
+
+"Nor is it part of the Prefect of Smyrno. It's not part of any prefect." 
+
+"Does Smyrno know that?" 
+
+
+
+I don't care what it knows. 
+
+
+"We do. We've just finished a war with her and she still holds two stellar systems that are ours. 
+Terminus occupies an extremely strategic spot, between the two nations." 
+
+Hardin felt weary. He broke in: "What is your proposition, your eminence?" 
+
+The sub-prefect seemed quite ready to stop fencing in favor of more direct statements. He said 
+briskly: "It seems perfectly obvious that, since Terminus cannot defend itself, Anacreon must 
+take over the job for its own sake. You understand we have no desire to interfere with internal 
+administration-" 
+
+"Uh-huh," grunted Hardin dryly. 
+
+"-but we believe that it would be best for all concerned to have Anacreon establish a military 
+base upon the planet." 
+
+"And that is all you would want - a military base in some of the vast unoccupied territory - and 
+let it go at that?" 
+
+"Well, of course, there would be the matter of supporting the protecting forces." 
+
+Hardin's chair came down on all four, and his elbows went forward on his knees. "Now we're 
+getting to the nub. Let's put it into language. Terminus is to be a protectorate and to pay 
+tribute." 
+
+"Not tribute. Taxes. We're protecting you. You pay for it." 
+
+Pirenne banged his hand on the chair with sudden violence. "Let me speak, Hardin. Your 
+eminence, I don't care a rusty half-credit coin for Anacreon, Smyrno, or all your local politics 
+and petty wars. I tell you this is a State-supported tax-free institution." 
+
+"State-supported? But we are the State, Dr. Pirenne, and we're not supporting." 
+
+Pirenne rose angrily. "Your eminence, I am the direct representative of-" 
+
+"-his august majesty, the Emperor," chorused Anselm haut Rodric sourly, "And I am the direct 
+representative of the King of Anacreon. Anacreon is a lot nearer, Dr. Pirenne. " 
+
+"Let's get back to business," urged Hardin. "How would you take these so-called taxes, your 
+eminence? Would you take them in kind: wheat, potatoes, vegetables, cattle?" 
+
+The sub-prefect stared. "What the devil? What do we need with those? We've got hefty 
+surpluses. Gold, of course. Chromium or vanadium would be even better, incidentally, if you 
+have it in quantity." 
+
+Hardin laughed. "Quantity! We haven't even got iron in quantity. Gold! Here, take a look at our 
+currency." He tossed a coin to the envoy. 
+
+Haut Rodric bounced it and stared. "What is it? Steel?" 
+
+"That's right." 
+
+
+
+I don't understand. 
+
+
+"Terminus is a planet practically without metals. We import it all. Consequently, we have no 
+gold, and nothing to pay unless you want a few thousand bushels of potatoes." 
+
+"Well - manufactured goods." 
+
+"Without metal? What do we make our machines out of?" 
+
+There was a pause and Pirenne tried again. "This whole discussion is wide of the point. 
+Terminus is not a planet, but a scientific foundation preparing a great encyclopedia. Space, 
+man, have you no respect for science?" 
+
+"Encyclopedias don't win wars." Haut Rodric's brows furrowed. "A completely unproductive 
+world, then - and practically unoccupied at that. Well, you might pay with land." 
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Pirenne. 
+
+"This world is just about empty and the unoccupied land is probably fertile. There are many of 
+the nobility on Anacreon that would like an addition to their estates." 
+
+"You can't propose any such-" 
+
+"There's no necessity of looking so alarmed, Dr. Pirenne. There's plenty for all of us. If it comes 
+to what it comes, and you co-operate, we could probably arrange it so that you lose nothing. 
+Titles can be conferred and estates granted. You understand me, I think." 
+
+Pirenne sneered, "Thanks!" 
+
+And then Hardin said ingenuously: "Could Anacreon supply us with adequate quantities of 
+plutonium for our nuclear-power plant? We've only a few years' supply left." 
+
+There was a gasp from Pirenne and then a dead silence for minutes. When Haut Rodric spoke 
+it was in a voice quite different from what it had been till then: 
+
+"You have nuclear power?" 
+
+"Certainly. What's unusual in that? I imagine nuclear power is fifty thousand years old now. 
+
+Why shouldn't we have it? Except that it's a little difficult to get plutonium." 
+
+"Yes ... Yes." The envoy paused and added uncomfortably: "Well, gentlemen, we'll pursue the 
+subject tomorrow. You'll excuse me-" 
+
+Pirenne looked after him and gritted through his teeth: "That insufferable, dull-witted donkey! 
+That-" 
+
+Hardin broke in: "Not at all. He's merely the product of his environment. He doesn't understand 
+much except that 'I have a gun and you haven't.’" 
+
+Pirenne whirled on him in exasperation. "What in space did you mean by the talk about military 
+bases and tribute? Are you crazy?" 
+
+"No. I merely gave him rope and let him talk. You'll notice that he managed to stumble out with 
+
+
+
+Anacreon's real intentions - that is, the parceling up of Terminus into landed estates. Of 
+course, I don't intend to let that happen." 
+
+"You don't intend. You don't. And who are you? And may I ask what you meant by blowing off 
+your mouth about our nuclear-power plant? Why, it's just the thing that would make us a military 
+target." 
+
+"Yes," grinned Hardin. "A military target to stay away from. Isn't it obvious why I brought the 
+subject up? It happened to confirm a very strong suspicion I had had." 
+
+"And that was what?" 
+
+"That Anacreon no longer has a nuclear-power economy. If they had, our friend would 
+undoubtedly have realized that plutonium, except in ancient tradition is not used in power 
+plants. And therefore it follows that the rest of the Periphery no longer has nuclear power either. 
+Certainly Smyrno hasn't, or Anacreon wouldn't have won most of the battles in their recent war. 
+Interesting, wouldn't you say?" 
+
+"Bah!" Pirenne left in fiendish humor, and Hardin smiled gently. 
+
+He threw his cigar away and looked up at the outstretched Galaxy. "Back to oil and coal, are 
+they?" he murmured - and what the rest of his thoughts were he kept to himself. 
+
+
+3 . 
+
+When Hardin denied owning the Journal, he was perhaps technically correct, but no more. 
+Hardin had been the leading spirit in the drive to incorporate Terminus into an autonomous 
+municipality-he had been elected its first mayor-so it was not surprising that, though not a 
+single share of Journal stock was in his name, some sixty percent was controlled by him in 
+more devious fashions. 
+
+There were ways. 
+
+Consequently, when Hardin began suggesting to Pirenne that he be allowed to attend meetings 
+of the Board of Trustees, it was not quite coincidence that the Journal began a similar 
+campaign. And the first mass meeting in the history of the Foundation was held, demanding 
+representation of the City in the "national" government. 
+
+And, eventually, Pirenne capitulated with ill grace. 
+
+Hardin, as he sat at the foot of the table, speculated idly as to just what it was that made 
+physical scientists such poor administrators. It might be merely that they were too used to 
+inflexible fact and far too unused to pliable people. 
+
+In any case, there was Tomaz Sutt and Jord Fara on his left; Lundin Crast and Yate Fulham on 
+his fight; with Pirenne, himself, presiding. He knew them all, of course, but they seemed to have 
+put on an extra-special bit of pomposity for the occasion. 
+
+Hardin had dozed through the initial formalities and then perked up when Pirenne sipped at the 
+
+
+
+glass of water before him by way of preparation and said: 
+
+"I find it very gratifying to be able to inform the Board that since our last meeting, I have 
+received word that Lord Dorwin, Chancellor of the Empire, will arrive at Terminus in two weeks. 
+It may be taken for granted that our relations with Anacreon will be smoothed out to our 
+complete satisfaction as soon as the Emperor is informed of the situation. " 
+
+He smiled and addressed Hardin across the length of the table. "Information to this effect has 
+been given the Journal." 
+
+Hardin snickered below his breath. It seemed evident that Pirenne's desire to strut this 
+information before him had been one reason for his admission into the sacrosanctum. 
+
+He said evenly: "Leaving vague expressions out of account, what do you expect Lord Dorwin to 
+do?" 
+
+Tomaz Sutt replied. He had a bad habit of addressing one in the third person when in his more 
+stately moods. 
+
+"It is quite evident," he observed, "that Mayor Hardin is a professional cynic. He can scarcely 
+fail to realize that the Emperor would be most unlikely to allow his personal rights to be 
+infringed." 
+
+"Why? What would he do in case they were?" 
+
+There was an annoyed stir. Pirenne said, "You are out of order," and, as an afterthought, "and 
+are making what are near-treasonable statements, besides." 
+
+"Am I to consider myself answered?" 
+
+"Yes! If you have nothing further to say-" 
+
+"Don't jump to conclusions. I'd like to ask a question. Besides this stroke of diplomacy - which 
+may or may not prove to mean anything - has anything concrete been done to meet the 
+Anacreonic menace?" 
+
+Yate Fulham drew one hand along his ferocious red mustache. "You see a menace there, do 
+you?" 
+
+"Don't you?" 
+
+"Scarcely"- this with indulgence. "The Emperor-" 
+
+"Great space!" Hardin felt annoyed. "What is this? Every once in a while someone mentions 
+'Emperor' or 'Empire' as if it were a magic word. The Emperor is thousands of parsecs away, 
+and I doubt whether he gives a damn about us. And if he does, what can he do? What there 
+was of the imperial navy in these regions is in the hands of the four kingdoms now and 
+Anacreon has its share. Listen, we have to fight with guns, not with words. 
+
+"Now, get this. We've had two months' grace so far, mainly because we've given Anacreon the 
+idea that we've got nuclear weapons. Well, we all know that that's a little white lie. We've got 
+
+
+
+nuclear power, but only for commercial uses, and darn little at that. They're going to find that 
+out soon, and if you think they're going to enjoy being jollied along, you're mistaken." 
+
+"My dear sir-" 
+
+"Hold on: I'm not finished." Hardin was warming up. He liked this. "It's all very well to drag 
+chancellors into this, but it would be much nicer to drag a few great big siege guns fitted for 
+beautiful nuclear bombs into it. We've lost two months, gentlemen, and we may not have 
+another two months to lose. What do you propose to do?" 
+
+Said Lundin Crast, his long nose wrinkling angrily: "If you're proposing the militarization of the 
+Foundation, I won't hear a word of it. It would mark our open entrance into the field of politics. 
+We, Mr. Mayor, are a scientific foundation and nothing else." 
+
+Added Sutt: "He does not realize, moreover, that building armaments would mean withdrawing 
+men - valuable men - from the Encyclopedia. That cannot be done, come what may." 
+
+"Very true," agreed Pirenne. "The Encyclopedia first - always." 
+
+Hardin groaned in spirit. The Board seemed to suffer violently from Encyclopedia on the brain, 
+
+He said icily: "Has it ever occurred to this Board that it is barely possible that Terminus may 
+have interests other than the Encyclopedia?" 
+
+Pirenne replied: "I do not conceive, Hardin, that the Foundation can have any interest other 
+than the Encyclopedia." 
+
+"I didn't say the Foundation; I said Terminus. I'm afraid you don't understand the situation. 
+There's a good million of us here on Terminus, and not more than a hundred and fifty thousand 
+are working directly on the Encyclopedia. To the rest of us, this is home. We were born here. 
+We're living here. Compared with our farms and our homes and our factories, the Encyclopedia 
+means little to us. We want them protected-" 
+
+He was shouted down. 
+
+"The Encyclopedia first," ground out Crast. "We have a mission to fulfill." 
+
+"Mission, hell," shouted Hardin. "That might have been true fifty years ago. But this is a new 
+generation." 
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," replied Pirenne. "We are scientists." 
+
+And Hardin leaped through the opening. "Are you, though? That's a nice hallucination, isn't it? 
+Your bunch here is a perfect example of what's been wrong with the entire Galaxy for 
+thousands of years. What kind of science is it to be stuck out here for centuries classifying the 
+work of scientists of the last millennium? Have you ever thought of working onward, extending 
+their knowledge and improving upon it? No! You're quite happy to stagnate. The whole Galaxy 
+is, and has been for space knows how long. That's why the Periphery is revolting; that's why 
+communications are breaking down; that's why petty wars are becoming eternal; that's why 
+whole systems are losing nuclear power and going back to barbarous techniques of chemical 
+power. 
+
+
+
+If you ask me," he cried, "the Galactic Empire is dying!" 
+
+
+He paused and dropped into his chair to catch his breath, paying no attention to the two or 
+three that were attempting simultaneously to answer him. 
+
+Crast got the floor. "I don't know what you're trying to gain by your hysterical statements, Mr. 
+Mayor. Certainly, you are adding nothing constructive to the discussion. I move, Mr. Chairman, 
+that the speaker's remarks be placed out of order and the discussion be resumed from the point 
+where it was interrupted." 
+
+Jord Fara bestirred himself for the first time. Up to this point Fara had taken no part in the 
+argument even at its hottest. But now his ponderous voice, every bit as ponderous as his 
+three-hundred-pound body, burst its bass way out. 
+
+"Haven't we forgotten something, gentlemen?" 
+
+"What?" asked Pirenne, peevishly. 
+
+"That in a month we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary." Fara had a trick of uttering the most 
+obvious platitudes with great profundity. 
+
+"What of it?" 
+
+"And on that anniversary," continued Fara, placidly, "Hari Seldon's Vault will open. Have you 
+ever considered what might be in the Vault?" 
+
+"I don't know. Routine matters. A stock Speech of congratulations, perhaps. I don't think any 
+significance need be placed on the Vault - though the Journal'- and he glared at Hardin, who 
+grinned back -"did try to make an issue of it. I put a stop to that." 
+
+"Ah," said Fara, "but perhaps you are wrong. Doesn't it strike you" - he paused and put a finger 
+to his round little nose -"that the Vault is opening at a very convenient time?" 
+
+"Very inconvenient time, you mean," muttered Fulham. "We've got some other things to worry 
+about." 
+
+"Other things more important than a message from Hari Seldon? I think not." Fara was growing 
+more pontifical than ever, and Hardin eyed him thoughtfully. What was he getting at? 
+
+"In fact," said Fara, happily, "you all seem to forget that Seldon was the greatest psychologist of 
+our time and that he was the founder of our Foundation. It seems reasonable to assume that he 
+used his science to determine the probable course of the history of the immediate future. If he 
+did, as seems likely, I repeat, he would certainly have managed to find a way to warn us of 
+danger and, perhaps, to point out a solution. The Encyclopedia was very dear to his heart, you 
+know." 
+
+An aura of puzzled doubt prevailed. Pirenne hemmed. "Well, now, I don't know. Psychology is a 
+great science, but-there are no psychologists among us at the moment, I believe. It seems to 
+me we're on uncertain ground." 
+
+Fara turned to Hardin. "Didn't you study psychology under Alurin?" 
+
+
+
+Hardin answered, half in reverie: "Yes, I never completed my studies, though. I got tired of 
+theory. I wanted to be a psychological engineer, but we lacked the facilities, so I did the next 
+best thing - I went into politics. It's practically the same thing." 
+
+"Well, what do you think of the Vault?" 
+
+And Hardin replied cautiously, "I don't know." 
+
+He did not say a word for the remainder of the meeting even though it got back to the subject of 
+the Chancellor of the Empire. 
+
+In fact, he didn't even listen. He'd been put on a new track and things were falling into 
+place-just a little. Little angles were fitting together - one or two. 
+
+And psychology was the key. He was sure of that. 
+
+He was trying desperately to remember the psychological theory he had once learned - and 
+from it he got one thing right at the start. 
+
+A great psychologist such as Seldon could unravel human emotions and human reactions 
+sufficiently to be able to predict broadly the historical sweep of the future. 
+
+And what would that mean? 
+
+
+4 . 
+
+Lord Dorwin took snuff. He also had long hair, curled intricately and, quite obviously, artificially, 
+to which were added a pair of fluffy, blond sideburns, which he fondled affectionately. Then, 
+too, he spoke in overprecise statements and left out all the r's. 
+
+At the moment, Hardin had no time to think of more of the reasons for the instant detestation in 
+which he had held the noble chancellor. Oh, yes, the elegant gestures of one hand with which 
+he accompanied his remarks and the studied condescension with which he accompanied even 
+a simple affirmative. 
+
+But, at any rate, the problem now was to locate him. He had disappeared with Pirenne half an 
+hour before - passed clean out of sight, blast him. 
+
+Hardin was quite sure that his own absence during the preliminary discussions would quite suit 
+Pirenne. 
+
+But Pirenne had been seen in this wing And on this floor. It was simply a matter of trying every 
+door. Halfway down, he said, "Ah!" and stepped into the darkened room. The profile of Lord 
+Dorwin's intricate hair-do was unmistakable against the lighted screen. 
+
+Lord Dorwin looked up and said: "Ah, Hahdin. You ah looking foah us, no doubt?" He held out 
+his snuffbox - overadorned and poor workmanship at that, noted Hardinand was politely 
+refused whereat he helped himself to a pinch and smiled graciously. 
+
+
+
+Pirenne scowled and Hardin met that with an expression of blank indifference. 
+
+The only sound to break the short silence that followed was the clicking of the lid of Lord 
+Dorwin's snuffbox. And then he put it away and said: 
+
+"A gweat achievement, this Encyclopedia of yoahs, Hahdin. A feat, indeed, to rank with the 
+most majestic accomplishments of all time." 
+
+"Most of us think so, milord. It's an accomplishment not quite accomplished as yet, however." 
+
+"Fwom the little I have seen of the efficiency of yoah Foundation, I have no feahs on that 
+scoah." And he nodded to Pirenne, who responded with a delighted bow. 
+
+Quite a love feast, thought Hardin. "I wasn't complaining about the lack of efficiency, milord, as 
+much as of the definite excess of efficiency on the part of the Anacreonians - though in another 
+and more destructive direction." 
+
+"Ah, yes, Anacweon." A negligent wave of the hand. "I have just come from theah. Most 
+bahbawous planet. It is thowoughly inconceivable that human beings could live heah in the 
+Pewiphewy. The lack of the most elementawy wequiahments of a cultuahed gentleman; the 
+absence of the most fundamental necessities foah comfoht and convenience - the uttah 
+desuetude into which they-" 
+
+Hardin interrupted dryly: "The Anacreonians, unfortunately, have all the elementary 
+requirements for warfare and all the fundamental necessities for destruction." 
+
+"Quite, quite." Lord Dorwin seemed annoyed, perhaps at being stopped midway in his 
+sentence. "But we ahn't to discuss business now, y'know. Weally, I'm othahwise concuhned. 
+Doctah Piwenne, ahn't you going to show me the second volume? Do, please." 
+
+The lights clicked out and for the next half-hour Hardin might as well have been on Anacreon 
+for all the attention they paid him. The book upon the screen made little sense to him, nor did 
+he trouble to make the attempt to follow, but Lord Dorwin became quite humanly excited at 
+times. Hardin noticed that during these moments of excitement the chancellor pronounced his 
+r's. 
+
+When the lights went on again, Lord Dorwin said: "Mahvelous. Twuly mahvelous. You ah not, 
+by chance, intewested in ahchaeology, ah you, Hahdin?" 
+
+"Eh?" Hardin shook himself out of an abstracted reverie. "No, milord, can't say I am. I'm a 
+psychologist by original intention and a politician by final decision." 
+
+"Ah! No doubt intewesting studies. 1 , myself, y'know" - he helped himself to a giant pinch of 
+snuff -"dabble in ahchaeology." 
+
+"Indeed?" 
+
+"His lordship," interrupted Pirenne, "is most thoroughly acquainted with the field." 
+
+"Well, p'haps I am, p'haps I am," said his lordship complacently. "I have done an awful amount 
+of wuhk in the science. Extwemely well-read, in fact. I've gone thwough all of Jawdun, Obijasi, 
+
+
+
+Kwomwill ... oh, all of them, y'know." 
+
+"I've heard of them, of course," said Hardin, "but I've never read them." 
+
+"You should some day, my deah fellow. It would amply repay you. Why, I cutainly considah it 
+well wuhth the twip heah to the Pewiphewy to see this copy of Lameth. Would you believe it, 
+my Libwawy totally lacks a copy. By the way, Doctah Piwenne, you have not fohgotten yoah 
+pwomise to twansdevelop a copy foah me befoah I leave?" 
+
+"Only too pleased." 
+
+"Lameth, you must know," continued the chancellor, politically, "pwesents a new and most 
+intwesting addition to my pwevious knowledge of the 'Owigin Question.'" 
+
+"Which question?" asked Hardin. 
+
+"The 'Owigin Question.' The place of the owigin of the human species, y'know. Suahly you must 
+know that it is thought that owiginally the human wace occupied only one planetawy system." 
+
+"Well, yes, I know that." 
+
+"Of cohse, no one knows exactly which system it is - lost in the mists of antiquity. Theah ah 
+theawies, howevah. Siwius, some say. Othahs insist on Alpha Centauwi, oah on Sol, oah on 61 
+Cygni - all in the Siwius sectah, you see." 
+
+"And what does Lameth say?" 
+
+"Well, he goes off along a new twail completely. He twies to show that ahchaeological wemains 
+on the thuhd planet of the Ahctuwian System show that humanity existed theah befoah theah 
+wah any indications of space-twavel." 
+
+"And that means it was humanity's birth planet?" 
+
+"P'haps. I must wead it closely and weigh the evidence befoah I can say foah cuhtain. One 
+must see just how weliable his obsuhvations ah." 
+
+Hardin remained silent for a short while. Then he said, "When did Lameth write his book?" 
+
+"Oh - I should say about eight hundwed yeahs ago. Of cohse, he has based it lahgely on the 
+pwevious wuhk of Gleen." 
+
+"Then why rely on him? Why not go to Arcturus and study the remains for yourself?" 
+
+Lord Dorwin raised his eyebrows and took a pinch of snuff hurriedly. "Why, whatevah foah, my 
+deah fellow?" 
+
+"To get the information firsthand, of course." 
+
+"But wheah's the necessity? It seems an uncommonly woundabout and hopelessly 
+wigmawolish method of getting anywheahs. Look heah, now, I've got the wuhks of all the old 
+mastahs - the gweat ahchaeologists of the past. I wigh them against each othah - balance the 
+disagweements - analyze the conflicting statements - decide which is pwobably cowwect - 
+
+
+
+and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least" - patronizingly -"as / see it. 
+How insuffewably cwude it would be to go to Ahctuwus, oah to Sol, foah instance, and blundah 
+about, when the old mastahs have covahed the gwound so much moah effectually than we 
+could possibly hope to do." 
+
+Hardin murmured politely, "I see." 
+
+"Come, milord," said Pirenne, "think we had better be returning." 
+
+"Ah, yes. P'haps we had." 
+
+As they left the room, Hardin said suddenly, "Milord, may I ask a question?" 
+
+Lord Dorwin smiled blandly and emphasized his answer with a gracious flutter of the hand. 
+"Cuhtainly, my deah fellow. Only too happy to be of suhvice. If I can help you in any way fwom 
+my pooah stoah of knowledge-" 
+
+"It isn't exactly about archaeology, milord." 
+
+"No?" 
+
+"No. It's this: Last year we received news here in Terminus about the meltdown of a power 
+plant on Planet V of Gamma Andromeda. We got the barest outline of the accident - no details 
+at all. I wonder if you could tell me exactly what happened." 
+
+Pirenne's mouth twisted. "I wonder you annoy his lordship with questions on totally irrelevant 
+subjects." 
+
+"Not at all, Doctah Piwenne," interceded the chancellor. "It is quite all wight. Theah isn't much to 
+say concuhning it in any case. The powah plant did undergo meltdown and it was quite a 
+catastwophe, y'know. I believe wadiatsen damage. Weally, the govuhnment is sewiously 
+considewing placing seveah westwictions upon the indiscwiminate use of nucleah powah - 
+though that is not a thing for genewal publication, y'know." 
+
+"I understand," said Hardin. "But what was wrong with the plant?" 
+
+"Well, weally," replied Lord Dorwin indifferently, "who knows? It had bwoken down some yeahs 
+pweviously and it is thought that the weplacements and wepaiah wuhk wuh most infewiah. It is 
+so difficult these days to find men who weally undahstand the moah technical details of ouah 
+powah systems." And he took a sorrowful pinch of snuff. 
+
+"You realize," said Hardin, "that the independent kingdoms of the Periphery had lost nuclear 
+power altogether?" 
+
+"Have they? I'm not at all suhpwised. Bahbawous planets- Oh, but my deah fellow, don't call 
+them independent. They ahn't, y'know. The tweaties we've made with them ah pwoof positive of 
+that. They acknowledge the soveweignty of the Empewah. They'd have to, of cohse, oah we 
+wouldn't tweat with them." 
+
+
+That may be so, but they have considerable freedom of action. 
+
+
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. Considewable. But that scahcely mattahs. The Empiah is fah bettah off, 
+with the Pewiphewy thwown upon its own wesoahces - as it is, moah oah less. They ahn't any 
+good to us, y'know. Most bahbawous planets. Scahcely civilized." 
+
+"They were civilized in the past. Anacreon was one of the richest of the outlying provinces. I 
+understand it compared favorably with Vega itself." 
+
+"Oh, but, Hahdin, that was centuwies ago. You can scahcely dwaw conclusion fwom that. 
+Things wah diffewent in the old gweat days. We ahn't the men we used to be, y'know. But, 
+Hahdin, come, you ah a most puhsistent chap. 
+
+I've told you I simply won't discuss business today. Doctah Piwenne did pwepayah me foah 
+you. He told me you would twy to badgah me, but I'm fah too old a hand foah that. Leave it foah 
+next day. And that was that. 
+
+
+5 . 
+
+This was the second meeting of the Board that Hardin had attended, if one were to exclude the 
+informal talks the Board members had had with the now-departed Lord Dorwin. Yet the mayor 
+had a perfectly definite idea that at least one other, and possibly two or three, had been held, to 
+which he had somehow never received an invitation. 
+
+Nor, it seemed to him, would he have received notification of this one had it not been for the 
+ultimatum. 
+
+At least, it amounted to an ultimatum, though a superficial reading of the visigraphed document 
+would lead one to suppose that it was a friendly interchange of greetings between two 
+potentates. 
+
+Hardin fingered it gingerly. It started off floridly with a salutation from "His Puissant Majesty, the 
+King of Anacreon, to his friend and brother, Dr. Lewis Pirenne, Chairman of the Board of 
+Trustees, of the Encyclopedia Foundation Number One," and it ended even more lavishly with 
+a gigantic, multicolored seal of the most involved symbolism. 
+
+But it was an ultimatum just the same. 
+
+Hardin said: "It turned out that we didn't have much time after all - only three months. But little 
+as it was, we threw it away unused. This thing here gives us a week. What do we do now?" 
+
+Pirenne frowned worriedly. "There must be a loophole. It is absolutely unbelievable that they 
+would push matters to extremities in the face of what Lord Dorwin has assured us regarding the 
+attitude of the Emperor and the Empire." 
+
+Hardin perked up. "I see. You have informed the King of Anacreon of this alleged attitude?" 
+
+"I did - after having placed the proposal to the Board for a vote and having received unanimous 
+consent." 
+
+
+And when did this vote take place? 
+
+
+
+Pirenne climbed onto his dignity. "I do not believe I am answerable to you in any way, Mayor 
+Hardin." 
+
+
+"All right. I'm not that vitally interested. It's just my opinion that it was your diplomatic 
+transmission of Lord Dorwin's valuable contribution to the situation"- he lifted the comer of his 
+mouth in a sour half-smile -"that was the direct cause of this friendly little note. They might 
+have delayed longer otherwise - though I don't think the additional time would have helped 
+Terminus any, considering the attitude of the Board." 
+
+Said Yate Fulham: "And just how do you arrive at that remarkable conclusion, Mr. Mayor?" 
+
+"In a rather simple way. It merely required the use of that much-neglected commodity - 
+common sense. You see, there is a branch of human knowledge known as symbolic logic, 
+which can be used to prune away all sorts of clogging deadwood that clutters up human 
+language." 
+
+"What about it?" said Fulham. 
+
+"I applied it. Among other things, I applied it to this document here. I didn't really need to for 
+myself because I knew what it was all about, but I think I can explain it more easily to five 
+physical scientists by symbols rather than by words." 
+
+Hardin removed a few sheets of paper from the pad under his arm and spread them out. "I 
+didn't do this myself, by the way," he said. "Muller Hoik of the Division of Logic has his name 
+signed to the analyses, as you can see." 
+
+Pirenne leaned over the table to get a better view and Hardin continued: "The message from 
+Anacreon was a simple problem, naturally, for the men who wrote it were men of action rather 
+than men of words. It boils down easily and straightforwardly to the unqualified statement, when 
+in symbols is what you see, and which in words, roughly translated, is, 'You give us what we 
+want in a week, or we take it by force.'" 
+
+There was silence as the five members of the Board ran down the line of symbols, and then 
+Pirenne sat down and coughed uneasily. 
+
+Hardin said, "No loophole, is there, Dr. Pirenne?" 
+
+"Doesn't seem to be." 
+
+"All right." Hardin replaced the sheets. "Before you now you see a copy of the treaty between 
+the Empire and Anacreon - a treaty, incidentally, which is signed on the Emperor's behalf by 
+the same Lord Dorwin who was here last week - and with it a symbolic analysis." 
+
+The treaty ran through five pages of fine print and the analysis was scrawled out in just under 
+half a page. 
+
+"As you see, gentlemen, something like ninety percent of the treaty boiled right out of the 
+analysis as being meaningless, and what we end up with can be described in the following 
+interesting manner: 
+
+"Obligations of Anacreon to the Empire: None! 
+
+
+
+Powers of the Empire over Anacreon: None!" 
+
+
+Again the five followed the reasoning anxiously, checking carefully back to the treaty, and when 
+they were finished, Pirenne said in a worried fashion, "That seems to be correct." 
+
+"You admit, then, that the treaty is nothing but a declaration of total independence on the part of 
+Anacreon and a recognition of that status by the Empire?" 
+
+"It seems so." 
+
+"And do you suppose that Anacreon doesn't realize that, and is not anxious to emphasize the 
+position of independence - so that it would naturally tend to resent any appearance of threats 
+from the Empire? Particularly when it is evident that the Empire is powerless to fulfill any such 
+threats, or it would never have allowed independence." 
+
+"But then," interposed Sutt, "how would Mayor Hardin account for Lord Dorwin's assurances of 
+Empire support? They seemed He shrugged. "Well, they seemed satisfactory." 
+
+Hardin threw himself back in the chair. "You know, that's the most interesting part of the whole 
+business. I'll admit I had thought his Lordship a most consummate donkey when I first met him 
+- but it turned out that he was actually an accomplished diplomat and a most clever man. I took 
+the liberty of recording all his statements." 
+
+There was a flurry, and Pirenne opened his mouth in horror. 
+
+"What of it?" demanded Hardin. "I realize it was a gross breach of hospitality and a thing no 
+so-called gentleman would do. Also, that if his lordship had caught on, things might have been 
+unpleasant; but he didn't, and I have the record, and that's that. I took that record, had it copied 
+out and sent that to Hoik for analysis, also." 
+
+Lundin Crast said, "And where is the analysis?" 
+
+"That," replied Hardin, "is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three 
+by all odds. When Hoik, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless 
+statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications - in short, all the goo and dribble - he 
+found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out." 
+
+"Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn't say one damned thing, and said it so 
+you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire." 
+
+Hardin might have placed an actively working stench bomb on the table and created no more 
+confusion than existed after his last statement. He waited, with weary patience, for it to die 
+down. 
+
+"So," he concluded, "when you sent threats - and that's what they were - concerning Empire 
+action to Anacreon, you merely irritated a monarch who knew better. Naturally, his ego would 
+demand immediate action, and the ultimatum is the result-which brings me to my original 
+statement. We have one week left and what do we do now?" 
+
+"It seems," said Sutt, "that we have no choice but to allow Anacreon to establish military bases 
+
+
+
+on Terminus. 
+
+
+"I agree with you there," replied Hardin, "but what do we do toward kicking them off again at the 
+first opportunity?" 
+
+Yate Fulham's mustache twitched. "That sounds as if you have made up your mind that 
+violence must be used against them." 
+
+"Violence," came the retort, "is the last refuge of the incompetent. But I certainly don't intend to 
+lay down the welcome mat and brush off the best furniture for their use." 
+
+"I still don't like the way you put that," insisted Fulham. "It is a dangerous attitude; the more 
+dangerous because we have noticed lately that a sizable section of the populace seems to 
+respond to all your suggestions just so. I might as well tell you, Mayor Hardin, that the board is 
+not quite blind to your recent activities." 
+
+He paused and there was general agreement. Hardin shrugged. 
+
+Fulham went on: "If you were to inflame the City into an act of violence, you would achieve 
+elaborate suicide - and we don't intend to allow that. Our policy has but one cardinal principle, 
+and that is the Encyclopedia. Whatever we decide to do or not to do will be so decided because 
+it will be the measure required to keep that Encyclopedia safe." 
+
+"Then," said Hardin, "you come to the conclusion that we must continue our intensive campaign 
+of doing nothing." 
+
+Pirenne said bitterly: "You have yourself demonstrated that the Empire cannot help us; though 
+how and why it can be so, I don't understand. If compromise is necessary-" 
+
+Hardin had the nightmarelike sensation of running at top speed and getting nowhere. "There is 
+no compromise! Don't you realize that this bosh about military bases is a particularly inferior 
+grade of drivel? Haut Rodric told us what Anacreon was after - outright annexation and 
+imposition of its own feudal system of landed estates and peasant-aristocracy economy upon 
+us. What is left of our bluff of nuclear power may force them to move slowly, but they will move 
+nonetheless." 
+
+He had risen indignantly, and the rest rose with him except for Jord Fara. 
+
+And then Jord Fara spoke. "Everyone will please sit down. We've gone quite far enough, I 
+think. Come, there's no use looking so furious, Mayor Hardin; none of us have been committing 
+treason." 
+
+"You'll have to convince me of that!" 
+
+Fara smiled gently. "You know you don't mean that. Let me speak!" 
+
+
+His little shrewd eyes were half closed, and the perspiration gleamed on the smooth expanse of 
+his chin. "There seems no point in concealing that the Board has come to the decision that the 
+real solution to the Anacreonian problem lies in what is to be revealed to us when the Vault 
+
+
+
+opens six days from now. 
+
+
+"Is that your contribution to the matter?" 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"We are to do nothing, is that fight, except to wait in quiet serenity and utter faith for the deus ex 
+machina to pop out of the Vault?" 
+
+"Stripped of your emotional phraseology, that's the idea." 
+
+"Such unsubtle escapism! Really, Dr. Fara, such folly smacks of genius. A lesser mind would 
+be incapable of it." 
+
+Fara smiled indulgently. "Your taste in epigrams is amusing, Hardin, but out of place. As a 
+matter of fact, I think you remember my line of argument concerning the Vault about three 
+weeks ago." 
+
+"Yes, I remember it. I don't deny that it was anything but a stupid idea from the standpoint of 
+deductive logic alone. You said - stop me when I make a mistake - that Hari Seldon was the 
+greatest psychologist in the System; that, hence, he could foresee the right and uncomfortable 
+spot we're in now; that, hence, he established the Vault as a method of telling us the way out." 
+
+"You've got the essence of the idea." 
+
+"Would it surprise you to hear that I've given considerable thought to the matter these last 
+weeks?" 
+
+"Very flattering. With what result?" 
+
+"With the result that pure deduction is found wanting. Again what is needed is a little sprinkling 
+of common sense." 
+
+"For instance?" 
+
+"For instance, if he foresaw the Anacreonian mess, why not have placed us on some other 
+planet nearer the Galactic centers? It's well known that Seldon maneuvered the Commissioners 
+on Trantor into ordering the Foundation established on Terminus. But why should he have done 
+so? Why put us out here at all if he could see in advance the break in communication lines, our 
+isolation from the Galaxy, the threat of our neighbors - and our helplessness because of the 
+lack of metals on Terminus? That above all! Or if he foresaw all this, why not have warned the 
+original settlers in advance that they might have had time to prepare, rather than wait, as he is 
+doing, until one foot is over the cliff, before doing so? 
+
+"And don't forget this. Even though he could foresee the problem then, we can see it equally 
+well now. Therefore, if he could foresee the solution then, we should be able to see it now. After 
+all, Seldon was not a magician. There are no trick methods of escaping from a dilemma that he 
+can see and we can't." 
+
+
+
+But, Hardin," reminded Fara, "we can't! 
+
+
+"But you haven't tried. You haven't tried once. First, you refused to admit that there was a 
+menace at all! Then you reposed an absolutely blind faith in the Emperor! Now you've shifted it 
+to Hari Seldon. Throughout you have invariably relied on authority or on the past - never on 
+yourselves." 
+
+His fists balled spasmodically. "It amounts to a diseased attitude - a conditioned reflex that 
+shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority. 
+There seems no doubt ever in your minds that the Emperor is more powerful than you are, or 
+Hari Seldon wiser. And that's wrong, don't you see?" 
+
+For some reason, no one cared to answer him. 
+
+Hardin continued: "It isn't just you. It's the whole Galaxy. Pirenne heard Lord Dorwin's idea of 
+scientific research. Lord Dorwin thought the way to be a good archaeologist was to read all the 
+books on the subject - written by men who were dead for centuries. He thought that the way to 
+solve archaeological puzzles was to weigh the opposing authorities. And Pirenne listened and 
+made no objections. Don't you see that there's something wrong with that?" 
+
+Again the note of near-pleading in his voice. Again no answer. 
+
+He went on: "And you men and half of Terminus as well are just as bad. We sit here, 
+considering the Encyclopedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science, is the 
+classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We're 
+receding and forgetting, don't you see? Here in the Periphery they've lost nuclear power. In 
+Gamma Andromeda, a power plant has undergone meltdown because of poor repairs, and the 
+Chancellor of the Empire complains that nuclear technicians are scarce. And the solution? To 
+train new ones? Never! Instead they're to restrict nuclear power." 
+
+And for the third time: "Don't you see? It's Galaxywide. It's a worship of the past. It's a 
+deterioration - a stagnation!" 
+
+He stared from one to the other and they gazed fixedly at him. 
+
+Fara was the first to recover. "Well, mystical philosophy isn't going to help us here. Let us be 
+concrete. Do you deny that Hari Seldon could easily have worked out historical trends of the 
+future by simple psychological technique?" 
+
+"No, of course not," cried Hardin. "But we can't rely on him for a solution. At best, he might 
+indicate the problem, but if ever there is to be a solution, we must work it out ourselves. He 
+can't do it for us." 
+
+Fulham spoke suddenly. "What do you mean - 'indicate the problem'? We know the problem." 
+
+Hardin whirled on him. "You think you do? You think Anacreon is all Hari Seldon is likely to be 
+worried about. I disagree! I tell you, gentlemen, that as yet none of you has the faintest 
+conception of what is really going on." 
+
+"And you do?" questioned Pirenne, hostilely. 
+
+
+
+"I think so!" Hardin jumped up and pushed his chair away. His eyes were cold and hard. "If 
+there's one thing that's definite, it is that there's something smelly about the whole situation; 
+something that is bigger than anything we've talked about yet. Just ask yourself this question: 
+Why was it that among the original population of the Foundation not one first-class psychologist 
+was included, except Bor Alurin? And he carefully refrained from training his pupils in more 
+than the fundamentals." 
+
+A short silence and Fara said: "All right. Why?" 
+
+"Perhaps because a psychologist might have caught on to what this was all about - and too 
+soon to suit Hari Seldon. As it is, we've been stumbling about, getting misty glimpses of the 
+truth and no more. And that is what Hari Seldon wanted." 
+
+He laughed harshly. "Good day, gentlemen!" 
+
+He stalked out of the room. 
+
+
+6 . 
+
+Mayor Hardin chewed at the end of his cigar. It had gone out but he was past noticing that. He 
+hadn't slept the night before and he had a good idea that he wouldn't sleep this coming night. 
+His eyes showed it. 
+
+He said wearily, "And that covers it?" 
+
+"I think so." Yohan Lee put a hand to his chin. "How does it sound?" 
+
+"Not too bad. It's got to be done, you understand, with impudence. That is, there is to be no 
+hesitation; no time to allow them to grasp the situation. Once we are in a position to give 
+orders, why, give them as though you were born to do so, and they'll obey out of habit. That's 
+the essence of a coup." 
+
+"If the Board remains irresolute for even 
+
+"The Board? Count them out. After tomorrow, their importance as a factor in Terminus affairs 
+won't matter a rusty half-credit." 
+
+Lee nodded slowly. "Yet it is strange that they've done nothing to stop us so far. You say they 
+weren't entirely in the dark." 
+
+"Fara stumbles at the edges of the problem. Sometimes he makes me nervous. And Pirenne's 
+been suspicious of me since I was elected. But, you see, they never had the capacity of really 
+understanding what was up. Their whole training has been authoritarian. They are sure that the 
+Emperor, just because he is the Emperor, is all-powerful. And they are sure that the Board of 
+Trustees, simply because it is the Board of Trustees acting in the name of the Emperor, cannot 
+be in a position where it does not give the orders. That incapacity to recognize the possibility of 
+revolt is our best ally." 
+
+He heaved out of his chair and went to the water cooler. "They're not bad fellows, Lee, when 
+
+
+
+they stick to their Encyclopedia - and we'll see that that's where they stick in the future. They're 
+hopelessly incompetent when it comes to ruling Terminus. Go away now and start things 
+rolling. I want to be alone." 
+
+He sat down on the comer of his desk and stared at the cup of water. 
+
+Space! If only he were as confident as he pretended! The Anacreonians were landing in two 
+days and what had he to go on but a set of notions and half-guesses as to what Had Seldon 
+had been driving at these past fifty years? He wasn't even a real, honest-to-goodness 
+psychologist - just a tumbler with a little training trying to outguess the greatest mind of the 
+age. 
+
+If Fara were fight; if Anacreon were all the problem Hari Seldon had foreseen; if the 
+Encyclopedia were all he was interested in preserving - then what price coup d'etat? 
+
+He shrugged and drank his water. 
+
+
+7 . 
+
+The Vault was furnished with considerably more than six chairs, as though a larger company 
+had been expected. Hardin noted that thoughtfully and seated himself wearily in a comer just 
+as far from the other five as possible. 
+
+The Board members did not seem to object to that arrangement. They spoke among 
+themselves in whispers, which fell off into sibilant monosyllables, and then into nothing at all. Of 
+them all, only Jord Fara seemed even reasonably calm. He had produced a watch and was 
+staring at it somberly. 
+
+Hardin glanced at his own watch and then at the glass cubicle - absolutely empty - that 
+dominated half the room. It was the only unusual feature of the room, for aside from that there 
+was no indication that somewhere a computer was splitting off instants of time toward that 
+precise moment when a muon stream would flow, a connection be made and- 
+
+The lights went dim! 
+
+They didn't go out, but merely yellowed and sank with a suddenness that made Hardin jump. 
+
+He had lifted his eyes to the ceiling lights in startled fashion, and when he brought them down 
+the glass cubicle was no longer empty. 
+
+A figure occupied it , a figure in a wheel chair! 
+
+It said nothing for a few moments, but it closed the book upon its lap and fingered it idly. And 
+then it smiled, and the face seemed all alive. 
+
+It said, "I am Hari Seldon." The voice was old and soft. 
+
+Hardin almost rose to acknowledge the introduction and stopped himself in the act. 
+
+The voice continued conversationally: "As you see, I am confined to this chair and cannot rise 
+
+
+
+to greet you. Your grandparents left for Terminus a few months back in my time and since then 
+I have suffered a rather inconvenient paralysis. I can't see you, you know, so I can't greet you 
+properly. I don't even know how many of you there are, so all this must be conducted 
+informally. If any of you are standing, please sit down; and if you care to smoke, I wouldn't 
+mind." There was a light chuckle. "Why should I? I'm not really here." 
+
+Hardin fumbled for a cigar almost automatically, but thought better of it. 
+
+Hari Seldon put away his book - as if laying it upon a desk at his side - and when his fingers let 
+go, it disappeared. 
+
+He said: "It is fifty years now since this Foundation was established - fifty years in which the 
+members of the Foundation have been ignorant of what it was they were working toward. It was 
+necessary that they be ignorant, but now the necessity is gone. 
+
+"The Encyclopedia Foundation, to begin with, is a fraud, and always has been!" 
+
+There was a sound of a scramble behind Hardin and one or two muffled exclamations, but he 
+did not turn around. 
+
+Hari Seldon was, of course, undisturbed. He went on: "It is a fraud in the sense that neither I 
+nor my colleagues care at all whether a single volume of the Encyclopedia is ever published. It 
+has served its purpose, since by it we extracted an imperial charter from the Emperor, by it we 
+attracted the hundred thousand humans necessary for our scheme, and by it we managed to 
+keep them preoccupied while events shaped themselves, until it was too late for any of them to 
+draw back. 
+
+"In the fifty years that you have worked on this fraudulent project - there is no use in softening 
+phrases - your retreat has been cut off, and you have now no choice but to proceed on the 
+infinitely more important project that was, and is, our real plan. 
+
+"To that end we have placed you on such a planet and at such a time that in fifty years you 
+were maneuvered to the point where you no longer have freedom of action. From now on, and 
+into the centuries, the path you must take is inevitable. You will be faced with a series of crises, 
+as you are now faced with the first, and in each case your freedom of action will become 
+similarly circumscribed so that you will be forced along one, and only one, path. 
+
+"It is that path which our psychology has worked out - and for a reason. 
+
+"For centuries Galactic civilization has stagnated and declined, though only a few ever realized 
+that. But now, at last, the Periphery is breaking away and the political unity of the Empire is 
+shattered. Somewhere in the fifty years just past is where the historians of the future will place 
+an arbitrary line and say: 'This marks the Fall of the Galactic Empire.' 
+
+"And they will be right, though scarcely any will recognize that Fall for additional centuries. 
+
+"And after the Fall will come inevitable barbarism, a period which, our psychohistory tells us, 
+should, under ordinary circumstances, last for thirty thousand years. We cannot stop the Fall. 
+We do not wish to; for Imperial culture has lost whatever virility and worth it once had. But we 
+can shorten the period of Barbarism that must follow - down to a single thousand of years. 
+
+
+
+"The ins and outs of that shortening, we cannot tell you; just as we could not tell you the truth 
+about the Foundation fifty years ago. Were you to discover those ins and outs, our plan might 
+fail; as it would have, had you penetrated the fraud of the Encyclopedia earlier; for then, by 
+knowledge, your freedom of action would be expanded and the number of additional variables 
+introduced would become greater than our psychology could handle. 
+
+"But you won't, for there are no psychologists on Terminus, and never were, but for Alurin - 
+and he was one of us. 
+
+"But this I can tell you: Terminus and its companion Foundation at the other end of the Galaxy 
+are the seeds of the Renascence and the future founders of the Second Galactic Empire. And it 
+is the present crisis that is starting Terminus off to that climax. 
+
+"This, by the way, is a rather straightforward crisis, much simpler than many of those that are 
+ahead. To reduce it to its fundamentals, it is this: You are a planet suddenly cut off from the 
+still-civilized centers of the Galaxy, and threatened by your stronger neighbors. You are a small 
+world of scientists surrounded by vast and rapidly expanding reaches of barbarism. You are an 
+island of nuclear power in a growing ocean of more primitive energy; but are helpless despite 
+that, because of your lack of metals. 
+
+"You see, then, that you are faced by hard necessity, and that action is forced on you. The 
+nature of that action - that is, the solution to your dilemma - is, of course, obvious!" 
+
+The image of Hari Seldon reached into open air and the book once more appeared in his hand. 
+Fie opened it and said: 
+
+"But whatever devious course your future history may take, impress it always upon your 
+descendants that the path has been marked out, and that at its end is new and greater Empire!" 
+
+And as his eyes bent to his book, he flicked into nothingness, and the lights brightened once 
+more. 
+
+Hardin looked up to see Pirenne facing him, eyes tragic and lips trembling. 
+
+The chairman's voice was firm but toneless. "You were right, it seems. If you will see us tonight 
+at six, the Board will consult with you as to the next move." 
+
+They shook his hand, each one, and left, and Hardin smiled to himself. They were 
+fundamentally sound at that; for they were scientists enough to admit that they were wrong - 
+but for them, it was too late. 
+
+Fie looked at his watch. By this time, it was all over. Lee's men were in control and the Board 
+was giving orders no longer. 
+
+The Anacreonians were landing their first spaceships tomorrow, but that was all right, too. In six 
+months, they would be giving orders no longer. 
+
+In fact, as Hari Seldon had said, and as Salvor Hardin had guessed since the day that Anselm 
+haut Rodric had first revealed to him Anacreon's lack of nuclear power - the solution to this first 
+crisis was obvious. 
+
+
+
+Obvious as all hell! 
+
+
+PART III 
+
+THE MAYORS 
+
+i. 
+
+THE FOUR KINGDOMS - The name given to those portions of the Province of Anacreon which 
+broke away from the First Empire in the early years of the Foundational Era to form 
+independent and short-lived kingdoms. The largest and most powerful of these was Anacreon 
+itself which in area... 
+
+... Undoubtedly the most interesting aspect of the history of the Four Kingdoms involves the 
+strange society forced temporarily upon it during the administration of Salvor Hardin.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+A deputation! 
+
+That Salvor Hardin had seen it coming made it none the more pleasant. On the contrary, he 
+found anticipation distinctly annoying. 
+
+Yohan Lee advocated extreme measures. "I don't see, Hardin," he said, "that we need waste 
+any time. They can't do anything till next election - legally, anyway - and that gives us a year. 
+Give them the brush-off." 
+
+Hardin pursed his lips. "Lee, you'll never learn. In the forty years I've known you, you've never 
+once learned the gentle art of sneaking up from behind." 
+
+"It's not my way of fighting," grumbled Lee. 
+
+"Yes, I know that. I suppose that's why you're the one man I trust." He paused and reached for 
+a cigar. "We've come a long way, Lee, since we engineered our coup against the 
+Encyclopedists way back. I'm getting old. Sixty-two. Do you ever think how fast those thirty 
+years went?" 
+
+Lee snorted. "I don't feel old, and I'm sixty-six." 
+
+"Yes, but I haven't your digestion." Hardin sucked lazily at his cigar. He had long since stopped 
+wishing for the mild Vegan tobacco of his youth. Those days when the planet, Terminus, had 
+trafficked with every part of the Galactic Empire belonged in the limbo to which all Good Old 
+Days go. Toward the same limbo where the Galactic Empire was heading. He wondered who 
+the new emperor was - or if there was a new emperor at all - or any Empire. Space! For thirty 
+years now, since the breakup of communications here at the edge of the Galaxy, the whole 
+universe of Terminus had consisted of itself and the four surrounding kingdoms. 
+
+
+
+
+How the mighty had fallen! Kingdoms ! They were prefects in the old days, all part of the same 
+province, which in turn had been part of a sector, which in turn had been part of a quadrant, 
+which in turn had been part of the allembracing Galactic Empire. And now that the Empire had 
+lost control over the farther reaches of the Galaxy, these little splinter groups of planets became 
+kingdoms - with comic-opera kings and nobles, and petty, meaningless wars, and a life that 
+went on pathetically among the ruins. 
+
+A civilization falling. Nuclear power forgotten. Science fading to mythology - until the 
+Foundation had stepped in. The Foundation that Hari Seldon had established for just that 
+purpose here on Terminus. 
+
+Lee was at the window and his voice broke in on Hardin's reverie. "They've come," he said, "in 
+a late-model ground car, the young pups." He took a few uncertain steps toward the door and 
+then looked at Hardin. 
+
+Hardin smiled, and waved him back. "I've given orders to have them brought up here." 
+
+"Here! What for? You're making them too important." 
+
+"Why go through all the ceremonies of an official mayor's audience? I'm getting too old for red 
+tape. Besides which, flattery is useful when dealing with youngsters - particularly when it 
+doesn't commit you to anything." He winked. "Sit down, Lee, and give me your moral backing. 
+
+I'll need it with this young Sermak." 
+
+"That fellow, Sermak," said Lee, heavily, "is dangerous. He's got a following, Hardin, so don't 
+underestimate him." 
+
+"Have I ever underestimated anybody?" 
+
+"Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward." 
+
+Hardin ignored that last bit of advice. "There they are, Lee." In response to the signal, he 
+stepped on the pedal beneath his desk, and the door slid aside. 
+
+They filed in, the four that composed the deputation, and Hardin waved them gently to the 
+armchairs that faced his desk in a semicircle. They bowed and waited for the mayor to speak 
+first. 
+
+Hardin flicked open the curiously carved silver lid of the cigar box that had once belonged to 
+Jord Fara of the old Board of Trustees in the long-dead days of the Encyclopedists. It was a 
+genuine Empire product from Santanni, though the cigars it now contained were home-grown. 
+One by one, with grave solemnity, the four of the deputation accepted cigars and lit up in 
+ritualistic fashion. 
+
+Sef Sermak was second from the right, the youngest of the young group - and the most 
+interesting with his bristly yellow mustache trimmed precisely, and his sunken eyes of uncertain 
+color. The other three Hardin dismissed almost immediately; they were rank and file on the face 
+of them. It was on Sermak that he concentrated, the Sermak who had already, in his first term 
+in the City Council, turned that sedate body topsy-turvy more than once, and it was to Sermak 
+that he said: 
+
+
+
+"I've been particularly anxious to see you, Councilman, ever since your very excellent speech 
+last month. Your attack on the foreign policy of this government was a most capable one." 
+
+Sermak's eyes smoldered. "Your interest honors me. The attack may or may not have been 
+capable, but it was certainly justified." 
+
+"Perhaps! Your opinions are yours, of course. Still you are rather young." 
+
+Dryly. "It is a fault that most people are guilty of at some period of their life. You became mayor 
+of the city when you were two years younger than I am now." 
+
+Hardin smiled to himself. The yearling was a cool customer. He said, "I take it now that you 
+have come to see me concerning this same foreign policy that annoys you so greatly in the 
+Council Chamber. Are you speaking for your three colleagues, or must I listen to each of you 
+separately?" There were quick mutual glances among the four young men, a slight flickering of 
+eyelids. 
+
+Sermak said grimly, "I speak for the people of Terminus - a people who are not now truly 
+represented in the rubberstamp body they call the Council." 
+
+"I see. Go ahead, then!" 
+
+"It comes to this, Mr. Mayor. We are dissatisfied-" 
+
+"By 'we' you mean 'the people,' don't you?" 
+
+Sermak stared hostilely, sensing a trap, and replied coldly, "I believe that my views reflect those 
+of the majority of the voters of Terminus. Does that suit you?" 
+
+"Well, a statement like that is all the better for proof, but go on, anyway. You are dissatisfied." 
+
+"Yes, dissatisfied with the policy which for thirty years had been stripping Terminus defenseless 
+against the inevitable attack from outside." 
+
+"I see. And therefore? Go on, go on." 
+
+"It's nice of you to anticipate. And therefore we are forming a new political party; one that will 
+stand for the immediate needs of Terminus and not for a mystic 'manifest destiny' of future 
+Empire. We are going to throw you and your lick-spittle clique of appeasers out of City Hall-and 
+that soon." 
+
+"Unless? There's always an 'unless,' you know." 
+
+"Not much of one in this case: Unless you resign now. I'm not asking you to change your 
+policies - I wouldn't trust you that far. Your promises are worth nothing. An outright resignation 
+is all we'll take." 
+
+"I see." Hardin crossed his legs and teetered his chair back on two legs. "That's your ultimatum. 
+Nice of you to give me warning. But, you see, I rather think I'll ignore it." 
+
+"Don't think it was a warning, Mr. Mayor. It was an announcement of principles and of action. 
+The new party has already been formed, and it will begin its official activities tomorrow. There is 
+
+
+
+neither room nor desire for compromise, and, frankly, it was only our recognition of your 
+services to the City that induced us to offer the easy way out. I didn't think you'd take it, but my 
+conscience is clear. 
+
+The next election will be a more forcible and quite irresistible reminder that resignation is 
+necessary." 
+
+He rose and motioned the rest up. 
+
+Hardin lifted his arm. "Hold on! Sit down!" 
+
+Sef Sermak seated himself once more with just a shade too much alacrity and Hardin smiled 
+behind a straight face. In spite of his words, he was waiting for an offer. 
+
+Hardin said, "In exactly what way do you want our foreign policy changed? Do you want us to 
+attack the Four Kingdoms, now, at once, and all four simultaneously?" 
+
+"I make no such suggestion, Mr. Mayor. It is our simple proposition that all appeasement cease 
+immediately. Throughout your administration, you have carried out a policy of scientific aid to 
+the Kingdoms. You have given them nuclear power. You have helped rebuild power plants on 
+their territories. You have established medical clinics, chemical laboratories and factories." 
+
+"Well? And your objection?" 
+
+"You have done this in order to keep them from attacking us. With these as bribes, you have 
+been playing the fool in a colossal game of blackmail, in which you have allowed Terminus to 
+be sucked dry - with the result that now we are at the mercy of these barbarians." 
+
+"In what way?" 
+
+"Because you have given them power, given them weapons, actually serviced the ships of their 
+navies, they are infinitely stronger than they were three decades ago. Their demands are 
+increasing, and with their new weapons, they will eventually satisfy all their demands at once by 
+violent annexation of Terminus. Isn't that the way blackmail usually ends?" 
+
+"And your remedy?" 
+
+"Stop the bribes immediately and while you can. Spend your effort in strengthening Terminus 
+itself - and attack first!" 
+
+Hardin watched the young fellow's little blond mustache with an almost morbid interest. Sermak 
+felt sure of himself or he wouldn't talk so much. There was no doubt that his remarks were the 
+reflection of a pretty huge segment of the population, pretty huge. 
+
+
+His voice did not betray the slightly perturbed current of his thoughts. If was almost negligent. 
+"Are you finished?" 
+
+"For the moment." 
+
+"Well, then, do you notice the framed statement I have on the wall behind me? Read it, if you 
+
+
+
+will! 
+
+
+Sermak's lips twitched. "It says: 'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.' That's an old 
+man's doctrine, Mr. Mayor." 
+
+"I applied it as a young man, Mr. Councilman - and successfully. You were busily being born 
+when it happened, but perhaps you may have read something of it in school." 
+
+He eyed Sermak closely and continued in measured tones, "When Hari Seldon established the 
+Foundation here, it was for the ostensible purpose of producing a great Encyclopedia, and for 
+fifty years we followed that will-of-the-wisp, before discovering what he was really after. By that 
+time, it was almost too late. When communications with the central regions of the old Empire 
+broke down, we found ourselves a world of scientists concentrated in a single city, possessing 
+no industries, and surrounded by newly created kingdoms, hostile and largely barbarous. We 
+were a tiny island of nuclear power in this ocean of barbarism, and an infinitely valuable prize. 
+
+"Anacreon, then as now, the most powerful of the Four Kingdoms, demanded and later actually 
+established a military base upon Terminus, and the then rulers of the City, the Encyclopedists, 
+knew very well that this was only a preliminary to taking over the entire planet. That is how 
+matters stood when I ... uh ... assumed actual government. What would you have done?" 
+
+Sermak shrugged his shoulders. "That's an academic question. Of course, I know what you 
+did." 
+
+"I'll repeat it, anyway. Perhaps you don't get the point. The temptation was great to muster what 
+force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to 
+self-respect - but, nearly invariably, the stupidest. You would have done it; you and your talk of 
+'attack first.' What I did, instead, was to visit the three other kingdoms, one by one; point out to 
+each that to allow the secret of nuclear power to fall into the hands of Anacreon was the 
+quickest way of cutting their own throats; and suggest gently that they do the obvious thing. 
+
+That was all. One month after the Anacreonian force had landed on Terminus, their king 
+received a joint ultimatum from his three neighbors. In seven days, the last Anacreonian was off 
+Terminus. 
+
+Now tell me, where was the need for violence?" 
+
+The young councilman regarded his cigar stub thoughtfully and tossed it into the incinerator 
+chute. "I fail to see the analogy. Insulin will bring a diabetic to normal without the faintest need 
+of a knife, but appendicitis needs an operation. You can't help that. When other courses have 
+failed, what is left but, as you put it, the last refuge? It's your fault that we're driven to it." 
+
+"I? Oh, yes, again my policy of appeasement. You still seem to lack grasp of the fundamental 
+necessities of our position. Our problem wasn't over with the departure of the Anacreonians. 
+They had just begun. The Four Kingdoms were more our enemies than ever, for each wanted 
+nuclear power-and each was kept off our throats only for fear of the other three. We are 
+balanced on the point of a very sharp sword, and the slightest sway in any direction - If, for 
+instance, one kingdom becomes too strong; or if two form a coalition - You understand?" 
+
+"Certainly. That was the time to begin all-out preparations for war." 
+
+
+
+"On the contrary. That was the time to begin all-out prevention of war. I played them one 
+against the other. I helped each in turn. I offered them science, trade, education, scientific 
+medicine. I made Terminus of more value to them as a flourishing world than as a military prize. 
+It worked for thirty years." 
+
+"Yes, but you were forced to surround these scientific gifts with the most outrageous mummery. 
+You've made half religion, half balderdash out of it. You've erected a hierarchy of priests and 
+complicated, meaningless ritual." 
+
+Hardin frowned. "What of that? I don't see that it has anything to do with the argument at all. I 
+started that way at first because the barbarians looked upon our science as a sort of magical 
+sorcery, and it was easiest to get them to accept it on that basis. The priesthood built itself and 
+if we help it along we are only following the line of least resistance. It is a minor matter." 
+
+"But these priests are in charge of the power plants. That is not a minor matter." 
+
+"True, but we have trained them. Their knowledge of their tools is purely empirical; and they 
+have a firm belief in the mummery that surrounds them." 
+
+"And if one pierces through the mummery, and has the genius to brush aside empiricism, what 
+is to prevent him from learning actual techniques, and selling out to the most satisfactory 
+bidder? What price our value to the kingdoms, then?" 
+
+"Little chance of that, Sermak. You are being superficial. The best men on the planets of the 
+kingdoms are sent here to the Foundation each year and educated into the priesthood. And the 
+best of these remain here as research students. If you think that those who are left, with 
+practically no knowledge of the elements of science, or worse, still, with the distorted 
+knowledge the priests receive, can penetrate at a bound to nuclear power, to electronics, to the 
+theory of the hyperwarp - you have a very romantic and very foolish idea of science. It takes 
+lifetimes of training and an excellent brain to get that far." 
+
+Yohan Lee had risen abruptly during the foregoing speech and left the room. He had returned 
+now and when Hardin finished speaking, he bent to his superior's ear. A whisper was 
+exchanged and then a leaden cylinder. Then, with one short hostile look at the deputation, Lee 
+resumed his chair. 
+
+Hardin turned the cylinder end for end in his hands, watching the deputation through his lashes. 
+And then he opened it with a hard, sudden twist and only Sermak had the sense not to throw a 
+rapid look at the rolled paper that fell out. 
+
+"In short, gentlemen," he said, "the Government is of the opinion that it knows what it is doing." 
+
+He read as he spoke. There were the lines of intricate, meaningless code that covered the 
+page and the three penciled words scrawled in one comer that carried the message. He took it 
+in at a glance and tossed it casually into the incinerator shaft. 
+
+"That," Hardin then said, "ends the interview, I'm afraid. Glad to have met you all. Thank you for 
+coming." He shook hands with each in perfunctory fashion, and they filed out. 
+
+Hardin had almost gotten out of the habit of laughing, but after Sermak and his three silent 
+
+
+
+partners were well out of earshot, he indulged in a dry chuckle and bent an amused look on 
+Lee. 
+
+"How did you like that battle of bluffs, Lee?" 
+
+Lee snorted grumpily. "I'm not sure that he was bluffing. Treat him with kid gloves and he's 
+quite liable to win the next election, just as he says." 
+
+"Oh, quite likely, quite likely - if nothing happens first." 
+
+"Make sure they don't happen in the wrong direction this time, Hardin. I tell you this Sermak has 
+a following. What if he doesn't wait till the next election? There was a time when you and I put 
+things through violently, in spite of your slogan about what violence is." 
+
+Hardin cocked an eyebrow. "You are pessimistic today, Lee. And singularly contrary, too, or 
+you wouldn't speak of violence. Our own little putsch was carried through without loss of life, 
+you remember. It was a necessary measure put through at the proper moment, and went over 
+smoothly, painlessly, and all but effortlessly. As for Sermak, he's up against a different 
+proposition. You and I, Lee, aren't the Encyclopedists. We stand prepared. Order your men 
+onto these youngsters in a nice way, old fellow. Don't let them know they're being watched - 
+but eyes open, you understand." 
+
+Lee laughed in sour amusement. "I'd be a fine one to wait for your orders, wouldn't I, Hardin? 
+Sermak and his men have been under surveillance for a month now." 
+
+The mayor chuckled. "Got in first, did you? All right. By the way," he observed, and added 
+softly, "Ambassador Verisof is returning to Terminus. Temporarily, I hope." 
+
+There was a short silence, faintly horrified, and then Lee said, "Was that the message? Are 
+things breaking already?" 
+
+"Don't know. I can't tell till I hear what Verisof has to say. They may be, though. After all, they 
+have to before election. But what are you looking so dead about?" 
+
+"Because I don't know how it's going to turn out. You're too deep, Hardin, and you're playing 
+the game too close to your chest." 
+
+"Even you?" murmured Hardin. And aloud, "Does that mean you're going to join Sermak's new 
+party?" 
+
+Lee smiled against his will. "All right. You win. How about lunch now?" 
+
+
+2 . 
+
+There are many epigrams attributed to Hardin - a confirmed epigrammatist - a good many of 
+which are probably apocryphal. Nevertheless, it is reported that on a certain occasion, he said: 
+
+"It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." 
+
+Poly Verisof had had occasion to act on that advice more than once for he was now in the 
+
+
+
+fourteenth year of his double status on Anacreon - a double status the upkeep of which 
+reminded him often and unpleasantly of a dance performed barefoot on hot metal. 
+
+To the people of Anacreon he was high priest, representative of that Foundation which, to 
+those "barbarians," was the acme of mystery and the physical center of this religion they had 
+created - with Hardin's help - in the last three decades. As such, he received a homage that 
+had become horribly wearying, for from his soul he despised the ritual of which he was the 
+center. 
+
+But to the King of Anacreon - the old one that had been, and the young grandson that was now 
+on the throne - he was simply the ambassador of a power at once feared and coveted. 
+
+On the whole, it was an uncomfortable job, and his first trip to the Foundation in three years, 
+despite the disturbing incident that had made it necessary, was something in the nature of a 
+holiday. 
+
+And since it was not the first time he had had to travel in absolute secrecy, he again made use 
+of Hardin's epigram on the uses of the obvious. 
+
+He changed into his civilian clothes - a holiday in itself - and boarded a passenger liner to the 
+Foundation, second class. Once at Terminus, he threaded his way through the crowd at the 
+spaceport and called up City Hall at a public visiphone. 
+
+He said, "My name is Jan Smite. I have an appointment with the mayor this afternoon." 
+
+The dead-voiced but efficient young lady at the other end made a second connection and 
+exchanged a few rapid words, then said to Verisof in dry, mechanical tone, "Mayor Hardin will 
+see you in half an hour, sir," and the screen went blank. 
+
+Whereupon the ambassador to Anacreon bought the latest edition of the Terminus City Journal, 
+sauntered casually to City Hall Park and, sitting, down on the first empty bench he came to, 
+read the editorial page, sport section and comic sheet while waiting. At the end of half an hour, 
+he tucked the paper under his arm, entered City Hall and presented himself in the anteroom. 
+
+In doing all this he remained safely and thoroughly unrecognized, for since he was so entirely 
+obvious, no one gave him a second look. 
+
+Hardin looked up at him and grinned. "Have a cigar! How was the trip?" 
+
+Verisof helped himself. "Interesting. There was a priest in the next cabin on his way here to 
+take a special course in the preparation of radioactive synthetics - for the treatment of cancer, 
+you know 
+
+"Surely, he didn't call it radioactive synthetics, now?" 
+
+"I guess not! It was the Holy Food to him." 
+
+The mayor smiled. "Go on." 
+
+"He inveigled me into a theological discussion and did his level best to elevate me out of sordid 
+materialism." 
+
+
+
+"And never recognized his own high priest?" 
+
+"Without my crimson robe? Besides, he was a Smyrnian. It was an interesting experience, 
+though. It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold. I've written an 
+essay on the subject - entirely for my own amusement; it wouldn't do to have it published. 
+Treating the problem sociologically, it would seem that when the old Empire began to rot at the 
+fringes, it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be 
+reaccepted it would have to present itself in another guise and it has done just that. It works out 
+beautifully." 
+
+"Interesting!" The mayor placed his arms around his neck and said suddenly, "Start talking 
+about the situation at Anacreon!" 
+
+The ambassador frowned and withdrew the cigar from his mouth. He looked at it distastefully 
+and put it down. "Well, it's pretty bad." 
+
+"You wouldn't be here, otherwise." 
+
+"Scarcely. Here's the position. The key man at Anacreon is the Prince Regent, Wienis. He's 
+King Lepold's uncle." 
+
+"I know. But Lepold is coming of age next year, isn't he? I believe he'll be sixteen in February." 
+
+"Yes." Pause, and then a wry addition. "If he lives. The king's father died under suspicious 
+circumstances. A needle bullet through the chest during a hunt. It was called an accident." 
+
+
+"Hmph. I seem to remember Wienis the time I was on Anacreon, when we kicked them off 
+Terminus. It was before your time. Let's see now. If I remember, he was a dark young fellow, 
+black hair and a squint in his right eye. He had a funny hook in his nose." 
+
+"Same fellow. The hook and the squint are still there, but his hair's gray now. He plays the 
+game dirty. Luckily, he's the most egregious fool on the planet. Fancies himself as a shrewd 
+devil, too, which mades his folly the more transparent." 
+
+"That's usually the way." 
+
+"His notion of cracking an egg is to shoot a nuclear blast at it. Witness the tax on Temple 
+property he tried to impose just after the old king died two years ago. Remember?" 
+
+Hardin nodded thoughtfully, then smiled. "The priests raised a howl." 
+
+"They raised one you could hear way out to Lucreza. He's shown more caution in dealing with 
+the priesthood since, but he still manages to do things the hard way. In a way, it's unfortunate 
+for us; he has unlimited self-confidence." 
+
+"Probably an over-compensated inferiority complex. Younger sons of royalty get that way, you 
+know." 
+
+
+But it amounts to the same thing. He's foaming at the mouth with eagerness to attack the 
+
+
+
+Foundation. He scarcely troubles to conceal it. And he's in a position to do it, too, from the 
+standpoint of armament. The old king built up a magnificent navy, and Wienis hasn't been 
+sleeping the last two years. In fact, the tax on Temple property was originally intended for 
+further armament, and when that fell through he increased the income tax twice." 
+
+"Any grumbling at that?" 
+
+"None of serious importance. Obedience to appointed authority was the text of every sermon in 
+the kingdom for weeks. Not that Wienis showed any gratitude." 
+
+"All right. I've got the background. Now what's happened?" 
+
+"Two weeks ago an Anacreonian merchant ship came across a derelict battle cruiser of the old 
+Imperial Navy. It must have been drifting in space for at least three centuries." 
+
+Interest flickered in Hardin's eyes. He sat up. "Yes, I've heard of that. The Board of Navigation 
+has sent me a petition asking me to obtain the ship for purposes of study. It is in good 
+condition, I understand." 
+
+"In entirely too good condition," responded Verisof, dryly. "When Wienis received your 
+suggestion last week that he turn the ship over to the Foundation, he almost had convulsions." 
+
+"He hasn't answered yet." 
+
+"He won't - except with guns, or so he thinks. You see, he came to me on the day I left 
+Anacreon and requested that the Foundation put this battle cruiser into fighting order and turn it 
+over to the Anacreonian navy. He had the infernal gall to say that your note of last week 
+indicated a plan of the Foundation's to attack Anacreon. He said that refusal to repair the battle 
+cruiser would confirm his suspicions; and indicated that measures for the self-defense of 
+Anacreon would be forced upon him. Those are his words. Forced upon him! And that's why I'm 
+here." 
+
+Hardin laughed gently. 
+
+Verisof smiled and continued, "Of course, he expects a refusal, and it would be a perfect 
+excuse - in his eyes - for immediate attack." 
+
+"I see that, Verisof. Well, we have at least six months to spare, so have the ship fixed up and 
+present it with my compliments. Have it renamed the Wienis as a mark of our esteem and 
+affection." 
+
+He laughed again. 
+
+And again Verisof responded with the faintest trace of a smile, "I suppose it's the logical step, 
+Hardin - but I'm worried." 
+
+"What about?" 
+
+"It's a ship! They could build in those days. Its cubic capacity is half again that of the entire 
+Anacreonian navy. It's got nuclear blasts capable of blowing up a planet, and a shield that could 
+take a Q-beam without working up radiation. Too much of a good thing, Hardin 
+
+
+
+"Superficial, Verisof, superficial. You and I both know that the armament he now has could 
+defeat Terminus handily, long before we could repair the cruiser for our own use. What does it 
+matter, then, if we give him the cruiser as well? You know it won't ever come to actual war." 
+
+"I suppose so. Yes." The ambassador looked up. "But Hardin 
+
+"Well? Why do you stop? Go ahead." 
+
+"Look. This isn't my province. But I've been reading the paper." He placed the Journal on the 
+desk and indicated the front page. "What's this all about?" 
+
+Hardin dropped a casual glance. "'A group of Councilmen are forming a new political party.'" 
+
+"That's what it says." Verisof fidgeted. "I know you're in better touch with internal matters than I 
+am, but they're attacking you with everything short of physical violence. How strong are they?" 
+
+"Damned strong. They'll probably control the Council after next election." 
+
+"Not before?" Verisof looked at the mayor obliquely. "There are ways of gaining control besides 
+elections." 
+
+"Do you take me for Wienis?" 
+
+"No. But repairing the ship will take months and an attack after that is certain. Our yielding will 
+be taken as a sign of appalling weakness and the addition of the Imperial Cruiser will just about 
+double the strength of Wienis' navy. He'll attack as sure as I'm a high priest. Why take 
+chances? Do one of two things. Either reveal the plan of campaign to the Council, or force the 
+issue with Anacreon now!" 
+
+Hardin frowned. "Force the issue now? Before the crisis comes? It's the one thing I mustn't do. 
+There's Hari Seldon and the Plan, you know." 
+
+Verisof hesitated, then muttered, "You're absolutely sure, then, that there is a Plan?" 
+
+"There can scarcely be any doubt," came the stiff reply. "I was present at the opening of the 
+Time Vault and Seldon's recording revealed it then." 
+
+"I didn't mean that, Hardin. I just don't see how it could be possible to chart history for a 
+thousand years ahead. Maybe Seldon overestimated himself." He shriveled a bit at Hardin's 
+ironical smile, and added, "Well, I'm no psychologist," 
+
+"Exactly. None of us are. But I did receive some elementary training in my youth - enough to 
+know what psychology is capable of, even if I can't exploit its capabilities myself. There's no 
+doubt but that Seldon did exactly what he claims to have done. The Foundation, as he says, 
+was established as a scientific refuge - the means by which the science and culture of the 
+dying Empire was to be preserved through the centuries of barbarism that have begun, to be 
+rekindled in the end into a second Empire." 
+
+Verisof nodded, a trifle doubtfully. "Everyone knows that's the way things are supposed to go. 
+
+
+
+But can we afford to take chances? Can we risk the present for the sake of a nebulous future?" 
+
+"We must - because the future isn't nebulous. It's been calculated out by Seldon and charted. 
+Each successive crisis in our history is mapped and each depends in a measure on the 
+successful conclusion of the ones previous. This is only the second crisis and Space knows 
+what effect even a trifling deviation would have in the end." 
+
+"That's rather empty speculation." 
+
+"No! Hari Seldon said in the Time Vault, that at each crisis our freedom of action would become 
+circumscribed to the point where only one course of action was possible." 
+
+"So as to keep us on the straight and narrow?" 
+
+"So as to keep us from deviating, yes. But, conversely, as long as more than one course of 
+action is possible, the crisis has not been reached. We must let things drift so long as we 
+possibly can, and by space, that's what I intend doing." 
+
+Verisof didn't answer. He chewed his lower lip in a grudging silence. It had only been the year 
+before that Hardin had first discussed the problem with him - the real problem; the problem of 
+countering Anacreon's hostile preparations. And then only because he, Verisof, had balked at 
+further appeasement. 
+
+Hardin seemed to follow his ambassador's thoughts. "I would much rather never to have told 
+you anything about this." 
+
+"What makes you say that?" cried Verisof, in surprise. 
+
+"Because there are six people now - you and I, the other three ambassadors and Yohan Lee - 
+who have a fair notion of what's ahead; and I'm damned afraid that it was Seldon's idea to have 
+no one know." 
+
+"Why so?" 
+
+"Because even Seldon's advanced psychology was limited. It could not handle too many 
+independent variables. He couldn't work with individuals over any length of time; any more than 
+you could apply kinetic theory of gases to single molecules. He worked with mobs, populations 
+of whole planets, and only blind mobs who do not possess foreknowledge of the results of their 
+own actions." 
+
+"That's not plain." 
+
+"I can't help it. I'm not psychologist enough to explain it scientifically. But this you know. There 
+are no trained psychologists on Terminus and no mathematical texts on the science. It is plain 
+that he wanted no one on Terminus capable of working out the future in advance. Seldon 
+wanted us to proceed blindly - and therefore correctly - according to the law of mob 
+psychology. As I once told you, I never knew where we were heading when I first drove out the 
+Anacreonians. My idea had been to maintain balance of power, no more than that. It was only 
+afterward that I thought I saw a pattern in events; but I've done my level best not to act on that 
+knowledge. Interference due to foresight would have knocked the Plan out of kilter." 
+
+
+
+Verisof nodded thoughtfully. "I've heard arguments almost as complicated in the Temples back 
+on Anacreon. How do you expect to spot the fight moment of action?" 
+
+"It's spotted already. You admit that once we repair the battle cruiser nothing will stop Wienis 
+from attacking us. There will no longer be any alternative in that respect." 
+
+"Yes 
+
+"All right. That accounts for the external aspect. Meanwhile, you'll further admit that the next 
+election will see a new and hostile Council that will force action against Anacreon. There is no 
+alternative there." 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"And as soon as all the alternatives disappear, the crisis has come. Just the same - I get 
+worried." 
+
+He paused, and Verisof waited. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Hardin continued, "I've got the idea 
+-just a notion - that the external and internal pressures were planned to come to a head 
+simultaneously. As it is, there's a few months difference. Wienis will probably attack before 
+spring, and elections are still a year off." 
+
+"That doesn't sound important." 
+
+"I don't know. It may be due merely to unavoidable errors of calculation, or it might be due to 
+the fact that I knew too much. I tried never to let my foresight influence my action, but how can I 
+tell? And what effect will the discrepancy have? Anyway," he looked up, "there's one thing I've 
+decided." 
+
+"And what's that?" 
+
+"When the crisis does begin to break, I'm going to Anacreon. I want to be on the spot ... Oh, 
+that's enough, Verisof. It's getting late. Let's go out and make a night of it. I want some 
+relaxation." 
+
+
+"Then get it right here,' said Verisof. "I don't want to be recognized, or you know what this new 
+party your precious Councilmen are forming would say. Call for the brandy." 
+
+And Hardin did - but not for too much. 
+
+
+3 . 
+
+In the ancient days when the Galactic Empire had embraced the Galaxy, and Anacreon had 
+been the richest of the prefects of the Periphery, more than one emperor had visited the 
+Viceregal Palace in state. And not one had left without at least one effort to pit his skill with air 
+speedster and needle gun against the feathered flying fortress they call the Nyakbird. 
+
+The fame of Anacreon had withered to nothing with the decay of the times. The Viceregal 
+
+
+
+Palace was a drafty mass of ruins except for the wing that Foundation workmen had restored. 
+And no Emperor had been seen in Anacreon for two hundred years. 
+
+But Nyak hunting was still the royal sport and a good eye with the needle gun still the first 
+requirement of Anacreon's kings. 
+
+Lepold I, King of Anacreon and - as was invariably, but untruthfully added - Lord of the Outer 
+Dominions, though not yet sixteen had already proved his skill many times over. He had 
+brought down his first Nyak when scarcely thirteen; had brought down his tenth the week after 
+his accession to the throne; and was returning now from his forty-sixth. 
+
+"Fifty before I come of age," he had exulted. "Who'll take the wager?" 
+
+But Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning. 
+So no one did, and the king left to change his clothes in high spirits. 
+
+"Lepold!" 
+
+The king stopped mid-step at the one voice that could cause him to do so. He turned sulkily. 
+Wienis stood upon the threshold of his chambers and beetled at his young nephew. 
+
+"Send them away," he motioned impatiently. "Get rid of them." 
+
+The king nodded curtly and the two chamberlains bowed and backed down the stairs. Lepold 
+entered his uncle's room. 
+
+Wienis stared at the king's hunting suit morosely. "You'll have more important things to tend to 
+than Nyak hunting soon enough." 
+
+He turned his back and stumped to his desk. Since he had grown too old for the rush of air, the 
+perilous dive within wing-beat of the Nyak, the roll and climb of the speedster at the motion of a 
+foot, he had soured upon the whole sport. 
+
+Lepold appreciated his uncle's sour-grapes attitude and it was not without malice that he began 
+enthusiastically, "But you should have been with us today, uncle. We flushed one in the wilds of 
+Sarnia that was a monster. And game as they come. We had it out for two hours over at least 
+seventy square miles of ground. And then I got to Sunwards - he was motioning graphically, as 
+though he were once more in his speedster -"and dived torque-wise. Caught him on the rise 
+just under the left wing at quarters. It maddened him and he canted athwart. I took his dare and 
+veered a-left, waiting for the plummet. Sure enough, down he came. He was within wing-beat 
+before I moved and then 
+
+"Lepold!" 
+
+"Well!- I got him." 
+
+"I'm sure you did. Now will you attend?" 
+
+The king shrugged and gravitated to the end table where he nibbled at a Lera nut in quite an 
+unregal sulk. He did not dare to meet his uncle's eyes. 
+
+
+
+Wienis said, by way of preamble, "I've been to the ship today." 
+
+"What ship?" 
+
+"There is only one ship. The ship. The one the Foundation is repairing for the navy. The old 
+Imperial cruiser. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?" 
+
+"That one? You see, I told you the Foundation would repair it if we asked them to. It's all 
+poppycock, you know, that story of yours about their wanting to attack us. Because if they did, 
+why would they fix the ship? It doesn't make sense, you know." 
+
+"Lepold, you're a fool!" 
+
+The king, who had just discarded the shell of the Lera nut and was lifting another to his lips, 
+flushed. 
+
+"Well now, look here," he said, with anger that scarcely rose above peevishness, "I don't think 
+you ought to call me that. You forget yourself. I'll be of age in two months, you know." 
+
+"Yes, and you're in a fine position to assume regal responsibilities. If you spent half the time on 
+public affairs that you do on Nyak hunting, I'd resign the regency directly with a clear 
+conscience." 
+
+"I don't care. That has nothing to do with the case, you know. The fact is that even if you are 
+the regent and my uncle, I'm still king and you're still my subject. You oughtn't to call me a fool 
+and you oughtn't to sit in my presence, anyway. You haven't asked my permission. I think you 
+ought to be careful, or I might do something about it pretty soon." 
+
+Wienis' gaze was cold. "May I refer to you as 'your majesty'?" 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"Very well! You are a fool, your majesty!" 
+
+His dark eyes blazed from beneath his grizzled brows and the young king sat down slowly. For 
+a moment, there was sardonic satisfaction in the regent's face, but it faded quickly. His thick 
+lips parted in a smile and one hand fell upon the king's shoulder. 
+
+"Never mind, Lepold. I should not have spoken harshly to you. It is difficult sometimes to 
+behave with true propriety when the pressure of events is such as - You understand?" But if 
+the words were conciliatory, there was something in his eyes that had not softened. 
+
+Lepold said uncertainly, "Yes. Affairs of State are deuced difficult, you know." He wondered, not 
+without apprehension, whether he were not in for a dull siege of meaningless details on the 
+year's trade with Smyrno and the long, wrangling dispute over the sparsely settled worlds on 
+the Red Corridor. 
+
+Wienis was speaking again. "My boy, I had thought to speak of this to you earlier, and perhaps 
+I should have, but I know that your youthful spirits are impatient of the dry detail of statecraft." 
+
+Lepold nodded. "Well, that's all right-" 
+
+
+
+His uncle broke in firmly and continued, "However, you will come of age in two months. 
+Moreover, in the difficult times that are coming, you will have to take a full and active part. You 
+will be king henceforward, Lepold." 
+
+Again Lepold nodded, but his expression was quite blank. 
+
+"There will be war, Lepold." 
+
+"War! But there's been truce with Smyrno-" 
+
+"Not Smyrno. The Foundation itself." 
+
+"But, uncle, they've agreed to repair the ship. You said-" 
+
+His voice choked off at the twist of his uncle's lip. 
+
+"Lepold" - some of the friendliness had gone -"we are to talk man to man. There is to be war 
+with the Foundation, whether the ship is repaired or not; all the sooner, in fact, since it is being 
+repaired. The Foundation is the source of power and might. All the greatness of Anacreon; all 
+its ships and its cities and its people and its commerce depend on the dribbles and leavings of 
+power that the Foundation have given us grudgingly. I remember the time - I, myself - when 
+the cities of Anacreon were warmed by the burning of coal and oil. But never mind that; you 
+would have no conception of it." 
+
+"It seems," suggested the king timidly, "that we ought to be grateful-" 
+
+"Grateful?" roared Wienis. "Grateful that they begrudge us the merest dregs, while keeping 
+space knows what for themselves - and keeping it with what purpose in mind? Why, only that 
+they may some day rule the Galaxy." 
+
+His hand came down on his nephew's knee, and his eyes narrowed. "Lepold, you are king of 
+Anacreon. Your children and your children's children may be kings of the universe - if you have 
+the power that the Foundation is keeping from us!" 
+
+"There's something in that." Lepold's eyes gained a sparkle and his back straightened. "After 
+all, what right have they to keep it to themselves? Not fair, you know. Anacreon counts for 
+something, too." 
+
+"You see, you're beginning to understand. And now, my boy, what if Smyrno decides to attack 
+the Foundation for its own part and thus gains all that power? How long do you suppose we 
+could escape becoming a vassal power? How long would you hold your throne?" 
+
+Lepold grew excited. "Space, yes. You're absolutely right, you know. We must strike first. It's 
+simply self-defense." 
+
+Wienis' smile broadened slightly. "Furthermore, once, at the very beginning of the reign of your 
+grandfather, Anacreon actually established a military base on the Foundation's planet, 
+
+Terminus - a base vitally needed for national defense. We were forced to abandon that base 
+as a result of the machinations of the leader of that Foundation, a sly cur, a scholar, with not a 
+drop of noble blood in his veins. You understand, Lepold? Your grandfather was humiliated by 
+this commoner. I remember him! He was scarcely older than myself when he came to 
+
+
+
+Anacreon with his devil's smile and devil's brain - and the power of the other three kingdoms 
+behind him, combined in cowardly union against the greatness of Anacreon." 
+
+Lepold flushed and the sparkle in his eyes blazed. "By Seldon, if I had been my grandfather, I 
+would have fought even so." 
+
+"No, Lepold. We decided to wait - to wipe out the insult at a fitter time. It had been your father's 
+hope, before his untimely death, that he might be the one to - Well, well!" Wienis turned away 
+for a moment. Then, as if stifling emotion, "He was my brother. And yet, if his son were-" 
+
+"Yes, uncle, I'll not fail him. I have decided. It seems only proper that Anacreon wipe out this 
+nest of troublemakers, and that immediately." 
+
+"No, not immediately. First, we must wait for the repairs of the battle cruiser to be completed. 
+The mere fact that they are willing to undertake these repairs proves that they fear us. The 
+fools attempt to placate us, but we are not to be turned from our path, are we?" 
+
+And Lepold's fist slammed against his cupped palm. 
+
+"Not while I am king in Anacreon." 
+
+Wienis' lip twitched sardonically. "Besides which we must wait for Salvor Hardin to arrive." 
+
+"Salvor Hardin!" The king grew suddenly round-eyed, and the youthful contour of his beardless 
+face lost the almost hard lines into which they had been compressed. 
+
+"Yes, Lepold, the leader of the Foundation himself is coming to Anacreon on your birthday - 
+probably to soothe us with buttered words. But it won't help him." 
+
+"Salvor Hardin!" It was the merest murmur. 
+
+Wienis frowned. "Are you afraid of the name? It is the same Salvor Hardin, who on his previous 
+visit, ground our noses into the dust. You're not forgetting that deadly insult to the royal house? 
+And from a commoner. The dregs of the gutter." 
+
+"No. I guess not. No, I won't. I won't! We'll pay him back - but.. .but - I'm afraid - a little." 
+
+The regent rose. "Afraid? Of what? Of what, you young-" He choked off. 
+
+"It would be. ..uh.. .sort of blasphemous, you know, to attack the Foundation. I mean-" He 
+paused. 
+
+"Go on." 
+
+Lepold said confusedly, "I mean, if there were really a Galactic Spirit, he...uh...it mightn't like it. 
+Don't you think? 
+
+"No, I don't," was the hard answer. Wienis sat down again and his lips twisted in a queer smile. 
+"And so you 
+
+really bother your head a great deal over the Galactic Spirit, do you? That's what comes of 
+letting you run wild. You've been listening to Verisof quite a bit, I take it." 
+
+
+
+He's explained a great deal-' 
+About the Galactic Spirit?" 
+
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"Why, you unweaned cub, he believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don't 
+believe in it at all. How many times have you been told that all this talk is nonsense?" 
+
+"Well, I know that. But Verisof says-" 
+
+"Pay no heed to Verisof. It's nonsense." 
+
+There was a short, rebellious silence, and then Lepold said, "Everyone believes it just the 
+same. I mean all this talk about the Prophet Hari Seldon and how he appointed the Foundation 
+to carry on his commandments that there might some day be a return of the Galactic Paradise: 
+and how anyone who disobeys his commandments will be destroyed for eternity. They believe 
+it. I've presided at festivals, and I'm sure they do." 
+
+"Yes, they do ; but we don't. And you may be thankful it's so, for according to this foolishness, 
+you are king by divine right - and are semi-divine yourself. Very handy. It eliminates all 
+possibilities of revolts and insures absolute obedience in everything. And that is why, Lepold, 
+you must take an active part in ordering the war against the Foundation. I am only regent, and 
+quite human. You are king, and more than half a god - to them." 
+
+"But I suppose I'm not really," said the king reflectively. 
+
+"No, not really," came the sardonic response, "but you are to everyone but the people of the 
+Foundation. Get that? To everyone but those of the Foundation. Once they are removed there 
+will be no one to deny you the godhead. Think of that!" 
+
+"And after that we will ourselves be able to operate the power boxes of the temples and the 
+ships that fly without men and the holy food that cures cancer and all the rest? Verisof said only 
+those blessed with the Galactic Spirit could-" 
+
+"Yes, Verisof said! Verisof, next to Salvor Hardin, is your greatest enemy. Stay with me, Lepold, 
+and don't worry about them. Together we will recreate an empire-not just the kingdom of 
+Anacreon-but one comprising every one of the billions of suns of the Empire. Is that better than 
+a wordy 'Galactic Paradise'?" 
+
+"Ye-es." 
+
+"Can Verisof promise more?" 
+
+"No." 
+
+"Very well." His voice became peremptory. "I suppose we may consider the matter settled." He 
+waited for no answer. "Get along. I'll be down later. And just one thing, Lepold." 
+
+The young king turned on the threshold. 
+
+
+
+Wienis was smiling with all but his eyes. "Be careful on these Nyak hunts, my boy. Since the 
+unfortunate accident to your father, I have had the strangest presentiments concerning you, at 
+times. In the confusion, with needle guns thickening the air with darts, one can never tell. You 
+will be careful, I hope. And you'll do as I say about the Foundation, won't you?" 
+
+Lepold's eyes widened and dropped away from those of his uncle. "Yes - certainly." 
+
+"Good!" He stared after his departing nephew, expressionlessly, and returned to his desk. 
+
+And Lepold's thoughts as he left were somber and not unfearful. Perhaps it would be best to 
+defeat the Foundation and gain the power Wienis spoke of. But afterward, when the war was 
+over and he was secure on his throne- He became acutely conscious of the fact that Wienis 
+and his two arrogant sons were at present next in line to the throne. 
+
+But he was king. And kings could order people executed. 
+
+Even uncles and cousins. 
+
+
+4 . 
+
+Next to Sermak himself, Lewis Bort was the most active in rallying those dissident elements 
+which had fused into the now-vociferous Action Party. Yet he had not been one of the 
+deputation that had called on Salvor Hardin almost half a year previously. That this was so was 
+not due to any lack of recognition of his efforts; quite the contrary. He was absent for the very 
+good reason that he was on Anacreon's capital world at the time. 
+
+He visited it as a private citizen. He saw no official and he did nothing of importance. He merely 
+watched the obscure comers of the busy planet and poked his stubby nose into dusty crannies. 
+
+He arrived home toward the end of a short winter day that had started with clouds and was 
+finishing with snow and within an hour was seated at the octagonal table in Sermak's home. 
+
+His first words were not calculated to improve the atmosphere of a gathering already 
+considerably depressed by the deepening snow-filled twilight outside.. 
+
+"I'm afraid," he said, "that our position is what is usually termed, in melodramatic phraseology, a 
+'Lost Cause.'" 
+
+"You think so?" said Sermak, gloomily. 
+
+"It's gone past thought, Sermak. There's no room for any other opinion." 
+
+"Armaments-" began Dokor Walto, somewhat officiously, but Bort broke in at once. 
+
+"Forget that. That's an old story." His eyes traveled round the circle. "I'm referring to the people. 
+
+I admit that it was my idea originally that we attempt to foster a palace rebellion of some sort to 
+install as king someone more favorable to the Foundation. It was a good idea. It still is. The 
+only trifling flaw about it is that it is impossible. The great Salvor Hardin saw to that." 
+
+
+
+Sermak said sourly, "If you'd give us the details, Bort-" 
+
+"Details! There aren't any! It isn't as simple as that. It's the whole damned situation on 
+Anacreon. It's this religion the Foundation has established. It works!" 
+
+"Well!" 
+
+"You've got to see it work to appreciate it. All you see here is that we have a large school 
+devoted to the training of priests, and that occasionally a special show is put on in some 
+obscure comer of the city for the benefit of pilgrims and that's all. The whole business hardly 
+affects us as a general thing. But on Anacreon-" 
+
+Lem Tarki smoothed his prim little Vandyke with one finger, and cleared his throat. "What kind 
+of religion is it? Hardin's always said that it was just a fluffy flummery to get them to accept our 
+science without question. You remember, Sermak, he told us that day-" 
+
+"Hardin's explanations," reminded Sermak, "don't often mean much at face value. But what kind 
+of a religion is it, Bort?" 
+
+Bort considered. "Ethically, it's fine. It scarcely varies from the various philosophies of the old 
+Empire. High moral standards and all that. There's nothing to complain about from that 
+viewpoint. Religion is one of the great civilizing influences of history and in that respect, it's 
+fulfilling-" 
+
+"We know that," interrupted Sermak, impatiently. "Get to the point." 
+
+"Here it is." Bort was a trifle disconcerted, but didn't show it. "The religion - which the 
+Foundation has fostered and encouraged, mind you - is built on on strictly authoritarian lines. 
+The priesthood has sole control of the instruments of science we have given Anacreon, but 
+they've learned to handle these tools only empirically. They believe in this religion entirely, and 
+in the ... uh ... spiritual value of the power they handle. For instance, two months ago some fool 
+tampered with the power plant in the Thessalekian Temple - one of the large ones. He 
+contaminated the city, of course. It was considered divine vengeance by everyone, including 
+the priests." 
+
+"I remember. The papers had some garbled version of the story at the time. I don't see what 
+you're driving at." 
+
+"Then, listen," said Bort, stiffly. "The priesthood forms a hierarchy at the apex of which is the 
+king, who is regarded as a sort of minor god. He's an absolute monarch by divine right, and the 
+people believe it, thoroughly, and the priests, too. You can't overthrow a king like that. Now do 
+you get the point?" 
+
+"Hold on," said Walto, at this point. "What did you mean when you said Hardin's done all this? 
+How does he come in?" 
+
+Bort glanced at his questioner bitterly. "The Foundation has fostered this delusion assiduously. 
+We've put all our scientific backing behind the hoax. There isn't a festival at which the king does 
+not preside surrounded by a radioactive aura shining forth all over his body and raising itself 
+like a coronet above his head. Anyone touching him is severely burned. He can move from 
+
+
+
+place to place through the air at crucial moments, supposedly by inspiration of divine spirit. He 
+fills the temple with a pearly, internal light at a gesture. There is no end to these quite simple 
+tricks that we perform for his benefit; but even the priests believe them, while working them 
+personally." 
+
+"Bad!" said Sermak, biting his lip. 
+
+"I could cry - like the fountain in City Hall Park," said Bort, earnestly, "when I think of the 
+chance we muffed. Take the situation thirty years ago, when Hardin saved the Foundation from 
+Anacreon - At that time, the Anacreonian people had no real conception of the fact that the 
+Empire was running down. They had been more or less running their own affairs since the 
+Zeonian revolt, but even after communications broke down and Lepold's pirate of a grandfather 
+made himself king, they never quite realized the Empire had gone kaput. 
+
+"If the Emperor had had the nerve to try, he could have taken over again with two cruisers and 
+with the help of the internal revolt that would have certainly sprung to life. And we we could 
+have done the same; but no, Hardin established monarch worship. Personally, I don't 
+understand it. Why? Why? Why?" 
+
+"What," demanded Jaim Orsy, suddenly, "does Verisof do? There was a day when he was an 
+advanced Actionist. What's he doing there? Is he blind, too?" 
+
+"I don't know," said Bort, curtly. "He's high priest to them. As far as I know, he does nothing but 
+act as adviser to the priesthood on technical details. Figurehead, blast him, figurehead!" 
+
+There was silence all round and all eyes turned to Sermak. The young party leader was biting a 
+fingernail nervously, and then said loudly, "No good. It's fishy!" 
+
+He looked around him, and added more energetically, "Is Hardin then such a fool?" 
+
+"Seems to be," shrugged Bort. 
+
+"Never! There's something wrong. To cut our own throats so thoroughly and so hopelessly 
+would require colossal stupidity. More than Hardin could possibly have even if he were a fool, 
+which I deny. On the one hand, to establish a religion that would wipe out all chance of internal 
+troubles. On the other hand, to arm Anacreon with all weapons of warfare. I don't see it." 
+
+"The matter is a little obscure, I admit," said Bort, "but the facts are there. What else can we 
+think?" 
+
+Walto said, jerkily, "Outright treason. He's in their pay." 
+
+But Sermak shook his head impatiently. "I don't see that, either. The whole affair is as insane 
+and meaningless - Tell me, Bort, have you heard anything about a battle cruiser that the 
+Foundation is supposed to have put into shape for use in the Anacreon navy?" 
+
+"Battle cruiser?" 
+
+"An old Imperial cruiser-" 
+
+"No, I haven't. But that doesn't mean much. The navy yards are religious sanctuaries 
+
+
+
+completely inviolate on the part of the lay public. No one ever hears anything about the fleet. 
+
+"Well, rumors have leaked out. Some of the Party have brought the matter up in Council. 
+Hardin never denied it, you know. His spokesmen denounced rumor mongers and let it go at 
+that. It might have significance." 
+
+"It's of a piece with the rest," said Bort. "if true, it's absolutely crazy. But it wouldn't be worse 
+than the rest." 
+
+"I suppose," said Orsy, "Hardin hasn't any secret weapon waiting. That might-" 
+
+"Yes," said Sermak, viciously, "a huge jack-in-the-box that will jump out at the psychological 
+moment and scare old Wienis into fits. The Foundation may as well blow itself out of existence 
+and save itself the agony of suspense if it has to depend on any secret weapon." 
+
+"Well," said Orsy, changing the subject hurriedly, "the question comes down to this: How much 
+time have we left? Eli, Bort?" 
+
+"All fight. It is the question. But don't look at me; I don't know. The Anacreonian press never 
+mentions the Foundation at all. Right now, it's full of the approaching celebrations and nothing 
+else. Lepold is coming of age next week, you know." 
+
+"We have months then." Walto smiled for the first time that evening. "That gives us time-" 
+
+"That gives us time, my foot," ground out Bort, impatiently. "The king's a god, I tell you. Do you 
+suppose he has to carry on a campaign of propaganda to get his people into fighting spirit? Do 
+you suppose he has to accuse us of aggression and pull out all stops on cheap emotionalism? 
+When the time comes to strike, Lepold gives the order and the people fight. Just like that. 
+That’s the damnedness of the system. You don’t question a god. He may give the order 
+tomorrow for all I know; and you can wrap tobacco round that and smoke it." 
+
+
+Everyone tried to talk at once and Sermak was slamming the table for silence, when the front 
+door opened and Levi Norast stamped in. He bounded up the stairs, overcoat on, trailing snow. 
+
+
+"Look at that!" he cried, tossing a cold, snow-speckled newspaper onto the table. "The 
+visicasters are full of it, too." 
+
+
+The newspaper was unfolded and five heads bent over it. 
+
+
+Sermak said, in a hushed voice, "Great Space, he’s going to Anacreon! Going to Anacreon!" 
+
+
+It is treason," squeaked Tarki, in sudden excitement. "I’ll be damned if Walto isn’t right. He’s 
+
+
+
+sold us out and now he’s going there to collect his wage. 
+
+
+Sermak had risen. "We’ve no choice now. I’m going to ask the Council tomorrow that Hardin be 
+impeached. And if that fails-" 
+
+
+5. 
+
+The snow had ceased, but it caked the ground deeply now and the sleek ground car advanced 
+through the deserted streets with lumbering effort. The murky gray light of incipient dawn was 
+cold not only in the poetical sense but also in a very literal way - and even in the then turbulent 
+state of the Foundation's politics, no one, whether Actionist or pro-Hardin found his spirits 
+sufficiently ardent to begin street activity that early. 
+
+Yohan Lee did not like that and his grumblings grew audible. "It's going to look bad, Hardin. 
+They're going to say you sneaked away." 
+
+"Let them say it if they wish. I've got to get to Anacreon and I want to do it without trouble. Now 
+that's enough, Lee." 
+
+Hardin leaned back into the cushioned seat and shivered slightly. It wasn't cold inside the 
+well-heated car, but there was something frigid about a snow-covered world, even through 
+glass, that annoyed him. 
+
+He said, reflectively, "Some day when we get around to it we ought to weather-condition 
+Terminus. It could be done." 
+
+"I," replied Lee, "would like to see a few other things done first. For instance, what about 
+weather-conditioning Sermak? A nice, dry cell fitted for twenty-five centigrade all year round 
+would be just fight." 
+
+"And then I'd really need bodyguards," said Hardin, "and not just those two," He indicated two 
+of Lee's bully-boys sitting up front with the driver, hard eyes on the empty streets, ready hands 
+at their atom blasts. "You evidently want to stir up civil war." 
+
+"I do? There are other sticks in the fire and it won't require much stirring, I can tell you." He 
+counted off on blunt fingers, "One: Sermak raised hell yesterday in the City Council and called 
+for an impeachment." 
+
+"He had a perfect right to do so," responded Hardin, coolly. "Besides which, his motion was 
+defeated 206 to 184." 
+
+"Certainly. A majority of twenty-two when we had counted on sixty as a minimum. Don't deny it; 
+you know you did." 
+
+
+It was close," admitted Hardin. 
+
+
+
+"All right. And two; after the vote, the fifty-nine members of the Actionist Party reared upon their 
+hind legs and stamped out of the Council Chambers." 
+
+Hardin was silent, and Lee continued, "And three: Before leaving, Sermak howled that you 
+were a traitor, that you were going to Anacreon to collect your payment, that the Chamber 
+majority in refusing to vote impeachment had participated in the treason, and that the name of 
+their party was not 'Actionist' for nothing. What does that sound like?" 
+
+"Trouble, I suppose." 
+
+"And now you're chasing off at daybreak, like a criminal. You ought to face them, Hardin - and 
+if you have to, declare martial law, by space!" 
+
+"Violence is the last refuge-" 
+
+"-Of the incompetent. Bah!" 
+
+"All right. We'll see. Now listen to me carefully, Lee. Thirty years ago, the Time Vault opened, 
+and on the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Foundation, there appeared a Hari Seldon 
+recording to give us our first idea of what was really going on." 
+
+"I remember," Lee nodded reminiscently, with a half smile. "It was the day we took over the 
+government." 
+
+"That's right. It was the time of our first major crisis. This is our second-and three weeks from 
+today will be the eightieth anniversary of the beginning of the Foundation. Does that strike you 
+as in any way significant?" 
+
+"You mean he's coming again?" 
+
+"I'm not finished. Seldon never said anything about returning, you understand, but that's of a 
+piece with his whole plan. He's always done his best to keep all foreknowledge from us. Nor is 
+there any way of telling whether the computer is set for further openings short of dismantling 
+the Vault - and it's probably set to destroy itself if we were to try that. I've been there every 
+anniversary since the first appearance, just on the chance. He's never shown up, but this is the 
+first time since then that there's really been a crisis." 
+
+"Then he'll come." 
+
+"Maybe. I don't know. However, this is the point. At today's session of the Council, just after you 
+announce that I have left for Anacreon, you will further announce, officially, that on March 14th 
+next, there will be another Hari Seldon recording, containing a message of the utmost 
+importance regarding the recent successfully concluded crisis. That's very important, Lee. Don't 
+add anything more no matter how many questions are asked." 
+
+Lee stared. "Will they believe it?" 
+
+"That doesn't matter. It will confuse them, which is all I want. Between wondering whether it is 
+true and what I mean by it if it isn't - they'll decide to postpone action till after March 1 4th. I'll be 
+back considerably before then." 
+
+
+
+Lee looked uncertain. "But that 'successfully concluded.' That's bull!" 
+
+"Highly confusing bull. Here's the airport!" 
+
+The waiting spaceship bulked somberly in the dimness. Hardin stamped through the snow 
+toward it and at the open air lock turned about with outstretched hand. 
+
+"Good-by, Lee. I hate to leave you in the frying pan like this, but there's not another I can trust. 
+Now please keep out of the fire." 
+
+"Don't worry. The frying pan is hot enough. I'll follow orders." He stepped back, and the air lock 
+closed. 
+
+
+6 . 
+
+
+Salvor Hardin did not travel to the planet Anacreon - from which planet the kingdom derived its 
+name - immediately. It was only on the day before the coronation that he arrived, after having 
+made flying visits to eight of the larger stellar systems of the kingdom, stopping only long, 
+enough to confer with the local representatives of the Foundation. 
+
+The trip left him with an oppressive realization of the vastness of the kingdom. It was a little 
+splinter, an insignificant fly speck compared to the inconceivable reaches of the Galactic 
+Empire of which it had once formed so distinguished a part; but to one whose habits of thought 
+had been built around a single planet, and a sparsely settled one at that, Anacreon's size in 
+area and population was staggering. 
+
+Following closely the boundaries of the old Prefect of Anacreon, it embraced twenty-five stellar 
+systems, six of which included more than one inhabited world. The population of nineteen 
+billion, though still far less than it had been in the Empire's heyday was rising rapidly with the 
+increasing scientific development fostered by the Foundation. 
+
+And it was only now that Hardin found himself floored by the magnitude of that task. Even in 
+thirty years, only the capital world had been powered. The outer provinces still possessed 
+immense stretches where nuclear power had not yet been re-introduced. Even the progress 
+that had been made might have been impossible had it not been for the still workable relics left 
+over by the ebbing tide of Empire. 
+
+When Hardin did arrive at the capital world, it was to find all normal business at an absolute 
+standstill. In the outer provinces there had been and still were celebrations; but here on the 
+planet Anacreon, not a person but took feverish part in the hectic religious pageantry that 
+heralded the coming-of-age of their god-king, Lepold. 
+
+Hardin had been able to snatch only half an hour from a haggard and harried Verisof before his 
+ambassador was forced to rush off to supervise still another temple festival. But the half-hour 
+was a most profitable one, and Hardin prepared himself for the night's fireworks well satisfied. 
+
+In all, he acted as an observer, for he had no stomach for the religious tasks he would 
+
+
+
+undoubtedly have had to undertake if his identity became known. So, when the palace's 
+ballroom filled itself with a glittering horde of the kingdom's very highest and most exalted 
+nobility, he found himself hugging the wall, little noticed or totally ignored. 
+
+He had been introduced to Lepold as one of a long line of introducees, and from a safe 
+distance, for the king stood apart in lonely and impressive grandeur, surrounded by his deadly 
+blaze of radioactive aura. And in less than an hour this same king would take his seat upon the 
+massive throne of rhodium-iridium alloy with jewel-set gold chasings, and then, throne and all 
+would rise maestically into the air, skim the ground slowly to hover before the great window 
+from which the great crowds of common folk could see their king and shout themselves into 
+near apoplexy. The throne would not have been so massive, of course, if it had not had a 
+shielded nuclear motor built into it. 
+
+It was past eleven. Hardin fidgeted and stood on his toes to better his view. He resisted an 
+impulse to stand on a chair. And then he saw Wienis threading through the crowd toward him 
+and he relaxed. 
+
+Wienis' progress was slow. At almost every step, he had to pass a kindly sentence with some 
+revered noble whose grandfather had helped Lepold's grandfather brigandize the kingdom and 
+had received a dukedom therefor. 
+
+And then he disentangled himself from the last uniformed peer and reached Hardin. His smile 
+crooked itself into a smirk and his black eyes peered from under grizzled brows with glints of 
+satisfaction in them. 
+
+"My dear Hardin," he said, in a low voice, "you must expect to be bored, when you refuse to 
+announce your identity." 
+
+"I am not bored, your highness. This is all extremely interesting. We have no comparable 
+spectacles on Terminus, you know." 
+
+"No doubt. But would you care to step into my private chambers, where we can speak at 
+greater length and with considerably more privacy?" 
+
+"Certainly." 
+
+With arms linked, the two ascended the staircase, and more than one dowager duchess stared 
+after them in surprise and wondered at the identity of this insignificantly dressed and 
+uninteresting-looking stranger on whom such signal honor was being conferred by the prince 
+regent. 
+
+In Wienis' chambers, Hardin relaxed in perfect comfort and accepted with a murmur of gratitude 
+the glass of liquor that had been poured out by the regent's own hand. 
+
+"Locris wine, Hardin," said Wienis, "from the royal cellars. The real thing - two centuries in age. 
+It was laid down ten years before the Zeonian Rebellion." 
+
+"A really royal drink," agreed Hardin, politely. "To Lepold I, King of Anacreon." 
+
+They drank, and Wienis added blandly, at the pause, "And soon to be Emperor of the 
+
+
+
+Periphery, and further, who knows? The Galaxy may some day be reunited." 
+
+"Undoubtedly. By Anacreon?" 
+
+"Why not? With the help of the Foundation, our scientific superiority over the rest of the 
+Periphery would be undisputable." 
+
+Hardin set his empty glass down and said, "Well, yes, except that, of course, the Foundation is 
+bound to help any nation that requests scientific aid of it. Due to the high idealism of our 
+government and the great moral purpose of our founder, Hari Seldon, we are unable to play 
+favorites. That can't be helped, your highness." 
+
+Wienis' smile broadened. "The Galactic Spirit, to use the popular cant, helps those who help 
+themselves. I quite understand that, left to itself, the Foundation would never cooperate." 
+
+"I wouldn't say that. We repaired the Imperial cruiser for you, though my board of navigation 
+wished it for themselves for research purposes." 
+
+The regent repeated the last words ironically. "Research purposes! Yes! Yet you would not 
+have repaired it, had I not threatened war." 
+
+Hardin made a deprecatory gesture. "I don't know." 
+
+"I do. And that threat always stood." 
+
+"And still stands now?" 
+
+"Now it is rather too late to speak of threats." Wienis had cast a rapid glance at the clock on his 
+desk. "Look here, Hardin, you were on Anacreon once before. You were young then; we were 
+both young. But even then we had entirely different ways of looking at things. You're what they 
+call a man of peace, aren't you?" 
+
+"I suppose I am. At least, I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There 
+are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct." 
+
+"Yes. I've heard of your famous remark: 'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.' And 
+yet" - the regent scratched one ear gently in affected abstraction -"I wouldn't call myself 
+exactly incompetent." 
+
+Hardin nodded politely and said nothing. 
+
+"And in spite of that," Wienis continued, "I have always believed in direct action. I have believed 
+in carving a straight path to my objective and following that path. I have accomplished much 
+that way, and fully expect to accomplish still more." 
+
+"I know," interrupted Hardin. "I believe you are carving a path such as you describe for yourself 
+and your children that leads directly to the throne, considering the late unfortunate death of the 
+king's father - your elder brother and the king's own precarious state of health. He is in a 
+precarious state of health, is he not?" 
+
+Wienis frowned at the shot, and his voice grew harder. "You might find it advisable, Hardin, to 
+avoid certain subjects. You may consider yourself privileged as mayor of Terminus to make ... 
+
+
+
+uh ... injudicious remarks, but if you do, please disabuse yourself of the notion. I am not one to 
+be frightened at words. It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced 
+boldly, and I have never turned my back upon one yet." 
+
+"I don't doubt that. What particular difficulty are you refusing to turn your back upon at the 
+present moment?" 
+
+"The difficulty, Hardin, of persuading the Foundation to co-operate. Your policy of peace, you 
+see, has led you into making several very serious mistakes, simply because you 
+underestimated the boldness of your adversary. Not everyone is as afraid of direct action as 
+you are." 
+
+"For instance?" suggested Hardin. 
+
+"For instance, you came to Anacreon alone and accompanied me to my chambers alone." 
+Hardin looked about him. "And what is wrong with that?" 
+
+"Nothing," said the regent, "except that outside this room are five police guards, well armed and 
+ready to shoot. I don't think you can leave, Hardin." 
+
+The mayor's eyebrows lifted, "I have no immediate desire to leave. Do you then fear me so 
+much?" 
+
+"I don't fear you at all. But this may serve to impress you with my determination. Shall we call it 
+a gesture?" 
+
+"Call it what you please," said Hardin, indifferently. "I shall not discommode myself over the 
+incident, whatever you choose to call it." 
+
+"I'm sure that attitude will change with time. But you have made another error, Hardin, a more 
+serious one. It seems that the planet Terminus is almost wholly undefended." 
+
+"Naturally. What have we to fear? We threaten no one's interest and serve all alike." 
+
+"And while remaining helpless," Wienis went on, "you kindly helped us to arm ourselves, aiding 
+us particularly in the development of a navy of our own, a great navy. In fact, a navy which, 
+since your donation of the Imperial cruiser, is quite irresistible." 
+
+"Your highness, you are wasting time." Hardin made as if to rise from his seat. "If you mean to 
+declare war, and are informing me of the fact, you will allow me to communicate with my 
+government at once." 
+
+"Sit down, Hardin. I am not declaring war, and you are not communicating with your 
+government at all. When the war is fought - not declared, Hardin, fought - the Foundation will 
+be informed of it in due time by the nuclear blasts of the Anacreonian navy under the lead of my 
+own son upon the flagship, Wienis, once a cruiser of the Imperial navy." 
+
+Hardin frowned. "When will all this happen?" 
+
+"If you're really interested, the ships of the fleet left Anacreon exactly fifty minutes ago, at 
+
+
+
+eleven, and the first shot will be fired as soon as they sight Terminus, which should be at noon 
+tomorrow. You may consider yourself a prisoner of war." 
+
+"That's exactly what I do consider myself, your highness," said Hardin, still frowning. "But I'm 
+disappointed." 
+
+Wienis chuckled contemptuously. "Is that all?" 
+
+"Yes. I had thought that the moment of coronation - midnight, you know - would be the logical 
+time to set the fleet in motion. Evidently, you wanted to start the war while you were still regent. 
+It would have been more dramatic the other way." 
+
+The regent stared. "What in Space are you talking about?" 
+
+"Don't you understand?" said Hardin, softly. "I had set my counterstroke for midnight." 
+
+Wienis started from his chair. "You are not bluffing me. There is no counterstroke. If you are 
+counting on the support of the other kingdoms, forget it. Their navies, combined, are no match 
+for ours." 
+
+"I know that. I don't intend firing a shot. It is simply that the word went out a week ago that at 
+midnight tonight, the planet Anacreon goes under the interdict." 
+
+"The interdict?" 
+
+"Yes. If you don't understand, I might explain that every priest in Anacreon is going on strike, 
+unless I countermand the order. But I can't while I'm being held incommunicado; nor do I wish 
+to even if I weren't!" He leaned forward and added, with sudden animation, "Do you realize, 
+your highness, that an attack on the Foundation is nothing short of sacrilege of the highest 
+order?" 
+
+Wienis was groping visibly for self-control. "Give me none of that, Hardin. Save it for the mob." 
+
+"My dear Wienis, whoever do you think I am saving it for? I imagine that for the last half hour 
+every temple on Anacreon has been the center of a mob listening to a priest exhorting them 
+upon that very subject. There's not a man or woman on Anacreon that doesn't know that their 
+government has launched a vicious, unprovoked attack upon the center of their religion. But it 
+lacks only four minutes of midnight now. You'd better go down to the ballroom to watch events. 
+I'll be safe here with five guards outside the door." He leaned back in his chair, helped himself 
+to another glass of Locris wine, and gazed at the ceiling with perfect indifference. 
+
+Wienis suddenly furious, rushed out of the room. 
+
+A hush had fallen over the elite in the ballroom, as a broad path was cleared for the throne. 
+Lepold sat on it now, hands solidly on its arms, head high, face frozen. The huge chandeliers 
+had dimmed and in the diffused multi-colored light from the tiny nucleo-bulbs that bespangled 
+the vaulted ceiling, the royal aura shone out bravely, lifting high above his head to form a 
+blazing coronet. 
+
+Wienis paused on the stairway. No one saw him; all eyes were on the throne. He clenched his 
+fists and remained where he was; Hardin would not bluff him into action. 
+
+
+
+And then the throne stiffed. Noiselessly, it lifted upward - and drifted. Off the dais, slowly down 
+the steps, and then horizontally, five centimetres off the floor, it worked itself toward the huge, 
+open window. 
+
+At the sound of the deep-toned bell that signified midnight, it stopped before the window - and 
+the king's aura died. 
+
+For a frozen split second, the king did not move, face twisted in surprise, without an aura, 
+merely human; and then the throne wobbled and dropped to the floor with a crashing thump, 
+just as every light in the palace went out. 
+
+Through the shrieking din and confusion, Wienis' bull voice sounded. "Get the flares! Get the 
+flares!" 
+
+He buffeted right and left through the crowd and forced his way to the door. From without, 
+palace guards had streamed into the darkness. 
+
+Somehow the flares were brought back to the ballroom; flares that were to have been used in 
+the gigantic torchlight procession through the streets of the city after the coronation. 
+
+Back to the ballroom guardsmen swarmed with torches - blue, green, and red; where the 
+strange light lit up frightened, confused faces. 
+
+"There is no harm done," shouted Wienis. "Keep your places. Power will return in a moment." 
+He turned to the captain of the guard who stood stiffly at attention. "What is it, Captain?" 
+
+"Your highness," was the instant response, "the palace is surrounded by the people of the city." 
+"What do they want?" snarled Wienis. 
+
+"A priest is at the head. He has been identified as High Priest Poly Verisof. He demands the 
+immediate release of Mayor Salvor Hardin and cessation of the war against the Foundation." 
+The report was made in the expressionless tones of an officer, but his eyes shifted uneasily. 
+
+Wienis cried, "if any of the rabble attempt to pass the palace gates, blast them out of existence. 
+For the moment, nothing more. Let them howl! There will be an accounting tomorrow." 
+
+The torches had been distributed now, and the ballroom was again alight. Wienis rushed to the 
+throne, still standing by the window, and dragged the stricken, wax-faced Lepold to his feet. 
+
+"Come with me." He cast one look out of the window. The city was pitch-black. From below 
+there were the hoarse confused cries of the mob. Only toward the fight, where the Argolid 
+Temple stood was there illumination. He swore angrily, and dragged the king away. 
+
+Wienis burst into his chambers, the five guardsmen at his heels. Lepold followed, wide-eyed, 
+scared speechless. 
+
+"Hardin," said Wienis, huskily, "you are playing with forces too great for you." 
+
+The mayor ignored the speaker. In the pearly light of the pocket nucleo-bulb at his side, he 
+
+
+
+remained quietly seated, a slightly ironic smile on his face. 
+
+"Good morning, your majesty," he said to Lepold. "I congratulate you on your coronation." 
+"Hardin," cried Wienis again, "order your priests back to their jobs." 
+
+Hardin looked up coolly. "Order them yourself, Wienis, and see who is playing with forces too 
+great for whom. Right now, there's not a wheel turning in Anacreon. There's not a light burning, 
+except in the temples. There's not a drop of water running, except in the temples. On the wintry 
+half of the planet, there's not a calorie of heat, except in the temples. The hospitals are taking in 
+no more patients. The power plants have shut down. All ships are grounded. If you don't like it, 
+Wienis, you can order the priests back to their jobs. I don't wish to." 
+
+"By Space, Hardin, I will. If it's to be a showdown, so be it. We'll see if your priests can 
+withstand the army. Tonight, every temple on the planet will be put under army supervision." 
+
+"Very good, but how are you going to give the orders? Every line of communication on the 
+planet is shut down. You'll find that neither wave nor hyperwave will work. In fact, the only 
+communicator of the planet that will work - outside of the temples, of course - is the televisor 
+right here in this room, and I've fitted it only for reception." 
+
+Wienis struggled vainly for breath, and Hardin continued, "If you wish you can order your army 
+into the Argolid Temple just outside the palace and then use the ultrawave sets there to contact 
+other portions of the planet. But if you do that, I'm afraid the army contigent will be cut to pieces 
+by the mob, and then what will protect your palace, Wienis? And your lives, Wienis?" 
+
+Wienis said thickly, "We can hold out, devil. We'll last the day. Let the mob howl and let the 
+power die, but we'll hold out. And when the news comes back that the Foundation has been 
+taken, your precious mob will find upon what vacuum their religion has been built, and they'll 
+desert your priests and turn against them. I give you until noon tomorrow, Hardin, because you 
+can stop the power on Anacreon but you can't stop my fleet. " His voice croaked exultantly. 
+"They're on their way, Hardin, with the great cruiser you yourself ordered repaired, at the head." 
+
+Hardin replied lightly. "Yes, the cruiser I myself ordered repaired - but in my own way. Tell me, 
+Wienis, have you ever heard of a hyperwave relay? No, I see you haven't. Well, in about two 
+minutes you'll find out what one can do." 
+
+The televisor flashed to life as he spoke, and he amended, "No, in two seconds. Sit down, 
+Wienis. and listen." 
+
+
+7 . 
+
+Theo Aporat was one of the very highest ranking priests of Anacreon. From the standpoint of 
+precedence alone, he deserved his appointment as head priest- attendant upon the flagship 
+Wienis. 
+
+
+But it was not only rank or precedence. He knew the ship. He had worked directly under the 
+holy men from the Foundation itself in repairing the ship. He had gone over the motors under 
+
+
+
+their orders. He had rewired the 'visors; revamped the communications system; replated the 
+punctured hull; reinforced the beams. He had even been permitted to help while the wise men 
+of the Foundation had installed a device so holy it had never been placed in any previous ship, 
+but had been reserved only for this magnificent colossus of a vessel - a hyperwave relay. 
+
+It was no wonder that he felt heartsick over the purposes to which the glorious ship was 
+perverted. He had never wanted to believe what Verisof had told him - that the ship was to be 
+used for appalling wickedness; that its guns were to be turned on the great Foundation. Turned 
+on that Foundation, where he had been trained as a youth, from which all blessedness was 
+derived. 
+
+Yet he could not doubt now, after what the admiral had told him. 
+
+How could the king, divinely blessed, allow this abominable act? Or was it the king? Was it not, 
+perhaps, an action of the accursed regent, Wienis, without the knowledge of the king at all. And 
+it was the son of this same Wienis that was the admiral who five minutes before had told him: 
+
+"Attend to your souls and your blessings, priest. I will attend to my ship." 
+
+Aporat smiled crookedly. He would attend to his souls and his blessings - and also to his 
+cursings; and Prince Lefkin would whine soon enough. 
+
+He had entered the general communications room now. His. acolyte preceded him and the two 
+officers in charge made no move to interfere. The head priest-attendant had the right of free 
+entry anywhere on the ship. 
+
+"Close the door," Aporat ordered, and looked at the chronometer. It lacked Five minutes of 
+twelve. He had timed it well. 
+
+With quick practiced motions, he moved the little levers that opened all communications, so that 
+every part of the two-mile-long ship was within reach of his voice and his image. 
+
+"Soldiers of the royal flagship Wienis, attend! It is your priest-attendant that speaks!" The sound 
+of his voice reverberated, he knew, from the stem atom blast in the extreme rear to the 
+navigation tables in the prow. 
+
+"Your ship," he cried, "is engaged in sacrilege. Without your knowledge, it is performing such 
+an act as will doom the soul of every man among you to the eternal frigidity of space! Listen! It 
+is the intention of your commander to take this ship to the Foundation and there to bombard 
+that source of all blessings into submission to his sinful will. And since that is his intention, I, in 
+the name of the Galactic Spirit, remove him from his command, for there is no command where 
+the blessing of the Galactic Spirit has been withdrawn. The divine king himself may not 
+maintain his kingship without the consent of the Spirit." 
+
+His voice took on a deeper tone, while the acolyte listened with veneration and the two soldiers 
+with mounting fear. "And because this ship is upon such a devil's errand, the blessing of the 
+Spirit is removed from it as well." 
+
+He lifted his arms solemnly, and before a thousand televisors throughout the ship, soldiers 
+cowered, as the stately image of their priest-attendant spoke: 
+
+
+
+"In the name of the Galactic Spirit and of his prophet, Hari Seldon, and of his interpreters, the 
+holy men of the Foundation, I curse this ship. Let the televisors of this ship, which are its eyes, 
+become blind. Let its grapples, which are its arms, be paralyzed. Let the nuclear blasts, which 
+are its fists, lose their function. Let the motors, which are its heart, cease to beat. Let the 
+communications, which are its voice, become dumb. Let its ventilations, which are its breath, 
+fade. Let its lights, which are its soul, shrivel into nothing. In the name of the Galactic Spirit, I so 
+curse this ship." 
+
+And with his last word, at the stroke of midnight, a hand, light-years distant in the Argolid 
+Temple, opened an ultrawave relay, which at the instantaneous speed of the ultrawave, opened 
+another on the flagship Wienis. 
+
+And the ship died! 
+
+For it is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works, and that such curses as 
+that of Aporat's are really deadly. 
+
+Aporat saw the darkness close down on the ship and heard the sudden ceasing of the soft, 
+distant purring of the hyperatomic motors. Fie exulted and from the pocket of his long robe 
+withdrew a self-powered nucleo-bulb that filled the room with pearly light. 
+
+Fie looked down at the two soldiers who, brave men though they undoubtedly were, writhed on 
+their knees in the last extremity of mortal terror. "Save our souls, your reverence. We are poor 
+men, ignorant of the crimes of our leaders," one whimpered. 
+
+"Follow," said Aporat, sternly. "Your soul is not yet lost." 
+
+The ship was a turmoil of darkness in which fear was so thick and palpable, it was all but a 
+miasmic smell. Soldiers crowded close wherever Aporat and his circle of light passed, striving 
+to touch the hem of his robe, pleading for the tiniest scrap of mercy. 
+
+And always his answer was, "Follow me!" 
+
+Fie found Prince Lefkin, groping his way through the officers' quarters, cursing loudly for lights. 
+The admiral stared at the priest-attendant with hating eyes. 
+
+"There you are!" Lefkin inherited his blue eyes from his mother, but there was that about the 
+hook in his nose and the squint in his eye that marked him as the son of Wienis. "What is the 
+meaning of your treasonable actions? Return the power to the ship. I am commander here." 
+
+"No longer," said Aporat, somberly. 
+
+Lefkin looked about wildly. "Seize that man. Arrest him, or by Space, I will send every man 
+within reach of my voice out the air lock in the nude." Fie paused, and then shrieked, "It is your 
+admiral that orders. Arrest him." 
+
+Then, as he lost his head entirely, "Are you allowing yourselves to be fooled by this 
+mountebank, this harlequin? Do you cringe before a religion compounded of clouds and 
+moonbeams? This man is an imposter and the Galactic Spirit he speaks of a fraud of the 
+imagination devised to-" 
+
+
+
+Aporat interrupted furiously. "Seize the blasphemer. You listen to him at the peril of your souls." 
+And promptly, the noble admiral went down under the clutching hands of a score of soldiers. 
+"Take him with you and follow me." 
+
+Aporat turned, and with Lefkin dragged along after him, and the corridors behind black with 
+soldiery, he returned to the communications room. There, he ordered the ex-commander before 
+the one televisor that worked. 
+
+"Order the rest of the fleet to cease course and to prepare for the return to Anacreon." 
+
+The disheveled Lefkin, bleeding, beaten, and half stunned, did so. 
+
+"And now," continued Aporat, grimly, "we are in contact with Anacreon on the hyperwave beam. 
+Speak as I order you." 
+
+Lefkin made a gesture of negation, and the mob in the room and the others crowding the 
+corridor beyond, growled fearfully. 
+
+"Speak!" said Aporat. "Begin: The Anacreonian navy-" 
+
+Lefkin began. 
+
+
+8 . 
+
+There was absolute silence in Wienis' chambers when the image of Prince Lefkin appeared at 
+the televisor. There had been one startled gasp from the regent at the haggard face and 
+shredded uniform of his son, and then he collapsed into a chair, face contorted with surprise 
+and apprehension. 
+
+Hardin listened stolidly, hands clasped lightly in his lap, while the just-crowned King Lepold sat 
+shriveled in the most shadowy comer, biting spasmodically at his goldbraided sleeve. Even the 
+soldiers had lost the emotionless stare that is the prerogative of the military, and, from where 
+they lined up against the door, nuclear blasts ready, peered furtively at the figure upon the 
+televisor. 
+
+Lefkin spoke, reluctantly, with a tired voice that paused at intervals as though he were being 
+prompted-and not gently: 
+
+"The Anacreonian navy ... aware of the nature of its mission ... and refusing to be a party ... to 
+abominable sacrilage ... is returning to Anacreon ... with the following ultimatum issued ... to 
+those blaspheming sinners ... who would dare to use profane force ... against the Foundation ... 
+source of all blessings ... and against the Galactic Spirit. Cease at once all war against ... the 
+true faith . . . and guarantee in a manner suiting us of the navy ... as represented by our ... 
+priest-attendant, Theo Aporat ... that such war will never in the future ... be resumed, and that"- 
+here a long pause, and then continuing -"and that the one-time prince regent, Wienis ... be 
+imprisoned ... and tried before an ecclesiastical court ... for his crimes. Otherwise the royal navy 
+... upon returning to Anacreon ... will blast the palace to the ground ... and take whatever other 
+
+
+
+measures ... are 
+
+
+necessary ... to destroy the nest of sinners ... and the den of destroyers ... of men's souls that 
+now prevail." 
+
+The voice ended with half a sob and the screen went blank. 
+
+Hardin's fingers passed rapidly over the nucleo-bulb and its light faded until in the dimness, the 
+hitherto regent, the king, and the soldiers were hazy-edged shadows; and for the first time it 
+could be seen that an aura encompassed Hardin. 
+
+It was not the blazing light that was the prerogative of kings, but one less spectacular, less 
+impressive, and yet one more effective in its own way, and more useful. 
+
+Hardin's voice was softly ironic as he addressed the same Wienis who had one hour earlier 
+declared him a prisoner of war and Terminus on the point of destruction, and who now was a 
+huddled shadow, broken and silent. 
+
+"There is an old fable," said Hardin, "as old perhaps as humanity, for the oldest records 
+containing it are merely copies of other records still older, that might interest you. It runs as 
+follows: 
+
+"A horse having a wolf as a powerful and dangerous enemy lived in constant fear of his life. 
+Being driven to desperation, it occured to him to seek a strong ally. Whereupon he approached 
+a man, and offered an alliance, pointing out that the wolf was likewise an enemy of the man. 
+The man accepted the partnership at once and offered to kill the wolf immediately, if his new 
+partner would only co-operate by placing his greater speed at the man's disposal. The horse 
+was willing, and allowed the man to place bridle and saddle upon him. The man mounted, 
+hunted down the wolf, and killed him. 
+
+"The horse, joyful and relieved, thanked the man, and said: 'Now that our enemy is dead, 
+remove your bridle and saddle and restore my freedom.' 
+
+"Whereupon the man laughed loudly and replied, 'Never!' and applied the spurs with a will." 
+Silence still. The shadow that was Wienis did not stir. 
+
+Hardin continued quietly, "You see the analogy, I hope. In their anxiety to cement forever 
+domination over their own people, the kings of the Four Kingdoms accepted the religion of 
+science that made them divine; and that same religion of science was their bridle and saddle, 
+for it placed the life blood of nuclear power in the hands of the priesthoodwho took their orders 
+from us, be it noted, and not from you. You killed the wolf, but could not get rid of the m-" 
+
+Wienis sprang to his feet and in the shadows, his eyes were maddened hollows. His voice was 
+thick, incoherent. "And yet I'll get you. You won't escape. You'll rot. Let them blow us up. Let 
+them blow everything up. You'll rot! I'll get you! 
+
+"Soldiers!" he thundered, hysterically. "Shoot me down that devil. Blast him! Blast him!" 
+
+Hardin turned about in his chair to face the soldiers and smiled. One aimed his nuclear blast 
+and then lowered it. The others never budged. Salvor Hardin, mayor of Terminus, surrounded 
+
+
+
+by that soft aura, smiling so confidently, and before whom all the power of Anacreon had 
+crumbled to powder was too much for them, despite the orders of the shrieking maniac just 
+beyond. 
+
+Wienis shouted incoherently and staggered to the nearest soldier. Wildly, he wrested the 
+nuclear blast from the man's hand-aimed it at Hardin, who didn't stir, shoved the lever and held 
+it contacted. 
+
+The pale continous beam impinged upon the force-field that surrounded the mayor of Terminus 
+and was sucked harmlessly to neutralization. Wienis pressed harder and laughed tearingly. 
+
+Hardin still smiled and his force-field aura scarcely brightened as it absorbed the energies of 
+the nuclear blast. From his comer Lepold covered his eyes and moaned. 
+
+And, with a yell of despair, Wienis changed his aim and shot again - and toppled to the floor 
+with his head blown into nothingness. 
+
+Hardin winced at the sight and muttered, "A man of 'direct action' to the end. The last refuge!" 
+
+
+9 . 
+
+The Time Vault was filled; filled far beyond the available seating capacity, and men lined the 
+back of the room, three deep. 
+
+Salvor Hardin compared this large company with the few men attending the first appearance of 
+Hari Seldon, thirty years earlier. There had only been six, then; the five old Encyclopedists - all 
+dead now - and himself, the young figurehead of a mayor. It had been on that day, that he, with 
+Yohan Lee's assistance had removed the "figurehead" stigma from his office. 
+
+It was quite different now; different in every respect. Every man of the City Council was 
+awaiting Seldon's appearance. He, himself, was still mayor, but all-powerful now; and since the 
+utter rout of Anacreon, all-popular. When he had returned from Anacreon with the news of the 
+death of Wienis, and the new treaty signed with the trembling Lepold, he was greeted with a 
+vote of confidence of shrieking unanimity. When this was followed in rapid order, by similar 
+treaties signed with each of the other three kingdoms - treaties that gave the Foundation 
+powers such as would forever prevent any attempts at attack similar to that of Anacreon's - 
+torchlight processions had been held in every city street of Terminus. Not even Hari Seldon's 
+name had been more loudly cheered. 
+
+Hardin's lips twitched. Such popularity had been his after the first crisis also. 
+
+Across the room, Sef Sermak and Lewis Bort were engaged in animated discussion, and recent 
+events seemed to have put them out not at all. They had joined in the vote of confidence; made 
+speeches in which they publicly admitted that they had been in the wrong, apologized 
+handsomely for the use of certain phrases in earlier debates, excused themselves delicately by 
+declaring they had merely followed the dictates of their judgement and their conscience - and 
+immediately launched a new Actionist campaign. 
+
+
+
+Yohan Lee touched Hardin's sleeve and pointed significantly to his watch. 
+
+Hardin looked up. "Hello there, Lee. Are you still sour? What's wrong now?" 
+
+"He's due in five minutes, isn't he?" 
+
+"I presume so. He appeared at noon last time." 
+
+"What if he doesn't?" 
+
+"Are you going to wear me down with your worries all your life? If he doesn't, he won't." 
+
+Lee frowned and shook his head slowly. "If this thing flops, we're in another mess. Without 
+Seldon's backing for what we've done, Sermak will be free to start all over. He wants outright 
+annexation of the Four Kingdoms, and immediate expansion of the Foundation - by force, if 
+necessary. He's begun his campaign, already." 
+
+"I know. A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself. And you, Lee, have got to 
+worry even if you must kill yourself to invent something to worry about." 
+
+Lee would have answered, but he lost his breath at just that moment - as the lights yellowed 
+and went dim. He raised his arm to point to the glass cubicle that dominated half the room and 
+then collapsed into a chair with a windy sigh. 
+
+Hardin himself straightened at the sight of the figure that now filled the cubicle - a figure in a 
+wheel chair! He alone, of all those present could remember the day, decades ago, when that 
+figure had appeared first. He had been young then, and the figure old. Since then, the figure 
+had not aged a day, but he himself had in turn grown old. 
+
+The figure stared straight ahead, hands fingering a book in its lap. 
+
+It said, "I am Hari Seldon!" The voice was old and soft. 
+
+There was a breathless silence in the room and Hari Seldon continued conversationally, "This 
+is the second time I've been here. Of course, I don't know if any of you were here the first time. 
+In fact, I have no way of telling, by sense perception, that there is anyone here at all, but that 
+doesn't matter. If the second crisis has been overcome safely, you are bound to be here; there 
+is no way out. If you are not here, then the second crisis has been too much for you." 
+
+He smiled engagingly. "I doubt that, however, for my figures show a ninety-eight point four 
+percent probability there is to be no significant deviation from the Plan in the first eighty years. 
+
+"According to our calculations, you have now reached domination of the barbarian kingdoms 
+immediately surrounding the Foundation. Just as in the first crisis you held them off by use of 
+the Balance of Power, so in the second, you gained mastery by use of the Spiritual Power as 
+against the Temporal. 
+
+"However, I might warn you here against overconfidence. It is not my way to grant you any 
+foreknowledge in these recordings, but it would be safe to indicate that what you have now 
+achieved is merely a new balance-though one in which your position is considerably better. The 
+Spiritual Power, while sufficient to ward off attacks of the Temporal is not sufficient to attack in 
+
+
+
+turn. Because of the invariable growth of the counteracting force known as Regionalism, or 
+Nationalism, the Spiritual Power cannot prevail. I am telling you nothing new, I'm sure. 
+
+"You must pardon me, by the way, for speaking to you in this vague way. The terms I use are at 
+best mere approximations, but none of you is qualified to understand the true symbology of 
+psychohistory, and so I must do the best I can. 
+
+"In this case, the Foundation is only at the start of the path that leads to the Second Galactic 
+Empire. The neighboring kingdoms, in manpower and resources are still overwhelmingly 
+powerful as compared to yourselves. Outside them lies the vast tangled jungle of barbarism 
+that extends around the entire breadth of the Galaxy. Within that rim there is still what is left of 
+the Galactic Empire - and that, weakened and decaying though it is, is still incomparably 
+mighty." 
+
+At this point, Hari Seldon lifted his book and opened it. His face grew solemn. "And never forget 
+there was another Foundation established eighty years ago; a Foundation at the other end of 
+the Galaxy, at Star's End. They will always be there for consideration. Gentlemen, nine hundred 
+and twenty years of the Plan stretch ahead of you. The problem is yours!" 
+
+He dropped his eyes to his book and flicked out of existence, while the lights brightened to 
+fullness. In the babble that followed, Lee leaned over to Hardin's ear. "He didn't say when he'd 
+be back." 
+
+Hardin replied, "I know - but I trust he won't return until you and I are safely and cozily dead!" 
+
+
+PART IV 
+
+THE TRADERS 
+
+i. 
+
+TRADERS-... and constantly in advance of the political hegemony of the Foundation were the 
+Traders, reaching out tenuous fingerholds through the tremendous distances of the Periphery. 
+Months or years might pass between landings on Terminus; their ships were often nothing 
+more than patchquilts of home-made repairs and improvisations; their honesty was none of the 
+highest; their daring... 
+
+Through it all they forged an empire more enduring than the pseudo-religious despotism of the 
+Four Kingdoms... 
+
+
+Tales without end are told of these massive, lonely figures who bore half-seriously, 
+half-mockingly a motto adopted from one of Salvor Hardin's epigrams, "Never let your sense of 
+
+
+
+
+morals prevent you from doing what is right!" It is difficult now to tell which tales are real and 
+which apocryphal. There are none probably that have not suffered some exaggeration.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Limmar Ponyets was completely a-lather when the call reached his receiver - which proves 
+that the old bromide about telemessages and the shower holds true even in the dark, hard 
+space of the Galactic Periphery. 
+
+Luckily that part of a free-lance trade ship which is not given over to miscellaneous 
+merchandise is extremely snug. So much so, that the shower, hot water included, is located in 
+a two-by-four cubby, ten feet from the control panels. Ponyets heard the staccato rattle of the 
+receiver quite plainly. 
+
+Dripping suds and a growl, he stepped out to adjust the vocal, and three hours later a second 
+trade ship was alongside, and a grinning youngster entered through the air tube between the 
+ships. 
+
+Ponyets rattled his best chair forward and perched himself on the pilot-swivel. 
+
+"What've you been doing, Gorm?" he asked, darkly. "Chasing me all the way from the 
+Foundation?" 
+
+Les Gorm broke out a cigarette, and shook his head definitely, "Me? Not a chance. I'm just a 
+sucker who happened to land on Glyptal IV the day after the mail. So they sent me out after 
+you with this." 
+
+The tiny, gleaming sphere changed hands, and Gorm added, "It's confidential. Super-secret. 
+Can't be trusted to the sub-ether and all that. Or so I gather. At least, it's a Personal Capsule, 
+and won't open for anyone but you." 
+
+Ponyets regarded the capsule distastefully, "I can see that. And I never knew one of these to 
+hold good news, either." 
+
+It opened in his hand and the thin, transparent tape unrolled stiffly. His eyes swept the 
+message quickly, for when the last of the tape had emerged, the first was already brown and 
+crinkled. In a minute and a half it had turned black and, molecule by molecule, fallen apart. 
+
+Ponyets grunted hollowly, "Oh, Galaxy f 
+
+Les Gorm said quietly, "Can I help somehow? Or is it too secret?" 
+
+"It will bear telling, since you're of the Guild. I've got to go to Askone." 
+
+"That place? How come?" 
+
+"They've imprisoned a trader. But keep it to yourself." 
+
+Gorm's expression jolted into anger, "Imprisoned! That's against the Convention." 
+
+"So is the interference with local politics." 
+
+
+
+"Oh! Is that what he did?" Gorm meditated. "Who's the trader'? Anyone I know?" 
+
+"No!" said Ponyets sharply, and Gorm accepted the implication and asked no further questions. 
+
+Ponyets was up and staring darkly out the visiplate. He mumbled strong expressions at that 
+part of the misty lens-form that was the body of the Galaxy, then said loudly, "Damnedest 
+mess! I'm way behind quota." 
+
+Light broke on Gorm's intellect, "Hey, friend, Askone is a closed area." 
+
+"That's right. You can't sell as much as a penknife on Askone. They won't buy nuclear gadgets 
+of any sort. With my quota dead on its feet, it's murder to go there." 
+
+"Can't get out of it?" 
+
+Ponyets shook his head absently, A know the fellow involved. Can't walk out on a friend. What 
+of it? I am in the hands of the Galactic Spirit and walk cheerfully in the way he points out." 
+
+Gorm said blankly, "Huh?" 
+
+Ponyets looked at him, and laughed shortly, "I forgot. You never read the 'Bood of the Spirit,' 
+did you?" 
+
+"Never heard of it," said Gorm, curtly. 
+
+"Well, you would if you'd had a religious training." 
+
+"Religious training? For the priesthood?" Gorm was profoundly shocked. 
+
+"Afraid so. It's my dark shame and secret. I was too much for the Reverend Fathers, though, 
+They expelled me, for reasons sufficient to promote me to a secular education under the 
+Foundation. Well, look, I'd better push off. How's your quota this year?" 
+
+Gorm crushed out his cigarette and adjusted his cap, "I've got my last cargo going now. I'll 
+make it." 
+
+"Lucky fellow," gloomed Ponyets, and for many minutes after Les Gorm left, he sat in 
+motionless reverie. 
+
+So Eskel Gorov was on Askone - and in prison as well! 
+
+That was bad! In fact, considerably worse than it might appear. It was one thing to tell a curious 
+youngster a diluted version of the business to throw him off and send him about his own. It was 
+a thing of a different sort to face the truth. 
+
+For Limmar Ponyets was one of the few people who happened to know that Master Trader 
+Eskel Gorov was not a trader at all; but that entirely different thing, an agent of the Foundation! 
+
+
+2 . 
+
+Two weeks gone! Two weeks wasted. 
+
+
+
+One week to reach Askone, at the extreme borders of which the vigilant warships speared out 
+to meet him in converging numbers. Whatever their detection system was, it worked - and well. 
+
+
+They sidled him in slowly, without a signal, maintaining their cold distance, and pointing him 
+harshly towards the central sun of Askone. 
+
+Ponyets could have handled them at a pinch. Those ships were holdovers from the 
+dead-and-gone Galactic Empire - but they were sports cruisers, not warships; and without 
+nuclear weapons, they were so many picturesque and impotent ellipsoids. But Eskel Gorov was 
+a prisoner in their hands, and Gorov was not a hostage to lose. The Askonians must know that. 
+
+And then another week - a week to wind a weary way through the clouds of minor officials that 
+formed the buffer between the Grand Master and the outer world. Each little sub-secretary 
+required soothing and conciliation. Each required careful and nauseating milking for the 
+flourishing signature that was the pathway to the next official one higher up. 
+
+For the first time, Ponyets found his trader's identification papers useless. 
+
+I Now, at last, the Grand Master was on the other side of the Guard-flanked gilded door - and 
+two weeks had gone. 
+
+Gorov was still a prisoner and Ponyets' cargo rotted useless in the holds of his ship. 
+
+The Grand Master was a small man; a small man with a balding head and very wrinkled face, 
+whose body seemed weighed down to motionlessness by the huge, glossy fur collar about his 
+neck. 
+
+His fingers moved on either side, and the line of armed men backed away to for a passage, 
+along which Ponyets strode to the foot of the Chair of State. 
+
+"Don't speak," snapped the Grand Master, and Ponyets' opening lips closed tightly. 
+
+"That's right," the Askonian ruler relaxed visibly, "I can't endure useless chatter. You cannot 
+threaten and I won't abide flattery. Nor is there room for injured complaints. I have lost count of 
+the times you wanderers have been warned that your devil's machines are not wanted 
+anywhere in Askone." 
+
+"Sir," said Ponyets, quietly, "there is no attempt to justify the trader in question. It is not the 
+policy of traders to intrude where they are not wanted. But the Galaxy is great, and it has 
+happened before that a boundary has been trespassed unwittingly. It was a deplorable 
+mistake." 
+
+"Deplorable, certainly," squeaked the Grand Master. "But mistake? Your people on Glyptal IV 
+have been bombarding me with pleas for negotiation since two hours after the sacrilegious 
+wretch was seized. I have been warned by them of your own coming many times over. It seems 
+a well-organized rescue campaign. Much seems to have been anticipated - a little too much for 
+
+
+
+mistakes, deplorable or otherwise." 
+
+The Askonian's black eyes were scornful. He raced on, "And are you traders, flitting from world 
+to world like mad little butterflies, so mad in your own right that you can land on Askone's 
+largest world, in the center of its system, and consider it an unwitting boundary mixup? Come, 
+surely not." 
+
+Ponyets winced without showing it. He said, doggedly, "If the attempt to trade was deliberate, 
+your Veneration, it was most injudicious and contrary to the strictest regulations of our Guild." 
+
+"Injudicious, yes," said the Askonian, curtly. "So much so, that your comrade is likely to lose life 
+in payment." 
+
+Ponyets' stomach knotted. There was no irresolution there. He said, "Death, your Veneration, is 
+so absolute and irrevocable a phenomenon that certainly there must be some alternative." 
+
+There was a pause before the guarded answer came, "I have heard that the Foundation is 
+rich." 
+
+"Rich? Certainly. But our riches are that which you refuse to take. Our nuclear goods are 
+worth-" 
+
+"Your goods are worthless in that they lack the ancestral blessing. Your goods are wicked and 
+accursed in that they lie under the ancestral interdict." The sentences were intoned; the 
+recitation of a formula. 
+
+The Grand Master's eyelids dropped, and he said with meaning, "You have nothing else of 
+value?" 
+
+The meaning was lost on the trader, "I don't understand. What is it you want?" 
+
+The Askonian's hands spread apart, "You ask me to trade places with you, and make known to 
+you my wants. I think not. Your colleague, it seems, must suffer the punishment set for 
+sacrilege by the Askonian code. Death by gas. We are a just people. The poorest peasant, in 
+like case, would suffer no more. I, myself, would suffer no less." 
+
+Ponyets mumbled hopelessly, "Your Veneration, would it be permitted that I speak to the 
+prisoner?" 
+
+"Askonian law," said the Grand Master coldly, "allows no communication with a condemned 
+man." 
+
+Mentally, Ponyets held his breath, "Your Veneration, I ask you to be merciful towards a man's 
+soul, in the hour when his body stands forfeit. He has been separated from spiritual consolation 
+in all the time that his life has been in danger. Even now, he faces the prospect of going 
+unprepared to the bosom of the Spirit that rules all." 
+
+The Grand Master said slowly and suspiciously, "You are a Tender of the Soul?" 
+
+Ponyets dropped a humble head, "I have been so trained. In the empty expanses of space, the 
+wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to 
+
+
+
+commerce and worldly pursuits." 
+
+The Askonian ruler sucked thoughtfully at his lower lip. "Every man should prepare his soul for 
+his journey to his ancestral spirits. Yet I had never thought you traders to be believers." 
+
+
+3 . 
+
+Eskel Gorov stirred on his couch and opened one eye as Limmar Ponyets entered the heavily 
+reinforced door. It boomed shut behind him. Gorov sputtered and came to his feet. 
+
+"Ponyets! They sent you?" 
+
+"Pure chance," said Ponyets, bitterly, "or the work of my own personal malevolent demon. Item 
+one, you get into a mess on Askone. Item two, my sales route, as known to the Board of Trade, 
+carries me within fifty parsecs of the system at just the time of item one. Item three, we've 
+worked together before and the Board knows it. Isn't that a sweet, inevitable set-up? The 
+answer just pops out of a slot." 
+
+"Be careful," said Gorov, tautly. "There'll be someone listening. Are you wearing a Field 
+Distorter?" 
+
+Ponyets indicated the ornamented bracelet that hugged his wrist and Gorov relaxed. 
+
+Ponyets looked about him. The cell was bare, but large. It was well-lit and it lacked offensive 
+odors. He said, "Not bad. They're treating you with kid gloves." 
+
+Gorov brushed the remark aside, "Listen, how did you get down here? I've been in strict solitary 
+for almost two weeks." 
+
+"Ever since I came, huh? Well, it seems the old bird who's boss here has his weak points. He 
+leans toward pious speeches, so I took a chance that worked. I'm here in the capacity of your 
+spiritual adviser. There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your 
+throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and 
+problematical soul. It's just a piece of empirical psychology. A trader has to know a little of 
+everything." 
+
+Gorov's smile was sardonic, "And you've been to theological school as well. You're all right, 
+Ponyets. I'm glad they sent you. But the Grand Master doesn't love my soul exclusively. Has he 
+mentioned a ransom?" 
+
+The trader's eyes narrowed, "He hinted - barely. And he also threatened death by gas. I played 
+safe, and dodged; it might easily have been a trap. So it's extortion, is it? What is it he wants?" 
+
+"Gold." 
+
+"Gold!" Ponyets frowned. "The metal itself? What for?" 
+
+"It's their medium of exchange." 
+
+"Is it? And where do I get gold from?" 
+
+
+
+"Wherever you can. Listen to me; this is important. Nothing will happen to me as long as the 
+Grand Master has the scent of gold in his nose. Promise it to him; as much as he asks for. 
+Then go back to the Foundation, if necessary, to get it. When I'm free, we'll be escorted out of 
+the system, and then we part company." 
+
+Ponyets stared disapprovingly, "And then you'll come back and try again." 
+
+"It's my assignment to sell nucleics to Askone." 
+
+"They'll get you before you've gone a parsec in space. You know that, I suppose." 
+
+"I don't," said Gorov. "And if I did, it wouldn't affect things." 
+
+"They'll kill you the second time." 
+
+Gorov shrugged. 
+
+Ponyets said quietly, "If I'm going to negotiate with the Grand Master again, I want to know the 
+whole story. So far, I've been working it too blind. As it was, the few mild remarks I did make 
+almost threw his Veneration into fits." 
+
+"It's simple enough," said Gorov. "The only way we can increase the security of the Foundation 
+here in the Periphery is to form a religion-controlled commercial empire. We're still too weak to 
+be able to force political control. It's all we can do to hold the Four Kingdoms." 
+
+Ponyets was nodding. "This I realize. And any system that doesn't accept nuclear gadgets can 
+never be placed under our religious control-" 
+
+"And can therefore become a focal point for independence and hostility. Yes." 
+
+"All right, then," said Ponyets, "so much for theory. Now what exactly prevents the sale. 
+Religion? The Grand Master implied as much." 
+
+"It's a form of ancestor worship. Their traditions tell of an evil past from which they were saved 
+by the simple and virtuous heroes of the past generations. It amounts to a distortion of the 
+anarchic period a century ago, when the imperial troops were driven out and an independent 
+government was set up. Advanced science and nuclear power in particular became identified 
+with the old imperial regime they remember with horror." 
+
+"That so? But they have nice little ships which spotted me very handily two parsecs away. That 
+smells of nucleics to me." 
+
+Gorov shrugged. "Those ships are holdovers of the Empire, no doubt. Probably with nuclear 
+drive. What they have, they keep. The point is that they will not innovate and their internal 
+economy is entirely non-nuclear. That is what we must change." 
+
+"Flow were you going to do it?" 
+
+"By breaking the resistance at one point. To put it simply, if I could sell a penknife with a 
+force-field blade to a nobleman, it would be to his interest to force laws that would allow him to 
+use it. Put that baldly, it sounds silly, but it is sound, psychologically. To make strategic sales, 
+
+
+
+at strategic points, would be to create a pro-nucleics faction at court." 
+
+"And they send you for that purpose, while I'm only here to ransom you and leave, while you 
+keep on trying? Isn't that sort of tail-backward?" 
+
+"In what way?" said Gorov, guardedly. 
+
+"Listen," Ponyets was suddenly exasperated, "you're a diplomat, not a trader, and calling you a 
+trader won't make you one. This case is for one who's made a business of selling - and I'm 
+here with a full cargo stinking into uselessness, and a quota that won't ever be met, it looks 
+like." 
+
+"You mean you're going to risk your life on something that isn't your business?" Gorov smiled 
+thinly. 
+
+Ponyets said, "You mean that this is a matter of patriotism and traders aren't patriotic?" 
+"Notoriously not. Pioneers never are." 
+
+"All right. I'll grant that. I don't scoot about space to save the Foundation or anything like that. 
+But I'm out to make money, and this is my chance. If it helps the Foundation at the same time, 
+all the better. And I've risked my life on slimmer chances." 
+
+Ponyets rose, and Gorov rose with him, "What are you going to do?" 
+
+The trader smiled, "Gorov, I don't know - not yet. But if the crux of the matter is to make a sale, 
+then I'm your man. I'm not a boaster as a general thing, but there's one thing I'll always back 
+up. I've never ended up below quota yet." 
+
+The door to the cell opened almost instantly when he knocked, and two guards fell in on either 
+side. 
+
+
+4 . 
+
+"A show!" said the Grand Master, grimly. Fie settled himself well into his furs, and one thin hand 
+grasped the iron cudgel he used as a cane. 
+
+"And gold, your Veneration." 
+
+"Anc/ gold," agreed the Grand Master, carelessly. 
+
+Ponyets set the box down and opened it with as fine an appearance of confidence as he could 
+manage. Fie felt alone in the face of universal hostility; the way he had felt out in space his first 
+year. The semicircle of bearded councilors who faced him down, stared unpleasantly. Among 
+them was Pherl, the thin-faced favorite who sat next to the Grand Master in stiff hostility. 
+Ponyets had met him once already and marked him immediately as prime enemy, and, as a 
+consequence, prime victim. 
+
+Outside the hall, a small army awaited events. Ponyets was effectively isolated from his ship; 
+he lacked any weapon, but his attempted bribe; and Gorov was still a hostage. 
+
+
+
+He made the final adjustments on the clumsy monstrosity that had cost him a week of 
+ingenuity, and prayed once again that the lead-lined quartz would stand the strain. 
+
+"What is it?" asked the Grand Master. 
+
+"This," said Ponyets, stepping back, "is a small device I have constructed myself." 
+
+"That is obvious, but it is not the information I want. Is it one of the black-magic abominations of 
+your world?" 
+
+"It is nuclear in nature, admitted Ponyets, gravely, "but none of you need touch it, or have 
+anything to do with it. It is for myself alone, and if it contains abominations, I take the foulness 
+of it upon myself." 
+
+The Grand Master had raised his iron cane at the machine in a threatening gesture and his lips 
+moved rapidly and silently in a purifying invocation. The thin-faced councilor at his right leaned 
+towards him and his straggled red mustache approached the Grand Master's ear. The ancient 
+Askonian petulantly shrugged himself free. 
+
+"And what is the connection of your instrument of evil and the gold that may save your 
+countryman's life?" 
+
+"With this machine," began Ponyets, as his hand dropped softly onto the central chamber and 
+caressed its hard, round flanks, "I can turn the iron you discard into gold of the finest quality. It 
+is the only device known to man that will take iron - the ugly iron, your Veneration, that props 
+up the chair you sit in and the walls of this building - and change it to shining, heavy, yellow 
+gold." 
+
+Ponyets felt himself botching it. His usual sales talk was smooth, facile and plausible; but this 
+limped like a shot-up space wagon. But it was the content, not the form, that interested the 
+Grand Master. 
+
+"So? Transmutation? Men have been fools who have claimed the ability. They have paid for 
+their prying sacrilege." 
+
+"Had they succeeded?" 
+
+"No." The Grand Master seemed coldly amused. "Success at producing gold would have been 
+a crime that carried its own antidote. It is the attempt plus the failure that is fatal. Here, what 
+can you do with my staff?" He pounded the floor with it. 
+
+"Your Veneration will excuse me. My device is a small model, prepared by myself, and your 
+staff is too long." 
+
+The Grand Master's small shining eye wandered and stopped, "Randel, your buckles. Come, 
+man, they shall be replaced double if need be." 
+
+The buckles passed down the line, hand to hand. The Grand Master weighed them 
+thoughtfully. 
+
+
+Here," he said, and threw them to the floor. 
+
+
+
+Ponyets picked them up. He tugged hard before the cylinder opened, and his eyes blinked and 
+squinted with effort as he centered the buckles carefully on the anode screen. Later, it would be 
+easier but there must be no failures the first time. 
+
+The homemade transmuter crackled malevolently for ten minutes while the odor of ozone 
+became faintly present. The Askonians backed away, muttering, and again Pherl whispered 
+urgently into his ruler's ear. The Grand Master's expression was stony. He did not budge. 
+
+And the buckles were gold. 
+
+Ponyets held them out to the Grand Master with a murmured, "Your Veneration!" but the old 
+man hesitated, then gestured them away. His stare lingered upon the transmuter. 
+
+Ponyets said rapidly, "Gentlemen, this is pure gold. Gold through and through. You may subject 
+it to every known physical and chemical test, if you wish to prove the point. It cannot be 
+identified from naturally-occurring gold in any way. Any iron can be so treated. Rust will not 
+interfere, not will a moderate amount of alloying metals-" 
+
+But Ponyets spoke only to fill a vacuum. He let the buckles remain in his outstretched hand, 
+and it was the gold that argued for him. 
+
+The Grand Master stretched out a slow hand at last, and the thin-faced Pherl was roused to 
+open speech. "Your Veneration, the gold is from a poisoned source." 
+
+And Ponyets countered, "A rose can grow from the mud, your Veneration. In your dealings with 
+your neighbors, you buy material of all imaginable variety, without inquiring as to where they 
+get it, whether from an orthodox machine blessed by your benign ancestors or from some 
+space-spawned outrage. Come, I don't offer the machine. I offer the gold." 
+
+"Your Veneration," said Pherl, "you are not responsible for the sins of foreigners who work 
+neither with your consent nor knowledge. But to accept this strange pseudo-gold made sinfully 
+from iron in your presence and with your consent is an affront to the living spirits of our holy 
+ancestors." 
+
+"Yet gold is gold," said the Grand Master, doubtfully, "and is but an exchange for the heathen 
+person of a convicted felon. Pherl, you are too critical." But he withdrew his hand. 
+
+Ponyets said, "You are wisdom, itself, your Veneration. Consider - to give up a heathen is to 
+lose nothing for your ancestors, whereas with the gold you get in exchange you can ornament 
+the shrines of their holy spirits. And surely, were gold evil in itself, if such, a thing could be, the 
+evil would depart of necessity once the metal were put to such pious use." 
+
+"Now by the bones of my grandfather," said the Grand Master with surprising vehemence. His 
+lips separated in a shrill laugh, "Pherl, what do you say of this young man? The statement is 
+valid. It is as valid as the words of my ancestors." 
+
+Pherl said gloomily, "So it would seem. Grant that the validity does not turn out to be a device 
+of the Malignant Spirit." 
+
+"I'll make it even better," said Ponyets, suddenly. "Hold the gold in hostage. Place it on the 
+
+
+
+altars of your ancestors as an offering and hold me for thirty days. If at the end of that time, 
+there is no evidence of displeasure - if no disasters occur - surely, it would be proof that the 
+offering was accepted. What more can be offered?" 
+
+And when the Grand Master rose to his feet to search out disapproval, not a man in the council 
+failed to signal his agreement. Even Pherl chewed the ragged end of his mustache and nodded 
+curtly. 
+
+Ponyets smiled and meditated on the uses of a religious education. 
+
+
+5 . 
+
+Another week rubbed away before the meeting with Pherl was arranged. Ponyets felt the 
+tension, but he was used to the feeling of physical helplessness now. He had left city limits 
+under guard. He was in Pherl's suburban villa under guard. There was nothing to do but accept 
+it without even looking over his shoulder. 
+
+Pherl was taller and younger outside the circle of Elders. In nonformal costume, he seemed no 
+Elder at all. 
+
+He said abruptly, "You're a peculiar man." His close-set eyes seemed to quiver. "You've done 
+nothing this last week, and particularly these last two hours, but imply that I need gold. It seems 
+useless labor, for who does not? Why not advance one step?" 
+
+"It is not simply gold," said Ponyets, discreetly. "Not simply gold. Not merely a coin or two. It is 
+rather all that lies behind gold." 
+
+"Now what can lie behind gold?" prodded Pherl, with a down-curved smile. "Certainly this is not 
+the preliminary of another clumsy demonstration." 
+
+"Clumsy?" Ponyets frowned slightly. 
+
+"Oh, definitely." Pherl folded his hands and nudged them gently with his chin. "I don't criticize 
+you. The clumsiness was on purpose, I am sure. I might have warned his Veneration of that, 
+had I been certain of the motive. Now had I been you, I would have produced the gold upon my 
+ship, and offered it alone. The show you offered us and the antagonism you aroused would 
+have been dispensed with." 
+
+"True," Ponyets admitted, "but since I was myself, I accepted the antagonism for the sake of 
+attracting your attention." 
+
+
+"Is that it? Simply that?" Pherl made no effort to hide his contemptuous amusement. "And I 
+imagine you suggested the thirty-day purification period that you might assure yourself time to 
+turn the attraction into something a bit more substantial. But what if the gold turns out to be 
+impure?" 
+
+Ponyets allowed himself a dark humor in return, "When the judgement of that impurity depends 
+
+
+
+upon those who are most interested in finding it pure?" 
+
+Pherl lifted his eyes and stared narrowly at the trader. He seemed at once surprised and 
+satisfied. 
+
+"A sensible point. Now tell me why you wished to attract me." 
+
+"This I will do. In the short time I have been here, I have observed useful facts that concern you 
+and interest me. For instance, you are young-very young for a member of the council, and even 
+of a relatively young family." 
+
+"You criticize my family?" 
+
+"Not at all. Your ancestors are great and holy; all will admit that. But there are those that say 
+you are not a member of one of the Five Tribes." 
+
+Pherl leaned back, "With all respect to those involved," and he did not hide his venom, "the Five 
+Tribes have impoverished loins and thin blood. Not fifty members of the Tribes are alive." 
+
+"Yet there are those who say the nation would not be willing to see any man outside the Tribes 
+as Grand Master. And so young and newly-advanced a favorite of the Grand Master is bound 
+to make powerful enemies among the great ones of the State - it is said. His Veneration is 
+aging and his protection will not last past his death, when it is an enemy of yours who will 
+undoubtedly be the one to interpret the words of his Spirit." 
+
+Pherl scowled, "For a foreigner you hear much. Such ears are made for cropping." 
+
+"That may be decided later." 
+
+"Let me anticipate." Pherl stirred impatiently in his seat. "You're going to offer me wealth and 
+power in terms of those evil little machines you carry in your ship. Well?" 
+
+"Suppose it so. What would be your objection? Simply your standard of good and evil?" 
+
+Pherl shook his head. "Not at all. Look, my Outlander, your opinion of us in your heathen 
+agnosticism is what it is - but I am not the entire slave of our mythology, though I may appear 
+so. I am an educated man, sir, and, I hope, an enlightened one. The full depth of our religious 
+customs, in the ritualistic rather than the ethical sense, is for the masses." 
+
+"Your objection, then?" pressed Ponyets, gently. 
+
+"Just that. The masses. I might be willing to deal with you, but your little machines must be 
+used to be useful. How might riches come to me, if I had to use - what is it you sell?- well, a 
+razor, for instance, only in the strictest, trembling secrecy. Even if my chin were more simply 
+and more cleanly shaven, how would I become rich? And how would I avoid death by gas 
+chamber or mob frightfulness if I were ever once caught using it?" 
+
+Ponyets shrugged, "You are correct. I might point out that the remedy would be to educate your 
+own people into the use of nucleics for their convenience and your own substantial profit. It 
+would be a gigantic piece of work; I don't deny it; but the returns would be still more gigantic. 
+
+Still that is your concern, and, at the moment, not mine at all. For I offer neither razor, knife, nor 
+
+
+
+mechanical garbage disposer." 
+
+"What do you offer?" 
+
+"Gold itself. Directly. You may have the machine I demonstrated last week." 
+
+And now Pherl stiffened and the skin on his forehead moved jerkily. "The transmuter?" 
+
+"Exactly. Your supply of gold will equal your supply of iron. That, I imagine, is sufficient for all 
+needs. Sufficient for the Grand Mastership itself, despite youth and enemies. And it is safe." 
+
+"In what way?" 
+
+"In that secrecy is the essence of its use; that same secrecy you described as the only safety 
+with regard to nucleics. You may bury the transmuter in the deepest dungeon of the strongest 
+fortress on your furthest estate, and it will still bring you instant wealth. It is the gold you buy, 
+not the machine, and that gold bears no trace of its manufacture, for it cannot be told from the 
+natural creation." 
+
+"And who is to operate the machine?" 
+
+"Yourself. Five minutes teaching is all you will require. I'll set it up for you wherever you wish." 
+"And in return?" 
+
+"Well," Ponyets grew cautious. "I ask a price and a handsome one. It is my living. Let us say,- 
+for it its a valuable machine - the equivalent of a cubic foot of gold in wrought iron." 
+
+Pherl laughed, and Ponyets grew red. "I point out, sir," he added, stiffly, "that you can get your 
+price back in two hours." 
+
+"True, and in one hour, you might be gone, and my machine might suddenly turn out to be 
+useless. I'll need a guarantee." 
+
+"You have my word." 
+
+"A very good one," Pherl bowed sardonically, "but your presence would be an even better 
+assurance. I'll give you my word to pay you one week after delivery in working order." 
+
+"Impossible." 
+
+"Impossible? When you've already incurred the death penalty very handily by even offering to 
+sell me anything. The only alternative is my word that you'll get the gas chamber tomorrow 
+otherwise." 
+
+Ponyet's face was expressionless, but his eyes might have flickered. He said, "It is an unfair 
+advantage. You will at least put your promise in writing?" 
+
+"And also become liable for execution? No, sir!" Pherl smiled a broad satisfaction. "No, sir! Only 
+one of us is a fool." 
+
+
+The trader said in a small voice, "It is agreed, then. 
+
+
+
+6 . 
+
+
+Gorov was released on the thirtieth day, and five hundred pounds of the yellowest gold took his 
+place. And with him was released the quarantined and untouched abomination that was his 
+ship. 
+
+Then, as on the journey into the Askonian system, so on the journey out, the cylinder of sleek 
+little ships ushered them on their way. 
+
+Ponyets watched the dimly sun-lit speck that was Gorov's ship while Gorov's voice pierced 
+through to him, clear and thin on the tight, distortion-bounded ether-beam. 
+
+He was saying, "But it isn't what's wanted, Ponyets. A transmuter won't do. Where did you get 
+one, anyway?" 
+
+"I didn't," Ponyets answer was patient. "I juiced it up out of a food irradiation chamber. It isn't 
+any good, really. The power consumption is prohibitive on any large scale or the Foundation 
+would use transmutation instead of chasing all over the Galaxy for heavy metals. It's one of the 
+standard tricks every trader uses, except that I never saw an iron-to-gold one before. But it's 
+impressive, and it works - very temporarily." 
+
+"All right. But that particular trick is no good." 
+
+"It got you out of a nasty spot." 
+
+"That is very far from the point. Especially since I've got to go back, once we shake our 
+solicitous escort." 
+
+"Why?" 
+
+"You yourself explained it to this politician of yours," Gorov's voice was on edge. "Your entire 
+sales-point rested on the fact that the transmuter was a means to an end, but of no value in 
+itself-, that he was buying the gold, not the machine. It was good psychology, since it worked, 
+but-" 
+
+"But?" Ponyets urged blandly and obtusely. 
+
+The voice from the receiver grew shriller, "But we want to sell them a machine of value in itself, 
+something they would want to use openly; something that would tend to force them out in favor 
+of nuclear techniques as a matter of self-interest." 
+
+"I understand all that," said Ponyets, gently. "You once explained it. But look at what follows 
+from my sale, will you? As long as that transmuter lasts, Pherl will coin gold; and it will last long 
+enough to buy him the next election. The present Grand Master won't last long." 
+
+"You count on gratitude?" asked Gorov, coldly. 
+
+"No - on intelligent self-interest. The transmuter gets him an election; other mechanisms-" 
+
+"No! No! Your premise is twisted. It's not the transmuter, he'll credit - it'll be the good, 
+
+
+
+old-fashioned gold. That's what I'm trying to tell you." 
+
+Ponyets grinned and shifted into a more comfortable position. All right. He'd baited the poor 
+fellow sufficiently. Gorov was beginning to sound wild. 
+
+The trader said, "Not so fast, Gorov. I haven't finished. There are other gadgets already 
+involved." 
+
+There was a short silence. Then, Gorov's voice sounded cautiously, "What other gadgets?" 
+Ponyets gestured automatically and uselessly, "You see that escort?" 
+
+"I do," said Gorov shortly. "Tell me about those gadgets." 
+
+"I will, -if you'll listen. That's Pherl's private navy escorting us; a special honor to him from the 
+Grand Master. He managed to squeeze that out." 
+
+"So?" 
+
+"And where do you think he's taking us? To his mining estates on the outskirts of Askone, that's 
+where. Listen!" Ponyets was suddenly fiery, "I told you I was in this to make money, not to save 
+worlds. All right. I sold that transmuter for nothing. Nothing except the risk of the gas chamber 
+and that doesn't count towards the quota." 
+
+"Get back to the mining estates, Ponyets. Where do they come in?" 
+
+"With the profits. We're stacking up on tin, Gorov. Tin to fill every last cubic foot this old scow 
+can scrape up, and then some more for yours. I'm going down with Pherl to collect, old man, 
+and you're going to cover me from upstairs with every gun you've got - just in case Pherl isn't 
+as sporting about the matter as he lets on to be. That tin's my profit." 
+
+"For the transmuter?" 
+
+"For my entire cargo of nucleics. At double price, plus a bonus." He shrugged, almost 
+apologetically. "I admit I gouged him, but I've got to make quota, don't I?" 
+
+Gorov was evidently lost. He said, weakly, "Do you mind explaining'?" 
+
+"What's there to explain? It's obvious, Gorov. Look, the clever dog thought he had me in a 
+foolproof trap, because his word was worth more than mine to the Grand Master. He took the 
+transmuter. That was a capital crime in Askone. But at any time he could say that he had lured 
+me on into a trap with the purest of patriotic motives, and denounce me as a seller of forbidden 
+things." 
+
+"That was obvious." 
+
+"Sure, but word against simple word wasn't all there was to it. You see, Pherl had never heard 
+nor conceived of a microfilm-recorder." 
+
+Gorov laughed suddenly. 
+
+"That's right," said Ponyets. "He had the upper hand. I was properly chastened. But when I set 
+
+
+
+up the transmuter for him in my whipped-dog fashion, I incorporated the recorder into the 
+device and removed it in the next day's overhaul. I had a perfect record of his sanctum 
+sanctorum, his holy-of-holies, with he himself, poor Pherl, operating the transmuter for all the 
+ergs it had and crowing over his first piece of gold as if it were an egg he had just laid." 
+
+"You showed him the results?" 
+
+"Two days later. The poor sap had never seen three-dimensional color-sound images in his life. 
+He claims he isn't superstitious, but if I ever saw an adult look as scared as he did then, call me 
+rookie. When I told him I had a recorder planted in the city square, set to go off at midday with a 
+million fanatical Askonians to watch, and to tear him to pieces subsequently, he was gibbering 
+at my knees in half a second. He was ready to make any deal I wanted." 
+
+"Did you?" Gorov's voice was suppressing laughter. "I mean, have one planted in the city 
+square." 
+
+"No, but that didn't matter. He made the deal. He bought every gadget I had, and every one you 
+had for as much tin as we could carry. At that moment, he believed me capable of anything. 
+
+The agreement is in writing and you'll have a copy before I go down with him, just as another 
+precaution." 
+
+"But you've damaged his ego," said Gorov. "Will he use the gadgets?" 
+
+"Why not? It's his only way of recouping his losses, and if he makes money out of it, he'll salve 
+his pride. And he will be the next Grand Master - and the best man we could have in our favor." 
+
+"Yes," said Gorov, "it was a good sale. Yet you've certainly got an uncomfortable sales 
+technique. No wonder you were kicked out of a seminary. Have you no sense of morals?" 
+
+"What are the odds?" said Ponyets, indifferently. "You know what Salvor Hardin said about a 
+sense of morals." 
+
+
+PART V 
+
+THE MERCHANT PRINCES 
+
+
+i. 
+
+TRADERS-... With psychohistoric inevitability, economic control of the Foundation grew. The 
+traders grew rich; and with riches came power.... 
+
+It is sometimes forgotten that Hober Mallow began life as an ordinary trader. It is never 
+forgotten that he ended it as the first of the Merchant Princes.... 
+
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+
+
+
+Jorane Sutt put the tips of carefully-manicured fingers together and said, "It's something of a 
+puzzle. In fact - and this is in the strictest of confidence - it may be another one of Hari 
+Seldon's crises." 
+
+The man opposite felt in the pocket of his short Smyrnian jacket for a cigarette. "Don't know 
+about that, Sutt. As a general rule, politicians start shouting 'Seldon crisis' at every mayoralty 
+campaign." 
+
+Sutt smiled very faintly, "I'm not campaigning, Mallow. We're facing nuclear weapons, and we 
+don't know where they're coming from." 
+
+Hober Mallow of Smyrno, Master Trader, smoked quietly, almost indifferently. "Go on. If you 
+have more to say, get it out." Mallow never made the mistake of being overpolite to a 
+Foundation man. He might be an Outlander, but a man's a man for a’ that. 
+
+Sutt indicated the trimensional star-map on the table. He adjusted the controls and a cluster of 
+some half-dozen stellar systems blazed red. 
+
+'That," he said quietly, "is the Korellian Republic." 
+
+The trader nodded, "I've been there. Stinking rathole! I suppose you can call it a republic but it's 
+always someone out of the Argo family that gets elected Commdor each time. And if you ever 
+don't like it - things happen to you." He twisted his lip and repeated, "I've been there." 
+
+"But you've come back, which hasn't always happened. Three trade ships, inviolate under the 
+Conventions, have disappeared within the territory of the Republic in the last year. And those 
+ships were armed with all the usual nuclear explosives and force-field defenses." 
+
+"What was the last word heard from the ships?" 
+
+"Routine reports. Nothing else." 
+
+"What did Korell say?" 
+
+Sutt's eyes gleamed sardonically, "There was no way of asking. The Foundation's greatest 
+asset throughout the Periphery is its reputation of power. Do you think we can lose three ships 
+and ask for them?" 
+
+"Well, then, suppose you tell me what you want with me." 
+
+Jorane Sutt did not waste his time in the luxury of annoyance. As secretary to the mayor, he 
+had held off opposition councilmen, jobseekers, reformers, and crackpots who claimed to have 
+solved in its entirety the course of future history as worked out by Hari Seldon. With training like 
+that, it took a good deal to disturb him. 
+
+He said methodically, "In a moment. You see, three ships lost in the same sector in the same 
+year can't be accident, and nuclear power can be conquered only by more nuclear power. The 
+question automatically arises: if Korell has nuclear weapons, where is it getting them?" 
+
+
+And where does it? 
+
+
+
+"Two alternatives. Either the Korellians have constructed them themselves-" 
+
+"Far-fetched!" 
+
+"Very! But the other possibility is that we are being afflicted with a case of treason." 
+
+"You think so?" Mallow's voice was cold. 
+
+The secretary said calmly, "There's nothing miraculous about the possibility. Since the Four 
+Kingdoms accepted the Foundation Convention, we have had to deal with considerable groups 
+of dissident populations in each nation. Each former kingdom has its pretenders and its former 
+noblemen, who can't very well pretend to love the Foundation. Some of them are becoming 
+active, perhaps." 
+
+Mallow was a dull red. "I see. Is there anything you want to say to me? I'm a Smyrnian." 
+
+"I know. You're a Smyrnian - born in Smyrno, one of the former Four Kingdoms. You're a 
+Foundation man by education only. By birth, you're an Outlander and a foreigner. No doubt 
+your grandfather was a baron at the time of the wars with Anacreon and Loris, and no doubt 
+your family estates were taken away when Sef Sermak redistributed the land." 
+
+"No, by Black Space, no! My grandfather was a blood-poor son-of-a-spacer who died heaving 
+coal at starving wages before the Foundation took over. I owe nothing to the old regime. But I 
+was born in Smyrno, and I'm not ashamed of either Smyrno or Smyrnians, by the Galaxy. Your 
+sly little hints of treason aren't going to panic me into licking Foundation spittle. And now you 
+can either give your orders or make your accusations. I don't care which." 
+
+"My good Master Trader, I don't care an electron whether your grandfather was King of Smyrno 
+or the greatest pauper on the planet. I recited that rigmarole about your birth and ancestry to 
+show you that I'm not interested in them. Evidently, you missed the point. Let's go back now. 
+You're a Smyrnian. You know the Outlanders. Also, you're a trader and one of the best. You've 
+been to Korell and you know the Korellians. That's where you've got to go." 
+
+Mallow breathed deeply, "As a spy?" 
+
+"Not at all. As a trader - but with your eyes open. If you can find out where the power is coming 
+from - I might remind you, since you're a Smyrnian, that two of those lost trade ships had 
+Smyrnian crews." 
+
+"When do I start?" 
+
+"When will your ship be ready?" 
+
+"In six days." 
+
+"Then that's when you start. You'll have all the details at the Admiralty." 
+
+"Right!" The trader rose, shook hands roughly, and strode out. 
+
+Sutt waited, spreading his fingers gingerly and rubbing out the pressure; then shrugged his 
+shoulders and stepped into the mayor's office. 
+
+
+
+The mayor deadened the visiplate and leaned back. "What do you make of it, Sutt?" 
+"He could be a good actor," said Sutt, and stared thoughtfully ahead. 
+
+
+2 . 
+
+It was evening of the same day, and in Jorane Sutt's bachelor apartment on the twenty-first 
+floor of the Hardin Building, Publis Manlio was sipping wine slowly. 
+
+It was Publis Manlio in whose slight, aging body were fulfilled two great offices of the 
+Foundation. He was Foreign Secretary in the mayor's cabinet, and to all the outer suns, barring 
+only the Foundation itself, he was, in addition, Primate of the Church, Purveyor of the Holy 
+Food, Master of the Temples, and so forth almost indefinitely in confusing but sonorous 
+syllables. 
+
+He was saying, "But he agreed to let you send out that trader. It is a point." 
+
+"But such a small one," said Sutt. "It gets us nothing immediately. The whole business is the 
+crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying 
+out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose." 
+
+"True. And this Mallow is a capable man. What if he is not an easy prey to dupery?" 
+
+"That is a chance that must be run. If there is treachery, it is the capable men that are 
+implicated. If not, we need a capable man to detect the truth. And Mallow will be guarded. Your 
+glass is empty." 
+
+"No, thanks. I've had enough." 
+
+Sutt filled his own glass and patiently endured the other's uneasy reverie. 
+
+Of whatever the reverie consisted, it ended indecisively, for the primate said suddenly, almost 
+explosively, "Sutt, what's on your mind?" 
+
+"I'll tell you, Manlio." His thin lips parted, "We're in the middle of a Seldon crisis." 
+
+Manlio stared, then said softly, "How do you know? Has Seldon appeared in the Time Vault 
+again?" 
+
+"That much, my friend, is not necessary. Look, reason it out. Since the Galactic Empire 
+abandoned the Periphery, and threw us on our own, we have never had an opponent who 
+possessed nuclear power. Now, for the first time, we have one. That seems significant even if it 
+stood by itself. And it doesn't. For the first time in over seventy years, we are facing a major 
+domestic political crisis. I should think the synchronization of the two crises, inner and outer, 
+puts it beyond all doubt." 
+
+Manlio's eyes narrowed, "If that's all, it's not enough. There have been two Seldon crises so far, 
+and both times the Foundation was in danger of extermination. Nothing can be a third crisis till 
+that danger returns." 
+
+
+
+Sutt never showed impatience, "That danger is coming. Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. 
+The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo. Look, Manlio, we're proceeding along a 
+planned history. We know that Hari Seldon worked out the historical probabilities of the future. 
+We know that some day we're to rebuild the Galactic Empire. We know that it will take a 
+thousand years or thereabouts. And we know that in the interval we will face certain definite 
+crises. 
+
+"Now the first crisis came fifty years after the establishment of the Foundation, and the second, 
+thirty years later than that. Almost seventy-five years have gone since. It's time, Manlio, it's 
+time." 
+
+Manlio rubbed his nose uncertainly, "And you've made your plans to meet this crisis?" 
+
+Sutt nodded. 
+
+"And I," continued Manlio, "am to play a part in it?" 
+
+Sutt nodded again, "Before we can meet the foreign threat of atomic power, we've got to put 
+our own house in order. These traders-" 
+
+"Ah!" The primate stiffened, and his eyes grew sharp. 
+
+"That's right. These traders. They are useful, but they are too strong - and too uncontrolled. 
+They are Outlanders, educated apart from religion. On the one hand, we put knowledge into 
+their hands, and on the other, we remove our strongest hold upon them." 
+
+"If we can prove treachery?" 
+
+"If we could, direct action would be simple and sufficient. But that doesn't signify in the least. 
+Even if treason among them did not exist, they would form an uncertain element in our society. 
+They wouldn't be bound to us by patriotism or common descent, or even by religious awe. 
+Under their secular leadership, the outer provinces, which, since Hardin's time, look to us as 
+the Holy Planet, might break away." 
+
+"I see all that, but the cure-" 
+
+"The cure must come quickly, before the Seldon Crisis becomes acute. If nuclear weapons are 
+without and disaffection within, the odds might be too great." Sutt put down the empty glass he 
+had been fingering, "This is obviously your job." 
+
+"Mine?" 
+
+"I can't do it. My office is appointive and has no legislative standing." 
+
+"The mayor-" 
+
+"Impossible. His personality is entirely negative. He is energetic only in evading responsibility. 
+But if an independent party arose that might endanger re-election, he might allow himself to be 
+led." 
+
+"But, Sutt, I lack the aptitude for practical politics." 
+
+
+
+"Leave that to me. Who knows, Manlio? Since Salvor Hardin's time, the primacy and the 
+mayoralty have never been combined in a single person. But it might happen now - if your job 
+were well done." 
+
+
+3 . 
+
+And at the other end of town, in homelier surroundings, Hober Mallow kept a second 
+appointment. He had listened long, and now he said cautiously, "Yes, I've heard of your 
+campaigns to get trader representation in the council. But why me, Twer?" 
+
+Jaim Twer, who would remind you any time, asked or unasked, that he was in the first group of 
+Outlanders to receive a lay education at the Foundation, beamed. 
+
+"I know what I'm doing," he said. "Remember when I met you first, last year." 
+
+"At the Trader's Convention." 
+
+"Right. You ran the meeting. You had those red-necked oxen planted in their seats, then put 
+them in your shirtpocket and walked off with them. And you're all right with the Foundation 
+masses, too. You've got glamor- or, at any rate, solid adventure-publicity, which is the same 
+thing." 
+
+"Very good," said Mallow, dryly. "But why now?" 
+
+'Because now's our chance. Do you know that the Secretary of Education has handed in his 
+resignation? It's not out in the open yet, but it will be." 
+
+"How do you know?" 
+
+"That - never mind-" He waved a disgusted hand. "It's so. The Actionist party is splitting wide 
+open, and we can murder it right now on a straight question of equal rights for traders; or, 
+rather, democracy, pro- and anti-." 
+
+Mallow lounged back in his chair and stared at his thick fingers, "Uh-uh. Sorry, Twer. I'm 
+leaving next week on business. You'll have to get someone else." 
+
+Twer stared, "Business? What kind of business?" 
+
+"Very super-secret. Triple-A priority. All that, you know. Had a talk with the mayor's own 
+secretary." 
+
+"Snake Sutt?" Jaim Twer grew excited. "A trick. The son-of-a-spacer is getting rid of you. 
+Mallow-" 
+
+"Hold on!" Mallow's hand fell on the other's balled fist. "Don't go into a blaze. If it's a trick, I'll be 
+back some day for the reckoning, if it isn't, your snake, Sutt, is playing into our hands. Listen, 
+there's a Seldon crisis coming up." 
+
+Mallow waited for a reaction but it never came. Twer merely stared. "What's a Seldon crisis?" 
+
+
+
+"Galaxy!" Mallow exploded angrily at the anticlimax, "What the blue blazes did you do when you 
+went to school? What do you mean anyway by a fool question like that?" 
+
+The elder man frowned, "If you'll explain-" 
+
+There was a long pause, then, "I'll explain." Mallow's eyebrows lowered, and he spoke slowly. 
+"When the Galactic Empire began to die at the edges, and when the ends of the Galaxy 
+reverted to barbarism and dropped away, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists planted a 
+colony, the Foundation, out here in the middle of the mess, so that we could incubate art, 
+science, and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire." 
+
+"Oh, yes, yes-" 
+
+"I'm not finished," said the trader, coldly. "The future course of the Foundation was plotted 
+according to the science of psychohistory, then highly developed, and conditions arranged so 
+as to bring about a series of crises that will force us most rapidly along the route to future 
+Empire. Each crisis, each Seldon crisis, marks an epoch in our history. We're approaching one 
+now - our third." 
+
+Twer shrugged. "I suppose this was mentioned in school, but I've been out of school a long 
+time - longer than you." 
+
+"I suppose so. Forget it. What matters is that I'm being sent out into the middle of the 
+development of this crisis. There's no telling what I'll have when I come back, and there is a 
+council election every year." 
+
+Twer looked up, "Are you on the track of anything?" 
+
+"No." 
+
+"You have definite plans?" 
+
+"Not the faintest inkling of one." 
+
+"Well-" 
+
+"Well, nothing. Hardin once said: 'To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must 
+improvise as well.' I'll improvise." 
+
+Twer shook his head uncertainly, and they stood, looking at each other. 
+
+Mallow said, quite suddenly, but quite matter-of-factly, "I tell you what, how about coming with 
+me? Don't stare, man. You've been a trader before you decided them was more excitement in 
+politics. Or so I've heard." 
+
+"Where are you going? Tell me that." 
+
+Towards the Whassallian Rift. I can't be more specific till we're out in space. What do you say?" 
+Suppose Sutt decides he wants me where he can see 
+
+"Not likely. If he's anxious to get rid of me, why not of you as well? Besides which, no trader 
+
+
+
+would hit space if he couldn't pick his own crew. I take whom I please." 
+
+There was a queer glint in the older man's eyes, "All right. I'll go." He held out his hand, "It'll be 
+my first trip in three years." 
+
+Mallow grasped and shook the other's hand, "Good! All fired good! And now I've got to round 
+up the boys. You know where the Far Star docks, don 't you? Then show up tomorrow. 
+Good-by." 
+
+
+4 . 
+
+Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of 
+the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained 
+even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal "honor" and court 
+etiquette. 
+
+Materially, its prosperity was low. The day of the Galactic Empire had departed, with nothing 
+but silent memorials and broken structures to testify to it. The day of the Foundation had not yet 
+come - and in the fierce determination of its ruler, the Commdor Asper Argo, with his strict 
+regulation of the traders and his stricter prohibition of the missionaries, it was never coming. 
+
+The spaceport itself was decrepit and decayed, and the crew of the Far Star were drearily 
+aware of that. The moldering hangars made for a moldering atmosphere and Jaim Twer itched 
+and fretted over a game of solitaire. 
+
+Hober Mallow said thoughtfully, "Good trading material here." He was staring quietly out the 
+viewport. So far, there was little else to be said about Korell. The trip here was uneventful. The 
+squadron of Korellian ships that had shot out to intercept the Far Star had been tiny, limping 
+relics of ancient glory or battered, clumsy hulks. They had maintained their distance fearfully, 
+and still maintained it, and for a week now, Mallow's requests for an audience with the local go 
+government had been unanswered. 
+
+Mallow repeated, "Good trading here. You might call this virgin territory." 
+
+Jaim Twer looked up impatiently, and threw his cards aside, "What the devil do you intend 
+doing, Mallow? The crew's grumbling, the officers are worried, and I’m wondering-" 
+
+"Wondering? About what?" 
+
+"About the situation. And about you. What are we doing?" 
+
+"Waiting." 
+
+The old trader snorted and grew red. He growled, "You're going it blind, Mallow. There's a 
+guard around the field and there are ships overhead. Suppose they're getting ready to blow us 
+into a hole in the ground." 
+
+"They've had a week." 
+
+
+
+"Maybe they're waiting for reinforcements." Twer's eyes were sharp and hard. 
+
+Mallow sat down abruptly, "Yes, I'd thought of that You see, it poses a pretty problem. First, we 
+got here without trouble. That may mean nothing, however, for only three ships out of better 
+than three hundred went a-glimmer last year. The percentage is low. But that may mean also 
+that the number of their ships equipped with nuclear power is small, and that they dare not 
+expose them needlessly, until that number grows. 
+
+"But it could mean, on the other hand, that they haven't nuclear power after all. Or maybe they 
+have and are keeping undercover, for fear we know something. It's one thing, after all, to 
+piratize blundering, light-armed merchant ships. It's another to fool around with an accredited 
+envoy of the Foundation when the mere fact of his presence may mean the Foundation is 
+growing suspicious. 
+
+"Combine this-" 
+
+"Flold on, Mallow, hold on." Twer raised his hands. "You're just about drowning me with talk. 
+What're you getting at? Never mind the in-betweens." 
+
+"You've got to have the in-betweens, or you won't understand, Twer. We're both waiting. They 
+don't know what I'm doing here and I don't know what they've got here. But I'm in the weaker 
+position because I'm one and they're an entire world - maybe with atomic power. I can't afford 
+to be the one to weaken. Sure it's dangerous. Sure there may be a hole in the ground waiting 
+for us. But we knew that from the start. What else is there to do?" 
+
+"I don't- Who's that, now?" 
+
+Mallow looked up patiently, and tuned the receiver. The visiplate glowed into the craggy face of 
+the watch sergeant. 
+
+"Speak, sergeant." 
+
+The sergeant said, "Pardon, sir. The men have given entry to a Foundation missionary." 
+
+"A what?' Mallow's face grew livid. 
+
+"A missionary, sit. Fle's in need of hospitalization, sir-" 
+
+"There'll be more than one in need of that, sergeant, for this piece of work. Order the men to 
+battle stations." 
+
+Crew's lounge was almost empty. Five minutes after the order, even the men on the off-shift 
+were at their guns. It was speed that was the great virtue in the anarchic regions of the 
+interstellar space of the Periphery, and it was in speed above all that the crew of a master 
+trader excelled. 
+
+Mallow entered slowly, and stared the missionary up and down and around. His eye slid to 
+Lieutenant Tinter, who shifted uneasily to one side and to Watch-Sergeant Demen, whose 
+blank face and stolid figure flanked the other. 
+
+The Master Trader turned to Twer and paused thoughtfully, "Well, then, Twer, get the officers 
+
+
+
+here quietly, except for the co-ordinators and the trajectorian. The men are to remain at stations 
+till further orders." 
+
+There was a five-minute hiatus, in which Mallow kicked open the doors to the lavatories, looked 
+behind the bar, pulled the draperies across the thick windows. For half a minute he left the 
+room altogether, and when he returned he was humming abstractedly. 
+
+Men filed in. Twer followed, and closed the door silently. 
+
+Mallow said quietly, "First, who let this man in without orders from me?" 
+
+The watch sergeant stepped forward. Every eye shifted. "Pardon, sir. It was no definite person. 
+It was a sort of mutual agreement. Fie was one of us, you might say, and these foreigners 
+here-" 
+
+Mallow cut him short, "I sympathize with your feelings, sergeant, and understand them. These 
+men, were they under your command?" 
+
+"Yes, sir." 
+
+"When this is over, they're to be confined to individual quarters for a week. You yourself are 
+relieved of all supervisory duties for a similar period. Understood?" 
+
+The sergeant's face never changed, but there was the slightest droop to his shoulders. Fie said, 
+crisply, "Yes, sir." 
+
+"You may leave. Get to your gun-station." 
+
+The door closed behind him and the babble rose. 
+
+Twer broke in, "Why the punishment, Mallow? You know that these Korellians kill captured 
+missionaries." 
+
+"An action against my orders is bad in itself whatever other reasons there may be in its favor. 
+
+No one was to leave or enter the ship without permission." 
+
+Lieutenant Tinter murmured rebelliously, "Seven days without action. You can't maintain 
+discipline that way." 
+
+Mallow said icily, "/can. There's no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I'll have it in 
+the face of death, or it's useless. Where's this missionary? Get him here in front of me." 
+
+The trader sat down, while the scarlet-cloaked figure was carefully brought forward. 
+
+"What's your name, reverend?" 
+
+"Eh?" The scarlet-robed figure wheeled towards Mallow, the whole body turning as a unit. FHis 
+eyes were blankly open and there was a bruise on one temple. Fie had not spoken, nor, as far 
+as Mallow could tell, moved during all the previous interval. 
+
+"Your name, revered one?" 
+
+The missionary started to sudden feverish life. FHis arms went out in an embracing gesture. "My 
+
+
+
+son - my children. May you always be in the protecting arms of the Galactic Spirit." 
+
+Twer stepped forward, eyes troubled, voice husky, "The man's sick. Take him to bed, 
+somebody. Order him to bed, Mallow, and have him seen to. He's badly hurt." 
+
+Mallow's great arm shoved him back, "Don't interfere, Twer, or I'll have you out of the room. 
+Your name, revered one?" 
+
+The missionary's hands clasped in sudden supplication, "As you are enlightened men, save me 
+from the heathen." The words tumbled out, "Save me from these brutes and darkened ones 
+who raven after me and would afflict the Galactic Spirit with their crimes. I am Jord Parma, of 
+the Anacreonian worlds. Educated at the Foundation; the Foundation itself, my children. I am a 
+Priest of the Spirit educated into all the mysteries, who have come here where the inner voice 
+called me." He was gasping. "I have suffered at the hands of the unenlightened. As you are 
+Children of the Spirit; and in the name of that Spirit, protect me from them." 
+
+A voice broke in upon them, as the emergency alarm box clamored metallically: 
+
+"Enemy units in sight! Instruction desired!" 
+
+Every eye shot mechanically upward to the speaker. 
+
+Mallow swore violently. He clicked open the reverse and yelled, "Maintain vigil! That is all!" and 
+turned it off. 
+
+He made his way to the thick drapes that rustled aside at a touch and stared grimly out, 
+
+Enemy units! Several thousands of them in the persons of the individual members of a 
+Korellian mob. The rolling rabble encompassed the port from extreme end to extreme end, and 
+in the cold, hard light of magnesium flares the foremost straggled closer. 
+
+"Tinter!" The trader never turned, but the back of his neck was red. "Get the outer speaker 
+working and find out what they want. Ask if they have a representative of the law with them. 
+Make no promises and no threats, or I'll kill you." 
+
+Tinter turned and left. 
+
+Mallow felt a rough hand on his shoulder and he struck it aside. It was Twer. His voice was an 
+angry hiss in his ear, "Mallow, you're bound to hold onto this man. There's no way of 
+maintaining decency and honor otherwise. He's of the Foundation and, after all, he - is a priest. 
+These savages outside- Do you hear me?" 
+
+"I hear you, Twer." Mallow's voice was incisive. "I've got more to do here than guard 
+missionaries. I'll do, sir, what I please, and, by Seldon and all the Galaxy, if you try to stop me, 
+I'll tear out your stinking windpipe. Don't get in my way, Twer, or it will be the last of you." 
+
+He turned and strode past. "You! Revered Parma! Did you know that, by convention, no 
+Foundation missionaries may enter the Korellian territory?" 
+
+The missionary was trembling, "I can but go where the Spirit leads, my son. If the darkened 
+ones refuse enlightenment, is it not the greater sign of their need for it?" 
+
+
+
+"That's outside the question, revered one. You are here against the law of both Korell and the 
+Foundation. I cannot in law protect you." 
+
+The missionary's hands were raised again. His earlier bewilderment was gone. There was the 
+raucous clamor of the ship's outer communication system in action, and the faint, undulating 
+gabble of the angry horde in response. The sound made his eyes wild. 
+
+"You hear them? Why do you talk of law to me, of a law made by men? There are higher laws. 
+Was it not the Galactic Spirit that said: Thou shalt not stand idly by to the hurl of thy fellowman. 
+And has he not said: Even as thou dealest with the humble and defenseless, thus shalt thou be 
+dealt with. 
+
+"Have you not guns? Have you not a ship? And behind you is there not the Foundation? And 
+above and all-about you is there not the Spirit that rules the universe?" He paused for breath. 
+
+And then the great outer voice of the Far Star ceased and Lieutenant Tinter was back, troubled. 
+
+"Speak!" said Mallow, shortly. 
+
+"Sir, they demand the person of Jord Parma." 
+
+"If not?" 
+
+"There are various threats, sir. It is difficult to make much out. There are so many - and they 
+seem quite mad. There is someone who says he governs the district and has police powers, 
+but he is quite evidently not his own master." 
+
+"Master or not," shrugged Mallow, "he is the law. Tell them that if this governor, or policeman, 
+or whatever he is, approaches the ship alone, he can have the Revered Jord Parma." 
+
+And there was suddenly a gun in his hand. He added, "I don't know what insubordination is. I 
+have never had any experience with it. But if there's anyone here who thinks he can teach me, 
+I'd like to teach him my antidote in return." 
+
+The gun swiveled slowly, and rested on Twer. With an effort, the old trader's face untwisted and 
+his hands unclenched and lowered. His breath was a harsh rasp in his nostrils. 
+
+Tinter left, and in five minutes a puny figure detached itself from the crowd. It approached 
+slowly and hesitantly, plainly drenched in fear and apprehension. Twice it turned back, and 
+twice the patently obvious threats of the many-headed monster urged him on. 
+
+"All right," Mallow gestured with the hand-blaster, which remained unsheathed. "Grun and 
+Upshur, take him out." 
+
+The missionary screeched. He raised his arms and rigid fingers speared upward as the 
+voluminous sleeves fell away to reveal the thin, veined arms. There was a momentary, tiny 
+flash of light that came and went in a breath. Mallow blinked and gestured again, 
+contemptuously. 
+
+The missionary's voice poured out as he struggled in the two-fold grasp, "Cursed be the traitor 
+who abandons his fellowman to evil and to death. Deafened be the ears that are deaf to the 
+
+
+
+pleadings of the helpless. Blind be the eyes that are blind to innocence. Blackened forever be 
+the soul that consorts with blackness-" 
+
+Twer clamped his hands tightly over his ears. 
+
+Mallow flipped his blaster and put it away. "Disperse," he said, evenly, "to respective stations. 
+Maintain full vigil for six hours after dispersion of crowd. Double stations for forty-eight hours 
+thereafter. Further instructions at that time. Twer, come with me." 
+
+They were alone in Mallow's private quarters. Mallow indicated a chair and Twer sat down. His 
+stocky figure looked shrunken. 
+
+Mallow stared him down, sardonically. "Twer," he said, "I'm disappointed. Your three years in 
+politics seem to have gotten you out of trader habits. Remember, I may be a democrat back at 
+the Foundation, but there's nothing short of tyranny that can run my ship the way I want it run. I 
+never had to pull a blaster on my men before, and I wouldn't have had to now, if you hadn't 
+gone out of line. 
+
+"Twer, you have no official position, but you're here on my invitation, and I'll extend you every 
+courtesy - in private. However, from now on, in the presence of my officers or men, I'm 'sir,' 
+and not 'Mallow.' And when I give an order, you'll jump faster than a third-class recruit just for 
+luck, or I'll have you handcuffed in the sub-level even faster. Understand?" 
+
+The party-leader swallowed dryly. He said, reluctantly, "My apologies." 
+
+"Accepted! Will you shake?" 
+
+Twer's limp fingers were swallowed in Mallow's huge palm. Twer said, "My motives were good. 
+It's difficult to send a man out to be lynched. That wobbly-kneed governor or whatever-he-was 
+can't save him. It's murder." 
+
+"I can't help that. Frankly, the incident smelled too bad. Didn't you notice?" 
+
+"Notice what?" 
+
+"This spaceport is deep in the middle of a sleepy far section. Suddenly a missionary escapes. 
+Where from? He comes here. Coincidence? A huge crowd gathers. From where? The nearest 
+city of any size must be at least a hundred miles away. But they arrive in half an hour. How?" 
+
+"How?" echoed Twer. 
+
+"Well, what if the missionary were brought here and released as bait. Our friend, Revered 
+Parma, was considerably confused. He seemed at no time to be in complete possession of his 
+wits." 
+
+"Hard usage-" murmured Twer bitterly. 
+
+"Maybe! And maybe the idea was to have us go all chivalrous and gallant, into a stupid defense 
+of the man. He was here against the laws of Korell and the Foundation. If I withhold him, it is an 
+act of war against Korell, and the Foundation would have no legal right to defend us." 
+
+"That - that's pretty far-fetched." 
+
+
+
+The speaker blared and forestalled Mallow's answer: "Sir, official communication received." 
+"Submit immediately!" 
+
+The gleaming cylinder arrived in its slot with a click. Mallow opened it and shook out the 
+silver-impregnated sheet it held. He rubbed it appreciatively between thumb and finger and 
+said, "Teleported direct from the capital. Commdor's own stationery." 
+
+He read it in a glance and laughed shortly, "So my idea was far-fetched, was it?" 
+
+He tossed it to Twer, and added, "Half an hour after we hand back the missionary, we finally 
+get a very polite invitation to the Commdor's august presence - after seven days of previous 
+waiting. / think we passed a test." 
+
+
+5 . 
+
+Commdor Asper was a man of the people, by self-acclamation. His remaining back-fringe of 
+gray hair drooped limply to his shoulders, his shirt needed laundering, and he spoke with a 
+snuffle. 
+
+"There is no ostentation here, Trader Mallow," he said. "No false show. In me, you see merely 
+the first citizen of the state. That's what Commdor means, and that's the only title I have." 
+
+He seemed inordinately pleased with it all, "in fact, I consider that fact one of the strongest 
+bonds between Korell and your nation. I understand you people enjoy the republican blessings 
+we do." 
+
+"Exactly, Commdor," said Mallow gravely, taking mental exception to the comparison, "an 
+argument which I consider strongly in favor of continued peace and friendship between our 
+governments." 
+
+"Peace! Ah!" The Commdor's sparse gray beard twitched to the sentimental grimaces of his 
+face. "I don't think there is anyone in the Periphery who has so near his heart the ideal of 
+Peace, as I have. I can truthfully say that since I succeeded my illustrious father to the 
+leadership of the state, the reign of Peace has never been broken. Perhaps I shouldn't say it" 
+-he coughed gently- "but I have been told that my people, my fellow-citizens rather, know me 
+as Asper, the Well-Beloved." 
+
+Mallow's eyes wandered over the well-kept garden. Perhaps the tall men and the 
+strangely-designed but openly-vicious weapons they carried just happened to be lurking in odd 
+comers as a precaution against himself. That would be understandable. But the lofty, 
+steel-girdered walls that circled the place had quite obviously been recently strengthened - an 
+unfitting occupation for such a Well-Beloved Asper. 
+
+He said, "It is fortunate that I have you to deal with then, Commdor. The despots and monarchs 
+of surrounding worlds, which haven't the benefit of enlightened administration, often lack the 
+qualities that would make a ruler well-beloved." 
+
+
+Such as?" There was a cautious note in the Commdor's voice. 
+
+
+
+"Such as a concern for the best interests of their people, You, on the other hand, would 
+understand," 
+
+The Commdor kept his eyes on the gravel path as they walked leisurely, His hands caressed 
+each other behind his back. 
+
+Mallow went on smoothly, "Up to now, trade between our two nations has suffered because of 
+the restrictions placed upon our traders by your government. Surely, it has long been evident to 
+you that unlimited trade-" 
+
+"Free Trade!" mumbled the Commdor. 
+
+"Free Trade, then. You must see that it would be of benefit to both of us. There are things you 
+have that we want, and things we have that you want. It asks only an exchange to bring 
+increased prosperity. An enlightened ruler such as yourself, a friend of the people - I might say, 
+a member of the people - needs no elaboration on that theme. I won't insult your intelligence by 
+offering any." 
+
+"True! I have seen this. But what would you?" His voice was a plaintive whine. "Your people 
+have always been so unreasonable. I am in favor of all the trade our economy can support, but 
+not on your terms. I am not sole master here." His voice rose, "I am only the servant of public 
+opinion. My people will not take commerce which carries with it a compulsory religion." 
+
+Mallow drew himself up, "A compulsory religion?" 
+
+"So it has always been in effect. Surely you remember the case of Askone twenty years ago. 
+First they were sold some of your goods and then your people asked for complete freedom of 
+missionary effort in order that the goods might be run properly; that Temples of Health be set 
+up. There was then the establishment of religious schools; autonomous rights for all officers of 
+the religion and with what result? Askone is now an integral member of the Foundation's 
+system and the Grand Master cannot call his underwear his own. Oh, no! Oh, no! The dignity of 
+an independent people could never suffer it." 
+
+"None of what you speak is at all what I suggest," interposed Mallow. 
+
+"No?" 
+
+"No. I'm a Master Trader. Money is my religion. All this mysticism and hocus-pocus of the 
+missionaries annoy me, and I'm glad you refuse to countenance it. It makes you more my type 
+of man." 
+
+The Commdor's laugh was high-pitched and jerky, "Well said! The Foundation should have 
+sent a man of your caliber before this." 
+
+He laid a friendly hand upon the trader's bulking shoulder, "But man, you have told me only 
+half. You have told me what the catch is not. Now tell me what it is" 
+
+"The only catch, Commdor, is that you're going to be burdened with an immense quantity of 
+riches." 
+
+
+
+"Indeed?" he snuffled. "But what could I want with riches? The true wealth is the love of one's 
+people. I have that." 
+
+"You can have both, for it is possible to gather gold with one hand and love with the other." 
+
+"Now that, my young man, would be an interesting phenomenon, if it were possible. How would 
+you go about it?" 
+
+"Oh, in a number of ways. The difficulty is choosing among them. Let's see. Well, luxury items, 
+for instance. This object here, now-" 
+
+Mallow drew gently out of an inner pocket a flat, linked chain of polished metal. "This, for 
+instance." 
+
+"What is it?" 
+
+"That's got to be demonstrated. Can you get a woman? Any young female will do. And a mirror, 
+full length." 
+
+"Hm-m-m. Let's get indoors, then." 
+
+The Commdor referred to his dwelling place as a house. The populace undoubtedly would call 
+it a palace. To Mallow's straightforward eyes, it looked uncommonly like a fortress, it was built 
+on an eminence that overlooked the capital. Its walls were thick and reinforced. Its approaches 
+were guarded, and its architecture was shaped for defense. Just the type of dwelling, Mallow 
+thought sourly, for Asper, the Well-Beloved. 
+
+A young girl was before them. She bent low to the Commdor, who said, "This is one of the 
+Commdora's girls. Will she do?" 
+
+"Perfectly!" 
+
+The Commdor watched carefully while Mallow snapped the chain about the girl's waist, and 
+stepped back. 
+
+The Commdor snuffled, "Well. Is that all?" 
+
+"Will you draw the curtain, Commdor. Young lady, there's a little knob just near the snap. Will 
+you move it upward, please? Go ahead, it won't hurt you." 
+
+The girl did so, drew a sharp breath, looked at her hands, and gasped, "Oh!" 
+
+From her waist as a source she was drowned in a pale, streaming luminescence of shifting 
+color that drew itself over her head in a flashing coronet of liquid fire. It was as if someone had 
+tom the aurora borealis out of the sky and molded it into a cloak. 
+
+The girl stepped to the mirror and stared, fascinated. 
+
+"Here, take this." Mallow handed her a necklace of dull pebbles. "Put it around your neck." 
+
+The girl did so, and each pebble, as it entered the luminescent field became an individual flame 
+that leaped and sparkled in crimson and gold. 
+
+
+
+"What do you think of it?" Mallow asked her. The girl didn't answer but there was adoration in 
+her eyes. The Commdor gestured and reluctantly, she pushed the knob down, and the glory 
+died. She left - with a memory. 
+
+"It's yours, Commdor," said Mallow, "for the Commdora. Consider it a small gift from the 
+Foundation." 
+
+"Hm-m-m.' The Commdor turned the belt and necklace over in his hand as though calculating 
+the weight. "How is it done?" 
+
+Mallow shrugged, "That's a question for our technical experts. But it will work for you without - 
+mark you, without- priestly help." 
+
+"Well, it's only feminine frippery after all. What could you do with it? Where would the money 
+come in?" 
+
+"You have balls, receptions, banquets - that sort of thing?" 
+
+"Oh, yes." 
+
+"Do you realize what women will pay for that sort of jewelry? Ten thousand credits, at least." 
+The Commdor seemed struck in a heap, "Ah!" 
+
+"And since the power unit of this particular item will not last longer than six months, there will be 
+the necessity of frequent replacements. Now we can sell as many of these as you want for the 
+equivalent in wrought iron of one thousand credits. There's nine hundred percent profit for you." 
+
+The Commdor plucked at his beard and seemed engaged in awesome mental calculations, 
+"Galaxy, how they would fight for them. I'll keep the supply small and let them bid. Of course, it 
+wouldn't do to let them know that I personally-" 
+
+Mallow said, "We can explain the workings of dummy corporations, if you would like. -Then, 
+working further at random, take our complete line of household gadgets. We have collapsible 
+stoves that will roast the toughest meats to the desired tenderness in two minutes. We've got 
+knives that won't require sharpening. We've got the equivalent of a complete laundry that can 
+be packed in a small closet and will work entirely automatically. Ditto dish-washers. Ditto-ditto 
+floor-scrubbers, furniture polishers, dust-precipitators, lighting fixtures - oh, anything you like. 
+Think of your increased popularity, if you make them available to the public. Think of your 
+increased quantity of, uh, worldly goods, if they're available as a government monopoly at nine 
+hundred percent profit. It will be worth many times the money to them, and they needn't know 
+what you pay for it. And, mind you, none of it will require priestly supervision. Everybody will be 
+happy." 
+
+"Except you, it seems. What do you get out of it?" 
+
+"Just what every trader gets by Foundation law. My men and I will collect half of whatever 
+profits we take in. Just you buy all I want to sell you, and we'll both make out quite well. Quite 
+well." 
+
+
+The Commdor was enjoying his thoughts, "What did you say you wanted to be paid with? Iron? 
+
+
+
+"That, and coal, and bauxite. Also tobacco, pepper, magnesium, hardwood. Nothing you 
+haven't got enough of." 
+
+"It sounds well." 
+
+"I think so. Oh, and still another item at random, Commdor. I could retool your factories." 
+
+"Eh? How's that?" 
+
+"Well, take your steel foundries. I have handy little gadgets that could do tricks with steel that 
+would cut production costs to one percent of previous marks. You could cut prices by half, and 
+still split extremely fat profits with the manufacturers. I tell you, I could show you exactly what I 
+mean, if you allowed me a demonstration. Do you have a steel foundry in this city? It wouldn't 
+take long." 
+
+"It could be arranged, Trader Mallow. But tomorrow, tomorrow. Would you dine with us 
+tonight?" 
+
+"My men-" began Mallow. 
+
+"Let them all come," said the Commdor, expansively. "A symbolic friendly union of our nations. 
+It will give us a chance for further friendly discussion. But one thing," his face lengthened and 
+grew stem, "none of your religion. Don't think that all this is an entering wedge for the 
+missionaries." 
+
+"Commdor," said Mallow, dryly, "I give you my word that religion would cut my profits." 
+
+"Then that will do for now. You'll be escorted back to your ship." 
+
+
+6 . 
+
+The Commdora was much younger than her husband. Her face was pale and coldly formed 
+and her black hair was drawn smoothly and tightly back. 
+
+Her voice was tart. "You are quite finished, my gracious and noble husband? Quite, quite 
+finished? I suppose I may even enter the garden if I wish, now." 
+
+"There is no need for dramatics, Licia, my dear," said the Commdor, mildly. "The young man 
+will attend at dinner tonight, and you can speak with him all you wish and even amuse yourself 
+by listening to all I say. Room will have to be arranged for his men somewhere about the place. 
+The stars grant that they be few in numbers." 
+
+"Most likely they'll be great hogs of eaters who will eat meat by the quarter-animal and wine by 
+the hogshead. And you will groan for two nights when you calculate the expense." 
+
+"Well now, perhaps I won't. Despite your opinion, the dinner is to be on the most lavish scale." 
+
+"Oh, I see." She stared at him contemptuously. "You are very friendly with these barbarians. 
+Perhaps that is why I was not to be permitted to attend your conversation. Perhaps your little 
+
+
+
+weazened soul is plotting to turn against my father." 
+
+"Not at all." 
+
+"Yes, I'd be likely to believe you, wouldn't I? If ever a poor woman was sacrificed for policy to 
+an unsavory marriage, it was myself. I could have picked a more proper man from the alleys 
+and mudheaps of my native world." 
+
+"Well, now, I'll tell you what, my lady. Perhaps you would enjoy returning to your native world. 
+Except that, to retain as a souvenir that portion of you with which I am best acquainted, I could 
+have your tongue cut out first. And," he tolled his head, calculatingly, to one side, "as a final 
+improving touch to your beauty, your ears and the tip of your nose as well." 
+
+"You wouldn't dare, you little pug-dog. My father would pulverize your toy nation to meteoric 
+dust. In fact, he might do it in any case, if I told him you were treating with these barbarians." 
+
+"Hm-m-m. Well, there's no need for threats. You are free to question the man yourself tonight. 
+Meanwhile, madam, keep your wagging tongue still." 
+
+"At your orders?" 
+
+"Here, take this, then, and keep still." 
+
+The band was about her waist and the necklace around her neck. He pushed the knob himself 
+and stepped back. 
+
+The Commdora drew in her breath and held out her hands stiffly. She fingered the necklace 
+gingerly, and gasped again. 
+
+The Commdor rubbed his hands with satisfaction and said, "You may wear it tonight - and I'll 
+get you more. Now keep still." 
+
+The Commdora kept still. 
+
+
+7 . 
+
+Jaim Twer fidgeted and shuffled his feet. He said, "What's twisting yoi/rface?" 
+
+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 groundcar to escort us to the foundry. Have you got the gadgets?" 
+
+
+"All of them." 
+
+
+8 . 
+
+The foundry was large, and bore the odor of decay which no amount of superficial repairs could 
+quite erase. It was empty now and in quite an unnatural state of quiet, as it played 
+unaccustomed host to the Commdor and his court. 
+
+Mallow had swung the steel sheet onto the two supports with a careless heave. He had taken 
+the instrument held out to him by Twer and was gripping the leather handle inside its leaden 
+sheath. 
+
+"The instrument," he said, "is dangerous, but so is a buzz saw. You just have to keep your 
+fingers away." 
+
+And as he spoke, he drew the muzzle-slit swiftly down the length of the steel sheet, which 
+quietly and instantly fell in two. 
+
+There was a unanimous jump, and Mallow laughed. He picked up one of the halves and 
+propped it against his knee, "You can adjust the cutting-length accurately to a hundredth of an 
+inch, and a two-inch sheet will slit down the middle as easily as this thing did. If you've got the 
+thickness exactly judged, you can place steel on a wooden table, and split the metal without 
+scratching the wood." 
+
+And at each phrase, the nuclear shear moved and a gouged chunk of steel flew across the 
+room. 
+
+"That," he said, "is whittling - with steel." 
+
+He passed back the shear. "Or else you have the plane. Do you want to decrease the thickness 
+of a sheet, smooth out an irregularity, remove corrosion? Watch!" 
+
+
+
+Thin, transparent foil flew off the other half of the original sheet in six-inch swarths, then 
+eight-inch, then twelve. 
+
+"Or drills? It's all the same principle." 
+
+They were crowded around now. It might have been a sleight-of-hand show, a comer magician, 
+a vaudeville act made into high-pressure salesmanship. Commdor Asper fingered scraps of 
+steel. High officials of the government tiptoed over each other's shoulders, and whispered, 
+while Mallow punched clean, beautiful round holes through an inch of hard steel at every touch 
+of his nuclear drill. 
+
+"Just one more demonstration. Bring two short lengths of pipe, somebody." 
+
+An Honorable Chamberlain of something-or-other sprang to obedience in the general 
+excitement and thought-absorption, and stained his hands like any laborer. 
+
+Mallow stood them upright and shaved the ends off with a single stroke of the shear, and then 
+joined the pipes, fresh cut to fresh cut. 
+
+And there was a single pipe! The new ends, with even atomic irregularities missing, formed one 
+piece upon joining. 
+
+Then Mallow looked up at his audience, stumbled at his first word and stopped. There was the 
+keen stirring of excitement in his chest, and the base of his stomach went tingly and cold. 
+
+The Commdor's own bodyguard, in the confusion, had struggled to the front line, and Mallow, 
+for the first time, was near enough to see their unfamiliar hand-weapons in detail. 
+
+They were nuclear! There was no mistaking it; an explosive projectile weapon with a barrel like 
+that was impossible. But that wasn't the big point. That wasn't the point at all. 
+
+The butts of those weapons had, deeply etched upon them, in worn gold plating, the 
+Spaceship-and-Sun! 
+
+The same Spaceship-and-Sun that was stamped on every, one of the great volumes of the 
+original Encyclopedia that the Foundation had begun and not yet finished. The same 
+Spaceship-and-Sun that had blazoned the banner of the Galactic Empire through millennia. 
+
+Mallow talked through and around his thoughts, "Test that pipe! It's one piece. Not perfect; 
+naturally, the joining shouldn't be done by hand." 
+
+There was no need of further legerdemain. It had gone over. Mallow was through. He had what 
+he wanted. There was only one thing in his mind. The golden globe with its conventionalized 
+rays, and the oblique cigar shape that was a space vessel. 
+
+The Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire! 
+
+The Empire! The words drilled! A century and a half had passed but there was still the-Empire, 
+somewhere deeper in the Galaxy. And it was emerging again, out into the Periphery. 
+
+
+Mallow smiled! 
+
+
+
+9 . 
+
+
+The Far Star was two days out in space, when Hober Mallow, in his private quarters with Senior 
+Lieutenant Drawt, handed him an envelope, a roll of microfilm, and a silvery spheroid. 
+
+"As of an hour from now, Lieutenant, you're Acting Captain of the Far Star, until I return, -or 
+forever." 
+
+Drawt made a motion of standing but Mallow waved him down imperiously. 
+
+"Quiet, and listen. The envelope contains the exact location of the planet to which you're to 
+proceed. There you will wait for me for two months. If, before the two months are up, the 
+Foundation locates you, the microfilm is my report of the trip. 
+
+"If, however," and his voice was somber, "I do not return at the end of two months, and 
+Foundation vessels do not locate you, proceed to the planet, Terminus, and hand in the Time 
+Capsule as the report. Do you understand that?" 
+
+"Yes, sir." 
+
+"At no time are you, or any of the men, to amplify in any single instance, my official report." 
+
+"If we are questioned, sir?" 
+
+"Then you know nothing." 
+
+"Yes, sir." 
+
+The interview ended, and fifty minutes later, a lifeboat kicked lightly off the side of the Far Star. 
+
+
+10 . 
+
+Onum Barr was an old man, too old to be afraid. Since the last disturbances, he had lived alone 
+on the fringes of the land with what books he had saved from the ruins. Fie had nothing he 
+feared losing, least of all the worn remnant of his life, and so he faced the intruder without 
+cringing. 
+
+"Your door was open," the stranger explained. 
+
+His accent was clipped and harsh, and Barr did not fail to notice the strange blue-steel 
+hand-weapon at his hip. In the half gloom of the small room, Barr saw the glow of a force-shield 
+surrounding the man. 
+
+He said, wearily, "There is no reason to keep it closed. Do you wish anything of me?" 
+
+"Yes." The stranger remained standing in the center of the room. He was large, both in height 
+and bulk. "Yours is the only house about here." 
+
+"It is a desolate place," agreed Barr, "but there is a town to the east. I can show you the way'." 
+
+
+
+"In awhile. May I sit?" 
+
+"If the chairs will hold you," said the old man, gravely. They were old, too. Relics of a better 
+youth. 
+
+The stranger said, "My name is Hober Mallow. I come from a far province." 
+
+Barr nodded and smiled, "Your tongue convicted you of that long ago. I am Onum Barr of 
+Siwenna - and once Patrician of the Empire." 
+
+"Then this is Siwenna. I had only old maps to guide me." 
+
+"They would have to be old, indeed, for star-positions to be misplaced." 
+
+Barr sat quite still, while the other's eyes drifted away into a reverie. He noticed that the nuclear 
+force-shield had vanished from about the man and admitted dryly to himself that his person no 
+longer seemed formidable to strangers - or even, for good or for evil, to his enemies. 
+
+He said, "My house is poor and my resources few. You may share what I have if your stomach 
+can endure black bread and dried corn." 
+
+Mallow shook his head, "No, I have eaten, and I can't stay. All I need are the directions to the 
+center of government." 
+
+"That is easily enough done, and poor though I am, deprives me of nothing. Do you mean the 
+capital of the planet, or of the Imperial Sector?" 
+
+The younger man's eyes narrowed, "Aren't the two identical? Isn't this Siwenna?" 
+
+The old patrician nodded slowly, "Siwenna, yes. But Siwenna is no longer capital of the 
+Normannic Sector. Your old map has misled you after all. The stars may not change even in 
+centuries, but political boundaries are all too fluid." 
+
+"That's too bad. In fact, that's very bad. Is the new capital far off?" 
+
+"It's on Orsha II. Twenty parsecs off. Your map will direct you. How old is it?" 
+
+"A hundred and fifty years." 
+
+"That old?" The old man sighed. "History has been crowded since. Do you know any of it?" 
+Mallow shook his bead slowly. 
+
+Barr said, "You're fortunate. It has been an evil time for the provinces, but for the reign of 
+Stannell VI, and he died fifty years ago. Since that time, rebellion and ruin, ruin and rebellion." 
+Barr wondered if he were growing garrulous. It was a lonely life out here, and he had so little 
+chance to talk to men. 
+
+Mallow said with sudden sharpness, "Ruin, eh? You sound as if the province were 
+impoverished." 
+
+"Perhaps not on an absolute scale. The physical resources of twenty-five first-rank planets take 
+
+
+
+a long time to use up. Compared to the wealth of the last century, though, we have gone a long 
+way downhill - and there is no sign of turning, not yet. Why are you so interested in all this, 
+young man? You are all alive and your eyes shine!" 
+
+The trader came near enough to blushing, as the faded eyes seemed to look too deep into his 
+and smile at what they saw. 
+
+He said, "Now look here. I'm a trader out there - out toward the rim of the Galaxy. I've located 
+some old maps, and I'm out to open new markets. Naturally, talk of impoverished provinces 
+disturbs me. You can't get money out of a world unless money's there to be got. Now how's 
+Siwenna, for instance?" 
+
+The old man leaned forward, "I cannot say. It will do even yet, perhaps. But you a trader? You 
+look more like a fighting man. You hold your hand near your gun and there is a scar on your 
+jawbone." 
+
+Mallow jerked his head, "There isn't much law out there where I come from. Fighting and scars 
+are part of a trader's overhead. But fighting is only useful when there's money at the end, and if 
+I can get it without, so much the sweeter. Now will I find enough money here to make it worth 
+the fighting? I take it I can find the fighting easily enough." 
+
+"Easily enough," agreed Barr. "You could join Wiscard's remnants in the Red Stars. I don't 
+know, though, if you'd call that fighting or piracy. Or you could join our present gracious viceroy 
+- gracious by right of murder, pillage, rapine, and the word of a boy Emperor, since rightfully 
+assassinated." The patrician's thin cheeks reddened. His eyes closed and then opened, 
+bird-bright. 
+
+"You don't sound very friendly to the viceroy, Patrician Barr," said Mallow. "What if I'm one of 
+his spies?" 
+
+"What if you are?" said Barr, bitterly. "What can you take?" He gestured a withered arm at the 
+bare interior of the decaying mansion. 
+
+"Your life." 
+
+"It would leave me easily enough. It has been with me five years too long. But you are not one 
+of the viceroy's men. If you were, perhaps even now instinctive self-preservation would keep 
+my mouth closed." 
+
+"How do you know?" 
+
+The old man laughed, "You seem suspicious - Come, I'll wager you think I'm trying to trap you 
+into denouncing the government. No, no. I am past politics." 
+
+"Past politics? Is a man ever past that? The words you used to describe the viceroy - what 
+were they? Murder, pillage, all that. You didn't sound objective. Not exactly. Not as if you were 
+past politics." 
+
+The old man shrugged, "Memories sting when they come suddenly. Listen! Judge for yourself! 
+When Siwenna was the provincial capital, I was a patrician and a member of the provincial 
+
+
+
+senate. My family was an old and honored one. One of my great-grandfathers had been- No, 
+never mind that. Past glories are poor feeding." 
+
+"I take it," said Mallow, "there was a civil war, or a revolution." 
+
+Barr's face darkened. "Civil wars are chronic in these degenerate days, but Siwenna had kept 
+apart. Under Stannell VI, it had almost achieved its ancient prosperity. But weak emperors 
+followed, and weak emperors mean strong viceroys, and our last viceroy - the same Wiscard, 
+whose remnants still prey on the commerce among the Red Stars - aimed at the Imperial 
+Purple. He wasn't the first to aim. And if he had succeeded, he wouldn't have been the first to 
+succeed. 
+
+"But he failed. For when the Emperor's Admiral approached the province at the head of a fleet, 
+Siwenna itself rebelled against its rebel viceroy." He stopped, sadly. 
+
+Mallow found himself tense on the edge of his seat, and relaxed slowly, "Please continue, sir." 
+
+"Thank you," said Barr, wearily. "It's kind of you to humor an old man. They rebelled; or I should 
+say, we rebelled, for I was one of the minor leaders. Wiscard left Siwenna, barely ahead of us, 
+and the planet, and with it the province, were thrown open to the admiral with every gesture of 
+loyalty to the Emperor. Why we did this, -I'm not sure. Maybe we felt loyal to the symbol, if not 
+the person, of the Emperor, -a cruel and vicious child. Maybe we feared the horrors of a siege." 
+
+"Well?" urged Mallow, gently. 
+
+"Well, came the grim retort, "that didn't suit the admiral. He wanted the glory of conquering a 
+rebellious province and his men wanted the loot such conquest would involve. So while the 
+people were still gathered in every large city, cheering the Emperor and his admiral, he 
+occupied all armed centers, and then ordered the population put to the nuclear blast." 
+
+"On what pretext?" 
+
+"On the pretext that they had rebelled against their viceroy, the Emperor's anointed. And the 
+admiral became the new viceroy, by virtue of one month of massacre, pillage and complete 
+horror. I had six sons. Five died - variously. I had a daughter. I hope she died, eventually. / 
+escaped because I was old. I came here, too old to cause even our viceroy worry." He bent his 
+gray head, "They left me nothing, because I had helped drive out a rebellious governor and 
+deprived an admiral of his glory." 
+
+Mallow sat silent, and waited. Then, "What of your sixth son?" he asked softly. 
+
+"Eh?" Barr smiled acidly. "He is safe, for he has joined the admiral as a common soldier under 
+an assumed name. He is a gunner in the viceroy's personal fleet. Oh, no, I see your eyes. He is 
+not an unnatural son. He visits me when he can and gives me what he can. He keeps me alive. 
+And some day, our great and glorious viceroy will grovel to his death, and it will be my son who 
+will be his executioner." 
+
+"And you tell this to a stranger? You endanger your son." 
+
+"No. I help him, by introducing a new enemy. And were I a friend of the viceroy, as I am his 
+
+
+
+enemy, I would tell him to string outer space with ships, clear to the rim of the Galaxy." 
+
+"There are no ships there?" 
+
+"Did you find any? Did any space-guards question your entry? With ships few enough, and the 
+bordering provinces filled with their share of intrigue and iniquity, none can be spared to guard 
+the barbarian outer suns. No danger ever threatened us from the broken edge of the Galaxy, 
+-until you came." 
+
+"I? I'm no danger." 
+
+"There will be more after you." 
+
+Mallow shook his head slowly, "I'm not sure I understand you." 
+
+"Listen!" There was a feverish edge to the old man's voice. "I knew you when you entered. You 
+have a force-shield about your body, or had when I first saw you." 
+
+Doubtful silence, then, "Yes, -I had." 
+
+"Good. That was a flaw, but you didn't know that. There are some things I know. It's out of 
+fashion in these decaying times to be a scholar. Events race and flash past and who cannot 
+fight the tide with nuclear-blast in hand is swept away, as I was. But I was a scholar, and I know 
+that in all the history of nucleics, no portable force-shield was ever invented. We have 
+force-shields - huge, lumbering powerhouses that will protect a city, or even a ship, but not 
+one, single man." 
+
+"Ah?" Mallow's underlip thrust out. "And what do you deduce from that?" 
+
+"There have been stories percolating through space. They travel strange paths and become 
+distorted with every parsec, -but when I was young there was a small ship of strange men, who 
+did not know our customs and could not tell where they came from. They talked of magicians at 
+the edge of the Galaxy; magicians who glowed in the darkness, who flew unaided through the 
+air, and whom weapons would not touch. 
+
+"We laughed. I laughed, too. I forgot it till today. But you glow in the darkness, and I don't think 
+my blaster, if I had one, would hurt you. Tell me, can you fly through air as you sit there now?" 
+
+Mallow said calmly, "I can make nothing of all this." 
+
+Barr smiled, "I'm content with the answer. I do not examine my guests. But if there are 
+magicians; if you are one of them; there may some day be a great influx of them, or you. 
+Perhaps that would be well. Maybe we need new blood." He muttered soundlessly to himself, 
+then, slowly, "But it works the other way, too. Our new viceroy also dreams, as did our old 
+Wiscard." 
+
+"Also after the Emperor's crown?" 
+
+Barr nodded, "My son hears tales. In the viceroy's personal entourage, one could scarcely help 
+it. And he tells me of them. Our new viceroy would not refuse the Crown if offered, but he 
+guards his line of retreat. There are stories that, failing Imperial heights, he plans to carve out a 
+
+
+
+new Empire in the Barbarian hinterland. It is said, but I don't vouch for this, that he has already 
+given one of his daughters as wife to a Kinglet somewhere in the uncharted Periphery." 
+
+"If one listened to every story-" 
+
+"I know. There are many more. I'm old and I babble nonsense. But what do you say?" And 
+those sharp, old eyes peered deep. 
+
+The trader considered, "I say nothing. But I'd like to ask something. Does Siwenna have 
+nuclear power? Now, wait, I know that it possesses the knowledge of nucleics. I mean, do they 
+have power generators intact, or did the recent sack destroy them?" 
+
+"Destroy them? Oh, no. Half a planet would be wiped out before the smallest power station 
+would be touched. They are irreplaceable and the suppliers of the strength of the fleet." Almost 
+proudly, "We have the largest and best on this side of Trantor itself." 
+
+"Then what would I do first if I wanted to see these generators?" 
+
+"Nothing!" replied Barr, decisively. "You couldn't approach any military center without being 
+shot down instantly. Neither could anyone. Siwenna is still deprived of civic rights." 
+
+"You mean all the power stations are under the military?" 
+
+"No. There are the small city stations, the ones supplying power for heating and lighting homes, 
+powering vehicles and so forth. Those are almost as bad. They're controlled by the tech-men." 
+
+"Who are they?" 
+
+"A specialized group which supervises the power plants. The honor is hereditary, the young 
+ones being brought up in the profession as apprentices. Strict sense of duty, honor, and all that. 
+No one but a tech-man could enter a station." 
+
+"I see." 
+
+"I don't say, though," added Barr, "that there aren't cases where tech-men haven't been bribed. 
+In days when we have nine emperors in fifty years and seven of these are assassinated, -when 
+every space-captain aspires to the usurpation of a viceroyship, and every viceroy to the 
+Imperium, 
+
+I suppose even a tech-man can fall prey to money. But it would require a good deal, and I have 
+none. Have you?" 
+
+"Money? No. But does one always bribe with money?" 
+
+"What else, when money buys all else." 
+
+"There is quite enough that money won't buy. And now if you'll tell me the nearest city with one 
+of the stations, and how best to get there, I'll thank you." 
+
+"Wait!" Barr held out his thin hands. "Where do you rush? You come here, but / ask no 
+questions. In the city, where the inhabitants are still called rebels, you would be challenged by 
+the first soldier or guard who heard your accent and saw your clothes." 
+
+
+
+He rose and from an obscure comer of an old chest brought out a booklet. "My passport, 
+-forged. I escaped with it." 
+
+He placed it in Mallow's hand and folded the fingers over it. "The description doesn't fit, but if 
+you flourish it, the chances are many to one they will not look closely." 
+
+"But you. You'll be left without one." 
+
+The old exile shrugged cynically, "What of it? And a further caution. Curb your tongue! Your 
+accent is barbarous, your idioms peculiar, and every once in a while you deliver yourself of the 
+most astounding archaisms. The less you speak, the less suspicion you will draw upon 
+yourself. Now I'll tell you how to get to the city-" 
+
+Five minutes later, Mallow was gone. 
+
+He returned but once, for a moment, to the old patrician's house, before leaving it entirely, 
+however. And when Onum Barr stepped into his little garden early the next morning, he found a 
+box at his feet. It contained provisions, concentrated provisions such as one would find aboard 
+ship, and alien in taste and preparation. 
+
+But they were good, and lasted long. 
+
+
+11 . 
+
+The tech-man was short, and his skin glistened with well-kept plumpness. His hair was a fringe 
+and his skull shone through pinkly. The rings on his fingers were thick and heavy, his clothes 
+were scented, and he was the first man Mallow had met on the planet who hadn't looked 
+hungry. 
+
+The tech-man's lips pursed peevishly, "Now, my man, quickly. I have things of great importance 
+waiting for me. You seem a stranger-" He seemed to evaluate Mallow's definitely 
+un-Siwennese costume and his eyelids were heavy with suspicion. 
+
+"I am not of the neighborhood," said Mallow, calmly, "but the matter is irrelevant. I have had the 
+honor to send you a little gift yesterday-" 
+
+The tech-man's nose lifted, "I received it. An interesting gewgaw. I may have use for it on 
+occasion." 
+
+"I have other and more interesting gifts. Quite out of the gewgaw stage." 
+
+"Oh-h?" The tech-man's voice lingered thoughtfully over the monosyllable. "I think I already see 
+the course of the interview; it has happened before. You are going to give me some trifle or 
+other. A few credits, perhaps a cloak, second-rate jewelry; anything your little soul may think 
+sufficient to corrupt a tech-man." His lower lip puffed out belligerently, "And I know what you 
+wish in exchange. There have been others and to spare with the same bright idea. You wish to 
+be adopted into our clan. You wish to be taught the mysteries of nucleics and the care of the 
+
+
+
+machines. You think because you dogs of Siwenna - and probably your strangerhood is 
+assumed for safety's sake - are being daily punished for your rebellion that you can escape 
+what you deserve by throwing over yourselves the privileges and protections of the tech-man's 
+guild." 
+
+Mallow would have spoken, but the tech-man raised himself into a sudden roar. "And now leave 
+before I report your name to the Protector of the City. Do you think that I would betray the trust? 
+The Siwennese traitors that preceded me would have - perhaps! But you deal with a different 
+breed now. Why, Galaxy, I marvel that I do not kill you myself at this moment with my bare 
+hands." 
+
+Mallow smiled to himself. The entire speech was patently artificial in tone and content, so that 
+all the dignified indignation degenerated into uninspired farce. 
+
+The trader glanced humorously at the two flabby hands that had been named as his possible 
+executioners then and there, and said, "Your Wisdom, you are wrong on three counts. First, I 
+am not a creature of the viceroy come to test your loyalty. Second, my gift is something the 
+Emperor himself in all his splendor does not and will never possess. Third, what I wish in return 
+is very little; a nothing; a mere breath." 
+
+"So you say!" He descended into heavy sarcasm. "Come, what is this imperial donation that 
+your godlike power wishes to bestow upon me? Something the Emperor doesn't have, eh?" He 
+broke into a sharp squawk of derision. 
+
+Mallow rose and pushed the chair aside, "I have waited three days to see you, Your Wisdom, 
+but the display will take only three seconds. If you will just draw that blaster whose butt I see 
+very near your hand-" 
+
+"Eh?" 
+
+"And shoot me, I will be obliged." 
+
+"What?” 
+
+"If I am killed, you can tell the police I tried to bribe you into betraying guild secrets. You'll 
+receive high praise. If I am not killed, you may have my shield." 
+
+For the first time, the tech-man became aware of the dimly-white illumination that hovered 
+closely about his visitor, as though he had been dipped in pearl-dust. His blaster raised to the 
+level and with eyes a-squint in wonder and suspicion, he closed contact. 
+
+The molecules of air caught in the sudden surge of atomic disruption, tore into glowing, burning 
+ions, and marked out the blinding thin line that struck at Mallow's heart - and splashed! 
+
+While Mallow's look of patience never changed, the nuclear forces that tore at him consumed 
+themselves against that fragile, pearly illumination, and crashed back to die in mid-air. 
+
+The tech-man's blaster dropped to the floor with an unnoticed crash. 
+
+Mallow said, "Does the Emperor have a personal force-shield? You can have one." 
+
+
+
+The tech-man stuttered, "Are you a tech-man?" 
+
+"No." 
+
+"Then - then where did you get that?" 
+
+"What do you care?" Mallow was coolly contemptuous. "Do you want it?" A thin, knobbed chain 
+fell upon the desk, "There it is." 
+
+The tech-man snatched it up and fingered it nervously, "Is this complete?" 
+
+"Complete." 
+
+"Where's the power?" 
+
+Mallow's finger fell upon the largest knob, dull in its leaden case. 
+
+The tech-man looked up, and his face was congested with blood, "Sir, I am a tech-man, senior 
+grade. I have twenty years behind me as supervisor and I studied under the great Bier at the 
+University of Trantor. If you have the infernal charlatanry to tell me that a small container the 
+size of a - of a walnut, blast it, holds a nuclear generator, I'll have you before the Protector in 
+three seconds." 
+
+"Explain it yourself then, if you can. I say it's complete." 
+
+The tech-man's flush faded slowly as he bound the chain about his waist, and, following 
+Mallow's gesture, pushed the knob. The radiance that surrounded him shone into dim relief. His 
+blaster lifted, then hesitated. Slowly, he adjusted it to an almost burnless minimum. 
+
+And then, convulsively, he closed circuit and the nuclear fire dashed against his hand, 
+harmlessly. 
+
+.He whirled, "And what if I shoot you now, and keep the shield." 
+
+"Try!" said Mallow. "Do you think I gave you my only sample?" And he, too, was solidly incased 
+in light. 
+
+The tech-man giggled nervously. The blaster clattered onto the desk. He said, "And what is this 
+mere nothing, this breath, that you wish in return'?" 
+
+"I want to see your generators." 
+
+"You realize that that is forbidden. It would mean ejection into space for both of us-" 
+
+"I don't want to touch them or have anything to do with them. I want to see them - from a 
+distance." 
+
+"If not?" 
+
+"If not, you have your shield, but I have other things. For one thing, a blaster especially 
+designed to pierce that shield." 
+
+"Hm-m-m." The tech-man's eyes shifted. "Come with me." 
+
+
+
+12 . 
+
+
+The tech-man's home was a small two-story affair on the Outskirts of the huge, cubiform, 
+windowless affair that dominated the center of the city. Mallow passed from one to the other 
+through an underground passage, and found himself in the silent, ozone-tinged atmosphere of 
+the powerhouse. 
+
+For fifteen minutes, he followed his guide and said nothing. His eyes missed nothing. His 
+fingers touched nothing. And then, the tech-man said in strangled tones, "Have you had 
+enough? I couldn't trust my underlings in this case." 
+
+"Could you ever?" asked Mallow, ironically. "I've had enough." 
+
+They were back in the office and Mallow said, thoughtfully, "And all those generators are in 
+your hands?" 
+
+"Every one," said the tech-man, with more than a touch of complacency. 
+
+"And you keep them running and in order?" 
+
+"Right!" 
+
+"And if they break down?" 
+
+The tech-man shook his head indignantly, "They don't break down. They never break down. 
+They were built for eternity." 
+
+"Eternity is a long time. Just suppose-" 
+
+"It is unscientific to suppose meaningless cases." 
+
+"All right. Suppose I were to blast a vital part into nothingness? I suppose the machines aren't 
+immune to nuclear forces? Suppose I fuse a vital connection, or smash a quartz D-tube?" 
+
+"Well, then," shouted the tech-man, furiously, "you would be killed." 
+
+"Yes, I know that," Mallow was shouting, too, "but what about the generator? Could you repair 
+it?" 
+
+"Sir," the tech-man howled his words, "you have had a fair return. You've had what you asked 
+for. Now get out! I owe you nothing more!" 
+
+Mallow bowed with a satiric respect and left. 
+
+Two days later he was back where the Far Star waited to return with him to the planet, 
+Terminus. 
+
+And two days later, the tech-man's shield went dead, and for all his puzzling and cursing never 
+glowed again. 
+
+
+
+13 . 
+
+
+Mallow relaxed for almost the first time in six months. He was on his back in the sunroom of his 
+new house, stripped to the skin. His great, brown arms were thrown up and out, and the 
+muscles tautened into a stretch, then faded into repose. 
+
+The man beside him placed a cigar between Mallow's teeth and lit it. He champed on one of his 
+own and said, "You must be overworked. Maybe you need a long rest." 
+
+"Maybe I do, Jael, but I'd rather rest in a council seat. Because I'm going to have that seat, and 
+you're going to help me." 
+
+Ankor Jael raised his eyebrows and said, "How did I get into this?" 
+
+"You got in obviously. Firstly, you're an old dog of a politico. Secondly, you were booted out of 
+your cabinet seat by Jorane Sutt, the same fellow who'd rather lose an eyeball than see me in 
+the council. You don't think much of my chances, do you?" 
+
+"Not much," agreed the ex-Minister of Education. "You're a Smyrnian." 
+
+"That's no legal bar. I've had a lay education." 
+
+"Well, come now. Since when does prejudice follow any law but its own. Now, how about your 
+own man - this Jaim Twer? What does he say?" 
+
+"He spoke about running me for council almost a year ago," replied Mallow easily, "but I've 
+outgrown him. He couldn't have pulled it off in any case. Not enough depth. He's loud and 
+forceful - but that's only an expression of nuisance value. I'm off to put over a real coup. I need 
+you." 
+
+"Jorane Sutt is the cleverest politician on the planet and he'll be against you. I don't claim to be 
+able to outsmart him. And don't think he doesn't fight hard, and dirty." 
+
+"I've got money." 
+
+"Mat helps. But it takes a lot to buy off prejudice, you dirty Smyrnian." 
+
+"I'll have a lot." 
+
+"Well, I'll look into the matter. But don't ever you crawl up on your hind legs and bleat that I 
+encouraged you in the matter. Who's that?" 
+
+Mallow pulled the corners of his mouth down, and said, "Jorane Sutt himself, I think. He's early, 
+and I can understand it. I’ve been dodging him for a month. Look, Jael, get into the next room, 
+and turn the speaker on low. I want you to listen." 
+
+He helped the council member out of the room with a shove of his bare foot, then scrambled up 
+and into a silk robe. The synthetic sunlight faded to normal power. 
+
+The secretary to the mayor entered stiffly, while the solemn major-domo tiptoed the door shut 
+behind him. 
+
+
+
+Mallow fastened his belt and said, "Take your choice of chairs, Sutt." 
+
+Sutt barely cracked a flickering smile. The chair he chose was comfortable but he did not relax 
+into it. From its edge, he said, "If you'll state your terms to begin with, we'll get down to 
+business." 
+
+"What terms?" 
+
+"You wish to be coaxed? Well, then, what, for instance, did you do at Korell? Your report was 
+incomplete." 
+
+"I gave it to you months ago. You were satisfied then." 
+
+Yes," Sutt rubbed his forehead thoughtfully with one finger, "but since then your activities have 
+been significant. We know a good deal of what you're doing, Mallow. We know, exactly, how 
+many factories you're putting up; in what a hurry you're doing it; and how much it's costing you. 
+And there's this palace you have," he gazed about him with a cold lack of appreciation, "which 
+set you back considerably more than my annual salary; and a swathe you've been cutting - a 
+very considerable and expensive swathe - through the upper layers of Foundation society." 
+
+"So? Beyond proving that you employ capable spies, what does it show?" 
+
+"It shows you have money you didn't have a year ago. And that can show anything - for 
+instance, that a good deal went on at Korell that we know nothing of. Where are you getting 
+your money?" 
+
+"My dear Sutt, you can't really expect me to tell you." 
+
+"I don't." 
+
+"I didn't think you did. That's why I'm going to tell you. It's straight from the treasure-chests of 
+the Commdor of Korell." 
+
+Sutt blinked. 
+
+Mallow smiled and continued. "Unfortunately for you, the money is quite legitimate. I'm a Master 
+Trader and the money I received was a quantity of wrought iron and chromite in exchange for a 
+number of trinkets I was able to supply him with. Fifty per cent of the profit is mine by 
+hidebound contract with the Foundation. The other half goes to the government at the end of 
+the year when all good citizens pay their income tax." 
+
+"There was no mention of any trade agreement in your report." 
+
+"Nor was there any mention of what I had for breakfast that day, or the name of my current 
+mistress, or any other irrelevant detail." Mallow's smile was fading into a sneer. "I was sent - to 
+quote yourself - to keep my eyes open. They were never, shut. You wanted to find out what 
+happened to the captured Foundation merchant ships. I never saw or heard of them. You 
+wanted to find out if Korell had nuclear power. My report tells of nuclear blasters in the 
+possession of the Commdor's private bodyguard. I saw no other signs. And the blasters I did 
+see are relics of the old Empire, and may be show-pieces that do not work, for all my 
+knowledge. 
+
+
+
+"So far, I followed orders, but beyond that I was, and. still am, a free agent. According to the 
+laws of the Foundation, a Master Trader may open whatever new markets he can, and receive 
+therefrom his due half of the profits. What are your objections? I don't see them." 
+
+Sutt bent his eyes carefully towards the wall and spoke with a difficult lack of anger, "It is the 
+general custom of all traders to advance the religion with their trade." 
+
+"I adhere to law, and not to custom." 
+
+"There are times when custom can be the higher law." 
+
+"Then appeal to the courts." 
+
+Sutt raised somber eyes which seemed to retreat into their sockets. "You're a Smyrnian after 
+all. It seems naturalization and education can't wipe out the taint in the blood. Listen, and try to 
+understand, just the same. 
+
+"This goes beyond money, or markets. We have the science of the great Hari Seldon to prove 
+that upon us depends the future empire of the Galaxy, and from the course that leads to that 
+Imperium we cannot turn. The religion we have is our all-important instrument towards that end. 
+With it we have brought the Four Kingdoms under our control, even at the moment when they 
+would have crushed us. It is the most potent device known with which to control men and 
+worlds. 
+
+"The primary reason for the development of trade and traders was to introduce and spread this 
+religion more quickly, and to insure that the introduction of new techniques and a new economy 
+would be subject to our thorough and intimate control." 
+
+Fie paused for breath, and Mallow interjected quietly, "I know the theory. I understand it 
+entirely." 
+
+"Do you? It is more than I expected. Then you see, of course, that your attempt at trade for its 
+own sake; at mass production of worthless gadgets, which can only affect a world's economy 
+superficially; at the subversion of interstellar policy to the god of profits; at the divorce of 
+nuclear power from our controlling religion - can only end with the overthrow and complete 
+negation of the policy that has worked successfully for a century." 
+
+"And time enough, too," said Mallow, indifferently, "for a policy outdated, dangerous and 
+impossible. Flowever well your religion has succeeded in the Four Kingdoms, scarcely another 
+world in the Periphery has accepted it. At the time we seized control of the Kingdoms, there 
+were a sufficient number of exiles, Galaxy knows, to spread the story of how Salvor Hardin 
+used the priesthood and the superstition of the people to overthrow the independence and 
+power of the secular monarchs. And if that wasn't enough, the case of Askone two decades 
+back made it plain enough. There isn't a ruler in the Periphery now that wouldn't sooner cut his 
+own throat than let a priest of the Foundation enter the territory. 
+
+"I don't propose to force Korell or any other world to accept something I know they don't want. 
+No, Sutt. If nuclear power makes them dangerous, a sincere friendship through trade will be 
+many times better than an insecure overlordship, based on the hated supremacy of a foreign 
+
+
+
+spiritual power, which, once it weakens ever so slightly, can only fall entirely and leave nothing 
+substantial behind except an immortal fear and hate." 
+
+Suit said cynically, "Very nicely put. So, to get back to the original point of discussion, what are 
+your terms? What do you require to exchange your ideas for mine?" 
+
+"You think my convictions are for sale?" 
+
+"Why not?" came the cold response. "Isn't that your business, buying and selling?" 
+
+"Only at a profit," said Mallow, unoffended. "Can you offer me more than I'm getting as is?" 
+"You could have three-quarters of your trade profits, rather than half." 
+
+Mallow laughed shortly, "A fine offer. The whole of the trade on your terms would fall far below 
+- a tenth share on mine. Try harder than that." 
+
+"You could have a council seat." 
+
+"I'll have that anyway, without and despite you." 
+
+With a sudden movement, Sutt clenched his fist, "You could also save yourself a prison term. 
+Of twenty years, if I have my way. Count the profit in that." 
+
+"No profit at all, but can you fulfill such a threat?" 
+
+"How about a trial for murder?" 
+
+"Whose murder?" asked Mallow, contemptuously. 
+
+Sutt's voice was harsh now, though no louder than before, "The murder of an Anacreonian 
+priest, in the service of the Foundation." 
+
+"Is that so now? And what's your evidence?" 
+
+The secretary to the mayor leaned forward, "Mallow, I'm not bluffing. The preliminaries are 
+over. I have only to sign one final paper and the case of the Foundation versus Hober Mallow, 
+Master Trader, is begun. You abandoned a subject of the Foundation to torture and death at 
+the hands of an alien mob, Mallow, and you have only five seconds to prevent the punishment 
+due you. For myself, I'd rather you decided to bluff it out. You'd be safer as a destroyed enemy, 
+than as a doubtfully-converted friend." 
+
+Mallow said solemnly, "You have your wish." 
+
+"Good!" and the secretary smiled savagely. "It was the mayor who wished the preliminary 
+attempt at compromise, not I. Witness that I did not try too hard." 
+
+The door opened before him, and he left. 
+
+Mallow looked up as Ankor Jael re-entered the room. 
+
+Mallow said, "Did you hear him?" 
+
+
+
+The politician flopped to the floor. "I never heard him as angry as that, since I've known the 
+snake." 
+
+"All right. What do you make of it?" 
+
+"Well, I'll tell you. A foreign policy of domination through spiritual means is his idee fixe, but it's 
+my notion that his ultimate aims aren't spiritual. I was fired out of the Cabinet for arguing on the 
+same issue, as I needn't tell you." 
+
+"You needn't. And what are those unspiritual aims according to your notion?" 
+
+Jael grew serious, "Well, he's not stupid, so he must see the bankruptcy of our religious policy, 
+which has hardly made a single conquest for us in seventy years. He's obviously using it for 
+purposes of his own. 
+
+"Now any dogma primarily based on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on 
+others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the 
+user. For a hundred years now, we've supported a ritual and mythology that is becoming more 
+and more venerable, traditional - and immovable. In some ways, it isn't under our control any 
+more." 
+
+"In what ways?" demanded Mallow. "Don't stop. I want your thoughts." 
+
+"Well, suppose one man, one ambitious man, uses the force of religion against us, rather than 
+for us." 
+
+"You mean Sutt-" 
+
+"You're right. I mean Sutt. Listen, man, if he could mobilize the various hierarchies on the 
+subject planets against the Foundation in the name of orthodoxy, what chance would we 
+stand? By planting himself at the head of the standards of the pious, he could make war on 
+heresy, as represented by you, for instance, and make himself king eventually. After all, it was 
+Hardin who said: 'A nuclear blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.'" 
+
+Mallow slapped his bare thigh, "All right, Jael, then get me in that council, and I'll fight him." 
+
+Jael paused, then said significantly, "Maybe not. What was all that about having a priest 
+lynched? Is isn't true, is it?" 
+
+"It's true enough," Mallow said, carelessly. 
+
+Jael whistled, "Has he definite proof?" 
+
+"He should have." Mallow hesitated, then added, "Jaim Twer was his man from the beginning, 
+though neither of them knew that I knew that. And Jaim Twer was an eyewitness." 
+
+Jael shook his head. "Uh-uh. That's bad." 
+
+"Bad? What's bad about it? That priest was illegally upon the planet by the Foundation's own 
+laws. He was obviously used by the Korellian government as a bait, whether involuntary or not. 
+By all the laws of common-sense, I had no choice but one action - and that action was strictly 
+
+
+
+within the law. If he brings me to trial, he'll do nothing but make a prime fool of himself." 
+
+And Jael shook his head again, "No, Mallow, you've missed it. I told you he played dirty. He's 
+not out to convict you; he knows he can't do that. But he is out to ruin your standing with the 
+people. You heard what he said. Custom is higher than law, at times. You could walk out of the 
+trial scot-free, but if the people think you threw a priest to the dogs, your popularity is gone. 
+
+"They'll admit you did the legal thing, even the sensible thing. But just the same you'll have 
+been, in their eyes, a cowardly dog, an unfeeling brute, a hard-hearted monster. And you would 
+never get elected to the council. You might even lose your rating as Master Trader by having 
+your citizenship voted away from you. You're not native born, you know. What more do you 
+think Sutt can want?" Mallow frowned stubbornly, "So!" "My boy," said Jael. "I'll stand by you, 
+but / can't help. You're on the spot, -dead center." 
+
+
+14 . 
+
+The council chamber was full in a very literal sense on the fourth day of the trial of Hober 
+Mallow, Master Trader. The only councilman absent was feebly cursing the fractured skull that 
+had bedridden him. The galleries were filled to the aisleways and ceilings with those few of the 
+crowd who by influence, wealth, or sheer diabolic perseverance had managed to get in. The 
+rest filled the square outside, in swarming knots about the open-air trimensional 'visors. 
+
+Ankor Jael made his way into the chamber with the near-futile aid and exertions of the police 
+department, and then through the scarcely smaller confusion within to Hober Mallow's seat. 
+
+Mallow turned with relief, "By Seldon, you cut it thin. Have you got it?" 
+
+"Here, take it," said Jael. "It's everything you asked for." 
+
+"Good. How are they taking it outside?" 
+
+"They're wild clear through." Jael stirred uneasily, "You should never have allowed public 
+hearings. You could have stopped them." 
+
+"I didn't want to." 
+
+"There's lynch talk. And Publis Manlio's men on the outer planets-" 
+
+"I wanted to ask you about that, Jael. He's stirring up the Hierarchy against me, is he?" 
+
+"Is he? It's the sweetest setup you ever saw, As Foreign Secretary, he handles the prosecution 
+in a case of interstellar law. As High Priest and Primate of the Church, he rouses the fanatic 
+hordes-" 
+
+"Well, forget it. Do you remember that Hardin quotation you threw at me last month? We'll show 
+them that the nuclear blaster can point both ways." 
+
+The mayor was taking his seat now and the council members were rising in respect. 
+
+Mallow whispered, "It's my turn today. Sit here and watch the fun." 
+
+
+
+The day's proceedings began and fifteen minutes later, Hober Mallow stepped through a hostile 
+whisper to the empty space before the mayor's bench. A lone beam of light centered upon him 
+and in the public 'visors of the city, as well as on the myriads of private 'visors in almost every 
+home of the Foundation's planets, the lonely giant figure of a man stared out defiantly. 
+
+He began easily and quietly, "To save time, I will admit the truth of every point made against 
+me by the prosecution. The story of the priest and the mob as related by them is perfectly 
+accurate in every detail." 
+
+There was a stirring in the chamber and a triumphant mass-snarl from the gallery. He waited 
+patiently for silence. 
+
+"However, the picture they presented fell short of completion. I ask the privilege of supplying 
+the completion in my own fashion. My story may seem irrelevant at first. I ask your indulgence 
+for that." 
+
+Mallow made no reference to the notes before him. 
+
+"I begin at the same time as the prosecution did; the day of my meeting with Jorane Sutt and 
+Jaim Twer. What went on at those meetings you know. The conversations have been 
+described, and to that description I have nothing to add - except my own thoughts of that day. 
+
+"They were suspicious thoughts, for the events of that day were queer. Consider. Two people, 
+neither of whom I knew more than casually, make unnatural and somewhat unbelievable 
+propositions to me. One, the secretary to the mayor, asks me to play the part of intelligence 
+agent to the government in a highly confidential matter, the nature and importance of which has 
+already been explained to you. The other, self-styled leader of a political party, asks me to run 
+for a council seat. 
+
+"Naturally I looked for the ulterior motive. Sutt's seemed evident. He didn't trust me. Perhaps he 
+thought I was selling nuclear power to enemies and plotting rebellion. And perhaps he was 
+forcing the issue, or thought he was. In that case, he would need a man of his own near me on 
+my proposed mission, as a spy. The last thought, however, did not occur to me until later on, 
+when Jaim Twer came on the scene. 
+
+"Consider again: Twer presents himself as a trader, retired into politics, yet I know of no details 
+of his trading career, although my knowledge of the field is immense. And further, although 
+Twer boasted of a lay education, he had never heard of a Seldon crisis." 
+
+Hober Mallow waited to let the significance sink in and was rewarded with the first silence he 
+had yet encountered, as the gallery caught its collective breath. That was for the inhabitants of 
+Terminus itself. The men of the Outer Planets could hear only censored versions that would 
+suit the requirements of religion. They would hear nothing of Seldon crises. But there would be 
+further strokes they would not miss. 
+
+Mallow continued: 
+
+"Who here can honestly state that any man with a lay education can possibly be ignorant of the 
+nature of a Seldon crisis? There is only one type of education upon the Foundation that 
+
+
+
+excludes all mention of the planned history of Seldon and deals only with the man himself as a 
+semi-mythical wizard- 
+
+"I knew at that instant that Jaim Twer had never been a trader. I knew then that he was in holy 
+orders and perhaps a full-fledged priest; and, doubtless, that for the three years he had 
+pretended to head a political party of the traders, he had been a bought man of Jorane Sutt. 
+
+"At the moment, I struck in the dark. I did not know Sun's purposes with regard to myself, but 
+since he seemed to be feeding me rope liberally, I handed him a few fathoms of my own. My 
+notion was that Twer was to be with me on my voyage as unofficial guardian on behalf of 
+Jorane Sutt. Well, if he didn't get on, I knew well there'd be other devices waiting - and those 
+others I might not catch in time. A known enemy is relatively safe. I invited Twer to come with 
+me. He accepted. 
+
+"That, gentlemen of the council, explains two things. First, it tells you that Twer is not a friend of 
+mine testifying against me reluctantly and for conscience' sake, as the prosecution would have 
+you believe. He is a spy, performing his paid job. Secondly, it explains a certain action of mine 
+on the occasion of the first appearance of the priest whom I am accused of having murdered - 
+an action as yet unmentioned, because unknown." 
+
+Now there was a disturbed whispering in the council. Mallow cleared his throat theatrically, and 
+continued: 
+
+"I hate to describe my feelings when I first heard that we had a refugee missionary on board. I 
+even hate to remember them. Essentially, they consisted of wild uncertainty. The event struck 
+me at the moment as a move by Sutt, and passed beyond my comprehension or calculation. I 
+was at sea - and completely. 
+
+"There was one thing I could do. I got rid of Twer for five minutes by sending him after my 
+officers. In his absence, I set up a Visual Record receiver, so that whatever happened might be 
+preserved for future study. This was in the hope, the wild but earnest hope, that what confused 
+me at the time might become plain upon review. 
+
+"I have gone over that Visual Record some fifty times since. I have it here with me now, and will 
+repeat the job a fifty-first time in your presence right now." 
+
+The mayor pounded monotonously for order, as the chamber lost its equilibrium and the gallery 
+roared. In five million homes on Terminus, excited observers crowded their receiving sets more 
+closely, and at the prosecutor's own bench, Jorane Sutt shook his head coldly at the nervous 
+high priest, while his eyes blazed fixedly on Mallow's face. 
+
+The center of the chamber was cleared, and the lights burnt low. Ankor Jael, from his bench on 
+the left, made the adjustments, and with a preliminary click, a holographic scene sprang to 
+view; in color, in three-dimensions, in every attribute of life but life itself. 
+
+There was the missionary, confused and battered, standing between the lieutenant and the 
+sergeant. Mallow's image waited silently, and then men filed in, Twer bringing up the rear. 
+
+The conversation played itself out, word for word. The sergeant was disciplined, and the 
+missionary was questioned. The mob appeared, their growl could be heard, and the Revered 
+
+
+
+Jord Parma made his wild appeal. Mallow drew his gun, and the missionary, as he was 
+dragged away, lifted his arms in a mad, final curse and a tiny flash of light came and went. 
+
+The scene ended, with the officers frozen at the horror of the situation, while Twer clamped 
+shaking hands over his ears, and Mallow calmly put his gun away. 
+
+The lights were on again; the empty space in the center of the floor was no longer even 
+apparently full. Mallow, the real Mallow of the present, took up the burden of his narration: 
+
+"The incident, you see, is exactly as the prosecution has presented it - on the surface. I'll 
+explain that shortly. Jaim Twer's emotions through the whole business shows clearly a priestly 
+education, by the way. 
+
+"It was on that same day that I pointed out certain incongruities in the episode to Twer. I asked 
+him where the missionary came from in the midst of the near-desolate tract we occupied at the 
+time. I asked further where the gigantic mob had come from with the nearest sizable town a 
+hundred miles away. The prosecution has paid no attention to such problems. 
+
+"Or to other points; for instance, the curious point of Jord Parma's blatant conspicuousness. A 
+missionary on Korell, risking his life in defiance of both Korellian and Foundation law, parades 
+about in a very new and very distinctive priestly costume. There's something wrong there. At 
+the time, I suggested that the missionary was an unwitting accomplice of the Commdor, who 
+was using him in an attempt to force us into an act of wildly illegal aggression, to justify, in law, 
+his subsequent destruction of our ship and of us. 
+
+"The prosecution has anticipated this justification of my actions. They have expected me to 
+explain that the safety of my ship, my crew, my mission itself were at stake and could not be 
+sacrificed for one man, when that man would, in any case, have been destroyed, with us or 
+without us. They reply by muttering about the Foundation's 'honor' and the necessity of 
+upholding our 'dignity' in order to maintain our ascendancy. 
+
+"For some strange reason, however, the prosecution has neglected Jord Parma himself, -as an 
+individual. They brought out no details concerning him; neither his birthplace, nor his education, 
+nor any detail of previous history. The explanation of this will also explain the incongruities I 
+have pointed out in the Visual Record you have just seen. The two are connected. 
+
+"The prosecution has advanced no details concerning Jord Parma because it cannot. That 
+scene you saw by Visual Record seemed phoney because Jord Parma was phoney. There 
+never was a Jord Parma. This whole trial is the biggest farce ever cooked up over an issue that 
+never existed. " 
+
+Once more he had to wait for the babble to die down. Fie said, slowly: 
+
+"I'm going to show you the enlargement of a single still from the Visual Record. It will speak for 
+itself. Lights again, Jael." 
+
+The chamber dimmed, and the empty air filled again with frozen figures in ghostly, waxen 
+illusion. The officers of the Far Star struck their stiff, impossible attitudes. A gun pointed from 
+Mallow's rigid hand. At his left, the Revered Jord Parma, caught in mid-shriek, stretched his 
+claws upward, while the failing sleeves hung halfway. 
+
+
+
+And from the missionary's hand there was that little gleam that in the previous showing had 
+flashed and gone. It was a permanent glow now. 
+
+"Keep your eye on that light on his hand," called Mallow from the shadows. "Enlarge that 
+scene, Jael!" 
+
+The tableau bloated quickly. Outer portions fell away as the missionary drew towards the center 
+and became a giant. Then there was only a hand and an arm, and then only a hand, which 
+filled everything and remained there in immense, hazy tautness. 
+
+The light had become a set of fuzzy, glowing letters: K S P. 
+
+"That," Mallow's voice boomed out, "is a sample of tatooing, gentlemen. Under ordinary light it 
+is invisible, but under ultraviolet light - with which I flooded the room in taking this Visual 
+Record, it stands out in high relief. I'll admit it is a naive method of secret identification, but it 
+works on Korell, where UV light is not to be found on street comers. Even in our ship, detection 
+was accidental. 
+
+"Perhaps some of you have already guessed what K S P stands for. Jord Parma knew his 
+priestly lingo well and did his job magnificently. Where he had learned it, and how, I cannot say, 
+but K S P stands for 'Korellian Secret Police.'" 
+
+Mallow shouted over the tumult, roaring against the noise, "I have collateral proof in the form of 
+documents brought from Korell, which I can present to the council if required. 
+
+"And where is now the prosecution's case? They have already made and re-made the 
+monstrous suggestion that I should have fought for the missionary in defiance of the law, and 
+sacrificed my mission, my ship, and myself to the 'honor' of the Foundation. 
+
+"But to do it for an impostor? 
+
+"Should I have done it then for a Korellian secret agent tricked out in the robes and verbal 
+gymnastics probably borrowed of an Anacreonian exile? Would Jorane Sutt and Publis Manlio 
+have had me fall into a stupid, odious trap-" 
+
+His hoarsened voice faded into the featureless background of a shouting mob. He was being 
+lifted onto shoulders, and carried to the mayor's bench. Out the windows, he could see a torrent 
+of madmen swarming into the square to add to the thousands there already. 
+
+Mallow looked about for Ankor Jael, but it was impossible to find any single face in the 
+incoherence of the mass. Slowly he became aware of a rhythmic, repeated shout, that was 
+spreading from a small beginning, and pulsing into insanity: 
+
+"Long live Mallow - long live Mallow - long live Mallow-" 
+
+
+15 . 
+
+Ankor Jael blinked at Mallow out of a haggard face. The last two days had been mad, sleepless 
+
+
+
+ones. 
+
+
+"Mallow, you've put on a beautiful show, so don't spoil it by jumping too high. You can't 
+seriously consider running for mayor. Mob enthusiasm is a powerful thing, but it's notoriously 
+fickle." ' 
+
+"Exactly!" said Mallow, grimly, "so we must coddle it, and the best way to do that is to continue 
+the show." 
+
+"Now what?" 
+
+"You're to have Publis Manlio and Jorane Sutt arrested-" 
+
+
+"What!" 
+
+"Just what you hear. Have the mayor arrest them! I don't care what threats you use. I control 
+the mob, -for today, at any rate. He won't dare face them." 
+
+"But on what charge, man?" 
+
+"On the obvious one. They've been inciting the priesthood of the outer planets to take sides in 
+the factional quarrels of the Foundation. That's illegal, by Seldon. Charge them with 
+'endangering the state.' And I don't care about a conviction any more than they did in my case. 
+Just get them out of circulation until I'm mayor." 
+
+"It's half a year till election." 
+
+"Not too long!" Mallow was on his feet, and his sudden grip of Jael's arm was tight. "Listen, I'd 
+seize the government by force if I had to - the way Salvor Hardin did a hundred years ago. 
+There's still that Seldon crisis coming up, and when it comes I have to be mayor and high 
+priest. Both I" 
+
+
+Jael's brow furrowed. He said, quietly, "What's it going to be? Korell, after all?" 
+
+Mallow nodded, "Of course. They'll declare war, eventually, though I'm betting it'll take another 
+pair of years." 
+
+"With nuclear ships?" 
+
+"What do you think? Those three merchant ships we lost in their space sector weren't knocked 
+over with compressed-air pistols. Jael, they're getting ships from the Empire itself. Don't open 
+your mouth like a fool. I said the Empire! It's still there, you know. It many be gone here in the 
+Periphery but in the Galactic center it's still very much alive. And one false move means that it, 
+itself, may be on our neck. That's why I must be mayor and high priest. I'm the only man who 
+knows how to fight the crisis." 
+
+Jael swallowed dryly, "How? What are you going to do?" 
+
+
+
+"Nothing." 
+
+Jael smiled uncertainly, "Really! All of that!" 
+
+But Mallow's answer was incisive, "When I'm boss of this Foundation, I'm going to do nothing. 
+One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis." 
+
+
+16 . 
+
+Asper Argo, the Well-Beloved, Commdor of the Korellian Republic greeted his wife's entry by a 
+hangdog lowering of his scanty eyebrows. To her at least, his self-adopted epithet did not 
+apply. Even he knew that. 
+
+She said, in a voice as sleek as her hair and as cold as her eyes, "My gracious lord, I 
+understand, has finally come to a decision upon the fate of the Foundation upstarts." 
+
+"Indeed?" said the Commdor, sourly. "And what more does your versatile understanding 
+embrace?" 
+
+"Enough, my very noble husband. You had another of your vacillating consultations with your 
+councilors. Fine advisors." With infinite scorn, "A herd of palsied purblind idiots hugging their 
+sterile profits close to their sunken chests in the face of my father's displeasure." 
+
+"And who, my dear," was the mild response, "is the excellent source from which your 
+understanding understands all this?" 
+
+The Commdora laughed shortly, "If I told you, my source would be more corpse than source." 
+
+"Well, you'll have your own way, as always." The Commdor shrugged and turned away. "And 
+as for your father's displeasure: I much fear me it extends to a niggardly refusal to supply more 
+ships." 
+
+"More ships!" She blazed away, hotly, "And haven't you five? Don't deny it. I know you have 
+five; and a sixth is promised." 
+
+"Promised for the last year." 
+
+"But one - just one - can blast that Foundation into stinking rubble. Just one! One, to sweep 
+their little pygmy boats out of space." 
+
+"I couldn't attack their planet, even with a dozen." 
+
+"And how long would their planet hold out with their trade ruined, and their cargoes of toys and 
+trash destroyed?" "Those toys and trash mean money," he sighed. "A good deal of money." 
+
+"But if you had the Foundation itself, would you not have all it contained'? And if you had my 
+father's respect and gratitude, would you not have more than ever the Foundation could give 
+you? It's been three years - more - since that barbarian came with his magic sideshow. It's 
+long enough." 
+
+
+
+"My dear!" The Commdor turned and faced her. "I am growing old. I am weary. I lack the 
+resilience to withstand your rattling mouth. You say you know that I have decided. Well, I have. 
+It is over, and there is war between Korell and the Foundation." 
+
+"Well!" The Commdora's figure expanded and her eyes sparkled, "You learned wisdom at last, 
+though in your dotage. And now when you are master of this hinterland, you may be sufficiently 
+respectable to be of some weight and importance in the Empire. For one thing, we might leave 
+this barbarous world and attend the viceroy's court. Indeed we might." 
+
+She swept out, with a smile, and a hand on her hip. Her hair gleamed in the light. 
+
+The Commdor waited, and then said to the closed door, with malignance and hate, "And when I 
+am master of what you call the hinterland, I may be sufficiently respectable to do without your 
+father's arrogance and his daughter's tongue. Completely - without!" 
+
+
+17 . 
+
+The senior lieutenant of the Dark Nebula stared in horror at the visiplate. 
+
+"Great Galloping Galaxies!" It should have been a howl, but it was a whisper instead, "What's 
+that?" 
+
+It was a ship, but a whale to the Dark Nebula's minnow; and on its side was the 
+Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire. Every alarm on the ship yammered hysterically. 
+
+The orders went out, and the Dark Nebula prepared to run if it could, and fight if it must, -while 
+down in the hyperwave room, a message stormed its way through hyperspace to the 
+Foundation. 
+
+Over and over again! Partly a plea for help, but mainly a warning of danger. 
+
+
+18 . 
+
+Flober Mallow shuffled his feet wearily as he leafed through the reports. Two years of the 
+mayoralty had made him a bit more housebroken, a bit softer, a bit more patient, -but it had not 
+made him learn to like government reports and the mind-breaking officialese in which they were 
+written. 
+
+"Flow many ships did they get?" asked Jael. 
+
+"Four trapped on the ground. Two unreported. All others accounted for and safe." Mallow 
+grunted, "We should have done better, but it's just a scratch." 
+
+There was no answer and Mallow looked up, "Does anything worry you?" 
+
+"I wish Sutt would get here," was the almost irrelevant answer. 
+
+"Ah, yes, and now we'll hear another lecture on the home front." 
+
+
+
+"No, we won't," snapped Jael, "but you're stubborn, Mallow. You may have worked out the 
+foreign situation to the last detail but you've never given a care about what goes on here on the 
+home planet." 
+
+"Well, that's your job, isn't it? What did I make you Minister of Education and Propaganda for?" 
+
+"Obviously to send me to an early and miserable grave, for all the co-operation you give me. 
+
+For the last year, I've been deafening you with the rising danger of Sutt and his Religionists. 
+What good will your plans be, if Sutt forces a special election and has you thrown out?" 
+
+"None, I admit." 
+
+"And your speech last night just about handed the election to Sutt with a smile and a pat. Was 
+there any necessity for being so frank?" 
+
+"Isn't there such a thing as stealing Sutt's thunder?" 
+
+"No," said Jael, violently, "not the way you did it. You claim to have foreseen everything, and 
+don't explain why you traded with Korell to their exclusive benefit for three years. Your only plan 
+of battle is to retire without a battle. You abandon all trade with the sectors of space near Korell. 
+You openly proclaim a stalemate. You promise no offensive, even in the future. Galaxy, Mallow, 
+what am I supposed to do with such a mess?" 
+
+"It lacks glamor?" 
+
+"It lacks mob emotion-appeal." 
+
+"Same thing." 
+
+"Mallow, wake up. You have two alternatives. Either you present the people with a dynamic 
+foreign policy, whatever your private plans are, or you make some sort of compromise with 
+Sutt." 
+
+Mallow said, "All right, if I've failed the first, let's try the second. Sutt's just arrived." 
+
+Sutt and Mallow had not met personally since the day of the trial, two years back. Neither 
+detected any change in the other, except for that subtle atmosphere about each which made it 
+quite evident that the roles of ruler and defier had changed. 
+
+Sutt took his seat without shaking hands. 
+
+Mallow offered a cigar and said, "Mind if Jael stays? He wants a compromise earnestly. He can 
+act as mediator if tempers rise." 
+
+Sutt shrugged, "A compromise will be well for you. Upon another occasion I once asked you to 
+state your terms. I presume the positions are reversed now." 
+
+"You presume correctly." 
+
+"Then there are my terms. You must abandon your blundering policy of economic bribery and 
+trade in gadgetry, and return to the tested foreign policy of our fathers." 
+
+
+
+"You mean conquest by missionary." 
+
+"Exactly." 
+
+"No compromise short of that?" 
+
+"None." 
+
+"Um-m-m." Mallow lit up very slowly and inhaled the tip of his cigar into a bright glow. "In 
+Hardin's time, when conquest by missionary was new and radical, men like yourself opposed it. 
+Now it is tried, tested, hallowed, -everything a Jorane Sutt would find well. But, tell me, how 
+would you get us out of our present mess?" 
+
+"Your present mess. I had nothing to do with it." 
+
+"Consider the question suitably modified." 
+
+"A strong offensive is indicated. The stalemate you seem to be satisfied with is fatal. It would be 
+a confession of weakness to all the worlds of the Periphery, where the appearance of strength 
+is all-important, and there's not one vulture among them that wouldn't join the assault for its 
+share of the corpse. You ought to understand that. You're from Smyrno, aren't you?" 
+
+Mallow passed over the significance of the remark. He said, "And if you beat Korell, what of the 
+Empire? That is the real enemy." 
+
+Sutt's narrow smile tugged at the comers of his mouth, "Oh, no, your records of your visit to 
+Siwenna were complete. The viceroy of the Normannic Sector is interested in creating 
+dissension in the Periphery for his own benefit, but only as a side issue. He isn't going to stake 
+everything on an expedition to the Galaxy's rim when he has fifty hostile neighbors and an 
+emperor to rebel against. I paraphrase your own words." 
+
+"Oh, yes he might, Sutt, if he thinks we're strong enough to be dangerous. And he might think 
+so, if we destroy Korell by the main force of frontal attack. We'd have to be considerably more 
+subtle." 
+
+"As for instance-" 
+
+Mallow leaned back, "Sutt, I'll give you your chance. I don't need you, but I can use you. So I'll 
+tell you what it's all about, and then you can either join me and receive a place in a coalition 
+cabinet, or you can play the martyr and rot in jail." 
+
+"Once before you tried that last trick." 
+
+"Not very hard, Sutt. The right time has only just come. Now listen." Mallow's eyes narrowed. 
+
+"When I first landed on Korell," he began, A bribed the Commdor with the trinkets and gadgets 
+that form the trader's usual stock. At the start, that, was meant only to get us entrance into a 
+steel foundry. I had no plan further than that, but in that I succeeded. I got what I wanted. But it 
+was only after my visit to the Empire that I first realized exactly what a weapon I could build that 
+trade into. 
+
+
+
+"This is a Seldon crisis we're facing, Sutt, and Seldon crises are not solved by individuals but by 
+historic forces. Hari Seldon, when he planned our course of future history, did not count on 
+brilliant heroics but on the broad sweeps of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the 
+various crises must be achieved by the forces that become available to us at the time. 
+
+"In this case, -trade!" 
+
+Sutt raised his eyebrows skeptically and took advantage of the pause, "I hope I am not of 
+subnormal intelligence, but the fact is that your vague lecture isn't very illuminating." 
+
+"It will become so," said Mallow. "Consider that until now the power of trade has been 
+underestimated. It has been thought that it took a priesthood under our control to make it a 
+powerful weapon. That is not so, and this is my contribution to the Galactic situation. Trade 
+without priests! Trade alone! It is strong enough. Let us become very simple and specific. Korell 
+is now at war with us. Consequently our trade with her has stopped. But, -notice that I am 
+making this as simple as a problem in addition, -in the past three years she has based her 
+economy more and more upon the nuclear techniques which we have introduced and which 
+only we can continue to supply. Now what do you suppose will happen once the tiny nuclear 
+generators begin failing, and one gadget after another goes out of commission? 
+
+"The small household appliances go first. After a half a year of this stalemate that you abhor, a 
+woman's nuclear knife won't work any more. Her stove begins failing. Her washer doesn't do a 
+good job. The temperature-humidity control in her house dies on a hot summer day. What 
+happens?" 
+
+He paused for an answer, and Sutt said calmly, "Nothing. People endure a good deal in war." 
+
+"Very true. They do. They'll send their sons out in unlimited numbers to die horribly on broken 
+spaceships. They'll bear up under enemy bombardment, if it means they have to live on stale 
+bread and foul water in caves half a mile deep. But it's very hard to bear up under little things 
+when the patriotic uplift of imminent danger is not present. It's going to, be a stalemate. There 
+will be no casualties, no bombardments, no battles. 
+
+"There will just be a knife that won't cut, and a stove that won't cook, and a house that freezes 
+in the winter. It will be annoying, and people will grumble." 
+
+Sutt said slowly, wonderingly, "Is that what you're setting your hopes on, man? What do you 
+expect? A housewives' rebellion? A Jacquerie? A sudden uprising of butchers and grocers with 
+their cleavers and bread-knives shouting 'Give us back our Automatic Super-Kleeno Nuclear 
+Washing Machines.'" 
+
+"No, sir," said Mallow, impatiently, "I do not. I expect, however, a general background of 
+grumbling and dissatisfaction which will be seized on by more important figures later on." 
+
+"And what more important figures are these?" 
+
+"The manufacturers, the factory owners, the industrialists of Korell. When two years of the 
+stalemate have gone, the machines in the factories will, one by one, begin to fail. Those 
+industries which we have changed from first to last with our new nuclear gadgets will find 
+themselves very suddenly ruined. The heavy industries will find themselves, en masse and at a 
+
+
+
+stroke, the owners of nothing but scrap machinery that won't work." 
+
+"The factories ran well enough before you came there, Mallow." 
+
+"Yes, Sutt, so they did - at about one-twentieth the profits, even if you leave out of 
+consideration the cost of reconversion to the original pre-nuclear state. With the industrialist 
+and financier and the average man all against him, how long will the Commdor hold out?" 
+
+"As long as he pleases, as soon as it occurs to him to get new nuclear generators from the 
+Empire." 
+
+And Mallow laughed joyously, "You've missed, Sutt, missed as badly as the Commdor himself. 
+You've missed everything, and understood nothing. Look, man, the Empire can replace 
+nothing. The Empire has always been a realm of colossal resources. They've calculated 
+everything in planets, in stellar systems, in whole sectors of the Galaxy. Their generators are 
+gigantic because they thought in gigantic fashion. 
+
+"But we, -we, our little Foundation, our single world almost without metallic resources, -have 
+had to work with brute economy. Our generators have had to be the size of our thumb, because 
+it was all the metal we could afford. We had to develop new techniques and new methods, 
+-techniques and methods the Empire can't follow because they have degenerated past the 
+stage where they can make any really vital scientific advance. 
+
+"With all their nuclear shields, large enough to protect a ship, a city, an entire world; they could 
+never build one to protect a single man. To supply light and heat to a city, they have motors six 
+stories high, -I saw them - where ours could fit into this room. And when I told one of their 
+nuclear specialists that a lead container the size of a walnut contained a nuclear generator, he 
+almost choked with indignation on the spot. 
+
+"Why, they don't even understand their own colossi any longer. The machines work from 
+generation to generation automatically, and the caretakers are a hereditary caste who would be 
+helpless if a single D-tube in all that vast structure burnt out. 
+
+"The whole war is a battle between those two systems, between the Empire and the 
+Foundation; between the big and the little. To seize control of a world, they bribe with immense 
+ships that can make war, but lack all economic significance. We, on the other hand, bribe with 
+little things, useless in war, but vital to prosperity and profits. 
+
+"A king, or a Commdor, will take the ships and even make war. Arbitrary rulers throughout 
+history have bartered their subjects' welfare for what they consider honor, and glory, and 
+conquest. But it's still the little things in life that count - and Asper Argo won't stand up against 
+the economic depression that will sweep all Korell in two or three years." 
+
+Sutt was at the window, his back to Mallow and Jael. It was early evening now, and the few 
+stars that struggled feebly here at the very rim of the Galaxy sparked against the background of 
+the misty, wispy Lens that included the remnants of that Empire, still vast, that fought against 
+them. 
+
+
+Sutt said, "No. You are not the man. 
+
+
+
+You don't believe me? 
+
+
+"I mean I don't trust you. You're smooth-tongued. You befooled me properly when I thought I 
+had you under proper care on your first trip to Korell. When I thought I had you cornered at the 
+trial, you wormed your way out of it and into the mayor's chair by demagoguery. There is 
+nothing straight about you; no motive that hasn't another behind it; no statement that hasn't 
+three meanings. 
+
+"Suppose you were a traitor. Suppose your visit to the Empire had brought you a subsidy and a 
+promise of power. Your actions would be precisely what they are now. You would bring about a 
+war after having strengthened the enemy. You would force the Foundation into inactivity. And 
+you would advance a plausible explanation of everything, one so plausible it would convince 
+everyone." 
+
+"You mean there'll be no compromise?" asked Mallow, gently. 
+
+"I mean you must get out, by free will or force." 
+
+"I warned you of the only alternative to co-operation." 
+
+Jorane Sutt's face congested with blood in a sudden access of emotion. "And I warn you, 
+
+Hober Mallow of Smyrno, that if you arrest me, there will be no quarter. My men will stop 
+nowhere in spreading the truth about you, and the common people of the Foundation will unite 
+against their foreign ruler. They have a consciousness of destiny that a Smyrnian can never 
+understand - and that consciousness will destroy you." 
+
+Flober Mallow said quietly to the two guards who had entered, "Take him away. Fle's under 
+arrest." 
+
+Sutt said, "Your last chance." 
+
+Mallow stubbed out his cigar and never looked up. 
+
+And five minutes later, Jael stirred and said, wearily, "Well, now that you've made a martyr for 
+the cause, what next?" 
+
+Mallow stopped playing with the ash tray and looked up, "That's not the Sutt I used to know. 
+Fle's a blood-blind bull. Galaxy, he hates me." 
+
+"All the more dangerous then." 
+
+"More dangerous? Nonsense! Fle's lost all power of judgement." 
+
+Jael said grimly, "You're overconfident, Mallow. You're ignoring the possibility of a popular 
+rebellion." 
+
+Mallow looked up, grim in his turn, "Once and for all, Jael, there is no possibility of a popular 
+rebellion." 
+
+"You're sure of yourself!" 
+
+"I'm sure of the Seldon crisis and the historical validity of their solutions, externally and 
+
+
+
+internally. There are some things I didn't tell Suit right now. He tried to control the Foundation 
+itself by religious forces as he controlled the outer worlds, and he failed, -which is the surest 
+sign that in the Seldon scheme, religion is played out. 
+
+"Economic control worked differently. And to paraphrase that famous Salvor Hardin quotation of 
+yours, it's a poor nuclear blaster that won't point both ways. If Korell prospered with our trade, 
+so did we. If Korellian factories fail without our trade; and if the prosperity of the outer worlds 
+vanishes with commercial isolation; so will our factories fail and our prosperity vanish. 
+
+"And there isn't a factory, not a trading center, not a shipping line that isn't under my control; 
+that I couldn't squeeze to nothing if Sutt attempts revolutionary propaganda. Where his 
+propaganda succeeds, or even looks as though it might succeed, I will make certain that 
+prosperity dies. Where it fails, prosperity will continue, because my factories will remain fully 
+staffed. 
+
+"So by the same reasoning which makes me sure that the Korellians will revolt in favor of 
+prosperity, I am sure we will not revolt against it. The game will be played out to its end." 
+
+"So then," said Jael, "you're establishing a plutocracy. You're making us a land of traders and 
+merchant princes. Then what of the future?" 
+
+Mallow lifted his gloomy face, and exclaimed fiercely, "What business of mine is the future? No 
+doubt Seldon has foreseen it and prepared against it. There will be other crises in the time to 
+come when money power has become as dead a force as religion is now. Let my successors 
+solve those new problems, as I have solved the one of today." 
+
+KORELL-.. .And so after three years of a war which was certainly the most unfought war on 
+record, the Republic of Korell surrendered unconditionally, and Hober Mallow took his place 
+next to Hari Seldon and Salvor Hardin in the hearts of the people of the Foundation. 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+
+ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
+
+Isaac Asimov was born in the Soviet Union to his great surprise. He moved quickly to correct 
+the situation. When his parents emigrated to the United States, Isaac (three years old at the 
+time) stowed away in their baggage. He has been an American citizen since the age of eight. 
+
+Brought up in Brooklyn, and educated in its public schools, he eventually found his way to 
+Columbia University and, over the protests of the school administration, managed to annex a 
+series of degrees in chemistry, up to and including a Ph.D. He then infiltrated Boston University 
+and climbed the academic ladder, ignoring all cries of outrage, until he found himself Professor 
+of Biochemistry. 
+
+Meanwhile, at the age of nine, he found the love of his life (in the inanimate sense) when he 
+discovered his first science-fiction magazine. By the time he was eleven, he began to write 
+
+
+
+stories, and at eighteen, he actually worked up the nerve to submit one. It was rejected. After 
+four long months of tribulation and suffering, he sold his first story and, thereafter, he never 
+looked back. 
+
+In 1941 , when he was twenty-one years old, he wrote the classic short story "Nightfall" and his 
+future was assured. Shortly before that he had begun writing his robot stories, and shortly after 
+that he had begun his Foundation series. 
+
+
+What was left except quantity? At the present time, he has published over 260 books, 
+distributed through every major division of the Dewey system of library classification, and 
+shows no signs of slowing up. He remains as youthful, as lively, and as lovable as ever, and 
+grows more handsome with each year. You can be sure that this is so since he has written this 
+little essay himself and his devotion to absolute objectivity is notorious. 
+
+He is married to Janet Jeppson, psychiatrist and writer, has two children by a previous 
+marriage, and lives in New York City. 
+
+
+
+
+ASIMOV 
+
+
+FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE 
+
+
+THE FOUNDATION NOVELS 
+
+
+FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE 
+ISAAC ASIMOV 
+
+
+PROLOGUE 
+
+
+Contents 
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I THE GENERAL 
+
+
+1. SEARCH FOR MAGICIANS 
+
+2. THE MAGICIANS 
+
+3. THE DEAD HAND 
+
+4. THE EMPEROR 
+
+5. THE WAR BEGINS 
+
+6. THE FAVORITE 
+
+7. BRIBERY 
+
+8. TO TRANTOR 
+
+9. ON TRANTOR 
+
+10. THE WAR ENDS 
+
+PART II THE MULE 
+
+11. BRIDE AND GROOM 
+
+12. CAPTAIN AND MAYOR 
+
+1 3. LIEUTENANT AND CLOWN 
+
+14. THE MUTANT 
+
+15. THE PSYCHOLOGIST 
+
+16. CONFERENCE 
+
+17. THE VISI-SONOR 
+
+1 8. FALL OF THE FOUNDATION 
+
+1 9. START OF THE SEARCH 
+
+20. CONSPIRATOR 
+
+21. INTERLUDE IN SPACE 
+
+22. DEATH ON NEOTRANTOR 
+
+23. THE RUINS OF TRANTOR 
+
+
+24. CONVERT 
+
+
+25. DEATH OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 
+
+26. END OF THE SEARCH 
+
+
+PROLOGUE 
+
+
+The Galactic Empire Was Falling. 
+
+It was a colossal Empire, stretching across millions of worlds from arm-end to arm-end of the 
+mighty multi-spiral that was the Milky Way. Its fall was colossal, too - and a long one, for it had 
+a long way to go. 
+
+It had been falling for centuries before one man became really aware of that fall. That man was 
+Hari Seldon, the man who represented the one spark of creative effort left among the gathering 
+decay. He developed and brought to its highest pitch the science of psychohistory. 
+
+Psychohistory dealt not with man, but with man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in 
+their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser 
+science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could 
+be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again. 
+
+Hari Seldon plotted the social and economic trends of the time, sighted along the curves and 
+foresaw the continuing and accelerating fall of civilization and the gap of thirty thousand years 
+that must elapse before a struggling new Empire could emerge from the ruins. 
+
+It was too late to stop that fall, but not too late to narrow the gap of barbarism. Seldon 
+established two Foundations at "opposite ends of the Galaxy" and their location was so 
+designed that in one short millennium events would knit and mesh so as to force out of them a 
+stronger, more permanent, more benevolent Second Empire. 
+
+Foundation (Gnome Press, 1951) has told the story of one of those Foundations during the first 
+two centuries of life. 
+
+It began as a settlement of physical scientists on Terminus, a planet at the extreme end of one 
+of the spiral arms of the Galaxy. Separated from the turmoil of the Empire, they worked as 
+compilers of a universal compendium of knowledge, the Encyclopedia Galactica, unaware of 
+the deeper role planned for them by the already-dead Seldon, 
+
+As the Empire rotted, the outer regions fell into the hands of independent "kings." The 
+Foundation was threatened by them. However, by playing one petty ruler against another, 
+under the leadership of their first mayor, Salvor Hardin, they maintained a precarious 
+independence. As sole possessors, of nuclear power among worlds which were losing their 
+sciences and falling back on coal and oil, they even established an ascendancy. The 
+Foundation became the "religious" center of the neighboring kingdoms. 
+
+
+Slowly, the Foundation developed a trading economy as the Encyclopedia receded into the 
+background. Their Traders, dealing in nuclear gadgets which not even the Empire in its heyday 
+could have duplicated for compactness, penetrated hundreds of light-years through the 
+Periphery. 
+
+Under Hober Mallow, the first of the Foundation's Merchant Princes, they developed the 
+techniques of economic warfare to the point of defeating the Republic of Korell, even though 
+that world was receiving support from one of the outer provinces of what was left of the Empire. 
+
+At the end of two hundred years, the Foundation was the most powerful state in the Galaxy, 
+except for the remains of the Empire, which, concentrated in the inner third of the Milky Way, 
+still controlled three quarters of the population and wealth of the Universe. 
+
+It seemed inevitable that the next danger the Foundation would have to face was the final lash 
+of the dying Empire. 
+
+The way must he cleared for the battle of Foundation and Empire. 
+
+
+PART I 
+
+THE GENERAL 
+
+
+1. SEARCH FOR MAGICIANS 
+
+BEL RIOSE .... In his relatively short career, Riose earned the title of "The Last of the Imperials'' 
+and earned It well. A study of his campaigns reveals him to be the equal of Peurifoy in strategic 
+ability and his superior perhaps in his ability to handle men. That he was born in the days of the 
+decline of Empire made it all but impossible for him to equal Peurifoy's record as a conqueror. 
+Yet he had his chance when, the first of the Empire's generals to do so, he faced the 
+Foundation squarely.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA* 
+
+*AII quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica here reproduced are taken from the 1 1 6th 
+Edition published in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus, with 
+permission of the publishers. 
+
+Bel Riose traveled without escort, which is not what court etiquette prescribes for the head of a 
+fleet stationed in a yet-sullen stellar system on the Marches of the Galactic Empire. 
+
+But Bel Riose was young and energetic - energetic enough to be sent as near the end of the 
+universe as possible by an unemotional and calculating court - and curious besides. Strange 
+and improbable tales fancifully-repeated by hundreds and murkily-known to thousands intrigued 
+
+
+
+
+
+the last faculty; the possibility of a military venture engaged the other two. The combination was 
+overpowering. 
+
+He was out of the dowdy ground-car he had appropriated and at the door of the fading mansion 
+that was his destination. He waited. The photonic eye that spanned the doorway was alive, but 
+when the door opened it was by hand. 
+
+Bel Riose smiled at the old man. "I am Riose-" 
+
+"I recognize you." The old man remained stiffly and unsurprised in his place. "Your business?" 
+
+Riose withdrew a step in a gesture of submission. "One of peace. If you are Ducem Barr, I ask 
+the favor of conversation." 
+
+Ducem Barr stepped aside and in the interior of the house the walls glowed into life, The 
+general entered into daylight. 
+
+He touched the wall of the study, then stared at his fingertips. "You have this on Siwenna?" 
+
+Barr smiled thinly. "Not elsewhere, I believe. I keep this in repair myself as well as I can. I must 
+apologize for your wait at the door. The automatic device registers the presence of a visitor but 
+will no longer open the door." 
+
+"Your repairs fall short?" The general's voice was faintly mocking. 
+
+"Parts are no longer available. If you will sit, sir. You drink tea?" 
+
+"On Siwenna? My good sir, it is socially impossible not to drink it here." 
+
+The old patrician retreated noiselessly with a slow bow that was part of the ceremonious legacy 
+left by the aristocracy of the last century's better days. 
+
+Riose looked after his host's departing figure, and his studied urbanity grew a bit uncertain at 
+the edges. His education had been purely military; his experience likewise. He had, as the 
+cliche, has it, faced death many times; but always death of a very familiar and tangible nature, 
+Consequently, there is no inconsistency in the fact that the idolized lion of the Twentieth Fleet 
+felt chilled in the suddenly musty atmosphere of an ancient room. 
+
+The general recognized the small black-ivroid boxes that lined the shelves to be books. Their 
+titles were unfamiliar. He guessed that the large structure at one end of the room was the 
+receiver that transmuted the books into sight-and-sound on demand. He had never seen one in 
+operation; but he had heard of them. 
+
+Once he had been told that long before, during the golden ages when the Empire had been 
+co-extensive with the entire Galaxy, nine houses out of every ten had such receivers - and 
+such rows of books. 
+
+But there were borders to watch now; books were for old men. And half the stories told about 
+the old days were mythical anyway. More than half. 
+
+The tea arrived, and Riose seated himself. Ducem Barr lifted his cup. "To your honor." 
+
+
+
+"Thank you. To yours." 
+
+Ducem Barr said deliberately, "You are said to be young. Thirty-five?" 
+
+"Near enough. Thirty-four." 
+
+"In that case," said Barr, with soft emphasis, "I could not begin better than by informing you 
+regretfully that I am not in the possession of love charms, potions, or philtres. Nor am I in the 
+least capable of influencing the favors of any young lady as may appeal to you." 
+
+"I have no need of artificial aids in that respect, sir." The complacency undeniably present in the 
+general's voice was stirred with amusement. "Do you receive many requests for such 
+commodities?" 
+
+"Enough. Unfortunately, an uninformed public tends to confuse scholarship with magicianry, 
+and love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering." 
+
+"And so would seem most natural. But I differ. I connect scholarship with nothing but the means 
+of answering difficult questions." 
+
+The Siwennian considered somberly, "You may be as wrong as they!" 
+
+"That may turn out or not." The young general set down his cup in its flaring sheath and it 
+refilled. He dropped the offered flavor-capsule into it with a small splash. "Tell me then, 
+patrician, who are the magicians? The real ones." 
+
+Barr seemed startled at a title long-unused. He said, "There are no magicians." 
+
+"But people speak of them. Siwenna crawls with the tales of them. There are cults being built 
+about them. There is some strange connection between it and those groups among your 
+countrymen who dream and drivel of ancient days and what they call liberty and autonomy. 
+Eventually the matter might become a danger to the State." 
+
+The old man shook his head. "Why ask me? Do you smell rebellion, with myself at the head?" 
+
+Riose shrugged, "Never. Never. Oh, it is not a thought completely ridiculous. Your father was 
+an exile in his day; you yourself a patriot and a chauvinist in yours. It is indelicate in me as a 
+guest to mention it, but my business here requires it. And yet a conspiracy now? I doubt it. 
+Siwenna has had the spirit beat out of it these three generations." 
+
+The old man replied with difficulty, "I shall be as indelicate a host as you a guest. I shall remind 
+you that once a viceroy thought as you did of the spiritless Siwennians. By the orders of that 
+viceroy my father became a fugitive pauper, my brothers martyrs, and my sister a suicide. Yet 
+that viceroy died a death sufficiently horrible at the hands of these same slavish Siwennians." 
+
+"Ah, yes, and there you touch nearly on something I could wish to say. For three years the 
+mysterious death of that viceroy has been no mystery to me. There was a young soldier of his 
+personal guard whose actions were of interest. You were that soldier, but there is no need of 
+details, I think." 
+
+
+Barr was quiet. "None. What do you propose? 
+
+
+
+"That you answer my questions." 
+
+"Not under threats. I am old enough for life not to mean particularly overmuch." 
+
+"My good sir, these are hard times," said Riose, with meaning, "and you have children and 
+friends. You have a country for which you have mouthed phrases of love and folly in the past. 
+Come, if I should decide to use force, my aim would not be so poor as to strike you." 
+
+Barr said coldly, "What do you want?" 
+
+Riose held the empty cup as he spoke. "Patrician, listen to me. These are days when the most 
+successful soldiers are those whose function is to lead the dress parades that wind through the 
+imperial palace grounds on feast days and to escort the sparkling pleasure ships that carry His 
+Imperial Splendor to the summer planets. I ... I am a failure. I am a failure at thirty-four, and I 
+shall stay a failure. Because, you see, I like to fight. 
+
+"That's why they sent me here. I'm too troublesome at court. I don't fit in with the etiquette. I 
+offend the dandies and the lord admirals, but I'm too good a leader of ships and men to be 
+disposed of shortly be being marooned in space. So Siwenna is the substitute. It's a frontier 
+world; a rebellious and a barren province. It is far away, far enough away to satisfy all. 
+
+"And so I moulder. There are no rebellions to stamp down, and the border viceroys do not 
+revolt lately, at least, not since His Imperial Majesty's late father of glorious memory made an 
+example of Mountel of Paramay." 
+
+"A strong Emperor," muttered Barr. 
+
+"Yes, and we need more of them. He is my master; remember that. These are his interests I 
+guard." 
+
+Barr shrugged unconcernedly. "How does all this relate to the subject?" 
+
+"I'll show you in two words. The magicians I've mentioned come from beyond-out there beyond 
+the frontier guards, where the stars are scattered thinly-" 
+
+"'Where the stars are scattered thinly,'" quoted Barr, '"And the cold of space seeps in."' 
+
+"Is that poetry?" Riose frowned. Verse seemed frivolous at the moment. "In any case, they're 
+from the Periphery - from the only quarter where I am free to fight for the glory of the Emperor." 
+
+"And thus serve His Imperial Majesty's interests and satisfy your own love of a good fight." 
+
+"Exactly. But I must know what I fight; and there you can help." 
+
+"How do you know?" 
+
+Riose nibbled casually at a cakelet. "Because for three years I have traced every rumor, every 
+myth, every breath concerning the magicians - and of all the library of information I have 
+gathered, only two isolated facts are unanimously agreed upon, and are hence certainly true. 
+The first is that the magicians come from the edge of the Galaxy opposite Siwenna; the second 
+is that your father once met a magician, alive and actual, and spoke with him." 
+
+
+
+The aged Siwennian stared unblinkingly, and Riose continued, "You had better tell me what 
+you know-" 
+
+Barr said thoughtfully, "It would be interesting to tell you certain things. It would be a 
+psychohistoric experiment of my own." 
+
+"What kind of experiment?" 
+
+"Psychohistoric." The old man had an unpleasant edge to his smile. Then, crisply, "You'd better 
+have more tea. I'm going to make a bit of a speech." 
+
+He leaned far back into the soft cushions of his chair. The wall-lights had softened to a 
+pink-ivory glow, which mellowed even the soldier's hard profile. 
+
+Ducem Barr began, "My own knowledge is the result of two accidents; the accidents of being 
+born the son of my father, and of being born the native of my country. It begins over forty years 
+ago, shortly after the great Massacre, when my father was a fugitive in the forests of the South, 
+while I was a gunner in the viceroy's personal fleet. This same viceroy, by the way, who had 
+ordered the Massacre, and who died such a cruel death thereafter." 
+
+Barr smiled grimly, and continued, "My father was a Patrician of the Empire and a Senator of 
+Siwenna. His name was Onum Barr." 
+
+Riose interrupted impatiently, "I know the circumstances of his exile very well. You needn't 
+elaborate upon it." 
+
+The Siwennian ignored him and proceeded without deflection. "During his exile a wanderer 
+came upon him; a merchant from the edge of the Galaxy; a young man who spoke a strange 
+accent, knew nothing of recent Imperial history, and who was protected by an individual 
+force-shield." 
+
+"An individual force-shield?" Riose glared. "You speak extravagance. What generator could be 
+powerful enough to condense a shield to the size of a single man? By the Great Galaxy, did he 
+carry five thousand myria-tons of nuclear power-source about with him on a little wheeled 
+gocart?" 
+
+Barr said quietly, "This is the magician of whom you hear whispers, stories and myths. The 
+name 'magician' is not lightly earned. He carried no generator large enough to be seen, but not 
+the heaviest weapon you can carry in your hand would have as much as creased the shield he 
+bore." 
+
+"Is this all the story there is? Are the magicians born of maunderings of an old man broken by 
+suffering and exile?" 
+
+"The story of the magicians antedated even my father, sir. And the proof is more concrete. After 
+leaving my father, this merchant that men call a magician visited a Tech-man at the city to 
+which my father had guided him, and there he left a shield-generator of the type he wore. That 
+generator was retrieved by my father after his return from exile upon the execution of the 
+bloody viceroy. It took a long time to find- 
+
+
+
+"The generator hangs on the wall behind you, sir. It does not work. It never worked but for the 
+first two days; but if you'll look at it, you will see that no one in the Empire ever designed it." 
+
+Bel Riose reached for the belt of linked metal that clung to the curved wall. It came away with a 
+little sucking noise as the tiny adhesion-field broke at the touch of his hand. The ellipsoid at the 
+apex of the belt held his attention. It was the size of a walnut. 
+
+"This-" he said. 
+
+"Was the generator," nodded Barr. "But it was the generator. The secret of its workings are 
+beyond discovery now. Sub-electronic investigations have shown it to be fused into a single 
+lump of metal and not all the most careful study of the diffraction patterns have sufficed to 
+distinguish the discrete parts that had existed before fusion." 
+
+"Then your 'proof still lingers on the frothy border of words backed by no concrete evidence." 
+
+Barr shrugged. "You have demanded my knowledge of me and threatened its extortion by 
+force. If you choose to meet it with skepticism, what is that to me? Do you want me to stop?" 
+
+"Go on!" said the general, harshly. 
+
+"I continued my father's researches after he died, and then the second accident I mentioned 
+came to help me, for Siwenna was well known to Hari Seldon." 
+
+"And who is Hari Seldon?" 
+
+"Hari Seldon was a scientist of the reign of the Emperor, Daluben IV. He was a psychohistorian; 
+the last and greatest of them all. He once visited Siwenna, when Siwenna was a great 
+commercial center, rich in the arts and sciences." 
+
+"Hmph," muttered Riose, sourly, "where is the stagnant planet that does not claim to have been 
+a land of overflowing wealth in older days?" 
+
+"The days I speak of are the days of two centuries ago, when the Emperor yet ruled to the 
+uttermost star; when Siwenna was a world of the interior and not a semi-barbarian border 
+province. In those days, Hari Seldon foresaw the decline of Imperial power and the eventual 
+barbarization of the entire Galaxy." 
+
+Riose laughed suddenly. "He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good scientist. I 
+suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful now than it has been in a 
+millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold bleakness of the border. Come to the inner 
+worlds some day; come to the warmth and the wealth of the center." 
+
+The old man shook his head somberly. "Circulation ceases first at the outer edges. It will take a 
+while yet for the decay to reach the heart. That is, the apparent, obvious-to-all decay, as distinct 
+from the inner decay that is an old story of some fifteen centuries." 
+
+"And so this Hari Seldon foresaw a Galaxy of uniform barbarism," said Riose, good-humoredly. 
+"And what then, eh?" 
+
+
+So he established two foundations at the extreme opposing ends of the Galaxy - Foundations 
+
+
+
+of the best, and the youngest, and the strongest, there to breed, grow, and develop. The worlds 
+on which they were placed were chosen carefully; as were the times and the surroundings. All 
+was arranged in such a way that the future as foreseen by the unalterable mathematics of 
+psychohistory would involve their early isolation from the main body of Imperial civilization and 
+their gradual growth into the germs of the Second Galactic Empire - cutting an inevitable 
+barbarian interregnum from thirty thousand years to scarcely a single thousand." 
+
+"And where did you find out all this? You seem to know it in detail." 
+
+"I don't and never did," said the patrician with composure. "It is the painful result of the piecing 
+together of certain evidence discovered by my father and a little more found by myself. The 
+basis is flimsy and the superstructure has been romanticized into existence to fill the huge 
+gaps. But I am convinced that it is essentially true." 
+
+"You are easily convinced." 
+
+"Am I? It has taken forty years of research." 
+
+"Hmph. Forty years! I could settle the question in forty days. In fact, I believe I ought to. It would 
+be - different." 
+
+"And how would you do that?" 
+
+"In the obvious way. I could become an explorer. I could find this Foundation you speak of and 
+observe with my eyes. You say there are two?" 
+
+"The records speak of two. Supporting evidence has been found only for one, which is 
+understandable, for the other is at the extreme end of the long axis of the Galaxy." 
+
+"Well, we'll visit the near one." The general was on his feet, adjusting his belt. 
+
+"You know where to go?" asked Barr. 
+
+"In a way. In the records of the last viceroy but one, he whom you murdered so effectively, 
+there are suspicious tales of outer barbarians. In fact, one of his daughters was given in 
+marriage to a barbarian prince. I'll find my way." 
+
+Fie held out a hand. "I thank you for your hospitality." 
+
+Ducem Barr touched the hand with his fingers and bowed formally. "Your visit was a great 
+honor." 
+
+"As for the information you gave me," continued Bel Riose, "I'll know how to thank you for that 
+when I return." 
+
+
+Ducem Barr followed his guest submissively to the outer door and said quietly to the 
+disappearing ground-car, "And if you return." 
+
+
+
+2. THE MAGICIANS 
+
+FOUNDATION ... With forty years of expansion behind them, the Foundation faced the menace 
+of Riose. The epic days of Hardin and Mallow had gone and with them were gone a certain 
+hard daring and resolution.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+There were four men in the room, and the room was set apart where none could approach. The 
+four men looked at each other quickly, then lengthily at the table that separated them. There 
+were four bottles on the table and as many full glasses, but no one had touched them. 
+
+And then the man nearest the door stretched out an arm and drummed a slow, padding rhythm 
+on the table. 
+
+He said, "Are you going to sit and wonder forever? Does it matter who speaks first?" 
+
+"Speak you first, then," said the big man directly opposite. "You're the one who should be the 
+most worried." 
+
+Sennett Forell chuckled with noiseless nonhumor. "Because you think I'm the richest. Well - Or 
+is it that you expect me to continue as I have started. I don't suppose you forget that it was my 
+own Trade Fleet that captured this scout ship of theirs." 
+
+"You had the largest fleet," said a third, "and the best pilots; which is another way of saying you 
+are the richest. It was a fearful risk; and would have been greater for one of us." 
+
+Sennett Forell chuckled again. "There is a certain facility in risk-taking that I inherit from my 
+father. After all, the essential point in running a risk is that the returns justify it. As to which, 
+witness the fact that the enemy ship was isolated and captured without loss to ourselves or 
+warning to the others." 
+
+That Forell was a distant collateral relative of the late great Hober Mallow was recognized 
+openly throughout the Foundation. That he was Mallow's illegitimate son was accepted quietly 
+to just as wide an extent. 
+
+The fourth man blinked his little eyes stealthily. Words crept out from between thin lips. "It is 
+nothing to sleep over in fat triumph, this grasping of little ships. Most likely, it will but anger that 
+young man further." 
+
+"You think he needs motives?" questioned Forell, scornfully. 
+
+"I do, and this might, or will, save him the vexation of having to manufacture one." The fourth 
+man spoke slowly, "Hober Mallow worked otherwise. And Salvor Hardin. They let others take 
+the uncertain paths of force, while they maneuvered surely and quietly." 
+
+Forell shrugged. "This ship has proved its value. Motives are cheap and we have sold this one 
+at a profit." There was the satisfaction of the born Trader in that. He continued, "The young 
+man is of the old Empire." 
+
+"We knew that," said the second man, the big one, with rumbling discontent. 
+
+
+
+"We suspected that," corrected Forell, softly. "If a man comes with ships and wealth, with 
+overtures of friendliness, and with offers of trade, it is only sensible to refrain from antagonizing 
+him, until we are certain that the profitable mask is not a face after all. But now-" 
+
+There was a faint whining edge to the third man's voice as he spoke. "We might have been 
+even more careful. We might have found out first. We might have found out before allowing him 
+to leave. It would have been the truest wisdom." 
+
+"That has been discussed and disposed of," said Forell. Fie waved the subject aside with a 
+flatly final gesture. 
+
+"The government is soft," complained the third man. "The mayor is an idiot." 
+
+The fourth man looked at the other three in turn and removed the stub of a cigar from his 
+mouth. Fie dropped it casually into the slot at his right where it disappeared with a silent flash of 
+disruption. 
+
+Fie said sarcastically, "I trust the gentleman who last spoke is speaking through habit only. We 
+can afford to remember here that we are the government." 
+
+There was a murmur of agreement. 
+
+The fourth man's little eyes were on the table. "Then let us leave government policy alone. This 
+young man ... this stranger might have been a possible customer. There have been cases. All 
+three of you tried to butter him into an advance contract. We have an agreement - a 
+gentleman's agreement - against it, but you tried." 
+
+"So did you," growled the second man. 
+
+I know it," said the fourth, calmly. 
+
+"Then let's forget what we should have done earlier," interrupted Forell impatiently, "and 
+continue with what we should do now. In any case, what if we had imprisoned him, or killed 
+him, what then? We are not certain of his intentions even yet, and at the worst, we could not 
+destroy an Empire by snipping short one man's life. There might be navies upon navies waiting 
+just the other side of his nonreturn." 
+
+"Exactly," approved the fourth man. "Now what did you get out of your captured ship? I'm too 
+old for all this talking." 
+
+"It can be told in a few enough words," said Forell, grimly. "Fle's an Imperial general or 
+whatever rank corresponds to that over there. Fle's a young man who has proved his military 
+brilliance - so I am told - and who is the idol of his men. Quite a romantic career. The stories 
+they tell of him are no doubt half lies, but even so it makes him out to be a type of wonder 
+man." 
+
+"Who are the 'they'?" demanded the second man. 
+
+"The crew of the captured ship. Look, I have all their statements recorded on micro-film, which I 
+have in a secure place. Later on, if you wish, you can see them. You can talk to the men 
+yourselves, if you think it necessary. I've told you the essentials." 
+
+
+
+"How did you get it out of them? How do you know they're telling the truth?" 
+
+Forell frowned. "I wasn't gentle, good sir. I knocked them about, drugged them crazy, and used 
+the Probe unmercifully. They talked. You can believe them." 
+
+"In the old days," said the third man, with sudden irrelevance, "they would have used pure 
+psychology. Painless, you know, but very sure. No chance of deceit." 
+
+"Well, there is a good deal they had in the old days," said Forell, dryly. "These are the new 
+days." 
+
+"But," said the fourth man, "what did he want here, this general, this romantic wonder-man?" 
+There was a dogged, weary persistence about him. 
+
+Forell glanced at him sharply. "You think he confides the details of state policy to his crew? 
+They didn't know. There was nothing to get out of them in that respect, and I tried, Galaxy 
+knows." 
+
+"Which leaves us-" 
+
+"To draw our own conclusions, obviously." Forell's fingers were tapping quietly again. "The 
+young man is a military leader of the Empire, yet he played the pretense of being a minor 
+princeling of some scattered stars in an odd comer of the Periphery. That alone would assure 
+us that his real motives are such as it would not benefit him to have us know. Combine the 
+nature of his profession with the fact that the Empire has already subsidized one attack upon us 
+in my father's time, and the possibilities become ominous. That first attack failed. I doubt that 
+the Empire owes us love for that." 
+
+"There is nothing in your findings," questioned the fourth man guardedly, "that makes for 
+certainty? You are withholding nothing?" 
+
+Forell answered levelly, "I can't withhold anything. From here on there can be no question of 
+business rivalry. Unity is forced upon us." 
+
+"Patriotism?" There was a sneer in the third man's thin voice. 
+
+"Patriotism be damned," said Forell quietly. "Do you think I give two puffs of nuclear emanation 
+for the future Second Empire? Do you think I'd risk a single Trade mission to smooth its path? 
+But - do you suppose Imperial conquest will help my business or yours? If the Empire wins, 
+there will be a sufficient number of yearning carrion crows to crave the rewards of battle." 
+
+"And we're the rewards," added the fourth man, dryly. 
+
+The second man broke his silence suddenly, and shifted his bulk angrily, so that the chair 
+creaked under him. "But why talk of that. The Empire can't win, can it? There is Seldon's 
+assurance that we will form the Second Empire in the end. This is only another crisis. There 
+have been three before this." 
+
+"Only another crisis, yes!" Forell brooded. "But - in the case of the first two, we had Salvor 
+Hardin to guide us; in the third, there was Hober Mallow. Whom have we now?" 
+
+
+
+He looked at the others somberly and continued, "Seldon's rules of psychohistory on which it is 
+so comforting to rely probably have as one of the contributing variables, a certain normal 
+initiative on the part of the people of the Foundation themselves. Seldon's laws help those who 
+help themselves." 
+
+"The times make the man," said the third man. "There's another proverb for you." 
+
+"You can't count on that, not with absolute assurance," grunted Forell. "Now the way it seems 
+to me is this. If this is the fourth crisis, then Seldon has foreseen it. If he has, then it can be 
+beaten, and there should be a way of doing it. 
+
+"Now The Empire is stronger than we; it always has been. But this is the first time we are in 
+danger of its direct attack, so that strength becomes terribly menacing. If it can be beaten, it 
+must be once again as in all past crises by a method other than pure force. We must find the 
+weak side of our enemy and attack it there." 
+
+"And what is that weak side?" asked the fourth man. "Do you intend advancing a theory?" 
+
+"No. That is the point I'm leading up to. Our great leaders of the past always saw the weak 
+points of their enemies and aimed at that. But now-" 
+
+There was a helplessness in his voice, and for a moment none volunteered a comment. 
+
+Then the fourth man said, "We need spies." 
+
+Forell turned to him eagerly. "Right! I don't know when the Empire will attack. There may be 
+time." 
+
+"Hober Mallow himself entered the Imperial dominions," suggested the second man. 
+
+But Forell shook his head. "Nothing so direct. None of us are precisely youthful; and all of us 
+are rusty with red-tape and administrative detail. We need young men that are in the field 
+now-" 
+
+"The independent traders?" asked the fourth man. 
+
+And Forell nodded his, head and whispered, "If there is yet time-" 
+
+
+3. THE DEAD HAND 
+
+
+Bel Riose interrupted his annoyed stridings to look up hopefully when his aide entered. "Any 
+word of the Starlet ?" 
+
+"None. The scouting party has quartered space, but the instruments have detected nothing. 
+Commander Yume has reported that the Fleet is ready for an immediate attack in retaliation." 
+
+The general shook his head. "No, not for a patrol ship. Not yet. Tell him to double - Wait! I'll 
+write out the message. Have it coded and transmitted by tight beam." 
+
+He wrote as he talked and thrust the paper at the waiting officer. "Has the Siwennian arrived 
+
+
+
+yet?" 
+
+"Not yet." 
+
+"Well, see to it that he is brought in here as soon as he does arrive." 
+
+The aide saluted crisply and left. Riose resumed his caged stride. 
+
+When the door opened a second time, it was Ducem Barr that stood on the threshold. Slowly, 
+in the footsteps of the ushering aide, he stepped into the garish room whose ceiling was an 
+ornamented holographic model of the Galaxy, and in the center of which Bel Riose stood in 
+field uniform. 
+
+"Patrician, good day!" The general pushed forward a chair with his foot and gestured the aide 
+away with a "That door is to stay closed till I open it." 
+
+He stood before the Siwennian, legs apart, hand grasping wrist behind his back, balancing 
+himself slowly, thoughtfully, on the balls of his feet. 
+
+Then, harshly, "Patrician, are you a loyal subject of the Emperor?" 
+
+Barr, who had maintained an indifferent silence till then, wrinkled a noncommittal brow. "I have 
+no cause to love Imperial rule." 
+
+"Which is a long way from saying that you would be a traitor." 
+
+"True. But the mere act of not being a traitor is also a long way from agreeing to be an active 
+helper." 
+
+"Ordinarily also true. But to refuse your help at this point," said Riose, deliberately, "will be 
+considered treason and treated as such." 
+
+Barr's eyebrows drew together. "Save your verbal cudgels for your subordinates. A simple 
+statement of your needs and wants will suffice me here." 
+
+Riose sat down and crossed his legs. "Barr, we had an earlier discussion half a year ago." 
+"About your magicians?" 
+
+"Yes. You remember what I said I would do." 
+
+Barr nodded. His arms rested limply in his lap. "You were going to visit them in their haunts, 
+and you've been away these four months. Did you find them?" 
+
+"Find them? That I did," cried Riose. His lips were stiff as he spoke. It seemed to require effort 
+to refrain from grinding molars. "Patrician, they are not magicians; they are devils. It is as far 
+from belief as the outer galaxies from here. Conceive it! It is a world the size of a handkerchief, 
+of a fingernail; with resources so petty, power so minute, a population so microscopic as would 
+never suffice the most backward worlds of the dusty prefects of the Dark Stars. Yet with that, a 
+people so proud and ambitious as to dream quietly and methodically of Galactic rule. 
+
+"Why, they are so sure of themselves that they do not even hurry. They move slowly, 
+
+
+
+phlegmatically; they speak of necessary centuries. They swallow worlds at leisure; creep 
+through systems with dawdling complacence. 
+
+"And they succeed. There is no one to stop them. They have built up a filthy trading community 
+that curls its tentacles about the systems further than their toy ships dare reach. For parsecs, 
+their Traders - which is what their agents call themselves - penetrate." 
+
+Ducem Barr interrupted the angry flow. "How much of this information is definite; and how much 
+is simply fury?" 
+
+The soldier caught his breath and grew calmer. "My fury does not blind me. I tell you I was in 
+worlds nearer to Siwenna than to the Foundation, where the Empire was a myth of the 
+distance, and where Traders were living truths. We ourselves were mistaken for Traders." 
+
+"The Foundation itself told you they aimed at Galactic dominion?" 
+
+"Told me!" Riose was violent again. "It was not a matter of telling me. The officials said nothing. 
+They spoke business exclusively. But I spoke to ordinary men. I absorbed the ideas of the 
+common folk; their 'manifest destiny,' their calm acceptance of a great future. It is a thing that 
+can't be hidden; a universal optimism they don't even try to hide." 
+
+The Siwennian openly displayed a certain quiet satisfaction. "You will notice that so far it would 
+seem to bear out quite accurately my reconstruction of events from the paltry data on the 
+subject that I have gathered." 
+
+"It is no doubt," replied Riose with vexed sarcasm, "a tribute to your analytical powers. It is also 
+a hearty and bumptious commentary on the growing danger to the domains of His Imperial 
+Majesty." 
+
+Barr shrugged his unconcern, and Riose leaned forward suddenly, to seize the old man's 
+shoulders and stare with curious gentleness into his eyes. 
+
+He said, "Now, patrician, none of that. I have no desire to be barbaric. For my part, the legacy 
+of Siwennian hostility to the Imperium is an odious burden, and one which I would do 
+everything in my power to wipe out. But my province is the military and interference in civil 
+affairs is impossible. It would bring about my recall and ruin my usefulness at once. You see 
+that? I know you see that. Between yourself and myself then, let the atrocity of forty years ago 
+be repaid by your vengeance upon its author and so forgotten. I need your help. I frankly admit 
+it." 
+
+There was a world of urgency in the young man's voice, but Ducem Barr's head shook gently 
+and deliberately in a negative gesture. 
+
+Riose said pleadingly, "You don't understand, patrician, and I doubt my ability to make you. I 
+can't argue on your ground. You're the scholar, not I. But this I can tell you. Whatever you think 
+of the Empire, you will admit its great services. Its armed forces have committed isolated 
+crimes, but in the main they have been a force for peace and civilization. It was the Imperial 
+navy that created the Pax Imperium that ruled over all the Galaxy for thousands of years. 
+Contrast the millennia of peace under the Sun-and-Spaceship of the Empire with the millennia 
+of interstellar anarchy that preceded it. Consider the wars and devastations of those old days 
+
+
+
+and tell me if, with all its faults, the Empire is not worth preserving. 
+
+"Consider," he drove on forcefully, "to what the outer fringe of the Galaxy is reduced in these 
+days of their breakaway and independence, and ask yourself if for the sake of a petty revenge 
+you would reduce Siwenna from its position as a province under the protection of a mighty 
+Navy to a barbarian world in a barbarian Galaxy, all immersed in its fragmentary independence 
+and its common degradation and misery." 
+
+"Is it so bad - so soon?" murmured the Siwennian. 
+
+"No," admitted Riose. "We would be safe ourselves no doubt, were our lifetimes quadrupled. 
+
+But it is for the Empire I fight; that, and a military tradition which is something for myself alone, 
+and which I can not transfer to you. It is a military tradition built on the Imperial institution which 
+I serve." 
+
+"You are getting mystical, and I always find it difficult to penetrate another person's mysticism." 
+"No matter. You understand the danger of this Foundation." 
+
+"It was I who pointed out what you call the danger before ever you headed outward from 
+Siwenna." 
+
+"Then you realize that it must be stopped in embryo or perhaps not at all. You have known of 
+this Foundation before anyone had heard of it. You know more about it than anyone else in the 
+Empire. You probably know how it might best be attacked; and you can probably forewarn me 
+of its countermeasures. Come, let us be friends." 
+
+Ducem Barr rose. Fie said flatly, "Such help as I could give you means nothing. So I will make 
+you free of it in the face of your strenuous demand." 
+
+"I will be the judge of its meaning." 
+
+"No, I am serious. Not all the might of the Empire could avail to crush this pygmy world." 
+
+"Why not?" Bel Riose's eyes glistened fiercely. "No, stay where you are. I'll tell you when you 
+may leave. Why not? If you think I underestimate this enemy I have discovered, you are wrong. 
+Patrician," he spoke reluctantly, "I lost a ship on my return. I have no proof that it fell into the 
+hands of the Foundation; but it has not been located since and were it merely an accident, its 
+dead hulk should, certainly have been found along the route we took. It is not an important loss 
+- less than the tenth part of a fleabite, but it may mean that the Foundation has already opened 
+hostilities. Such eagerness and such disregard for consequences might mean secret forces of 
+which I know nothing. Can you help me then by answering a specific question? What is their 
+military power?" 
+
+"I haven't any notion." 
+
+"Then explain yourself on your own terms. Why do you say the Empire can not defeat this small 
+enemy?" 
+
+The Siwennian seated himself once more and looked away from Riose's fixed glare. Fie spoke 
+heavily, "Because I have faith in the principles of psychohistory. It is a strange science. It 
+
+
+
+reached mathematical maturity with one man, Hari Seldon, and died with him, for no man since 
+has been capable of manipulating its intricacies. But in that short period, it proved itself the 
+most powerful instrument ever invented for the study of humanity. Without pretending to predict 
+the actions of individual humans, it formulated definite laws capable of mathematical analysis 
+and extrapolation to govern and predict the mass action of human groups." 
+
+"So-" 
+
+"It was that psychohistory which Seldon and the group he worked with applied in full force to 
+the establishment of the Foundation. The place, time, and conditions all conspire 
+mathematically and so, inevitably, to the development of a Second Galactic Empire." 
+
+Riose's voice trembled with indignation. "You mean that this art of his predicts that I would 
+attack the Foundation and lose such and such a battle for such and such a reason? You are 
+trying to say that I am a silly robot following a predetermined course into destruction." 
+
+"No," replied the old patrician, sharply. "I have already said that the science had nothing to do 
+with individual actions. It is the vaster background that has been foreseen." 
+
+"Then we stand clasped tightly in the forcing hand of the Goddess of Historical Necessity." 
+
+"Of Psyc/7ohistorical Necessity," prompted Barr, softly. 
+
+"And if I exercise my prerogative of freewill? If I choose to attack next year, or not to attack at 
+all? Flow pliable is the Goddess? Flow resourceful?" 
+
+Barr shrugged. "Attack now or never; with a single ship, or all the force in the Empire; by 
+military force or economic pressure; by candid declaration of war or by treacherous ambush. 
+
+Do whatever you wish in your fullest exercise of freewill. You will still lose." 
+
+"Because of Hari Seldon's dead hand?" 
+
+"Because of the dead hand of the mathematics of human behavior that can neither be stopped, 
+swerved, nor delayed." 
+
+The two faced each other in deadlock, until the general stepped back. 
+
+Fie said simply, "I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will." 
+
+
+4. THE EMPEROR 
+
+CLEON II commonly called "The Great. " The last strong Emperor of the First Empire, he is 
+important for the political and artistic renaissance that took place during his long reign. He is 
+best known to romance, however, for his connection with Bel Riose, and to the common man, 
+he is simply "Riose's Emperor. " It is important not to allow events of the last year of his reign to 
+overshadow forty years of... 
+
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+
+
+Cleon II was Lord of the Universe. Cleon II also suffered from a painful and undiagnosed 
+ailment. By the queer twists of human affairs, the two statements are not mutually exclusive, 
+nor even particularly incongruous. There have been a wearisomely large number of precedents 
+in history. 
+
+But Cleon II cared nothing for such precedents. To meditate upon a long list of similar cases 
+would not ameliorate personal suffering an electron's worth. It soothed him as little to think that 
+where his great-grandfather had been the pirate ruler of a dust-speck planet, he himself slept in 
+the pleasure palace of Ammenetik the Great, as heir of a line of Galactic rulers stretching 
+backward into a tenuous past. It was at present no source of comfort to him that the efforts of 
+his father had cleansed the realm of its leprous patches of rebellion and restored it to the peace 
+and unity it had enjoyed under Stanel VI; that, as a consequence, in the twenty-five years of his 
+reign, not one cloud of revolt had misted his burnished glory. 
+
+The Emperor of the Galaxy and the Lord of All whimpered as he lolled his head backward into 
+the invigorating plane of force about his pillows. It yielded in a softness that did not touch, and 
+at the pleasant tingle, Cleon relaxed a bit. He sat up with difficulty and stared morosely at the 
+distant walls of the grand chamber. It was a bad room to be alone in. It was too big. All the 
+rooms were too big. 
+
+But better to be alone during these crippling bouts than to endure the prinking of the courtiers, 
+their lavish sympathy, their soft, condescending dullness. Better to be alone than to watch 
+those insipid masks behind which spun the tortuous speculations on the chances of death and 
+the fortunes of the succession. 
+
+His thoughts hurried him. There were his three sons; three straight-backed youths full of 
+promise and virtue. Where did they disappear on these bad days? Waiting, no doubt. Each 
+watching the other; and all watching him. 
+
+He stirred uneasily. And now Brodrig craved audience. The low-born, faithful Brodrig; faithful 
+because he was hated with a unanimous and cordial hatred that was the only point of 
+agreement between the dozen cliques that divided his court. 
+
+Brodrig - the faithful favorite, who had to be faithful, since unless he owned the fastest 
+speed-ship in the Galaxy and took to it the day of the Emperor's death, it would be the 
+radiation-chamber the day after. 
+
+Cleon II touched the smooth knob on the arm of his great divan, and the huge door at the end 
+of the room dissolved to transparency. 
+
+Brodrig advanced along the crimson carpet, and knelt to kiss the Emperor's limp hand. 
+
+"Your health, sire?" asked the Privy Secretary in a low tone of becoming anxiety. 
+
+"I live," snapped the Emperor with exasperation, "if you can call it life where every scoundrel 
+who can read a book of medicine uses me as a blank and receptive field for his feeble 
+experiments. If there is a conceivable remedy, chemical, physical, or nuclear, which has not yet 
+been tried, why then, some learned babbler from the far comers of the realm will arrive 
+tomorrow to try it. And still another newly-discovered book, or forgery morelike, will be used as 
+
+
+
+authority. 
+
+"By my father's memory," he rumbled savagely, "it seems there is not a biped extant who can 
+study a disease before his eyes with those same eyes. There is not one who can count a 
+pulse-beat without a book of the ancients before him. I'm sick and they call it 'unknown.' The 
+fools! If in the course of millennia, human bodies learn new methods of falling askew, it remains 
+uncovered by the studies of the ancients and uncurable forevermore. The ancients should be 
+alive now, or I then." 
+
+The Emperor ran down to a low-breathed curse while Brodrig waited dutifully. Cleon II said 
+peevishly, "How many are waiting outside?" 
+
+He jerked his head in the direction of the door. 
+
+Brodrig said patiently, "The Great Hall holds the usual number." 
+
+"Well, let them wait. State matters occupy me. Have the Captain of the Guard announce it. Or 
+wait, forget the state matters. Just have it announced I hold no audience, and let the Captain of 
+the Guard look doleful. The jackals among them may betray themselves." The Emperor 
+sneered nastily. 
+
+"There is a rumor, sire," said Brodrig, smoothly, "that it is your heart that troubles you." 
+
+The Emperor's smile was little removed from the previous sneer. "It will hurt others more than 
+myself if any act prematurely on that rumor. But what is it you want. Let's have this over." 
+
+Brodrig rose from his kneeling posture at a gesture of permission and said, "It concerns 
+General Bel Riose, the Military Governor of Siwenna." 
+
+"Riose?" Cleon II frowned heavily. "I don't place him. Wait, is he the one who sent that quixotic 
+message some months back? Yes, I remember. He panted for permission to enter a career of 
+conquest for the glory of the Empire and Emperor." 
+
+"Exactly, sire." 
+
+The Emperor laughed shortly. "Did you think I had such generals left me, Brodrig? He seems to 
+be a curious atavism. What was the answer? I believe you took care of it." 
+
+"I did, sire. He was instructed to forward additional information and to take no steps involving 
+naval action without further orders from the Imperium." 
+
+"Hmp. Safe enough. Who is this Riose? Was he ever at court?" 
+
+Brodrig nodded and his mouth twisted ever so little. "He began his career as a cadet in the 
+Guards ten years back. He had part in that affair off the Lemul Cluster." 
+
+"The Lemul Cluster? You know, my memory isn't quite - Was that the time a young soldier 
+saved two ships of the line from a head-on collision by ... uh ... something or other?" He waved 
+a hand impatiently. "I don't remember the details. It was something heroic." 
+
+"Riose was that soldier. He received a promotion for it," Brodrig said dryly, "and an appointment 
+
+
+
+to field duty as captain of a ship." 
+
+"And now Military Governor of a border system and still young. Capable man, Brodrig!" 
+
+"Unsafe, sire. He lives in the past. He is a dreamer of ancient times, or rather, of the myths of 
+what ancient times used to be. Such men are harmless in themselves, but their queer lack of 
+realism makes them fools for others." He added, "His men, I understand, are completely under 
+his control. He is one of your popular generals." 
+
+"Is he?" the Emperor mused. "Well, come, Brodrig, I would not wish to be served entirely by 
+incompetents. They certainly set no enviable standard for faithfulness themselves." 
+
+"An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched." 
+
+"You among them, Brodrig?" Cleon II laughed and then grimaced with pain. "Well, then, you 
+may forget the lecture for the while. What new development is there in the matter of this young 
+conqueror? I hope you haven't come merely to reminisce." 
+
+"Another message, sire, has been received from General Riose." 
+
+"Oh? And to what effect?" 
+
+"He has spied out the land of these barbarians and advocates an expedition in force. His 
+arguments are long and fairly tedious. It is not worth annoying Your Imperial Majesty with it at 
+present, during your indisposition. Particularly since it will be discussed at length during the 
+session of the Council of Lords." He glanced sidewise at the Emperor. 
+
+Cleon II frowned. "The Lords? Is it a question for them, Brodrig? It will mean further demands 
+for a broader interpretation of the Charter. It always comes to that." 
+
+"It can't be avoided, sire. It might have been better if your august father could have beaten 
+down the last rebellion without granting the Charter. But since it is here, we must endure it for 
+the while." 
+
+"You're right, I suppose. Then the Lords it must be. But why all this solemnity, man? It is, after 
+all, a minor point. Success on a remote border with limited troops is scarcely a state affair." 
+
+Brodrig smiled narrowly. He said coolly, "It is an affair of a romantic idiot; but even a romantic 
+idiot can be a deadly weapon when an unromantic rebel uses him as a tool. Sire, the man was 
+popular here and is popular there. He is young. If he annexes a vagrant barbarian planet or 
+two, he will become a conqueror. Now a young conqueror who has proven his ability to rouse 
+the enthusiasm of pilots, miners, tradesmen and suchlike rabble is dangerous at any time. Even 
+if he lacked the desire to do to you as your august father did to the usurper, Ricker, then one of 
+our loyal Lords of the Domain may decide to use him as his weapon." 
+
+Cleon II moved an arm hastily and stiffened with pain. Slowly he relaxed, but his smile was 
+weak, and his voice a whisper. "You are a valuable subject, Brodrig. You always suspect far 
+more than is necessary, and I have but to take half your suggested precautions to be utterly 
+safe. We'll put it up to the Lords. We shall see what they say and take our measure accordingly. 
+The young man, I suppose, has made no hostile moves yet." 
+
+
+
+"He report none. But already he asks for reinforcements." 
+
+"Reinforcements!" The Emperor's eyes narrowed with wonder. "What force has he?" 
+
+"Ten ships of the line, sire, with a full complement of auxiliary vessels. Two of the ships are 
+equipped with motors salvaged from the old Grand Fleet, and one has a battery of power 
+artillery from the same source. The other ships are new ones of the last fifty years, but are 
+serviceable, nevertheless." 
+
+"Ten ships would seem adequate for any reasonable undertaking. Why, with less than ten ships 
+my father won his first victories against the usurper. Who are these barbarians he's fighting?" 
+
+The Privy Secretary raised a pair of supercilious eyebrows. "He refers to them as 'the 
+Foundation.'" 
+
+"The Foundation? What is it?" 
+
+"There is no record of it, sire. I have searched the archives carefully. The area of the Galaxy 
+indicated falls within the ancient province of Anacreon, which two centuries since gave itself up 
+to brigandage, barbarism, and anarchy. There is no planet known as Foundation in the 
+province, however. There was a vague reference to a group of scientists sent to that province 
+just before its separation from our protection. They were to prepare an Encyclopedia." He 
+smiled thinly. "I believe they called it the Encyclopedia Foundation." 
+
+"Well," the Emperor considered it somberly, "that seems a tenuous connection to advance." 
+
+"I'm not advancing it, sire. No word was ever received from that expedition after the growth of 
+anarchy in that region. If their descendants still live and retain their name, then they have 
+reverted to barbarism most certainly." 
+
+"And so he wants reinforcements." The Emperor bent a fierce glance at his secretary. "This is 
+most peculiar; to propose to fight savages with ten ships and to ask for more before a blow is 
+struck. And yet I begin to remember this Riose; he was a handsome boy of loyal family. 
+
+Brodrig, there are complications in this that I don't penetrate. There may be more importance in 
+it than would seem." 
+
+His fingers played idly with the gleaming sheet that covered his stiffened legs. He said, "I need 
+a man out there; one with eyes, brains and loyalty. Brodrig-" 
+
+The secretary bent a submissive head. "And the ships, sire?" 
+
+"Not yet!" The Emperor moaned softly as he shifted his position in gentle stages. He pointed a 
+feeble finger, "Not till we know more. Convene the Council of Lords for this day week. It will be 
+a good opportunity for the new appropriation as well. I'll put that through or lives will end." 
+
+He leaned his aching head into the soothing tingle of the force-field pillow, "Go now, Brodrig, 
+and send in the doctor. He's the worst bumbler of the lot." 
+
+
+
+5. THE WAR BEGINS 
+
+From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the 
+black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the 
+vagrant stars at the Galaxy's rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation 
+influence. 
+
+Worlds isolated in their new barbarism of two centuries felt the sensation once again of Imperial 
+overlords upon their soil. Allegiance was sworn in the face of the massive artillery covering 
+capital cities. 
+
+Garrisons were left; garrisons of men in Imperial uniform with the Spaceship-and-Sun insignia 
+upon their shoulders. The old men took notice and remembered once again the forgotten tales 
+of their grandfathers' fathers of the times when the universe was big, and rich, and peaceful 
+and that same Spaceship-and-Sun ruled all. 
+
+Then the great ships passed on to weave their line of forward bases further around the 
+Foundation. And as each world was knotted into its proper place in the fabric, the report went 
+back to Bel Riose at the General Fleadquarters he had established on the rocky barrenness of 
+a wandering sunless planet. 
+
+Now Riose relaxed and smiled grimly at Ducem Barr. "Well, what do you think, patrician?" 
+
+"I? Of what value are my thoughts? I am not a military man." He took in with one wearily 
+distasteful glance the crowded disorder of the rock-bound room which had been carved out of 
+the wall of a cavern of artificial air, light, and heat which marked the single bubble of life in the 
+vastness of a bleak world. 
+
+"For the help I could give you," he muttered, "or would want to give you, you might return me to 
+Siwenna." 
+
+"Not yet. Not yet." The general turned his chair to the comer which held the huge, 
+brilliantly-transparent sphere that mapped the old Imperial prefect of Anacreon and its 
+neighboring sectors. "Later, when this is over, you will go back to your books and to more. I'll 
+see to it that the estates of your family are restored to you and to your children for the rest of 
+time." 
+
+"Thank you," said Barr, with faint irony, "but I lack your faith in the happy outcome of all this." 
+
+Riose laughed harshly, "Don't start your prophetic croakings again. This map speaks louder 
+than all your woeful theories." He caressed its curved invisible outline gently. "Can you read a 
+map in radial projection? You can? Well, here, see for yourself. The stars in gold represent the 
+Imperial territories. The red stars are those in subjection to the Foundation and the pink are 
+those which are probably within the economic sphere of influence. Now watch-" 
+
+Riose's hand covered a rounded knob, and slowly an area of hard, white pinpoints changed into 
+a deepening blue. Like an inverted cup they folded about the red and the pink. 
+
+"Those blue stars have been taken over by my forces," said Riose with quiet satisfaction, "and 
+
+
+
+they still advance. No opposition has appeared anywhere. The barbarians are quiet. And 
+particularly, no opposition has come from Foundation forces. They sleep peacefully and well." 
+
+"You spread your force thinly, don't you?" asked Barr. 
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Riose, "despite appearances, I don't. The key points which I garrison 
+and fortify are relatively few, but they are carefully chosen. The result is that the force 
+expended is small, but the strategic result great. There are many advantages, more than would 
+ever appear to anyone who hasn't made a careful study of spatial tactics, but it is apparent to 
+anyone, for instance, that I can base an attack from any point in an inclosing sphere, and that 
+when I am finished it will be impossible for the Foundation to attack at flank or rear. I shall have 
+no flank or rear with respect to them. 
+
+"This strategy of the Previous Enclosure has been tried before, notably in the campaigns of 
+Loris VI, some two thousand years ago, but always imperfectly; always with the knowledge and 
+attempted interference of the enemy. This is different." 
+
+"The ideal textbook case?" Barr's voice was languid and indifferent. 
+
+Riose was impatient, "You still think my forces will fail?" 
+
+"They must." 
+
+"You understand that there is no case in military history where an Enclosure has been 
+completed that the attacking forces have not eventually won, except where an outside Navy 
+exists in sufficient force to break the Enclosure." 
+
+"If you say so." 
+
+"And you still adhere to your faith." 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+Riose shrugged. "Then do so." 
+
+Barr allowed the angry silence to continue for a moment, then asked quietly, "Flave you 
+received an answer from the Emperor?" 
+
+Riose removed a cigarette from a wall container behind his head, placed a filter tip between his 
+lips and puffed it aflame carefully. Fie said, "You mean my request for reinforcements? It came, 
+but that's all. Just the answer." 
+
+"No ships." 
+
+"None. I half-expected that. Frankly, patrician, I should never have allowed myself to be 
+stampeded by your theories into requesting them in the first place. It puts me in a false light." 
+
+"Does it?" 
+
+"Definitely. Ships are at a premium. The civil wars of the last two centuries have smashed up 
+more than half of the Grand Fleet and what's left is in pretty shaky condition. You know it isn't 
+as if the ships we build these days are worth anything. I don't think there's a man in the Galaxy 
+
+
+
+today who can build a first-rate hypernuclear motor." 
+
+"I knew that," said the Siwennian. His eyes were thoughtful and introspective. "I didn't know that 
+yoi/knew it. So his Imperial Majesty can spare no ships. Psychohistory could have predicted 
+that; in fact, it probably did. I should say that Hari Seldon's dead hand wins the opening round." 
+
+Riose answered sharply, "I have enough ships as it is. Your Seldon wins nothing. Should the 
+situation turn more serious, then more ships will be available. As yet, the Emperor does not 
+know all the story." 
+
+"Indeed? What haven't you told him?" 
+
+"Obviously - your theories." Riose looked sardonic. "The story is, with all respect to you, 
+inherently improbable. If developments warrant; if events supply me with proof, then, but only 
+then, would I make out the case of mortal danger. 
+
+"And in addition," Riose drove on, casually, "the story, unbolstered by fact, has a flavor of lese 
+majeste that could scarcely be pleasant to His Imperial Majesty." 
+
+The old patrician smiled. "You mean that telling him his august throne is in danger of 
+subversion by a parcel of ragged barbarians from the ends of the universe is not a warning to 
+be believed or appreciated. Then you expect nothing from him." 
+
+"Unless you count a special envoy as something." 
+
+"And why a special envoy?" 
+
+"It's an old custom. A direct representative of the crown is present on every military campaign 
+which is under government auspices." 
+
+"Really? Why?" 
+
+"It's a method of preserving the symbol of personal Imperial leadership in all campaigns. It's 
+gained a secondary function of insuring the fidelity of generals. It doesn't always succeed in 
+that respect." 
+
+"You'll find that inconvenient, general. Extraneous authority, I mean." 
+
+"I don't doubt that," Riose reddened faintly, "but it can't be helped-" 
+
+The receiver at the general's hand glowed warmly, and with an unobtrusive jar, the cylindered 
+communication popped into its slot. Riose unrolled it, "Good! This is it!" 
+
+Ducem Barr raised a mildly questioning eyebrow. 
+
+Riose said, "You know we've captured one of these Trader people. Alive - and with his ship 
+intact." 
+
+"I've heard talk of it." 
+
+"Well, they've just brought him in, and we'll have him here in a minute. You keep your seat, 
+patrician. I want you here when I'm questioning him. It's why I asked you here today in the first 
+
+
+
+place. You may understand him where I might miss important points." 
+
+The door signal sounded and a touch of the general's toe swung the door wide. The man who 
+stood on the threshold was tall and bearded, wore a short coat of a soft, leathery plastic, with 
+an attached hood shoved back on his neck. His hands were free, and if he noticed the men 
+about him were armed, he did not trouble to indicate it. 
+
+He stepped in casually, and looked about with calculating eyes. He favored the general with a 
+rudimentary wave of the hand and a half nod. 
+
+"Your name?" demanded Riose, crisply. 
+
+"Lathan Devers." The trader hooked his thumbs into his wide and gaudy belt. "Are you the boss 
+here?" 
+
+"You are a trader of the Foundation?" 
+
+"That's right. Listen, if you're the boss, you'd better tell your hired men here to lay off my cargo." 
+
+The general raised his head and regarded the prisoner coldly. "Answer questions. Do not 
+volunteer orders." 
+
+"All right. I'm agreeable. But one of your boys blasted a two-foot hole in his chest already, by 
+sticking his fingers where he wasn't supposed to." 
+
+Riose shifted his gaze to the lieutenant in charge. "Is this man telling the truth? Your report, 
+Vrank, had it that no lives were lost." 
+
+"None were, sir," the lieutenant spoke stiffly, apprehensively, "at the time. There was later some 
+disposition to search the ship, there having arisen a rumor that a woman was aboard. Instead, 
+sir, many instruments of unknown nature were located, instruments which the prisoner claims 
+to be his stock in trade. One of them flashed on handling, and the soldier holding it died." 
+
+The general turned back to the trader. "Does your ship carry nuclear explosives?" 
+
+"Galaxy, no. What for? That fool grabbed a nuclear puncher, wrong end forward and set at 
+maximum dispersion. You're not supposed to do that. Might as well point a neut-gun at your 
+head. I'd have stopped him, if five men weren't sitting on my chest." 
+
+Riose gestured at the waiting guard, "You go. The captured ship is to he sealed against all 
+intrusion. Sit down, Devers." 
+
+The trader did so, in the spot indicated, and withstood stolidly the hard scrutiny of the Imperial 
+general and the curious glance of the Siwennian patrician. 
+
+Riose said, "You're a sensible man, Devers." 
+
+"Thank you. Are you impressed by my face, or do you want something? Tell you what, though. 
+I'm a good business man." 
+
+"It's about the same thing. You surrendered your ship when you might have decided to waste 
+our ammunition and have yourself blown to electron-dust. It could result in good treatment for 
+
+
+
+you, if you continue that sort of outlook on life." 
+
+"Good treatment is what I mostly crave, boss." 
+
+"Good, and co-operation is what I mostly crave." Riose smiled, and said in a low aside to 
+Ducem Barr, "I hope the word 'crave' means what I think it does. Did you ever hear such a 
+barbarous jargon?" 
+
+Devers said blandly, "Right. I check you. But what kind of co-operation are you talking about, 
+boss? To tell you straight, I don't know where I stand." He looked about him, "Where's this 
+place, for instance, and - what's the idea?" 
+
+"Ah, I've neglected the other half of the introductions. I apologize." Riose was in good humor. 
+"That gentleman is Ducem Barr, Patrician of the Empire. I am Bel Riose, Peer of the Empire, 
+and General of the Third Class in the armed forces of His Imperial Majesty." 
+
+The trader's jaw slackened. Then, "The Empire? I mean the old Empire they taught us about at 
+school? Huh! Funny! I always had the sort of notion that it didn't exist any more." 
+
+"Look about you. It does," said Riose grimly. 
+
+"Might have known it though," and Lathan Devers pointed his beard at the ceiling. "That was a 
+mightily polished-looking set of craft that took my tub. No kingdom of the Periphery could have 
+turned them out." His brow furrowed. "So what's the game, boss? Or do I call you general?" 
+
+"Me game is war." 
+
+"Empire versus Foundation, that it?" 
+
+"Right." 
+
+"Why?" 
+
+"I think you know why." 
+
+The trader stared sharply and shook his head. 
+
+Riose let the other deliberate, then said softly, "I'm sure you know why." 
+
+Lathan Devers muttered, "Warm here," and stood up to remove his hooded jacket. Then he sat 
+down again and stretched his legs out before him. 
+
+"You know," he said, comfortably, "I figure you're thinking I ought to jump up with a whoop and 
+lay about me. I can catch you before you could move if I choose my time, and this old fellow 
+who sits there and doesn't say anything couldn't do much to stop me." 
+
+"But you won't," said Riose, confidently. 
+
+"I won't," agreed Devers, amiably. "First off, killing you wouldn't stop the war, I suppose. There 
+are more generals where you came from." 
+
+"Very accurately calculated." 
+
+
+
+"Besides which, I'd probably be slammed down about two seconds after I got you, and killed 
+fast, or maybe slow, depending. But I'd be killed, and I never like to count on that when I'm 
+making plans. It doesn't pay off." 
+
+"I said you were a sensible man." 
+
+"But there's one thing I would like, boss. I'd like you to tell me what you mean when you say I 
+know why you're jumping us. I don't; and guessing games bother me no end." 
+
+"Yes? Ever hear of Hari Seldon?" 
+
+"No. I said I don't like guessing games." 
+
+Riose flicked a side glance at Ducem Barr who smiled with a narrow gentleness and resumed 
+his inwardly-dreaming expression. 
+
+Riose said with a grimace, "Don't you play games, Devers. There is a tradition, or a fable, or 
+sober history - I don't care what - upon your Foundation, that eventually you will found the 
+Second Empire. I know quite a detailed version of Hari Seldon's psychohistorical claptrap, and 
+your eventual plans of aggression against the Empire." 
+
+"That so?" Devers nodded thoughtfully. "And who told you all that?" 
+
+"Does that matter?" said Riose with dangerous smoothness. "You're here to question nothing. I 
+want what you know about the Seldon Fable." 
+
+"But if it's a Fable-" 
+
+"Don't play with words, Devers." 
+
+"I'm not. In fact, I'll give it to you straight. You know all I know about it. It's silly stuff, half-baked. 
+Every world has its yams; you can't keep it away from them. Yes, I've heard that sort of talk; 
+Seldon, Second Empire, and so on. They put kids to sleep at night with the stuff. The young 
+squirts curl up in the spare rooms with their pocket projectors and suck up Seldon thrillers. But 
+it's strictly non-adult. Nonintelligent adult, anyway." The trader shook his head. 
+
+The Imperial general's eyes were dark. "Is that really so? You waste your lies, man. I've been 
+on the planet, Terminus. I know your Foundation. I've looked it in the face." 
+
+"And you ask me? Me, when I haven't kept foot on it for two months at a piece in ten years. You 
+are wasting your time. But go ahead with your war, if it's fables you're after." 
+
+And Barr spoke for the first time, mildly, "You are so confident then that the Foundation will 
+win?" 
+
+The trader turned. He flushed faintly and an old scar on one temple showed whitely, "Hm-m-m, 
+the silent partner. How'd you squeeze that out of what I said, doc?" 
+
+Riose nodded very slightly at Barr, and the Siwennian continued in a low voice, "Because the 
+notion would bother you if you thought your world might lose this war, and suffer the bitter 
+reapings of defeat, I know. My world once did, and still does." 
+
+
+
+Lathan Devers fumbled his beard, looked from one of his opponents to the other, then laughed 
+shortly. "Does he always talk like that, boss? Listen," he grew serious, "what's defeat? I've seen 
+wars and I've seen defeats. What if the winner does take over? Who's bothered? Me? Guys like 
+me?" He shook his head in derision. 
+
+"Get this," the trader spoke forcefully and earnestly, "there are five or six fat slobs who usually 
+run an average planet. They get the rabbit punch, but I'm not losing peace of mind over them. 
+See. The people? The ordinary run of guys? Sure, some get killed, and the rest pay extra taxes 
+for a while. But it settles itself out; it runs itself down. And then it's the old situation again with a 
+different five or six." 
+
+Ducem Barr's nostrils flared, and the tendons of his old right hand jerked; but he said nothing. 
+
+Lathan Devers' eyes were on him. They missed nothing. He said, "Look. I spend my life in 
+space for my five-and-dime gadgets and my beer-and-pretzel kickback from the Combines. 
+There's fat fellows back there," his thumb jerked over his shoulder and back, "that sit home and 
+collect my year's income every minute - out of skimmings from me and more like me. Suppose 
+you run the Foundation. You'll still need us. You'll need us more than ever the Combines do - 
+because you'd not know your way around, and we could bring in the hard cash. We'd make a 
+better deal with the Empire. Yes, we would; and I'm a man of business. If it adds up to a plus 
+mark, I'm for it." 
+
+And he stared at the two with sardonic belligerence. 
+
+The silence remained unbroken for minutes, and then a cylinder rattled into its slot. The general 
+flipped it open, glanced at the neat printing and in-circuited the visuals with a sweep. 
+
+"Prepare plan indicating position of each ship in action. Await orders on full-armed defensive." 
+
+He reached for his cape. As he fastened it about his shoulders, he whispered in a stiff-lipped 
+monotone to Barr, "I'm leaving this man to you. I'll expect results. This is war and I can be cruel 
+to failures. Remember!" He left, with a salute to both. 
+
+Lathan Devers looked after him, "Well, something's hit him where it hurts. What goes on?" 
+
+"A battle, obviously," said Barr, gruffly. "The forces of the Foundation are coming out for their 
+first battle. You'd better come along." 
+
+There were armed soldiers in the room. Their bearing was respectful and their faces were hard. 
+Devers followed the proud old Siwennian patriarch out of the room. 
+
+The room to which they were led was smaller, barer. It contained two beds, a visi-screen, and 
+shower and sanitary facilities. The soldiers marched out, and the thick door boomed hollowly 
+shut. 
+
+" Hmp ?' Devers stared disapprovingly about. "This looks permanent." 
+
+"It is," said Barr, shortly. The old Siwennian turned his back. 
+
+The trader said irritably, "What's your game, doc?" 
+
+
+
+"I have no game. You're in my charge, that's all." 
+
+The trader rose and advanced. His bulk towered over the unmoving patrician. "Yes? But you're 
+in this cell with me and when you were marched here the guns were pointed just as hard at you 
+as at me. Listen, you were all boiled up about my notions on the subject of war and peace." 
+
+He waited fruitlessly, "All fight, let me ask you something. You said your country was licked 
+once. By whom? Comet people from the outer nebulae?" 
+
+Barr looked up. "By the Empire." 
+
+"That so? Then what are you doing here?" 
+
+Barr maintained an eloquent silence. 
+
+The trader thrust out a lower lip and nodded his head slowly. He slipped off the flat-linked 
+bracelet that hugged his fight wrist and held it out. "What do you think of that?" He wore the 
+mate to it on his left. 
+
+The Siwennian took the ornament. He responded slowly to the trader's gesture and put it on. 
+The odd tingling at the wrist passed away quickly. 
+
+Devers' voice changed at once. "Right, doc, you've got the action now. Just speak casually. If 
+this room is wired, they won't get a thing. That's a Field Distorter you've got there; genuine 
+Mallow design. Sells for twenty-five credits on any world from here to the outer rim. You get it 
+free. Hold your lips still when you talk and take it easy. You've got to get the trick of it." 
+
+Ducem Barr was suddenly weary. The trader's boring eyes were luminous and urging. He felt 
+unequal to their demands. 
+
+Barr said, "What do you want?" The words slurred from between unmoving lips. 
+
+"I've told you. You make mouth noises like what we call a patriot. Yet your own world has been 
+mashed up by the Empire, and here you are playing ball with the Empire's fair-haired general. 
+Doesn't make sense, does it?" 
+
+Barr said, "I have done my part. A conquering Imperial viceroy is dead because of me." 
+
+"That so? Recently?" 
+
+"Forty years ago." 
+
+"Forty ... years ... ago!" The words seemed to have meaning to the trader. He frowned, "That's 
+a long time to live on memories. Does that young squirt in the general's uniform know about it?" 
+
+Barr nodded. 
+
+Devers' eyes were dark with thought. "You want the Empire to win?" 
+
+And the old Siwennian patrician broke out in sudden deep anger, "May the Empire and all its 
+works perish in universal catastrophe. All Siwenna prays that daily. I had brothers once, a 
+sister, a father. But I have children now, grandchildren. The general knows where to find them." 
+
+
+
+Devers waited. 
+
+
+Barr continued in a whisper, "But that would not stop me if the results in view warranted the 
+risk. They would know how to die." 
+
+The trader said gently, "You killed a viceroy once, huh? You know, I recognize a few things. We 
+once had a mayor, Hober Mallow his name was. He visited Siwenna; that's your world, isn't it? 
+He met a man named Barr." 
+
+Ducem Barr stared hard, suspiciously. "What do you know of this?" 
+
+"What every trader on the Foundation knows. You might be a smart old fellow put in here to get 
+on my right side. Sure, they'd point guns at you, and you'd hate the Empire and be all-out for its 
+smashing. Then I'd fall all over you and pour out my heart to you, and wouldn't the general be 
+pleased. There's not much chance of that, doc. 
+
+"But just the same I'd like to have you prove that you're the son of Onum Barr of Siwenna - the 
+sixth and youngest who escaped the massacre." 
+
+Ducem Barr's hand shook as he opened the flat metal box in a wall recess. The metal object he 
+withdrew clanked softly as he thrust it into the trader's hands. "Look at that," he said. 
+
+Devers stared. He held the swollen central link of the chain close to his eyes and swore softly. 
+"That's Mallow's monogram, or I'm a space-struck rookie, and the design is fifty years old if it's 
+a day." 
+
+He looked up and smiled. 
+
+"Shake, doc. A man-sized nuclear shield is all the proof I need," and he held out his large hand. 
+
+
+6. THE FAVORITE 
+
+The tiny ships had appeared out of the vacant depths and darted into the midst of the Armada. 
+Without a shot or a burst of energy, they weaved through the ship-swollen area, then blasted 
+on and out, while the Imperial wagons turned after them like lumbering beasts. There were two 
+noiseless flares that pinpointed space as two of the tiny gnats shriveled in atomic disintegration, 
+and the rest were gone. 
+
+The great ships searched, then returned to their original task, and world by world, the great web 
+of the Enclosure continued. 
+
+Brodrig's uniform was stately; carefully tailored and as carefully worn. His walk through the 
+gardens of the obscure planet Wanda, now temporary Imperial headquarters, was leisurely; his 
+expression was somber. 
+
+Bel Riose walked with him, his field uniform open at the collar, and doleful in its monotonous 
+gray-black. 
+
+Riose indicated the smooth black bench under the fragrant tree-fern whose large spatulate 
+
+
+
+leaves lifted flatly against the white sun. "See that, sir. It is a relic of the Imperium. The 
+ornamented benches, built for lovers, linger on, fresh and useful, while the factories and the 
+palaces collapse into unremembered ruin." 
+
+He seated himself, while Cleon ll's Privy Secretary stood erect before him and clipped the 
+leaves above neatly with precise swings of his ivory staff. 
+
+Riose crossed his legs and offered a cigarette to the other. He fingered one himself as he 
+spoke, "It is what one would expect from the enlightened wisdom of His Imperial Majesty to 
+send so competent an observer as yourself. It relieves any anxiety I might have felt that the 
+press of more important and more immediate business might perhaps force into the shadows a 
+small campaign on the Periphery." 
+
+"The eyes of the Emperor are everywhere," said Brodrig, mechanically. "We do not 
+underestimate the importance of the campaign; yet still it would seem that too great an 
+emphasis is being placed upon its difficulty. Surely their little ships are no such barrier that we 
+must move through the intricate preliminary maneuver of an Enclosure." 
+
+Riose flushed, but he maintained his equilibrium. "I can not risk the lives of my men, who are 
+few enough, or the destruction of my ships which are irreplaceable, by a too-rash attack. The 
+establishment of an Enclosure will quarter my casualties in the ultimate attack, howsoever 
+difficult it be. The military reasons for that I took the liberty to explain yesterday." 
+
+"Well, well, I am not a military man. In this case, you assure me that what seems patently and 
+obviously right is, in reality, wrong. We will allow that. Yet your caution shoots far beyond that. 
+In your second communication, you requested reinforcements. And these, against an enemy 
+poor, small, and barbarous, with whom you have had not one' skirmish at the time. To desire 
+more forces under the circumstances would savor almost of incapacity or worse, had not your 
+earlier career given sufficient proof of your boldness and imagination." 
+
+"I thank you," said the general, coldly, "but I would remind you that there is a difference 
+between boldness and blindness. There is a place for a decisive gamble when you know your 
+enemy and can calculate the risks at least roughly; but to move at all against an unknown 
+enemy is boldness in itself. You might as well ask why the same man sprints safely across an 
+obstacle course in the day, and falls over the furniture in his room at night." 
+
+Brodrig swept away the other's words with a neat flirt of the fingers. "Dramatic, but not 
+satisfactory. You have been to this barbarian world yourself. You have in addition this enemy 
+prisoner you coddle, this trader. Between yourself and the prisoner you are not in a night fog." 
+
+"No? I pray you to remember that a world which has developed in isolation for two centuries 
+can not be interpreted to the point of intelligent attack by a month's visit. I am a soldier, not a 
+cleft-chinned, barrel-chested hero of a subetheric trimensional thriller. Nor can a single 
+prisoner, and one who is an obscure member of an economic group which has no close 
+connection with the enemy world introduce me to all the inner secrets of enemy strategy." 
+
+"You have questioned him?" 
+
+"I have." 
+
+
+
+Well? 
+
+
+"It has been useful, but not vitally so. His ship is tiny, of no account. He sells little toys which 
+are amusing if nothing else. I have a few of the cleverest which I intend sending to the Emperor 
+as curiosities. Naturally, there is a good deal about the ship and its workings which I do not 
+understand, but then I am not a tech-man." 
+
+"But you have among you those who are," pointed out Brodrig. 
+
+"I, too, am aware of that," replied the general in faintly caustic tones. "But the fools have far to 
+go before they could meet my needs. I have already sent for clever men who can understand 
+the workings of the odd nuclear field-circuits the ship contains. I have received no answer." 
+
+"Men of that type can not be spared, general. Surely, there must be one man of your vast 
+province who understands nucleics." 
+
+"Were there such a one, I would have him heal the limping, invalid motors that power two of my 
+small fleet of ships. Two ships of my meager ten that can not fight a major battle for lack of 
+sufficient power supply. One fifth of my force condemned to the carrion activity of consolidating 
+positions behind the lines." 
+
+The secretary's fingers fluttered impatiently. "Your position is not unique in that respect, 
+general. The Emperor has similar troubles." 
+
+The general threw away his shredded, never-lit cigarette, lit another, and shrugged. "Well, it is 
+beside the immediate point, this lack of first-class tech-men. Except that I might have made 
+more progress with my prisoner were my Psychic Probe in proper order." 
+
+The secretary's eyebrows lifted. "You have a Probe?" 
+
+"An old one. A superannuated one which fails me the one time I needed it. I set it up during the 
+prisoner's sleep, and received nothing. So much for the Probe. I have tried it on my own men 
+and the reaction is quite proper, but again there is not one among my staff of tech-men who 
+can tell me why it fails upon the prisoner. Ducem Barr, who is a theoretician of parts, though no 
+mechanic, says the psychic structure of the prisoner may be unaffected by the Probe since 
+from childhood he has been subjected to alien environments and neural stimuli. I don't know. 
+But he may yet be useful. I save him in that hope." 
+
+Brodrig leaned on his staff. A shall see if a specialist is available in the capital. In the 
+meanwhile, what of this other man you just mentioned, this Siwennian? You keep too many 
+enemies in your good graces." 
+
+"He knows the enemy. He, too, I keep for future reference and the help he may afford me." 
+
+"But he is a Siwennian and the son of a proscribed rebel." 
+
+"He is old and powerless, and his family acts as hostage." 
+
+"I see. Yet I think that I should speak to this trader, myself." 
+
+"Certainly." 
+
+
+
+"Alone," the secretary added coldly, making his point. 
+
+"Certainly," repeated Riose, blandly. "As a loyal subject of the Emperor, I accept his personal 
+representative as my superior. However, since the trader is at the permanent base, you will 
+have to leave the front areas at an interesting moment." 
+
+"Yes? Interesting in what way?" 
+
+"Interesting in that the Enclosure is complete today. Interesting in that within the week, the 
+Twentieth Fleet of the Border advances inward towards the core of resistance." Riose smiled 
+and turned away. 
+
+In a vague way, Brodrig felt punctured. 
+
+
+7. BRIBERY 
+
+
+Sergeant Mori Luk made an ideal soldier of the ranks. He came from the huge agricultural 
+planets of the Pleiades where only army life could break the bond to the soil and the unavailing 
+life of drudgery; and he was typical of that background. Unimaginative enough to face danger 
+without fear, he was strong and agile enough to face it successfully. He accepted orders 
+instantly, drove the men under him unbendingly and adored his general unswervingly. 
+
+And yet with that, he was of a sunny nature. If he killed a man in the line of duty without a scrap 
+of hesitation, it was also without a scrap of animosity. 
+
+That Sergeant Luk should signal at the door before entering was further a sign of tact, for he 
+would have been perfectly within his rights to enter without signaling. 
+
+The two within looked up from their evening meal and one reached out with his foot to cut off 
+the cracked voice which rattled out of the battered pocket-transmitter with bright liveliness. 
+
+"More books?" asked Lathan Devers. 
+
+The sergeant held out the tightly-wound cylinder of film and scratched his neck. "It belongs to 
+Engineer Orre, but he'll have to have it back. He's going to send it to his kids, you know, like 
+what you might call a souvenir, you know." 
+
+Ducem Barr turned the cylinder in his hands with interest. "And where did the engineer get it? 
+He hasn't a transmitter also, has he?" 
+
+The sergeant shook his head emphatically. He pointed to the knocked-about remnant at the 
+foot of the bed. "That's the only one in the place. This fellow, Orre, now, he got that book from 
+one of these pig-pen worlds out here we captured. They had it in a big building by itself and he 
+had to kill a few of the natives that tried to stop him from taking it." 
+
+He looked at it appraisingly. "It makes a good souvenir - for kids." 
+
+He paused, then said stealthily, "There's big news floating about, by the way. It's only 
+scuttlebutt, but even so, it's too good to keep. The general did it again." And he nodded slowly, 
+
+
+
+gravely. 
+
+"That so?" said Devers. "And what did he do?" 
+
+"Finished the Enclosure, that's all." The sergeant chuckled with a fatherly pride. "Isn't he the 
+corker, though? Didn't he work it fine? One of the fellows who's strong on fancy talk, says it 
+went as smooth and even as the music of the spheres, whatever they are." 
+
+"The big offensive starts now?" asked Barr, mildly. 
+
+"Hope so," was the boisterous response. "I want to get back on my ship now that my arm is in 
+one piece again. I'm tired of sitting on my scupper out here." 
+
+"So am I," muttered Devers, suddenly and savagely. There was a bit of underlip caught in his 
+teeth, and he worried it. 
+
+The sergeant looked at him doubtfully, and said, "I'd better go now. The captain's round is due 
+and I'd just as soon he didn't catch me in here." 
+
+He paused at the door. "By the way, sir," he said with sudden, awkward shyness to the trader, 
+
+"I heard from my wife. She says that little freezer you gave me to send her works fine. It doesn't 
+cost her anything, and she just about keeps a month's supply of food froze up complete. I 
+appreciate it." 
+
+"It's all right. Forget it." 
+
+The great door moved noiselessly shut behind the grinning sergeant. 
+
+Ducem Barr got out of his chair. "Well, he gives us a fair return for the freezer. Let's take a look 
+at this new book. Ahh, the title is gone." 
+
+He unrolled a yard or so of the film and looked through at the light. Then he murmured, "Well, 
+skewer me through the scupper, as the sergeant says. This is 'The Garden of Summa,' 
+
+Devers." 
+
+"That so?" said the trader, without interest. He shoved aside what was left of his dinner. "Sit 
+down, Barr. Listening to this old-time literature isn't doing me any good. You heard what the 
+sergeant said?" 
+
+"Yes, I did. What of it?" 
+
+"The offensive will start. And we sit here!" 
+
+"Where do you want to sit?" 
+
+"You know what I mean. There's no use just waiting." 
+
+"Isn't there?" Barr was carefully removing the old film from the transmitter and installing the 
+new. "You told me a good deal of Foundation history in the last month, and it seems that the 
+great leaders of past crises did precious little more than sit - and wait." 
+
+"Ah, Barr, but they knew where they were going." 
+
+
+
+"Did they? I suppose they said they did when it was over, and for all I know maybe they did. But 
+there's no proof that things would not have worked out as well or better if they had not known 
+where they were going. The deeper economic and sociological forces aren't directed by 
+individual men." 
+
+Devers sneered. "No way of telling that things wouldn't have worked out worse, either. You're 
+arguing tail-end backwards." His eyes were brooding. "You know, suppose I blasted him?" 
+
+"Whom? Riose?" 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+Barr sighed. His aging eyes were troubled with a reflection of the long past. "Assassination isn't 
+the way out, Devers. I once tried it, under provocation, when I was twenty - but it solved 
+nothing. I removed a villain from Siwenna, but not the Imperial yoke; and it was the Imperial 
+yoke and not the villain that mattered." 
+
+"But Riose is not just a villain, doc. He's the whole blamed army. It would fall apart without him. 
+They hang on him like babies. The sergeant out there slobbers every time he mentions him." 
+
+"Even so. There are other armies and other leaders. You must go deeper. There is this Brodrig, 
+for instance - no one more than he has the ear of the Emperor. He could demand hundreds of 
+ships where Riose must struggle with ten. I know him by reputation." 
+
+"That so? What about him?" The trader's eyes lost in frustration what they gained in sharp 
+interest. 
+
+"You want a pocket outline? He's a low-born rascal who has by unfailing flattery tickled the 
+whims of the Emperor. He's well-hated by the court aristocracy, vermin themselves, because 
+he can lay claim to neither family nor humility. He is the Emperor's adviser in all things, and the 
+Emperor's too in the worst things. He is faithless by choice but loyal by necessity. There is not a 
+man in the Empire as subtle in villainy or as crude in his pleasures. And they say there is no 
+way to the Emperor's favor but through him; and no way to his, but through infamy." 
+
+"Wow!" Devers pulled thoughtfully at his neatly trimmed beard. "And he's the old boy the 
+Emperor sent out here to keep an eye on Riose. Do you know I have an idea?" 
+
+"I do now." 
+
+"Suppose this Brodrig takes a dislike to our young Army's Delight?" 
+
+"He probably has already. He's not noted for a capacity for liking." 
+
+"Suppose it gets really bad. The Emperor might hear about it, and Riose might be in trouble." 
+"Uh-huh. Quite likely. But how do you propose to get that to happen?" 
+
+"I don't know. I suppose he could be bribed?" 
+
+The patrician laughed gently. "Yes, in a way, but not in the manner you bribed the sergeant - 
+not with a pocket freezer. And even if you reach his scale, it wouldn't be worth it. There's 
+probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable 
+
+
+
+corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum. Think of something else." 
+
+Devers swung a leg over his knee and his toe nodded quickly and restlessly. "It's the first hint, 
+though-" 
+
+He stopped; the door signal was flashing once again, and the sergeant was on the threshold 
+once more. He was excited, and his broad face was red and unsmiling. 
+
+"Sir," he began, in an agitated attempt at deference, "I am very thankful for the freezer, and you 
+have always spoken to me very fine, although I am only the son of a farmer and you are great 
+lords." 
+
+His Pleiades accent had grown thick, almost too much so for easy comprehension; and with 
+excitement, his lumpish peasant derivation wiped out completely the soldierly bearing so long 
+and so painfully cultivated. 
+
+Barr said softly, "What is it, sergeant?" 
+
+"Lord Brodrig is coming to see you. Tomorrow! I know, because the captain told me to have my 
+men ready for dress review tomorrow for ... for him. I thought - I might warn you." 
+
+Barr said, "Thank you, sergeant, we appreciate that. But it's all right, man; no need for-" 
+
+But the look on Sergeant Luk's face was now unmistakably one of fear. He spoke in a rough 
+whisper, "You don't hear the stories the men tell about him. He has sold himself to the space 
+fiend. No, don't laugh. There are most terrible tales told about him. They say he has men with 
+blast-guns who follow him everywhere, and when he wants pleasure, he just tells them to blast 
+down anyone they meet. And they do - and he laughs. They say even the Emperor is in terror 
+of him, and that he forces the Emperor to raise taxes and won't let him listen to the complaints 
+of the people. 
+
+"And he hates the general, that's what they say. They say he would like to kill the general, 
+because the general is so great and wise. But he can't because our general is a match for 
+anyone and he knows Lord Brodrig is a bad 'un." 
+
+The sergeant blinked; smiled in a sudden incongruous shyness at his own outburst; and 
+backed toward the door. He nodded his head, jerkily. "You mind my words. Watch him." 
+
+He ducked out. 
+
+And Devers looked up, hard-eyed. "This breaks things our way, doesn't it, doc?" 
+
+"It depends," said Barr, dryly, "on Brodrig, doesn't it?" 
+
+But Devers was thinking, not listening. 
+
+He was thinking hard. 
+
+Lord Brodrig ducked his head as he stepped into the cramped living quarters of the trading 
+ship, and his two armed guards followed quickly, with bared guns and the professionally hard 
+scowls of the hired bravos. 
+
+
+
+The Privy Secretary had little of the look of the lost soul about him just then. If the space fiend 
+had bought him, he had left no visible mark of possession. Rather might Brodrig have been 
+considered a breath of court-fashion come to enliven the hard, bare ugliness of an army base. 
+
+The stiff, tight lines of his sheened and immaculate costume gave him the illusion of height, 
+from the very top of which his cold, emotionless eyes stared down the declivity of a long nose 
+at the trader. The mother-of-pearl ruches at his wrists fluttered filmily as he brought his ivory 
+stick to the ground before him and leaned upon it daintily. 
+
+"No," he said, with a little gesture, "you remain here. Forget your toys; I am not interested in 
+them." 
+
+He drew forth a chair, dusted it carefully with the iridescent square of fabric attached to the top 
+of his white stick, and seated himself. Devers glanced towards the mate to the chair, but 
+Brodrig said lazily, "You will stand in the presence of a Peer of the Realm." 
+
+He smiled. 
+
+Devers shrugged. "If you're not interested in my stock in trade, what am I here for?" 
+
+The Privy Secretary waited coldly, and Devers added a slow, "Sir." 
+
+"For privacy," said the secretary. "Now is it likely that I would come two hundred parsecs 
+through space to inspect trinkets? It's you I want to see." He extracted a small pink tablet from 
+an engraved box and placed it delicately between his teeth. He sucked it slowly and 
+appreciatively. 
+
+"For instance," he said, "who are you? Are you really a citizen of this barbarian world that is 
+creating all this fury of military frenzy?" 
+
+Devers nodded gravely. 
+
+"And you were really captured by him after the beginning of this squabble he calls a war. I am 
+referring to our young general." 
+
+Devers nodded again. 
+
+"So! Very well, my worthy Outlander. I see your fluency of speech is at a minimum. I shall 
+smooth the way for you. It seems that our general here is fighting an apparently meaningless 
+war with frightful transports of energy - and this over a forsaken fleabite of a world at the end of 
+nowhere, which to a logical man would not seem worth a single blast of a single gun. Yet the 
+general is not illogical. On the contrary, I would say he was extremely intelligent. Do you follow 
+me?" 
+
+"Can't say I do, sir." 
+
+The secretary inspected his fingernails and said, "Listen further, then. The general would not 
+waste his men and ships on a sterile feat of glory. I know he talks of glory and of Imperial 
+honor, but it is quite obvious that the affectation of being one of the insufferable old demigods 
+of the Heroic Age won't wash. There is something more than glory hereand he does take queer, 
+unnecessary care of you. Now if you were my prisoner and told me as little of use as you have 
+
+
+
+our general, I would slit open your abdomen and strangle you with your own intestines." 
+
+Devers remained wooden. His eyes moved slightly, first to one of the secretary's bully-boys, 
+and then to the other. They were ready; eagerly ready. 
+
+The secretary smiled. "Well, now, you're a silent devil. According to the general, even a Psychic 
+Probe made no impression, and that was a mistake on his part, by the way, for it convinced me 
+that our young military whizz-bang was lying." He seemed in high humor. 
+
+"My honest tradesman," he said, "I have a Psychic Probe of my own, one that ought to suit you 
+peculiarly well. You see this-" 
+
+And between thumb and forefinger, held negligently, were intricately designed, pink-and-yellow 
+rectangles which were most definitely obvious in identity. 
+
+Devers said so. "It looks like cash," he said. 
+
+"Cash it is - and the best cash of the Empire, for it is backed by my estates, which are more 
+extensive than the Emperor's own. A hundred thousand credits. All here! Between two fingers! 
+Yours!" 
+
+"For what, sir? I am a good trader, but all trades go in both directions." 
+
+"For what? For the truth! What is the general after? Why is he fighting this war?" 
+
+Lathan Devers sighed, and smoothed his beard thoughtfully. 
+
+"What he's after?" His eyes were following the motions of the secretary's hands as he counted 
+the money slowly, bill by bill. "In a word, the Empire." 
+
+"Hmp. How ordinary! It always comes to that in the end. But how? What is the road that leads 
+from the Galaxy's edge to the peak of Empire so broadly and invitingly?" 
+
+"The Foundation," said Devers, bitterly, "has secrets. They have books, old books - so old that 
+the language they are in is only known to a few of the top men. But the secrets are shrouded in 
+ritual and religion, and none may use them. I tried and now I am here - and there is a death 
+sentence waiting for me, there." 
+
+"I see. And these old secrets? Come, for one hundred thousand I deserve the intimate details." 
+"The transmutation of elements," said Devers, shortly. 
+
+The secretary's eyes narrowed and lost some of their detachment. "I have been told that 
+practical transmutation is impossible by the laws of nucleics." 
+
+"So it is, if nuclear forces are used. But the ancients were smart boys. There are sources of 
+power greater than the nuclei and more fundamental. If the Foundation used those sources as I 
+suggested-" 
+
+Devers felt a soft, creeping sensation in his stomach. The bait was dangling; the fish was 
+nosing it. 
+
+
+
+The secretary said suddenly, "Continue. The general, I am sure, is aware of a this. But what 
+does he intend doing once he finishes this opera-bouffe affair?" 
+
+Devers kept his voice rock-steady. "With transmutation he controls the economy of the whole 
+set-up of your Empire. Mineral holdings won't be worth a sneeze when Riose can make 
+tungsten out of aluminum and iridium out of iron. An entire production system based on the 
+scarcity of certain elements and the abundance of others is thrown completely out of whack. 
+There'll be the greatest disjointment the Empire has ever seen, and only Riose will be able to 
+stop it. Anc/ there is the question of this new power I mentioned, the use of which won't give 
+Riose religious heebies. 
+
+"There's nothing that can stop him now. He's got the Foundation by the back of the neck, and 
+once he's finished with it, he'll be Emperor in two years." 
+
+"So." Brodrig laughed lightly. "Iridium out of iron, that's what you said, isn't it? Come, I'll tell you 
+a state secret. Do you know that the Foundation has already been in communication with the 
+general?" 
+
+Devers' back stiffened. 
+
+"You look surprised. Why not? It seems logical now. They offered him a hundred tons of iridium 
+a year to make peace. A hundred tons of iron converted to iridium in violation of their religious 
+principles to save their necks. Fair enough, but no wonder our rigidly incorruptible general 
+refused - when he can have the iridium and the Empire as well. And poor Cleon called him his 
+one honest general. My bewhiskered merchant, you have earned your money." 
+
+He tossed it, and Devers scrambled after the flying bills. 
+
+Lord Brodrig stopped at the door and turned. "One reminder, trader. My playmates with the 
+guns here have neither middle ears, tongues, education, nor intelligence. They can neither 
+hear, speak, write, nor even make sense to a Psychic Probe. But they are very expert at 
+interesting executions. I have bought you, man, at one hundred thousand credits. You will be 
+good and worthy merchandise. Should you forget that you are bought at any time and attempt 
+to ... say ... repeat our conversation to Riose, you will be executed. But executed my way." 
+
+And in that delicate face there were sudden hard lines of eager cruelty that changed the studied 
+smile into a red-lipped snarl. For one fleeting second, Devers saw that space fiend who had 
+bought his buyer, look out of his buyer's eyes. 
+
+Silently, he preceded the two thrusting blast-guns of Brodrig's "playmates" to his quarters. 
+
+And to Ducem Barr's question, he said with brooding satisfaction, "No, that's the queerest part 
+of it. He bribed me. 
+
+Two months of difficult war had left their mark on Bel Riose. There was heavy-handed gravity 
+about him; and he was short-tempered. 
+
+It was with impatience that he addressed the worshiping Sergeant Luk. "Wait outside, soldier, 
+and conduct these men back to their quarters when I am through. No one is to enter until I call. 
+No one at all, you understand." 
+
+
+
+The sergeant saluted himself stiffly out of the room, and Riose with muttered disgust scooped 
+up the waiting papers on his desk, threw them into the top drawer and slammed it shut. 
+
+"Take seats," he said shortly, to the waiting two. "I haven't much time. Strictly speaking, I 
+shouldn't be here at all, but it is necessary to see you." 
+
+He turned to Ducem Barr, whose long fingers were caressing with interest the crystal cube in 
+which was set the simulacrum of the lined, austere face of His Imperial Majesty, Cleon II. 
+
+"In the first place, patrician," said the general, "your Seldon is losing. To be sure, he battles 
+well, for these men of the Foundation swarm like senseless bees and fight like madmen. Every 
+planet is defended viciously, and once taken, every planet heaves so with rebellion it is as 
+much trouble to hold as to conquer. But they are taken, and they are held. Your Seldon is 
+losing." 
+
+"But he has not yet lost," murmured Barr politely. 
+
+"The Foundation itself retains less optimism. They offer me millions in order that I may not put 
+this Seldon to the final test." 
+
+"So rumor goes." 
+
+"Ah, is rumor preceding me? Does it prate also of the latest?" 
+
+"What is the latest?" 
+
+"Why, that Lord Brodrig, the darling of the Emperor, is now second in command at his own 
+request." 
+
+Devers spoke for the first time. "At his own request, boss? How come? Or are you growing to 
+like the fellow?" He chuckled. 
+
+Riose said, calmly, "No, can't say I do. It's just that he bought the office at what I considered a 
+fair and adequate price." 
+
+"Such as?" 
+
+"Such as a request to the Emperor for reinforcements." 
+
+Devers' contemptuous smile broadened. "'He has communicated with the Emperor, huh? And I 
+take it, boss, you're just waiting for these reinforcements, but they'll come any day. Right?" 
+
+"Wrong! They have already come. Five ships of the line; smooth and strong, with a personal 
+message of congratulations from the Emperor, and more ships on the way. What's wrong, 
+trader?" he asked, sardonically. 
+
+Devers spoke through suddenly frozen lips. "Nothing!" 
+
+Riose strode out from behind his desk and faced the trader, hand on the butt of his blast-gun. 
+
+"I say, what's wrong, trader? The news would seem to disturb you. Surely, you have no sudden 
+birth of interest in the Foundation." 
+
+
+
+"I haven't." 
+
+"Yes - there are queer points about you." 
+
+"That so, boss?" Devers smiled tightly, and balled the fists in his pockets. "Just you line them 
+up and I'll knock them down for you." 
+
+"Here they are. You were caught easily. You surrendered at first blow with a burnt-out shield. 
+You're quite ready to desert your world, and that without a price. Interesting, all this, isn't it?" 
+
+"I crave to be on the winning side, boss. I'm a sensible man; you called me that yourself." 
+
+Riose said with tight throatiness, "Granted! Yet no trader since has been captured. No trade 
+ship but has had the speed to escape at choice. No trade ship but has had a screen that could 
+take all the beating a light cruiser could give it, should it choose to fight. And no trader but has 
+fought to death when occasion warranted. Traders have been traced as the leaders and 
+instigators of the guerilla warfare on occupied planets and of the flying raids in occupied space. 
+
+"Are you the only sensible man then? You neither fight nor flee, but turn traitor without urging. 
+You are unique, amazingly unique - in fact, suspiciously unique." 
+
+Devers said softly, "I take your meaning, but you have nothing on me. I've been here now six 
+months, and I've been a good boy." 
+
+"So you have, and I have repaid you by good treatment. I have left your ship undisturbed and 
+treated you with every consideration. Yet you fall short. Freely offered information, for instance, 
+on your gadgets might have been helpful. The atomic principles on which they are built would 
+seem to be used in some of the Foundation's nastiest weapons. Right?" 
+
+"I am only a trader," said Devers, "and not one of these bigwig technicians. I sell the stuff; I 
+don't make it." 
+
+"Well, that will be seen shortly. It is what I came here for. For instance, your ship will be 
+searched for a personal force-shield. You have never worn one; yet all soldiers of the 
+Foundation do. It will be significant evidence that there is information you do not choose to give 
+me. Right?" 
+
+There was no answer. He continued, "And there will be more direct evidence. I have brought 
+with me the Psychic Probe. It failed once before, but contact with the enemy is a liberal 
+education." 
+
+His voice was smoothly threatening and Devers felt the gun thrust hard in his midriff - the 
+general's gun, hitherto in its holster. 
+
+The general said quietly, "You will remove your wristband and any other metal ornament you 
+wear and give them to me. Slowly! Atomic fields can be distorted, you see, and Psychic Probes 
+might probe only into static. That's right.. I'll take it." 
+
+The receiver on the general's desk was glowing and a message capsule clicked into the slot, 
+near which Barr stood and still held the trimensional Imperial bust. 
+
+
+
+Riose stepped behind his desk, with his blast-gun held ready. He said to Barr, "You too, 
+patrician. Your wristband condemns you. You have been helpful earlier, however, and I am not 
+vindictive, but I shall judge the fate of your behostaged family by the results of the Psychic 
+Probe." 
+
+And as Riose leaned over to take out the message capsule, Barr lifted the crystal-enveloped 
+bust of Cleon and quietly and methodically brought it down upon the general's head. 
+
+It happened too suddenly for Devers to grasp. It was as if a sudden demon had grown into the 
+old man. 
+
+"Out!" said Barr, in a tooth-clenched whisper. "Quickly!" He seized Riose's dropped blaster and 
+buried it in his blouse. 
+
+Sergeant Luk turned as they emerged from the narrowest possible crack of the door. 
+
+Barr said easily, "Lead on, sergeant!" 
+
+Devers closed the door behind him. 
+
+Sergeant Luk led in silence to their quarters, and then, with the briefest pause, continued 
+onward, for there was the nudge of a blast-gun muzzle in his ribs, and a hard voice in his ears 
+which said, "To the trade ship." 
+
+Devers stepped forward to open the air lock, and Barr said, "Stand where you are, Luk. You've 
+been a decent man, and we're not going to kill you." 
+
+But the sergeant recognized the monogram on the gun. He cried in choked fury, "You've killed 
+the general." 
+
+With a wild, incoherent yell, he charged blindly upon the blasting fury of the gun and collapsed 
+in blasted ruin. 
+
+The trade ship was rising above the dead planet before the signal lights began their eerie blink 
+and against the creamy cobweb of the great Lens in the sky which was the Galaxy, other black 
+forms rose. 
+
+Devers said grimly, "Hold tight, Barr - and let's see if they've got a ship that can match my 
+speed." 
+
+He knew they hadn't! 
+
+And once in open space, the trader's voice seemed lost and dead as he said, "The line I fed 
+Brodrig was a little too good. It seems as if he's thrown in with the general." 
+
+Swiftly they raced into the depths of the star-mass that was the Galaxy. 
+
+
+
+8. TO TRANTOR 
+
+Devers bent over the little dead globe, watching for a tiny sign of life. The directional control 
+was slowly and thoroughly sieving space with its jabbing tight sheaf of signals. 
+
+Barr watched patiently from his seat on the low cot in the comer, He asked, "No more signs of 
+them?" 
+
+"The Empire boys? No." The trader growled the words with evident impatience. "We lost the 
+scuppers long ago. Space! With the blind jumps we took through hyperspace, it's lucky we 
+didn't land up in a sun's belly. They couldn't have followed us even if they outranqed us, which 
+they didn't." 
+
+He sat back and loosened his collar with a jerk. "I don't know what those Empire boys have 
+done here. I think some of the gaps are out of alignment." 
+
+"I take it, then, you're trying to get to the Foundation." 
+
+"I'm calling the Association - or trying to." 
+
+"The Association? Who are they?" 
+
+"Association of Independent Traders. Never heard of it, huh? Well, you're not alone. We haven't 
+made our splash yet!" 
+
+For a while there was a silence that centered about the unresponsive Reception Indicator, and 
+Barr said, "Are you within range?" 
+
+"I don't know. I haven't but a small notion where we are, going by dead reckoning. That's why I 
+have to use directional control. It could take years, you know." 
+
+"Might it?" 
+
+Barr pointed; and Devers jumped and adjusted his earphones. Within the little murky sphere 
+there was a tiny glowing whiteness. 
+
+For half an hour, Devers nursed the fragile, groping thread of communication that reached 
+through hyperspace to connect two points that laggard light would take five hundred years to 
+bind together. 
+
+Then he sat back, hopelessly. He looked up, and shoved the earphones back. 
+
+"Let's eat, doc. There's a needle-shower you can use if you want to, but go easy on the hot 
+water." 
+
+He squatted before one of the cabinets that lined one wall and felt through the contents. "You're 
+not a vegetarian, I hope?" 
+
+Barr said, "I'm omnivorous. But what about the Association. Have you lost them?" 
+
+"Looks so. It was extreme range, a little too extreme. Doesn't matter, though. I got all that 
+counted." 
+
+
+
+He straightened, and placed the two metal containers upon the table. "Just give it five minutes, 
+doc, then slit it open by pushing the contact. It'll be plate, food, and fork - sort of handy for 
+when you're in a hurry, if you're not interested in such incidentals as napkins. I suppose you 
+want to know what I got out of the Association." 
+
+"If it isn't a secret." 
+
+Devers shook his head. "Not to you. What Riose said was true." 
+
+"About the offer of tribute?" 
+
+"Uh-huh. They offered it, and had it refused. Things are bad. There's fighting in the outer suns 
+of Loris." 
+
+"Loris is close to the Foundation?" 
+
+"Huh? Oh, you wouldn't know. It's one of the original Four Kingdoms. You might call it part of 
+the inner line of defense. That's not the worst. They've been fighting large ships previously 
+never encountered. Which means Riose wasn't giving us the works. He has received more 
+ships. Brodrig has switched sides, and I have messed things up." 
+
+His eyes were bleak as he joined the food-container contact-points and watched it fall open 
+neatly. The stewlike dish steamed its aroma through the room. Ducem Barr was already eating. 
+
+"So much," said Barr, "for improvisations, then. We can do nothing here; we can not cut 
+through the Imperial lines to return to the Foundation; we can do nothing but that which is most 
+sensible - to wait patiently. However, if Riose has reached the inner line I trust the wait will not 
+be too long." 
+
+And Devers put down his fork. "Wait, is it?" he snarled, glowering. "That's all right for you. 
+You've got nothing at stake." 
+
+"Haven't I?" Barr smiled thinly. 
+
+"No. In fact, I'll tell you." Devers' irritation skimmed the surface. "I'm tired of looking at this whole 
+business as if it were an interesting something-or-other on a microscope slide. I've got friends 
+somewhere out there, dying; and a whole world out there, my home, dying also. You're an 
+outsider. You don't know." 
+
+"I have seen friends die." The old man's hands were limp in his lap and his eyes were closed. 
+"Are you married?" 
+
+Devers said, "Traders don't marry." 
+
+"Well, I have two sons and a nephew. They have been warned, but - for reasons - they could 
+take no action. Our escape means their death. My daughter and my two grandchildren have, I 
+hope, left the planet safety before this, but even excluding them, I have already risked and lost 
+more than you." 
+
+Devers was morosely savage. "I know. But that was a matter of choice. You might have played 
+ball with Riose. I never asked you to-" 
+
+
+
+Barr shook his head. "It was not a matter of choice, Devers. Make your conscience free, I didn't 
+risk my sons for you. I co-operated with Riose as long as I dared. But there was the Psychic 
+Probe." 
+
+The Siwennian patrician opened his eyes and they were sharp with pain. "Riose came to me 
+once; it was over a year ago. He spoke of a cult centering about the magicians, but missed the 
+truth. It is not quite a cult. You see, it is forty years now that Siwenna has been gripped in the 
+same unbearable vise that threatens your world. Five revolts have been ground out. Then I 
+discovered the ancient records of Hari Seldon - and now this 'cult' waits. 
+
+"It waits for the coming of the 'magicians' and for that day it is ready. My sons are leaders of 
+those who wait. It is that secret which is in my mind and which the Probe must never touch. 
+
+And so they must die as hostages; for the alternative is their death as rebels and half of 
+Siwenna with them. You see, I had no choice! And I am no outsider." 
+
+Devers' eyes fell, and Barr continued softly, "It is on a Foundation victory that Siwenna's hopes 
+depend. It is for a Foundation victory that my sons are sacrificed. And Hari Seldon does not 
+pre-calculate the inevitable salvation of Siwenna as he does that of the Foundation. I have no 
+certainty for my people - only hope." 
+
+"But you are still satisfied to wait. Even with the Imperial Navy at Loris." 
+
+"I would wait, in perfect confidence," said Barr, simply, "if they had landed on the planet, 
+Terminus, itself." 
+
+The trader frowned hopelessly. "I don't know. It can't really work like that; not just like magic. 
+Psychohistory or not, they're terribly strong, and we're weak. What can Setdon do about it?" 
+
+"There's nothing to do. It's all already done. It's proceeding now. Because you don't hear the 
+wheels turning and the gongs beating doesn't mean it's any the less certain." 
+
+"Maybe; but I wish you had cracked Riose's skull for keeps. He's more the enemy than all his 
+army." 
+
+"Cracked his skull? With Brodrig his second in command?" Barr's face sharpened with hate. "All 
+Siwenna would have been my hostage. Brodrig has proven his worth long since. There exists a 
+world which five years ago lost one male in every ten - and simply for failure to meet 
+outstanding taxes. This same Brodrig was the tax-collector. No, Riose may live. His 
+punishments are mercy in comparison." 
+
+"But six months, six months, in the enemy Base, with nothing to show for it." Devers' strong 
+hands clasped each other tautly, so that his knuckles cracked. "Nothing to show for it!" 
+
+"Well, now, wait. You remind me-" Barr fumbled in his pouch. "You might want to count this." 
+And he tossed the small sphere of metal on the table. 
+
+Devers snatched it. "What is it?" 
+
+"The message capsule. The one that Riose received just before I jacked him. Does that count 
+as something?" 
+
+
+
+"I don't know. Depends on what's in it!" Devers sat down and turned it over carefully in his 
+hand. 
+
+
+When Barr stepped from his cold shower and, gratefully, into the mild warm current of the air 
+dryer, he found Devers silent and absorbed at the workbench. 
+
+The Siwennian slapped his body with a sharp rhythm and spoke above the punctuating sounds. 
+"What are you doing?" 
+
+Devers looked up. Droplets of perspiration glittered in his beard. "I'm going to open this 
+capsule." 
+
+"Can you open it without Riose's personal characteristic?" There was mild surprise in the 
+Siwennian's voice. 
+
+"If I can't, I'll resign from the Association and never skipper a ship for what's left of my life. I've 
+got a three-way electronic analysis of the interior now, and I've got little jiggers that the Empire 
+never heard of, especially made for jimmying capsules. I've been a burglar before this, y'know. 
+A trader has to be something of everything." 
+
+He bent low over the little sphere, and a small flat instrument probed delicately and sparked 
+redly at each fleeting contact. 
+
+He said, "This capsule is a crude job, anyway. These Imperial boys are no shakes at this small 
+work. I can see that. Ever see a Foundation capsule? It's half the size and impervious to 
+electronic analysis in the first place." 
+
+And then he was rigid, the shoulder muscles beneath his tunic tautening visibly. His tiny probe 
+pressed slowly- 
+
+It was noiseless when it came, but Devers; relaxed and sighed. In his hand was the shining 
+sphere with its message unrolled like a parchment tongue. 
+
+"It's from Brodrig," he said. Then, with contempt, "The message medium is permanent. In a 
+Foundation capsule, the message would be oxidized to gas within the minute." 
+
+But Ducem Barr waved him silent. He read the message quickly. 
+
+FROM: AMMEL BRODRIG, ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY OF HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY, PRIVY 
+SECRETARY OF THE COUNCIL, AND PEER OF THE REALM. 
+
+TO: BEL RIOSE, MILITARY GOVERNOR OF SIWENNA. GENERAL OF THE IMPERIAL 
+FORCES, AND PEER OF THE REALM. I GREET YOU. 
+
+PLANET #1 1 20 NO LONGER RESISTS. THE PLANS OF OFFENSE AS OUTLINED 
+CONTINUE SMOOTHLY. THE ENEMY WEAKENS VISIBLY AND THE ULTIMATE ENDS IN 
+VIEW WILL SURELY BE GAINED. 
+
+Barr raised his head from the almost microscopic print and cried bitterly, "The fool! The 
+forsaken blasted fop! That a. message?" 
+
+
+
+"Huh?" said Devers. He was vaguely disappointed. 
+
+"It says nothing," ground out Barr. "Our lick-spittle courtier is playing at general now. With Riose 
+away, he is the field commander and must sooth his paltry spirit by spewing out his pompous 
+reports concerning military affairs he has nothing to do with. 'So-and-so planet no longer 
+resists.' 'The offensive moves on.' 'The enemy weakens.' The vacuum-headed peacock." 
+
+"Well, now, wait a minute. Hold on-" 
+
+"Throw it away." The old man turned away in mortification. "The Galaxy knows I never expected 
+it to be world-shakingly important, but in wartime it is reasonable to assume that even the most 
+routine order left undelivered might hamper military movements and lead to complications later. 
+It's why I snatched it. But this! Better to have left it. It would have wasted a minute of Riose's 
+time that will now be put to more constructive use." 
+
+But Devers had arisen. "Will you hold on and stop throwing your weight around? For Seldon's 
+sake-" 
+
+He held out the sliver of message before Barr's nose, "Now read that again. What does he 
+mean by 'ultimate ends in view'?" 
+
+"The conquest of the Foundation. Well?" 
+
+"Yes? And maybe he means the conquest of the Empire. You know he believes that to be the 
+ultimate end." 
+
+"And if he does?" 
+
+"If he does!" Devers' one-sided smile was lost in his beard. "Why, watch then, and I'll show 
+you." 
+
+With one finger the lavishly monogrammed sheet of message-parchment was thrust back into 
+its slot. With a soft twang, it disappeared and the globe was a smooth, unbroken whole again. 
+Somewhere inside was the tiny oiled whir of the controls as they lost their setting by random 
+movements. 
+
+"Now there is no known way of opening this capsule without knowledge of Riose's personal 
+characteristic, is there?" 
+
+"To the Empire, no," said Barr. 
+
+"Then the evidence it contains is unknown to us and absolutely authentic." 
+
+"To the Empire, yes," said Barr. 
+
+"And the Emperor can open it, can't he? Personal Characteristics of Government officials must 
+be on file. We keep records of OL/r officials at the Foundation." 
+
+"At the Imperial capital as well," agreed Barr. 
+
+"Then when you, a Siwennian patrician and Peer of the Realm, tell this Cleon, this Emperor, 
+that his favorite tame-parrot and his shiniest general are getting together to knock him over, 
+
+
+
+and hand him the capsule as evidence, what will he think Brodrig's 'ultimate ends' are?" 
+
+Barr sat down weakly. "Wait, I don't follow you." He stroked one thin cheek, and said, "You're 
+not really serious, are you?" 
+
+"I am." Devers was angrily excited. "Listen, nine out of the last ten Emperors got their throats 
+cut, or their gizzards blasted out by one or another of their generals with bigtime notions in their 
+heads. You told me that yourself more than once. Old man Emperor would believe us so fast it 
+would make Riose's head swim." 
+
+Barr muttered feebly, "He is serious, For the Galaxy's sake, man, you can't beat a Seldon crisis 
+by a far-fetched, impractical, storybook scheme like that. Suppose you had never got hold of 
+the capsule. Suppose Brodrig hadn't used the word 'ultimate.' Seldon doesn't depend on wild 
+luck." 
+
+"If wild luck comes our way, there's no law says Seldon can't take advantage of it." 
+
+"Certainly. But ... but," Barr stopped, then spoke calmly but with visible restraint. "Look, in the 
+first place, how will you get to the planet Trantor? You don't know its location in space, and I 
+certainly don't remember the co-ordinates, to say nothing of the ephemerae. You don't even 
+know your own position in space." 
+
+"You can't get lost in space," grinned Devers. He was at the controls already. "Down we go to 
+the nearest planet, and back we come with complete bearings and the best navigation charts 
+Brodrig's hundred thousand smackers can buy." 
+
+"And a blaster in our belly. Our descriptions are probably in every planet in this quarter of the 
+Empire." 
+
+"Doc," said Devers, patiently, "don't be a hick tom the sticks. Riose said my ship surrendered 
+too easily and, brother, he wasn't kidding. This ship has enough fire-power and enough juice in 
+its shield to hold off anything we're Rely to meet this deep inside the frontier. And we have 
+personal shields, too. The Empire boys never found them, you know, but they weren't meant to 
+be found." 
+
+"All fight," said Barr, "all right. Suppose yourself on Trantor. How do you see the Emperor then? 
+You think he keeps office hours?" 
+
+"Suppose we worry about that on Trantor," said Devers. 
+
+And Barr muttered helplessly, "All right again. I've wanted to see Trantor before I die for half a 
+century now. Have your way." 
+
+The hypernuclear motor was cut in. The lights flickered and there was the slight internal wrench 
+that marked the shift into hyperspace. 
+
+
+
+9. ON TRANTOR 
+
+The stars were as thick as weeds in an unkempt field, and for the first time, Lathan Devers 
+found the figures to the right of the decimal point of prime importance in calculating the cuts 
+through the hyper-regions. There was a claustrophobic sensation about the necessity for leaps 
+of not more than a light-year. There was a frightening harshness about a sky which glittered 
+unbrokenly in every direction. It was being lost in a sea of radiation. 
+
+And in the center of an open cluster of ten thousand stars, whose light tore to shreds the feebly 
+encircling darkness, there circled the huge Imperial planet, Trantor. 
+
+But it was more than a planet; it was the living pulse beat of an Empire of twenty million stellar 
+systems. It had only one, function, administration; one purpose, government; and one 
+manufactured product, law. 
+
+The entire world was one functional distortion. There was no living object on its surface hut 
+man, his pets, and his parasites. No blade of grass or fragment of uncovered soil could be 
+found outside the hundred square miles of the Imperial Palace. No fresh water outside the 
+Palace grounds existed but in the vast underground cisterns that held the water supply of a 
+world. 
+
+The lustrous, indestructible, incorruptible metal that was the unbroken surface of the planet was 
+the foundation of the huge, metal structures that mazed the planet. They were structures 
+connected by causeways; laced by corridors; cubbyholed by offices; basemented by the huge 
+retail centers that covered square miles; penthoused by the glittering amusement world that 
+sparkled into life each night. 
+
+One could walk around the world of Trantor and never leave that one conglomerate building, 
+nor see the city. 
+
+A fleet of ships greater in number than all the war fleets the Empire had ever supported landed 
+their cargoes on Trantor each day to feed the forty billions of humans who gave nothing in 
+exchange but the fulfillment of the necessity of untangling the myriads of threads that spiraled 
+into the central administration of the most complex government Humanity had ever known. 
+
+Twenty agricultural worlds were the granary of Trantor. A universe was its servant. 
+
+Tightly held by the huge metal arms on either side, the trade ship was gently lowered down the 
+huge ramp that led to the hangar. Already Devers had fumed his way through the manifold 
+complications of a world conceived in paper work and dedicated to the principle of the 
+form-in-quadruplicate. 
+
+There had been the preliminary halt in space, where the first of what had grown into a hundred 
+questionnaires had been filled out. There were the hundred cross-examinations, the routine 
+administration of a simple Probe, the photographing of the ship, the Characteristic-Analysis of 
+the two men, and the subsequent recording of the same, the search for contraband, the 
+payment of the entry tax - and finally the question of the identity cards and visitor's visa. 
+
+Ducem Barr was a Siwennian and subject of the Emperor, but Lathan Devers was an unknown 
+
+
+
+without the requisite documents. The official in charge at the moment was devastated with 
+sorrow, but Devers could not enter. In fact, he would have to be held for official investigation. 
+
+From somewhere a hundred credits in crisp, new bills backed by the estates of Lord Brodrig 
+made their appearance, and changed bands quietly. The official hemmed importantly and the 
+devastation of his sorrow was assuaged. A new form made its appearance from the appropriate 
+pigeonhole. It was filled out rapidly and efficiently, with the Devers characteristic thereto 
+formally and properly attached. 
+
+The two men, trader and patrician, entered Siwenna. 
+
+In the hangar, the trade ship was another vessel to be cached, photographed, recorded, 
+contents noted, identity cards of passengers facsimiled, and for which a suitable fee was paid, 
+recorded, and receipted. 
+
+And then Devers was on a huge terrace under the bright white sun, along which women 
+chattered, children shrieked, and men sipped drinks languidly and listened to the huge 
+televisors blaring out the news of the Empire. 
+
+Barr paid a requisite number of iridium coins and appropriated the uppermost member of a pile 
+of newspapers. It was the Trantor Imperial News, official organ of the government. In the back 
+of the news room, there was the soft clicking noise of additional editions being printed in 
+long-distance sympathy with the busy machines at the Imperial News offices ten thousand 
+miles away by corridor - six thousand by air-machine - just as ten million sets of copies were 
+being likewise printed at that moment in ten million other news rooms all over the planet. 
+
+Barr glanced at the headlines and said softly, "What shall we do first?" 
+
+Devers tried to shake himself out of his depression. He was in a universe far removed from his 
+own, on a world that weighted him down with its intricacy, among people whose doings were 
+incomprehensible and whose language was nearly so. The gleaming metallic towers that 
+surrounded him and continued onwards in never-ending multiplicity to beyond the horizon 
+oppressed him; the whole busy, unheeding life of a world-metropolis cast him into the horrible 
+gloom of isolation and pygmyish unimportance. 
+
+He said, "I better leave it to you, doc." 
+
+Barr was calm, low-voice. "I tried to tell you, but it's hard to believe without seeing for yourself, I 
+know that. Do you know how many people want to see the Emperor every day? About one 
+million. Do you know how many he sees? About ten. We'll have to work through the civil 
+service, and that makes it harder. But we can't afford the aristocracy." 
+
+"We have almost one hundred thousand." 
+
+"A single Peer of the Realm would cost us that, and it would take at least three or four to form 
+an adequate bridge to the Emperor. It may take fifty chief commissioners and senior 
+supervisors to do the same, but they would cost us only a hundred apiece perhaps. I'll do the 
+talking. In the first place, they wouldn't understand your accent, and in the second, you don't 
+know the etiquette of Imperial bribery. It's an art, I assure you. Ah!" 
+
+
+
+The third page of the Imperial News had what he wanted and he passed the paper to Devers. 
+
+Devers read slowly. The vocabulary was strange, but he understood. He looked up, and his 
+eyes were dark with concern. He slapped the news sheet angrily with the back of his hand. 
+
+"You think this can be trusted?" 
+
+"Within limits," replied Barr, calmly. "It's highly improbable that the Foundation fleet was wiped 
+out. They've probably reported that several times already, if they've gone by the usual 
+war-reporting technique of a world capital far from the actual scene of fighting. What it means, 
+though, is that Riose has won another battle, which would be none-too-unexpected. It says he's 
+captured Loris. Is that the capital planet of the Kingdom of Loris?" 
+
+"Yes," brooded Devers, "or of what used to be the Kingdom of Loris. And it's not twenty parsecs 
+from the Foundation. Doc, we've got to work fast." 
+
+Barr shrugged, "You can't go fast on Trantor. If you try, you'll end up at the point of an 
+atom-blaster, most likely." 
+
+"How long will it take?" 
+
+"A month, if we're lucky. A month, and our hundred thousand credits - if even that will suffice. 
+And that is providing the Emperor does not take it into his head in the meantime to travel to the 
+Summer Planets, where he sees no petitioners at all." 
+
+"But the Foundation-" 
+
+"-Will take care of itself, as heretofore. Come, there's the question of dinner. I'm hungry. And 
+afterwards, the evening is ours and we may as well use it. We shall never see Trantor or any 
+world like it again, you know." 
+
+The Home Commissioner of the Outer Provinces spread his pudgy hands helplessly and 
+peered at the petitioners with owlish nearsightedness. "But the Emperor is indisposed, 
+gentlemen. It is really useless to take the matter to my superior. His Imperial Majesty has seen 
+no one in a week." 
+
+"He will see us," said Barr, with an affectation of confidence. "It is but a question of seeing a 
+member of the staff of the Privy Secretary." 
+
+"Impossible," said the commissioner emphatically. "It would be the worth of my job to attempt 
+that. Now if you could but be more explicit concerning the nature of your business. I'm willing to 
+help you, understand, but naturally I want something less vague, something I can present to my 
+superior as reason for taking the matter further." 
+
+"If my business were such that it could be told to any but the highest," suggested Barr, 
+smoothly, "it would scarcely be important enough to rate audience with His Imperial Majesty. I 
+propose that you take a chance. I might remind you that if His Imperial Majesty attaches the 
+importance to our business which we guarantee that he will, you will stand certain to receive 
+the honors you will deserve for helping us now." 
+
+"Yes, but-" and the commissioner shrugged, wordlessly. 
+
+
+
+"It's a chance," agreed Barr. "Naturally, a risk should have its compensation. It is a rather great 
+favor to ask you, but we have already been greatly obliged with your kindness in offering us this 
+opportunity to explain our problem. But if you would allow us to express our gratitude just 
+slightly by-" 
+
+Devers scowled. He had heard this speech with its slight variations twenty times in the past 
+month. It ended, as always, in a quick shift of the half-hidden bills. But the epilogue differed 
+here. Usually the bills vanished immediately; here they remained in plain view, while slowly the 
+commissioner counted them, inspecting them front and back as he did so. 
+
+There was a subtle change in his voice. "Backed by the Privy Secretary, hey? Good money!" 
+
+"To get back to the subject-" urged Barr. 
+
+"No, but wait," interrupted the commissioner, "let us go back by easy stages. I really do wish to 
+know what your business can be. This money, it is fresh and new, and you must have a good 
+deal, for it strikes me that you have seen other officials before me. Come, now, what about it?" 
+
+Barr said, "I don't see what you are driving at." 
+
+"Why, see here, it might be proven that you are upon the planet illegally, since the Identification 
+and Entry Cards of your silent friend are certainly inadequate. He is not a subject of the 
+Emperor." 
+
+"I deny that." 
+
+"It doesn't matter that you do," said the commissioner, with sudden bluntness. "The official who 
+signed his Cards for the sum of a hundred credits has confessed - under pressure - and we 
+know more of you than you think." 
+
+"If you are hinting, sir, that the sum we have asked you to accept is inadequate in view of the 
+risks-" 
+
+The commissioner smiled. "On the contrary, it is more than adequate." He tossed the bills 
+aside. "To return to what I was saying, it is the Emperor himself who has become interested in 
+your case. Is it not true, sirs, that you have recently been guests of General Riose? Is it not true 
+that you have escaped from the midst of his army with, to put it mildly, astonishing ease? Is it 
+not true that you possess a small fortune in bills backed by Lord Brodrig's estates? In short, is it 
+not true that you are a pair of spies and assassins sent here to - Well, you shall tell us yourself 
+who paid you and for what!" 
+
+"Do you know," said Barr, with silky anger, "I deny the right of a petty commissioner to accuse 
+us of crimes. We will leave." 
+
+"You will not leave." The commissioner arose, and his eyes no longer seemed near-sighted. 
+"You need answer no question now; that will be reserved for a later - and more forceful - time. 
+Nor am I a commissioner; I am a Lieutenant of the Imperial Police. You are under arrest." 
+
+There was a glitteringly efficient blast-gun in his fist as he smiled. "There are greater men than 
+you under arrest this day. It is a hornet's nest we are cleaning up." 
+
+
+
+Devers snarled and reached slowly for his own gun. The lieutenant of police smiled more 
+broadly and squeezed the contacts. The blasting line of force struck Devers' chest in an 
+accurate blaze of destruction - that bounced harmlessly off his personal shield in sparkling 
+spicules of light. 
+
+Devers shot in turn, and the lieutenant's head fell from off an upper torso that had disappeared. 
+It was still smiling as it lay in the jag of sunshine which entered through the new-made hole in 
+the wall. 
+
+It was through the back entrance that they left. 
+
+Devers said huskily, "Quickly to the ship. They'll have the alarm out in no time." He cursed in a 
+ferocious whisper. "It's another plan that's backfired. I could swear the space fiend himself is 
+against me." 
+
+It was in the open that they became aware of the jabbering crowds that surrounded the huge 
+televisors. They had no time to wait; the disconnected roaring words that reached them, they 
+disregarded. But Barr snatched a copy of the Imperial News before diving into the huge barn of 
+the hangar, where the ship lifted hastily through a giant cavity burnt fiercely into the roof. 
+
+"Can you get away from them?" asked Barr. 
+
+Ten ships of the traffic-police wildly followed the runaway craft that had burst out of the lawful, 
+radio-beamed Path of Leaving, and then broken every speed law in creation. Further behind 
+still, sleek vessels of the Secret Service were lifting in pursuit of a carefully described ship 
+manned by two thoroughly identified murderers. 
+
+"Watch me," said Devers, and savagely shifted into hyperspace two thousand miles above the 
+surface of Trantor. The shift, so near a planetary mass, meant unconsciousness for Barr and a 
+fearful haze of pain for Devers, but light-years further, space above them was clear. 
+
+Devers' somber pride in his ship burst to the surface. He said, "There's not an Imperial ship that 
+could follow me anywhere." 
+
+And then, bitterly, "But there is nowhere left to run to for us, and we can't fight their weight. 
+What's there to do? What can anyone do?" 
+
+Barr moved feebly on his cot. The effect of the hypershift had not yet worn off, and each of his 
+muscles ached. He said, "No one has to do anything. It's all over. Here!" 
+
+He passed the copy of the Imperial News that he still clutched, and the headlines were enough 
+for the trader. 
+
+"Recalled and arrested - Riose and Brodrig," Devers muttered. He stared blankly at Barr. 
+"Why?" 
+
+"The story doesn't say, but what does it matter? The war with the Foundation is over, and at 
+this moment, Siwenna is revolting. Read the story and see." His voice was drifting off. "We'll 
+stop in some of the provinces and find out the later details. If you don't mind, I'll go to sleep 
+now." 
+
+
+
+And he did. 
+
+
+In grasshopper jumps of increasing magnitude, the trade ship was spanning the Galaxy in its 
+return to the Foundation. 
+
+
+10. THE WAR ENDS 
+
+Lathan Devers felt definitely uncomfortable, and vaguely resentful. He had received his own 
+decoration and withstood with mute stoicism the turgid oratory of the mayor which 
+accompanied the slip of crimson ribbon. That had ended his share of the ceremonies, but, 
+naturally, formality forced him to remain. And it was formality, chiefly - the type that couldn't 
+allow him to yawn noisily or to swing a foot comfortably onto a chair seat - that made him long 
+to be in space, where he belonged. 
+
+The Siwennese delegation, with Ducem Barr a lionized member, signed the Convention, and 
+Siwenna became the first province to pass directly from the Empire's political rule to the 
+Foundation's economic one. 
+
+Five Imperial Ships of the Line - captured when Siwenna rebelled behind the lines of the 
+Empire's Border Fleet - flashed overhead, huge and massive, detonating a roaring salute as 
+they passed over the city. 
+
+Nothing but drinking, etiquette, and small talk now. 
+
+A voice called him. It was Forell; the man who, Devers realized coldly, could buy twenty of him 
+with a morning's profits - but a Forell who now crooked a finger at him with genial 
+condescension. 
+
+He stepped out upon the balcony into the cool night wind, and bowed properly, while scowling 
+into his bristling beard. Barr was there, too; smiling. He said, "Devers, you'll have to come to my 
+rescue. I'm being accused of modesty, a horrible and thoroughly unnatural crime." 
+
+"Devers," Forell removed the fat cigar from the side of his mouth when he spoke, "Lord Barr 
+claims that your trip to Cleon's capital had nothing to do with the recall of Riose." 
+
+"Nothing at all, sir." Devers was curt. "We never saw the Emperor. The reports we picked up on 
+our way back concerning the trial, showed it up to be the purest frameup. There was a mess of 
+rigmarole about the general being tied up with subversive interests at the court." 
+
+"And he was innocent?" 
+
+"Riose?" interposed Barr. "Yes! By the Galaxy, yes. Brodrig was a traitor on general principles 
+but was never guilty of the specific accusations brought against him. It was a judicial farce; but 
+a necessary one, a predictable one, an inevitable one." 
+
+"By psychohistorical necessity, I presume." Forell rolled the phrase sonorously with the 
+humorous ease of long familiarity. 
+
+"Exactly." Barr grew serious. "It never penetrated earlier, but once it was over and I could ... 
+
+
+
+well ... look at the answers in the back of the book, the problem became simple. We can see, 
+now , that the social background of the Empire makes wars of conquest impossible for it. Under 
+weak Emperors, it is tom apart by generals competing for a worthless and surely death-bringing 
+throne. Under strong Emperors, the Empire is frozen into a paralytic rigor in which 
+disintegration apparently ceases for the moment, but only at the sacrifice of all possible 
+growth." 
+
+Forell growled bluntly through strong puffs, "You're not clear, Lord Barr." 
+
+Barr smiled slowly. "I suppose so. It's the difficulty of not being trained in psychohistory. Words 
+are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations. But let's see now-" 
+
+Barr considered, while Forell relaxed, back to railing, and Devers looked into the velvet sky and 
+thought wonderingly of Trantor. 
+
+Then Barr said, "You see, sir, you - and Devers - and everyone no doubt, had the idea that 
+beating the Empire meant first prying apart the Emperor and his general. You, and Devers, and 
+everyone else were right - right all the time, as far as the principle of internal disunion was 
+concerned. 
+
+"You were wrong, however, in thinking that this internal split was something to be brought about 
+by individual acts, by inspirations of the moment. You tried bribery and lies. You appealed to 
+ambition and to fear. But you got nothing for all your pains. In fact, appearances were worse 
+after each attempt. 
+
+"And through all this wild threshing up of tiny ripples, the Seldon tidal wave continued onward, 
+quietly - but quite irresistibly." 
+
+Ducem Barr turned away, and looked over the railing at the lights of a rejoicing city. Fie said, 
+"There was a dead hand pushing all of us; the mighty general and the great Emperor; my world 
+and your world - the dead hand of Hari Seldon. Fie knew that a man like Riose would have to 
+fail, since it was his success that brought failure; and the greater the success, the surer the 
+failure." 
+
+Forell said dryly, "I can't say you're getting clearer." 
+
+"A moment," continued Barr earnestly. "Look at the situation. A weak general could never have 
+endangered us, obviously. A strong general during the time of a weak Emperor would never 
+have endangered us, either; for he would have turned his arms towards a much more fruitful 
+target. Events have shown that three-fourths of the Emperors of the last two centuries were 
+rebel generals and rebel viceroys before they were Emperors. 
+
+"So it is only the combination of strong Emperor and strong general that can harm the 
+Foundation; for a strong Emperor can not be dethroned easily, and a strong general is forced to 
+turn outwards, past the frontiers. 
+
+"But, what keeps the Emperor strong? What kept Cleon strong? It's obvious. Fie is strong, 
+because he permits no strong subjects. A courtier who becomes too rich, or a general who 
+becomes too popular is dangerous. All the recent history of the Empire proves that to any 
+Emperor intelligent enough to be strong. 
+
+
+
+"Riose won victories, so the Emperor grew suspicious. All the atmosphere of the times forced 
+him to be suspicious. Did Riose refuse a bribe? Very suspicious; ulterior motives. Did his most 
+trusted courtier suddenly favor Riose? Very suspicious; ulterior motives. It wasn't the individual 
+acts that were suspicious. Anything else would have done which is why our individual plots 
+were unnecessary and rather futile. It was the success of Riose that was suspicious. So he was 
+recalled, and accused, condemned, murdered. The Foundation wins again. 
+
+"Look, there is not a conceivable combination of events that does not result in the Foundation 
+winning. It was inevitable; whatever Riose did, whatever we did." 
+
+The Foundation magnate nodded ponderously. "So! But what if the Emperor and the general 
+had been the same person. Fley? What then? That's a case you didn't cover, so you haven't 
+proved your point yet." 
+
+Barr shrugged. "I can't prove anything; I haven't the mathematics. But I appeal to your reason. 
+With an Empire in which every aristocrat, every strong man, every pirate can aspire to the 
+Throne - and, as history shows, often successfully - what would happen to even a strong 
+Emperor who preoccupied himself with foreign wars at the extreme end of the Galaxy? How 
+long would he have to remain away from the capital before somebody raised the standards of 
+civil war and forced him home. The social environment of the Empire would make that time 
+short. 
+
+"I once told Riose that not all the Empire's strength could swerve the dead hand of Hari 
+Seldom" 
+
+"Good! Good!" Forell was expansively pleased. "Then you imply the Empire can never threaten 
+us again." 
+
+"It seems to me so," agreed Barr. "Frankly, Cleon may not live out the year, and there's going to 
+be a disputed succession almost as a matter of course, which might mean the last civil war for 
+the Empire." 
+
+"Then," said Forell, "there are no more enemies." 
+
+Barr was thoughtful. "There's a Second Foundation." 
+
+"At the other end of the Galaxy? Not for centuries." 
+
+Devers turned suddenly at this, and his face was dark as he faced Forell. "There are internal 
+enemies, perhaps." 
+
+"Are there?" asked Forell, coolly. "Who, for instance?" 
+
+"People, for instance, who might like to spread the wealth a bit, and keep it from concentrating 
+too much out of the hands that work for it. See what I mean?" 
+
+
+Slowly, Forell's gaze lost its contempt and grew one with the anger of Devers' own. 
+
+
+
+PART II 
+THE MULE 
+
+11. BRIDE AND GROOM 
+
+THE MULE Less is known of "The Mule" than of any character of comparable significance to 
+Galactic history. Even the period of his greatest renown is known to us chiefly through the eyes 
+of his antagonists and, principally, through those of a young bride.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Bayta's first sight of Haven was entirely the contrary of spectacular. Her husband pointed it out 
+- a dull star lost in the emptiness of the Galaxy's edge. It was past the last sparse clusters, to 
+where straggling points of light gleamed lonely. And even among these it was poor and 
+inconspicuous. 
+
+Toran was quite aware that as the earliest prelude to married life, the Red Dwarf lacked 
+impressiveness and his lips curled self-consciously. "I know, Bay - It isn't exactly a proper 
+change, is it? I mean from the Foundation to this." 
+
+"A horrible change, Toran. I should never have married you." 
+
+And when his face looked momentarily hurt, before he caught himself, she said with her special 
+"cozy" tone, "All right, silly. Now let your lower lip droop and give me that special dying-duck 
+look - the one just before you're supposed to bury your head on my shoulder, while I stroke 
+your hair full of static electricity. You were fishing for some drivel, weren't you? You were 
+expecting me to say 'I'd be happy anywhere with you, Toran!' or 'The interstellar depths 
+themselves would be home, my sweet, were you but with me!' Now you admit it." 
+
+She pointed a finger at him and snatched it away an instant before his teeth closed upon it. 
+
+He said, "If I surrender, and admit you're right, will you prepare dinner?" 
+
+She nodded contentedly. He smiled, and just looked at her. 
+
+She wasn't beautiful on the grand scale to others - he admitted that - even if everybody did 
+look twice. Her hair was dark and glossy, though straight, her mouth a bit wide - but her 
+meticulous, close-textured eyebrows separated a white, unlined forehead from the warmest 
+mahogany eyes ever filled with smiles. 
+
+And behind a very sturdily-built and staunchly-defended facade of practical, unromantic, 
+hard-headedness towards life, there was just that little pool of softness that would never show if 
+you poked for it, but could be reached if you knew just how - and never let on that you were 
+looking for it. 
+
+Toran adjusted the controls unnecessarily and decided to relax. He was one interstellar jump, 
+
+
+
+and then several milli-microparsecs "on the straight" before manipulation by hand was 
+necessary. He leaned over backwards to look into the storeroom, where Bayta was juggling 
+appropriate containers. 
+
+There was quite a bit of smugness about his attitude towards Bayta - the satisfied awe that 
+marks the triumph of someone who has been hovering at the edge of an inferiority complex for 
+three years. 
+
+After all he was a provincial - and not merely a provincial, but the son of a renegade Trader. 
+And she was of the Foundation itself - and not merely that, but she could trace her ancestry 
+back to Mallow. 
+
+And with all that, a tiny quiver underneath. To take her back to Haven, with its rock-world and 
+cave-cities was bad enough. To have her face the traditional hostility of Trader for Foundation - 
+nomad for city dweller - was worse. 
+
+Still - After supper, the last jump! 
+
+Haven was an angry crimson blaze, and the second planet was a ruddy patch of light with 
+atmosphere-blurred rim and a half-sphere of darkness. Bayta leaned over the large view table 
+with its spidering of crisscross lines that centered Haven II neatly. 
+
+She said gravely, "I wish I had met your father first. If he takes a dislike to me-" 
+
+"Then," said Toran matter-of-factly, "you would be the first pretty girl to inspire that in him. 
+Before he lost his arm and stopped roving around the Galaxy, he - Well, if you ask him about it, 
+he'll talk to you about it till your ears wear down to a nubbin. After a while I got to thinking that 
+he was embroidering; because he never told the same story twice the same way-" 
+
+Haven II was rushing up at them now. The landlocked sea wheeled ponderously below them, 
+slate-gray in the lowering dimness and lost to sight, here and there, among the wispy clouds. 
+Mountains jutted raggedly along the coast. 
+
+The sea became wrinkled with nearness and, as it veered off past the horizon just at the end, 
+there was one vanishing glimpse of shore-hugging ice fields. 
+
+Toran grunted under the fierce deceleration, "Is your suit locked?" 
+
+Bayta's plump face was round and ruddy in the incasing sponge-foam of the internally-heated, 
+skin-clinging costume. 
+
+The ship lowered crunchingly on the open field just short of the lifting of the plateau. 
+
+They climbed out awkwardly into the solid darkness of the outer-galactic night, and Bayta 
+gasped as the sudden cold bit, and the thin wind swirled emptily. Toran seized her elbow and 
+nudged her into an awkward run over the smooth, packed ground towards the sparking of 
+artificial light in the distance. 
+
+The advancing guards met them halfway, and after a whispered exchange of words, they were 
+taken onward. The wind and the cold disappeared when the gate of rock opened and then 
+closed behind them. The warm interior, white with wall-light, was filled with an incongruous 
+
+
+
+humming bustle. Men looked up from their desks, and Toran produced documents. 
+
+They were waved onward after a short glance and Toran whispered to his wife, "Dad must have 
+fixed up the preliminaries. The usual lapse here is about five hours." 
+
+They burst into the open and Bayta said suddenly, "Oh, my-" 
+
+The cave city was in daylight - the white daylight of a young sun. Not that there was a sun, of 
+course. What should have been the sky was lost in the unfocused glow of an over-all brilliance. 
+And the warm air was properly thick and fragrant with greenery. 
+
+Bayta said, "Why, Toran, it's beautiful." 
+
+Toran grinned with anxious delight. "Well, now, Bay, it isn't like anything on the Foundation, of 
+course, but it's the biggest city on Haven II - twenty thousand people, you know - and you'll get 
+to like it. No amusement palaces, I'm afraid, but no secret police either." 
+
+"Oh, Torie, it's just like a toy city. It's all white and pink - and so clean." 
+
+"Well-" Toran looked at the city with her. The houses were two stories high for the most part, 
+and of the smooth vein rock indigenous to the region. The spires of the Foundation were 
+missing, and the colossal community houses of the Old Kingdoms - but the smallness was 
+there and the individuality; a relic of personal initiative in a Galaxy of mass life. 
+
+He snapped to sudden attention. "Bay - There's Dad! Right there - where I'm pointing, silly. 
+Don't you see him?" 
+
+She did. It was just the impression of a large man, waving frantically, fingers spread wide as 
+though groping wildly in air. The deep thunder of a drawn-out shout reached them. Bayta trailed 
+her husband, rushing downwards over the close-cropped lawn. She caught sight of a smaller 
+man, white-haired, almost lost to view behind the robust One-arm, who still waved and still 
+shouted. 
+
+Toran cried over his shoulder, "It's my father's half-brother. The one who's been to the 
+Foundation. You know." 
+
+They met in the grass, laughing and incoherent, and Toran's father let out a final whoop for 
+sheer joy. He hitched at his short jacket and adjusted the metal-chased belt that was his one 
+concession to luxury. 
+
+His eyes shifted from one of the youngsters to the other, and then he said, a little out of breath, 
+"You picked a rotten day to return home, boy!" 
+
+"What? Oh, it is Seldon's birthday, isn't it?" 
+
+"It is. I had to rent a car to make the trip here, and dragoon Randu to drive it. Not a public 
+vehicle to be had at gun's point." 
+
+His eyes were on Bayta now, and didn't leave. He spoke to her more softly, "I have the crystal 
+of you right here - and it's good, but I can see the fellow who took it was an amateur." 
+
+
+
+He had the small cube of transparency out of his jacket pocket and in the light the laughing little 
+face within sprang to vivid colored life as a miniature Bayta. 
+
+"That one!" said Bayta. "Now I wonder why Toran should send that caricature. I'm surprised you 
+let me come near you, sir." 
+
+"Are you now? Call me Fran. I'll have none of this fancy mess. For that, I think you can take my 
+arm, and we'll go on to the car. Till now I never did think my boy knew what he was ever up to. I 
+think I'll change that opinion. I think I'll have to change that opinion." 
+
+Toran said to his half uncle softly, "How is the old man these days? Does he still hound the 
+women?" 
+
+Randu puckered up all over his face when he smiled. "When he can, Toran, when he can. 
+
+There are times when he remembers that his next birthday will be his sixtieth, and that 
+disheartens him. But he shouts it down, this evil thought, and then he is himself. He is a Trader 
+of the ancient type. But you, Toran. Where did you find such a pretty wife?" 
+
+The young man chuckled and linked arms. "Do you want a three years' history at a gasp, 
+uncle?" 
+
+It was in the small living room of the home that Bayta struggled out of her traveling cloak and 
+hood and shook her hair loose. She sat down, crossing her knees, and returned the 
+appreciative stare of this large, ruddy man. 
+
+She said, "I know what you're trying to estimate, and I'll help you; Age, twenty-four, height, 
+five-four, weight, one-ten, educational specialty, history." She noticed that he always crooked 
+his stand so as to hide the missing arm. But now Fran leaned close and said, "Since you 
+mention it -weight, one-twenty." 
+
+He laughed loudly at her flush. Then he said to the company in general, "You can always tell a 
+woman's weight by her upper arm - with due experience, of course. Do you want a drink, Bay?" 
+
+"Among other things," she said, and they left together, while Toran busied himself at the book 
+shelves to check for new additions. 
+
+Fran returned alone and said, "She'll be down later." 
+
+He lowered himself heavily into the large comer chair and placed his stiff-jointed left leg on the 
+stool before it. The laughter had left his red face, and Toran turned to face him. 
+
+Fran said, "Well, you're home, boy, and I'm glad you are. I like your woman. She's no whining 
+ninny." 
+
+"I married her," said Toran simply. 
+
+"Well, that's another thing altogether, boy." His eyes darkened. "It's a foolish way to tie up the 
+future. In my longer life, and more experienced, I never did such a thing." 
+
+Randu interrupted from the comer where he stood quietly. "Now Franssart, what comparisons 
+are you making? Till your crash landing six years ago you were never in one spot long enough 
+
+
+
+to establish residence requirements for marriage, And since then, who would have you?" 
+
+The one-armed man jerked erect in his seat and replied hotly, "Many, you snowy dotard-" 
+
+Toran said with hasty tact, "It's largely a legal formality, Dad. The situation has its 
+conveniences." 
+
+"Mostly for the woman," grumbled Fran. 
+
+"And even if so," agreed Randu, "it's up to the boy to decide. Marriage is an old custom among 
+the Foundationers." 
+
+"The Foundationers are not fit models for an honest Trader," smoldered Fran. 
+
+Toran broke in again, "My wife is a Foundationer." Fie looked from one to the other, and then 
+said quietly, "She's coming." 
+
+The conversation took a general turn after the evening meal, which Fran had spiced with three 
+tales of reminiscence composed of equal parts of blood, women, profits, and embroidery. The 
+small televisor was on, and some classic drama was playing itself out in an unregarded 
+whisper. Randu had hitched himself into a more comfortable position on the low couch and 
+gazed past the slow smoke of his long pipe to where Bayta had knelt down upon the softness 
+of the white fur mat brought back once long ago from a trade mission and now spread out only 
+upon the most ceremonious occasions. 
+
+"You have studied history, my girl?" he asked, pleasantly. 
+
+Bayta nodded. "I was the despair of my teachers, but I learned a bit, eventually." 
+
+"A citation for scholarship," put in Toran, smugly, "that's all!" 
+
+"And what did you learn?" proceeded Randu, smoothly. 
+
+"Everything? Now?" laughed the girl. 
+
+The old man smiled gently. "Well then, what do you think of the Galactic situation?" 
+
+"I think," said Bayta, concisely, "that a Seldon crisis is pending - and that if it isn't then away 
+with the Seldon plan altogether. It is a failure." 
+
+("Whew," muttered Fran, from his comer. "What a way to speak of Seldon." But he said nothing 
+aloud.) 
+
+Randu sucked at his pipe speculatively. "Indeed? Why do you say that? I was to the 
+Foundation, you know, in my younger days, and I, too, once thought great dramatic thoughts. 
+But, now, why do you say that?" 
+
+"Well," Bayta's eyes misted with thought as she curled her bare toes into the white softness of 
+the rug and nestled her little chin in one plump hand, "it seems to me that the whole essence of 
+Seldon's plan was to create a world better than the ancient one of the Galactic Empire. It was 
+failing apart, that world, three centuries ago, when Seldon first established the Foundation - 
+and if history speaks truly, it was falling apart of the triple disease of inertia, despotism, and 
+
+
+
+maldistribution of the goods of the universe." 
+
+Randu nodded slowly, while Toran gazed with proud, luminous eyes at his wife, and Fran in the 
+comer clucked his tongue and carefully refilled his glass. 
+
+Bayta said, "If the story of Seldon is true, he foresaw the complete collapse of the Empire 
+through his Jaws of psychohistory, and was able to predict the necessary thirty thousand years 
+of barbarism before the establishment of a new Second Empire to restore civilization and 
+culture to humanity. It was the whole aim of his life-work to set up such conditions as would 
+insure a speedier rejuvenation," 
+
+The deep voice of Fran burst out, "And that's why he established the two Foundations, honor 
+be to his name." 
+
+"And that's why he established the two Foundations," assented Bayta. "Our Foundation was a 
+gathering of the scientists of the dying Empire intended to carry on the science and learning of 
+man to new heights. And the Foundation was so situated in space and the historical 
+environment was such that through the careful calculations of his genius, Seldon foresaw that 
+in one thousand years, it would become a newer, greater Empire." 
+
+There was a reverent silence. 
+
+The girl said softly, "It's an old story. You all know it. For almost three centuries every human 
+being of the Foundation has known it. But I thought it would be appropriate to go through it - 
+just quickly. Today is Seldon's birthday, you know, and even if I am of the Foundation, and you 
+are of Flaven, we have that in common-" 
+
+She lit a cigarette slowly, and watched the glowing tip absently. "The laws of history are as 
+absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because 
+history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations 
+count for more. Seldon predicted a series of crises through the thousand years of growth, each 
+of which would force a new turning of our history into a pre-calculated path. It is those crises 
+which direct us - and therefore a crisis must come now. 
+
+"Now!" she repeated, forcefully. "It's almost a century since the last one, and in that century, 
+every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows 
+one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one 
+desire; to hold what is theirs." 
+
+"While others starve!" roared Fran suddenly with a mighty blow of his fist upon the arm of his 
+chair. "Girl, your words are pearls. The fat guts on their moneybags ruin the Foundation, while 
+the brave Traders hide their poverty on dregs of worlds like Flaven. It's a disgrace to Seldon, a 
+casting of dirt in his face, a spewing in his beard." Fie raised his arm high, and then his face 
+lengthened. "If I had my other arm! If - once - they had listened to me!" 
+
+"Dad," said Toran, "take it easy." 
+
+"Take it easy. Take it easy," his father mimicked savagely. "We'll live here and die here forever 
+- and you say, take it easy." 
+
+
+
+"That's our modern Lathan Devers," said Randu, gesturing with his pipe, "this Fran of ours. 
+Devers died in the slave mines eighty years ago with your husband's great-grandfather, 
+because he lacked wisdom and didn't lack heart-" 
+
+"Yes, by the Galaxy, I'd do the same if I were he," swore Fran. "Devers was the greatest Trader 
+in history - greater than the overblown windbag, Mallow, the Foundationers worship. If the 
+cutthroats who lord the Foundation killed him because he loved justice, the greater the 
+blood-debt owed them." 
+
+"Go on, girl," said Randu. "Go on, or, surely, he'll talk a the night and rave all the next day." 
+
+"There's nothing to go on about," she said, with a sudden gloom. "There must be a crisis, but I 
+don't know how to make one. The progressive forces on the Foundation are oppressed 
+fearfully. You Traders may have the will, but you are hunted and disunited. If all the forces of 
+good will in and out of the Foundation could combine-" 
+
+Fran's laugh was a raucous jeer. "Listen to her, Randu, listen to her. In and out of the 
+Foundation, she says. Girl, girl, there's no hope in the flab-sides of the Foundation. Among 
+them some hold the whip and the rest are whipped dead whipped. Not enough spunk left in the 
+whole rotten world to outface one good Trader." 
+
+Bayta's attempted interruptions broke feebly against the overwhelming wind. 
+
+Toran leaned over and put a hand over her mouth. "Dad," he said, coldly, "you've never been 
+on the Foundation. You know nothing about it. I tell you that the underground there is brave and 
+daring enough. I could tell you that Bayta was one of them-" 
+
+"All right, boy, no offense. Now, where's the cause for anger?" Fie was genuinely perturbed. 
+
+Toran drove on fervently, "The trouble with you, Dad, is that you've got a provincial outlook. 
+
+You think because some hundred thousand Traders scurry into holes on an unwanted planet at 
+the end of nowhere, that they're a great people. Of course, any tax collector from the 
+Foundation that gets here never leaves again, but that's cheap heroism. What would you do if 
+the Foundation sent a fleet?" 
+
+"We'd blast them," said Fran, sharply. 
+
+"And get blasted - with the balance in their favor. You're outnumbered, outarmed, outorganized 
+- and as soon as the Foundation thinks it worth its while, you'll realize that. So you had better 
+seek your allies - on the Foundation itself, if you can." 
+
+"Randu, said Fran, looking at his brother like a great, helpless bull. 
+
+Randu took his pipe away from his lips, "The boy's right, Fran. When you listen to the little 
+thoughts deep inside you, you know he is. But they're uncomfortable thoughts, so you drown 
+them out with that roar of yours. But they're still there. Toran, I'll tell you why I brought all this 
+up." 
+
+Fie puffed thoughtfully awhile, then dipped his pipe into the neck of the tray, waited for the silent 
+flash, and withdrew it clean. Slowly, he filled it again with precise tamps of his little finger. 
+
+
+
+He said, "Your little suggestion of Foundation's interest in us, Toran, is to the point. There have 
+been two recent visits lately - for tax purposes. The disturbing point is that the second visitor 
+was accompanied by a light patrol ship. They landed in Gleiar City - giving us the miss for a 
+change - and they never lifted off again, naturally. But now they'll surely be back. Your father is 
+aware of all this, Toran, he really is. 
+
+"Look at the stubborn rakehell. He knows Haven is in trouble, and he knows we're helpless, but 
+he repeats his formulas. It warms and protects him. But once he's had his say, and roared his 
+defiance, and feels he's discharged his duty as a man and a Bull Trader, why he's as 
+reasonable as any of us." 
+
+"Any of who?" asked Bayta. 
+
+He smiled at her. "We've formed a little group, Bayta - just in our city. We haven't done 
+anything, yet. We haven't even managed to contact the other cities yet, but it's a start." 
+
+"But towards what?" 
+
+Randu shook his head. "We don't know-yet. We hope for a miracle. We have decided that, as 
+you say, a Seldon crisis must be at hand." He gestured widely upwards. "The Galaxy is full of 
+the chips and splinters of the broken Empire. The generals swarm. Do you suppose the time 
+may come when one will grow bold?" 
+
+Bayta considered, and shook her head decisively, so that the long straight hair with the single 
+inward curl at the end swirled about her ears. "No, not a chance. There's not one of those 
+generals who doesn't know that an attack on the Foundation is suicide. Bel Riose of the old 
+Empire was a better man than any of them, and he attacked with the resources of a galaxy, and 
+couldn't win against the Seldon Plan. Is there one general that doesn't know that?" 
+
+"But what if we spur them on?" 
+
+"Into where? Into an atomic furnace? With what could you possibly spur them?" 
+
+"Well, there is one - a new one. In this past year or two, there has come word of a strange man 
+whom they call the Mule." 
+
+"The Mule?" She considered. "Ever hear of him, Torie?" 
+
+Toran shook his head. She said, "What about him?" 
+
+"I don't know. But he wins victories at, they say, impossible odds. The rumors may be 
+exaggerated, but it would be interesting, in any case, to become acquainted with him. Not every 
+man with sufficient ability and sufficient ambition would believe in Hari Seldon and his laws of 
+psychohistory. We could encourage that disbelief. He might attack." 
+
+"And the Foundation would win." 
+
+"Yes - but not necessarily easily. It might be a crisis, and we could take advantage of such a 
+crisis to force a compromise with the despots of the Foundation. At the worst, they would forget 
+us long enough to enable us to plan farther." 
+
+
+
+"What do you think, Torie?" 
+
+Toran smiled feebly and pulled at a loose brown curl that fell over one eye. "The way he 
+describes it, it can't hurt; but who is the Mule? What do you know of him, Randu?" 
+
+"Nothing yet. For that, we could use you, Toran. And your wife, if she's willing. We've talked of 
+this, your father and I. We've talked of this thoroughly." 
+
+"In what way, Randu? What do you want of us?" The young man cast a quick inquisitive look at 
+his wife. 
+
+"Have you had a honeymoon?" 
+
+"Well ... yes ... if you can call the trip from the Foundation a honeymoon." 
+
+"How about a better one on Kalgan? It's semitropical beaches - water sports - bird hunting - 
+quite the vacation spot. It's about seven thousand parsecs in-not too far." 
+
+"What's on Kalgan?" 
+
+"The Mule! His men, at least. He took it last month, and without a battle, though Kalgan's 
+warlord broadcast a threat to blow the planet to ionic dust before giving it up." 
+
+"Where's the warlord now?" 
+
+"He isn't," said Randu, with a shrug. "What do you say?" 
+
+"But what are we to do?" 
+
+"I don't know. Fran and I are old; we're provincial. The Traders of Haven are all essentially 
+provincial. Even you say so. Our trading is of a very restricted sort, and we're not the Galaxy 
+roamers our ancestors were, Shut up, Fran! But you two know the Galaxy. Bayta, especially, 
+speaks with a nice Foundation accent. We merely wish whatever you can find out. If you can 
+make contact ... but we wouldn't expect that. Suppose you two think it over. You can meet our 
+entire group if you wish ... oh, not before next week. You ought to have some time to catch your 
+breath." 
+
+There was a pause and then Fran roared, "Who wants; another drink? I mean, besides me?" 
+
+
+12. CAPTAIN AND MAYOR 
+
+Captain Han Pritcher was unused to the luxury of his surroundings and by no means 
+impressed. As a general thing, he discouraged self-analysis and all forms of philosophy and 
+metaphysics not directly connected with his work. 
+
+It helped. 
+
+His work consisted largely of what the War Department called "intelligence," the sophisticates, 
+"espionage," and the romanticists, "spy stuff." And, unfortunately, despite the frothy shrillness of 
+the televisors, "intelligence," "espionage," and "spy stuff" are at best a sordid business of 
+
+
+
+routine betrayal and bad faith. It is excused by society since it is in the "interest of the State," 
+but since philosophy seemed always to lead Captain Pritcher to the conclusion that even in that 
+holy interest, society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience - he discouraged 
+philosophy. 
+
+And now, in the luxury of the mayor's anteroom, his thoughts turned inward despite himself. 
+
+Men had been promoted over his head continuously, though of lesser ability - that much was 
+admitted. He had withstood an eternal rain of black marks and official reprimands, and survived 
+it. And stubbornly he had held to his own way in the firm belief that insubordination in that same 
+holy "interest of the State" would yet be recognized for the service it was. 
+
+So here he was in the anteroom of the mayor-with five soldiers as a respectful guard, and 
+probably a court-martial awaiting him. 
+
+The heavy, marble doors rolled apart smoothly, silently, revealing satiny walls, a red plastic 
+carpeting, and two more marble doors, metal-inlaid, within. Two officials in the straight-lined 
+costume of three centuries back, stepped out, and called: 
+
+"An audience to Captain Han Pritcher of Information." 
+
+They stepped back with a ceremonious bow as the captain started forward. His escort stopped 
+at the outer door, and he entered the inner alone. 
+
+On the other side of the doors, in a large room strangely simple, behind a large desk strangely 
+angular, sat a small man, almost lost in the immensity, 
+
+Mayor Indbur - successively the third of that name - was the grandson of the first Indbur, who 
+had been brutal and capable; and who had exhibited the first quality in spectacular fashion by 
+his manner of seizing power, and the latter by the skill with which he put an end to the last 
+farcical remnants of free election and the even greater skill with which he maintained a 
+relatively peaceful rule. 
+
+Mayor Indbur was also the son of the second Indbur, who was the first Mayor of the Foundation 
+to succeed to his post by right of birth - and who was only half his father, for he was merely 
+brutal. 
+
+So Mayor Indbur was the third of the name and the second to succeed by right of birth, and he 
+was the least of the three, for he was neither brutal nor capable - but merely an excellent 
+bookkeeper born wrong. 
+
+Indbur the Third was a peculiar combination of ersatz characteristics to all but himself. 
+
+To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was "system," an indefatigable and feverish 
+interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was "industry," indecision when right 
+was "caution," and blind stubbornness when wrong, "determination." 
+
+And withal he wasted no money, killed no man needlessly, and meant extremely well. 
+
+If Captain Pritcher's gloomy thoughts ran along these lines as he remained respectfully in place 
+before the large desk, the wooden arrangement of his features yielded no insight into the fact. 
+
+
+
+He neither coughed, shifted weight, nor shuffled his feet until the thin face of the mayor lifted 
+slowly as the busy stylus ceased in its task of marginal notations, and a sheet of close-printed 
+paper was lifted from one neat stack and placed upon another neat stack. 
+
+Mayor Indbur clasped his hands carefully before him, deliberately refraining from disturbing the 
+careful arrangement of desk accessories. 
+
+He said, in acknowledgment, "Captain Han Pritcher of Information." 
+
+And Captain Pritcher in strict obedience to protocol bent one knee nearly to the ground and 
+bowed his head until he heard the words of release. 
+
+"Arise, Captain Pritcher!" 
+
+The mayor said with an air of warm sympathy, "You are here, Captain Pritcher, because of 
+certain disciplinary action taken against yourself by your superior officer. The papers 
+concerning such action have come, in the ordinary course of events, to my notice, and since no 
+event in the Foundation is of disinterest to me, I took the trouble to ask for further information 
+on your case. You are not, I hope, surprised." 
+
+Captain Pritcher said unemotionally, "Excellence, no. Your justice is proverbial." 
+
+"Is it? Is it?" His tone was pleased, and the tinted contact lenses he wore caught the light in a 
+manner that imparted a hard, dry gleam to his eyes. Meticulously, he fanned out a series of 
+metal-bound folders before him. The parchment sheets within crackled sharply as he turned 
+them, his long finger following down the line as he spoke. 
+
+"I have your record here, captain - complete. You are forty-three and have been an Officer of 
+the Armed Forces for seventeen years. You were born in Loris, of Anacreonian parents, no 
+serious childhood diseases, an attack of myo ... well, that's of no importance ... education, 
+premilitary, at the Academy of Sciences, major, hyper-engines, academic standing ... hm-m-m, 
+very good, you are to be congratulated ... entered the Army as Under-Officer on the one 
+hundred second day of the 293rd year of the Foundation Era." 
+
+He lifted his eyes momentarily as he shifted the first folder, and opened the second. 
+
+"You see," he said, "in my administration, nothing is left to chance. Order! System!" 
+
+He lifted a pink, scented jelly-globule to his lips. It was his one vice, and but dolingly indulged 
+in. Witness the fact that the mayor's desk lacked that almost-inevitable atom flash for the 
+disposal of dead tobacco. For the mayor did not smoke. 
+
+Nor, as a matter of course, did his visitors. 
+
+The mayor's voice droned on, methodically, slurringly, mumblingly - now and then interspersed 
+with whispered comments of equally mild and equally ineffectual commendation or reproof. 
+
+Slowly, he replaced the folders as originally, in a single neat pile. 
+
+"Well, captain," he said, briskly, "your record is unusual. Your ability is outstanding, it would 
+seem, and your services valuable beyond question. I note that you have been wounded in the 
+
+
+
+line of duty twice, and that you have been awarded the Order of Merit for bravery beyond the 
+call of duty. Those are facts not lightly to be minimized." 
+
+Captain Pritcher's expressionless face did not soften. He remained stiffly erect. Protocol 
+required that a subject honored by an audience with the mayor may not sit down - a point 
+perhaps needlessly reinforced by the fact that only one chair existed in the room, the one 
+underneath the mayor. Protocol further required no statements other than those needed to 
+answer a direct question. 
+
+The mayor's eyes bore down hard upon the soldier and his voice grew pointed and heavy. 
+"However, you have not been promoted in ten years, and your superiors report, over and over 
+again, of the unbending stubbornness of your character. You are reported to be chronically 
+insubordinate, incapable of maintaining a correct attitude towards superior officers, apparently 
+uninterested in maintaining frictionless relationships with your colleagues, and an incurable 
+troublemaker, besides. How do you explain that, captain?" 
+
+"Excellence, I do what seems right to me. My deeds on behalf of the State, and my wounds in 
+that cause bear witness that what seems fight to me is also in the interest of the State." 
+
+"A soldierly statement, captain, but a dangerous doctrine. More of that, later. Specifically, you 
+are charged with refusing an assignment three times in the face of orders signed by my legal 
+delegates. What have you to say to that?" 
+
+"Excellence, the assignment lacks significance in a critical time, where matters of first 
+importance are being ignored." 
+
+"Ah, and who tells you these matters you speak of are of the first importance at all, and if they 
+are, who tells you further that they are ignored?" 
+
+"Excellence, these things are quite evident to me. My experience and my knowledge of events 
+- the value of neither of which my superiors deny - make it plain." 
+
+"But, my good captain, are you blind that you do not see that by arrogating to yourself the right 
+to determine Intelligence policy, you usurp the duties of your superior?" 
+
+"Excellence, my duty is primarily to the State, and not to my superior." 
+
+"Fallacious, for your superior has his superior, and that superior is myself, and I am the State. 
+But come, you shall have no cause to complain of this justice of mine that you say is proverbial. 
+State in your own words the nature of the breach in discipline that has brought all this on." 
+
+"Excellence, my duty is primarily to the State, and not to my living the life of a retired merchant 
+mariner upon the world of Kalgan. My instructions were to direct Foundation activity upon the 
+planet, perfect an organization to act as check upon the warlord of Kalgan, particularly as 
+regards his foreign policy." 
+
+"This is known to me. Continue!" 
+
+"Excellence, my reports have continually stressed the strategic positions of Kalgan and the 
+systems it controls. I have reported on the ambition of the warlord, his resources, his 
+
+
+
+determination to extend his domain and his essential friendliness - or, perhaps, neutrality - 
+towards the Foundation." 
+
+"I have read your reports thoroughly. Continue!" 
+
+"Excellence, I returned two months ago. At that time, there was no sign of impending war; no 
+sign of anything but an almost superfluity of ability to repel any conceivable attack. One month 
+ago, an unknown soldier of fortune took Kalgan without a fight. The man who was once warlord 
+of Kalgan is apparently no longer alive. Men do not speak of treason - they speak only of the 
+power and genius of this strange condottiere - this Mule." 
+
+"This who?" the mayor leaned forward, and looked offended. 
+
+"Excellence, he is known as the Mule. He is spoken of little, in a factual sense, but I have 
+gathered the scraps and fragments of knowledge and winnowed out the most probable of them. 
+He is apparently a man of neither birth nor standing. His father, unknown. His mother, dead in 
+childbirth. His upbringing, that of a vagabond. His education, that of the tramp worlds, and the 
+backwash alleys of space. He has no name other than that of the Mule, a name reportedly 
+applied by himself to himself, and signifying, by popular explanation, his immense physical 
+strength, and stubbornness of purpose." 
+
+"What is his military strength, captain? Never mind his physique." 
+
+"Excellence, men speak of huge fleets, but in this they may be influenced by the strange fall of 
+Kalgan. The territory he controls is not large, though its exact limits are not capable of definite 
+determination. Nevertheless, this man must be investigated." 
+
+"Hm-m-m. So! So!" The mayor fell into a reverie, and slowly with twenty-four strokes of his 
+stylus drew six squares in hexagonal arrangements upon the blank top sheet of a pad, which 
+he tore off, folded neatly in three parts and slipped into the wastepaper slot at his right hand. It 
+slid towards a clean and silent atomic disintegration. 
+
+"Now then, tell me, captain, what is the alternative? You have told me what 'must' be 
+investigated. What have you been ordered to investigate?" 
+
+"Excellence, there is a rat hole in space that, it seems, does not pay its taxes." 
+
+"Ah, and is that all? You are not aware, and have not been told that these men who do not pay 
+their taxes, are descendants of the wild Traders of our early days - anarchists, rebels, social 
+maniacs who claim Foundation ancestry and deride Foundation culture. You are not aware, 
+and have not been told, that this rat hole in space, is not one, but many; that these rat holes are 
+in greater number than we know; that these rat holes conspire together, one with the other, and 
+all with the criminal elements that still exist throughout Foundation territory. Even here, captain, 
+even here!" 
+
+The mayor's momentary fire subsided quickly. "You are not aware, captain?" 
+
+"Excellence, I have been told all this. But as servant of the State, I must serve faithfully - and 
+he serves most faithfully who serves Truth. Whatever the political implications of these dregs of 
+the ancient Traders - the warlords who have inherited the splinters of the old Empire have the 
+
+
+
+power. The Traders have neither arms nor resources. They have not even unity. I am not a tax 
+collector to be sent on a child's errand." 
+
+
+"Captain Pritcher, you are a soldier, and count guns. It is a failing to be allowed you up to the 
+point where it involves disobedience to myself. Take care. My justice is not simply weakness. 
+Captain, it has already been proven that the generals of the Imperial Age and the warlords of 
+the present age are equally impotent against us. Seldon's science which predicts the course of 
+the Foundation is based, not on individual heroism, as you seem to believe, but on the social 
+and economic trends of history. We have passed successfully through four crises already, have 
+we not?" 
+
+"Excellence, we have. Yet Seldon's science is known only to Seldon. We ourselves have but 
+faith. In the first three crises, as I have been carefully taught, the Foundation was led by wise 
+leaders who foresaw the nature of the crises and took the proper precautions. Otherwise - who 
+can say?" 
+
+"Yes, captain, but you omit the fourth crisis. Come, captain, we had no leadership worthy of the 
+name then, and we faced the cleverest opponent, the heaviest armor, the strongest force of all. 
+Yet we won by the inevitability of history." 
+
+"Excellence, that is true. But this history you mention became inevitable only after we had 
+fought desperately for over a year. The inevitable victory we won cost us half a thousand ships 
+and half a million men. Excellence, Seldon's plan helps those who help themselves." 
+
+Mayor Indbur frowned and grew suddenly tired of his patient exposition. It occurred to him that 
+there was a fallacy in condescension, since it was mistaken for permission to argue eternally; to 
+grow contentious; to wallow in dialectic. Fie said, stiffly, "Nevertheless, captain, Seldon 
+guarantees victory over the warlords, and I can not, in these busy times, indulge in a dispersal 
+of effort. These Traders you dismiss are Foundation-derived. A war with them would be a civil 
+war. Seldon's plan makes no guarantee there for us - since they anc/we are Foundation. So 
+they must be brought to heel. You have your orders." 
+
+"Excellence-" 
+
+"You have been asked no question, captain. You have your orders. You will obey those orders. 
+Further argument of any sort with myself or those representing myself will be considered 
+treason. You are excused." 
+
+Captain Flan Pritcher knelt once more, then left with slow, backward steps. 
+
+Mayor Indbur, third of his name, and second mayor of Foundation history to be so by fight of 
+birth, recovered his equilibrium, and lifted another sheet of paper from the neat stack at his left. 
+It was a report on the saving of funds due to the reduction of the quantity of metal-foam edging 
+on the uniforms of the police force. Mayor Indbur crossed out a superfluous comma, corrected 
+a misspelling, made three marginal notations, and placed it upon the neat stack at his fight. Fie 
+lifted another sheet of paper from the neat stack at his left. 
+
+Captain Flan Pritcher of Information found a Personal Capsule waiting for him when he returned 
+to barracks. It contained orders, terse and redly underlined with a stamped "URGENT"' across 
+
+
+
+it, and the whole initialed with a precise, capital "I". 
+
+Captain Han Pritcher was ordered to the "rebel world called Haven" in the strongest terms. 
+
+Captain Han Pritcher, alone in his light one-man speedster, set his course quietly and calmly 
+for Kalgan. He slept that night the sleep of a successfully stubborn man. 
+
+
+13. LIEUTENANT AND CLOWN 
+
+If, from a distance of seven thousand parsecs, the fall of Kalgan to the armies of the Mule had 
+produced reverberations that had excited the curiosity of an old Trader, the apprehension of a 
+dogged captain, and the annoyance of a meticulous mayor - to those on Kalgan itself, it 
+produced nothing and excited no one. It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in 
+time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever 
+been permanently learned. 
+
+Kalgan was - Kalgan. It alone of all that quadrant of the Galaxy seemed not to know that the 
+Empire had fallen, that the Stannells no longer ruled, that greatness had departed, and peace 
+had disappeared. 
+
+Kalgan was the luxury world. With the edifice of mankind crumbling, it maintained its integrity as 
+a producer of pleasure, a buyer of gold and a seller of leisure. 
+
+It escaped the harsher vicissitudes of history, for what conqueror would destroy or even 
+seriously damage a world so full of the ready cash that would buy immunity. 
+
+Yet even Kalgan had finally become the headquarters of a warlord and its softness had been 
+tempered to the exigencies of war. 
+
+Its tamed jungles, its mildly modeled shores, and its garishly glamorous cities echoed to the 
+march of imported mercenaries and impressed citizens. The worlds of its province had been 
+armed and its money invested in battleships rather than bribes for the first time in its history. Its 
+ruler proved beyond doubt that he was determined to defend what was his and eager to seize 
+what was others. He was a great one of the Galaxy, a war and peace maker, a builder of 
+Empire, an establisher of dynasty. 
+
+And an unknown with a ridiculous nickname had taken him - and his arms - and his budding 
+Empire - and had not even fought a battle. 
+
+So Kalgan was as before, and its uniformed citizens hurried back to their older life, while the 
+foreign professionals of war merged easily into the newer bands that descended. 
+
+Again as always, there were the elaborate luxury hunts for the cultivated animal life of the 
+jungles that never took human life; and the speedster bird-chases in the air above, that was 
+fatal only to the Great Birds. 
+
+In the cities, the escapers of the Galaxy could take their varieties of pleasure to suit their purse, 
+from the ethereal sky-palaces of spectacle and fantasy that opened their doors to the masses 
+
+
+
+at the jingle of half a credit, to the unmarked, unnoted haunts to which only those of great 
+wealth were of the cognoscenti. 
+
+To the vast flood, Toran and Bayta added not even a trickle. They registered their ship in the 
+huge common hangar on the East Peninsula, and gravitated to that compromise of the 
+middle-classes, the Inland Sea-where the pleasures were yet legal, and even respectable, and 
+the crowds not yet beyond endurance. 
+
+Bayta wore dark glasses against the light, and a thin, white robe against the heat. Warm-tinted 
+arms, scarcely the goldener for the sun, clasped her knees to her, and she stared with firm, 
+abstracted gaze at the length of her husband's outstretched body - almost shimmering in the 
+brilliance of white sun-splendor. 
+
+"Don't overdo it," she had said at first, but Toran was of a dying-red star, Despite three years of 
+the Foundation, sunlight was a luxury, and for four days now his skin, treated beforehand for 
+ray resistance, had not felt the harshness of clothing, except for the brief shorts. 
+
+Bayta huddled close to him on the sand and they spoke in whispers. 
+
+Toran's voice was gloomy, as it drifted upwards from a relaxed face, "No, I admit we're 
+nowhere. But where is he? Who is he? This mad world says nothing of him. Perhaps he doesn't 
+exist." 
+
+"He exists," replied Bayta, with lips that didn't move. "He's clever, that's all. And your uncle is 
+right. He's a man we could use - if there's time." 
+
+A short pause. Toran whispered, "Know what I've been doing, Bay? I'm just daydreaming 
+myself into a sun-stupor. Things figure themselves out so neatly - so sweetly." His voice nearly 
+trailed off, then returned, "Remember the way Dr. Amann talked back at college, Bay. The 
+Foundation can never lose, but that does not mean the rulers of the Foundation can't. Didn't the 
+real history of the Foundation begin when Salvor Hardin kicked out the Encyclopedists and took 
+over the planet Terminus as the first mayor? And then in the next century, didn't Hober Mallow 
+gain power by methods almost as drastic? That's twice the rulers were defeated, so it can be 
+done. So why not by us?" 
+
+"It's the oldest argument in the books. Torie. What a waste of good reverie." 
+
+"Is it? Follow it out. What's Haven? Isn't it part of the Foundation? If we become top dog, it's still 
+the Foundation winning, and only the current rulers losing." 
+
+"Lots of difference between 'we can' and 'we will.' You're just jabbering." 
+
+Toran squirmed. "Nuts, Bay, you're just in one of your sour, green moods. What do you want to 
+spoil my fun for? I'll just go to sleep if you don't mind." 
+
+But Bayta was craning her head, and suddenly - quite a non sequitur - she giggled, and 
+removed her glasses to look down the beach with only her palm shading her eyes. 
+
+Toran looked up, then lifted and twisted his shoulders to follow her glance. 
+
+Apparently, she was watching a spindly figure, feet in air, who teetered on his hands for the 
+
+
+
+amusement of a haphazard crowd. It was one of the swarming acrobatic beggars of the shore, 
+whose supple joints bent and snapped for the sake of the thrown coins. 
+
+A beach guard was motioning him on his way and with a surprising one-handed balance, the 
+clown brought a thumb to his nose in an upside-down gesture. The guard advanced 
+threateningly and reeled backward with a foot in his stomach. The clown righted himself without 
+interrupting the motion of the initial kick and was away, while the frothing guard was held off by 
+a thoroughly unsympathetic crowd. 
+
+The clown made his way raggedly down the beach. He brushed past many, hesitated often, 
+stopped nowhere. The original crowd had dispersed. The guard had departed. 
+
+"He's a queer fellow," said Bayta, with amusement, and Toran agreed indifferently. The clown 
+was close enough now to be seen clearly. His thin face drew together in front into a nose of 
+generous planes and fleshy tip that seemed all but prehensile. His long, lean limbs and spidery 
+body, accentuated by his costume, moved easily and with grace, but with just a suggestion of 
+having been thrown together at random. 
+
+To look was to smile. 
+
+The clown seemed suddenly aware of their regard, for he stopped after he had passed, and, 
+with a sharp turn, approached. His large, brown eyes fastened upon Bayta. 
+
+She found herself disconcerted. 
+
+The clown smiled, but it only saddened his beaked face, and when he spoke it was with the 
+soft, elaborate phrasing of the Central Sectors. 
+
+"Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me," he said, "then I would say this lady can not 
+exist - for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and 
+lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes." 
+
+Bayta's own eyes opened wide. She said, "Wow!" 
+
+Toran laughed, "Oh, you enchantress. Go ahead, Bay, that deserves a five-credit piece. Let 
+him have it." 
+
+But the clown was forward with a jump. "No, my lady, mistake me not. I spoke for money not at 
+all, but for bright eyes and sweet face." 
+
+"Well, thanks," then, to Toran, "Golly, you think the sun's in his eyes?" 
+
+"Yet not alone for eyes and face," babbled the clown, as his words hurled past each other in 
+heightened frenzy, "but also for a mind, clear and sturdy - and kind as well." 
+
+Toran rose to his feet, reached for the white robe he had crooked his arm about for four days, 
+and slipped into it. 
+
+"Now, bud," he said, "suppose you tell me what you want, and stop annoying the lady." 
+
+The clown fell back a frightened step, his meager body cringing. "Now, sure I meant no harm. I 
+
+
+
+am a stranger here, and it's been said I am of addled wits; yet there is something in a face that I 
+can read. Behind this lady's fairness, there is a heart that's kind, and that would help me in my 
+trouble for all I speak so boldly." 
+
+"Will five credits cure your trouble?" said Toran, dryly, and held out the coin. 
+
+But the clown did not move to take it, and Bayta said, "Let me talk to him, Torie," She added 
+swiftly, and in an undertone, "There's no use being annoyed at his silly way of talking. That's 
+just his dialect; and our speech is probably as strange to him." 
+
+She said, "What is your trouble? You're not worried about the guard, are you? He won't bother 
+you." 
+
+"Oh, no, not he. He's but a windlet that blows the dust about my ankles. There is another that I 
+flee, and he is a storm that sweeps the worlds aside and throws them plunging at each other. A 
+week ago, I ran away, have slept in city streets, and hid in city crowds. I've looked in many 
+faces for help in need. I find it here." He repeated the last phrase in softer, anxious tones, and 
+his large eyes were troubled, "I find it here." 
+
+"Now," said Bayta, reasonably, "I would like to help, but really, friend, I'm no protection against 
+a world-sweeping storm. To be truthful about it, I could use-" 
+
+There was an uplifted, powerful voice that bore down upon them. 
+
+"Now, then, you mud-spawned rascal-" 
+
+It was the beach guard, with a fire-red face, and snarling mouth, that approached at a run. He 
+pointed with his low-power stun pistol. 
+
+"Hold him, you two. Don't let him get away." His heavy hand fell upon the clown's thin shoulder, 
+so that a whimper was squeezed out of him. 
+
+Toran said, "What's he done?" 
+
+"What's he done? What's he done? Well, now, that's good!" The guard reached inside the 
+dangling pocket attached to his belt, and removed a purple handkerchief, with which he 
+mopped his bare neck. He said with relish. "I'll tell you what he's done. He's run away. The 
+word's all over Kalgan and I would have recognized him before this if he had been on his feet 
+instead of on his hawkface top." And he rattled his prey in a fierce good humor. 
+
+Bayta said with a smile, "Now where did he escape from, sir?" 
+
+The guard raised his voice. A crowd was gathering, popeyed and jabbering, and with the 
+increase of audience, the guard's sense of importance increased in direct ratio. 
+
+"Where did he escape from?" he declaimed in high sarcasm. "Why, I suppose you've heard of 
+the Mule, now." 
+
+All jabbering stopped, and Bayta felt a sudden iciness trickle down into her stomach. The clown 
+had eyes only for her-he still quivered in the guard's brawny grasp. 
+
+"And who," continued the guard heavily, "would this infernal ragged piece be, but his lordship's 
+
+
+
+own court fool who's run away." He jarred his captive with a massive shake, "Do you admit it, 
+fool?" 
+
+
+There was only white fear for answer, and the soundless sibilance of Bayta's voice close to 
+Toran's ear. 
+
+Toran stepped forward to the guard in friendly fashion, "Now, my man, suppose you take your 
+hand away for just a while. This entertainer you hold has been dancing for us and has not yet 
+danced out his fee." 
+
+"Here!" The guard's voice rose in sudden concern. "There's a reward-" 
+
+"You'll have it, if you can prove he's the man you want. Suppose you withdraw till then. You 
+know that you're interfering with a guest, which could be serious for you." 
+
+"But you're interfering with his lordship and that will be serious for you." He shook the clown 
+once again. "Return the man's fee, carrion." 
+
+Toran's hand moved quickly and the guard's stun pistol was wrenched away with half a finger 
+nearly following it. The guard howled his pain and rage. Toran shoved him violently aside, and 
+the clown, unhanded, scuttled behind him. 
+
+The crowd, whose fringes were now lost to the eye, paid little attention to the latest 
+development. There was among them a craning of necks, and a centrifugal motion as if many 
+had decided to increase their distance from the center of activity. 
+
+Then there was a bustle, and a rough order in the distance. A corridor formed itself and two 
+men strode through, electric whips in careless readiness. Upon each purple blouse was 
+designed an angular shaft of lightning with a splitting planet underneath. 
+
+A dark giant, in lieutenant's uniform, followed them; dark of skin, and hair, and scowl. 
+
+The dark man spoke with the dangerous softness that meant he had little need of shouting to 
+enforce his whims. He said, "Are you the man who notified us?" 
+
+The guard was still holding his wrenched hand, and with a pain-distorted face mumbled, "I 
+claim the reward, your mightiness, and I accuse that man-" 
+
+"You'll get your reward," said the lieutenant, without looking at him. He motioned curtly to his 
+men, "Take him." 
+
+Toran felt the clown tearing at his robe with a maddened grip. 
+
+He raised his voice and kept it from shaking, "I'm sorry, lieutenant; this man is mine." 
+
+The soldiers took the statement without blinking. One raised his whip casually, but the 
+lieutenant's snapped order brought it down. 
+
+His dark mightiness swung forward and planted his square body before Toran, "Who are you?" 
+And the answer rang out, "A citizen of the Foundation." 
+
+
+
+It worked-with the crowd, at any rate. The pent-up silence broke into an intense hum. The 
+Mule's name might excite fear, but it was, after all, a new name and scarcely stuck as deeply in 
+the vitals as the old one of the Foundation - that had destroyed the Empire - and the fear of 
+which ruled a quadrant of the Galaxy with ruthless despotism. 
+
+The lieutenant kept face. He said, "Are you aware of the identity of the man behind you?" 
+
+"I have been told he's a runaway from the court of your leader, but my only sure knowledge is 
+that he is a friend of mine. You'll need firm proof of his identity to take him." 
+
+There were high-pitched sighs from the crowd, but the lieutenant let it pass. "Have you your 
+papers of Foundation citizenship with you?" 
+
+"At my ship." 
+
+"You realize that your actions are illegal? I can have you shot." 
+
+"Undoubtedly. But then you would have shot a Foundation citizen and it is quite likely that your 
+body would be sent to the Foundation - quartered - as part compensation. It's been done by 
+other warlords." 
+
+The lieutenant wet his lips. The statement was true. 
+
+He said, "Your name?" 
+
+Toran followed up his advantage, "I will answer further questions at my ship. You can get the 
+cell number at the Hangar; it is registered under the name 'Bayta'." 
+
+"You won't give up the runaway?" 
+
+"To the Mule, perhaps. Send your master!" 
+
+The conversation had degenerated to a whisper and the lieutenant turned sharply away. 
+"Disperse the crowd!" he said to his men, with suppressed ferocity. 
+
+The electric whips rose and fell. There were shrieks and a vast surge of separation and flight. 
+
+Toran interrupted his reverie only once on their way back to the Hangar. He said, almost to 
+himself, "Galaxy, Bay, what a time I had! I was so scared-" 
+
+"Yes," she said, with a voice that still shook, and eyes that still showed something akin to 
+worship, "it was quite out of character." 
+
+"Well, I still don't know what happened. I just got up there with a stun pistol that I wasn't even 
+sure I knew how to use, and talked back to him. I don't know why I did it." 
+
+He looked across the aisle of the short-run air vessel that was carrying them out of the beach 
+area, to the seat on which the Mule's clown scrunched up in sleep, and added distastefully, "It 
+was the hardest thing I've ever done." 
+
+The lieutenant stood respectfully before the colonel of the garrison, and the colonel looked at 
+him and said, "Well done. Your part's over now." 
+
+
+
+But the lieutenant did not retire immediately. He said darkly, "The Mule has lost face before a 
+mob, sir. It will be necessary to undertake disciplinary action to restore proper atmosphere of 
+respect." 
+
+"Those measures have already been taken." 
+
+The lieutenant half turned, then, almost with resentment, "I'm willing to agree, sir, that orders 
+are orders, but standing before that man with his stun pistol and swallowing his insolence 
+whole, was the hardest thing I've ever done." 
+
+
+14. THE MUTANT 
+
+The "hangar" on Kalgan is an institution peculiar unto itself, born of the need for the disposition 
+of the vast number of ships brought in by the visitors from abroad, and the simultaneous and 
+consequent vast need for living accommodations for the same. The original bright one who had 
+thought of the obvious solution had quickly become a millionaire. His heirs - by birth or finance 
+- were easily among the richest on Kalgan. 
+
+The "hangar" spreads fatly over square miles of territory, and "hangar" does not describe it at 
+all sufficiently. It is essentially a hotel - for ships. The traveler pays in advance and his ship is 
+awarded a berth from which it can take off into space at any desired moment. The visitor then 
+lives in his ship as always. The ordinary hotel services such as the replacement of food and 
+medical supplies at special rates, simple servicing of the ship itself, special intra-Kalgan 
+transportation for a nominal sum are to be had, of course. 
+
+As a result, the visitor combines hangar space and hotel bill into one, at a saving. The owners 
+sell temporary use of ground space at ample profits. The government collects huge taxes. 
+Everyone has fun. Nobody loses. Simple! 
+
+The man who made his way down the shadow-borders of the wide corridors that connected the 
+multitudinous wings of the "hangar" had in the past speculated on the novelty and usefulness of 
+the system described above, but these were reflections for idle moments - distinctly unsuitable 
+at present. 
+
+The ships hulked in their height and breadth down the long lines of carefully aligned cells, and 
+the man discarded line after line. He was an expert at what he was doing now and if his 
+preliminary study of the hangar registry had failed to give specific information beyond the 
+doubtful indication of a specific wing - one containing hundreds of ships - his specialized 
+knowledge could winnow those hundreds into one. 
+
+There was the ghost of a sigh in the silence, as the man stopped and faded down one of the 
+lines; a crawling insect beneath the notice of the arrogant metal monsters that rested there. 
+
+Here and there the sparkling of light from a porthole would indicate the presence of an early 
+returner from the organized pleasures to simpler - or more private - pleasures of his own. 
+
+The man halted, and would have smiled if he ever smiled. Certainly the convolutions of his 
+
+
+
+brain performed the mental equivalent of a smile. 
+
+The ship he stopped at was sleek and obviously fast. The peculiarity of its design was what he 
+wanted. It was not a usual model - and these days most of the ships of this quadrant of the 
+Galaxy either imitated Foundation design or were built by Foundation technicians. But this was 
+special. This was a Foundation ship - if only because of the tiny bulges in the skin that were 
+the nodes of the protective screen that only a Foundation ship could possess. There were other 
+indications, too. 
+
+The man felt no hesitation. 
+
+The electronic barrier strung across the line of the ships as a concession to privacy on the part 
+of the management was not at all important to him. It parted easily, and without activating the 
+alarm, at the use of the very special neutralizing force he had at his disposal. 
+
+So the first knowledge within the ship of the intruder without was the casual and almost friendly 
+signal of the muted buzzer in the ship's living room that was the result of a palm placed over the 
+little photocell just one side of the main air lock. 
+
+And while that successful search went on, Toran and Bayta felt only the most precarious 
+security within the steel walls of the Bayta. The Mule's clown who had reported that within his 
+narrow compass of body he held the lordly name of Magnifico Giganticus, sat hunched over the 
+table and gobbled at the food set before him. 
+
+His sad, brown eyes lifted from his meat only to follow Bayta's movements in the combined 
+kitchen and larder where he ate. 
+
+"The thanks of a weak one are of but little value," he muttered, "but you have them, for truly, in 
+this past week, little but scraps have come my way - and for all my body is small, yet is my 
+appetite unseemly great." 
+
+"Well, then, eat!" said Bayta, with a smile. "Don't waste your time on thanks. Isn't there a 
+Central Galaxy proverb about gratitude that I once heard?" 
+
+"Truly there is, my lady. For a wise man, I have been told, once said, 'Gratitude is best and 
+most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.' But alas, my lady, I am but a 
+mass of empty phrases, it would seem. When my empty phrases pleased the Mule, it brought 
+me a court dress, and a grand name - for, see you, it was originally simply Bobo, one that 
+pleases him not - and then when my empty phrases pleased him not, it would bring upon my 
+poor bones beatings and whippings." 
+
+Toran entered from the pilot room, "Nothing to do now but wait, Bay. I hope the Mule is capable 
+of understanding that a Foundation ship is Foundation territory." 
+
+Magnifico Giganticus, once Bobo, opened his eyes wide and exclaimed, "How great is the 
+Foundation before which even the cruel servants of the Mule tremble." 
+
+"Have you heard of the Foundation, too?" asked Bayta, with a little smile. 
+
+"And who has not?" Magnifico's voice was a mysterious whisper. "There are those who say it is 
+
+
+
+a world of great magic, of fires that can consume planets, and secrets of mighty strength. They 
+say that not the highest nobility of the Galaxy could achieve the honor and deference 
+considered only the natural due of a simple man who could say 'I am a citizen of the 
+Foundation,' - were he only a salvage miner of space, or a nothing like myself." 
+
+Bayta said, "Now, Magnifico, you'll never finish if you make speeches. Here, I'll get you a little 
+flavored milk. It's good." 
+
+She placed a pitcher of it upon the table and motioned Toran out of the room. 
+
+"Torie, what are we going to do now - about him?" and she motioned towards the kitchen. 
+
+"How do you mean?" 
+
+"If the Mule comes, are we going to give him up?" 
+
+"Well, what else, Bay?" He sounded harassed, and the gesture with which he shoved back the 
+moist curl upon his forehead testified to that. 
+
+He continued impatiently, "Before I came here I had a sort of vague idea that all we had to do 
+was to ask for the Mule, and then get down to business - just business, you know, nothing 
+definite." 
+
+"I know what you mean, Torie. I wasn't much hoping to see the Mule myself, but I did think we 
+could pick up some firsthand knowledge of the mess, and then pass it over to people who know 
+a little more about this interstellar intrigue. I'm no storybook spy." 
+
+"You're not behind me, Bay." He folded his arms and frowned. "What a situation! You'd never 
+know there was a person like the Mule, except for this last queer break. Do you suppose he'll 
+come for his clown?" 
+
+Bayta looked up at him. "I don't know that I want him to. I don't know what to say or do. Do 
+you?" 
+
+The inner buzzer sounded with its intermittent burring noise. Bayta's lips moved wordlessly, 
+"The Mule!" 
+
+Magnifico was in the doorway, eyes wide, his voice a whimper, "The Mule?" 
+
+Toran murmured, "I've got to let them in." 
+
+A contact opened the air lock and the outer door closed behind the newcomer. The scanner 
+showed only a single shadowed figure. 
+
+"It's only one person," said Toran, with open relief, and his voice was almost shaky as he bent 
+toward the signal tube, "Who are you?" 
+
+"You'd better let me in and find out, hadn't you?" The words came thinly out the receiver. 
+
+"I'll inform you that this is a Foundation ship and consequently Foundation territory by 
+international treaty." 
+
+
+
+"I know that." 
+
+"Come with your arms free, or I'll shoot. I'm well-armed." 
+
+"Done!" 
+
+Toran opened the inner door and closed contact on his blast pistol, thumb hovering over the 
+pressure point. There was the sound of footsteps and then the door swung open, and Magnifico 
+cried out, "It's not the Mule. It's but a man." 
+
+The "man" bowed to the clown somberly, "Very accurate. I'm not the Mule." He held his hands 
+apart, "I'm not armed, and I come on a peaceful errand. You might relax and put the blast pistol 
+away. Your hand isn't steady enough for my peace of mind." 
+
+"Who are you?" asked Toran, brusquely. 
+
+"I might ask you that," said the stranger, coolly, "since you're the one under false pretenses, not 
+I." 
+
+"How so?" 
+
+"You're the one who claims to be a Foundation citizen when there's not an authorized Trader 
+on the planet." 
+
+"That's not so. How would you know?" 
+
+"Because I am a Foundation citizen, and have my papers to prove it. Where are yours?" 
+
+"I think you'd better get out." 
+
+"I think not. If you know anything about Foundation methods, and despite your imposture you 
+might, you'd know that if I don't return alive to my ship at a specified time, there'll be a signal at 
+the nearest Foundation headquarters so I doubt if your weapons will have much effect, 
+practically speaking." 
+
+There was an irresolute silence and then Bayta said, calmly, "Put the blaster away, Toran, and 
+take him at face value. He sounds like the real thing." 
+
+"Thank you," said the stranger. 
+
+Toran put his gun on the chair beside him, "Suppose you explain all this now." 
+
+The stranger remained standing. He was long of bone and large of limb. His face consisted of 
+hard flat planes and it was somehow evident that he never smiled. But his eyes lacked 
+hardness. 
+
+He said, "News travels quickly, especially when it is apparently beyond belief. I don't suppose 
+there's a person on Kalgan who doesn't know that the Mule's men were kicked in the teeth 
+today by two tourists from the Foundation. I knew of the important details before evening, and, 
+as I said, there are no Foundation tourists aside from myself on the planet. We know about 
+those things." 
+
+
+
+Who are the 'we'? 
+
+
+"'We' are - 'we'! Myself for one! I knew you were at the Hangar - you had been overheard to 
+say so. I had my ways of checking the registry, and my ways of finding the ship." 
+
+He turned to Bayta suddenly, "You're from the Foundation - by birth, aren't you?" 
+
+"Am I?" 
+
+"You're a member of the democratic opposition - they call it 'the underground.' I don't 
+remember your name, but I do the face. You got out only recently - and wouldn't have if you 
+were more important." 
+
+Bayta shrugged, "You know a lot." 
+
+"I do. You escaped with a man. That one?" 
+
+"Does it matter what I say?" 
+
+"No. I merely want a thorough mutual understanding. I believe that the password during the 
+week you left so hastily was 'Seldon, Hardin, and Freedom.' Porfirat Hart was your section 
+leader. " 
+
+"Where'd you get that?" Bayta was suddenly fierce. "Did the police get him?" Toran held her 
+back, but she shook herself loose and advanced. 
+
+The man from the Foundation said quietly, "Nobody has him. It's just that the underground 
+spreads widely and in queer places. I'm Captain Han Pritcher of Information, and I'm a section 
+leader myself - never mind under what name." 
+
+He waited, then said, "No, you don't have to believe me. In our business it is better to overdo 
+suspicion than the opposite. But I'd better get past the preliminaries." 
+
+"Yes," said Toran, "suppose you do." 
+
+"May I sit down? Thanks." Captain Pritcher swung a long leg across his knee and let an arm 
+swing loose over the back of the chair. "I'll start out by saying that I don't know what all this is 
+about - from your angle. You two aren't from the Foundation, but it's not a hard guess that 
+you're from one of the independent Trading worlds. That doesn't bother me overmuch. But out 
+of curiosity, what do you want with that fellow, that clown you snatched to safety? You're risking 
+your life to hold on to him." 
+
+"I can't tell you that." 
+
+"Hm-m-m. Well, I didn't think you would. But if you're waiting for the Mule himself to come 
+behind a fanfarade of horns, drums, and electric organs - relax! The Mule doesn't work that 
+way." 
+
+"What?" It came from both Toran and Bayta, and in the comer where Magnifico lurked with ears 
+almost visibly expanded, there was a sudden joyful start. 
+
+"That's right. I've been trying to contact him myself, and doing a rather more thorough job of it 
+
+
+
+than you two amateurs can. It won't work. The man makes no personal appearance, does not 
+allow himself to be photographed or simulated, and is seen only by his most intimate 
+associates." 
+
+"Is that supposed to explain your interest in us, captain?" questioned Toran. 
+
+"No. That clown is the key. That clown is one of the very few that have seen him. I want him. 
+
+He may be the proof I need - and I need something, Galaxy knows - to awaken the 
+Foundation." 
+
+"It needs awakening?" broke in Bayta with sudden sharpness. "Against what? And in what role 
+do you act as alarm, that of rebel democrat or of secret police and provocateur?" 
+
+The captain's face set in its hard lines. "When the entire Foundation is threatened, Madame 
+Revolutionary, both democrats and tyrants perish. Let us save the tyrants from a greater, that 
+we may overthrow them in their turn." 
+
+"Who's the greater tyrant you speak of?" flared Bayta. 
+
+"The Mule! I know a bit about him, enough to have been my death several times over already, if 
+I had moved less nimbly. Send the clown out of the room. This will require privacy." 
+
+"Magnifico," said Bayta, with a gesture, and the clown left without a sound. 
+
+The captain's voice was grave and intense, and low enough so that Toran and Bayta drew 
+close. 
+
+He said, "The Mule is a shrewd operator - far too shrewd not to realize the advantage of the 
+magnetism and glamour of personal leadership. If he gives that up, it's for a reason. That 
+reason must be the fact that personal contact would reveal something that is of overwhelming 
+importance not to reveal." 
+
+He waved aside questions, and continued more quickly, "I went back to his birthplace for this, 
+and questioned people who for their knowledge will not live long. Few enough are still alive. 
+They remember the baby born thirty years before - the death of his mother - his strange youth. 
+The Mule is not a human being!" 
+
+And his two listeners drew back in horror at the misty implications. Neither understood, fully or 
+clearly, but the menace of the phrase was definite. 
+
+The captain continued, "He is a mutant, and obviously from his subsequent career, a highly 
+successful one. I don't know his powers or the exact extent to which he is what our thrillers 
+would call a 'superman,' but the rise from nothing to the conqueror of Kalgan's warlord in two 
+years is revealing. You see, don't you, the danger? Can a genetic accident of unpredictable 
+biological properties be taken into account in the Seldon plan?" 
+
+Slowly, Bayta spoke, "I don't believe it. This is some sort of complicated trickery. Why didn't the 
+Mule's men kill us when they could have, if he's a superman?" 
+
+"I told you that I don't know the extent of his mutation. He may not be ready, yet, for the 
+Foundation, and it would be a sign of the greatest wisdom to resist provocation until ready. Now 
+
+
+
+let me speak to the clown." 
+
+The captain faced the trembling Magnifico, who obviously distrusted this huge, hard man who 
+faced him. 
+
+The captain began slowly, "Have you seen the Mule with your own eyes?" 
+
+"I have but too well, respected sir. And felt the weight of his arm with my own body as well." 
+
+"I have no doubt of that. Can you describe him?" 
+
+"It is frightening to recall him, respected sir. He is a man of mighty frame. Against him, even you 
+would be but a spindling. His hair is of a burning crimson, and with all my strength and weight I 
+could not pull down his arm, once extended - not a hair's thickness." Magnifico's thinness 
+seemed to collapse upon itself in a huddle of arms and legs. "Often, to amuse his generals or to 
+amuse only himself, he would suspend me by one finger in my belt from a fearful height, while I 
+chattered poetry. It was only after the twentieth verse that I was withdrawn, and each 
+improvised and each a perfect rhyme, or else start over. He is a man of overpowering might, 
+respected sir, and cruel in the use of his power - and his eyes, respected sir, no one sees." 
+
+"What? What's that last?" 
+
+"He wears spectacles, respected sir, of a curious nature. It is said that they are opaque and that 
+he sees by a powerful magic that far transcends human powers. I have heard," and his voice 
+was small and mysterious, "that to see his eyes is to see death; that he kills with his eyes, 
+respected sir." 
+
+Magnifico's eyes wheeled quickly from one watching face to another. He quavered, "It is true. 
+
+As I live, it is true. " 
+
+Bayta drew a long breath, "Sounds like you're right, captain. Do you want to take over?" 
+
+"Well, let's look at the situation. You don't owe anything here? The hangar's barrier above is 
+free?" 
+
+"I can leave any time." 
+
+"Then leave. The Mule may not wish to antagonize the Foundation, but he runs a frightful risk in 
+letting Magnifico get away. It probably accounts for the hue and cry after the poor devil in the 
+first place. So there may be ships waiting for you upstairs. If you're lost in space, who's to pin 
+the crime?" 
+
+"You're right," agreed Toran, bleakly. 
+
+"However, you've got a shield and you're probably speedier than anything they've got, so as 
+soon as you're clear of the atmosphere make the circle in neutral to the other hemisphere, then 
+just cut a track outwards at top acceleration." 
+
+"Yes," said Bayta coldly, "and when we are back on the Foundation, what then, captain?" 
+
+"Why, you are then co-operative citizens of Kalgan, are you not? I know nothing to the contrary, 
+do I?" 
+
+
+
+Nothing was said. Toran turned to the controls. There was an imperceptible lurch. 
+
+It was when Toran had left Kalgan sufficiently far in the rear to attempt his first interstellar jump, 
+that Captain Pritcher's face first creased slightly - for no ship of the Mule had in any way 
+attempted to bar their leaving. 
+
+"Looks like he's letting us carry off Magnifico," said Toran. "Not so good for your story." 
+
+"Unless," corrected the captain, "he wants us to carry him off, in which case it's not so good for 
+the Foundation." 
+
+It was after the last jump, when within neutral-flight distance of the Foundation, that the first 
+hyperwave news broadcast reached the ship. 
+
+And there was one news item barely mentioned. It seemed that a warlord - unidentified by the 
+bored speaker - had made representations to the Foundation concerning the forceful abduction 
+of a member of his court. The announcer went on to the sports news. 
+
+Captain Pritcher said icily, "He's one step ahead of us after all." Thoughtfully, he added, "He's 
+ready for the Foundation, and he uses this as an excuse for action. It makes things more 
+difficult for us. We will have to act before we are really ready." 
+
+
+15. THE PSYCHOLOGIST 
+
+There was reason to the fact that the element known as "pure science" was the freest form of 
+life on the Foundation. In a Galaxy where the predominance - and even survival - of the 
+Foundation still rested upon the superiority of its technology - even despite its large access of 
+physical power in the last century and a half - a certain immunity adhered to The Scientist. He 
+was needed, and he knew it. 
+
+Likewise, there was reason to the fact that Ebling Mis - only those who did not know him added 
+his titles to his name - was the freest form of life in the "pure science" of the Foundation. In a 
+world where science was respected, he was The Scientist - with capital letters and no smile. 
+
+He was needed, and he knew it. 
+
+And so it happened, that when others bent their knee, he refused and added loudly that his 
+ancestors in their time bowed no knee to any stinking mayor. And in his ancestors' time the 
+mayor was elected anyhow, and kicked out at will, and that the only people that inherited 
+anything by right of birth were the congenital idiots. 
+
+So it also happened, that when Ebling Mis decided to allow Indbur to honor him with an 
+audience, he did not wait for the usual rigid line of command to pass his request up and the 
+favored reply down, but, having thrown the less disreputable of his two formal jackets over his 
+shoulders and pounded an odd hat of impossible design on one side of his head, and lit a 
+forbidden cigar into the bargain, he barged past two ineffectually bleating guards and into the 
+mayor's palace. 
+
+The first notice his excellence received of the intrusion was when from his garden he heard the 
+
+
+
+gradually nearing uproar of expostulation and the answering bull-roar of inarticulate swearing. 
+
+Slowly, Indbur lay down his trowel; slowly, he stood up; and slowly, he frowned. For Indbur 
+allowed himself a daily vacation from work, and for two hours in the early afternoon, weather 
+permitting, he was in his garden. There in his garden, the blooms grew in squares and 
+triangles, interlaced in a severe order of red and yellow, with little dashes of violet at the apices, 
+and greenery bordering the whole in rigid lines. There in his garden no one disturbed him - no 
+one! 
+
+Indbur peeled off his soil-stained gloves as he advanced toward the little garden door. 
+
+Inevitably, he said, "What is the meaning of this?" 
+
+It is the precise question and the precise wording thereof that has been put to the atmosphere 
+on such occasions by an incredible variety of men since humanity was invented. It is not 
+recorded that it has ever been asked for any purpose other than dignified effect. 
+
+But the answer was literal this time, for Mis's body came plunging through with a bellow, and a 
+shake of a fist at the ones who were still holding tatters of his cloak. 
+
+Indbur motioned them away with a solemn, displeased frown, and Mis bent to pick up his ruin of 
+a hat, shake about a quarter of the gathered dirt off it, thrust it under his armpit and say: 
+
+"Look here, Indbur, those unprintable minions of yours will be charged for one good cloak. Lots 
+of good wear left in this cloak." He puffed and wiped his forehead with just a trace of 
+theatricality. 
+
+The mayor stood stiff with displeasure, and said haughtily from the peak of his five-foot-two, "It 
+has not been brought to my attention, Mis, that you have requested an audience. You have 
+certainly not been assigned one." 
+
+Ebling Mis looked down at his mayor with what was apparently shocked disbelief, "Ga-LAX-y, 
+Indbur, didn't you get my note yesterday? I handed it to a flunky in purple uniform day before. I 
+would have handed it to you direct, but I know how you like formality." 
+
+"Formality!" Indbur turned up exasperated eyes. Then, strenuously, "Have you ever heard of 
+proper organization? At all future times you are to submit your request for an audience, 
+properly made out in triplicate, at the government office intended for the purpose. You are then 
+to wait until the ordinary course of events brings you notification of the time of audience to be 
+granted. You are then to appear, properly clothed - properly clothed, do you understand - and 
+with proper respect, too. You may leave." 
+
+"What's wrong with my clothes?" demanded Mis, hotly. "Best cloak I had till those unprintable 
+fiends got their claws on it. I'll leave just as soon as I deliver what I came to deliver. "Ga-LAX-y, 
+if it didn't involve a Seldon Crisis, I would leave right now." 
+
+"Seldon crisis!" Indbur exhibited first interest. Mis was a great psychologist - a democrat, boor, 
+and rebel certainly, but a psychologist, too. In his uncertainty, the mayor even failed to put into 
+words the inner pang that stabbed suddenly when Mis plucked a casual bloom, held it to his 
+nostrils expectantly, then flipped it away with a wrinkled nose. 
+
+
+
+Indbur said coldly, "Would you follow me? This garden wasn't made for serious conversation." 
+
+He felt better in his built-up chair behind his large desk from which he could look down on the 
+few hairs that quite ineffectually hid Mis's pink scalp-skin. He felt much better when Mis cast a 
+series of automatic glances about him for a non-existent chair and then remained standing in 
+uneasy shifting fashion. He felt best of all when in response to a careful pressure of the correct 
+contact, a liveried underling scurried in, bowed his way to the desk, and laid thereon a bulky, 
+metal-bound volume. 
+
+"Now, in order," said Indbur, once more master of the situation, "to make this unauthorized 
+interview as short as possible, make your statement in the fewest possible words." 
+
+Ebling Mis said unhurriedly, "You know what I'm doing these days?" 
+
+"I have your reports here," replied the mayor, with satisfaction, "together with authorized 
+summaries of them. As I understand it, your investigations into the mathematics of 
+psychohistory have been intended to duplicate Hari Seldon's work and, eventually, trace the 
+projected course of future history, for the use of the Foundation." 
+
+"Exactly," said Mis, dryly. "When Seldon first established the Foundation, he was wise enough 
+to include no psychologists among the scientists placed here - so that the Foundation has 
+always worked blindly along the course of historical necessity. In the course of my researches, I 
+have based a good deal upon hints found at the Time Vault." 
+
+"I am aware of that, Mis. It is a waste of time to repeat." 
+
+"I'm not repeating," blared Mis, "because what I'm going to tell you isn't in any of those reports." 
+
+"How do you mean, not in the reports?" said Indbur, stupidly. "How could-" 
+
+"Ga-LAX-y, Let me tell this my own way, you offensive little creature. Stop putting words into 
+my mouth and questioning my every statement or I'll tramp out of here and let everything 
+crumble around you. Remember, you unprintable fool, the Foundation will come through 
+because it must, but if I walk out of here now - you won't." 
+
+Dashing his hat on the floor, so that clods of earth scattered, he sprang up the stairs of the dais 
+on which the wide desk stood and shoving papers violently, sat down upon a comer of it. 
+
+Indbur thought frantically of summoning the guard, or using the built-in blasters of his desk. But 
+Mis's face was glaring down upon him and there was nothing to do but cringe the best face 
+upon it. 
+
+"Dr. Mis," he began, with weak formality, "you must-" 
+
+"Shut up," said Mis, ferociously, "and listen. If this thing here," and his palm came down heavily 
+on the metal of the bound data, "is a mess of my reports - throw it out. Any report I write goes 
+up through some twenty-odd officials, gets to you, and then sort of winds down through twenty 
+more. That's fine if there's nothing you don't want kept secret. Well, I've got something 
+confidential here. It's so confidential, even the boys working for me haven't got wind of it. They 
+did the work, of course, but each just a little unconnected piece - and I put it together. You 
+
+
+
+know what the Time Vault is? 
+
+
+Indbur nodded his head, but Mis went on with loud enjoyment of the situation, "Well, I'll tell you 
+anyhow because I've been sort of imagining this unprintable situation for a "Ga-LAX-y, of a long 
+time; I can read your mind, you puny fraud. You've got your hand right near a little knob that'll 
+call in about five hundred or so armed men to finish me off, but you're afraid of what I know - 
+you're afraid of a Seldon Crisis. Besides which, if you touch anything on your desk, I'll knock 
+your unprintable head off before anyone gets here. You and your bandit father and pirate 
+grandfather have been blood-sucking the Foundation long enough anyway." 
+
+"This is treason," gabbled Indbur. 
+
+"It certainly is," gloated Mis, "but what are you going to do about it? Let me tell you about the 
+Time Vault. That Time Vault is what Hari Seldon placed here at the beginning to help us over 
+the rough spots. For every crisis, Seldon has prepared a personal simulacrum to help - and 
+explain. Four crises so far - four appearances. The first time he appeared at the height of the 
+first crisis. The second time, he appeared at the moment just after the successful evolution of 
+the second crisis. Our ancestors were there to listen to him both times. At the third and fourth 
+crises, he was ignored - probably because he was not needed, but recent investigations -not 
+included in those reports you have - indicate that he appeared anyway, and at the proper 
+times. Get it?" 
+
+Fie did not wait for any answer. His cigar, a tattered, dead ruin was finally disposed of, a new 
+cigar groped for, and lit. The smoke puffed out violently. 
+
+Fie said, "Officially I've been trying to rebuild the science of psychohistory. Well, no one man is 
+going to do that, and it won't get done in any one century, either. But I've made advances in the 
+more simple elements and I've been able to use it as an excuse to meddle with the Time Vault. 
+What I have done, involves the determination, to a pretty fair kind of certainty, of the exact date 
+of the next appearance of Hari Seldon. I can give you the exact day, in other words, that the 
+coming Seldon Crisis, the fifth, will reach its climax. " 
+
+"Flow far off?" demanded Indbur, tensely. 
+
+And Mis exploded his bomb with cheerful nonchalance, 
+
+"Four months," he said. "Four unprintable months, less two days." 
+
+"Four months," said Indbur, with uncharacteristic vehemence. "Impossible." 
+
+"Impossible, my unprintable eye." 
+
+"Four months? Do you understand what that means? For a crisis to come to a head in four 
+months would mean that it has been preparing for years." 
+
+"And why not? Is there a law of Nature that requires the process to mature in the full light of 
+day?" 
+
+"But nothing impends. Nothing hangs over us." Indbur almost wrung his hands for anxiety. With 
+a sudden spasmodic recrudescence of ferocity, he screamed, "Will you get off my desk and let 
+
+
+
+me put it in order? How do you expect me to think?" 
+
+Mis, startled, lifted heavily and moved aside. 
+
+Indbur replaced objects in their appropriate niches with a feverish motion. He was speaking 
+quickly, "You have no right to come here like this. If you had presented your theory-" 
+
+"It is not a theory. " 
+
+"I say it is a theory. If you had presented it together with your evidence and arguments, in 
+appropriate fashion, it would have gone to the Bureau of Historical Sciences. There it could 
+have been properly treated, the resulting analyses submitted to me, and then, of course, proper 
+action would have been taken. As it is, you've vexed me to no purpose. Ah, here it is." 
+
+He had a sheet of transparent, silvery paper in his hand which he shook at the bulbous 
+psychologist beside him. 
+
+"This is a short summary I prepare myself - weekly - of foreign matters in progress. Listen - 
+we have completed negotiations for a commercial treaty with Mores, continue negotiations for 
+one with Lyonesse, sent a delegation to some celebration or other on Bonde, received some 
+complaint or other from Kalgan and we've promised to look into it, protested some sharp trade 
+practices in Asperta and they've promised to look into it - and so on and so on." The mayor's 
+eyes swarmed down the list of coded notations, and then he carefully placed the sheet in its 
+proper place in the proper folder in the proper pigeonhole. 
+
+I tell you, Mis, there's not a thing there that breathes anything but order and peace-" 
+
+The door at the far, long end opened, and, in far too dramatically coincident a fashion to 
+suggest anything but real life, a plainly-costumed notable stepped in. 
+
+Indbur half-rose. He had the curiously swirling sensation of unreality that comes upon those 
+days when too much happens. After Mis's intrusion and wild turnings there now came the 
+equally improper, hence disturbing, intrusion unannounced, of his secretary, who at least knew 
+the rules. 
+
+The secretary kneeled low. 
+
+Indbur said, sharply, "Well!" 
+
+The secretary addressed the floor, "Excellence, Captain Han Pritcher of Information, returning 
+from Kalgan, in disobedience to your orders, has according to prior instructions - your order 
+X20-513 - been imprisoned, and awaits execution. Those accompanying him are being held for 
+questioning. A full report has been filed." 
+
+Indbur, in agony, said, "A full report has been received. Well!" 
+
+"Excellence, Captain Pritcher has reported, vaguely, dangerous designs on the part of the new 
+warlord of Kalgan. He has been given, according to prior instructions - your order X20-651 - no 
+formal hearing, but his remarks have been recorded and a full report filed." 
+
+
+Indbur screamed, "A full report has been received. Well!" 
+
+
+
+"Excellence, reports have within the quarter-hour been received from the Salinnian frontier. 
+Ships identified as Kalganian have been entering Foundation territory, unauthorized. The ships 
+are armed. Fighting has occurred." 
+
+The secretary was bent nearly double. Indbur remained standing. Ebling Mis shook himself, 
+clumped up to the secretary, and tapped him sharply on the shoulder. 
+
+"Flere, you'd better have them release this Captain Pritcher, and have him sent here. Get out." 
+
+The secretary left, and Mis turned to the mayor, "Fladn't you better get the machinery moving, 
+Indbur? Four months, you know." 
+
+Indbur remained standing, glaze-eyed. Only one finger seemed alive - and it traced rapid jerky 
+triangles on the smooth desk top before him. 
+
+
+16. CONFERENCE 
+
+When the twenty-seven independent Trading worlds, united only by their distrust of the mother 
+planet of the Foundation, concert an assembly among themselves, and each is big with a pride 
+grown of its smallness, hardened by its own insularity and embittered by eternal danger - there 
+are preliminary negotiations to be overcome of a pettiness sufficiently staggering to heartsicken 
+the most persevering. 
+
+It is not enough to fix in advance such details as methods of voting, type of representation - 
+whether by world or by population. These are matters of involved political importance. It is not 
+enough to fix matters of priority at the table, both council and dinner, those are matters of 
+involved social importance. 
+
+It was the place of meeting - since that was a matter of overpowering provincialism. And in the 
+end the devious routes of diplomacy led to the world of Radole, which some commentators had 
+suggested at the start for logical reason of central position. 
+
+Radole was a small world - and, in military potential, perhaps the weakest of the twenty-seven. 
+That, by the way, was another factor in the logic of the choice. 
+
+It was a ribbon world - of which the Galaxy boasts sufficient, but among which, the inhabited 
+variety is a rarity for the physical requirements are difficult to meet. It was a world, in other 
+words, where the two halves face the monotonous extremes of heat and cold, while the region 
+of possible life is the girdling ribbon of the twilight zone. 
+
+Such a world invariably sounds uninviting to those who have not tried it, but there exist spots, 
+strategically placed - and Radole City was located in such a one. 
+
+It spread along the soft slopes of the foothills before the hacked-out mountains that backed it 
+along the rim of the cold hemisphere and held off the frightful ice. The warm, dry air of the 
+sun-half spilled over, and from the mountains was piped the water-and between the two, 
+
+Radole City became a continuous garden, swimming in the eternal morning of an eternal June. 
+
+
+
+Each house nestled among its flower garden, open to the fangless elements. Each garden was 
+a horticultural forcing ground, where luxury plants grew in fantastic patterns for the sake of the 
+foreign exchange they brought - until Radole had almost become a producing world, rather 
+than a typical Trading world. 
+
+So, in its way, Radole City was a little point of softness and luxury on a horrible planet - a tiny 
+scrap of Eden - and that, too, was a factor in the logic of the choice. 
+
+The strangers came from each of the twenty-six other Trading worlds: delegates, wives, 
+secretaries, newsmen, ships, and crews - and Radole's population nearly doubled and 
+Radole's resources strained themselves to the limit. One ate at will, and drank at will, and slept 
+not at all. 
+
+Yet there were few among the roisterers who were not intensely aware that all that volume of 
+the Galaxy burnt slowly in a sort of quiet, slumbrous war. And of those who were aware, there 
+were dime classes. First, there were the many who knew little and were very confident. 
+
+Such as the young space pilot who wore the Haven cockade on the clasp of his cap, and who 
+managed, in holding his glass before his eyes, to catch those of the faintly smiling Radolian girl 
+opposite. He was saying: 
+
+"We came fight through the war-zone to get here-on purpose. We traveled about a light-minute 
+or so, in neutral, right past Horleggor-" 
+
+"Horleggor?" broke in a long-legged native, who was playing host to that particular gathering. 
+"That's where the Mule got the guts beat out of him last week, wasn't it?" 
+
+"Where'd you hear that the Mule got the guts beat out of him?" demanded the pilot, loftily. 
+
+"Foundation radio." 
+
+"Yeah? Well, the Mule's got Horleggor. We almost ran into a convoy of his ships, and that's 
+where they were coming from. It isn't a gut-beating when you stay where you fought, and the 
+gut-beater leaves in a hurry." 
+
+Someone else said in a high, blurred voice, "Don't talk like that. Foundation always takes it on 
+the chin for a while. You watch; just sit tight and watch. 01' Foundation knows when to come 
+back. And then - pow T The thick voice concluded and was succeeded by a bleary grin. 
+
+"Anyway." said the pilot from Haven, after a short pause, "As I say, we saw the Mule's ships, 
+and they looked pretty good, pretty good. I tell you what - they looked new." 
+
+"New?" said the native, thoughtfully. "They build them themselves?" He broke a leaf from an 
+overhanging branch, sniffed delicately at it, then crunched it between his teeth, the bruised 
+tissues bleeding greenly and diffusing a minty odor. He said, "You trying to tell me they beat 
+Foundation ships with homebuilt jobs? Go on." 
+
+"We saw them, doc. And I can tell a ship from a comet, too, you know." 
+
+The native leaned close. "You know what I think. Listen, don't kid yourself. Wars don't just start 
+by themselves, and we have a bunch of shrewd apples running things. They know what they're 
+
+
+
+doing." 
+
+The well-unthirsted one said with sudden loudness, "You watch ol' Foundation. They wait for 
+the last minute, then - powf' He grinned with vacuously open mouth at the girl, who moved 
+away from him. 
+
+The Radolian was saying, "For instance, old man, you think maybe that this Mule guy's running 
+things. No-o-o." And he wagged a finger horizontally. "The way I hear it, and from pretty high 
+up, mind you, he's our boy. We're paying him off, and we probably built those ships. Let's be 
+realistic about it - we probably did. Sure, he can't beat the Foundation in the long run, but he 
+can get them shaky, and when he does - we get in." 
+
+The girl said, "Is that all you can talk about, Kiev? The war? You make me tired." 
+
+The pilot from Haven said, in an access of gallantry, 
+
+"Change the subject. Can't make the girls tired." 
+
+The bedewed one took up the refrain and banged a mug to the rhythm. The little groups of two 
+that had formed broke up with giggles and swagger, and a few similar groups of twos emerged 
+from the sun-house in the background. 
+
+The conversation became more general, more varied, more meaningless. 
+
+Then there were those who knew a little more and were less confident. 
+
+Such as the one-armed Fran, whose large bulk represented Haven as official delegated, and 
+who lived high in consequence, and cultivated new friendships - with women when he could 
+and with men when he had to. 
+
+It was on the sun platform of the hilltop home, of one of these new friends, that he relaxed for 
+the first of what eventually proved to be a total of two times while on Radole. The new friend 
+was Iwo Lyon, a kindred soul of Radole. Iwo's house was apart from the general cluster, 
+apparently alone in a sea of floral perfume and insect chatter. The sun platform was a grassy 
+strip of lawn set at a forty-five degree angle, and upon it Fran stretched out and fairly sopped 
+up sun. 
+
+He said, "Don't have anything like this on Haven." 
+
+Iwo replied, sleepily, "Ever seen the cold side. There's a spot twenty miles from here where the 
+oxygen runs like water. " 
+
+"Go on. 
+
+"Fact." 
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, Iwo-ln the old days before my arm was chewed off I knocked around, see - 
+and you won't believe this, but" - The story that followed lasted considerably, and Iwo didn't 
+believe it. 
+
+
+Iwo said, through yawns, "They don't make them like in the old days, that's the truth. 
+
+
+
+"No, guess they don't. Well, now," Fran fired up, "don't say that. I told you about my son, didn't 
+I? He's one of the old school, if you like. He'll make a great Trader, blast it. He's his old man up 
+and down. Up and down, except that he gets married." 
+
+"You mean legal contract? With a girl?" 
+
+"That's right. Don't see the sense in it myself. They went to Kalgan for their honeymoon." 
+"Kalgan? Kalgan? When the Galaxy was this?" 
+
+Fran smiled broadly, and said with slow meaning, "Just before the Mule declared war on the 
+Foundation." 
+
+"That so?" 
+
+Fran nodded and motioned Iwo closer with his head. He said, hoarsely, "In fact, I can tell you 
+something, if you don't let it go any further. My boy was sent to Kalgan for a purpose. Now I 
+wouldn't like to let it out, you know, just what the purpose was, naturally, but you look at the 
+situation now, and I suppose you can make a pretty good guess. In any case, my boy was the 
+man for the job. We Traders needed some sort of ruckus." He smiled, craftily. "It's here. I'm not 
+saying how we did it, but - my boy went to Kalgan, and the Mule sent out his ships. My son!" 
+
+Iwo was duly impressed. He grew confidential in his turn, "That's good. You know, they say 
+we've got five hundred ships ready to pitch in on our own at the right time. " 
+
+Fran said authoritatively, "More than that, maybe. This is real strategy. This is the kind I like." 
+He clawed loudly at the skin of his abdomen. "But don't you forget that the Mule is a smart boy, 
+too. What happened at Horleggor worries me." 
+
+"I heard he lost about ten ships." 
+
+"Sure, but he had a hundred more, and the Foundation had to get out. It's all to the good to 
+have those tyrants beaten, but not as quickly as all that." He shook his head. 
+
+"The question I ask is where does the Mule get his ships? There's a widespread rumor we're 
+making them for him." 
+
+"We? The Traders? Haven has the biggest ship factories anywhere in the independent worlds, 
+and we haven't made one for anyone but ourselves. Do you suppose any world is building a 
+fleet for the Mule on its own, without taking the precaution of united action? That's a ... a fairy 
+tale." 
+
+"Well, where does he get them?" 
+
+And Fran shrugged, "Makes them himself, I suppose. That worries me, too." 
+
+Fran blinked at the sun and curled his toes about the smooth wood of the polished foot-rest. 
+Slowly, he fell asleep and the soft burr of his breathing mingled with the insect sibilance. 
+
+Lastly, there were the very few who knew considerable and were not confident at all. 
+
+Such as Randu, who on the fifth day of the all-Trader convention entered the Central Hall and 
+
+
+
+found the two men he had asked to be there, waiting for him. The five hundred seats were 
+empty - and were going to stay so. 
+
+Randu said quickly, almost before he sat down, "We three represent about half the military 
+potential of the Independent Trading Worlds." 
+
+"Yes," said Mangin of Iss, "my colleague and I have already commented upon the fact." 
+
+"I am ready," said Randu, "to speak quickly and earnestly. I am not interested in bargaining or 
+subtlety. Our position is radically in the worse." 
+
+"As a result of-" urged Ovall Gri of Mnemon. 
+
+"Of developments of the last hour. Please! From the beginning. First, our position is not of our 
+doing, and but doubtfully of our control. Our original dealings were not with the Mule, but with 
+several others; notably the ex-warlord of Kalgan, whom the Mule defeated at a most 
+inconvenient time for us." 
+
+"Yes, but this Mule is a worthy substitute," said Mangin. "I do not cavil at details." 
+
+"You may when you know all the details." Randu leaned forward and placed his hands upon the 
+table palms-up in an obvious gesture. 
+
+Fie said, "A month ago I sent my nephew and my nephew's wife to Kalgan." 
+
+"Your nephew!" cried Ovall Gri, in surprise. "I did not know he was your nephew." 
+
+"With what purpose," asked Mangin, dryly. "This?" And his thumb drew an inclusive circle high 
+in the air. 
+
+"No. If you mean the Mule's war on the Foundation, no. Flow could I aim so high? The young 
+man knew nothing - neither of our organization nor of our aims. Fie was told I was a minor 
+member of an intra-Flaven patriotic society, and his function at Kalgan was nothing but that of 
+an amateur observer. My motives were, I must admit, rather obscure. Mainly, I was curious 
+about the Mule. Fie is a strange phenomenon - but that's a chewed cud; I'll not go into it. 
+Secondly, it would make an interesting and educational training project for a man who had 
+experience with the Foundation and the Foundation underground and showed promise of future 
+usefulness to us. You see-" 
+
+Ovall's long face fell into vertical lines as he showed his large teeth, "You must have been 
+surprised at the outcome, then, since there is not a world among the Traders, I believe, that 
+does not know that this nephew of yours abducted a Mule underling in the name of the 
+Foundation and furnished the Mule with a casus belli. Galaxy, Randu, you spin romances. I find 
+it hard to believe you had no hand in that. Come, it was a skillful job." 
+
+Randu shook his white head, "Not of my doing. Nor, willfully, of my nephew's, who is now held 
+prisoner at the Foundation, and may not live to see the completion of this so-skillful job. I have 
+just heard from him. The Personal Capsule has been smuggled out somehow, come through 
+the war zone, gone to Haven, and traveled from there to here. It has been a month on its 
+travels." 
+
+
+
+And?-' 
+
+
+Randu leaned a heavy hand upon the heel of his palm and said, sadly, "I'm afraid we are cast 
+for the same role that the onetime warlord of Kalgan played. The Mule is a mutant!" 
+
+There was a momentary qualm; a faint impression of quickened heartbeats. Randu might easily 
+have imagined it. 
+
+When Mangin spoke, the evenness of his voice was unchanged, "How do you know?" 
+
+"Only because my nephew says so, but he was on Kalgan. 
+
+"What kind of a mutant? There are all kinds, you know." 
+
+Randu forced the rising impatience down, "All kinds of mutants, yes, Mangin. All kinds! But only 
+one kind of Mule. What kind of a mutant would start as an unknown, assemble an army, 
+establish, they say, a five-mile asteroid as original base, capture a planet, then a system, then 
+a region - and then attack the Foundation, and defeat them at Horleggor. And all in two or 
+three years!" 
+
+Ovall Gri shrugged, "So you think he'll beat the Foundation?" 
+
+"I don't know. Suppose he does?" 
+
+"Sorry, I can't go that far. You don't beat the Foundation. Look, there's not a new fact we have 
+to go on except for the statements of a ... well, of an inexperienced boy. Suppose we shelve it 
+for a while. With all the Mule's victories, we weren't worried until now, and unless he goes a 
+good deal further than he has, I see no reason to change that. Yes?" 
+
+Randu frowned and despaired at the cobweb texture of his argument. He said to both, "Have 
+we yet made any contact with the Mule?" 
+
+"No," both answered. 
+
+"It's true, though, that we've tried, isn't it? It's true that there's not much purpose to our meeting 
+unless we do reach him, isn't it? It's true that so far there's been more drinking than thinking, 
+and more wooing than doing - I quote from an editorial in today's Radole Tribune - and all 
+because we can't reach the Mule. Gentlemen, we have nearly a thousand ships waiting to be 
+thrown into the fight at the proper moment to seize control of the Foundation. I say we should 
+change that. I say, throw those thousand onto the board now - against the Mule." 
+
+"You mean for the Tyrant Indbur and the bloodsuckers of the Foundation?" demanded Mangin, 
+with quiet venom. 
+
+Randu raised a weary hand, "Spare me the adjectives. Against the Mule, I say, and for 
+l-don't-care-who." 
+
+Ovall Gri rose, "Randu, I'll have nothing to do with that, You present it to the full council tonight 
+if you particularly hunger for political suicide." 
+
+He left without another word and Mangin followed silently, leaving Randu to drag out a lonely 
+
+
+
+hour of endless, insoluble consideration. 
+
+At the full council that night, he said nothing. 
+
+But it was Ovall Gri who pushed into his room the next morning; an Ovall Gri only sketchily 
+dressed and who had neither shaved nor combed his hair. 
+
+Randu stared at him over a yet-uncleared breakfast table with an astonishment sufficiently 
+open and strenuous to cause him to drop his pipe. 
+
+Ovall said baldly, harshly. "Mnemon has been bombarded from space by treacherous attack." 
+Randu's eyes narrowed, "The Foundation?" 
+
+"The Mule!" exploded Ovall. "The Mule!" His words raced, "It was unprovoked and deliberate. 
+Most of our fleet had joined the international flotilla. The few left as Home Squadron were 
+insufficient and were blown out of the sky. There have been no landings yet, and there may not 
+be, for half the attackers are reported destroyed - but it is war - and I have come to ask how 
+Haven stands on the matter." 
+
+"Haven, I am sure, will adhere to the spirit of the Charter of Federation. But, you see? He 
+attacks us as well." 
+
+"This Mule is a madman. Can he defeat the universe?" He faltered and sat down to seize 
+Randu's wrist, "Our few survivors have reported the Mule's poss ... enemy's possession of a 
+new weapon. A nuclear-field depressor." 
+
+"A what?" 
+
+Ovall said, "Most of our ships were lost because their nuclear weapons failed them. It could not 
+have happened by either accident or sabotage. It must have been a weapon of the Mule. It 
+didn't work perfectly; the effect was intermittent; there were ways to neutralize - my dispatches 
+are not detailed. But you see that such a tool would change the nature of war and, possibly, 
+make our entire fleet obsolete." 
+
+Randu felt an old, old man. His face sagged hopelessly, "I am afraid a monster is grown that 
+will devour all of us. Yet we must fight him." 
+
+
+17. THE VISI-SONOR 
+
+Ebling Mis's house in a not-so-pretentious neighborhood of Terminus City was well known to 
+the intelligentsia, literati, and just-plain-well-read of the Foundation. Its notable characteristics 
+depended, subjectively, upon the source material that was read. To a thoughtful biographer, it 
+was the "symbolization of a retreat from a nonacademic reality," a society columnist gushed 
+silkily at its "frightfully masculine atmosphere of careless disorder," a University Ph.D. called it 
+brusquely, "bookish, but unorganized," a nonuniversity friend said, "good for a drink anytime 
+and you can put your feet on the sofa," and a breezy newsweekly broadcast, that went in for 
+color, spoke of the "rocky, down-to-earth, no-nonsense living quarters of blaspheming, Leftish, 
+
+
+
+balding Ebling Mis." 
+
+To Bayta, who thought for no audience but herself at the moment, and who had the advantage 
+of first-hand information, it was merely sloppy. 
+
+Except for the first few days, her imprisonment had been a light burden. Far lighter, it seemed, 
+that this half-hour wait in the psychologist's home - under secret observation, perhaps? She 
+had been with Toran then, at least. 
+
+Perhaps she might have grown wearier of the strain, had not Magnifico's long nose drooped in 
+a gesture that plainly showed his own far greater tension. 
+
+Magnifico's pipe-stem legs were folded up under a pointed, sagging chin, as if he were trying to 
+huddle himself into disappearance, and Bayta's hand went out in a gentle and automatic 
+gesture of reassurance. Magnifico winced, then smiled. 
+
+"Surely, my lady, it would seem that even yet my body denies the knowledge of my mind and 
+expects of others' hands a blow." 
+
+"There's no need for worry, Magnifico. I'm with you, and I won't let anyone hurt you." 
+
+The clown's eyes sidled towards her, then drew away quickly. "But they kept me away from you 
+earlier - and from your kind husband - and, on my word, you may laugh, but I was lonely for 
+missing friendship." 
+
+"I wouldn't laugh at that. I was, too." 
+
+The clown brightened, and he hugged his knees closer. He said, "You have not met this man 
+who will see us?" It was a cautious question. 
+
+"No. But he is a famous man. I have seen him in the newscasts and heard quite a good deal of 
+him. I think he's a good man, Magnifico, who means us no harm." 
+
+"Yes?" The clown stirred uneasily. "That may be, my lady, but he has questioned me before, 
+and his manner is of an abruptness and loudness that bequivers me. He is full of strange 
+words, so that the answers to his questions could not worm out of my throat. Almost, I might 
+believe the romancer who once played on my ignorance with a tale that, at such moments, the 
+heart lodged in the windpipe and prevented speech." 
+
+"But it's different now. We're two to his one, and he won't be able to frighten the both of us, will 
+he?" 
+
+"No, my lady." 
+
+A door slammed somewheres, and the roaring of a voice entered the house. Just outside the 
+room, it coagulated into words with a fierce, "Get the "Ga-LAX-y out of here!" and two 
+uniformed guards were momentarily visible through the opening door, in quick retreat. 
+
+Ebling Mis entered frowning, deposited a carefully wrapped bundle on the floor, and 
+approached to shake Bayta's hand with careless pressure. Bayta returned it vigorously, 
+man-fashion. Mis did a double-take as he turned to the clown, and favored the girl with a longer 
+
+
+
+look. 
+
+He said, "Married?" 
+
+"Yes. We went through the legal formalities." 
+
+Mis paused. Then, "Happy about it?" 
+
+"So far." 
+
+Mis shrugged, and turned again to Magnifico. He unwrapped the package, "Know what this is, 
+boy?" 
+
+Magnifico fairly hurled himself out of his seat and caught the multi-keyed instrument. He 
+fingered the myriad knobby contacts and threw a sudden back somersault of joy, to the 
+imminent destruction of the nearby furniture. 
+
+He croaked, "A Visi-Sonor - and of a make to distill joy out of a dead man's heart." His long 
+fingers caressed softly and slowly, pressing lightly on contacts with a rippling motion, resting 
+momentarily on one key then another - and in the air before them there was a soft glowing 
+rosiness, just inside the range of vision. 
+
+Ebling Mis said, "All right, boy, you said you could pound on one of those gadgets, and there's 
+your chance. You'd better tune it, though. It's out of a museum." Then, in an aside to Bayta, 
+"Near as I can make it, no one on the Foundation can make it talk right." 
+
+He leaned closer and said quickly, "The clown won't talk without you. Will you help?" 
+
+She nodded. 
+
+"Good!" he said. "His state of fear is almost fixed, and I doubt that his mental strength would 
+possibly stand a psychic probe. If I'm to get anything out of him otherwise, he's got to feel 
+absolutely at ease. You understand?" 
+
+She nodded again. 
+
+"This Visi-Sonor is the first step in the process. He says he can play it; and his reaction now 
+makes it pretty certain that it's one of the great joys of his life. So whether the playing is good or 
+bad, be interested and appreciative. Then exhibit friendliness and confidence in me. Above all, 
+follow my lead in everything." There was a swift glance at Magnifico, huddled in a comer of the 
+sofa, making rapid adjustments in the interior of the instrument. He was completely absorbed. 
+
+Mis said in a conversational tone to Bayta, "Ever hear a Visi-Sonor?" 
+
+"Once," said Bayta, equally casually, "at a concert of rare instruments. I wasn't impressed." 
+
+"Well, I doubt that you came across good playing. There are very few really good players. It's 
+not so much that it requires physical co-ordination - a multi-bank piano requires more, for 
+instance - as a certain type of free-wheeling mentality." In a lower voice, "That's why our living 
+skeleton there might be better than we think. More often than not, good players are idiots 
+otherwise. It's one of those queer setups that makes psychology interesting." 
+
+
+
+He added, in a patent effort to manufacture light conversation, "You know how the beblistered 
+thing works? I looked it up for this purpose, and all I've made out so far is that its radiations 
+stimulate the optic center of the brain directly, without ever touching the optic nerve. It's actually 
+the utilization of a sense never met with in ordinary nature. Remarkable, when you come to 
+think of it. What you hear is all right. That's ordinary. Eardrum, cochlea, all that. But - Shh! He's 
+ready. Will you kick that switch. It works better in the dark." 
+
+In the darkness, Magnifico was a mere blob, Ebling Mis a heavy-breathing mass. Bayta found 
+herself straining her eyes anxiously, and at first with no effect. There was a thin, reedy quaver 
+in the air, that wavered raggedly up the scale. It hovered, dropped and caught itself, gained in 
+body, and swooped into a booming crash that had the effect of a thunderous split in a veiling 
+curtain. 
+
+A little globe of pulsing color grew in rhythmic spurts and burst in midair into formless gouts that 
+swirled high and came down as curving streamers in interfacing patterns. They coalesced into 
+little spheres, no two alike in color - and Bayta began discovering things. 
+
+She noticed that closing her eyes made the color pattern all the clearer; that each little 
+movement of color had its own little pattern of sound; that she could not identify the colors; and, 
+lastly, that the globes were not globes but little figures. 
+
+Little figures; little shifting flames, that danced and flickered in their myriads; that dropped out of 
+sight and returned from nowhere; that whipped about one another and coalesced then into a 
+new color. 
+
+Incongruously, Bayta thought of the little blobs of color that come at night when you close your 
+eyelids till they hurt, and stare patiently. There was the old familiar effect of the marching polka 
+dots of shifting color, of the contracting concentric circles, of the shapeless masses that quiver 
+momentarily. All that, larger, multivaried - and each little dot of color a tiny figure. 
+
+They darted at her in pairs, and she lifted her hands with a sudden gasp, but they tumbled and 
+for an instant she was the center of a brilliant snowstorm, while cold light slipped off her 
+shoulders and down her arm in a luminous ski-slide, shooting off her stiff fingers and meeting 
+slowly in a shining midair focus. Beneath it all, the sound of a hundred instruments flowed in 
+liquid streams until she could not tell it from the light. 
+
+She wondered if Ebling Mis were seeing the same thing, and if not, what he did see, The 
+wonder passed, and then- 
+
+She was watching again. The little figures-were they little figures? -little tiny women with 
+burning hair that turned and bent too quickly for the mind to focus? -seized one another in 
+star-shaped groups that turned - and the music was faint laughter - girls' laughter that began 
+inside the ear. 
+
+The stars drew together, sparked towards one another, grew slowly into structure - and from 
+below, a palace shot upward in rapid evolution. Each brick a tiny color, each color a tiny spark, 
+each spark a stabbing light that shifted patterns and led the eye skyward to twenty jeweled 
+minarets. 
+
+
+
+A glittering carpet shot out and about, whirling, spinning an insubstantial web that engulfed all 
+space, and from it luminous shoots stabbed upward and branched into trees that sang with a 
+music all their own. 
+
+Bayta sat inclosed in it. The music welled about her in rapid, lyrical flights. She reached out to 
+touch a fragile tree and blossoming spicules floated downwards and faded, each with its clear, 
+tiny tinkle. 
+
+The music crashed in twenty cymbals, and before her an area flamed up in a spout and 
+cascaded down invisible steps into Bayta's lap, where it spilled over and flowed in rapid current, 
+raising the fiery sparkle to her waist, while across her lap was a rainbow bridge and upon it the 
+little figures- 
+
+A palace, and a garden, and tiny men and women on a bridge, stretching out as far as she 
+could see, swimming through the stately swells of stringed music converging in upon her- 
+
+And then - there seemed a frightened pause, a hesitant, indrawn motion, a swift collapse. The 
+colors fled, spun into a globe that shrank, and rose, and disappeared. 
+
+And it was merely dark again. 
+
+A heavy foot scratched for the pedal, reached it, and the light flooded in; the flat light of a prosy 
+sun. Bayta blinked until the tears came, as though for the longing of what was gone. Ebling Mis 
+was a podgy inertness with his eyes still round and his mouth still open. 
+
+Only Magnifico himself was alive, and he fondled his Visi-Sonor in a crooning ecstasy. 
+
+"My lady," he gasped, "it is indeed of an effect the most magical. It is of balance and response 
+almost beyond hope in its delicacy and stability. On this, it would seem I could work wonders. 
+How liked you my composition, my lady?" 
+
+"Was it yours?" breathed Bayta. "Your own?" 
+
+At her awe, his thin face turned a glowing red to the tip of his mighty nose. "My very own, my 
+lady. The Mule liked it not, but often and often I have played it for my own amusement. It was 
+once, in my youth, that I saw the palace - a gigantic place of jeweled riches that I saw from a 
+distance at a time of high carnival. There were people of a splendor undreamed of - and 
+magnificence more than ever I saw afterwards, even in the Mule's service. It is but a poor 
+makeshift I have created, but my mind's poverty precludes more. I call it, 'The Memory of 
+Heaven.'" 
+
+Now through the midst of the chatter, Mis shook himself to active life. "Here," he said, "here, 
+Magnifico, would you like to do that same thing for others?" 
+
+For a moment, the clown drew back. "For others?" he quavered. 
+
+"For thousands," cried Mis, "in the great Halls of the Foundation. Would you like to be your own 
+master, and honored by all, wealthy, and ... and-" his imagination failed him. "And all that? Eh? 
+What do you say?" 
+
+"But how may I be all that, mighty sir, for indeed I am but a poor clown ungiven to the great 
+
+
+
+things of the world?" 
+
+The psychologist puffed out his lips, and passed the back of his hand across his brow. He said, 
+"But your playing, man. The world is yours if you would play so for the mayor and his Trading 
+Trusts. Wouldn't you like that?" 
+
+The clown glanced briefly at Bayta, "Would she stay with me?" 
+
+Bayta laughed, "Of course, silly. Would it be likely that I'd leave you now that you're on the point 
+of becoming rich and famous?" 
+
+"It would all be yours," he replied earnestly, "and surely the wealth of Galaxy itself would be 
+yours before I could repay my debt to your kindness." 
+
+"But," said Mis, casually, "if you would first help me-" 
+
+"What is that?" 
+
+The psychologist paused, and smiled, "A little surface probe that doesn't hurt. It wouldn't touch 
+but the peel of your brain." 
+
+There was a flare of deadly fear in Magnifico's eyes. "Not a probe. I have seen it used. It drains 
+the mind and leaves an empty skull. The Mule did use it upon traitors and let them wander 
+mindless through the streets, until out of mercy, they were killed." He held up his hand to push 
+Mis away. 
+
+"That was a psychic probe," explained Mis, patiently, "and even that would only harm a person 
+when misused. This probe I have is a surface probe that wouldn't hurt a baby. " 
+
+"That's right, Magnifico," urged Bayta. "It's only to help beat the Mule and keep him far away. 
+Once that's done, you and I will be rich and famous all our lives." 
+
+Magnifico held out a trembling hand, "Will you hold my hand, then?" 
+
+Bayta took it in both her own, and the clown watched the approach of the burnished terminal 
+plates with large eyes. 
+
+Ebling Mis rested carelessly on the too-lavish chair in Mayor Indbur's private quarters, 
+unregenerately unthankful for the condescension shown him and watched the small mayor's 
+fidgeting unsympathetically. He tossed away a cigar stub and spat out a shred of tobacco. 
+
+"And, incidentally, if you want something for your next concert at Mallow Hall, Indbur," he said, 
+"you can dump out those electronic gadgeteers into the sewers they came from and have this 
+little freak play the Visi-Sonor for you. Indbur - it's out of this world." 
+
+Indbur said peevishly, "I did not call you here to listen to your lectures on music. What of the 
+Mule? Tell me that. What of the Mule?" 
+
+"The Mule? Well, I'll tell you - I used a surface probe and got little. Can't use the psychic probe 
+because the freak is scared blind of it, so that his resistance will probably blow his unprintable 
+mental fuses as soon as contact is made. But this is what I've got, if you'll just stop tapping your 
+
+
+
+fingernails— 
+
+"First place, de-stress the Mule's physical strength. He's probably strong, but most of the freak's 
+fairy tales about it are probably considerably blown up by his own fearful memory, He wears 
+queer glasses and his eyes kill, he evidently has mental powers." 
+
+"So much we had at the start," commented the mayor, sourly. 
+
+"Then the probe confirms it, and from there on I've been working mathematically." 
+
+"So? And how long will all this take? Your word-rattling will deafen me yet." 
+
+"About a month, I should say, and I may have something for you. And I may not, of course. But 
+what of it? If this is all outside Seldon's plans, our chances are precious little, unprintable little." 
+
+Indbur whirled on the psychologist fiercely, "Now I have you, traitor. Lie! Say you're not one of 
+these criminal rumormongers that are spreading defeatism and panic through the Foundation, 
+and making my work doubly hard." 
+
+"I? I?" Mis gathered anger slowly. 
+
+Indbur swore at him, "Because by the dust-clouds of space, the Foundation will win - the 
+Foundation must win." 
+
+"Despite the loss at Horleggor?" 
+
+"It was not a loss. You have swallowed that spreading lie, too? We were outnumbered and 
+betreasoned-" 
+
+"By whom?" demanded Mis, contemptuously. 
+
+"By the lice-ridden democrats of the gutter," shouted Indbur back at him. "I have known for long 
+that the fleet has been riddled by democratic cells. Most have been wiped out, but enough 
+remain for the unexplained surrender of twenty ships in the thickest of the swarming fight. 
+Enough to force an apparent defeat. 
+
+"For that matter, my rough-tongued, simple patriot and epitome of the primitive virtues, what are 
+your own connections with the democrats?" 
+
+Ebling Mis shrugged it off, "You rave, do you know that? What of the retreat since, and the loss 
+of half of Siwenna? Democrats again?" 
+
+"No. Not democrats," the little man smiled sharply. "We retreat - as the Foundation has always 
+retreated under attack, until the inevitable march of history turns with us. Already, I see the 
+outcome. Already, the so-called underground of the democrats has issued manifestoes 
+swearing aid and allegiance to the Government. It could be a feint, a cover for a deeper 
+treachery, but I make good use of it, and the propaganda distilled from it will have its effect, 
+whatever the crawling traitors scheme. And better than that-" 
+
+"Even better than that, Indbur?" 
+
+"Judge for yourself. Two days ago, the so-called Association of Independent Traders declared 
+
+
+
+war on the Mule, and the Foundation fleet is strengthened, at a stroke, by a thousand ships. 
+You see, this Mule goes too far. He finds us divided and quarreling among ourselves and under 
+the pressure of his attack we unite and grow strong. He must lose. It is inevitable - as always." 
+
+Mis still exuded skepticism, "Then you tell me that Seldon planned even for the fortuitous 
+occurrence of a mutant." 
+
+"A mutant! I can't tell him from a human, nor could you but for the ravings of a rebel captain, 
+some outland youngsters, and an addled juggler and clown. You forget the most conclusive 
+evidence of all - your own." 
+
+"My own?" For just a moment, Mis was startled. 
+
+"Your own," sneered the mayor. "The Time Vault opens in nine weeks. What of that? It opens 
+for a crisis. If this attack of the Mule is not the crisis, where is the 'real' one, the one the Vault is 
+opening for? Answer me, you lardish ball." 
+
+The psychologist shrugged, "All tight. If it keeps you happy. Do me a favor, though. Just in case 
+... just in case old Seldon makes his speech and it does go sour, suppose you let me attend the 
+Grand Opening." 
+
+"All right. Get out of here. And stay out of my sight for nine weeks." 
+
+"With unprintable pleasure, you wizened horror," muttered Mis to himself as he left. 
+
+
+18. FALL OF THE FOUNDATION 
+
+There was an atmosphere about the Time Vault that just missed definition in several directions 
+at once. It was not one of decay, for it was well-lit and well-conditioned, with the color scheme 
+of the walls lively, and the rows of fixed chairs comfortable and apparently designed for eternal 
+use. It was not even ancient, for three centuries had left no obvious mark. There was certainly 
+no effort at the creation of awe or reverence, for the appointments were simple and everyday - 
+next door to bareness, in fact. 
+
+Yet after all the negatives were added and the sum disposed of, something was left - and that 
+something centered about the glass cubicle that dominated half the room with its clear 
+emptiness. Four times in three centuries, the living simulacrum of Hari Seldon himself had sat 
+there and spoken. Twice he had spoken to no audience. 
+
+Through three centuries and nine generations, the old man who had seen the great days of 
+universal empire projected himself - and still he understood more of the Galaxy of his 
+great-ultra-great-grandchildren, than did those grandchildren themselves. 
+
+Patiently that empty cubicle waited. 
+
+The first to arrive was Mayor Indbur III, driving his ceremonial ground car through the hushed 
+and anxious streets. Arriving with him was his own chair, higher than those that belonged there, 
+and wider. It was placed before all the others, and Indbur dominated all but the empty 
+
+
+
+glassiness before him. 
+
+The solemn official at his left bowed a reverent head. "Excellence, arrangements are completed 
+for the widest possible sub-etheric spread for the official announcement by your excellence 
+tonight." 
+
+"Good. Meanwhile, special interplanetary programs concerning the Time Vault are to continue. 
+There will, of course, be no predictions or speculations of any sort on the subject. Does popular 
+reaction continue satisfactory?" 
+
+"Excellence, very much so. The vicious rumors prevailing of late have decreased further. 
+Confidence is widespread." 
+
+"Good!" He gestured the man away and adjusted his elaborate neckpiece to a nicety. 
+
+It was twenty minutes of noon! 
+
+A select group of the great props of the mayoralty - the leaders of the great Trading 
+organizations - appeared in ones and twos with the degree of pomp appropriate to their 
+financial status and place in mayoral favor. Each presented himself to the mayor, received a 
+gracious word or two, took an assigned seat. 
+
+Somewhere, incongruous among the stilted ceremony of all this, Randu of Haven made his 
+appearance and wormed his way unannounced to the mayor's seat. 
+
+"Excellence!" he muttered, and bowed. 
+
+Indbur frowned. "You have not been granted an audience. " 
+
+"Excellence, I have requested one for a week." 
+
+"I regret that the matters of State involved in the appearance of Seldon have-" 
+
+"Excellence, I regret them, too, but I must ask you to rescind your order that the ships of the 
+Independent Traders be distributed among the fleets of the Foundation." 
+
+Indbur had flushed red at the interruption. "This is not the time for discussion." 
+
+"Excellence, it is the only time," Randu whispered urgently. "As representative of the 
+Independent Trading Worlds, I tell you such a move can not be obeyed. It must be rescinded 
+before Seldon solves our problem for us. Once the emergency is passed, it will be too late to 
+conciliate and our alliance will melt away." 
+
+Indbur stared at Randu coldly. "You realize that I am head of the Foundation armed forces? 
+Have I the right to determine military policy or have I not?" 
+
+"Excellence, you have, but some things are inexpedient." 
+
+"I recognize no inexpediency. It is dangerous to allow your people separate fleets in this 
+emergency. Divided action plays into the hands of the enemy. We must unite, ambassador, 
+militarily as well as politically." 
+
+
+
+Randu felt his throat muscles tighten. He omitted the courtesy of the opening title. "You feet 
+safe now that Seldon will speak, and you move against us. A month ago you were soft and 
+yielding, when our ships defeated the Mule at Terel. I might remind you, sir, that it is the 
+Foundation Fleet that has been defeated in open battle five times, and that the ships of the 
+Independent Trading Worlds have won your victories for you." 
+
+Indbur frowned dangerously, "You are no longer welcome upon Terminus, ambassador. Your 
+return will be requested this evening. Furthermore, your connection with subversive democratic 
+forces on Terminus will be - and has been - investigated." 
+
+Randu replied, "When I leave, our ships will go with me. I know nothing of your democrats. I 
+know only that your Foundation's ships have surrendered to the Mule by the treason of their 
+high officers, not their sailors, democratic or otherwise. I tell you that twenty ships of the 
+Foundation surrendered at Horleggor at the orders of their rear admiral, when they were 
+unharmed and unbeaten. The rear admiral was your own close associate - he presided at the 
+trial of my nephew when he first arrived from Kalgan. It is not the only case we know of and our 
+ships and men will not be risked under potential traitors. 
+
+Indbur said, "You will be placed under guard upon leaving here." 
+
+Randu walked away under the silent stares of the contemptuous coterie of the rulers of 
+Terminus. 
+
+It was ten minutes of twelve! 
+
+Bayta and Toran had already arrived. They rose in their back seats and beckoned to Randu as 
+he passed. 
+
+Randu smiled gently, "You are here after all. How did you work it?" 
+
+"Magnifico was our politician," grinned Toran. "Indbur insists upon his Visi-Sonor composition 
+based on the Time Vault, with himself, no doubt, as hero. Magnifico refused to attend without 
+us, and there was no arguing him out of it. Ebling Mis is with us, or was. He's wandering about 
+somewhere." Then, with a sudden access of anxious qravity, "Why, what's wronq, uncle? You 
+don't look well." 
+
+Randu nodded, "I suppose not. We're in for bad times, Toran. When the Mule is disposed of, 
+our turn will come, I'm afraid. " 
+
+A straight solemn figure in white approached, and greeted them with a stiff bow. 
+
+Bayta's dark eyes smiled, as she held out her hand, "Captain Pritcher! Are you on space duty 
+then?" 
+
+The captain took the hand and bowed lower, "Nothing like it. Dr. Mis, I understand, has been 
+instrumental in bringing me here, but it's only temporary. Back to home guard tomorrow. What 
+time is it?" 
+
+It was three minutes of twelve! 
+
+Magnifico was the picture of misery and heartsick depression. His body curled up, in his eternal 
+
+
+
+effort at self-effacement. His long nose was pinched at the nostrils and his large, down-slanted 
+eyes darted uneasily about. 
+
+He clutched at Bayta's hand, and when she bent down, he whispered, "Do you suppose, my 
+lady, that all these great ones were in the audience, perhaps, when I ... when I played the 
+Visi-Sonor?" 
+
+"Everyone, I'm sure," Bayta assured him, and shook him gently. "And I'm sure they all think 
+you're the most wonderful player in the Galaxy and that your concert was the greatest ever 
+seen, so you just straighten yourself and sit correctly. We must have dignity." 
+
+He smiled feebly at her mock-frown and unfolded his long-boned limbs slowly. 
+
+It was noon - and the glass cubicle was no longer empty. 
+
+It was doubtful that anyone had witnessed the appearance. It was a clean break; one moment 
+not there and the next moment there. 
+
+In the cubicle was a figure in a wheelchair, old and shrunken, from whose wrinkled face bright 
+eyes shone, and whose voice, as it turned out, was the livest thing about him. A book lay face 
+downward in his lap, and the voice came softly. 
+
+"I am Hari Seldon!" 
+
+He spoke through a silence, thunderous in its intensity. 
+
+"I am Hari Seldon! I do not know if anyone is here at all by mere sense-perception but that is 
+unimportant. I have few fears as yet of a breakdown in the Plan. For the first three centuries the 
+percentage probability of nondeviation is nine-four point two." 
+
+He paused to smile, and then said genially, "By the way, if any of you are standing, you may sit. 
+If any would like to smoke, please do. I am not here in the flesh. I require no ceremony. 
+
+"Let us take up the problem of the moment, then. For the first time, the Foundation has been 
+faced, or perhaps, is in the last stages of facing, civil war. Till now, the attacks from without 
+have been adequately beaten off, and inevitably so, according to the strict laws of 
+psychohistory. The attack at present is that of a too-undisciplined outer group of the Foundation 
+against the too-authoritarian central government. The procedure was necessary, the result 
+obvious." 
+
+The dignity of the high-born audience was beginning to break. Indbur was half out of his chair. 
+
+Bayta leaned forward with troubled eyes. What was the great Seldon talking about? She had 
+missed a few of the words- 
+
+"-that the compromise worked out is necessary in two respects. The revolt of the Independent 
+Traders introduces an element of new uncertainty in a government perhaps grown 
+over-confident. The element of striving is restored. Although beaten, a healthy increase of 
+democracy-" 
+
+There were raised voices now. Whispers had ascended the scale of loudness, and the edge of 
+
+
+
+panic was in them. 
+
+Bayta said in Toran's ear, "Why doesn't he talk about the Mule? The Traders never revolted." 
+Toran shrugged his shoulders. 
+
+The seated figure spoke cheerfully across and through the increasing disorganization: 
+
+"-a new and firmer coalition government was the necessary and beneficial outcome of the 
+logical civil war forced upon the Foundation. And now only the remnants of the old Empire 
+stand in the way of further expansion, and in them, for the next few years, at any rate, is no 
+problem. Of course, I can not reveal the nature of the next prob-" 
+
+In the complete uproar, Seldon's lips moved soundlessly. 
+
+Ebling Mis was next to Randu, face ruddy. He was shouting. "Seldon is off his rocker. He's got 
+the wrong crisis. Were your Traders ever planning civil war?" 
+
+Randu said thinly, "We planned one, yes. We called it off in the face of the Mule." 
+
+"Then the Mule is an added feature, unprepared for in Seldon's psychohistory. Now what's 
+happened?" 
+
+In the sudden, frozen silence, Bayta found the cubicle once again empty. The nuclear glow of 
+the walls was dead, the soft current of conditioned air absent. 
+
+Somewhere the sound of a shrill siren was rising and falling in the scale and Randu formed the 
+words with his lips, "Space raid!" 
+
+And Ebling Mis held his wrist watch to his ears and shouted suddenly, "Stopped, by the 
+"Ga-LAX-y, is there a watch in the room that is going?" His voice was a roar. 
+
+Twenty wrists went to twenty ears. And in far less than twenty seconds, it was quite certain that 
+none were. 
+
+"Then," said Mis, with a grim and horrible finality, "something has stopped all nuclear power in 
+the Time Vault - and the Mule is attacking." 
+
+Indbur's wail rose high above the noise, "Take your seats! The Mule is fifty parsecs distant." 
+
+"He was," shouted back Mis, "a week ago. Right now, Terminus is being bombarded." 
+
+Bayta felt a deep depression settle softly upon her. She felt its folds tighten close and thick, 
+until her breath forced its way only with pain past her tightened throat. 
+
+The outer noise of a gathering crowd was evident. The doors were thrown open and a harried 
+figure entered, and spoke rapidly to Indbur, who had rushed to him. 
+
+"Excellence," he whispered, "not a vehicle is running in the city, not a communication line to the 
+outside is open. 
+
+The Tenth Fleet is reported defeated and the Mule's ships are outside the atmosphere. The 
+general staff-" 
+
+
+
+Indbur crumpled, and was a collapsed figure of impotence upon the floor. In all that hall, not a 
+voice was raised now. Even the growing crowd without was fearful, but silent, and the horror of 
+cold panic hovered dangerously. 
+
+Indbur was raised. Wine was held to his lips. His lips moved before his eyes opened, and the 
+word they formed was, "Surrender!" 
+
+Bayta found herself near to crying - not for sorrow or humiliation, but simply and plainly out of a 
+vast frightened despair. Ebling Mis plucked at her sleeve. "Come, young lady-" 
+
+She was pulled out of her chair, bodily. 
+
+"We're leaving," he said, "and take your musician with you." The plump scientist's lips were 
+trembling and colorless. 
+
+"Magnifico," said Bayta, faintly. The clown shrank in horror. His eyes were glassy. 
+
+"The Mule," he shrieked. "The Mule is coming for me." 
+
+He thrashed wildly at her touch. Toran leaned over and brought his fist up sharply. Magnifico 
+slumped into unconsciousness and Toran carried him out potato-sack fashion. 
+
+The next day, the ugly, battle-black ships of the Mule poured down upon the landing fields of 
+the planet Terminus. The attacking general sped down the empty main street of Terminus City 
+in a foreign-made ground car that ran where a whole city of atomic cars still stood useless. 
+
+The proclamation of occupation was made twenty-four hours to the minute after Seldon had 
+appeared before the former mighty of the Foundation. 
+
+Of all the Foundation planets, only the Independent Traders still stood, and against them the 
+power of the Mule - conqueror of the Foundation - now turned itself. 
+
+
+19. START OF THE SEARCH 
+
+The lonely planet, Haven - only planet of an only sun of a Galactic Sector that trailed raggedly 
+off into intergalactic vacuum - was under siege. 
+
+In a strictly military sense, it was certainly under siege, since no area of space on the Galactic 
+side further than twenty parsecs distance was outside range of the Mule's advance bases. In 
+the four months since the shattering fall of the Foundation, Haven's communications had fallen 
+apart like a spiderweb under the razor's edge. The ships of Haven converged inwards upon the 
+home world, and only Haven itself was now a fighting base. 
+
+And in other respects, the siege was even closer; for the shrouds of helplessness and doom 
+had already invaded 
+
+Bayta plodded her way down the pink-waved aisle past the rows of milky plastic-topped tables 
+and found her seat by blind reckoning. She eased on to the high, armless chair, answered 
+half-heard greetings mechanically, rubbed a wearily-itching eye with the back of a weary hand, 
+
+
+
+and reached for her menu. 
+
+
+She had time to register a violent mental reaction of distaste to the pronounced presence of 
+various cultured-fungus dishes, which were considered high delicacies at Haven, and which her 
+Foundation taste found highly inedible - and then she was aware of the sobbing near her and 
+looked up. 
+
+Until then, her notice of Juddee, the plain, snub-nosed, indifferent blonde at the dining unit 
+diagonally across had been the superficial one of the nonacquaintance. And now Juddee was 
+crying, biting woefully at a moist handkerchief, and choking back sobs until her complexion was 
+blotched with turgid red. Her shapeless radiation-proof costume was thrown back upon her 
+shoulders, and her transparent face shield had tumbled forward into her dessert, and there 
+remained. 
+
+Bayta joined the three girls who were taking turns at the eternally applied and eternally 
+inefficacious remedies of shoulder-patting, hair-smoothing, and incoherent murmuring. 
+
+"What's the matter?" she whispered. 
+
+One turned to her and shrugged a discreet, "I don't know." Then, feeling the inadequacy of the 
+gesture, she pulled Bayta aside. 
+
+"She's had a hard day, I guess. And she's worrying about her husband." 
+
+"Is he on space patrol?" 
+
+"Yes". 
+
+Bayta reached a friendly hand out to Juddee. 
+
+"Why don't you go home, Juddee?" Her voice was a cheerfully businesslike intrusion on the 
+soft, flabby inanities that had preceded. 
+
+Juddee looked up half in resentment. "I've been out once this week already-" 
+
+"Then you'll be out twice. If you try to stay on, you know, you'll just be out three days next week 
+- so going home now amounts to patriotism. Any of you girls work in her department? Well, 
+then, suppose you take care of her card. Better go to the washroom first, Juddee, and get the 
+peaches and cream back where it belongs. Go ahead! Shoo!" 
+
+Bayta returned to her seat and took up the menu again with a dismal relief. These moods were 
+contagious. One weeping girl would have her entire department in a frenzy these nerve-torn 
+days. 
+
+She made a distasteful decision, pressed the correct buttons at her elbow and put the menu 
+back into its niche. 
+
+The tall, dark girl opposite her was saying, "Isn't much any of us can do except cry, is there?" 
+
+Her amazingly full lips scarcely moved, and Bayta noticed that their ends were carefully 
+touched to exhibit that artificial, just-so half-smile that was the current last word in 
+sophistication. 
+
+
+
+Bayta investigated the insinuating thrust contained in the words with lashed eyes and 
+welcomed the diversion of the arrival of her lunch, as the tile-top of her unit moved inward and 
+the food lifted. She tore the wrappings carefully off her cutlery and handled them gingerly till 
+they cooled. 
+
+She said, "Can't you think of anything else to do, Hella?" 
+
+"Oh, yes," said Hella. "/can!" She flicked her cigarette with a casual and expert finger-motion 
+into the little recess provided and the tiny flash caught it before it hit shallow bottom. 
+
+"For instance," and Hella clasped slender, well-kept hands under her chin, "I think we could 
+make a very nice arrangement with the Mule and stop all this nonsense. But then I don't have 
+the ... uh ... facilities to manage to get out of places quickly when the Mule takes over." 
+
+Bayta's clear forehead remained clear. Her voice was light and indifferent. "You don't happen to 
+have a brother or husband in the fighting ships, do you?" 
+
+"No. All the more credit that I see no reason for the sacrifice of the brothers and husbands of 
+others." 
+
+"The sacrifice will come the more surely for surrender." 
+
+"The Foundation surrendered and is at peace. Our men are away and the Galaxy is against 
+us." 
+
+Bayta shrugged, and said sweetly, "I'm afraid it is the first of the pair that bothers you." She 
+returned to her vegetable platter and ate it with the clammy realization of the silence about her. 
+No one in ear-shot had cared to answer Hella's cynicism. 
+
+She left quickly, after stabbing at the button which cleared her dining unit for the next shift's 
+occupant. 
+
+A new girl, three seats away, stage-whispered to Hella, "Who was she?" 
+
+Hella's mobile lips curled in indifference. "She's our coordinator's niece. Didn't you know that?" 
+
+"Yes?" Her eyes sought out the last glimpse of disappearing back. "What's she doing here?" 
+
+"Just an assembly girl. Don't you know it's fashionable to be patriotic? It's all so democratic, it 
+makes me retch." 
+
+"Now, Hella," said the plump girl to her right. "She's never pulled her uncle on us yet. Why don't 
+you lay off?" 
+
+Hella ignored her neighbor with a glazed sweep of eyes and lit another cigarette. 
+
+The new girl was listening to the chatter of the bright-eyed accountant opposite. The words 
+were coming quickly, 
+
+"-and she's supposed to have been in the Vault - actually in the Vault, you know - when 
+Seldon spoke - and they say the mayor was in frothing furies and there were riots, and all of 
+that sort of thing, you know. She got away before the Mule landed, and they say she had the 
+
+
+
+most tha-rilling escape - had to go through the blockade, and all - and I do wonder she doesn't 
+write a book about it, these war books being so popular these days, you know. And she was 
+supposed to be on this world of the Mule's, too - Kalgan, you know - and-" 
+
+The time bell shrilled and the dining room emptied slowly. The accountant's voice buzzed on, 
+and the new girl interrupted only with the conventional and wide-eyed, "Really-y-y-y?" at 
+appropriate points. 
+
+The huge cave lights were being shielded group-wise in the gradual descent towards the 
+darkness that meant sleep for the righteous and hard-working, when Bayta returned home. 
+
+Toran met her at the door, with a slice of buttered bread in his hand. 
+
+"Where've you been?" he asked, food-muffled. Then, more clearly, "I've got a dinner of sorts 
+rassled up. If it isn't much, don't blame me." 
+
+But she was circling him, wide-eyed. "Torie! Where's your uniform? What are you doing in 
+civvies?" 
+
+"Orders, Bay. Randu is holed up with Ebling Mis right now, and what it's all about, I don't know. 
+So there you have everything." 
+
+"Am I going?" She moved towards him impulsively. 
+
+He kissed her before he answered, "I believe so. It will probably be dangerous." 
+
+"What isn't dangerous?" 
+
+"Exactly. Oh, yes, and I've already sent for Magnifico, so he's probably coming too." 
+
+"You mean his concert at the Engine Factory will have to be cancelled." 
+
+"Obviously." 
+
+Bayta passed into the next room and sat down to a meal that definitely bore signs of having 
+been "rassled-up." She cut the sandwiches in two with quick efficiency and said: 
+
+"That's too bad about the concert. The girls at the factory were looking forward to it. Magnifico, 
+too, for that matter." She shook her head. "He's such a queer thing." 
+
+"Stirs your mother-complex, Bay, that's what he does. Some day we'll have a baby, and then 
+you'll forget Magnifico." 
+
+'Bayta answered from the depths of her sandwich, "Strikes me that you're all the stirring my 
+mother-complex can stand." 
+
+And then she laid the sandwich down, and was gravely serious in a moment. 
+
+"Torie." 
+
+"M-m-m?" 
+
+"Torie, I was at City Hall today - at the Bureau of Production. That is why I was so late today." 
+
+
+
+"What were you doing there?" 
+
+"Well..." she hesitated, uncertainly. "It's been building up. I was getting so I couldn't stand it at 
+the factory. Morale just doesn't exist. The girls go on crying jags for no particular reason. Those 
+who don't get sick become sullen. Even the little mousie types pout. In my particular section, 
+production isn't a quarter what it was when I came, and there isn't a day that we have a full 
+roster of workers." 
+
+"All right," said Toran, "tie in the B. of P. What did you do there?" 
+
+"Asked a few questions. And it's so, Torie, it's so all over Haven. Dropping production, 
+increasing sedition and disaffection. The bureau chief just shrugged his shoulders - after I had 
+sat in the anteroom an hour to see him, and only got in because I was the co-ordinator's niece 
+- and said it was beyond him. Frankly, I don't think he cared." 
+
+"Now, don't go off base, Bay." 
+
+"I don't think he did." She was strenuously fiery. "I tell you there's something wrong. It's that 
+same horrible frustration that hit me in the Time Vault when Seldon deserted us. You felt it 
+yourself." 
+
+"Yes, I did." 
+
+"Well, it's back," she continued savagely. "And we'll never be able to resist the Mule. Even if we 
+had the material, we lack the heart, the spirit, the will - Torie, there's no use fighting-" 
+
+Bayta had never cried in Toran's memory, and she did not cry now. Not really. But Toran laid a 
+light hand on her shoulder and whispered, "Suppose you forget it, baby. I know what you mean. 
+But there's nothing-" 
+
+"Yes, there's nothing we can do! Everyone says that - and we just sit and wait for the knife to 
+come down." 
+
+She returned to what was left of her sandwich and tea. Quietly, Toran was arranging the beds. 
+
+It was quite dark outside. 
+
+Randu, as newly-appointed co-ordinator - in itself a wartime post - of the confederation of 
+cities on Haven, had been assigned, at his own request, to an upper room, out of the window of 
+which he could brood over the roof tops and greenery of the city. Now, in the fading of the cave 
+lights, the city receded into the level lack of distinction of the shades. Randu did not care to 
+meditate upon the symbolism. 
+
+He said to Ebling Mis - whose clear, little eyes seemed to have no further interest than the 
+red-filled goblet in his hand - "There's a saying on Haven that when the cave lights go out, it is 
+time for the righteous and hard-working to sleep." 
+
+"Do you sleep much lately?" 
+
+"No! Sorry to call you so late, Mis. I like the night better somehow these days. Isn't that 
+strange? The people on Haven condition themselves pretty strictly on the lack of light meaning 
+sleep. Myself, too. But it's different now-" 
+
+
+
+"You're hiding," said Mis, flatly. "You're surrounded by people in the waking period, and you feel 
+their eyes and their hopes on you. You can't stand up under it. In the sleep period, you're free." 
+
+"Do you feel it, too, then? This miserable sense of defeat?" 
+
+Ebling Mis nodded slowly, "I do. It's a mass psychosis, an unprintable mob panic. "Ga-LAX-y, 
+Randu, what do you expect? Here you have a whole culture brought up to a blind, blubbering 
+belief that a folk hero of the past has everything all planned out and is taking care of every little 
+piece of their unprintable lives. The thought-pattern evoked has religious characteristics, and 
+you know what that means." 
+
+"Not a bit." 
+
+Mis was not enthusiastic about the necessity of explanation. He never was. So he growled, 
+stared at the long cigar he rolled thoughtfully between his fingers and said, "Characterized by 
+strong faith reactions. Beliefs can't be shaken short of a major shock, in which case, a fairly 
+complete mental disruption results. Mild cases-hysteria, morbid sense of insecurity. Advanced 
+cases - madness and suicide." 
+
+Randu bit at a thumbnail. "When Seldon fails us, in other words, our prop disappears, and 
+we've been leaning upon it so long, our muscles are atrophied to where we can not stand 
+without it." 
+
+"That's it. Sort of a clumsy metaphor, but that's it." 
+
+"And you, Ebling, what of your own muscles?" 
+
+The psychologist filtered a long draught of air through his cigar, and let the smoke laze out. 
+"Rusty, but not atrophied. My profession has resulted in just a bit of independent thinking." 
+
+"And you see a way out?" 
+
+"No, but there must be one. Maybe Seldon made no provisions for the Mule. Maybe he didn't 
+guarantee our victory. But, then, neither did he guarantee defeat. He's just out of the game and 
+we're on our own. The Mule can be licked." 
+
+"How?" 
+
+"By the only way anyone can be licked - by attacking in strength at weakness. See here, 
+
+Randu, the Mule isn't a superman. If he is finally defeated, everyone will see that for himself. 
+
+It's just that he's an unknown, and the legends cluster quickly. He's supposed to be a mutant. 
+Well, what of that? A mutant means a 'superman' to the ignoramuses of humanity. Nothing of 
+the sort. 
+
+"It's been estimated that several million mutants are born in the Galaxy every day. Of the 
+several million, all but one or two percent can be detected only by means of microscopes and 
+chemistry. Of the one or two percent macromutants, that is, those with mutations detectable to 
+the naked eye or naked mind, all but one or two percent are freaks, fit for the amusement 
+centers, the laboratories, and death. Of the few macromutants whose differences are to the 
+good, almost all are harmless curiosities, unusual in some single respect, normal - and often 
+
+
+
+subnormal - in most others. You see that, Randu?" 
+
+"I do. But what of the Mule?" 
+
+"Supposing the Mule to be a mutant then, we can assume that he has some attribute, 
+undoubtedly mental, which can be used to conquer worlds. In other respects, he undoubtedly 
+has his shortcomings, which we must locate. He would not be so secretive, so shy of others' 
+eyes, if these shortcomings were not apparent and fatal. If he's a mutant." 
+
+"Is there an alternative?" 
+
+"There might be. Evidence for mutation rests on Captain Han Pritcher of what used to be 
+Foundation's Intelligence. He drew his conclusions from the feeble memories of those who 
+claimed to know the Mule-or somebody who might have been the Mule - in infancy and early 
+childhood. Pritcher worked on slim pickings there, and what evidence he found might easily 
+have been planted by the Mule for his own purposes, for it's certain that the Mule has been 
+vastly aided by his reputation as a mutant-superman." 
+
+"This is interesting. How long have you thought that?" 
+
+"I never thought that, in the sense of believing it. It is merely an alternative to be considered. 
+
+For instance, Randu, suppose the Mule has discovered a form of radiation capable of 
+depressing mental energy just as he is in possession of one which depresses nuclear 
+reactions. What then, eh? Could that explain what's hitting us now - and what did hit the 
+Foundation?" 
+
+Randu seemed immersed in a near-wordless gloom. 
+
+He said, "What of your own researches on the Mule's clown." 
+
+And now Ebling Mis hesitated. "Useless as yet. I spoke bravely to the mayor previous to the 
+Foundation's collapse, mainly to keep his courage up - partly to keep my own up as well. But, 
+Randu, if my mathematical tools were up to it, then from the clown alone I could analyze the 
+Mule completely. Then we would have him. Then we could solve the queer anomalies that have 
+impressed me already." 
+
+"Such as?" 
+
+"Think, man. The Mule defeated the navies of the Foundation at will, but he has not once 
+managed to force the much weaker fleets of the Independent Traders to retreat in open 
+combat. The Foundation fell at a blow; the Independent Traders hold out against all his 
+strength. He first used Extinguishing Field upon the nuclear weapons of the Independent 
+Traders of Mnemon. The element of surprise lost them that battle but they countered the Field. 
+He was never able to use it successfully against the Independents again. 
+
+"But over and over again, it worked against Foundation forces. It worked on the Foundation 
+itself. Why? With our present knowledge, it is all illogical. So there must be factors of which we 
+are not aware." 
+
+
+Treachery? 
+
+
+
+"That's rattle-pated nonsense, Randu. Unprintable twaddle. There wasn't a man on the 
+Foundation who wasn't sure of victory. Who would betray a certain-to-win side." 
+
+Randu stepped to the curved window and stared unseeingly out into the unseeable. He said, 
+"But we're certain to lose now, if the Mule had a thousand weaknesses; if he were a network of 
+holes-" 
+
+He did not turn. It was as if the slump of his back, the nervous groping for one another of the 
+hands behind him that spoke. He said, "We escaped easily after the Time Vault episode, 
+
+Ebling. Others might have escaped as well. A few did. Most did not. The Extinguishing Field 
+could have been counteracted. It asked ingenuity and a certain amount of labor. All the ships of 
+the Foundation Navy could have flown to Haven or other nearby planets to continue the fight as 
+we did. Not one percent did so. In effect, they deserted to the enemy. 
+
+"The Foundation underground, upon which most people here seem to rely so heavily, has thus 
+far done nothing of consequence. The Mule has been politic enough to promise to safeguard 
+the property and profits of the great Traders and they have gone over to him." 
+
+Ebling Mis said stubbornly, "The plutocrats have always been against us." 
+
+"They always held the power, too. Listen, Ebling. We have reason to believe that the Mule or 
+his tools have already been in contact with powerful men among the Independent Traders. At 
+least ten of the twenty-seven Trading Worlds are known to have gone over to the Mule. 
+
+Perhaps ten more waver. There are personalities on Haven itself who would not be unhappy 
+over the Mule's domination. It's apparently an insurmountable temptation to give up 
+endangered political power, if that will maintain your hold over economic affairs. " 
+
+"You don't think Haven can fight the Mule?" 
+
+"I don't think Haven will." And now Randu turned his troubled face full upon the psychologist. "I 
+think Haven is waiting to surrender. It's what I called you here to tell you. I want you to leave 
+Haven." 
+
+Ebling Mis puffed up his plump checks in amazement. "Already?" 
+
+Randu felt horribly tired. "Ebling, you are the Foundation's greatest psychologist. The real 
+master-psychologists went out with Seldon, but you're the best we have. You're our only 
+chance of defeating the Mule. You can't do that here; you'll have to go to what's left of the 
+Empire." 
+
+"To Trantor?" 
+
+"That's right. What was once the Empire is bare bones today, but something must still be at the 
+center. They've got the records there, Ebling. You may learn more of mathematical psychology; 
+perhaps enough to be able to interpret the clown's mind. He will go with you, of course." 
+
+Mis responded dryly, "I doubt if he'd be willing to, even for fear of the Mule, unless your niece 
+went with him." 
+
+
+I know that. Toran and Bayta are leaving with you for that very reason. And, Ebling, there's 
+
+
+
+another, greater purpose. Hari Seldon founded two Foundations three centuries ago; one at 
+each end of the Galaxy. You must find that Second Foundation. " 
+
+
+20. CONSPIRATOR 
+
+The mayor's palace - what was once the mayor's palace - was a looming smudge in the 
+darkness. The city was quiet under its conquest and curfew, and the hazy milk of the great 
+Galactic Lens, with here and there a lonely star, dominated the sky of the Foundation. 
+
+In three centuries the Foundation had grown from a private project of a small group of scientists 
+to a tentacular trade empire sprawling deep into the Galaxy and half a year had flung it from its 
+heights to the status of another conquered province. 
+
+Captain Flan Pritcher refused to grasp that. 
+
+The city's sullen nighttime quiet, the darkened palace, intruder-occupied, were symbolic 
+enough, but Captain Flan Pritcher, just within the outer gate of the palace, with the tiny nuclear 
+bomb under his tongue, refused to understand. 
+
+A shape drifted closer - the captain bent his head. 
+
+The whisper came deathly low, "The alarm system is as it always was, captain. Proceed! It will 
+register nothing." 
+
+Softly, the captain ducked through the low archway, and down the fountain-lined path to what 
+had been Indbur's garden. 
+
+Four months ago had been the day in the Time Vault, the fullness of which his memory balked 
+at. Singly and separately the impressions would come back, unwelcome, mostly at night. 
+
+Old Seldon speaking his benevolent words that were so shatteringly wrong - the jumbled 
+confusion - Indbur, with his mayoral costume incongruously bright about his pinched, 
+unconscious face - the frightened crowds gathering quickly, waiting noiselessly for the 
+inevitable word of surrender - the young man, Toran, disappearing out of a side door with the 
+Mule's clown dangling over his shoulder. 
+
+And himself, somehow out of it all afterward, with his car unworkable. 
+
+Shouldering his way along and through the leaderless mob that was already leaving the city - 
+destination unknown. 
+
+Making blindly for the various rat holes which were - which had once been - the headquarters 
+for a democratic underground that for eighty years had been failing and dwindling. 
+
+And the rat holes were empty. 
+
+The next day, black alien ships were momentarily visible in the sky, sinking gently into the 
+clustered buildings of the nearby city. Captain Flan Pritcher felt an accumulation of 
+helplessness and despair drown him. 
+
+
+
+He started his travels in earnest. 
+
+
+In thirty days he had covered nearly two hundred miles on foot, changed to the clothing of a 
+worker in the hydroponic factories whose body he found newly-dead by the side of the road, 
+grown a fierce beard of russet intensity 
+
+And found what was left of the underground. 
+
+The city was Newton, the district a residential one of one-time elegance slowly edging towards 
+squalor, the house an undistinguished member of a row, and the man a small-eyed, big-boned 
+whose knotted fists bulged through his pockets and whose wiry body remained unbudgingly in 
+the narrow door opening. 
+
+The captain mumbled, "I come from Miran." 
+
+The man returned the gambit, grimly. "Miran is early this year." 
+
+The captain said, "No earlier than last year." 
+
+But the man did not step aside. He said, "Who are you?" 
+
+"Aren't you Fox?" 
+
+"Do you always answer by asking?" 
+
+The captain took an imperceptibly longer breath, and then said calmly, "I am Han Pritcher, 
+Captain of the Fleet, and member of the Democratic Underground Party. Will you let me in?" 
+
+The Fox stepped aside. He said, "My real name is Orum Palley." 
+
+He held out his hand. The captain took it. 
+
+The room was well-kept, but not lavish. In one comer stood a decorative book-film projector, 
+which to the captain's military eyes might easily have been a camouflaged blaster of 
+respectable caliber. The projecting lens covered the doorway, and such could be remotely 
+controlled. 
+
+The Fox followed his bearded guest's eyes, and smiled tightly. He said, "Yes! But only in the 
+days of Indbur and his lackey-hearted vampires. It wouldn't do much against the Mule, eh? 
+Nothing would help against the Mule. Are you hungry?" 
+
+The captain's jaw muscles tightened beneath his beard, and he nodded. 
+
+"It'll take a minute if you don't mind waiting." The Fox removed cans from a cupboard and 
+placed two before Captain Pritcher. "Keep your finger on it, and break them when they're hot 
+enough. My heat-control unit's out of whack. Things like that remind you there's a war on - or 
+was on, eh?" 
+
+His quick words had a jovial content, but were said in anything but a jovial tone - and his eyes 
+were coldly thoughtful. He sat down opposite the captain and said, "There'll be nothing but a 
+burn-spot left where you're sitting, if there's anything about you I don't like. Know that?" 
+
+
+
+The captain did not answer. The cans before him opened at a pressure. 
+
+The Fox said, shortly, "Stew! Sorry, but the food situation is short." 
+
+"I know," said the captain. He ate quickly; not looking up. 
+
+The Fox said, "I once saw you. I'm trying to remember, and the beard is definitely out of the 
+picture." 
+
+"I haven't shaved in thirty days." Then, fiercely, "What do you want? I had the correct 
+passwords. I have identification." 
+
+The other waved a hand, "Oh, I'll grant you're Pritcher all right. But there are plenty who have 
+the passwords, and the identifications, and the identities - who are with the Mule. Ever hear of 
+Levvaw, eh?" 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"He's with the Mule." 
+
+"What? He-" 
+
+"Yes. He was the man they called 'No Surrender.'" The Fox's lips made laughing motions, with 
+neither sound nor humor. "Then there's Willig. With the Mule! Garre and Noth. With the Mule! 
+Why not Pritcher as well, eh? How would I know?" 
+
+The captain merely shook his head. 
+
+"But it doesn't matter," said the Fox, softly. "They must have my name, if Noth has gone over - 
+so if you're legitimate, you're in more new danger than I am over our acquaintanceship." 
+
+The captain had finished eating. He leaned back, "If you have no organization here, where can 
+I find one? The Foundation may have surrendered, but I haven't." 
+
+"So! You can't wander forever, captain. Men of the Foundation must have travel permits to 
+move from town to town these days. You know that? Also identity cards. You have one? Also, 
+all officers of the old Navy have been requested to report to the nearest occupation 
+headquarters. That's you, eh?" 
+
+"Yes." The captain's voice was hard. "Do you think I run through fear. I was on Kalgan not long 
+after its fall to the Mule. Within a month, not one of the old warlord's officers was at large, 
+because they were the natural military leaders of any revolt. It's always been the underground's 
+knowledge that no revolution can be successful without the control of at least part of the Navy. 
+The Mule evidently knows it, too." 
+
+The Fox nodded thoughtfully, "Logical enough. The Mule is thorough." 
+
+"I discarded the uniform as soon as I could. I grew the beard. Afterwards there may be a 
+chance that others have taken the same action." 
+
+
+Are you married? 
+
+
+
+"My wife is dead. I have no children. 
+
+"You're hostage-immune, then." 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"You want my advice?" 
+
+"If you have any." 
+
+A don't know what the Mule's policy is or what he intends, but skilled workers have not been 
+harmed so far. Pay rates have gone up. Production of all sorts of nuclear weapons is booming." 
+
+"Yes? Sounds like a continuing offensive." 
+
+"I don't know. The Mule's a subtle son of a drab, and he may merely be soothing the workers 
+into submission. If Seldon couldn't figure him out with all his psychohistory, I'm not going to try. 
+But you're wearing work clothes. That suggests something, eh?" 
+
+"I'm not a skilled worker." 
+
+"You've had a military course in nucleics, haven't you?" 
+
+"Certainly." 
+
+"That's enough. The Nuclear-Field Bearings, Inc., is located here in town. Tell them you've had 
+experience. The stinkers who used to run the factory for Indbur are still running it - for the 
+Mule. They won't ask questions, as long as they need more workers to make their fat hunk. 
+They'll give you an identity card and you can apply for a room in the Corporation's housing 
+district. You might start now." 
+
+In that manner, Captain Han Pritcher of the National Fleet became Shield-man Lo Moro of the 
+45 Shop of Nuclear-Field Bearings, Inc. And from an Intelligence agent, he descended the 
+social scale to "conspirator"- a calling which led him months later to what had been Indbur's 
+private garden, 
+
+In the garden, Captain Pritcher consulted the radometer in the palm of his hand. The inner 
+warning field was still in operation, and he waited. Half an hour remained to the life of the 
+nuclear bomb in his mouth. He rolled it gingerly with his tongue. 
+
+The radometer died into an ominous darkness and the captain advanced quickly. 
+
+So far, matters had progressed well. 
+
+He reflected objectively that the life of the nuclear bomb was his as well; that its death was his 
+death - and the Mule's death. 
+
+And the grand climacteric of a four-month's private war would be reached; a war that had 
+passed from flight through a Newton factory 
+
+For two months, Captain Pritcher wore leaden aprons and heavy face shields, till all things 
+military had been frictioned off his outer bearing. He was a laborer, who collected his pay, spent 
+
+
+
+his evenings in town, and never discussed politics. 
+
+For two months, he did not see the Fox. 
+
+And then, one day, a man stumbled past his bench, and there was a scrap of paper in his 
+pocket. The word "Fox" was on it. Fie tossed it into the nuclear chamber, where it vanished in a 
+sightless puff, sending the energy output up a millimicrovolt - and turned back to his work. 
+
+That night he was at the Fox's home, and took a hand in a game of cards with two other men 
+he knew by reputation and one by name and face. 
+
+Over the cards and the passing and repassing tokens, they spoke. 
+
+The captain said, "It's a fundamental error. You live in the exploded past. For eighty years our 
+organization has been waiting for the correct historical moment. We've been blinded by 
+Seldon's psychohistory, one of the first propositions of which is that the individual does not 
+count, does not make history, and that complex social and economic factors override him, 
+make a puppet out of him." Fie adjusted his cards carefully, appraised their value and said, as 
+he put out a token. "Why not kill the Mule?" 
+
+"Well, now, and what good would that do?" demanded the man at his left, fiercely. 
+
+"You see," said the captain, discarding two cards, "that's the attitude. What is one man - out of 
+quadrillions. The Galaxy won't stop rotating because one man dies. But the Mule is not a man, 
+he is a mutant. Already, he had upset Seldon's plan, and if you'll stop to analyze the 
+implications, it means that he - one man - one mutant - upset all of Seldon's psychohistory. If 
+he had never lived, the Foundation would not have fallen. If he ceased living, it would not 
+remain fallen. 
+
+"Come, the democrats have fought the mayors and the traders for eighty years by connivery. 
+Let's try assassination." 
+
+"Flow?" interposed the Fox, with cold common sense. 
+
+The captain said, slowly, "I've spent three months of thought on that with no solution. I came 
+here and had it in five minutes." Fie glanced briefly at the man whose broad, pink melon of a 
+face smiled from the place at his right. "You were once Mayor Indbur's chamberlain. I did not 
+know you were of the underground," 
+
+"Nor I, that you were." 
+
+"Well, then, in your capacity as chamberlain you periodically checked the working of the alarm 
+system of the palace." 
+
+"I did." 
+
+"And the Mule occupies the palace now." 
+
+"So it has been announced - though he is a modest conqueror who makes no speeches, 
+proclamations nor public appearances of any sort." 
+
+"That's an old story, and affects nothing. You, my ex-chamberlain, are all we need." 
+
+
+
+The cards were shown and the Fox collected the stakes. Slowly, he dealt a new hand. 
+
+The man who had once been chamberlain picked up his cards, singly. "Sorry, captain. I 
+checked the alarm system, but it was routine. I know nothing about it." 
+
+"I expected that, but your mind carries an eidetic memory of the controls if it can be probed 
+deeply enough - with a psychic probe." 
+
+The chamberlain's ruddy face paled suddenly and sagged. The cards in his hand crumpled 
+under sudden fist-pressure, "A psychic probe?" 
+
+"You needn't worry," said the captain, sharply. "I know how to use one. It will not harm you past 
+a few days' weakness. And if it did, it is the chance you take and the price you pay. There are 
+some among us, no doubt, who from the controls of the alarm could determine the wavelength 
+combinations. There are some among us who could manufacture a small bomb under 
+time-control and I myself will carry it to the Mule." 
+
+The men gathered over the table. 
+
+The captain announced, "On a given evening, a riot will start in Terminus City in the 
+neighborhood of the palace. No real fighting. Disturbance - then flight. As long as the palace 
+guard is attracted ... or, at the very least, distracted-" 
+
+From that day for a month the preparations went on, and Captain Flan Pritcher of the National 
+Fleet having become conspirator descended further in the social scale and became an 
+"assassin." 
+
+Captain Pritcher, assassin, was in the palace itself, and found himself grimly pleased with his 
+psychology. A thorough alarm system outside meant few guards within. In this case, it meant 
+none at all. 
+
+The floor plan was clear in his mind. Fie was a blob moving noiselessly up the well-carpeted 
+ramp. At its head, he flattened against the wall and waited. 
+
+The small closed door of a private room was before him. Behind that door must be the mutant 
+who had beaten the unbeatable. Fie was early - the bomb had ten minutes of life in it. 
+
+Five of these passed, and still in all the world there was no sound. The Mule had five minutes to 
+live - So had Captain Pritcher- 
+
+He stepped forward on sudden impulse. The plot could no longer fail. When the bomb went, the 
+palace would go with it - all the palace. A door between - ten yards between - was nothing. 
+
+But he wanted to see the Mule as they died together. 
+
+In a last, insolent gesture, he thundered upon the door. 
+
+And it opened and let out the blinding light. 
+
+Captain Pritcher staggered, then caught himself. The solemn man, standing in the center of the 
+small room before a suspended fish bowl, looked up mildly. 
+
+FHis uniform was a somber black, and as he tapped the bowl in an absent gesture, it bobbed 
+
+
+
+quickly and the feather-finned, orange and vermilion fish within darted wildly. 
+
+He said, "Come in, captain!" 
+
+To the captain's quivering tongue the little metal globe beneath was swelling ominously - a 
+physical impossibility, the captain knew. But it was in its last minute of life. 
+
+The uniformed man said, "You had better spit out the foolish pellet and free yourself for speech. 
+It won't blast." 
+
+The minute passed and with a slow, sodden motion the captain bent his head and dropped the 
+silvery globe into his palm. With a furious force it was flung against the wall. It rebounded with a 
+tiny, sharp clangor, gleaming harmlessly as it flew. 
+
+The uniformed man shrugged. "So much for that, then. It would have done you no good in any 
+case, captain. I am not the Mule. You will have to be satisfied with his viceroy." 
+
+"How did you know?" muttered the captain, thickly. 
+
+"Blame it on an efficient counter-espionage system. I can name every member of your little 
+gang, every step of their planning-" 
+
+"And you let it go this far?" 
+
+"Why not? It has been one of my great purposes here to find you and some others. Particularly 
+you. I might have had you some months ago, while you were still a worker at the Newton 
+Bearings Works, but this is much better. If you hadn't suggested the main outlines of the plot 
+yourself, one of my own men would have advanced something of much the same sort for you. 
+The result is quite dramatic, and rather grimly humorous." 
+
+The captain's eyes were hard. "I find it so, too. Is it all over now?" 
+
+"Just begun. Come, captain, sit down. Let us leave heroics for the fools who are impressed by 
+it. Captain, you are a capable man. According to the information I have, you were the first on 
+the Foundation to recognize the power of the Mule. Since then you have interested yourself, 
+rather daringly, in the Mule's early life. You have been one of those who carried off his clown, 
+who, incidentally, has not yet been found, and for which there will yet be full payment. Naturally, 
+your ability is recognized and the Mule is not of those who fear the ability of his enemies as 
+long as he can convert it into the ability of a new friend." 
+
+"Is that what you're hedging up to? Oh, no!" 
+
+"Oh, yes! It was the purpose of tonight's comedy. You are an intelligent man, yet your little 
+conspiracies against die Mule fail humorously. You can scarcely dignify it with the name of 
+conspiracy. Is it part of your military training to waste ships in hopeless actions?" 
+
+"One must first admit them to be hopeless." 
+
+"One will," the viceroy assured him, gently. "The Mule has conquered the Foundation, It is 
+rapidly being turned into an arsenal for accomplishment of his greater aims." 
+
+"What greater aims?" 
+
+
+
+"The conquest of the entire Galaxy. The reunion of all the tom worlds into a new Empire. The 
+fulfillment, you dull-witted patriot, of your own Seldon's dream seven hundred years before he 
+hoped to see it. And in the fulfillment, you can help us." 
+
+"I can, undoubtedly. But I won't, undoubtedly." 
+
+"I understand," reasoned the viceroy, "that only three of the Independent Trading Worlds yet 
+resist. They will not last much longer. It will be the last of all Foundation forces. You still hold 
+out." 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"Yet you won't. A voluntary recruit is the, most efficient. But the other kind will do. 
+
+Unfortunately, the Mule is absent. He leads the fight, as always, against the resisting Traders. 
+But he is in continual contact with us. You will not have to wait long." 
+
+"For what?" 
+
+"For your conversion. 
+
+"The Mule," said the captain, frigidly, "will find that beyond his ability." 
+
+"But he won't. I was not beyond it. You don't recognize me? Come, you were on Kalgan, so you 
+have seen me. I wore a monocle, a fur-lined scarlet robe, a high-crowned hat-" 
+
+The captain stiffened in dismay. "You were the warlord of Kalgan." 
+
+"Yes. And now I am the loyal viceroy of the Mule. You see, he is persuasive." 
+
+
+21. INTERLUDE IN SPACE 
+
+The blockade was run successfully. In the vast volume of space, not all the navies ever in 
+existence could keep their watch in tight proximity. Given a single ship, a skillful pilot, and a 
+moderate degree of luck, and there are holes and to spare. 
+
+With cold-eyed calm, Toran drove a protesting vessel from the vicinity of one star to that of 
+another. If the neighborhood of great mass made an interstellar jump erratic and difficult, it also 
+made the enemy detection devices useless or nearly so. 
+
+And once the girdle of ships had been passed the inner sphere of dead space, through whose 
+blockaded sub-ether no message could be driven, was passed as well. For the first time in over 
+three months Toran felt unisolated. 
+
+A week passed before the enemy news programs dealt with anything more than the dull, 
+self-laudatory details of growing control over the Foundation. It was a week in which Toran's 
+armored trading ship fled inward from the Periphery in hasty jumps. 
+
+Ebling Mis called out to the pilot room and Toran rose blink-eyed from his charts. 
+
+"What's the matter?" Toran stepped down into the small central chamber which Bayta had 
+
+
+
+inevitably devised into a living room. 
+
+Mis shook his head, "Bescuppered if I know. The Mule's newsmen are announcing a special 
+bulletin. Thought you might want to get in on it." 
+
+"Might as well. Where's Bayta?" 
+
+"Setting the table in the diner and picking out a menuor some such frippery." 
+
+Toran sat down upon the cot that served as Magnifico's bed, and waited. The propaganda 
+routine of the Mule's "special bulletins" were monotonously similar. First the martial music, and 
+then the buttery slickness of the announcer. The minor news items would come, following one 
+another in patient lock step. Then the pause. Then the trumpets and the rising excitement and 
+the climax. 
+
+Toran endured it. Mis muttered to himself. 
+
+The newscaster spilled out, in conventional war-correspondent phraseology, the unctuous 
+words that translated into sound the molten metal and blasted flesh of a battle in space. 
+
+"Rapid cruiser squadrons under Lieutenant General Sammin hit back hard today at the task 
+force striking out from Iss-" The carefully expressionless face of the speaker upon the screen 
+faded into the blackness of a space cut through by the quick swaths of ships reeling across 
+emptiness in deadly battle. The voice continued through the soundless thunder 
+
+"The most striking action of the battle was the subsidiary combat of the heavy cruiser Cluster 
+against three enemy ships of the 'Nova' class-" 
+
+The screen's view veered and closed in. A great ship sparked and one of the frantic attackers 
+glowed angrily, twisted out of focus, swung back and rammed. The Cluster bowed wildly and 
+survived the glancing blow that drove the attacker off in twisting reflection. 
+
+The newsman's smooth unimpassioned delivery continued to the last blow and the last hulk. 
+
+Then a pause, and a large similar voice-and-picture of the fight off Mnemon, to which the 
+novelty was added of a lengthy description of a hit-and-run landing - the picture of a blasted 
+city - huddled and weary prisoners - and off again. 
+
+Mnemon had not long to live. 
+
+The pause again - and this time the raucous sound of the expected brasses. The screen faded 
+into the long, impressively soldier-lined corridor up which the government spokesman in 
+councilor's uniform strode quickly. 
+
+The silence was oppressive. 
+
+The voice that came at last was solemn, slow and hard: "By order of our sovereign, it is 
+announced that the planet, Haven, hitherto in warlike opposition to his will, has submitted to the 
+acceptance of defeat. At this moment, the forces of our sovereign are occupying the planet. 
+Opposition was scattered, unco-ordinated, and speedily crushed." 
+
+
+
+The scene faded out, the original newsman returned to state importantly that other 
+developments would be transmitted as they occurred. 
+
+Then there was dance music, and Ebling Mis threw the shield that cut the power. 
+
+Toran rose and walked unsteadily away, without a word. The psychologist made no move to 
+stop him. 
+
+When Bayta stepped out of the kitchen, Mis motioned silence. 
+
+He said, "They've taken Haven." 
+
+And Bayta said, "Already?" Her eyes were round, and sick with disbelief. 
+
+"Without a fight. Without an unprin-" He stopped and swallowed. "You'd better leave Toran 
+alone. It's not pleasant for him. Suppose we eat without him this once." 
+
+Bayta looked once toward the pilot room, then turned hopelessly. "Very well!" 
+
+Magnifico sat unnoticed at the table. He neither spoke nor ate but stared ahead with a 
+concentrated fear that seemed to drain all the vitality out of his thread of a body. 
+
+Ebling Mis pushed absently at his iced-fruit dessert and said, harshly, "Two Trading worlds 
+fight. They fight, and bleed, and die and don't surrender. Only at Haven - Just as at the 
+Foundation-" 
+
+"But why? Why?" 
+
+The psychologist shook his head. "It's of a piece with all the problem. Every queer facet is a 
+hint at the nature of the Mule. First, the problem of how he could conquer the Foundation, with 
+little blood, and at a single blow essentially - while the Independent Trading Worlds held out. 
+The blanket on nuclear reactions was a puny weapon - we've discussed that back and forth till 
+I'm sick of it - and it did not work on any but the Foundation. 
+
+"Randu suggested," and Ebling's grizzly eyebrows pulled together, "it might have been a 
+radiant Will-Depresser. It's what might have done the work on Haven. But then why wasn't it 
+used on Mnemon and Iss - which even now fight with such demonic intensity that it is taking 
+half the Foundation fleet in addition to the Mule's forces to beat them down. Yes, I recognized 
+Foundation ships in the attack." 
+
+Bayta whispered, "The Foundation, then Haven. Disaster seems to follow us, without touching. 
+We always seem to get out by a hair. Will it last forever?" 
+
+Ebling Mis was not listening. To himself, he was making a point. "But there's another problem - 
+another problem. Bayta, you remember the news item that the Mule's clown was not found on 
+Terminus; that it was suspected he had fled to Haven, or been carried there by his original 
+kidnappers. There is an importance attached to him, Bayta, that doesn't fade, and we have not 
+located it yet. Magnifico must know something that is fatal to the Mule. I'm sure of it. " 
+
+Magnifico, white and stuttering, protested, "Sire ... noble lord ... indeed, I swear it is past my 
+poor reckoning to penetrate your wants. I have told what I know to the utter limits, and with your 
+
+
+
+probe, you have drawn out of my meager wit that which I knew, but knew not that I knew." 
+
+"I know ... I know. It is something small. A hint so small that neither you nor I recognize it for 
+what it is. Yet I must find it - for Mnemon and Iss will go soon, and when they do, we are the 
+last remnants, the last droplets of the independent Foundation." 
+
+The stars begin to cluster closely when the core of the Galaxy is penetrated. Gravitational fields 
+begin to overlap at intensities sufficient to introduce perturbations in an interstellar jump that 
+can not be overlooked. 
+
+Toran became aware of that when a jump landed their ship in the full glare of a red giant which 
+clutched viciously, and whose grip was loosed, then wrenched apart, only after twelve 
+sleepless, soul-battering hours. 
+
+With charts limited in scope, and an experience not at all fully developed, either operationally or 
+mathematically, Toran resigned himself to days of careful plotting between jumps. 
+
+It became a community project of a sort. Ebling Mis checked Toran's mathematics and Bayta 
+tested possible routes, by the various generalized methods, for the presence of real solutions. 
+Even Magnifico was put to work on the calculating machine for routine computations, a type of 
+work, which, once explained, was a source of great amusement to him and at which he was 
+surprisingly proficient. 
+
+So at the end of a month, or nearly, Bayta was able to survey the red line that wormed its way 
+through the ship's trimensional model of the Galactic Lens halfway to its center, and say with 
+Satiric relish, "You know what it looks like. It looks like a ten-foot earth-worm with a terrific case 
+of indigestion. Eventually, you'll land us back in Haven." 
+
+"I will," growled Toran, with a fierce rustle of his chart, "if you don't shut up." 
+
+"And at that," continued Bayta, "there is probably a route fight through, straight as a meridian of 
+longitude." 
+
+"Yeah? Well, in the first place, dimwit, it probably took five hundred ships five hundred years to 
+work out that route by hit-and-miss, and my lousy half-credit charts don't give it. Besides, 
+maybe those straight routes are a good thing to avoid. They're probably choked up with ships. 
+And besides-" 
+
+"Oh, for Galaxy's sake, stop driveling and slavering so much righteous indignation." Her hands 
+were in his hair. 
+
+He yowled, "Ouch! Let go!" seized her wrists and whipped downward, whereupon Toran, Bayta, 
+and chair formed a tangled threesome on the floor. It degenerated into a panting wrestling 
+match, composed mostly of choking laughter and various foul blows. 
+
+Toran broke loose at Magnifico's breathless entrance. 
+
+"What is it?" 
+
+The lines of anxiety puckered the clown's face and tightened the skin whitely over the 
+enormous bridge of his nose. "The instruments are behaving queerly, sir. I have not, in the 
+
+
+
+knowledge of my ignorance, touched anything-" 
+
+In two seconds, Toran was in the pilot room. He said quietly to Magnifico, "Wake up Ebling Mis. 
+Have him come down here." 
+
+He said to Bayta, who was trying to get a basic order back to her hair by use of her fingers, 
+"We've been detected, Bay." 
+
+"Detected?" And Bayta's arms dropped. "By whom?" 
+
+"Galaxy knows," muttered Toran, "but I imagine by someone with blasters already ranged and 
+trained." 
+
+He sat down and in a low voice was already sending into the sub-ether the ship's identification 
+code. 
+
+And when Ebling Mis entered, bathrobed and blear-eyed, Toran said with a desperate calm, "It 
+seems we're inside the borders of a local Inner Kingdom which is called the Autarchy of Filia." 
+
+"Never heard of it," said Mis, abruptly. 
+
+"Well, neither did I," replied Toran, "but we're being stopped by a Filian ship just the same, and 
+I don't know what it will involve." 
+
+The captain-inspector of the Filian ship crowded aboard with six armed men following him. He 
+was short, thin-haired, thin-lipped, and dry-skinned. He coughed a sharp cough as he sat down 
+and threw open the folio under his arm to a blank page. 
+
+"Your passports and ship's clearance, please." 
+
+"We have none," said Toran. 
+
+"None, hey?" he snatched up a microphone suspended from his belt and spoke into it quickly, 
+"Three men and one woman. Papers not in order." He made an accompanying notation in the 
+folio. 
+
+He said, "Where are you from?" 
+
+"Siwenna," said Toran warily. 
+
+"Where is that?" 
+
+"Thirty thousand parsecs, eighty degrees west Trantor, forty degrees-" 
+
+"Never mind, never mind!" Toran could see that his inquisitor had written down: "Point of origin 
+- Periphery." 
+
+The Filian continued, "Where are you going?" 
+
+Toran said, "Trantor sector." 
+
+"Purpose?" 
+
+
+
+"Pleasure trip." 
+
+"Carrying any cargo?" 
+
+"No." 
+
+"Hm-m-m. We'll check on that." He nodded and two men jumped to activity. Toran made no 
+move to interfere. 
+
+"What brings you into Filian territory?" The Filian's eyes gleamed unamiably. 
+
+"We didn't know we were. I lack a proper chart." 
+
+"You will be required to pay a hundred credits for that lack - and, of course, the usual fees 
+required for tariff duties, et cetera." 
+
+He spoke again into the microphone - but listened more than he spoke. Then, to Toran, "Know 
+anything about nuclear technology?" 
+
+"A little," replied Toran, guardedly. 
+
+"Yes?" The Filian closed his folio, and added, "The men of the Periphery have a knowledgeable 
+reputation that way. Put on a suit and come with me." 
+
+Bayta stepped forward, "What are you going to do with him?" 
+
+Toran put her aside gently, and asked coldly, "Where do you want me to come?" 
+
+"Our power plant needs minor adjustments. He'll come with you." His pointing finger aimed 
+directly at Magnifico, whose brown eyes opened wide in a blubbery dismay. 
+
+"What's he got to do with it?" demanded Toran fiercely. 
+
+The official looked up coldly. "I am informed of pirate activities in this vicinity. A description of 
+one of the known thugs tallies roughly. It is a purely routine matter of identification. " 
+
+Toran hesitated, but six men and six blasters are eloquent arguments. He reached into the 
+cupboard for the suits. 
+
+An hour later, he rose upright in the bowels of the Filian ship and raged, "There's not a thing 
+wrong with the motors that I can see. The busbars are true, the L-tubes are feeding properly 
+and the reaction analysis checks. Who's in charge here?" 
+
+The head engineer said quietly, "I am." 
+
+"Well, get me out of here-" 
+
+He was led to the officers' level and the small anteroom held only an indifferent ensign. 
+
+"Where's the man who came with me?" 
+
+"Please wait," said the ensign. 
+
+It was fifteen minutes later that Magnifico was brought in. 
+
+
+
+"What did they do to you?" asked Toran quickly. 
+
+"Nothing. Nothing at all." Magnifico's head shook a slow negative. 
+
+It took two hundred and fifty credits to fulfill the demands of Filia - fifty credits of it for instant 
+release - and they were in free space again. 
+
+Bayta said with a forced laugh, "Don't we rate an escort? Don't we get the usual figurative boot 
+over the border?" 
+
+And Toran replied, grimly, "That was no Filian ship - and we're not leaving for a while. Come in 
+here." 
+
+They gathered about him. 
+
+Fie said, whitely, "That was a Foundation ship, and those were the Mule's men aboard." 
+
+Ebling bent to pick up the cigar he had dropped. Fie said, "Flere? We're fifteen thousand 
+parsecs from the Foundation. " 
+
+"And we're here. What's to prevent them from making the same trip. Galaxy, Ebling, don't you 
+think I can tell ships apart? I saw their engines, and that's enough for me. I tell you it was a 
+Foundation engine in a Foundation ship." 
+
+"And how did they get here?" asked Bayta, logically. "What are the chances of a random 
+meeting of two given ships in space?" 
+
+"What's that to do with it?" demanded Toran, hotly. "It would only show we've been followed." 
+"Followed?" hooted Bayta. "Through hyperspace?" 
+
+Ebling Mis interposed wearily, "That can be done - given a good ship and a great pilot. But the 
+possibility doesn't impress me." 
+
+"I haven't been masking my trail," insisted Toran. "I've been building up take-off speed on the 
+straight. A blind man could have calculated our route." 
+
+"The blazes he could," cried Bayta. "With the cockeyed jumps you are making, observing our 
+initial direction didn't mean a thing. We came out of the jump wrong-end forwards more than 
+once." 
+
+"We're wasting time," blazed Toran, with gritted teeth. "It's a Foundation ship under the Mule. 
+It's stopped us. It's searched us. It's had Magnifico - alone - with me as hostage to keep the 
+rest of you quiet, in case you suspected. And we're going to bum it out of space right now." 
+
+"Flold on now," and Ebling Mis clutched at him. "Are you going to destroy us for one ship you 
+think is an enemy? Think, man, would those scuppers chase us over an impossible route half 
+through the bestinkered Galaxy, look us over, and then let us go?' 
+
+"They're still interested in where we're going." 
+
+"Then why stop us and put us on our guard? You can't have it both ways, you know." 
+
+
+
+"I'll have it my way. Let go of me, Ebling, or I'll knock you down." 
+
+Magnifico leaned forward from his balanced perch on his favorite chair back. His long nostrils 
+flared with excitement. "I crave your pardon for my interruption, but my poor mind is of a 
+sudden plagued with a queer thought." 
+
+Bayta anticipated Toran's gesture of annoyance, and added her grip to Ebling's. "Go ahead and 
+speak, Magnifico. We will all listen faithfully." 
+
+Magnifico said, "In my stay in their ship what addled wits I have were bemazed and bemused 
+by a chattering fear that befell men. Of a truth I have a lack of memory of most that happened. 
+Many men staring at me, and talk I did not understand. But towards the last - as though a 
+beam of sunlight had dashed through a cloud rift - there was a face I knew. A glimpse, the 
+merest glimmer - and yet it glows in my memory ever stronger and brighter." 
+
+Toran said, "Who was it?" 
+
+"That captain who was with us so long a time ago, when first you saved me from slavery." 
+
+It had obviously been Magnifico's intention to create a sensation, and the delighted smile that 
+curled broadly in the shadow of his proboscis, attested to his realization of the intention's 
+success. 
+
+"Captain ... Han ... Pritcher?" demanded Mis, sternly. "You're sure of that? Certain sure now?" 
+
+"Sir, I swear," and he laid a bone-thin hand upon his narrow chest. "I would uphold the truth of it 
+before the Mule and swear it in his teeth, though all his power were behind him to deny it." 
+
+Bayta said in pure wonder, "Then what's it all about?" The clown faced her eagerly, "My lady, I 
+have a theory. It came upon me, ready made, as though the Galactic Spirit had gently laid it in 
+my mind." He actually raised his voice above Toran's interrupting objection. 
+
+"My lady," he addressed himself exclusively to Bayta, "if this captain had, like us, escaped with 
+a ship; if he, like us, were on a trip for a purpose of his own devising; if he blundered upon us - 
+he would suspect us of following and waylaying him, as we suspect him of the like. What 
+wonder he played this comedy to enter our ship?" 
+
+"Why would he want us in his ship, then?" demanded Toran. "That doesn't fit." 
+
+"Why, yes, it does," clamored the clown, with a flowing inspiration. "He sent an underling who 
+knew us not, but who described us into his microphone. The listening captain would be struck 
+at my own poor likeness - for, of a truth there are not many in this great Galaxy who bear a 
+resemblance to my scantiness. I was the proof of the identity of the rest of you." 
+
+"And so he leaves us?" 
+
+"What do we know of his mission, and the secrecy thereof? lie has spied us out for not an 
+enemy and having it done so, must he needs think it wise to risk his plan by widening the 
+knowledge thereof?" 
+
+Bayta said slowly, "Don't be stubborn, Torie. It does explain things." 
+
+
+
+"It could be," agreed Mis. 
+
+Toran seemed helpless in the face of united resistance. Something in the clown's fluent 
+explanations bothered him. Something was wrong. Yet he was bewildered and, in spite of 
+himself, his anger ebbed. 
+
+"For a while," he whispered, "I thought we might have had one of the Mule's ships." 
+
+And his eyes were dark with the pain of Haven's loss. 
+
+The others understood. 
+
+
+22. DEATH ON NEOTRANTOR 
+
+NEOTRANTOR The small planet of Dellcass, renamed after the Great Sack, was for nearly a 
+century, the seat of the last dynasty of the First Empire. It was a shadow world and a shadow 
+Empire and Its existence Is only of legalistic importance. Under the first of the Neotrantorlan 
+dynasty.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Neotrantor was the name! New Trantor! And when you have said the name you have 
+exhausted at a stroke all the resemblances of the new Trantor to the great original. Two 
+parsecs away, the sun of Old Trantor still shone and the Galaxy's Imperial Capital of the 
+previous century still cut through space in the silent and eternal repetition of its orbit. 
+
+Men even inhabited Old Trantor. Not many - a hundred million, perhaps, where fifty years 
+before, forty billions had swarmed. The huge, metal world was in jagged splinters. The towering 
+thrusts of the multi-towers from the single world-girdling base were torn and empty - still 
+bearing the original blastholes and firegut - shards of the Great Sack of forty years earlier. 
+
+It was strange that a world which had been the center of a Galaxy for two thousand years - that 
+had ruled limitless space and been home to legislators and rulers whose whims spanned the 
+parsecs - could die in a month. It was strange that a world which had been untouched through 
+the vast conquering sweeps and retreats of a millennia, and equally untouched by the civil wars 
+and palace revolutions of other millennia - should lie dead at last. It was strange that the Glory 
+of the Galaxy should be a rotting corpse. 
+
+And pathetic! 
+
+For centuries would yet pass before the mighty works of fifty generations of humans would 
+decay past use. Only the declining powers of men, themselves, rendered them useless now. 
+
+The millions left after the billions had died tore up the gleaming metal base of the planet and 
+exposed soil that had not felt the touch of sun in a thousand years. 
+
+Surrounded by the mechanical perfections of human efforts, encircled by the industrial marvels 
+of mankind freed of the tyranny of environment - they returned to the land. In the huge traffic 
+
+
+
+clearings, wheat and corn grew. In the shadow of the towers, sheep grazed. 
+
+But Neotrantor existed - an obscure village of a planet drowned in the shadow of mighty 
+Trantor, until a heart-throttled royal family, racing before the fire and flame of the Great Sack 
+sped to it as its last refuge - and held out there, barely, until the roaring wave of rebellion 
+subsided. There it ruled in ghostly splendor over a cadaverous remnant of Imperium. 
+
+Twenty agricultural worlds were a Galactic Empire! 
+
+Dagobert IX, ruler of twenty worlds of refractory squires and sullen peasants, was Emperor of 
+the Galaxy, Lord of the Universe. 
+
+Dagobert IX had been twenty-five on the bloody day he arrived with his father upon Neotrantor. 
+His eyes and mind were still alive with the glory and the power of the Empire that was. But his 
+son, who might one day be Dagobert X, was born on Neotrantor. 
+
+Twenty worlds were all he knew. 
+
+Jord Commason's open air car was the finest vehicle of its type on all Neotrantor - and, after 
+all, justly so. It did not end with the fact that Commason was the largest landowner on 
+Neotrantor. It began there. For in earlier days he had been the companion and evil genius of a 
+young crown prince, restive in the dominating grip of a middle-aged emperor. And now he was 
+the companion and still the evil genius of a middle-aged crown prince who hated and 
+dominated an old emperor. 
+
+So Jord Commason, in his air car, which in mother-of-pearl finish and gold-and-lumetron 
+ornamentation needed no coat of arms as owner's identification, surveyed the lands that were 
+his, and the miles of rolling wheat that were his, and the huge threshers and harvesters that 
+were his, and the tenant-farmers and machine-tenders that were his - and considered his 
+problems cautiously. 
+
+Beside him, his bent and withered chauffeur guided the ship gently through the upper winds 
+and smiled. 
+
+Jord Commason spoke to the wind, the air, and the sky, "You remember what I told you, 
+Inchney?" 
+
+Inchney's thin gray hair wisped lightly in the wind. His gap-toothed smile widened in its 
+thin-lipped fashion and the vertical wrinkles of his cheeks deepened as though he were keeping 
+an eternal secret from himself. The whisper of his voice whistled between his teeth. 
+
+"I remember, sire, and I have thought." 
+
+"And what have you thought, Inchney?" There was an impatience about the question. 
+
+Inchney remembered that he had been young and handsome, and a lord on Old Trantor. 
+Inchney remembered that he was a disfigured ancient on Neotrantor, who lived by grace of 
+Squire Jord Commason, and paid for the grace by lending his subtlety on request. He sighed 
+very softly. 
+
+He whispered again, "Visitors from the Foundation, sire, are a convenient thing to have. 
+
+
+
+Especially, sire, when they come with but a single ship, and but a single fighting man. How 
+welcome they might be." 
+
+"Welcome?" said Commason, gloomily. "Perhaps so. But those men are magicians and may be 
+powerful." 
+
+"Pugh," muttered Inchney, "the mistiness of distance hides the truth. The Foundation is but a 
+world. Its citizens are but men. If you blast them, they die." 
+
+Inchney held the ship on its course - A river was a winding sparkle below. He whispered, "And 
+is there not a man they speak of now who stirs the worlds of the Periphery?" 
+
+Commason was suddenly suspicious. "What do you know of this?" 
+
+There was no smile on his chauffeur's face. "Nothing, sire. It was but an idle question." 
+
+The squire's hesitation was short. He said, with brutal directness, "Nothing you ask is idle, and 
+your method of acquiring knowledge will have your scrawny neck in a vise yet. But - I have it! 
+This man is called the Mule, and a subject of his had been here some months ago on a ... 
+matter of business. I await another ... now ... for its conclusion." 
+
+"And these newcomers? They are not the ones you want, perhaps?" 
+
+"They lack the identification they should have." 
+
+"It has been reported that the Foundation has been captured-" 
+
+"I did not tell you that." 
+
+"It has been so reported," continued Inchney, coolly, "and if that is correct, then these may be 
+refugees from the destruction, and may be held for the Mule's man out of honest friendship." 
+
+"Yes?" Commason was uncertain. 
+
+"And, sire, since it is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim, it would be 
+but a measure of honest self-defense. For there are such things as psychic probes, and here 
+we have four Foundation brains. There is much about the Foundation it would be useful to 
+know, much even about the Mule. And then the Mule's friendship would be a trifle the less 
+overpowering." 
+
+Commason, in the quiet of the upper air, returned with a shiver to his first thought. "But if the 
+Foundation has not fallen. If the reports are lies. It is said that it has been foretold it can not 
+fall." 
+
+"We are past the age of soothsayers, sire." 
+
+"And yet if it did not fall, Inchney. Think! If it did not fall. The Mule made me promises, indeed-" 
+He had gone too far, and backtracked. "That is, he made boasts. But boasts are wind and 
+deeds are hard." 
+
+
+Inchney laughed noiselessly. "Deeds are hard indeed, until begun. One could scarcely find a 
+further fear than a Galaxy-end Foundation." 
+
+
+
+"There is still the prince," murmured Commason, almost to himself. 
+
+"He deals with the Mule also, then, sire?" 
+
+Commason could not quite choke down the complacent shift of features. "Not entirely. Not as / 
+do. But he grows wilder, more uncontrollable. A demon is upon him. If I seize these people and 
+he takes them away for his own use - for he does not lack a certain shrewdness - I am not yet 
+ready to quarrel with him." He frowned and his heavy cheeks bent downwards with dislike. 
+
+"I saw those strangers for a few moments yesterday," said the gray chauffeur, irrelevantly, "and 
+it is a strange woman, that dark one. she walks with the freedom of a man and she is of a 
+startling paleness against the dark luster of hair." There was almost a warmth in the husky 
+whisper of the withered voice, so that Commason turned toward him in sudden surprise. 
+
+Inchney continued, "The prince, I think, would not find his shrewdness proof against a 
+reasonable compromise. You could have the rest, if you left him the girl-" 
+
+A light broke upon Commason, "A thought! Indeed a thought! Inchney, turn back! And Inchney, 
+if all turns well, we will discuss further this matter of your freedom." 
+
+It was with an almost superstitious sense of symbolism that Commason found a Personal 
+Capsule waiting for him in his private study when he returned. It had arrived by a wavelength 
+known to few. Commason smiled a fat smile. The Mule's man was coming and the Foundation 
+had indeed fallen. 
+
+Bayta's misty visions, when she had them, of an Imperial palace, did not jibe with the reality, 
+and inside her, there was a vague sense of disappointment. The room was small, almost plain, 
+almost ordinary. The palace did not even match the mayor's residence back at the Foundation 
+- and Dagobert IX - 
+
+Bayta had definite ideas of what an emperor ought to look like. He ought not look like 
+somebody's benevolent grandfather. He ought not be thin and white and faded - or serving 
+cups of tea with his own hand in an expressed anxiety for the comfort of his visitors. 
+
+But so it was. 
+
+Dagobert IX chuckled as he poured tea into her stiffly outheld cup. 
+
+"This is a great pleasure for me, my dear. It is a moment away from ceremony and courtiers. I 
+have not had the opportunity for welcoming visitors from my outer provinces for a time now. My 
+son takes care of these details now that I'm older. You haven't met my son? A fine boy. 
+Headstrong, perhaps. But then he's young. Do you care for a flavor capsule? No?" 
+
+Toran attempted an interruption, "Your imperial majesty-" 
+
+"Yes?" 
+
+"Your imperial majesty, it has not been our intention to intrude upon you-" 
+
+"Nonsense, there is no intrusion. Tonight there will be the official reception, but until then, we 
+are free. Let's see, where did you say you were from? It seems a long time since we had an 
+
+
+
+official reception. You said you were from the Province of Anacreon?" 
+
+"From the Foundation, your imperial majesty!" 
+
+"Yes, the Foundation. I remember now. I had it located. It is in the Province of Anacreon. I have 
+never been there. My doctor forbids extensive traveling. I don't recall any recent reports from 
+my viceroy at Anacreon. Flow are conditions there?" he concluded anxiously. 
+
+"Sire," mumbled Toran, "I bring no complaints." 
+
+"That is gratifying. I will commend my viceroy." 
+
+Toran looked helplessly at Ebling Mis, whose brusque voice rose. "Sire, we have been told that 
+it will require your permission for us to visit the Imperial University Library on Trantor." 
+
+"Trantor?" questioned the emperor, mildly, "Trantor?" 
+
+Then a look of puzzled pain crossed his thin face. "Trantor?" he whispered. "I remember now. I 
+am making plans now to return there with a flood of ships at my back. You shall come with me. 
+Together we will destroy the rebel, Gilmer. Together we shall restore the empire!" 
+
+His bent back had straightened. His voice had strengthened. For a moment his eyes were hard. 
+Then, he blinked and said softly, "But Gilmer is dead. I seem to remember - Yes. Yes! Gilmer 
+is dead! Trantor is dead - For a moment, it seemed - Where was it you said you came from?" 
+
+Magnifico whispered to Bayta, "Is this really an emperor? For somehow I thought emperors 
+were greater and wiser than ordinary men." 
+
+Bayta motioned him quiet. She said, "If your imperial majesty would but sign an order permitting 
+us to go to Trantor, it would avail greatly the common cause." 
+
+"To Trantor?" The emperor was blank and uncomprehending. 
+
+"Sire, the Viceroy of Anacreon, in whose name we speak, sends word that Gilmer is yet alive-" 
+"Alive! Alive!" thundered Dagobert. "Where? It will be war!" 
+
+"Your imperial majesty, it must not yet be known. His whereabouts are uncertain. The viceroy 
+sends us to acquaint you of the fact, and it is only on Trantor that we may find his hiding place. 
+Once discovered-" 
+
+"Yes, yes - Fie must be found-" The old emperor doddered to the wall and touched the little 
+photocell with a trembling finger. Fie muttered, after an ineffectual pause, "My servants do not 
+come. I can not wait for them." 
+
+Fie was scribbling on a blank sheet, and ended with a flourished "D." Fie said, "Gilmer will yet 
+learn the power of his emperor. Where was it you came from? Anacreon? What are the 
+conditions there? Is the name of the emperor powerful?" 
+
+Bayta took the paper from his loose fingers, "Your imperial majesty is beloved by the people. 
+Your love for them is widely known." 
+
+
+
+"I shall have to visit my good people of Anacreon, but my doctor says ... I don't remember what 
+he says, but-" He looked up, his old gray eyes sharp, "Were you saying something of Gilmer?" 
+
+"No, your imperial majesty." 
+
+"He shall not advance further. Go back and tell your people that. Trantor shall hold! My father 
+leads the fleet now, and the rebel vermin Gilmer shall freeze in space with his regicidal rabble." 
+
+He staggered into a seat and his eyes were blank once more. "What was I saying?" 
+
+Toran rose and bowed low, "Your imperial majesty has been kind to us, but the time allotted us 
+for an audience is over. " 
+
+For a moment, Dagobert IX looked like an emperor indeed as he rose and stood stiff-backed 
+while, one by one, his visitors retreated backward through the door 
+
+-to where twenty armed men intervened and locked a circle about them. 
+
+A hand-weapon flashed- 
+
+To Bayta, consciousness returned sluggishly, but without the "Where am I?" sensation. She 
+remembered clearly the odd old man who called himself emperor, and the other men who 
+waited outside. The arthritic tingle in her finger joints meant a stun pistol. 
+
+She kept her eyes closed, and listened with painful attention to the voices. 
+
+There were two of them. One was slow and cautious, with a slyness beneath the surface 
+obsequity. The other was hoarse and thick, almost sodden, and blurted out in viscous spurts. 
+Bayta liked neither. 
+
+The thick voice was predominant. 
+
+Bayta caught the last words, "He will live forever, that old madman. It wearies me. It annoys 
+me. Commason, I will have it. I grow older, too." 
+
+"Your highness, let us first see of what use these people are. It may be we shall have sources 
+of strength other than your father still provides." 
+
+The thick voice was lost in a bubbling whisper. Bayta caught only the phrase, " -the girl-" but 
+the other, fawning voice was a nasty, low, running chuckle followed by a comradely, 
+near-patronizing, "Dagobert, you do not age. They lie who say you are not a youth of twenty." 
+
+They laughed together, and Bayta's blood was an icy trickle. Dagobert - your highness - The 
+old emperor had spoken of a headstrong son, and the implication of the whispers now beat 
+dully upon her. But such things didn't happen to people in real life— 
+
+Toran's voice broke upon her in a slow, hard current of cursing. 
+
+She opened her eyes, and Toran's, which were upon her, showed open relief. He said, fiercely, 
+"This banditry will be answered by the emperor. Release us." 
+
+It dawned upon Bayta that her wrists and ankles were fastened to wall and floor by a tight 
+
+
+
+attraction field. 
+
+
+Thick Voice approached Toran. He was paunchy, his lower eyelids puffed darkly, and his hair 
+was thinning out. There was a gay feather in his peaked hat, and the edging of his doublet was 
+embroidered with silvery metal-foam. 
+
+He sneered with a heavy amusement. "The emperor? The poor, mad emperor?" 
+
+"I have his pass. No subject may hinder our freedom." 
+
+"But I am no subject, space-garbage. I am the regent and crown prince and am to be 
+addressed as such. As for my poor silly father, it amuses him to see visitors occasionally. And 
+we humor him. It tickles his mock-imperial fancy. But, of course, it has no other meaning." 
+
+And then he was before Bayta, and she looked up at him contemptuously. He leaned close and 
+his breath was overpoweringly minted. 
+
+He said, "Her eyes suit well, Commason - she is even prettier with them open. I think she'll do. 
+It will be an exotic dish for a jaded taste, eh?" 
+
+There was a futile surge upwards on Toran's part, which the crown prince ignored and Bayta 
+felt the iciness travel outward to the skin. Ebling Mis was still out; head lolling weakly upon his 
+chest, but, with a sensation of surprise, Bayta noted that Magnifico's eyes were open, sharply 
+open, as though awake for many minutes. Those large brown eyes swiveled towards Bayta and 
+stared at her out of a doughy face. 
+
+He whimpered, and nodded with his head towards the crown prince, "That one has my 
+Visi-Sonor." 
+
+The crown prince turned sharply toward the new voice, "This is yours, monster?" He swung the 
+instrument from his shoulder where it had hung, suspended by its green strap, unnoticed by 
+Bayta. 
+
+He fingered it clumsily, tried to sound a chord and got nothing for his pains, "Can you play it, 
+monster?" 
+
+Magnifico nodded once. 
+
+Toran said suddenly, "You've rifled a ship of the Foundation. If the emperor will not avenge, the 
+Foundation will." 
+
+It was the other, Commason, who answered slowly, "What Foundation? Or is the Mule no 
+longer the Mule?" 
+
+There was no answer to that. The prince's grin showed large uneven teeth. The clown's binding 
+field was broken and he was nudged ungently to his feet. The Visi-Sonor was thrust into his 
+hand. 
+
+"Play for us, monster," said the prince. "Play us a serenade of love and beauty for our foreign 
+lady here. Tell her that my father's country prison is no palace, but that I can take her to one 
+where she can swim in rose water - and know what a prince's love is. Sing of a prince's love, 
+
+
+
+monster. 
+
+
+He placed one thick thigh upon a marble table and swung a leg idly, while his fatuous smiling 
+stare swept Bayta into a silent rage. Toran's sinews strained against the field, in painful, 
+perspiring effort. Ebling Mis stirred and moaned. 
+
+Magnifico gasped, "My fingers are of useless stiffness-" 
+
+"Play, monster!" roared the prince. The lights dimmed at a gesture to Commason and in the 
+dimness he crossed his arms and waited. 
+
+Magnifico drew his fingers in rapid, rhythmic jumps from end to end of the multikeyed 
+instrument - and a sharp, gliding rainbow of light jumped across the room. A low, soft tone 
+sounded - throbbing, tearful. It lifted in sad laughter, and underneath it there sounded a dull 
+tolling. 
+
+The darkness seemed to intensify and grow thick. Music reached Bayta through the muffled 
+folds of invisible blankets. Gleaming light reached her from the depths as though a single 
+candle glowed at the bottom of a pit. 
+
+Automatically, her eyes strained. The light brightened, but remained blurred. It moved fuzzily, in 
+confused color, and the music was suddenly brassy, evil - flourishing in high crescendo. The 
+light flickered quickly, in swift motion to the wicked rhythm. Something writhed within the light. 
+Something with poisonous metallic scales writhed and yawned. And the music writhed and 
+yawned with it. 
+
+Bayta struggled with a strange emotion and then caught herself in a mental gasp. Almost, it 
+reminded her of the time in the Time Vault, of those last days on Haven. It was that horrible, 
+cloying, clinging spiderweb of horror and despair. She shrunk beneath it oppressed. 
+
+The music dinned upon her, laughing horribly, and the writhing terror at the wrong end of the 
+telescope in the small circle of light was lost as she turned feverishly away. Her forehead was 
+wet and cold. 
+
+The music died. It must have lasted fifteen minutes, and a vast pleasure at its absence flooded 
+Bayta. Light glared, and Magnifico's face was close to hers, sweaty, wild-eyed, lugubrious. 
+
+"My lady," he gasped, "how fare you?" 
+
+"Well enough," she whispered, "but why did you play like that?" 
+
+She became aware of the others in the room. Toran and Mis were limp and helpless against 
+the wall, but her eyes skimmed over them. There was the prince, lying strangely still at the foot 
+of the table. There was Commason, moaning wildly through an open, drooling mouth. 
+
+Commason flinched, and yelled mindlessly, as Magnifico took a step towards him. 
+
+Magnifico turned, and with a leap, turned the others loose. 
+
+Toran lunged upwards and with eager, taut fists seized the landowner by the neck, "You come 
+with us. We'll want you - to make sure we get to our ship." 
+
+
+
+Two hours later, in the ship's kitchen, Bayta served a walloping homemade pie, and Magnifico 
+celebrated the return to space by attacking it with a magnificent disregard of table manners. 
+
+"Good, Magnifico?" 
+
+"Um-m-m-m!" 
+
+"Magnifico?" 
+
+"Yes, my lady?" 
+
+"What was it you played back there?" 
+
+The clown writhed, "I ... I'd rather not say. I learned it once, and the Visi-Sonor is of an effect 
+upon the nervous system most profound. Surely, it was an evil thing, and not for your sweet 
+innocence, my lady." 
+
+"Oh, now, come, Magnifico. I'm not as innocent as that. Don't flatter so. Did I see anything like 
+what f/7eysaw?" 
+
+"I hope not. I played it for them only. If you saw, it was but the rim of it - from afar." 
+
+"And that was enough. Do you know you knocked the prince out?" 
+
+Magnifico spoke grimly through a large, muffling piece of pie. "I killed h\rr\, my lady." 
+
+"What?" She swallowed, painfully. 
+
+"He was dead when I stopped, or I would have continued. I cared not for Commason. His 
+greatest threat was death or torture. But, my lady, this prince looked upon you wickedly, and-" 
+he choked in a mixture of indignation and embarrassment. 
+
+Bayta felt strange thoughts come and repressed them sternly. "Magnifico, you've got a gallant 
+soul." 
+
+"Oh, my lady." He bent a red nose into his pie, but, somehow did not eat. 
+
+Ebling Mis stared out the port. Trantor was near - its metallic shine fearfully bright. Toran was 
+standing there, too. 
+
+He said with dull bitterness, "We've come for nothing, Ebling. The Mule's man precedes us." 
+
+Ebling Mis rubbed his forehead with a hand that seemed shriveled out of its former plumpness. 
+His voice was an abstracted mutter. 
+
+Toran was annoyed. "I say those people know the Foundation has fallen. I say-" 
+
+"Eh?" Mis looked up, puzzled. Then, he placed a gentle hand upon Toran's wrist, in complete 
+oblivion of any previous conversation, "Toran, I ... I've been looking at Trantor. Do you know ... I 
+have the queerest feeling ... ever since we arrived on Neotrantor. It's an urge, a driving urge 
+that's pushing and pushing inside. Toran, I can do it; I know I can do it. Things are becoming 
+clear in my mind - they have never been so clear." 
+
+
+
+Toran stared - and shrugged. The words brought him no confidence. 
+
+He said, tentatively, "Mis?" 
+
+"Yes?" 
+
+"You didn't see a ship come down on Neotrantor as we left?" 
+
+Consideration was brief. "No." 
+
+"I did. Imagination, I suppose, but it could have been that Filian ship." 
+
+"The one with Captain Han Pritcher on it?" 
+
+"The one with space knows who upon it. Magnifico's information - It followed us here, Mis." 
+Ebling Mis said nothing, 
+
+Toran said strenuously, "is there anything wrong with you? Aren't you well?" 
+
+Mis's eyes were thoughtful, luminous, and strange. He did not answer. 
+
+
+23. THE RUINS OF TRANTOR 
+
+The location of an objective upon the great world of Trantor presents a problem unique in the 
+Galaxy. There are no continents or oceans to locate from a thousand miles distance. There are 
+no rivers, lakes, and islands to catch sight of through the cloud rifts. 
+
+The metal-covered world was - had been - one colossal city, and only the old Imperial palace 
+could be identified readily from outer space by a stranger. The Bayta circled the world at almost 
+air-car height in repeated painful search. 
+
+From polar regions, where the icy coating of the metal spires were somber evidence of the 
+breakdown or neglect of the weather-conditioning machinery, they worked southwards. 
+Occasionally they could experiment with the correlations -(or presumable correlations)- 
+between what they saw and what the inadequate map obtained at Neotrantor showed. 
+
+But it was unmistakable when it came. The gap in the metal coat of the planet was fifty miles. 
+The unusual greenery spread over hundreds of square miles, inclosing the mighty grace of the 
+ancient Imperial residences. 
+
+The Bayta hovered and slowly oriented itself. There were only the huge supercauseways to 
+guide them. Long straight arrows on the map, smooth, gleaming ribbons there below them. 
+
+What the map indicated to be the University area was reached by dead reckoning, and upon 
+the flat area of what once must have been a busy landing-field, the ship lowered itself. 
+
+It was only as they submerged into the welter of metal that the smooth beauty apparent from 
+the air dissolved into the broken, twisted near-wreckage that had been left in the wake of the 
+Sack. Spires were truncated, smooth walls gouted and twisted, and just for an instant there was 
+
+
+
+the glimpse of a shaven area of earth - perhaps several hundred acres in extent - dark and 
+plowed. 
+
+Lee Senter waited as the ship settled downward cautiously. It was a strange ship, not from 
+Neotrantor, and inwardly he sighed. Strange ships and confused dealings with the men of outer 
+space could mean the end of the short days of peace, a return to the old grandiose times of 
+death and battle. Senter was leader of the group; the old books were in his charge and he had 
+read of those old days. He did not want them. 
+
+Perhaps ten minutes spent themselves as the strange ship came down to nestle upon the 
+flatness, but long memories telescoped themselves in that time. There was first the great farm 
+of his childhood - that remained in his mind merely as busy crowds of people. Then there was 
+the trek of the young families to new lands. He was ten, then; an only child, puzzled, and 
+frightened. 
+
+Then the new buildings; the great metal slabs to be uprooted and tom aside; the exposed soil 
+to be turned, and freshened, and invigorated; neighboring buildings to be tom down and 
+leveled; others to be transformed to living quarters. 
+
+There were crops to be grown and harvested; peaceful relations with neighboring farms to be 
+established- 
+
+There was growth and expansion, and the quiet efficiency of self-rule. There was the coming of 
+a new generation of hard, little youngsters born to the soil. There was the great day when he 
+was chosen leader of the Group and for the first time since his eighteenth birthday he did not 
+shave and saw the first stubble of his Leader's Beard appear. 
+
+And now the Galaxy might intrude and put an end to the brief idyll of isolation- 
+
+The ship landed. He watched wordlessly as the port opened. Four emerged, cautious and 
+watchful. There were three men, varied, old, young, thin and beaked. And a woman striding 
+among them like an equal. His hand left the two glassy black tufts of his beard as he stepped 
+forward. 
+
+He gave the universal gesture of peace. Both hands were before him; hard, calloused palms 
+upward. 
+
+The young man approached two steps and duplicated the gesture. "I come in peace." 
+
+The accent was strange, but the words were understandable, and welcome. He replied, deeply, 
+"In peace be it. You are welcome to the hospitality of the Group. Are you hungry? You shall eat. 
+Are you thirsty? You shall drink." 
+
+Slowly, the reply came, "We thank you for your kindness, and shall bear good report of your 
+Group when we return to our world." 
+
+A queer answer, but good. Behind him, the men of the Group were smiling, and from the 
+recesses of the surrounding structures, the women emerged. 
+
+In his own quarters, he removed the locked, mirror-walled box from its hidden place, and 
+
+
+
+offered each of the guests the long, plump cigars that were reserved for great occasions. 
+
+Before the woman, he hesitated. She had taken a seat among the men. The strangers 
+evidently allowed, even expected, such effrontery. Stiffly, he offered the box. 
+
+She accepted one with a smile, and drew in its aromatic smoke, with all the relish one could 
+expect. Lee Senter repressed a scandalized emotion. 
+
+The stiff conversation, in advance of the meal, touched politely upon the subject of fanning on 
+Trantor. 
+
+It was the old man who asked, "What about hydroponics? Surely, for such a world as Trantor, 
+hydroponics would be the answer." 
+
+Senter shook his head slowly. He felt uncertain. His knowledge was the unfamiliar matter of the 
+books he had read, "Artificial fanning in chemicals, I think? No, not on Trantor. This 
+hydroponics requires a world of industy - for instance, a great chemical industry. And in war or 
+disaster, when industry breaks down, the people starve. Nor can all foods be grown artificially. 
+Some lose their food value. The soil is cheaper, still better - always more dependable." 
+
+"And your food supply is sufficient?" 
+
+"Sufficient; perhaps monotonous. We have fowl that supply eggs, and milk-yielders for our dairy 
+products - but our meat supply rests upon our foreign trade." 
+
+"Trade." The young man seemed roused to sudden interest. "You trade then. But what do you 
+export?" 
+
+"Metal," was the curt answer. "Look for yourself. We have an infinite supply, ready processed. 
+They come from Neotrantor with ships, demolish an indicated area-increasing our growing 
+space - and leave us in exchange meat, canned fruit, food concentrates, farm machinery and 
+so on. They carry off the metal and both sides profit." 
+
+They feasted on bread and cheese, and a vegetable stew that was unreservedly delicious. It 
+was over the dessert of frosted fruit, the only imported item on the menu, that, for the first time, 
+the Outlanders became other than mere guests. The young man produced a map of Trantor. 
+
+Calmly, Lee Senter studied it. He listened - and said gravely, "The University Grounds are a 
+static area. We farmers do not grow crops on it. We do not, by preference, even enter it. It is 
+one of our few relics of another time we would keep undisturbed. " 
+
+"We are seekers after knowledge. We would disturb nothing. Our ship would be our hostage." 
+The old man offered this - eagerly, feverishly. 
+
+"I can take you there then," said Senter. 
+
+That night the strangers slept, and that night Lee Senter sent a message to Neotrantor. 
+
+
+
+24. CONVERT 
+
+The thin life of Trantor trickled to nothing when they entered among the wide-spaced buildings 
+of the University grounds. There was a solemn and lonely silence over it. 
+
+The strangers of the Foundation knew nothing of the swirling days and nights of the bloody 
+Sack that had left the University untouched. They knew nothing of the time after the collapse of 
+the Imperial power, when the students, with their borrowed weapons, and their pale-faced 
+inexperienced bravery, formed a protective volunteer army to protect the central shrine of the 
+science of the Galaxy. They knew nothing of the Seven Days Fight, and the armistice that kept 
+the University free, when even the Imperial palace clanged with the boots of Gilmer and his 
+soldiers, during the short interval of their rule. 
+
+Those of the Foundation, approaching for the first time, realized only that in a world of transition 
+from a gutted old to a strenuous new this area was a quiet, graceful museum-piece of ancient 
+greatness. 
+
+They were intruders in a sense. The brooding emptiness rejected them. The academic 
+atmosphere seemed still to live and to stir angrily at the disturbance. 
+
+The library was a deceptively small building which broadened out vastly underground into a 
+mammoth volume of silence and reverie. Ebling Mis paused before the elaborate murals of the 
+reception room. 
+
+Fie whispered - one had to whisper here: "I think we passed the catalog rooms back a way. I'll 
+stop there." 
+
+His forehead was flushed, his hand trembling, "I mustn't be disturbed, Toran. Will you bring my 
+meals down to me?" 
+
+"Anything you say. We'll do all we can to help. Do you want us to work under you-" 
+
+"No. I must be alone-" 
+
+"You think you will get what you want." 
+
+And Ebling Mis replied with a soft certainty, "I know I will!" 
+
+Toran and Bayta came closer to "setting up housekeeping" in normal fashion than at any time 
+in their year of married life. It was a strange sort of "housekeeping." They lived in the middle of 
+grandeur with an inappropriate simplicity. Their food was drawn largely from Lee Senter's farm 
+and was paid for in the little nuclear gadgets that may be found on any Trader's ship. 
+
+Magnifico taught himself how to use the projectors in the library reading room, and sat over 
+adventure novels and romances to the point where he was almost as forgetful of meals and 
+sleep as was Ebling Mis. 
+
+Ebling himself was completely buried. Fie had insisted on a hammock being slung up for him in 
+the Psychology Reference Room. His face grew thin and white. His vigor of speech was lost 
+and his favorite curses had died a mild death. There were times when the recognition of either 
+
+
+
+Toran or Bayta seemed a struggle. 
+
+He was more himself with Magnifico who brought him his meals and often sat watching him for 
+hours at a time, with a queer, fascinated absorption, as the aging psychologist transcribed 
+endless equations, cross-referred to endless book-films, scurried endlessly about in a wild 
+mental effort towards an end he alone saw. 
+
+Toran came upon her in the darkened room, and said sharply, "Bayta!" 
+
+Bayta started guiltily. "Yes? You want me, Torie?" 
+
+"Sure I want you. What in Space are you sitting there for? You've been acting all wrong since 
+we got to Trantor. What's the matter with you?" 
+
+"Oh, Torie, stop," she said, wearily. 
+
+And "Oh, Torie, stop!" he mimicked impatiently. Then, with sudden softness, "Won't you tell me 
+what's wrong, Bay? Something's bothering you." 
+
+"No! Nothing is, Torie. If you keep on just nagging and nagging, you'll have me mad. I'm just — 
+thinking." 
+
+"Thinking about what?" 
+
+"About nothing. Well, about the Mule, and Haven, and the Foundation, and everything. About 
+Ebling Mis and whether he'll find anything about the Second Foundation, and whether it will 
+help us when he does find it - and a million other things. Are you satisfied?" Her voice was 
+agitated. 
+
+"If you're just brooding, do you mind stopping? It isn't pleasant and it doesn't help the situation." 
+Bayta got to her feet and smiled weakly. "All right. I'm happy. See, I'm smiling and jolly. " 
+Magnifico's voice was an agitated cry outside. "My lady-" 
+
+"What is it? Come-" 
+
+Bayta's voice choked off sharply when the opening door framed the large, hard-faced- 
+"Pritcher," cried Toran. 
+
+Bayta gasped, "Captain! How did you find us?" 
+
+Han Pritcher stepped inside. His voice was clear and level, and utterly dead of feeling, "My rank 
+is colonel now - under the Mule." 
+
+"Under the ... Mule!" Toran's voice trailed off. They formed a tableau there, the three. 
+
+Magnifico stared wildly and shrank behind Toran. Nobody stopped to notice him. 
+
+Bayta said, her hands trembling in each other's tight grasp, "You are arresting us? You have 
+really gone over to them?" 
+
+
+
+The colonel replied quickly, "I have not come to arrest you. My instructions make no mention of 
+you. With regard to you, I am free, and I choose to exercise our old friendship, if you will let 
+me." 
+
+Toran's face was a twisted suppression of fury, "How did you find us? You were in the Filian 
+ship, then? You followed us?" 
+
+The wooden lack of expression on Pritcher's face might have flickered in embarrassment. "I 
+was on the Filian ship! I met you in the first place ... well ... by chance." 
+
+"It is a chance that is mathematically impossible." 
+
+"No. Simply rather improbable, so my statement will have to stand. In any case, you admitted to 
+the. Filians - there is, of course, no such nation as Filia actually - that you were heading for the 
+Trantor sector, and since the Mule already had his contacts upon Neotrantor, it was easy to 
+have you detained there. Unfortunately, you got away before I arrived, but not long before. I 
+had time to have the farms on Trantor ordered to report your arrival. It was done and I am here. 
+May I sit down? I come in friendliness, believe me. 
+
+He sat. Toran bent his head and thought futilely. With a numbed lack of emotion, Bayta 
+prepared tea. 
+
+Toran looked up harshly. "Well, what are you waiting for - colonel? What's your friendship? If 
+it's not arrest, what is it then? Protective custody? Call in your men and give your orders." 
+
+Patiently, Pritcher shook his head. "No, Toran. I come of my own will to speak to you, to 
+persuade you of the uselessness of what you are doing. If I fail I shall leave. That is all." 
+
+"That is all? Well, then peddle your propaganda, give us your speech, and leave. I don't want 
+any tea, Bayta." 
+
+Pritcher accepted a cup, with a grave word of thanks. He looked at Toran with a clear strength 
+as he sipped lightly. Then he said, "The Mule is a mutant. He can not be beaten in the very 
+nature of the mutation-" 
+
+"Why? What is the mutation?" asked Toran, with sour humor. "I suppose you'll tell us now, eh?" 
+
+"Yes, I will. Your knowledge won't hurt him. You see - he is capable of adjusting the emotional 
+balance of human beings. It sounds like a little trick, but it's quite unbeatable." 
+
+Bayta broke in, "The emotional balance?" She frowned, "Won't you explain that? I don't quite 
+understand." 
+
+"I mean that it is an easy matter for him to instill into a capable general, say, the emotion of 
+utter loyalty to the Mule and complete belief in the Mule's victory. His generals are emotionally 
+controlled. They can not betray him; they can not weaken - and the control is permanent. His 
+most capable enemies become his most faithful subordinates, The warlord of Kalgan 
+surrenders his planet and becomes his viceroy for the Foundation." 
+
+"And you," added Bayta, bitterly, "betray your cause and become Mule's envoy to Trantor. I 
+see!" 
+
+
+
+"I haven't finished. The Mule's gift works in reverse even more effectively. Despair is an 
+emotion! At the crucial moment, keymen on the Foundation - keymen on Haven - despaired. 
+Their worlds fell without too much struggle." 
+
+"Do you mean to say," demanded Bayta, tensely, "that the feeling I had in the Time Vault was 
+the Mule juggling my emotional control." 
+
+"Mine, too. Everyone's. How was it on Haven towards the end?" 
+
+Bayta turned away. 
+
+Colonel Pritcher continued earnestly, "As it works for worlds, so it works for individuals. Can 
+you fight a force which can make you surrender willingly when it so desires; can make you a 
+faithful servant when it so desires?" 
+
+Toran said slowly, "How do I know this is the truth?" 
+
+"Can you explain the fall of the Foundation and of Haven otherwise? Can you explain my 
+conversion otherwise? Think, man! What have you - or I - or the whole Galaxy accomplished 
+against the Mule in all this time? What one little thing?" 
+
+Toran felt the challenge, "By the Galaxy, I can!" With a sudden touch of fierce satisfaction, he 
+shouted, "Your wonderful Mule had contacts with Neotrantor you say that were to have 
+detained us, eh? Those contacts are dead or worse. We killed the crown prince and left the 
+other a whimpering idiot. The Mule did not stop us there, and that much has been undone." 
+
+"Why, no, not at all. Those weren't our men. The crown prince was a wine-soaked mediocrity. 
+The other man, Commason, is phenomenally stupid. He was a power on his world but that 
+didn't prevent him from being vicious, evil, and completely incompetent. We had nothing really 
+to do with them. They were, in a sense, merely feints-" 
+
+"It was they who detained us, or tried." 
+
+"Again, no. Commason had a personal slave - a man called Inchney. Detention was his policy. 
+He is old, but will serve our temporary purpose. You would not have killed him, you see." 
+
+Bayta whirled on him. She had not touched her own tea. "But, by your very statement, your own 
+emotions have been tampered with. You've got faith and belief in the Mule, an unnatural, a 
+diseased faith in the Mule. Of what value are your opinions? You've lost all power of objective 
+thought." 
+
+"You are wrong." Slowly, the colonel shook his head. "Only my emotions are fixed. My reason 
+is as it always was. It may be influenced in a certain direction by my conditioned emotions, but 
+it is not forced. And there are some things I can see more clearly now that I am freed of my 
+earlier emotional trend. 
+
+"I can see that the Mule's program is an intelligent and worthy one. In the time since I have 
+been - converted, I have followed his career from its start seven years ago. With his mutant 
+mental power, he began by winning over a condottiere and his band. With that - and his power 
+- he won a planet. With that - and his power - he extended his grip until he could tackle the 
+
+
+
+warlord of Kalgan. Each step followed the other logically. With Kalgan in his pocket, he had a 
+first-class fleet, and with that - and his power - he could attack the Foundation. 
+
+"The Foundation is the key. It is the greatest area of industrial concentration in the Galaxy, and 
+now that the nuclear techniques of the Foundation are in his hands, he is the actual master of 
+the Galaxy. With those techniques - and his power - he can force the remnants of the Empire 
+to acknowledge his rule, and eventually - with the death of the old emperor, who is mad and 
+not long for this world - to crown him emperor. Fie will then have the name as well as the fact. 
+With that - and his power - where is the world in the Galaxy that can oppose him? 
+
+"In these last seven years, he has established a new Empire. In seven years, in other words, he 
+will have accomplished what all Seldon's psychohistory could not have done in less than an 
+additional seven hundred. The Galaxy will have peace and order at last. 
+
+"And you could not stop it - any more than you could stop a planet's rush with your shoulders." 
+
+A long silence followed Pritcher's speech. What remained of his tea had grown cold. Fie 
+emptied his cup, filled it again, and drained it slowly. Toran bit viciously at a thumbnail. Bayta's 
+face was cold, and distant, and white. 
+
+Then Bayta said in a thin voice, "We are not convinced. If the Mule wishes us to be, let him 
+come here and condition us himself. You fought him until the last moment of your conversion, I 
+imagine, didn't you?" 
+
+"I did," said Colonel Pritcher, solemnly. 
+
+"Then allow us the same privilege." 
+
+Colonel Pritcher arose. With a crisp air of finality, he said, "Then I leave. As I said earlier, my 
+mission at present concerns you in no way. Therefore, I don't think it will be necessary to report 
+your presence here. That is not too great a kindness. If the Mule wishes you stopped, he no 
+doubt has other men assigned to the job, and you will be stopped. But, for what it is worth, I 
+shall not contribute more than my requirement." 
+
+"Thank you," said Bayta faintly. 
+
+"As for Magnifico. Where is he? Come out, Magnifico, I won't hurt you-" 
+
+"What about him?" demanded Bayta, with sudden animation. 
+
+"Nothing. My instructions make no mention of him, either. I have heard that he is searched for, 
+but the Mule will find him when the time suits him. I shall say nothing. Will you shake hands?" 
+
+Bayta shook her head. Toran glared his frustrated contempt. 
+
+There was the slightest lowering of the colonel's iron shoulders. Fie strode to the door, turned 
+and said: 
+
+"One last thing. Don't think I am not aware of the source of your stubbornness. It is known that 
+you search for the Second Foundation. The Mule, in his time, will take his measures. Nothing 
+will help you - But I knew you in other times; perhaps there is something in my conscience that 
+
+
+
+urged me to this; at any rate, I tried to help you and remove you from the final danger before it 
+was too late. Good-by." 
+
+He saluted sharply - and was gone. 
+
+Bayta turned to a silent Toran, and whispered, "They even know about the Second 
+Foundation." 
+
+In the recesses of the library, Ebling Mis, unaware of all, crouched under the one spark of light 
+amid the murky spaces and mumbled triumphantly to himself. 
+
+
+25. DEATH OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 
+
+After that there were only two weeks left to the life of Ebling Mis. 
+
+And in those two weeks, Bayta was with him three times. The first time was on the night after 
+the evening upon which they saw Colonel Pritcher. The second was one week later. And the 
+third was again a week later - on the last day - the day Mis died. 
+
+First, there was the night of Colonel Pritcher's evening, the first hour of which was spent by a 
+stricken pair in a brooding, unmerry merry-go-round. 
+
+Bayta said, "Torie, let's tell Ebling." 
+
+Toran said dully, "Think he can help?" 
+
+"We're only two. We've got to take some of the weight off. Maybe he can help." 
+
+Toran said, "He's changed. He's lost weight. He's a little feathery; a little woolly." His fingers 
+groped in air, metaphorically. "Sometimes, I don't think he'll help us muchever. Sometimes, I 
+don't think anything will help." 
+
+"Don't!" Bayta's voice caught and escaped a break, "Torie, don't! When you say that, I think the 
+Mule's getting us. Let's tell Ebling, Torie - now!" 
+
+Ebling Mis raised his head from the long desk, and bleared at them as they approached. His 
+thinning hair was scuffed up, his lips made sleepy, smacking sounds. 
+
+"Eh?" he said. "Someone want me?" 
+
+Bayta bent to her knees, "Did we wake you? Shall we leave?" 
+
+"Leave? Who is it? Bayta? No, no, stay! Aren't there chairs? I saw them-" His finger pointed 
+vaguely. 
+
+Toran pushed two ahead of him. Bayta sat down and took one of the psychologist's flaccid 
+hands in hers. "May we talk to you, Doctor?" She rarely used the title. 
+
+"Is something wrong?" A little sparkle returned to his abstracted eyes. His sagging cheeks 
+regained a touch of color. "Is something wrong?" 
+
+
+
+Bayta said, "Captain Pritcher has been here. Let me talk, Torie. You remember Captain 
+Pritcher, Doctor?" 
+
+"Yes- Yes-" His fingers pinched his lips and released them. "Tall man. Democrat." 
+
+"Yes, he. He's discovered the Mule's mutation. He was here, Doctor, and told us." 
+
+"But that is nothing new. The Mule's mutation is straightened out." In honest astonishment, 
+"Haven't I told you? Have I forgotten to tell you?" 
+
+"Forgotten to tell us what?" put in Toran, quickly. 
+
+"About the Mule's mutation, of course. He tampers with emotions. Emotional control! I haven't 
+told you? Now what made me forget?" Slowly, he sucked in his under lip and considered. 
+
+Then, slowly, life crept into his voice and his eyelids lifted wide, as though his sluggish brain 
+had slid onto a well-greased single track. He spoke in a dream, looking between the two 
+listeners rather than at them. "It is really so simple. It requires no specialized knowledge. In the 
+mathematics of psychohistory, of course, it works out promptly, in a third-level equation 
+involving no more - Never mind that. It can be put into ordinary words - roughly - and have it 
+make sense, which isn't usual with psychohistorical phenomena. 
+
+"Ask yourselves - What can upset Hari Seldon's careful scheme of history, eh?" He peered 
+from one to the other with a mild, questioning anxiety. "What were Seldon's original 
+assumptions? First, that there would be no fundamental change in human society over the next 
+thousand years. 
+
+"For instance, suppose there were a major change in the Galaxy's technology, such as finding 
+a new principle for the utilization of energy, or perfecting the study of electronic neurobiology. 
+Social changes would render Seldon's original equations obsolete. But that hasn't happened, 
+has it now?" 
+
+"Or suppose that a new weapon were to be invented by forces outside the Foundation, capable 
+of withstanding all the Foundation's armaments. That might cause a ruinous deviation, though 
+less certainly. But even that hasn't happened. The Mule's Nuclear Field-Depressor was a 
+clumsy weapon and could be countered. And that was the only novelty he presented, poor as it 
+was. 
+
+"But there was a second assumption, a more subtle one! Seldon assumed that human reaction 
+to stimuli would remain constant. Granted that the first assumption held true, then the second 
+must have broken down! Some factor must be twisting and distorting the emotional responses 
+of human beings or Seldon couldn't have failed and the Foundation couldn't have fallen. And 
+what factor but the Mule? 
+
+"Am I right? Is there a flaw in the reasoning?" 
+
+Bayta's plump hand patted his gently. "No flaw, Ebling." 
+
+Mis was joyful, like a child. "This and more comes so easily. I tell you I wonder sometimes what 
+is going on inside me. I seem to recall the time when so much was a mystery to me and now 
+
+
+
+things are so clear. Problems are absent. I come across what might be one, and somehow, 
+inside me, I see and understand. And my guesses, my theories seem always to be borne out. 
+There's a drive in me ... always onward ... so that I can't stop ... and I don't want to eat or sleep 
+... but always go on ... and on ... and on-" 
+
+His voice was a whisper; his wasted, blue-veined hand rested tremblingly upon his forehead. 
+There was a frenzy in his eyes that faded and went out. 
+
+He said more quietly, "Then I never told you about the Mule's mutant powers, did I? But then ... 
+did you say you knew about it?" 
+
+"It was Captain Pritcher, Ebling," said Bayta. "Remember?" 
+
+"He told you?" There was a tinge of outrage in his tone. "But how did he find out?" 
+
+"He's been conditioned by the Mule. He's a colonel now, a Mule's man. He came to advise us 
+to surrender to the Mule, and he told us - what you told us." 
+
+"Then the Mule knows we're here? I must hurry - Where's Magnifico? Isn't he with you?" 
+"Magnifico's sleeping," said Toran, impatiently. "It's past midnight, you know." 
+
+"It is? Then - Was I sleeping when you came in?" 
+
+"You were," said Bayta decisively, "and you're not going back to work, either. You're getting into 
+bed. Come on, Torie, help me. And you stop pushing at me, Ebling, because it's just your luck I 
+don't shove you under a shower first. Pull off his shoes, Torie, and tomorrow you come down 
+here and drag him out into the open air before he fades completely away. Look at you, Ebling, 
+you'll be growing cobwebs. Are you hungry?" 
+
+Ebling Mis shook his head and looked up from his cot in a peevish confusion. "I want you to 
+send Magnifico down tomorrow," he muttered. 
+
+Bayta tucked the sheet around his neck. "You'll have me down tomorrow, with washed clothes. 
+You're going to take a good bath, and then get out and visit the farm and feel a little sun on 
+you." 
+
+"I won't do it," said Mis weakly. "You hear me? I'm too busy." 
+
+His sparse hair spread out on the pillow like a silver fringe about his head. His voice was a 
+confidential whisper. "You want that Second Foundation, don't you?" 
+
+Toran turned quickly and squatted down on the cot beside him. "What about the Second 
+Foundation, Ebling?" 
+
+The psychologist freed an arm from beneath the sheet and his tired fingers clutched at Toran's 
+sleeve. "The Foundations were established at a great Psychological Convention presided over 
+by Hari Seldon. Toran, I have located the published minutes of that Convention. Twenty-five fat 
+films. I have already looked through various summaries." 
+
+
+Well? 
+
+
+
+"Well, do you know that it is very easy to find from them the exact location of the First 
+Foundation, if you know anything at all about psychohistory. It is frequently referred to, when 
+you understand the equations. But Toran, nobody mentions the Second Foundation, There has 
+been no reference to it anywhere." 
+
+Toran's eyebrows pulled into a frown. "It doesn't exist?" 
+
+"Of course it exists," cried Mis, angrily, "who said it didn't? But there's less talk of it. Its 
+significance - and all about it - are better hidden, better obscured. Don't you see? It's the more 
+important of the two. It's the critical one; the one that counts! And I've got the minutes of the 
+Seldon Convention. The Mule hasn't won yet-" 
+
+Quietly, Bayta turned the lights down. "Go to sleep!" 
+
+Without speaking, Toran and Bayta made their way up to their own quarters. 
+
+The next day, Ebling Mis bathed and dressed himself, saw the sun of Trantor and felt the wind 
+of Trantor for the last time. At the end of the day he was once again submerged in the gigantic 
+recesses of the library, and never emerged thereafter. 
+
+In the week that followed, life settled again into its groove. The sun of Neotrantor was a calm, 
+bright star in Trantor's night sky. The farm was busy with its spring planting. The University 
+grounds were silent in their desertion. The Galaxy seemed empty. The Mule might never have 
+existed. 
+
+Bayta was thinking that as she watched Toran light his cigar carefully and look up at the 
+sections of blue sky visible between the swarming metal spires that encircled the horizon. 
+
+"It's a nice day," he said. 
+
+"Yes, it is. Flave you everything mentioned on the list, Torie?" 
+
+"Sure. Half pound butter, dozen eggs, string beans - Got it all down here, Bay. I'll have it right." 
+
+"Good. And make sure the vegetables are of the last harvest and not museum relics. Did you 
+see Magnifico anywhere, by the way?" 
+
+"Not since breakfast. Guess he's down with Ebling, watching a book-film." 
+
+"All right. Don't waste any time, because I'll need the eggs for dinner." 
+
+Toran left with a backward smile and a wave of the hand. 
+
+Bayta turned away as Toran slid out of sight among the maze of metal. She hesitated before 
+the kitchen door, about-faced slowly, and entered the colonnade leading to the elevator that 
+burrowed down into the recesses. 
+
+Ebling Mis was there, head bent down over the eyepieces of the projector, motionless, a 
+frozen, questing body. Near him sat Magnifico, screwed up into a chair, eyes sharp and 
+watching - a bundle of slatty limbs with a nose emphasizing his scrawny face. 
+
+Bayta said softly, "Magnifico-" 
+
+
+
+Magnifico scrambled to his feet. His voice was an eager whisper. "My lady!" 
+
+"Magnifico," said Bayta, "Toran has left for the farm and won't be back for a while. Would you 
+be a good boy and go out after him with a message that I'll write for you?" 
+
+"Gladly, my lady. My small services are but too eagerly yours, for the tiny uses you can put 
+them to." 
+
+She was alone with Ebling Mis, who had not moved. Firmly, she placed her hand upon his 
+shoulder. "Ebling-" 
+
+The psychologist started, with a peevish cry, "What is it?" He wrinkled his eyes. "Is it you, 
+Bayta? Where's Magnifico?" 
+
+"I sent him away. I want to be alone with you for a while." She enunciated her words with 
+exaggerated distinctness. "I want to talk to you, Ebling." 
+
+The psychologist made a move to return to his projector, but her hand on his shoulder was firm. 
+She felt the bone under the sleeve clearly. The flesh seemed to have fairly melted away since 
+their arrival on Trantor. His face was thin, yellowish, and bore a half-week stubble. His 
+shoulders were visibly stooped, even in a sitting position. 
+
+Bayta said, "Magnifico isn't bothering you, is he, Ebling? He seems to be down here night and 
+day." 
+
+"No, no, no! Not at all. Why, I don't mind him. He is silent and never disturbs me. Sometimes he 
+carries the films back and forth for me; seems to know what I want without my speaking. Just 
+let him be." 
+
+"Very well - but, Ebling, doesn't he make you wonder? Do you hear me, Ebling? Doesn't he 
+make you wonder?" 
+
+She jerked a chair close to his and stared at him as though to pull the answer out of his eyes. 
+Ebling Mis shook his head. "No. What do you mean?" 
+
+"I mean that Colonel Pritcher and you both say the Mule can condition the emotions of human 
+beings. But are you sure of it? Isn't Magnifico himself a flaw in the theory?" 
+
+There was silence. 
+
+Bayta repressed a strong desire to shake the psychologist. "What's wrong with you, Ebling? 
+Magnifico was the Mule's clown. Why wasn't he conditioned to love and faith? Why should he, 
+of all those in contact with the Mule, hate him so. 
+
+"But ... but he was conditioned. Certainly, Bay!" He seemed to gather certainty as he spoke. 
+
+"Do you suppose that the Mule treats his clown the way he treats his generals? He needs faith 
+and loyalty in the latter, but in his clown he needs only fear. Didn't you ever notice that 
+Magnifico's continual state of panic is pathological in nature? Do you suppose it is natural for a 
+human being to be as frightened as that all the time? Fear to such an extent becomes comic. It 
+was probably comic to the Mule - and helpful, too, since it obscured what help we might have 
+
+
+
+gotten earlier from Magnifico." 
+
+Bayta said, "You mean Magnifico's information about the Mule was false?" 
+
+"it was misleading. It was colored by pathological fear. The Mule is not the physical giant 
+Magnifico thinks. He is more probably an ordinary man outside his mental powers. But if it 
+amused him to appear a superman to poor Magnifico-" The psychologist shrugged. "In any 
+case, Magnifico's information is no longer of importance." 
+
+"What is, then?" 
+
+But Mis shook himself loose and returned to his projector. 
+
+"What is, then?" she repeated. "The Second Foundation?" 
+
+The psychologist's eyes jerked towards her. "Have I told you anything about that? I don't 
+remember telling you anything. I'm not ready yet. What have I told you?" 
+
+"Nothing," said Bayta, intensely. "Oh, Galaxy, you've told me nothing, but I wish you would 
+because I'm deathly tired. When will it be over?" 
+
+Ebling Mis peered at her, vaguely rueful, "Well, now, my ... my dear, I did not mean to hurt you. 
+
+I forget sometimes ... who my friends are. Sometimes it seems to me that I must not talk of all 
+this. There's a need for secrecy - but from the Mule, not from you, my dear." He patted her 
+shoulder with a weak amiability. 
+
+She said, "What about the Second Foundation?" 
+
+His voice was automatically a whisper, thin and sibilant. "Do you know the thoroughness with 
+which Seldon covered his traces? The proceedings of the Seldon Convention would have been 
+of no use to me at a as little as a month ago, before this strange insight came. Even now, it 
+seems - tenuous. The papers put out by the Convention are often apparently unrelated; always 
+obscure. More than once I wondered if the members of the Convention, themselves, knew all 
+that was in Seldon's mind. Sometimes I think he used the Convention only as a gigantic front, 
+and single-handed erected the structure-" 
+
+"Of the Foundations?" urged Bayta. 
+
+"Of the Second Foundation! Our Foundation was simple. But the Second Foundation was only 
+a name. It was mentioned, but if there was any elaboration, it was hidden deep in the 
+mathematics. There is still much I don't even begin to understand, but for seven days, the bits 
+have been clumping together into a vague picture. 
+
+"Foundation Number One was a world of physical scientists. It represented a concentration of 
+the dying science of the Galaxy under the conditions necessary to make it live again. No 
+psychologists were included. It was a peculiar distortion, and must have had a purpose. The 
+usual explanation was that Seldon's psychohistory worked best where the individual working 
+units - human beings - had no knowledge of what was coming, and could therefore react 
+naturally to all situations. Do you follow me, my dear-" 
+
+
+Yes, doctor. 
+
+
+
+"Then listen carefully. Foundation Number Two was a world of mental scientists. It was the 
+mirror image of our world. Psychology, not physics, was king." Triumphantly. "You see?" 
+
+"I don't." 
+
+"But think, Bayta, use your head. Hari Seldon knew that his psychohistory could predict only 
+probabilities, and not certainties. There was always a margin of error, and as time passed that 
+margin increases in geometric progression. Seldon would naturally guard as well as he could 
+against it. Our Foundation was scientifically vigorous. It could conquer armies and weapons. It 
+could pit force against force. But what of the mental attack of a mutant such as the Mule?" 
+
+"That would be for the psychologists of the Second Foundation!" Bayta felt excitement rising 
+within her. 
+
+"Yes, yes, yes! Certainly!" 
+
+"But they have done nothing so far." 
+
+"Flow do you know they haven't?" 
+
+Bayta considered that, "I don't. Do you have evidence that they have?" 
+
+"No. There are many factors I know nothing of. The Second Foundation could not have been 
+established full-grown, any more than we were. We developed slowly and grew in strength; 
+they must have also. The stars know at what stage their strength is now. Are they strong 
+enough to fight the Mule? Are they aware of the danger in the first place? Flave they capable 
+leaders?" 
+
+"But if they follow Seldon's plan, then the Mule must be beaten by the Second Foundation." 
+
+"Ah," and Ebling Mis's thin face wrinkled thoughtfully, "is it that again? But the Second 
+Foundation was a more difficult job than the First. Its complexity is hugely greater; and 
+consequently so is its possibility of error. And if the Second Foundation should not beat the 
+Mule, it is bad - ultimately bad. It is the end, may be, of the human race as we know it." 
+
+"No. 
+
+"Yes. If the Mule's descendants inherit his mental powers - You see? Flomo sapiens could not 
+compete. There would be a new dominant race - a new aristocracy - with homo sapiens 
+demoted to slave labor as an inferior race. Isn't that so?" 
+
+"Yes, that is so." 
+
+"And even if by some chance the Mule did not establish a dynasty, he would still establish a 
+distorted new Empire upheld by his personal power only. It would die with his death; the Galaxy 
+would be left where it was before he came, except that there would no longer be Foundations 
+around which a real and healthy Second Empire could coalesce. It would mean thousands of 
+years of barbarism. It would mean no end in sight." 
+
+
+What can we do? Can we warn the Second Foundation? 
+
+
+
+"We must, or they may go under through ignorance, which we can not risk. But there is no way 
+of warning them." 
+
+"No way?" 
+
+"I don't know where they are located. They are 'at the other end of the Galaxy' but that is all, 
+and there are millions of worlds to choose from." 
+
+"But, Ebling, don't they say?" She pointed vaguely at the films that covered the table. 
+
+"No, they don't. Not where I can find it - yet. The secrecy must mean something. There must 
+be a reason-" A puzzled expression returned to his eyes. "But I wish you'd leave. I have 
+wasted enough time, and it's growing short - it's growing short." 
+
+He tore away, petulant and frowning. 
+
+Magnifico's soft step approached. "Your husband is home, my lady." 
+
+Ebling Mis did not greet the clown. He was back at his projector. 
+
+That evening Toran, having listened, spoke, "And you think he's really right, Bay? You think he 
+isn't-" He hesitated. 
+
+"He is right, Torie. He's sick, I know that. The change that's come over him, the loss in weight, 
+the way he speaks - he's sick. But as soon as the subject of the Mule or the Second 
+Foundation, or anything he is working on, comes up, listen to him. He is lucid and clear as the 
+sky of outer space. He knows what he's talking about. I believe him." 
+
+"Then there's hope." It was half a question. 
+
+"I ... I haven't worked it out. Maybe! Maybe not! I'm carrying a blaster from now on." The 
+shiny-barreled weapon was in her hand as she spoke. "Just in case, Torie, just in case." 
+
+"In case what?" 
+
+Bayta laughed with a touch of hysteria, "Never mind. Maybe I'm a little crazy, too - like Ebling 
+Mis." 
+
+Ebling Mis at that time had seven days to live, and the seven days slipped by, one after the 
+other, quietly. 
+
+To Toran, there was a quality of stupor about them. The warming days and the dull silence 
+covered him with lethargy. All life seemed to have lost its quality of action, and changed into an 
+infinite sea of hibernation. 
+
+Mis was a hidden entity whose burrowing work produced nothing and did not make itself 
+known. He had barricaded himself. Neither Toran nor Bayta could see him. Only Magnifico's 
+go-between characteristics were evidence of his existence. Magnifico, grown silent and 
+thoughtful, with his tiptoed trays of food and his still, watchful witness in the gloom. 
+
+Bayta was more and more a creature of herself. The vivacity died, the self-assured competence 
+wavered. She, too, sought her own worried, absorbed company, and once Toran bad come 
+
+
+
+upon her, fingering her blaster. She had put it away quickly, forced a smile. 
+
+"What are you doing with it, Bay?" 
+
+"Holding it. Is that a crime?" 
+
+"You'll blow your fool head off." 
+
+"Then I'll blow it off. Small loss!" 
+
+Married life had taught Toran the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood. He 
+shrugged, and left her. 
+
+On the last day, Magnifico scampered breathless into their presence. He clutched at them, 
+frightened. "The learned doctor calls for you. He is not well." 
+
+And he wasn't well. He was in bed, his eyes unnaturally large, unnaturally bright. He was dirty, 
+unrecognizable. 
+
+"Ebling!" cried Bayta. 
+
+"Let me speak," croaked the psychologist, lifting his weight to a thin elbow with an effort. "Let 
+me speak. I am finished; the work I pass on to you. I have kept no notes; the scrap-figures I 
+have destroyed. No other must know. All must remain in your minds." 
+
+"Magnifico," said Bayta, with rough directness. "Go upstairs!" 
+
+Reluctantly, the clown rose and took a backward step. His sad eyes were on Mis. 
+
+Mis gestured weakly, "He won't matter; let him stay. Stay, Magnifico." 
+
+The clown sat down quickly. Bayta gazed at the floor. 
+
+Slowly, slowly, her lower lip caught in her teeth. 
+
+Mis said, in a hoarse whisper, "I am convinced the Second Foundation can win, if it is not 
+caught prematurely by the Mule. It has kept itself secret; the secrecy must be upheld; it has a 
+purpose. You must go there; your information is vital ... may make all the difference. Do you 
+hear me?" 
+
+Toran cried in near-agony, "Yes, yes! Tell us how to get there, Ebling? Where is it?" 
+
+"I can tell you," said the faint voice. 
+
+He never did. 
+
+Bayta, face frozen white, lifted her blaster and shot, with an echoing clap of noise. From the 
+waist upward, Mis was not, and a ragged hole was in the wall behind. From numb fingers, 
+Bayta's blaster dropped to the floor. 
+
+
+
+26. END OF THE SEARCH 
+
+There was not a word to be said. The echoes of the blast rolled away into the outer rooms and 
+rumbled downward into a hoarse, dying whisper. Before its death, it had muffled the sharp 
+clamor of Bayta's falling blaster, smothered Magnifico's high-pitched cry, drowned out Toran's 
+inarticulate roar. 
+
+There was a silence of agony. 
+
+Bayta's head was bent into obscurity. A droplet caught the light as it fell. Bayta had never wept 
+since her childhood. 
+
+Toran's muscles almost cracked in their spasm, but he did not relax - he felt as if he would 
+never unclench his teeth again. Magnifico's face was a faded, lifeless mask. 
+
+Finally, from between teeth still tight, Toran choked out in an unrecognizable voice, "You're a 
+Mule's woman, then. He got to you!" 
+
+Bayta looked up, and her mouth twisted with a painful merriment, "/, a Mule's woman? That's 
+ironic." 
+
+She smiled - a brittle effort - and tossed her hair back. Slowly, her voice verged back to the 
+normal, or something near it. "It's over, Toran; I can talk now. How much I will survive, I don't 
+know. But I can start talking-" 
+
+Toran's tension had broken of its own weight and faded into a flaccid dullness, "Talk about 
+what, Bay? What's there to talk about?" 
+
+"About the calamity that's followed us. We've remarked about it before, Torie. Don't you 
+remember? How defeat has always bitten at our heels and never actually managed to nip us? 
+We were on the Foundation, and it collapsed while the Independent Traders still fought - but 
+we got out in time to go to Haven. We were on Haven, and it collapsed while the others still 
+fought - and again we got out in time. We went to Neotrantor, and by now it's undoubtedly 
+joined the Mule." 
+
+Toran listened and shook his head, "I don't understand." 
+
+"Torie, such things don't happen in real life. You and I are insignificant people; we don't fall from 
+one vortex of politics into another continuously for the space of a year - unless we carry the 
+vortex with us. Unless we carry the source of infection with us! Now do you see?" 
+
+Toran's lips tightened. His glance fixed horribly upon the bloody remnants of what had once 
+been a human, and his eyes sickened. 
+
+"Let's get out of here, Bay. Let's get out into the open." 
+
+It was cloudy outside. The wind scudded about them in drab spurts and disordered Bayta's hair. 
+Magnifico had crept after them and now he hovered at the edge of their conversation. 
+
+Toran said tightly, "You killed Ebling Mis because you believed him to be the focus of 
+
+
+
+infection?" Something in her eyes struck him. He whispered, "He was the Mule?" He did not - 
+could not - believe the implications of his own words. 
+
+Bayta laughed sharply, "Poor Ebling the Mule? Galaxy, no! I couldn't have killed him if he were 
+the Mule. He would have detected the emotion accompanying the move and changed it for me 
+to love, devotion, adoration, terror, whatever he pleased. No, I killed Ebling because he was not 
+the Mule. I killed him because he knew where the Second Foundation was, and in two seconds 
+would have told the Mule the secret." 
+
+"Would have told the Mule the secret," Toran repeated stupidly. "Told the Mule-" 
+
+And then he emitted a sharp cry, and turned to stare in horror at the clown, who might have 
+been crouching unconscious there for the apparent understanding he had of what he heard. 
+
+"Not Magnifico?" Toran whispered the question. 
+
+"Listen!" said Bayta. "Do you remember what happened on Neotrantor? Oh, think for yourself, 
+Torie-" 
+
+But he shook his head and mumbled at her. 
+
+She went on, wearily, "A man died on Neotrantor. A man died with no one touching him. Isn't 
+that true? Magnifico played on his Visi-Sonor and when he was finished, the crown prince was 
+dead. Now isn't that strange? Isn't it queer that a creature afraid of everything, apparently 
+helpless with terror, has the capacity to kill at will." 
+
+"The music and the light-effects," said Toran, "have a profound emotional effect-" 
+
+"Yes, an emotional effect. A pretty big one. Emotional effects happen to be the Mule's specialty. 
+That, I suppose, can be considered a coincidence. And a creature who can kill by suggestion is 
+so full of fright. Well, the Mule tampered with his mind, supposedly, so that can be explained. 
+But, Toran, I caught a little of that Visi-Sonor selection that killed the crown prince. Just a little - 
+but it was enough to give me that same feeling of despair I had in the Time Vault and on 
+Haven. Toran, I can't mistake that particular feeling." 
+
+Toran's face was darkening. "I ... felt it, too. I forgot. I never thought-" 
+
+"It was then that it first occurred to me. It was just a vague feeling - intuition, if you like. I had 
+nothing to go on. And then Pritcher told us of the Mule and his mutation, and it was clear in a 
+moment. It was the Mule who had created the despair in the Time Vault; it was Magnifico who 
+had created the despair on Neotrantor. It was the same emotion. Therefore, the Mule and 
+Magnifico were the same person. Doesn't it work out nicely, Torie? Isn't it just like an axiom in 
+geometry - things equal to the same thing are equal to each other?" 
+
+She was at the edge of hysteria, but dragged herself back to sobriety by main force. She 
+continued, "The discovery scared me to death. If Magnifico were the Mule, he could know my 
+emotions - and cure them for his own purposes. I dared not let him know. I avoided him. 
+
+Luckily, he avoided me also; he was too interested in Ebling Mis. I planned killing Mis before he 
+could talk. I planned it secretly - as secretly as I could - so secretly I didn't dare tell it to myself. 
+
+
+
+"If I could have killed the Mule himself - But I couldn't take the chance. He would have noticed, 
+and I would have lost everything." 
+
+She seemed drained of emotion. 
+
+Toran said harshly and with finality, "It's impossible. Look at the miserable creature. He the 
+Mule? He doesn't even hear what we're saying." 
+
+But when his eyes followed his pointing finger, Magnifico was erect and alert, his eyes sharp 
+and darkly bright. His voice was without a trace of an accent, "I hear her, my friend. It is merely 
+that I have been sitting here and brooding on the fact that with all my cleverness and 
+forethought I could make a mistake, and lose so much." 
+
+Toran stumbled backward as if afraid the clown might touch him or that his breath might 
+contaminate him. 
+
+Magnifico nodded, and answered the unspoken question. "I am the Mule." 
+
+He seemed no longer a grotesque; his pipestem limbs, his beak of a nose lost their 
+humor-compelling qualities. His fear was gone; his bearing was firm. 
+
+He was in command of the situation with an ease born of usage. 
+
+He said, tolerantly, "Seat yourselves. Go ahead; you might as well sprawl out and make 
+yourselves comfortable. The game's over, and I'd like to tell you a story. It's a weakness of 
+mine - I want people to understand me." 
+
+And his eyes as he looked at Bayta were still the old, soft sad brown ones of Magnifico, the 
+clown. 
+
+"There is nothing really to my childhood," he began, plunging bodily into quick, impatient 
+speech, "that I care to remember. Perhaps you can understand that. My meagerness is 
+glandular; my nose I was born with. It was not possible for me to lead a normal childhood. My 
+mother died before she saw me. I do not know my father. I grew up haphazard, wounded and 
+tortured in mind, full of self-pity and hatred of others. I was known then as a queer child. All 
+avoided me; most out of dislike; some out of fear. Queer incidents occurred - Well, never mind! 
+Enough happened to enable Captain Pritcher, in his investigation of my childhood to realize 
+that I was a mutant, which was more than / ever realized until I was in my twenties." 
+
+Toran and Bayta listened distantly. The wash of his voice broke over them, seated on the 
+ground as they were, unheeded almost. The clown - or the Mule - paced before them with little 
+steps, speaking downward to his own folded arms. 
+
+"The whole notion of my unusual power seems to have broken on me so slowly, in such 
+sluggish steps. Even toward the end, I couldn't believe it. To me, men's minds are dials, with 
+pointers that indicate the prevailing emotion. It is a poor picture, but how else can I explain it? 
+Slowly, I learned that I could reach into those minds and turn the pointer to the spot I wished, 
+that I could nail it there forever. And then it took even longer to realize that others couldn't. 
+
+"But the consciousness of power came, and with it, the desire to make up for the miserable 
+
+
+
+position of my earlier life. Maybe you can understand it. Maybe you can try to understand it. It 
+isn't easy to be a freak - to have a mind and an understanding and be a freak. Laughter and 
+cruelty! To be different! To be an outsider! 
+
+"You've never been through it!" 
+
+Magnifico looked up to the sky and teetered on the balls of his feet and reminisced stonily, "But 
+I eventually did learn, and I decided that the Galaxy and I could take turns. Come, they had had 
+their innings, and I had been patient about it - for twenty-two years. My turn! It would be up to 
+the rest of you to take it! And the odds would be fair enough for the Galaxy. One of me! 
+Quadrillions of them!" 
+
+He paused to glance at Bayta swiftly. "But I had a weakness. I was nothing in myself. If I could 
+gain power, it could only be by means of others. Success came to me through middlemen. 
+Always! It was as Pritcher said. Through a pirate, I obtained my first asteroidal base of 
+operations. Through an industrialist I got my first foothold on a planet. Through a variety of 
+others ending with the warlord of Kalgan, I won Kalgan itself and got a navy. After that, it was 
+the Foundation - and you two come into the story. 
+
+"The Foundation," he said, softly, "was the most difficult task I had met. To beat it, I would have 
+to win over, break down, or render useless an extraordinary proportion of its ruling class. I 
+could have done it from scratch - but a short cut was possible, and I looked for it. After all, if a 
+strong man can lift five hundred pounds, it does not mean that he is eager to do so 
+continuously. My emotional control is not an easy task, I prefer not to use it, where not fully 
+necessary. So I accepted allies in my first attack upon the Foundation. 
+
+"As my clown, I looked for the agent, or agents, of the Foundation that must inevitably have 
+been sent to Kalgan to investigate my humble self. I know now it was Han Pritcher I was 
+looking for. By a stroke of fortune, I found you instead. I am a telepath, but not a complete one, 
+and, my lady, you were from the Foundation. I was led astray by that. It was not fatal for 
+Pritcher joined us afterward, but it was the starting point of an error that was fatal." 
+
+Toran stirred for the first time. He spoke in an outraged tone, "Hold on, now. You mean that 
+when I outfaced that lieutenant on Kalgan with only a stun pistol, and rescued you - that you 
+had emotionally-controlled me into it." He was spluttering. "You mean I've been tampered with 
+all along." 
+
+A thin smile played on Magnifico's face. "Why not? You don't think it's likely? Ask yourself then 
+- Would you have risked death for a strange grotesque you had never seen before, if you had 
+been in your right mind? I imagine you were surprised at events in cold after-blood." 
+
+"Yes," said Bayta, distantly, "he was. It's quite plain." 
+
+"As it was," continued the Mule, "Toran was in no danger. The lieutenant had his own strict 
+instructions to let us go. So the three of us and Pritcher went to the Foundation - and see how 
+my campaign shaped itself instantly. When Pritcher was court-martialed and we were present, I 
+was busy. The military judges of that trial later commanded their squadrons in the war. They 
+surrendered rather easily, and my Navy won the battle of Horleggor, and other lesser affairs. 
+
+
+
+"Through Pritcher, I met Dr. Mis, who brought me a Visi-Sonor, entirely of his own accord, and 
+simplified my task immensely. Only it wasn't entirely of his own accord." 
+
+Bayta interrupted, "Those concerts! I've been trying to fit them in. Now I see." 
+
+"Yes," said Magnifico, "the Visi-Sonor acts as a focusing device. In a way, it is a primitive 
+device for emotional control in itself. With it, I can handle people in quantity and single people 
+more intensively. The concerts I gave on Terminus before it fell and Haven before it fell 
+contributed to the general defeatism. I might have made the crown prince of Neotrantor very 
+sick without the Visi-Sonor, but I could not have killed him. You see? 
+
+"But it was Ebling Mis who was my most important find. He might have been-" Magnifico said it 
+with chagrin, then hurried on, "There is a special facet to emotional control you do not know 
+about. Intuition or insight or hunch-tendency, whatever you wish to call it, can be treated as an 
+emotion. At least, I can treat it so. You don't understand it, do you?" 
+
+He waited for no negative, "The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the 
+figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power it is termed a hunch, 
+or insight, or intuition. I found early that I could induce a continual use of high brain-efficiency. It 
+is a killing process for the person affected, but it is useful. The nuclear field-depressor which I 
+used in the war against the Foundation was the result of high-pressuring a Kalgan technician. 
+Again I work through others. 
+
+"Ebling Mis was the bull's-eye. His potentialities were high, and I needed him. Even before my 
+war with the Foundation had opened, I had already sent delegates to negotiate with the Empire. 
+It was at that time I began my search for the Second Foundation. Naturally, I didn't find it. 
+Naturally, I knew that I must find it - and Ebling Mis was the answer. With his mind at high 
+efficiency, he might possibly have duplicated the work of Hari Seldon. 
+
+"Partly, he did. I drove him to the utter limit. The process was ruthless, but had to be completed. 
+He was dying at the end, but he lived-" Again, his chagrin interrupted him. "He would have 
+lived long enough. Together, we three could have gone onward to the Second Foundation. It 
+would have been the last battle - but for my mistake." 
+
+Toran stirred his voice to hardness, "Why do you stretch it out so? What was your mistake, and 
+... and have done with your speech." 
+
+"Why, your wife was the mistake. Your wife was an unusual person. I had never met her like 
+before in my life. I ... I-" Quite suddenly, Magnifico's voice broke. He recovered with difficulty. 
+There was a grimness about him as he continued. "She liked me without my having to juggle 
+her emotions. She was neither repelled by me nor amused by me. She liked me! 
+
+"Don't you understand? Can't you see what that would mean to me? Never before had anyone 
+- Well, I ... cherished that. My own emotions played me false, though I was master of all others. 
+I stayed out of her mind, you see; I did not tamper with it. I cherished the natural feeling too 
+greatly. It was my mistake - the first. 
+
+"You, Toran, were under control. You never suspected me; never questioned me; never saw 
+anything peculiar or strange about me. As for instance, when the 'Filian' ship stopped us. They 
+
+
+
+knew our location, by the way, because I was in communication with them, as I've remained in 
+communication with my generals at all times. When they stopped us, I was taken aboard to 
+adjust Han Pritcher, who was on it as a prisoner. When I left, he was a colonel, a Mule's man, 
+and in command. The whole procedure was too open even for you, Toran. Yet you accepted 
+my explanation of the matter, which was full of fallacies. See what I mean?" 
+
+Toran grimaced, and challenged him, "How did you retain communications with your generals?" 
+
+"There was no difficulty to it. Hyperwave transmitters are easy to handle and eminently 
+portable. Nor could I be detected in a real sense! Anyone who did catch me in the act would 
+leave me with a slice gapped out of his memory. It happened, on occasion. 
+
+"On Neotrantor, my own foolish emotions betrayed me again. Bayta was not under my control, 
+but even so might never have suspected me if I had kept my head about the crown prince. His 
+intentions towards Bayta - annoyed me. 
+
+"I killed him. It was a foolish gesture. An unobtrusive flight would have served as well. 
+
+"And still your suspicions would not have been certainties, if I had stopped Pritcher in his 
+well-intentioned babbling, or paid less attention to Mis and more to you-" He shrugged. 
+
+"That's the end of it?" asked Bayta. 
+
+"That's the end." 
+
+"What now, then?" 
+
+"I'll continue with my program. That I'll find another as adequately brained and trained as Ebling 
+Mis in these degenerate days, I doubt. I shall have to search for the Second Foundation 
+otherwise. In a sense you have defeated me." 
+
+And now Bayta was upon her feet, triumphant. "In a sense? Only in a sense? We have 
+defeated you entirely! All your victories outside the Foundation count for nothing, since the 
+Galaxy is a barbarian vacuum now. The Foundation itself is only a minor victory, since it wasn't 
+meant to stop your variety of crisis. It's the Second Foundation you must beat - the Second 
+Foundation - and it's the Second Foundation that will defeat you. Your only chance was to 
+locate it and strike it before it was prepared. You won't do that now. Every minute from now on, 
+they will be readier for you. At this moment, at this moment, the machinery may have started. 
+You'll know - when it strikes you, and your short term of power will be over, and you'll be just 
+another strutting conqueror, flashing quickly and meanly across the bloody face of history." 
+
+She was breathing hard, nearly gasping in her vehemence, "And we've defeated you, Toran 
+and I. I am satisfied to die." 
+
+But the Mule's sad, brown eyes were the sad, brown, loving eyes of Magnifico. "I won't kill you 
+or your husband. It is, after all, impossible for you two to hurt me further; and killing you won't 
+bring back Ebling Mis. My mistakes were my own, and I take responsibility for them. Your 
+husband and yourself may leave! Go in peace, for the sake of what I call - friendship." 
+
+Then, with a sudden touch of pride, "And meanwhile I am still the Mule, the most powerful man 
+
+
+
+in the Galaxy. I shall still defeat the Second Foundation." 
+
+And Bayta shot her last arrow with a firm, calm certitude, "You won't! I have faith in the wisdom 
+of Seldon yet. You shall be the last ruler of your dynasty, as well as the first." 
+
+Something caught Magnifico. "Of my dynasty? Yes, I had thought of that, often. That I might 
+establish a dynasty. That I might have a suitable consort." 
+
+Bayta suddenly caught the meaning of the look in his eyes and froze horribly. 
+
+Magnifico shook his head. "I sense your revulsion, but that's silly. If things were otherwise, I 
+could make you happy very easily. It would be an artificial ecstasy, but there would be no 
+difference between it and the genuine emotion. But things are not otherwise. I call myself the 
+Mule - but not because of my strength - obviously-" 
+
+He left them, never looking back. 
+
+
+
+
+ASIMOV 
+
+
+SECOND FOUNDATION 
+
+
+
+
+SECOND FOUNDATION 
+ISAAC ASIMOV 
+
+
+Contents 
+
+PROLOGUE 
+
+PART I SEARCH BY THE MULE 
+
+1 . TWO MEN AND THE MULE 
+
+First Interlude 
+
+2. TWO MEN WITHOUT THE MULE 
+
+Second Interlude 
+
+3. TWO MEN AND A PEASANT 
+
+Third Interlude 
+
+4. TWO MEN AND THE ELDERS 
+
+Fourth Interlude 
+
+5. ONE MAN AND THE MULE 
+
+6. ONE MAN, THE MULE - AND ANOTHER 
+
+Last Interlude 
+
+PART II SEARCH BY THE FOUNDATION 
+
+7. ARCADIA 
+
+8. SELDON'S PLAN 
+
+9. THE CONSPIRATORS 
+
+10. APPROACHING CRISIS 
+
+1 1 . STOWAWAY 
+
+12. LORD 
+
+
+13. LADY 
+
+
+14. ANXIETY 
+
+15. THROUGH THE GRID 
+
+16. BEGINNING OF WAR 
+
+1 7. WAR 
+
+18. GHOST OF A WORLD 
+
+19. END OF WAR 
+
+20. "I KNOW..." 
+
+21 . THE ANSWER THAT SATISFIED 
+
+22. THE ANSWER THAT WAS TRUE 
+
+
+Prologue 
+
+The First Galactic Empire had endured for tens of thousands of years. It had included all the 
+planets of the Galaxy in a centralized rule, sometimes tyrannical, sometimes benevolent, 
+always orderly. Human beings had forgotten that any other form of existence could be. 
+
+All except Hari Seldon. 
+
+Hari Seldon was the last great scientist of the First Empire. It was he who brought the science 
+of psycho-history to its full development. Psycho-history was the quintessence of sociology, it 
+was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. 
+
+The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, 
+could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be 
+achieved. And the size of the human masses that Seldon worked with was no less than the 
+population of the Galaxy which in his time was numbered in the quintillions. 
+
+It was Seldon, then, who foresaw, against all common sense and popular belief, that the 
+brilliant Empire which seemed so strong was in a state of irremediable decay and decline. He 
+foresaw (or he solved his equations and interpreted its symbols, which amounts to the same 
+thing) that left to itself, the Galaxy would pass through a thirty thousand year period of misery 
+and anarchy before a unified government would rise once more. 
+
+He set about to remedy the situation, to bring about a state of affairs that would restore peace 
+and civilization in a single thousand of years. Carefully, he set up two colonies of scientists that 
+he called "Foundations." With deliberate intention, he set them up "at opposite ends of the 
+Galaxy." One Foundation was set up in the full daylight of publicity. The existence of the other, 
+
+
+the Second Foundation, was drowned in silence. 
+
+In Foundation (Gnome, 1951) and Foundation and Empire (Gnome, 1952) are told the first 
+three centuries of the history of the First Foundation. It began as a small community of 
+Encyclopedists lost in the emptiness of the outer periphery of the Galaxy. Periodically, it faced 
+a crisis in which the variables of human intercourse, of the social and economic currents of the 
+time constricted about it. Its freedom to move lay along only one certain line and when it moved 
+in that direction, a new horizon of development opened before it. All had been planned by Hari 
+Seldon, long dead now. 
+
+The First Foundation, with its superior science, took over the barbarized planets that 
+surrounded it. It faced the anarchic Warlords that broke away from the dying Empire and beat 
+them. It faced the remnant of the Empire itself under its last strong Emperor and its last strong 
+General and beat it. 
+
+Then it faced something which Hari Seldon could not foresee, the overwhelming power of a 
+single human being, a Mutant. The creature known as the Mule was born with the ability to 
+mold men's emotions and to shape their minds. His bitterest opponents were made into his 
+devoted servants. Armies could not, would not fight him. Before him, the First Foundation fell 
+and Seldon's schemes lay partly in ruins. 
+
+There was left the mysterious Second Foundation, the goal of all searches. The Mule must find 
+it to make his conquest of the Galaxy complete. The faithful of what was left of the First 
+Foundation must find it for quite another reason. But where was it? That no one knew. 
+
+This, then, is the story of the search for the Second Foundation! 
+
+
+PART I 
+
+SEARCH BY THE MULE 
+
+
+1 
+
+Two Men and the Mule 
+
+THE MULE It was after the fall of the First Foundation that the constructive aspects of the 
+Mule's regime took shape. After the definite break-up at the first Galactic Empire, it was he who 
+first presented history with a unified volume at space truly imperial in scope. The earlier 
+commercial empire at the fallen Foundation had been diverse and loosely knit, despite the 
+impalpable backing at the predictions of psycho-history. It was not to be compared with the 
+tightly controlled 'Union of Worlds' under the Mule, comprising as it did, one-tenth the volume of 
+
+
+
+
+
+the Galaxy and one-fifteenth of its population. Particularly during the era of the so-called 
+Search.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA * 
+
+* All quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica here reproduced are taken from the 1 1 6th 
+Edition published in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus, with 
+permission of the publishers. 
+
+There is much more that the Encyclopedia has to say on the subject of the Mule and his Empire 
+but almost all of it is not germane to the issue at immediate hand, and most of it is considerably 
+too dry for our purposes in any case. Mainly, the article concerns itself at this point with the 
+economic conditions that led to the rise of the "First Citizen of the Union" - the Mule's official 
+title - and with the economic consequences thereof. 
+
+If, at any time, the writer of the article is mildly astonished at the colossal haste with which the 
+Mule rose from nothing to vast dominion in five years, he conceals it. If he is further surprised at 
+the sudden cessation of expansion in favor of a five-year consolidation of territory, he hides the 
+fact. 
+
+We therefore abandon the Encyclopedia and continue on our own path for our own purposes 
+and take up the history of the Great Interregnum - between the First and Second Galactic 
+Empires - at the end of that five years of consolidation. 
+
+Politically, the Union is quiet. Economically, it is prosperous. Few would care to exchange the 
+peace of the Mule's steady grip for the chaos that had preceded, On the worlds that five years 
+previously had known the Foundation, there might be a nostalgic regret, but no more. The 
+Foundation's leaders were dead, where useless; and Converted, where useful. 
+
+And of the Converted, the most useful was Flan Pritcher, now lieutenant general. 
+
+In the days of the Foundation, Flan Pritcher had been a captain and a member of the 
+underground Democratic Opposition. When the Foundation fell to the Mule without a fight, 
+Pritcher fought the Mule. Until, that is, he was Converted. 
+
+The Conversion was not the ordinary one brought on by the power of superior reason. Flan 
+Pritcher know that well enough. Fie had been changed because the Mule was a mutant with 
+mental powers quite capable of adjusting the conditions of ordinary humans to suit himself. But 
+that satisfied him completely. That was as it should be. The very contentment with the 
+Conversion was a prime symptom of it, but Flan Pritcher was no longer even curious about the 
+matter. 
+
+And now that he was returning from his fifth major expedition into the boundlessness of the 
+Galaxy outside the Union, it was with something approaching artless joy that the veteran 
+spaceman and Intelligence agent considered his approaching audience with the "First Citizen." 
+FHis hard face, gouged out of a dark, grainless wood that did not seem to be capable of smiling 
+without cracking, didn't show it - but the outward indications were unnecessary. The Mule could 
+see the emotions within, down to the smallest, much as an ordinary man could see the twitch of 
+an eyebrow. 
+
+
+
+Pritcher left his air car at the old vice-regal hangars and entered the palace grounds on foot as 
+was required. He walked one mile along the arrowed highway - which was empty and silent. 
+Pritcher knew that over the square miles of Palace grounds, there was not one guard, not one 
+soldier, not one armed man. 
+
+The Mule had need of no protection. 
+
+The Mule was his own best, all-powerful protector. 
+
+Pritcher's footsteps beat softly in his own cars, as the palace reared its gleaming, incredibly 
+light and incredibly strong metallic walls before him in the daring, overblown, near-hectic arches 
+that characterized the architecture of the Late Empire. It brooded strongly over the empty 
+grounds, over the crowded city on the horizon. 
+
+Within the palace was that one man - by himself - on whose inhuman mental attributes 
+depended the new aristocracy, and the whole structure of the Union. 
+
+The huge, smooth door swung massively open at the general's approach, and he entered. He 
+stepped on to the wide, sweeping ramp that moved upward under him. He rose swiftly in the 
+noiseless elevator. He stood before the small plain door of the Mule's own room in the highest 
+glitter of the palace spires. 
+
+It opened- 
+
+Bail Channis was young, and Bail Channis was Unconverted. That is, in plainer language, his 
+emotional make-up had been unadjusted by the Mule. It remained exactly as it had been 
+formed by the original shape of its heredity and the subsequent modifications of his 
+environment. And that satisfied him, too. 
+
+At not quite thirty, he was in marvelously good odor in the capital. He was handsome and 
+quick-witted - therefore successful in society. He was intelligent and self-possessed - therefore 
+successful with the Mule. And he was thoroughly pleased at both successes. 
+
+And now, for the first time, the Mule had summoned him to personal audience. 
+
+His legs carried him down the long, glittering highway that led tautly to the sponge-aluminum 
+spires that had been once the residence of the viceroy of Kalgan, who ruled under the old 
+emperors; and that had been later the residence of the independent Princes of Kalgan, who 
+ruled in their own name; and that was now the residence of the First Citizen of the Union, who 
+ruled over an empire of his own. 
+
+Channis hummed softly to himself. He did not doubt what this was all about. The Second 
+Foundation, naturally! That all-embracing bogey, the mere consideration of which had thrown 
+the Mule back from his policy of limitless expansion into static caution. The official term was - 
+"consolidation." 
+
+Now there were rumors - you couldn't stop rumors. The Mule was to begin the offensive once 
+more. The Mule had discovered the whereabouts of the Second Foundation, and would attack 
+The Mule had come to an agreement with the Second Foundation and divided the Galaxy. The 
+Mule had decided the Second Foundation did not exist and would take over all the Galaxy. 
+
+
+
+No use listing all the varieties one heard in the anterooms. It was not even the first time such 
+rumors had circulated. But now they seemed to have more body in them, and all the free, 
+expansive Souls Who thrived on war, military adventure, and political chaos and withered in 
+times of stability and stagnant peace were joyful. 
+
+Bail Channis was one of these. He did not fear the mysterious Second Foundation. For that 
+matter, he did not fear the Mule, and boasted of it. Some, perhaps, who disapproved of one at 
+once so young and so well-off, waited darkly for the reckoning with the gay ladies' man who 
+employed his wit openly at the expense of the Mule's physical appearance and sequestered 
+life. None dared join him and few dared laugh, but when nothing happened to him, his 
+reputation rose accordingly. 
+
+Channis was improvising words to the tune he was humming. Nonsense words with the 
+recurrent refrain: "Second Foundation threatens the Nation and all of Creation." 
+
+He was at the palace. 
+
+The huge, smooth door swung massively open at his approach and he entered. He stepped on 
+to the wide, sweeping ramp that moved upward under him. He rose swiftly in the noiseless 
+elevator. He stood before the small plain door of the Mule's own room in the highest glitter of 
+the palace spires. 
+
+It opened- 
+
+The man who had no name other than the Mule, and no title other than First Citizen looked out 
+through the one-way transparency of the wall to the light and lofty city on the horizon. 
+
+In the darkening twilight, the stars were emerging, and not one but owed allegiance to him. 
+
+He smiled with fleeting bitterness at the thought. The allegiance they owed was to a personality 
+few had ever seen. 
+
+He was not a man to look at, the Mule - not a man to look at without derision. Not more than 
+one hundred and twenty pounds was stretched out into his five-foot-eight length. His limbs were 
+bony stalks that jutted out of his scrawniness in graceless angularity. And his thin face was 
+nearly drowned out in the prominence of a fleshy beak that thrust three inches outward. 
+
+Only his eyes played false with the general farce that was the Mule. In their softness - a 
+strange softness for the Galaxy's greatest conqueror - sadness was never entirely subdued. 
+
+In the city was to be found all the gaiety of a luxurious capital on a luxurious world. He might 
+have established his capital on the Foundation, the strongest of his now-conquered enemies, 
+but it was far out on the very rim of the Galaxy. Kalgan, more centrally located, with a long 
+tradition as aristocracy's playground, suited him better - strategically. 
+
+But in its traditional gaiety, enhanced by unheard-of prosperity, he found no peace. 
+
+They feared him and obeyed him and, perhaps, even respected him - from a goodly distance. 
+But who could look at him without contempt? Only those he had Converted. And of what value 
+was their artificial loyalty? It lacked flavor. He might have adopted titles, and enforced ritual and 
+
+
+
+invented elaborations, but even that would have changed nothing. Better - or at least, no worse 
+
+- to be simply the First Citizen - and to hide himself. 
+
+There was a sudden surge of rebellion within him - strong and brutal. Not a portion of the 
+Galaxy must be denied him, For five years he had remained silent and buried here on Kalgan 
+because of the eternal, misty, space-ridden menace of the unseen, unheard, unknown Second 
+Foundation. Fie was thirty-two. Not old - but he felt old. His body, whatever its mutant mental 
+powers, was physically weak. 
+
+Every star! Every star he could see - and every star he couldnt see. It must all be his! 
+
+Revenge on all. On a humanity of which he wasn't a part. On a Galaxy in which he didn't fit. 
+
+The cool, overhead warning light flickered. Fie could follow the progress of the man who had 
+entered the palace, and simultaneously, as though his mutant sense had been enhanced and 
+sensitized in the lonely twilight, he felt the wash of emotional content touch the fibers of his 
+brain. 
+
+Fie recognized the identity without an effort. It was Pritcher. 
+
+Captain Pritcher of the one-time Foundation. The Captain Pritcher who had been ignored and 
+passed over by the bureaucrats of that decaying government. The Captain Pritcher whose job 
+as petty spy he had wiped out and whom he had lifted from its slime. The Captain Pritcher 
+whom he had made first colonel and then general; whose scope of activity he had made 
+Galaxywide. 
+
+The now-General Pritcher who was, iron rebel though he began, completely loyal. And yet with 
+all that, not loyal because of benefits gained, not loyal out of gratitude, not loyal as a fair return 
+
+- but loyal only through the artifice of Conversion. 
+
+The Mule was conscious of that strong unalterable surface layer of loyalty and love that colored 
+every swirl and eddy of the emotionality of Flan Pritcher - the layer he had himself implanted 
+five years before. Far underneath there were the original traces of stubborn individuality, 
+impatience of rule, idealism - but even he, himself, could scarcely detect them any longer. 
+
+The door behind him opened, and he turned. The transparency of the wall faded to opacity, and 
+the purple evening light gave way to the whitely blazing glow of atomic power. 
+
+Flan Pritcher took the seat indicated. There was neither bowing, nor kneeling nor the use of 
+honorifics in private audiences with the Mule. The Mule was merely "First Citizen." Fie was 
+addressed as "sir." You sat in his presence, and you could turn your back on him if it so 
+happened that you did. 
+
+To Flan Pritcher this was all evidence of the sure and confident power of the man. Fie was 
+warmly satisfied with it. 
+
+The Mule said: "Your final report reached me yesterday. I can't deny that I find it somewhat 
+depressing, Pritcher." 
+
+The general's eyebrows closed upon each other: "Yes, I imagine so - but I don't see to what 
+
+
+
+other conclusions I could have come. There just isn't any Second Foundation, sir." 
+
+Arid the Mule considered and then slowly shook his head, as he had done many a time before: 
+"There's the evidence of Ebling Mis. There is always the evidence of Ebling Mis." 
+
+It was not a new story. Pritcher said without qualification: "Mis may have been the greatest 
+psychologist of the Foundation, but he was a baby compared to Hari Seldon. At the time he 
+was investigating Seldon's works, he was under the artificial stimulation of your own brain 
+control. You may have pushed him too far. Fie might have been wrong. Sir, he must have been 
+wrong." 
+
+The Mule sighed, his lugubrious face thrust forward on its thin stalk of a neck. "If only he had 
+lived another minute. Fie was on the point of telling me where the Second Foundation was. Fie 
+knew, I'm telling you. I need not have retreated. I need not have waited and waited. So much 
+time lost. Five years gone for nothing." 
+
+Pritcher could not have been censorious over the weak longing of his ruler; his controlled 
+mental make-up forbade that. Fie was disturbed instead; vaguely uneasy. Fie said: "But what 
+alternative explanation can there possibly be, sir? Five times I've gone out. You yourself have 
+plotted the routes. And I've left no asteroid unturned. It was three hundred years ago that FHari 
+Seldon of the old Empire supposedly established two Foundations to act as nuclei of a new 
+Empire to replace the dying old one. One hundred years after Seldon, the First Foundation - 
+the one we know so well - was known through all the Periphery. One hundred fifty years after 
+Seldon - at the time of the last battle with the old Empire - it was known throughout the Galaxy. 
+And now it's three hundred years - and where should this mysterious Second be? In no eddy of 
+the Galactic stream has it been heard of." 
+
+"Ebling Mis said it kept itself secret. Only secrecy can turn its weakness to strength." 
+
+"Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well." 
+
+The Mule looked up, large eyes sharp and wary. "No. It does exist." A bony finger pointed 
+sharply. "There is going to be a slight change in tactics." 
+
+Pritcher frowned. "You plan to leave yourself? I would scarcely advise it." 
+
+"No, of course not. You will have to go out once again - one last time. But with another in joint 
+command." 
+
+There was a silence, and Pritcher's voice was hard, "Who, Sir?" 
+
+"There's a young man here in Kalgan. Bail Channis." 
+
+"I've never heard of him, Sir." 
+
+"No, I imagine not. But he's got an agile mind, he's ambitious - and he's not Converted." 
+
+Pritcher's long jaw trembled for a bare instant, "I fail to see the advantage in that." 
+
+"There is one, Pritcher. You're a resourceful and experienced man. You have given me good 
+service. But you are Converted. Your motivation is simply an enforced and helpless loyalty to 
+
+
+
+myself. When you lost your native motivations, you lost something, some subtle drive, that I 
+cannot possibly replace." 
+
+"I don't feel that, Sir," said Pritcher grimly. "I recall myself quite well as I was in the days when I 
+was an enemy of yours. I feel none the inferior." 
+
+"Naturally not," and the Mule’s mouth twitched into a smile. "Your judgment in this matter is 
+scarcely objective. This Channis, now, is ambitious - for himself. He is completely trustworthy - 
+out of no loyalty but to himself. He knows that it is on my coattails that he rides and he would do 
+anything to increase my power that the ride might be long and far and that the destination might 
+be glorious. If he goes with you, there is just that added push behind his seeking - that push for 
+himself.' 
+
+"Then," said Pritcher. still insistent, "why not remove my own Conversion, if you think that will 
+improve me. I can scarcely be mistrusted, now." 
+
+"That never, Pritcher. While you are within arm's reach, or blaster reach, of myself, you will 
+remain firmly held in Conversion. If I were to release you this minute, I would be dead the next." 
+
+The general's nostrils flared. "I am hurt that you should think so." 
+
+"I don't mean to hurt you, but it is impossible for you to realize what your feelings would be if 
+free to form themselves along the lines of your natural motivation. The human mind resents 
+control. The ordinary human hypnotist cannot hypnotize a person against his will for that 
+reason. I can, because I'm not a hypnotist, and, believe me, Pritcher, the resentment that you 
+cannot show and do not even know you possess is something I wouldn't want to face." 
+
+Pritcher's head bowed. Futility wrenched him and left him gray and haggard inside. He said with 
+an effort, "But how can you trust this man. I mean, completely - as you can trust me in my 
+Conversion." 
+
+"Well, I suppose I can't entirely. That is why you must go with him. You see, Pritcher," and the 
+Mule buried himself in the large armchair against the soft back of which he looked like an 
+angularly animated toothpick, "if he should stumble on the Second Foundation - if it should 
+occur to him that an arrangement with them might be more profitable than with me - You 
+understand?" 
+
+A profoundly satisfied light blazed in Pritcher's eyes. "That is better, Sir." 
+
+"Exactly. But remember, he must have a free rein as far as possible." 
+
+"Certainly." 
+
+"And ... uh ... Pritcher. The young man is handsome, pleasant and extremely charming. Don't 
+let him fool you. He's a dangerous and unscrupulous character. Don't get in his way unless 
+you're prepared to meet him properly. That's all." 
+
+The Mule was alone again. He let the lights die and the wall before him kicked to transparency 
+again. The sky was purple now, and the city was a smudge of light on the horizon. 
+
+What was it all for? And if he were the master of all there was - what then? Would it really stop 
+
+
+
+men like Pritcher. from being straight and tall, self-confident, strong? Would Bail Channis lose 
+his looks? Would he himself be other than he was? 
+
+He cursed his doubts. What was he really after? 
+
+The cool, overhead warning light flickered. He could follow the progress of the man who had 
+entered the palace and, almost against his will, he felt the soft wash of emotional content touch 
+the fibers of his brain. 
+
+He recognized the identity without an effort. It was Channis. Here the Mule saw no uniformity, 
+but the primitive diversity of a strong mind, untouched and unmolded except by the manifold 
+disorganizations of the Universe. It writhed in floods and waves. There was caution on the 
+surface, a thin, smoothing effect, but with touches of cynical ribaldry in the hidden eddies of it. 
+And underneath there was the strong flow of self-interest and self-love, with a gush of cruel 
+humor here and there, and a deep, still pool of ambition underlying all. 
+
+The Mule felt that he could reach out and dam the current, wrench the pool from its basin and 
+turn it in another course, dry up one flow and begin another. But what of it? If he could bend 
+Channis’ curly head in the profoundest adoration, would that change his own grotesquerie that 
+made him shun the day and love the night, that made him a recluse inside an empire that was 
+unconditionally big? 
+
+The door behind him opened, and he turned. The transparency of the wall faded to opacity, and 
+the darkness gave way to the whitely blazing artifice of atomic power. 
+
+Bail Channis sat down lightly and said: "This is a not-quite-unexpected honor, sir." 
+
+The Mule rubbed his proboscis with all four fingers at once and sounded a bit irritable in his 
+response. "Why so, young man?" 
+
+"A hunch, I suppose. Unless I want to admit that I've been listening to rumors." 
+
+"Rumors? Which one of the several dozen varieties are you referring to?" 
+
+"Those that say a renewal of the Galactic Offensive is being planned. It is a hope with me that 
+such is true and that I might play an appropriate part." 
+
+"Then you think there is a Second Foundation?" 
+
+"Why not? It would make things so much more interesting." 
+
+"And you find interest in it as well?" 
+
+"Certainly. In the very mystery of it! What better subject could you find for conjecture? The 
+newspaper supplements are full of nothing else lately - which is probably significant. The 
+Cosmos had one of its feature writers compose a weirdie about a world consisting of beings of 
+pure mind - the Second Foundation, you see - who had developed mental force to energies 
+large enough to compete with any known to physical science. Spaceships could be blasted 
+light-years away, planets could be turned out of their orbits-" 
+
+"Interesting. Yes. But do you have any notions on the subject? Do you subscribe to this 
+
+
+
+mind-power notion?' 
+
+"Galaxy, no! Do you think creatures like that would stay on their own planet? No, sir. I think the 
+Second Foundation remains hidden because it is weaker than we think." 
+
+"In that case, I can explain myself very easily. How would you like to head an expedition to 
+locate the Second Foundation?" 
+
+For a moment Channis seemed caught up by the sudden rush of events at just a little greater 
+speed than he was prepared for. His tongue had apparently skidded to a halt in a lengthening 
+silence. 
+
+The Mule said dryly: "Well?" 
+
+Channis corrugated his forehead. "Certainly. But where am I to go? Have you any information 
+available?" 
+
+"General Pritcher will be with you-" 
+
+"Then I'm not to head it?" 
+
+"Judge for yourself when I'm done. Listen, you're not of the Foundation. You're a native of 
+Kalgan, aren't you? Yes. Well, then, your knowledge of the Seldon plan may be vague. When 
+the first Galactic Empire was falling, Hari Seldon and a group of psychohistorians, analyzing the 
+future course of history by mathematical tools no longer available in these degenerate times, 
+set up two Foundations, one at each end of the Galaxy, in such a way that the economic and 
+sociological forces that were slowly evolving, would make them serve as foci for the Second 
+Empire. Hari Seldon planned on a thousand years to accomplish that - and it would have taken 
+thirty thousand without the Foundations. But he couldn't count on me. I am a mutant and I am 
+unpredictable by psychohistory which can only deal with the average reactions of numbers. Do 
+you understand?" 
+
+"Perfectly, sir. But how does that involve me?' 
+
+"You'll understand shortly. I intend to unite the Galaxy now - and reach Seldon's thousand-year 
+goal in three hundred. One Foundation - the world of physical scientists - is still flourishing, 
+under me. Under the prosperity and order of the Union, the atomic weapons they have 
+developed are capable of dealing with anything in the Galaxy - except perhaps the Second 
+Foundation. So I must know more about it. General Pritcher is of the definite opinion that it 
+does not exist at all. I know otherwise." 
+
+Channis said delicately: "How do you know, sir?" 
+
+And the Mule's words were suddenly liquid indignation: "Because minds under my control have 
+been interfered with. Delicately! Subtly! But not so subtly that I couldn't notice. And these 
+interferences are increasing, and hitting valuable men at important times. Do you wonder now 
+that a certain discretion has kept me motionless these years? 
+
+"That is your importance. General Pritcher is the best man left me, so he is no longer safe. Of 
+course, he does not know that. But you are Unconverted and therefore not instantly detectable 
+
+
+
+as a Mule's man. You may fool the Second Foundation longer than one of my own men would - 
+perhaps just sufficiently longer. Do you understand?" 
+
+"Um-m-m. Yes. But pardon me, sir, if I question you. How are these men of yours disturbed, so 
+that I might detect change in General Pritcher, in case any occurs. Are they Unconverted 
+again? Do they become disloyal?" 
+
+"No. I told you it was subtle. It's more disturbing than that, because its harder to detect and 
+sometimes I have to wait before acting, uncertain whether a key man is being normally erratic 
+or has been tampered with. Their loyalty is left intact, but initiative and ingenuity are rubbed out. 
+I'm left with a perfectly normal person, apparently, but one completely useless. In the last year, 
+six have been so treated. Six of my best." A corner of his mouth lifted. "They're in charge of 
+training bases now - and my most earnest wishes go with them that no emergencies come up 
+for them to decide upon." 
+
+"Suppose, sir ... suppose it were not the Second Foundation. What if it were another, such as 
+yourself - another mutant?" 
+
+"The planning is too careful, too long range. A single man would be in a greater hurry. No, it is a 
+world, and you are to be my weapon against it." 
+
+Channis' eyes shone as he said: "I'm delighted at the chance." 
+
+But the Mule caught the sudden emotional upwelling. He said: "Yes, apparently it occurs to you, 
+that you will perform a unique service, worthy of a unique reward - perhaps even that of being 
+my successor. Quite so. But there are unique punishments, too, you know. My emotional 
+gymnastics are not confined to the creation of loyalty alone." 
+
+And the little smile on his thin lips was grim, as Channis leaped out of his seat in horror. 
+
+For just an instant, just one, flashing instant, Channis had felt the pang of an overwhelming 
+grief close over him. It had slammed down with a physical pain that had blackened his mind 
+unbearably, and then lifted. Now nothing was left but the strong wash of anger. 
+
+The Mule said: "Anger won't help ... yes, you're covering it up now, aren't you? But I can see it. 
+So just remember - that sort of business can be made more intense and kept up. I've killed 
+men by emotional control, and there's no death crueler." 
+
+He paused: "That's all!" 
+
+The Mule was alone again. He let the lights die and the wall before him kicked to transparency 
+again. The sky was black, and the rising body of the Galactic Lens was spreading its 
+bespanglement across the velvet depths of space. 
+
+All that haze of nebula was a mass of stars so numerous that they melted one into the other 
+and left nothing but a cloud of light. 
+
+And all to be his— 
+
+And now but one last arrangement to make, and he could sleep. 
+
+
+
+FIRST INTERLUDE 
+
+
+The Executive Council of the Second Foundation was in session. To us they are merely voices. 
+Neither the exact scene of the meeting nor the identity of those present are essential at the 
+point. 
+
+Nor, strictly speaking, can we even consider an exact reproduction of any part of the session - 
+unless we wish to sacrifice completely even the minimum comprehensibility we have a right to 
+expect. 
+
+We deal here with psychologists - and not merely psychologists. Let us say, rather, scientists 
+with a psychological orientation. That is, men whose fundamental conception of scientific 
+philosophy is pointed in an entirely different direction from all of the orientations we know. The 
+"psychology" of scientists brought up among the axioms deduced from the observational habits 
+of physical science has only the vaguest relationship to PSYCFIOLOGY. 
+
+Which is about as far as I can go in explaining color to a blind man - with myself as blind as the 
+audience. 
+
+The point being made is that the minds assembled understood thoroughly the workings of each 
+other, not only by general theory but by the specific application over a long period of these 
+theories to particular individuals. Speech as known to us was unnecessary. A fragment of a 
+sentence amounted almost to long-winded redundancy. A gesture, a grunt, the curve of a facial 
+line - even a significantly timed pause yielded informational juice. 
+
+The liberty is taken, therefore, of freely translating a small portion of the conference into the 
+extremely specific word-combinations necessary to minds oriented from childhood to a physical 
+science philosophy, even at the risk of losing the more delicate nuances. 
+
+There was one "voice" predominant, and that belonged to the individual known simply as the 
+First Speaker. 
+
+Fie said: "It is apparently quite definite now as to what stopped the Mule in his first mad rush. I 
+can't say that the matter reflects credit upon ... well, upon the organization of the situation. 
+Apparently, he almost located us, by means of the artificially heightened brain-energy of what 
+they call a 'psychologist' on the First Foundation. This psychologist was killed just before he 
+could communicate his discovery to the Mule. The events leading to that killing were completely 
+fortuitous for all calculations below Phase Three. Suppose you take over." 
+
+It was the Fifth Speaker who was indicated by an inflection of the voice. Fie said, in grim 
+nuances: "It is certain that the situation was mishandled. We are, of course, highly vulnerable 
+under mass attack, particularly an attack led by such a mental phenomenon as the Mule. 
+
+Shortly after he first achieved Galactic eminence with the conquest of the First Foundation, half 
+a year after to be exact, he was on Trantor. Within another half year he would have been here 
+and the odds would have been stupendously against us - 96.3 plus or minus 0.05% to be 
+exact. We have spent considerable time analyzing the forces that stopped him. We know, of 
+course, what was driving him on so in the first place. The internal ramifications of his physical 
+deformity and mental uniqueness are obvious to all of us. Flowever, it was only through 
+penetration to Phase Three that we could determine - after the fact- tbe possibility of his 
+
+
+
+anomalous action in the presence of another human being who had an honest affection for him. 
+
+"And since such an anomalous action would depend upon the presence of such another human 
+being at the appropriate time, to that extent the whole affair was fortuitous. Our agents are 
+certain that it was a girl that killed the Mule's psychologist - a girl for whom the Mule felt trust 
+out of sentiment, and whom he, therefore, did not control mentally - simply because she liked 
+him. 
+
+"Since that event - and for those who want the details, a mathematical treatment of the subject 
+has been drawn up for the Central Library - which warned us, we have held the Mule off by 
+unorthodox methods with which we daily risk Seldon's entire scheme of history. That is all." 
+
+The First Speaker paused an instant to allow the individuals assembled to absorb the full 
+implications. He said: "The situation is then highly unstable. With Seldon's original scheme bent 
+to the fracture point - and I must emphasize that we have blundered badly in this whole matter, 
+in our horrible lack of foresight - we are faced with an irreversible breakdown of the Plan. Time 
+is passing us by. I think there is only one solution left us - and even that is risky. 
+
+"We must allow the Mule to find us - in a sense." 
+
+Another pause, in which he gathered the reactions, then: "I repeat - in a sense!" 
+
+2 
+
+Two Men without the Mule 
+
+The ship was in near-readiness. Nothing lacked, but the destination. The Mule had suggested a 
+return to Trantor - the world that was the bulk of an incomparable Galactic metropolis of the 
+hugest Empire mankind had ever known - the dead world that had been capital of all the stars. 
+
+Pritcher disapproved. It was an old path - sucked dry. 
+
+He found Bail Channis in the ship's navigation room. The young man's curly hair was just 
+sufficiently disheveled to allow a single curl to droop over the forehead - as if it had been 
+carefully placed there - and even teeth showed in a smile that matched it. Vaguely, the stiff 
+officer felt himself harden against the other. 
+
+Channis' excitement was evident, "Pritcher, it's too far a coincidence." 
+
+The general said coldly: "I’m not aware of the subject of conversation." 
+
+"Oh- Well, then drag up a chair, old man, and let’s get into it. I've been going over your notes. I 
+find them excellent." 
+
+"How ... pleasant that you do." 
+
+"But I’m wondering if you've come to the conclusions I have. Have you ever tried analyzing the 
+problem deductively? I mean, it's all very well to comb the stars at random, and to have done all 
+you did in five expeditions is quite a bit of star-hopping. That's obvious. But have you calculated 
+
+
+
+how long it would take to go through every known world at this rate?" 
+
+"Yes. Several times," Pritcher felt no urge to meet the young man halfway, but there was the 
+importance of filching the other's mind - the other's uncontrolled, and hence, unpredictable, 
+mind. 
+
+"Well, then, suppose we're analytical about it and try to decide just what we're looking for?" 
+
+"The Second Foundation," said Pritcher, grimly. 
+
+"A Foundation of psychologists," corrected Channis, "who are is weak in physical science as 
+the First Foundation was weak in psychology. Well, you're from the First Foundation, which I'm 
+not. The implications are probably obvious to you. We must find a world which rules by virtue of 
+mental skills, and yet which is very backwards scientifically." 
+
+"Is that necessarily so?" questioned Pritcher, quietly. "Our own ‘Union of Worlds' isn't 
+backwards scientifically, even though our ruler owes his strength to his mental powers." 
+
+"Because he has the skills of the First Foundation to draw upon," came the slightly impatient 
+answer, "and that is the only such reservoir of knowledge in the Galaxy. The Second 
+Foundation must live among the dry crumbs of the broken Galactic Empire. There are no 
+pickings there." 
+
+"So then you postulate mental power sufficient to establish their rule over a group of worlds and 
+physical helplessness as well?" 
+
+"Comparative physical helplessness. Against the decadent neighboring areas, they are 
+competent to defend themselves. Against the resurgent forces of the Mule, with his background 
+of a mature atomic economy, they cannot stand. Else, why is their location so well-hidden, both 
+at the start by the founder, Hari Seldon, and now by themselves. Your own First Foundation 
+made no secret of its existence and did not have it made for them, when they were an 
+undefended single city on a lonely planet three hundred years ago." 
+
+The smooth lines of Pritcher's dark face twitched sardonically. 'And now that you've finished 
+your deep analysis, would you like a list of all the kingdoms, republics, planet states and 
+dictatorships of one sort or another in that political wilderness out there that correspond to your 
+description and to several factors besides?" 
+
+"All this has been considered then?" Channis lost none of his brashness. 
+
+"You won't find it here, naturally, but we have a completely worked out guide to the political 
+units of the Opposing Periphery. Really, did you suppose the Mule would work entirely 
+hit-and-miss?" 
+
+"Well, then" and the young man's voice rose in a burst of energy, "what of the Oligarchy of 
+Tazenda?" 
+
+Pritcher touched his ear thoughtfully, "Tazenda? Oh, I think I know it. They're not in the 
+Periphery, are they? It seems to me they're fully a third of the way towards the center of the 
+Galaxy." 
+
+
+
+Yes. What of that? 
+
+
+"The records we have place the Second Foundation at the other end of the Galaxy. Space 
+knows it's the only thing we have to go on. Why talk of Tazenda anyway? Its angular deviation 
+from the First Foundation radian is only about one hundred ten to one hundred twenty degrees 
+anyway. Nowhere near one hundred eighty." 
+
+"There's another point in the records. The Second Foundation was established at 'Star's End.'" 
+"No such region in the Galaxy has ever been located." 
+
+"Because it was a local name, suppressed later for greater secrecy. Or maybe one invented for 
+the purpose by Seldon and his group. Yet there's some relationship between 'Star's End' and 
+'Tazenda,' don't you think?" 
+
+"A vague similarity in sound? Insufficient." 
+
+'Flave you ever been there?" 
+
+"No." 
+
+"Yet it is mentioned in your records." 
+
+"Where? Oh, yes, but that was merely to take on food and water. There was certainly nothing 
+remarkable about the world." 
+
+"Did you land at the ruling planet? The center of government?" 
+
+"I couldn't possibly say." 
+
+Channis brooded about it under the other's cold gaze. Then, "Would you look at the Lens with 
+me for a moment?" 
+
+"Certainly." 
+
+The Lens was perhaps the newest feature of the interstellar cruisers of the day. Actually, it was 
+a complicated calculating machine which could throw on a screen a reproduction of the night 
+sky as seen from any given point of the Galaxy. 
+
+Channis adjusted the co-ordinate points and the wall lights of the pilot room were extinguished. 
+In the dim red light at the control board of the Lens, Channis' face glowed ruddily. Pritcher sat in 
+the pilot seat, long legs crossed, face lost in the gloom. 
+
+Slowly, as the induction period passed, the points of light brightened on the screen. And then 
+they were thick and bright with the generously populated star-groupings of the Galaxy's center. 
+
+"This," explained Channis, "is the winter night-sky as seen from Trantor. That is the important 
+point that, as far as I know, has been neglected so far in your search. All intelligent orientation 
+must start from Trantor as zero point. Trantor was the capital of the Galactic Empire. Even 
+more so scientifically and culturally, than politically. And, therefore, the significance of any 
+descriptive name should stem, nine times out of ten, from a Trantorian orientation. You'll 
+remember in this connection that, although Seldon was from Helicon, towards the Periphery, 
+
+
+
+his group worked on Trantor itself." 
+
+"What is it you're trying to show me?" Pritcher's level voice plunged icily into the gathering 
+enthusiasm of the other. 
+
+"The map will explain it. Do you see the dark nebula?" The shadow of his arm fell upon the 
+screen, which took on the bespanglement of the Galaxy. The pointing finger ended on a tiny 
+patch of black that seemed a hole in the speckled fabric of light. "The stellagraphical records 
+call it Pelot's Nebula. Watch it. I'm going to expand the image." 
+
+Pritcher had watched the phenomenon of Lens Image expansion before but he still caught his 
+breath. It was like being at the visiplate of a spaceship storming through a horribly crowded 
+Galaxy without entering hyperspace. The stars diverged towards them from a common center, 
+flared outwards and tumbled off the edge of the screen. Single points became double, then 
+globular. Hazy patches dissolved into myriad points. And always that illusion of motion. 
+
+Channis spoke through it all, "You'll notice that we are moving along the direct line from Trantor 
+to Pelot's Nebula, so that in effect we are still looking at a stellar orientation equivalent to that of 
+Trantor. There is probably a slight error because of the gravitic deviation of light that I haven't 
+the math to calculate for, but I'm sure it can't be significant." 
+
+The darkness was spreading over the screen. As the rate of magnification slowed, the stars 
+slipped off the four ends of the screen in a regretful leave-taking. At the rims of the growing 
+nebula, the brilliant universe of stars shone abruptly in token for that light which was merely 
+hidden behind the swirling unradiating atom fragments of sodium and calcium that filled cubic 
+parsecs of space. 
+
+And Channis pointed again, "This has been called 'The Mouth' by the inhabitants of that region 
+of space. And that is significant because it is only from the Trantorian orientation that it looks 
+like a mouth." What he indicated was a rift in the body of the Nebula, shaped like a ragged, 
+grinning mouth in profile, outlined by the glazing glory of the starlight with which it was filled. 
+
+"Follow The Mouth.'" said Channis. "Follow 'The Mouth' towards the gullet as it narrows down to 
+a thin, splintering line of light. 
+
+Again the screen expanded a trifle, until the Nebula stretched away from "The Mouth" to block 
+off all the screen but that narrow trickle and Channis' finger silently followed it down, to where it 
+straggled to a halt, and then, as his finger continued moving onward, to a spot where one single 
+star sparked lonesomely; and there his finger halted, for beyond that was blackness, 
+unrelieved. 
+
+"'Star's End,'" said the young man, simply. "The fabric of the Nebula is thin there and the light of 
+that one star finds its way through in just that one direction - to shine on Trantor." 
+
+"You're tying to tell me that-" the voice of the Mule's general died in suspicion. 
+
+"I'm not trying. That is Tazenda - Star's End." 
+
+The lights went on. The Lens flicked off. Pritcher reached Channis in three long strides, "What 
+made you think of this?" 
+
+
+
+And Channis leaned back in his chair with a queerly puzzled expression on his face. "It was 
+accidental. I'd like to take intellectual credit for this, but it was only accidental. In any case, 
+however it happens, it fits. According to our references, Tazenda is an oligarchy. It rules 
+twenty-seven inhabited planets. It is not advanced scientifically. And most of all, it is an obscure 
+world that has adhered to a strict neutrality in the local politics of that stellar region, and is not 
+expansionist. I think we ought to see it." 
+
+"Have you informed the Mule of this?" 
+
+"No. Nor shall we. We're in space now, about to make the first hop." 
+
+Pritcher, in sudden horror, sprang to the visiplate. Cold space met his eyes when he adjusted it. 
+He gazed fixedly at the view, then turned. Automatically, his hand reached for the hard, 
+comfortable curve of the butt of his blaster. 
+
+"By whose order?" 
+
+"By my order, general"- it was the first time Channis had ever used the other's title -"while I 
+was engaging you here. You probably felt no acceleration, because it came at the moment I 
+was expanding the field of the Lens and you undoubtedly imagined it to be an illusion of the 
+apparent star motion." 
+
+"Why? Just what are you doing? What was the point of your nonsense about Tazenda, then?" 
+
+"That was no nonsense. I was completely serious. We're going there. We left today because 
+we were scheduled to leave three days from now. General, you don't believe there is a Second 
+Foundation, and I do. You are merely following the Mule's orders without faith; I recognize a 
+serious danger. The Second Foundation has now had five years to prepare. How they've 
+prepared, I don't know, but what if they have agents on Kalgan. If I carry about in my mind the 
+knowledge of the whereabouts of the Second Foundation, they may discover that. My life might 
+be no longer safe, and I have a great affection for my life. Even on a thin and remote possibility 
+such as that, I would rather play safe. So no one knows of Tazenda but you, and you found out 
+only after we were out in space. And even so, there is the question of the crew." Channis was 
+smiling again, ironically, in obviously complete control of the situation. 
+
+Pritcher's hand fell away from his blaster, and for a moment a vague discomfort pierced him. 
+What kept him from action? What deadened him ? There was a time when he was a rebellious 
+and unpromoted captain of the First Foundation's commercial empire, when it would have been 
+himself rather than Channis who would have taken prompt and daring action such as that. Was 
+the Mule right? Was his controlled mind so concerned with obedience as to lose initiative? He 
+felt a thickening despondency drive him down into a strange lassitude. 
+
+He said, "Well done! However, you will consult me in the future before making decisions of this 
+nature." 
+
+The flickering signal caught his attention. 
+
+"That's the engine room," said Channis, casually. "They warmed up on five minutes' notice and 
+I asked them to let me know if there was any trouble. Want to hold the fort?" 
+
+
+
+Pritcher nodded mutely, and cogitated in the sudden loneliness on the evils of approaching fifty. 
+The visiplate was sparsely starred. The main body of the Galaxy misted one end. What if he 
+were free of the Mule's influence- 
+
+But he recoiled in horror at the thought. 
+
+Chief Engineer Huxlani looked sharply at the young, ununiformed man who carried himself with 
+the assurance of a Fleet officer and seemed to be in a position of authority. Huxlani, as a 
+regular Fleet man from the days his chin had dripped milk, generally confused authority with 
+specific insignia. 
+
+But the Mule had appointed this man, and the Mule was, of course, the last word. The only 
+word for that matter. Not even subconsciously did he question that. Emotional control went 
+deep. 
+
+He handed Channis the little oval object without a word. 
+
+Channis hefted it, and smiled engagingly. 
+
+"You're a Foundation man, aren't you, chief?" 
+
+"Yes, sir. I served in the Foundation Fleet eighteen years before the First Citizen took over." 
+"Foundation training in engineering?" 
+
+"Qualified Technician, First Class - Central School on Anacreon." 
+
+"Good enough. And you found this on the communication circuit, where I asked you to look?" 
+"Yes, Sir." 
+
+"Does it belong there?" 
+
+"No, Sir." 
+
+"Then what is it?" 
+
+"A hypertracer, sir." 
+
+"That's not enough. I'm not a Foundation man. What is it?" 
+
+"It's a device to allow the ship to be traced through hyperspace." 
+
+"In other words we can be followed anywhere." 
+
+"Yes, Sir." 
+
+"All right. It's a recent invention, isn't it? It was developed by one of the Research Institutes set 
+up by the First Citizen, wasn't it?" 
+
+"I believe so, Sir." 
+
+"And its workings are a government secret. Right?" 
+
+
+
+"I, believe so, Sir." 
+
+"Yet here it is. Intriguing." 
+
+Channis tossed the hypertracer methodically from hand to hand for a few seconds. Then, 
+sharply, he held it out, "Take it, then, and put it back exactly where you found it and exactly how 
+you found it. Understand? And then forget this incident. Entirely!" 
+
+The chief choked down his near-automatic salute, turned sharply and left. 
+
+The ship bounded through the Galaxy, its path a wide-spaced dotted line through the stars. The 
+dots, referred to, were the scant stretches of ten to sixty light-seconds spent in normal space 
+and between them stretched the hundred-and-up light-year gaps that represented the "hops" 
+through hyperspace. 
+
+Bail Channis sat at the control panel of the Lens and felt again the involuntary surge of 
+near-worship at the contemplation of it. 
+
+He was not a Foundation man and the interplay of forces at the twist of a knob or the breaking 
+of a contact was not second nature to him. 
+
+Not that the Lens ought quite to bore even a Foundation man. Within its unbelievably compact 
+body were enough electronic circuits to pin- point accurately a hundred million separate stars in 
+exact relationship to each other. And as if that were not a feat in itself, it was further capable of 
+translating any given portion of the Galactic Field along any of the three spatial axes or to rotate 
+any portion of the Field about a center. 
+
+It was because of that, that the Lens had performed a near-revolution in interstellar travel. In 
+the younger days of interstellar travel, the calculation of each "hop" through hyperspace meant 
+any amount of work from a day to a week - and the larger portion of such work was the more or 
+less precise calculation of "Ship's Position" on the Galactic scale of reference. Essentially that 
+meant the accurate observation of at least three widely-spaced stars, the position of which, with 
+reference to the arbitrary Galactic triple-zero, were known. 
+
+And it is the word "known," that is the catch. To any who know the star field well from one 
+certain reference point, stars are as individual as people. Jump ten parsecs, however, and not 
+even your own sun is recognizable. It may not even be visible. 
+
+The answer was, of course, spectroscopic analysis. For centuries, the main object of interstellar 
+engineering was the analysis of the "light signature" of more and more stars in greater and 
+greater detail. With this, and the growing precision of the "hop" itself, standard routes of travel 
+through the Galaxy were adopted and interstellar travel became less of an art and more of a 
+science. 
+
+And yet, even under the Foundation with improved calculating machines and a new method of 
+mechanically scanning the star field for a known "light signature," it sometimes took days to 
+locate three stars and then calculate position in regions not previously familiar to the pilot. 
+
+It was the Lens that changed all that. For one thing it required only a single known star. For 
+another, even a space tyro such as Channis could operate it. 
+
+
+
+The nearest sizable star at the moment was Vincetori, according to "hop" calculations, and on 
+the visiplate now, a bright star was centered. Channis hoped that it was Vincetori. 
+
+The field screen of the Lens was thrown directly next that of the visiplate and with careful 
+fingers, Channis punched out the co-ordinates of Vincetori. He closed a relay, and the star field 
+sprang to bright view. In it, too, a bright star was centered, but otherwise there seemed no 
+relationship. He adjusted the Lens along the Z-Axis and expanded the Field to where the 
+photometer showed both centered stars to be of equal brightness. 
+
+Channis looked for a second star, sizably bright, on the visiplate and found one on the field 
+screen to correspond. Slowly, he rotated the screen to similar angular deflection. He twisted his 
+mouth and rejected the result with a grimace. Again he rotated and another bright star was 
+brought into position, and a third. And then he grinned. That did it. Perhaps a specialist with 
+trained relationship perception might have clicked first try, but he'd settle for three. 
+
+That was the adjustment. In the final step, the two fields overlapped and merged into a sea of 
+not-quite-rightness. Most of the stars were close doubles. But the fine adjustment did not take 
+long. The double stars melted together, one field remained, and the "Ship's Position" could now 
+be read directly off the dials. The entire procedure had taken less than half an hour. 
+
+Channis found Han Pritcher in his private quarters. The general was quite apparently preparing 
+for bed. He looked up. 
+
+"News?" 
+
+"Not particularly. We’ll be at Tazenda in another hop." 
+
+"I know." 
+
+"I don't want to bother you if you're turning in, but have you looked through the film we picked 
+up in Cil?" 
+
+Han Pritcher cast a disparaging look at the article in question, where it lay in its black case 
+upon his low bookshelf, "Yes." 
+
+"And what do you think?" 
+
+"I think that if there was ever any science to History, it has been quite lost in this region of the 
+Galaxy." 
+
+Channis grinned broadly, "I know what you mean. Rather barren, isn't it?" 
+
+"Not if you enjoy personal chronicles of rulers. Probably unreachable, I should say, in both 
+directions. Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or 
+white according to the interests of the writer. I find it all remarkably useless." 
+
+"But there is talk about Tazenda. That's the point I tried to make when I gave you the film. It's 
+the only one I could find that even mentioned them." 
+
+"All right. They have good rulers and bad. They've conquered a few planets, won some battles, 
+lost a few. There is nothing distinctive about them. I don't think much of your theory, Channis." 
+
+
+
+"But you've missed a few points. Didn't you notice that they never formed coalitions? They 
+always remained completely outside the politics of this corner of the star swarm. As you say, 
+they conquered a few planets, but then they stopped - and that without any startling defeat of 
+consequence. It's just as if they spread out enough to protect themselves, but not enough to 
+attract attention." 
+
+"Very well," came the unemotional response. "I have no objection to landing. At the worst - a 
+little lost time." 
+
+"Oh, no. At the worst - complete defeat. If it is the Second Foundation. Remember it would be 
+a world of space-knows-how-many Mules." 
+
+"What do you plan to do?" 
+
+"Land on some minor subject planet. Find out as much as we can about Tazenda first, then 
+improvise from that." 
+
+"All right. No objection. If you don't mind now, I would like the light out." 
+
+Channis left with a wave of his hand. 
+
+And in the darkness of a tiny room in an island of driving metal lost in the vastness of space, 
+General Flan Pritcher remained awake, following the thoughts that led him through such 
+fantastic reaches. 
+
+If everything he had so painfully decided were true - and how all the facts were beginning to fit 
+- then Tazenda was the Second Foundation. There was no way out. But how? Flow? 
+
+Could it be Tazenda? An ordinary world? One without distinction? A slum lost amid the 
+wreckage of an Empire? A splinter among the fragments? Fie remembered, as from a distance, 
+the Mule's shriveled face and his thin voice as he used to speak of the old Foundation 
+psychologist, Ebling Mis, the one man who had - maybe - learned the secret of the Second 
+Foundation. 
+
+Pritcher recalled the tension of the Mule's words: "It was as if astonishment had overwhelmed 
+Mis. It was as though something about the Second Foundation had surpassed all his 
+expectations, had driven in a direction completely different from what he might have assumed. 
+
+If I could only have read his thoughts rather than his emotions. Yet the emotions were plain - 
+and above everything else was this vast surprise." 
+
+Surprise was the keynote. Something supremely astonishing! And now came this boy, this 
+grinning youngster, glibly joyful about Tazenda and its undistinguished subnormality. And he 
+had to be right. Fie had\o. Otherwise, nothing made sense. 
+
+Pritcher's last conscious thought had a touch of grimness. That hypertracer along the Etheric 
+tube was still there. Fie had checked it one hour back, with Channis well out of the way. 
+
+SECOND INTERLUDE 
+
+It was a casual meeting in the anteroom of the Council Chamber - just a few moments before 
+
+
+
+passing into the Chamber to take up the business of the day - and the few thoughts flashed 
+back and forth quickly. 
+
+"So the Mule is on his way." 
+
+"That's what I hear, too. Risky! Mighty risky!" 
+
+"Not if affairs adhere to the functions set up." 
+
+"The Mule is not an ordinary man - and it is difficult to manipulate his chosen instruments 
+without detection by him. The controlled minds are difficult to touch. They say he's caught on to 
+a few cases." 
+
+"Yes, I don't see how that can be avoided." 
+
+"Uncontrolled minds are easier. But so few are in positions of authority under him-" 
+
+They entered the Chamber. Others of the Second Foundation followed them. 
+
+3 
+
+Two Men and a Peasant 
+
+Rossem is one of those marginal worlds usually neglected in Galactic history and scarcely ever 
+obtruding itself upon the notice of men of the myriad happier planets. 
+
+In the latter days of the Galactic Empire, a few political prisoners had inhabited its wastes, while 
+an observatory and a small Naval garrison served to keep it from complete desertion. Later, in 
+the evil days of strife, even before the time of Hari Seldon, the weaker sort of men, tired of the 
+periodic decades of insecurity and danger; weary of sacked planets and a ghostly succession 
+of ephemeral emperors making their way to the Purple for a few wicked, fruitless years - these 
+men fled the populated centers and sought shelter in the barren nooks of the Galaxy. 
+
+Along the chilly wastes of Rossem, villages huddled. Its sun was a small ruddy niggard that 
+clutched its dribble of heat to itself, while snow beat thinly down for nine months of the year. 
+
+The tough native grain lay dormant in the soil those snow-filled months, then grew and ripened 
+in almost panic speed, when the sun's reluctant radiation brought the temperature to nearly 
+fifty. 
+
+Small, goatlike animals cropped the grasslands, kicking the thin snow aside with tiny, tri-hooved 
+feet. 
+
+The men of Rossem had, thus, their bread and their milk - and when they could spare an 
+animal - even their meat. The darkly ominous forests that gnarled their way over half of the 
+equatorial region of the planet supplied a tough, fine-grained wood for housing. This wood, 
+together with certain furs and minerals, was even worth exporting, and the ships of the Empire 
+came at times and brought in exchange farm machinery, atomic heaters, even televisor sets. 
+The last was not really incongruous, for the long winter imposed a lonely hibernation upon the 
+peasant. 
+
+
+
+Imperial history flowed past the peasants of Rossem. The trading ships might bring news in 
+impatient spurts; occasionally new fugitives would arrive - at one time, a relatively large group 
+arrived in a body and remained - and these usually had news of the Galaxy. 
+
+It was then that the Rossemites learned of sweeping battles and decimated populations or of 
+tyrannical emperors and rebellious viceroys. And they would sigh and shake their heads, and 
+draw their fur collars closer about their bearded faces as they sat about the village square in 
+the weak sun and philosophized on the evil of men. 
+
+Then after a while, no trading ships arrived at all, and life grew harder. Supplies of foreign, soft 
+food, of tobacco, of machinery stopped. Vague word from scraps gathered on the televisor 
+brought increasingly disturbing news. And finally it spread that Trantor had been sacked. The 
+great capital world of all the Galaxy, the splendid, storied, unapproachable and incomparable 
+home of the emperors had been despoiled and ruined and brought to utter destruction. 
+
+It was something inconceivable, and to many of the peasants of Rossem, scratching away at 
+their fields, it might well seem that the end of the Galaxy was at hand. 
+
+And then one day not unlike other days a ship arrived again. The old men of each village 
+nodded wisely and lifted their old eyelids to whisper that thus it had been in their father's time - 
+but it wasn't, quite. 
+
+This ship was not an Imperial ship. The glowing Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire was missing 
+from its prow. It was a stubby affair made of scraps of older ships - and the men within called 
+themselves soldiers of Tazenda. 
+
+The peasants were confused. They had not heard of Tazenda, but they greeted the soldiers 
+nevertheless in the traditional fashion of hospitality. The newcomers inquired closely as to the 
+nature of the planet, the number of its inhabitants, the number of its cities - a word mistaken by 
+the peasants to mean "villages" to the confusion of all concerned - its type of economy and so 
+on. 
+
+Other ships came and proclamations were issued all over the world that Tazenda was now the 
+ruling world, that tax-collecting stations would be established girdling the equator - the 
+inhabited region - that percentages of grain and furs according to certain numerical formulae 
+would be collected annually. 
+
+The Rossemites had blinked solemnly, uncertain of the word "taxes." When collection time 
+came, many had paid, or had stood by in confusion while the uniformed, other-wordlings loaded 
+the harvested corn and the pelts on to the broad ground-cars. 
+
+Here and there indignant peasants banded together and brought out ancient hunting weapons 
+- but of this nothing ever came. Grumblingly they had disbanded when the men of Tazenda 
+came and with dismay watched their hard struggle for existence become harder. 
+
+But a new equilibrium was reached. The Tazendian governor lived dourly in the village of 
+Gentri, from which all Rossemites were barred. He and the officials under him were dim 
+otherworld beings that rarely impinged on the Rossemite ken. The tax-farmers, Rossemites in 
+the employ of Tazenda, came periodically, but they were creatures of custom now - and the 
+
+
+
+peasant had learned how to hide his grain and drive his cattle into the forest, and refrain from 
+having his hut appear too ostentatiously prosperous. Then with a dull, uncomprehending 
+expression he would greet all sharp questioning as to his assets by merely pointing at what 
+they could see. 
+
+Even that grew less, and taxes decreased, almost as If Tazenda wearied of extorting pennies 
+from such a world. 
+
+Trading sprang up and perhaps Tazenda found that more profitable. The men of Rossem no 
+longer received in exchange the polished creations of the Empire, but even Tazendian 
+machines and Tazendian food was better than the native stuff. And there were clothes for the 
+women of other than gray home-spun, which was a very important thing. 
+
+So once again, Galactic history glided past peacefully enough, and the peasants scrabbled life 
+out of the hard soil. 
+
+Narovi blew into his beard as he stepped out of his cottage. 
+
+The first snows were sifting across the hard ground and the sky was a dull, overcast pink. He 
+squinted carefully upward and decided that no real storm was in sight. He could travel to Gentri 
+without much trouble and get rid of his surplus grain in return for enough canned foods to last 
+the winter. 
+
+He roared back through the door, which he opened a crack for the purpose: "Has the car been 
+fed its fuel, yunker?" 
+
+A voice shouted from within, and then Narovi's oldest son, his short, red beard not yet 
+completely outgrown its boyish sparseness, joined him. 
+
+"The car," he said, sullenly, "is fueled and rides well, but for the bad condition of the axles. For 
+that I am of no blame. I have told you it needs expert repairs." 
+
+The old man stepped back and surveyed his son through lowering eyebrows, then thrust his 
+hairy chin outward: "And is the fault mine? Where and in what manner may I achieve expert 
+repairs? Has the harvest then been anything but scanty for five years? Have my herds escaped 
+the pest? Have the pelts climbed of themselves-" 
+
+"Narovi!" The well-known voice from within stopped him in mid-word. He grumbled, "Well, well - 
+and now your mother must insert herself into the affairs of a father and his son. Bring out the 
+car, and see to it that the storage trailers are securely attached." 
+
+He pounded his gloved hands together, and looked upward again. The dimly-ruddy clouds were 
+gathering and the gray sky that showed in the rifts bore no warmth. The sun was hidden. 
+
+He was at the point of looking away, when his dropping eyes caught and his finger almost 
+automatically rose on high while his mouth fell open in a shout, in complete disregard of the 
+cold air. 
+
+"Wife," he called vigorously, "Old woman - come here." 
+
+An indignant head appeared at a window. The woman's eyes followed his finger, gaped. With a 
+
+
+
+cry, she dashed down the wooden stairs, snatching up an old wrap and a square of linen as 
+she went. She emerged with the linen wrapped insecurely over her head and ears, and the 
+wrap dangling from her shoulders. 
+
+She snuffled: "It is a ship from outer space." 
+
+And Narovi remarked impatiently: "And what else could it be? We have visitors, old woman, 
+visitors!" 
+
+The ship was sinking slowly to a landing on the bare frozen field in the northern portions of 
+Narovi's farm. 
+
+"But what shall we do?" gasped the woman. "Can we offer these people hospitality? Is the dirt 
+floor of our hovel to be theirs and the pickings of last week's hoecake?" 
+
+"Shall they then go to our neighbors?" Narovi purpled past the crimson induced by the cold and 
+his arms in their sleek fur covering lunged out and seized the woman's brawny shoulders. 
+
+"Wife of my soul," he purred, "you will take the two chairs from our room downstairs; you will 
+see that a fat youngling is slaughtered and roasted with tubers; you will bake a fresh hoecake. I 
+go now to greet these men of power from outer space ... and ... and-" He paused, placed his 
+great cap awry, and scratched hesitantly. "Yes, I shall bring my jug of brewed grain as well. 
+Hearty drink is pleasant." 
+
+The woman's mouth had flapped idly during this speech. Nothing came out. And when that 
+stage passed, it was only a discordant screech that issued. 
+
+Narovi lifted a finger, "Old woman, what was it the village Elders said a se'nnight since? Eh? 
+
+Stir your memory. The Elders went from farm to farm - themselves! Imagine the importance of 
+it! - to ask us that should any ships from outer space land, they were to be informed 
+immediately on the orders of the governor. 
+
+"And now shall I not seize the opportunity to win into the good graces of those in power? 
+
+Regard that ship. Have you ever seen its like? These men from the outer worlds are rich, great. 
+The governor himself sends such urgent messages concerning them that the Elders walk from 
+farm to farm in the cooling weather. Perhaps the message is sent throughout all Rossem that 
+these men are greatly desired by the Lords of Tazenda - and it is on my farm that they are 
+landing." 
+
+He fairly hopped for anxiety, "The proper hospitality now - the mention of my name to the 
+governor - and what may not be ours?" 
+
+His wife was suddenly aware of the cold biting through her thin house-clothing. She leaped 
+towards the door, shouting over her shoulders, "Leave then quickly." 
+
+But she was speaking to a man who was even then racing towards the segment of the horizon 
+against which the ship sank. 
+
+Neither the cold of the world, nor its bleak, empty spaces worried General Han Pritcher. Nor the 
+poverty of their surroundings, nor the perspiring peasant himself. 
+
+
+
+What did bother him was the question of the wisdom of their tactics? He and Channis were 
+alone here. 
+
+
+The ship, left in space, could take care of itself in ordinary circumstances, but still, he felt 
+unsafe. It was Channis, of course, who was responsible for this move. He looked across at the 
+young man and caught him winking cheerfully at the gap in the furred partition, in which a 
+woman's peeping eyes and gaping mouth momentarily appeared. 
+
+Channis, at least, seemed completely at ease. That fact Pritcher savored with a vinegary 
+satisfaction. His game had not much longer to proceed exactly as he wished it. Yet, meanwhile 
+their wrist ultrawave sender-receivers were their only connection with the ship. 
+
+And then the peasant host smiled enormously and bobbed his head several times and said in a 
+voice oily with respect, "Noble Lords, I crave leave to tell you that my eldest son - a good, 
+worthy lad whom my poverty prevents from educating as his wisdom deserves - has informed 
+me that the Elders will arrive soon. I trust your stay here has been as pleasant as my humble 
+means - for I am poverty-stricken, though a hard-working, honest, and humble farmer, as 
+anyone here will tell you - could afford." 
+
+"Elders?" said Channis, lightly. "The chief men of the region here?" 
+
+"So they are, Noble Lords, and honest, worthy men all of them, for our entire village is known 
+throughout Rossem as a just and righteous spot - though living is hard and the returns of the 
+fields and forests meager. Perhaps you will mention to the Elders, Noble Lords, of my respect 
+and honor for travelers and it may happen that they will request a new motor wagon for our 
+household as the old one can scarcely creep and upon the remnant of it depends our 
+livelihood." 
+
+He looked humbly eager and Han Pritcher nodded with thee properly aloof condescension 
+required of the role of "Noble, Lords" bestowed upon them. 
+
+"A report of your hospitality shall reach the ears of your Elders." 
+
+Pritcher seized the next moments of isolation to speak to the apparently half-sleeping Channis. 
+
+"I am not particularly fond of this meeting of the Elders," he said. "Have you any thoughts on 
+the subject?" 
+
+Channis seemed surprised. "No. What worries you?" 
+
+"It seems we have better things to do than to become conspicuous here.' 
+
+Channis spoke hastily, in a low monotoned voice: "It may be necessary to risk becoming 
+conspicuous in our next moves. We won't find the type of men we want, Pritcher, by simply 
+reaching out a hand into a dark bag and groping. Men who rule by tricks of the mind need not 
+necessarily be men in obvious power. In the first place, the psychologists of the Second 
+Foundation are probably a very small minority of the total population, just as on your own First 
+Foundation, the technicians and scientists formed a minority. The ordinary inhabitants are 
+probably just that - very ordinary. The psychologists may even be well hidden, and the men in 
+the apparently ruling position, may honestly think they are the true masters. Our solution to that 
+
+
+
+problem may be found here on this frozen lump of a planet." 
+
+"I don't follow that at all." 
+
+"Why, see here, it's obvious enough. Tazenda is probably a huge world of millions or hundreds 
+of millions. How could we identify the psychologists among them and be able to report truly to 
+the Mule that we have located the Second Foundation? But here, on this tiny peasant world 
+and subject planet, an the Tazendian rulers, our host informs us, are concentrated in their chief 
+village of Gentri. There may be only a few hundred of them there, Pritcher, and among them 
+must be one or more of the men of the Second Foundation. We will go there eventually, but let 
+us see the Elders first - it's a logical step on the way." 
+
+They drew apart easily, as their black-bearded host tumbled into the room again, obviously 
+agitated. 
+
+"Noble Lords, the Elders are arriving. I crave leave to beg you once more to mention a word, 
+perhaps, on my behalf-" He almost bent double in a paroxysm of fawning. 
+
+"We shall certainly remember you," said Channis. "Are these your Elders?" 
+
+They apparently were. There were three. 
+
+One approached. He bowed with a dignified respect and said: "We are honored. Transportation 
+has been provided, Respected sirs, and we hope for the pleasure of your company at our 
+Meeting Hall." 
+
+
+THIRD INTERLUDE 
+
+The First Speaker gazed wistfully at the night sky. Wispy clouds scudded across the faint 
+stargleams. Space looked actively hostile. It was cold and awful at best but now it contained 
+that strange creature, the Mule, and the very content seemed to darken and thicken it into 
+ominous threat. 
+
+The meeting was over. It had not been long. There had been the doubts and questionings 
+inspired by the difficult mathematical problem of dealing with a mental mutant of uncertain 
+makeup. All the extreme permutations had had to be considered. 
+
+Were they even yet certain? Somewhere in this region of space - within reaching distance as 
+Galactic spaces go - was the Mule. What would he do? 
+
+It was easy enough to handle his men. They reacted - and were reacting - according to plan. 
+But what of the Mule himself? 
+
+
+4 
+
+
+
+Two Men and the Elders 
+
+The Elders of this particular region of Rossem were not exactly what one might have expected. 
+They were not a mere extrapolation of the peasantry; older, more authoritative, less friendly. 
+
+Not at all. 
+
+The dignity that had marked them at first meeting had grown in impression till it had reached 
+the mark of being their predominant characteristic. 
+
+They sat about their oval table like so many grave and slow-moving thinkers. Most were a trifle 
+past their physical prime, though the few who possessed beards wore them short and neatly 
+arranged. Still, enough appeared younger than forty to make it quite obvious that "Elders" was 
+a term of respect rather than entirely a literal description of age. 
+
+The two from outer space were at the head of the table and in the solemn silence that 
+accompanied a rather frugal meal that seemed ceremonious rather than nourishing, absorbed 
+the new, contrasting atmosphere. 
+
+After the meal and after one or two respectful remarks - too short and simple to be called 
+speeches - had been made by those of the Elders apparently held most in esteem, an 
+informality forced itself upon the assembly. 
+
+It was as if the dignity of greeting foreign personages had finally given way to the amiable rustic 
+qualities of curiosity and friendliness. 
+
+They crowded around the two strangers and the flood of questions came. 
+
+They asked if it were difficult to handle a spaceship, how many men were required for the job, if 
+better motors could be made for their ground-cars, if it was true that it rarely snowed on other 
+worlds as was said to be the case with Tazenda, how many people lived on their world, if it was 
+as large as Tazenda, if it was far away, how their clothes were woven and what gave them the 
+metallic shimmer, why they did not wear furs, if they shaved every day, what sort of stone that 
+was in Pritcher's ring - The list stretched out. 
+
+And almost always the questions were addressed to Pritcher as though, as the elder, they 
+automatically invested him with the greater authority. Pritcher found himself forced to answer at 
+greater and greater length. It was like an immersion in a crowd of children. Their questions 
+were those of utter and disarming wonder. Their eagerness to know was completely irresistible 
+and would not be denied. 
+
+Pritcher explained that spaceships were not difficult to handle and that crews varied with the 
+size, from one to many, that the motors of their ground-cars were unknown in detail to him but 
+could doubtless be improved, that the climates of worlds varied almost infinitely, that many 
+hundreds of millions lived on his world but that it was far smaller and more insignificant than the 
+great empire of Tazenda, that their clothes were woven of silicone plastics in which metallic 
+luster was artificially produced by proper orientation of the surface molecules, and that they 
+could be artificially heated so that furs were unnecessary, that they shaved every day, that the 
+stone in his ring was an amethyst. The list stretched out. He found himself thawing to these 
+
+
+
+naive provincials against his will. 
+
+And always as he answered there was a rapid chatter among the Elders, as though they 
+debated the information gained. It was difficult to follow these inner discussions of theirs for 
+they lapsed into their own accented version of the universal Galactic language that, through 
+long separation from the currents of living speech, had become archaic. 
+
+Almost, one might say, their curt comments among themselves hovered on the edge of 
+understanding, but just managed to elude the clutching tendrils of comprehension. 
+
+Until finally Channis interrupted to say, "Good sirs, you must answer us for a while, for we are 
+strangers and would be very much interested to know all we can of Tazenda." 
+
+And what happened then was that a great silence fell and each of the hitherto voluble Elders 
+grew silent. Their hands, which had been moving in such rapid and delicate accompaniment to 
+their words as though to give them greater scope and varied shades of meaning, fell suddenly 
+limp. They stared furtively at one another, apparently quite willing each to let the other have all 
+the floor. 
+
+Pritcher interposed quickly, "My companion asks this in friendliness, for the fame of Tazenda 
+fills the Galaxy and we, of course, shall inform the governor of the loyalty and love of the Elders 
+of Rossem." 
+
+No sigh of relief was heard but faces brightened. An Elder stroked his beard with thumb and 
+forefinger, straightening its slight curl with a gentle pressure, and said: "We are faithful servants 
+of the Lords of Tazenda." 
+
+Pritcher's annoyance at Channis' bald question subsided. It was apparent, at least, that the age 
+that he had felt creeping over him of late had not yet deprived him of his own capacity for 
+making smooth the blunders of others. 
+
+He continued: "We do not know, in our far part of the universe, much of the past history of the 
+Lords of Tazenda. We presume they have ruled benevolently here for a long time." 
+
+The same Elder who spoke before, answered. In a soft, automatic way he had become 
+spokesman. He said: "Not the grandfather of the oldest can recall a time in which the Lords 
+were absent." 
+
+"It has been a time of peace?" 
+
+"It has been a time of peace!" He hesitated. "The governor is a strong and powerful Lord who 
+would not hesitate to punish traitors. None of us are traitors, of course." 
+
+"He has punished some in the past, I imagine, as they deserve." 
+
+Again hesitation, "None here have ever been traitors, or our fathers or our fathers' fathers. But 
+on other worlds, there have been such, and death followed for them quickly. It is not good to 
+think of for we are humble men who are poor farmers and not concerned with matters of 
+politics." 
+
+The anxiety in his voice, the universal concern in the eyes of all of them was obvious. 
+
+
+
+Pritcher said smoothly: "Could you inform us as to how we can arrange an audience with your 
+governor." 
+
+And instantly an element of sudden bewilderment entered the situation. 
+
+For after a long moment, the elder said: "Why, did you not know? The governor will be here 
+tomorrow. He has expected you. It has been a great honor for us. We ... we hope earnestly that 
+you will report to him satisfactorily as to our loyalty to him." 
+
+Pritcher's smile scarcely twitched. "Expected us?" 
+
+The Elder looked wonderingly from one to the other. "Why ... it is now a week since we have 
+been waiting for you." 
+
+Their quarters were undoubtedly luxurious for the world. Pritcher had lived in worse. Channis 
+showed nothing but indifference to externals. 
+
+But there was an element of tension between them of a different nature than hitherto. Pritcher, 
+felt the time approaching for a definite decision and yet there was still the desirability of 
+additional waiting. To see the governor first would be to increase the gamble to dangerous 
+dimensions and yet to win that gamble might multi-double the winnings. He felt a surge of 
+anger at the slight crease between Channis' eyebrows, the delicate uncertainty with which the 
+young man's lower lip presented itself to an upper tooth. He detested the useless play-acting 
+and yearned for an end to it. 
+
+He said: "We seem to be anticipated." 
+
+'Yes," said Channis, simply. 
+
+"Just that? You have no contribution of greater pith to make. We come here and find that the 
+governor expects us. Presumably we shall find from the governor that Tazenda itself expects 
+us. Of what value then is our entire mission?" 
+
+Channis looked up, without endeavoring to conceal the weary note in his voice: "To expect us 
+is one thing; to know who we are and what we came for, is another." 
+
+"Do you expect to conceal these things from men of the Second Foundation?" 
+
+"Perhaps. Why not? Are you ready to throw your hand in? Suppose our ship was detected in 
+space. Is it unusual for a realm to maintain frontier observation posts? Even if we were ordinary 
+strangers, we would be of interest." 
+
+"Sufficient interest for a governor to come to us rather than the reverse?' 
+
+Channis shrugged: "We’ll have to meet that problem later. Let us see what this governor is 
+like." 
+
+Pritcher bared his teeth in a bloodless kind of scowl. The situation was becoming ridiculous. 
+
+Channis proceeded with an artificial animation: "At least we know one thing. Tazenda is the 
+Second Foundation or a million shreds of evidence are unanimously pointing the wrong way. 
+
+
+
+How do you interpret the obvious terror in which these natives hold Tazenda? I see no signs of 
+political domination. Their groups of Elders apparently meet freely and without interference of 
+any sort. The taxation they speak of doesn't seem at all extensive to me or efficiently carried 
+through. The natives speak much of poverty but seem sturdy and well-fed. The houses are 
+uncouth and their villages rude, but are obviously adequate for the purpose. 
+
+"In fact, the world fascinates me. I have never seen a more forbidding one, yet I am convinced 
+there is no suffering among the population and that their uncomplicated lives manage to 
+contain a well-balanced happiness lacking in the sophisticated populations of the advanced 
+centers." 
+
+"Are you an admirer of peasant virtues, then?" 
+
+"The stars forbid." Channis seemed amused at the idea. "I merely point out the significance of 
+all this. Apparently, Tazenda is an efficient administrator - efficient in a sense far different from 
+the efficiency of the old Empire or of the First Foundation, or even of our own Union. All these 
+have brought mechanical efficiency to their subjects at the cost of more intangible values. 
+Tazenda brings happiness and sufficiency. Don't you see that the whole orientation of their 
+domination is different? It is not physical, but psychological." 
+
+"Really?" Pritcher, allowed himself irony. "And the terror with which the Elders spoke of the 
+punishment of treason by these kind hearted psychologist administrators? How does that suit 
+your thesis?" 
+
+"Were they the objects of the punishment? They speak of punishment only of others. It is as if 
+knowledge of punishment has been so well implanted in them that punishment itself need never 
+be used. The proper mental attitudes are so inserted into their minds that I am certain that not a 
+Tazendian soldier exists on the planet. Don't you see all this?" 
+
+"I’ll see perhaps," said Pritcher, coldly, "when I see the governor. And what, by the way, if our 
+mentalities are handled?" 
+
+Channis replied with brutal contempt: "You should be accustomed to that." 
+
+Pritcher whitened perceptibly, and, with an effort, turned away. They spoke to one another no 
+more that day. 
+
+It was in the silent windlessness of the frigid night, as he listened to the soft, sleeping motions 
+of the other, that Pritcher silently adjusted his wrist-transmitter to the ultrawave region for which 
+Channis' was unadjustable and, with noiseless touches of his fingernail, contacted the ship. 
+
+The answer came in little periods of noiseless vibration that barely lifted themselves above the 
+sensory threshold. 
+
+Twice Pritcher asked: "Any communications at all yet?" 
+
+Twice the answer came: "None. We wait always." 
+
+He got out of bed. It was cold in the room and he pulled the furry blanket around him as he sat 
+in the chair and stared out at the crowding stars so different in the brightness and complexity of 
+
+
+
+their arrangement from the even fog of the Galactic Lens that dominated the night sky of his 
+native Periphery. 
+
+Somewhere there between the stars was the answer to the complications that overwhelmed 
+him, and he felt the yearning for that solution to arrive and end things. 
+
+For a moment he wondered again if the Mule were right - if Conversion had robbed him of the 
+firm sharp edge of self-reliance. Or was it simply age and the fluctuations of these last years? 
+
+He didn't really care. 
+
+He was tired. 
+
+The governor of Rossem arrived with minor ostentation. His only companion was the uniformed 
+man at the controls of the ground-car. 
+
+The ground-car itself was of lush design but to Pritcher it appeared inefficient. It turned 
+clumsily; more than once it apparently balked at what might have been a too-rapid change of 
+gears. It was obvious at once from its design that it ran on chemical, and not on atomic, fuel. 
+
+The Tazendian governor stepped softly on to the thin layer of snow and advanced between two 
+lines of respectful Elders. He did not look at them but entered quickly. They followed after him. 
+
+From the quarters assigned to them, the two men of the Mule's Union watched. He - the 
+governor -was thickset, rather stocky, short, unimpressive. 
+
+But what of that? 
+
+Pritcher cursed himself for a failure of nerve. His face, to be sure, remained icily calm. There 
+was no humiliation before Channis - but he knew very well that his blood pressure had 
+heightened and his throat had become dry. 
+
+It was not a case of physical fear. He was not one of those dull-witted, unimaginative men of 
+nerveless meat who were too stupid ever to be afraid - but physical fear he could account for 
+and discount. 
+
+But this was different. It was the other fear. 
+
+He glanced quickly at Channis. The young man glanced idly at the nails of one hand and poked 
+leisurely at some trifling unevenness. 
+
+Something inside Pritcher became vastly indignant. What had Channis to fear of mental 
+handling? 
+
+Pritcher caught a mental breath and tried to think back. How had he been before the Mule had 
+Converted him from the die-hard Democrat that he was. It was hard to remember. He could not 
+place himself mentally. He could not break the clinging wires that bound him emotionally to the 
+Mule. Intellectually, he could remember that he had once tried to assassinate the Mule but not 
+for all the straining he could endure, could he remember his emotions at the time. That might 
+be the self-defense of his own mind, however, for at the intuitive thought of what those 
+emotions might have been - not realizing the details, but merely comprehending the drift of it - 
+
+
+
+his stomach grew queasy. 
+
+What if the governor tampered with his mind? 
+
+What if the insubstantial mental tendrils of a Second Foundationer insinuated itself down the 
+emotional crevices of his makeup and pulled them apart and rejoined them? 
+
+There had been no sensation the first time. There had been no pain, no mental jar - not even a 
+feeling of discontinuity. He had always loved the Mule. If there had ever been a time long 
+before - as long before as five short years - when he had thought he hadn't loved him, that he 
+had hated him - that was just a horrid illusion. The thought of that illusion embarrassed him. 
+
+But there had been no pain. 
+
+Would meeting the governor duplicate that? Would all that had gone before - all his service for 
+the Mule - all his life's orientation - join the hazy, other-life dream that held the word, 
+Democracy. The Mule also a dream, and only to Tazenda, his loyalty— 
+
+Sharply, he turned away. 
+
+There was that strong desire to retch. 
+
+And then Channis' voice clashed on his ear, "I think this is it, general." 
+
+Pritcher turned again. An Elder had opened the door silently and stood with a dignified and 
+calm respect upon the threshold. 
+
+He said, "His Excellency, Governor of Rossem, in the name of the Lords of Tazenda, is pleased 
+to present his permission for an audience and request your appearance before him." 
+
+"Sure thing," and Channis tightened his belt with a jerk and adjusted a Rossemian hood over 
+his head. 
+
+Pritcher's jaw set. This was the beginning of the real gamble. 
+
+The governor of Rossem was not of formidable appearance. For one thing, he was 
+bareheaded, and his thinning hair, light brown, tending to gray, lent him mildness. His bony 
+eye-ridges lowered at them, and his eyes, set in a fine network of surrounding wrinkles, 
+seemed calculating, but his fresh-cropped chin was soft and small and, by the universal 
+convention of followers of the pseudoscience of reading character by facial bony structure, 
+seemed "weak." 
+
+Pritcher, avoided the eyes and watched the chin. He didn't know whether that would be 
+effective - if anything would be. 
+
+The governor's voice was high-pitched, indifferent: "Welcome to Tazenda. We greet you in 
+peace. You have eaten?" 
+
+His hand - long fingers, gnarled veins - waved almost regally at the U-shaped table. 
+
+They bowed and sat down. The governor sat at the outer side of the base of the U, they on the 
+inner; along both arms sat the double row of silent Elders. 
+
+
+
+The governor spoke in short, abrupt sentences - praising the food as Tazendian importations - 
+and it had indeed a quality different if, somehow, not so much better, than the rougher food of 
+the Elders - disparaging Rossemian weather, referring with an attempt at casualness to the 
+intricacies of space travel. 
+
+Channis talked little. Pritcher not at all. 
+
+Then it was over. The small, stewed fruits were finished; the napkins used and discarded, and 
+the governor leaned back. 
+
+His small eyes sparkled. 
+
+"I have inquired as to your ship. Naturally, I would like to see that it receives due care and 
+overhaul. I am told its whereabouts are unknown." 
+
+"True." Channis replied lightly. "We have left it in space. It is a large ship, suitable for long 
+journeys in sometimes hostile regions, and we felt that landing it here might give rise to doubts 
+as to our peaceful intentions. We preferred to land alone, unarmed." 
+
+"A friendly act," commented the governor, without conviction. "A large ship, you say?" 
+
+"Not a vessel of war, excellency." 
+
+"Ha, hum. Where is it you come from?" 
+
+"A small world of the Santanni sector, your excellency. It may be you are not aware of its 
+existence for it lacks importance. We are interested in establishing trade relationships." 
+
+"Trade, eh? And what have you to sell?' 
+
+"Machines of all sorts, excellency. In return, food, wood, ores 
+
+"Ha, hum." The governor seemed doubtful. "I know little these matters. Perhaps mutual profit 
+may be arranged. Perhaps, after I have examined your credentials at length - for much 
+information will be required by my government before matters may proceed, you understand - 
+and after I have looked over your ship, it would be advisable for you to proceed to Tazenda." 
+
+There was no answer to that, and the governor's attitude iced perceptibly. 
+
+"It is necessary that I see your ship, however." 
+
+Channis said distantly: "The ship, unfortunately, is undergoing repairs at the moment. If your 
+excellency would not object giving us forty-eight hours, it will be at your service." 
+
+"I am not accustomed to waiting." 
+
+For the first time, Pritcher met the glare of the other, eye to eye, and his breath exploded softly 
+inside him. For a moment, he had the sensation of drowning, but then his eyes tore away. 
+
+Channis did not waver. He said: "The ship cannot be landed for forty-eight hours, excellency. 
+We are here and unarmed. Can you doubt our honest intentions?" 
+
+
+
+There was a long silence, and then the governor said gruffly, "Tell me of the world from which 
+you come." 
+
+That was all. It passed with that. There was no more unpleasantness. The governor, having 
+fulfilled his official duty, apparently lost interest and the audience died a dull death. 
+
+And when it was all over, Pritcher found himself back in their quarters and took stock of himself. 
+
+Carefully - holding his breath - he "felt" his emotions. Certainly he seemed no different to 
+himself, but would he feel any difference? Had he felt different after the Mule's Conversion? 
+
+Had not everything seemed natural? As it should have been? 
+
+He experimented. 
+
+With cold purpose, he shouted inside the silent caverns of his mind, and the shout was, "The 
+Second Foundation must be discovered and destroyed." 
+
+And the emotion that accompanied it was honest hate. There was not as much as a hesitation 
+involved in it. 
+
+And then it was in his mind to substitute the word "Mule" for the phrase "Second Foundation" 
+and his breath caught at the mere emotion and his tongue clogged. 
+
+So far, good. 
+
+But had he been handled otherwise - more subtly? Had tiny changes been made? Changes 
+that he couldn't detect because their very existence warped his judgment. 
+
+There was no way to tell. 
+
+But he still felt absolute loyalty to the Mule! If that were unchanged, nothing else really 
+mattered. 
+
+He turned his mind to action again. Channis was busy at his end of the room. Pritcher's 
+thumbnail idled at his wrist communicator. 
+
+And then at the response that came he felt a wave of relief surge over him and leave him weak. 
+
+The quiet muscles of his face did not betray him, but inside he was shouting with joy - and 
+when Channis turned to face him, he knew that the farce was about over. 
+
+FOURTH INTERLUDE 
+
+The two Speakers passed each other on the road and one stopped the other. 
+
+"I have word from the First Speaker." 
+
+There was a half-apprehensive flicker in the other's eyes. "Intersection point?" 
+
+"Yes! May we live to see the dawn!" 
+
+
+
+5 
+
+One Man and the Mule 
+
+There was no sign in any of Channis' actions that he was aware of any subtle change in the 
+attitude of Pritcher, and in their relations to each other. He leaned back on the hard wooden 
+bench and spread-eagled his feet out in front of him. 
+
+"What did you make of the governor?" 
+
+Pritcher shrugged: "Nothing at all. He certainly seemed no mental genius to me. A very poor 
+specimen of the Second Foundation, if that's what he was supposed to be." 
+
+"I don't think he was, you know. I'm not sure what to make of it. Suppose you were a Second 
+Foundationer," Channis grew thoughtful, "what would yoi/do? Suppose you had an idea of our 
+purpose here. How would you handle us?" 
+
+"Conversion, of course." 
+
+"Like the Mule?" Channis looked up, sharply. "Would we know if they had converted us? I 
+wonder- And what if they were simply psychologists, but very clever ones." 
+
+"In that case, I'd have us killed rather quickly." 
+
+"And our ship? No." Channis wagged a forefinger. "We're playing a bluff, Pritcher, old man. It 
+can only be a bluff. Even if they have emotional control down pat, we - you and I - are only 
+fronts. It's the Mule they must fight, and they're being just as careful of us as we are of them. 
+
+I'm assuming that they know who we are." 
+
+Pritcher, stared coldly: "What do you intend doing?" 
+
+"Wait." The word was bitten off. "Let them come to us. They're worried, maybe about the ship, 
+but probably about the Mule. They bluffed with the governor. It didn't work. We stayed pat. The 
+next person they'll send will be a Second Foundationer, and he’ll propose a deal of some sort." 
+
+"And then?" 
+
+"And then we make the deal." 
+
+"I don't think so." 
+
+"Because you think it will double-cross the Mule? It won't." 
+
+"No, the Mule could handle your double-crosses, any you could invent. But I still don't think so." 
+"Because you think then we couldn't double-cross the Foundationers?" 
+
+"Perhaps not. But that’s not the reason." 
+
+Channis let his glance drop to what the other held in his fist, and said grimly: "You mean that's 
+the reason." 
+
+
+
+Pritcher cradled his blaster, "That's right. You are under arrest." 
+
+"Why?" 
+
+"For treason to the First Citizen of the Union." 
+
+Channis' lips hardened upon one another: "What's going on?" 
+
+"Treason! As I said. And correction of the matter, on my part." 
+
+"Your proof? Or evidence, assumptions, daydreams? Are you mad?" 
+
+"No. Are you? Do you think the Mule sends out unweaned youngsters on ridiculous 
+swashbuckling missions for nothing? It was queer to me at the time. But I wasted time in 
+doubting myself. Why should he send you? Because you smile and dress well? Because you're 
+twenty-eight." 
+
+"Perhaps because I can be trusted. Or aren't you in the market for logical reasons?" 
+
+"Or perhaps because you can't be trusted. Which is logical enough, as it turns out." 
+
+"Are we matching paradoxes, or is this all a word game to see who can say the least in the 
+most words?" 
+
+And the blaster advanced, with Pritcher after it. Fie stood erect before the younger man: "Stand 
+up!" 
+
+Channis did so, in no particular hurry, and felt the muzzle of the blaster touch his belt with no 
+shrinking of the stomach muscles. 
+
+Pritcher said: "What the Mule wanted was to find the Second Foundation. Fie had failed and I 
+had failed, and the secret that neither of us can find is a well-hidden one. So there was one 
+outstanding possibility left - and that was to find a seeker who ready knew the hiding-place." 
+
+"Is that I?" 
+
+"Apparently it was. I didn't know then, of course, but though my mind must be slowing, it still 
+points in the right direction. Flow easily we found Star's End! Flow miraculously you examined 
+the correct Field Region of the Lens from among an infinite number of possibles! And having 
+done so, how nicely we observe just the correct point for observation! You clumsy fool! Did you 
+so underestimate me that no combination of impossible fortuties struck you as being too much 
+for me to swallow?" 
+
+"You mean I've been too successful?" 
+
+"Too successful by half for any loyal man." 
+
+"Because the standards of success you set me were so low?" 
+
+And the blaster prodded, though in the face that confront Channis only the cold glitter of the 
+eyes betrayed the growing anger: "Because you are in the pay of the Second Foundation." 
+
+
+
+"Pay?"- infinite contempt. "Prove that." 
+
+"Or under the mental influence." 
+
+"Without the Mule's knowledge? Ridiculous." 
+
+"With the Mule's knowledge. Exactly my point, my you dullard. With the Mule's knowledge. Do 
+you suppose else that you would be given a ship to play with? You led us to the Second 
+Foundation as you were supposed to do." 
+
+"I thresh a kernel of something or other out of this immensity of chaff. May I ask why I'm 
+supposed to be doing all this? If were a traitor, why should I lead you to the Second 
+Foundation? Why not hither and yon through the Galaxy, skipping gaily, finding no more than 
+you ever did?' 
+
+"For the sake of the ship. And because the men of the Second Foundation quite obviously need 
+atomic warfare for self-defense." 
+
+'You'll have to do better than that. One ship won't mean thing to them, and if they think they'll 
+learn science from it a build atomic power plants next year, they are very, very simple Second 
+Foundationers, indeed. On the order of simplicity as yourself, I should say." 
+
+"You will have the opportunity to explain that to the Mule." 
+
+"We're going back to Kalgan?" 
+
+"On the contrary. We're staying here. And the Mule will join us in fifteen minutes - more or less. 
+Do you think he hasn't followed us, my sharp-witted, nimble-minded lump of self-admiration? 
+You have played the decoy well in reverse. You may not have led our victims to us, but you 
+have certainly led us to our victims." 
+
+"May I sit down," said Channis, "and explain something to you in picture drawings? Please." 
+"You will remain standing." 
+
+At that, I can say it as well standing. You think the Mule followed us because of the hypertracer 
+on the communication circuit?" 
+
+The blaster might have wavered. Channis wouldn't have sworn to it. Fie said: "You don't look 
+surprised. But I don't waste time doubting that you feel surprised. Yes, I knew about it. And 
+now, having shown you that I knew of something you didn't think I did, I'll tell you something 
+you don't know, that I know you don't." 
+
+"You allow yourself too many preliminaries, Channis. I should think your sense of invention was 
+more smoothly greased. 
+
+"There's on invention to this. There have been traitors, of course, or enemy agents, if you prefer 
+that term. But the Mule knew of that in a rather curious way. It seems, you see, that some of his 
+Converted men had been tampered with." 
+
+The blaster did waver that time. Unmistakably. 
+
+
+
+"I emphasize that, Pritcher. It was why he needed me. I was an Unconverted man. Didn't he 
+emphasize to you that he needed an Unconverted? Whether he gave you the real reason or 
+not?" 
+
+"Try something else, Channis. If I were against the Mule, I'd know it." Quietly, rapidly, Pritcher 
+was feeling his mind. It felt the same. It felt the same. Obviously the man was lying. 
+
+"You mean you feel loyal to the Mule. Perhaps. Loyalty wasn't tampered with. Too easily 
+detectable, the Mule said. But how do you feel mentally? Sluggish? Since you started this trip, 
+have you always felt normal? Or have you felt strange sometimes, as though you weren't quite 
+yourself? What are you trying to do, bore a hole through me without touching the trigger?" 
+
+Pritcher withdrew his blaster half an inch, "What are you trying to say?" 
+
+"I say that you've been tampered with. You've been handled. You didn't see the Mule install that 
+hypertracer. You didn't see anyone do it. You just found it there, and assumed it was the Mule, 
+and ever since you've been assuming he was following us. Sure, the wrist receiver you're 
+wearing contacts the ship on a wave length mine isn't good for. Do you think I didn't know 
+that?" He was speaking quickly now, angrily. His cloak of indifference had dissolved into 
+savagery. "But it's not the Mule that's coming toward us from out there. It's not the Mule." 
+
+"Who, if not?" 
+
+"Well, who do you suppose? I found that hypertracer, the day we left. But I didn't think it was 
+the Mule. He had no reason for indirection at that point. Don't you see the nonsense of it? If I 
+were a traitor and he knew that, I could be Converted as easily as you were, and he would 
+have the secret of the location of the Second Foundation out of my mind without sending me 
+half across the Galaxy. Can you keep a secret from the Mule? And if / didn't know, then I 
+couldn't lead him to it. So why send me in either case? 
+
+"Obviously, that hypertracer must have been put there by an agent of the Second Foundation. 
+That's who's coming towards us now. And would you have been fooled if your precious mind 
+hadn't been tampered with? What kind of normality have you that you imagine immense folly to 
+be wisdom? Me bring a ship to the Second Foundation? What would they do with a ship? 
+
+"It's you they want, Pritcher. You know more about the Union than anyone but the Mule, and 
+you're not dangerous to them while he is. That’s why they put the direction of search into my 
+mind. Of course, it was completely impossible for me to find Tazenda by random searchings of 
+the Lens. I knew that. But I knew there was the Second Foundation after us, and I knew they 
+engineered it. Why not play their game? It was a battle of bluffs. They wanted us and I wanted 
+their location - and space take the one that couldn't outbluff the other. 
+
+"But it's we that will lose as long as you hold that blaster on me. And it obviously isn't your idea. 
+It's theirs. Give me the blaster, Pritcher. I know it seems wrong to you, but it isn't your mind 
+speaking, it's the Second Foundation within you. Give me the blaster, Pritcher, and we’ll face 
+what's coming now, together." 
+
+Pritcher, faced a growing confusion in horror. Plausibility! Could he be so wrong? Why this 
+eternal doubt of himself? Why wasn't he sure? What made Channis sound so plausible? 
+
+
+
+Plausibility! 
+
+Or was it his own tortured mind fighting the invasion of the alien. 
+
+Was he split in two? 
+
+Hazily, he saw Channis standing before him, hand outstretched - and suddenly, he knew he 
+was going to give him the blaster. 
+
+And as the muscles of his arm were on the point of contracting in the proper manner to do so, 
+the door opened, not hastily, behind him - and he turned. 
+
+There are perhaps men in the Galaxy who can be confused for one another even by men at 
+their peaceful leisure. Correspondingly, there may be conditions of mind when even unlikely 
+pairs may be mis-recognized. But the Mule rises above any combination of the two factors. 
+
+Not all Pritcher's agony of mind prevented the instantaneous mental flood of cool vigor that 
+engulfed him. 
+
+Physically, the Mule could not dominate any situation. Nor did he dominate this one. 
+
+He was rather a ridiculous figure in his layers of clothing that thickened him past his normality 
+without allowing him to reach normal dimensions even so. His face was muffled and the usually 
+dominant beak covered what was left in a cold-red prominence. 
+
+Probably as a vision of rescue, no greater incongruity could exist. 
+
+He said: "Keep your blaster, Pritcher." 
+
+Then he turned to Channis, who had shrugged and seated himself: "The emotional context 
+here seems rather confusing and considerably in conflict. What's this about someone other 
+than myself following you?" 
+
+Pritcher intervened sharply: "Was a hypertracer placed upon our ship by your orders, sir?" 
+
+The Mule turned cool eyes upon him, "Certainly. Is it very likely that any organization in the 
+Galaxy other than the Union of Worlds would have access to it?' 
+
+"He said-" 
+
+"Well, he's here, general. Indirect quotation is not necessary. Have you been saying anything, 
+Channis?" 
+
+"Yes. But mistakes apparently, sir. It has been my opinion that the tracer was put there by 
+someone in the pay of the Second Foundation and that we had been led here for some 
+purpose of theirs, which I was prepared to counter. I was under the further impression that the 
+general was more or less in their hands." 
+
+"You sound as if you think so no longer." 
+
+"I'm afraid not. Or it would not have been you at the door." 
+
+"Well, then, let us thresh this out." The Mule peeled off the outer layers of padded, and 
+
+
+
+electrically heated clothing. "Do you mind if I sit down as well? Now - we are safe here and 
+perfectly free of any danger of intrusion. No native of this lump of ice will have any desire to 
+approach this place. I assure you of that," and there was a grim earnestness about his 
+insistence upon his powers. 
+
+Channis showed his disgust. "Why privacy? Is someone going to serve tea and bring out the 
+dancing girls?" 
+
+"Scarcely. What was this theory of yours, young man? A Second Foundationer was tracing you 
+with a device which no one but I have and - how did you say you found this place?" 
+
+"Apparently, sir, it seems obvious, in order to account for known facts, that certain notions have 
+been put into my head-" 
+
+"By these same Second Foundationers?" 
+
+"No one else, I imagine." 
+
+"Then it did not occur to you that if a Second Foundationer could force, or entice, or inveigle 
+you into going to the Second Foundation for purposes of his own - and I assume you imagined 
+he used methods similar to mine, though, mind you, I can implant only emotions, not ideas - it 
+did not occur to you that if he could do that there was little necessity to put a hypertracer on 
+you. 
+
+And Channis looked up sharply and met his sovereign's large eyes with sudden startle. Pritcher 
+grunted and a visible relaxation showed itself in his shoulders. 
+
+"No," said Channis, "that hadn't occurred to me." 
+
+"Or that if they were obliged to trace you, they couldn't feel capable of directing you, and that, 
+undirected, you could have precious little chance of finding your way here as you did. Did that 
+occur to you?" 
+
+"That, neither." 
+
+"Why not? Flas your intellectual level receded to a so-much-greater-than-probable degree?" 
+
+"The only answer is a question, sir. Are you joining General Pritcher in accusing me of being a 
+traitor?" 
+
+"You have a defense in case I am?" 
+
+"Only the one I presented to the general. If I were a traitor and knew the whereabouts of the 
+Second Foundation, you could Convert me and learn the knowledge directly. If you felt it 
+necessary to trace me, then I hadn't the knowledge beforehand and wasn't a traitor. So I 
+answer your paradox with another." 
+
+"Then your conclusion?" 
+
+"That I am not a traitor." 
+
+"To which I must agree, since your argument is irrefutable." 
+
+
+
+"Then may I ask you why you had us secretly followed?" 
+
+"Because to all the facts there is a third explanation. Both you and Pritcher explained some 
+facts in your own individual ways, but not all. I - if you can spare me the time - will explain all. 
+And in a rather short time, so there is little danger of boredom. Sit down, Pritcher, and give me 
+your blaster. There is no danger of attack on us any longer. None from in here and none from 
+out there. None in fact even from the Second Foundation. Thanks to you, Channis." 
+
+The room was lit in the usual Rossemian fashion of electrically heated wire. A single bulb was 
+suspended from the ceiling and in its dim yellow glow, the three cast their individual shadows. 
+
+The Mule said: "Since I felt it necessary to trace Channis, it was obvious I expect to gain 
+something thereby. Since he went to the Second Foundation with a startling speed and 
+directness, we can reasonably assume that that was what I was expecting to happen. Since I 
+did not gain the knowledge from him directly, something must have been preventing me. Those 
+are the facts. Channis, of course, knows the answer. So do I. Do you see it, Pritcher?" 
+
+And Pritcher said doggedly: "No, sir." 
+
+"Then I’ll explain. Only one kind of man can both know the location of the Second Foundation 
+and prevent me from learning it. Channis, I'm afraid you're a Second Foundationer yourself." 
+
+And Channis' elbows rested on his knees as he leaned forward, and through stiff and angry lips 
+said: "What is your direct evidence? Deduction has proven wrong twice today." 
+
+"There is direct evidence, too, Channis. It was easy enough. I told you that my men had been 
+tampered with. The tamperer must have been, obviously, someone who was a) Unconverted, 
+and b) fairly close to the center of things. The field was large but not entirely unlimited. You 
+were too successful, Channis. People liked you too much. You got along too well. I wondered- 
+
+"And then I summoned you to take over this expedition and it didn't set you back. I watched 
+your emotions. It didn't bother you. You overplayed the confidence there, Channis. No man of 
+real competence could have avoided a dash of uncertainty at a job like that. Since your mind 
+did avoid it, it was either a foolish one or a controlled one. 
+
+It was easy to test the alternatives. I seized your mind at a moment of relaxation and filled it 
+with grief for an instant and then removed it. You were angry afterwards with such 
+accomplished art that I could have sworn it was a natural reaction, but for that which went first. 
+For when I wrenched at your emotions, for just one instant, for one tiny instant before you could 
+catch yourself, your mind resisted. It was all I needed to know. 
+
+"No one could have resisted me, even for that tiny instant, without control similar to mine." 
+Channis' voice was low and bitter: "Well, then? Now what?" 
+
+"And now you die - as a Second Foundationer. Quite necessary, as I believe you realize." 
+
+And once again Channis stared into the muzzle of a blaster. A muzzle guided this time by a 
+mind, not like Pritcher's capable of offhand twisting to suit himself, but by one as mature as his 
+own and as resistant to force as his own. 
+
+
+
+And the period of time allotted him for a correction of events was small. 
+
+What followed thereafter is difficult to describe by one with the normal complement of senses 
+and the normal incapacity for emotional control. 
+
+Essentially, this is what Channis realized in the tiny space of time involved in the pushing of the 
+Mule's thumb upon the trigger contact. 
+
+The Mule's current emotional makeup was one of a hard and polished determination, unmisted 
+by hesitation in the least. Had Channis been sufficiently interested afterward to calculate the 
+time involved from the determination to shoot to the arrival of the disintegrating energies, he 
+might have realized that his leeway was about one-fifth of a second. 
+
+That was barely time. 
+
+What the Mule realized in that same tiny space of time was that the emotional potential of 
+Channis' brain had surged suddenly upwards without his own mind feeling any impact and that, 
+simultaneously, a flood of pure, thrilling hatred cascaded upon him from an unexpected 
+direction. 
+
+It was that new emotional element that jerked his thumb off the contact. Nothing else could 
+have done it, and almost together with his change of action, came complete realization of the 
+new situation. 
+
+It was a tableau that endured far less than the significance adhering to it should require from a 
+dramatic standpoint. There was the Mule, thumb off the blaster, staring intently upon Channis 
+There was Channis taut, not quite daring to breathe yet. And there was Pritcher, convulsed in 
+his chair; every muscle at a spasmodic breaking point; every tendon writhing in an effort to hurl 
+forward; his face twisted at last out of schooled woodenness into an unrecognizable death 
+mask of horrid hate; and his eyes only and entirely and supremely upon the Mule. 
+
+Only a word or two passed between Channis and the Mule - only a word or two and that utterly 
+revealing stream of emotional consciousness that remains forever the true interplay of 
+understanding between such as they. For the sake of our own limits, it is necessary to translate 
+into words what went on, then, and thenceforward. 
+
+Channis said, tensely: "You’re between two fires, First Citizen. You can't control two minds 
+simultaneously, not when one of them is mine - so you have your choice. Pritcher, is free of 
+your Conversion now. I've snapped the bonds. He's the old Pritcher; the one who tried to kill 
+you once; the one who thinks you're the enemy of all that is free and right and holy; and he's 
+the one besides who knows that you've debased him to helpless adulation for five years. I'm 
+holding him back now by suppressing his will, but if you kill me, that ends, and in considerably 
+less time than you could shift your blaster or even your will - he will kill you." 
+
+The Mule quite plainly realized that. He did not move. 
+
+Channis continued: "If you turn to place him under control, to kill him, to do anything, you won't 
+ever be quick enough to turn again to stop me." 
+
+The Mule still did not move. Only a soft sigh of realization. 
+
+
+
+"So," said Channis, "throw down the blaster, and let us be on even terms again, and you can 
+have Pritcher back." 
+
+
+"I made a mistake," said the Mule, finally. "It was wrong to have a third party present when I 
+confronted you. It introduced one variable too many. It is a mistake that must be paid for, I 
+suppose." 
+
+He dropped the blaster carelessly, and kicked it to the other end of the room. Simultaneously, 
+Pritcher crumpled into profound sleep. 
+
+"He’ll be normal when he awakes," said the Mule, indifferently. 
+
+The entire exchange from the time the Mule's thumb had begun pressing the trigger-contact to 
+the time he dropped the blaster had occupied just under a second and a half of time. 
+
+But just beneath the borders of consciousness, for a time just above the borders of detection, 
+Channis caught a fugitive emotional gleam in the Mule's mind. And it was still one of sure and 
+confident triumph. 
+
+
+6 
+
+One Man, the Mule - and Another 
+
+Two men, apparently relaxed and entirely at ease, poles apart physically - with every nerve 
+that served as emotional detector quivering tensely. 
+
+The Mule, for the first time in long years, had insufficient surety of his own way. Channis knew 
+that, though he could protect himself for the moment, it was an effort - and that the attack upon 
+him was none such for his opponent. In a test of endurance, Channis knew he would lose. 
+
+But it was deadly to think of that. To give away to the Mule an emotional weakness would be to 
+hand him a weapon. There was already that glimpse of something - a winner's something - in 
+the Mule's mind. 
+
+To gain time- 
+
+Why did the others delay? Was that the source of the Mule's confidence? What did his 
+opponent know that he didn't? The mind he watched told nothing. If only he could read ideas. 
+And yet- 
+
+Channis braked his own mental whirling roughly. There was only that; to gain time- 
+
+Channis said: "Since it is decided, and not denied by myself after our little duel over Pritcher, 
+that I am a Second Foundationer, suppose you tell me why I came to Tazenda." 
+
+"Oh, no," and the Mule laughed, with high-pitched confidence, "I am not Pritcher. I need make 
+no explanations to you. You had what you thought were reasons. Whatever they were, your 
+actions suited me, and so I inquire no further." 
+
+
+
+"Yet there must be such gaps in your conception of the story. Is Tazenda the Second 
+Foundation you expected to find? Pritcher spoke much of your other attempt at finding it, and of 
+your psychologist tool, Ebling Mis. He babbled a bit sometimes under my ... uh ... slight 
+encouragement. Think back on Ebling Mis, First Citizen." 
+
+"Why should I?" Confidence! 
+
+Channis felt that confidence edge out into the open, as if with the passage of time, any anxiety 
+the Mule might be having was increasingly vanishing. 
+
+He said, firmly restraining the rush of desperation: "You lack curiosity, then? Pritcher told me of 
+Mis' vast surprise at something. There was his terribly drastic urging for speed, for a rapid 
+warning of the Second Foundation? Why? Why? Ebling Mis died. The Second Foundation was 
+not warned. And yet the Second Foundation exists." 
+
+The Mule smiled in real pleasure, and with a sudden and surprising dash of cruelty that 
+Channis felt advance and suddenly withdraw: "But apparently the Second Foundation was 
+warned. Else how and why did one Bail Channis arrive on Kalgan to handle my men and to 
+assume the rather thankless task of outwitting me. The warning came too late, that is all." 
+
+"Then," and Channis allowed pity to drench outward from him, "you don't even know what the 
+Second Foundation is, or anything of the deeper meaning of all that has been going on." 
+
+To gain time! 
+
+The Mule felt the other's pity, and his eyes narrowed with instant hostility. He rubbed his nose 
+in his familiar four-fingered gesture, and snapped: "Amuse yourself, then. What o/The Second 
+Foundation?" 
+
+Channis spoke deliberately, in words rather than in emotional symbology. He said: "From what I 
+have heard, it was the mystery that surrounded the Second Foundation that most puzzled Mis. 
+Hari Seldon founded his two units so differently. The First Foundation was a splurge that in two 
+centuries dazzled half the Galaxy. And the Second was an abyss that was dark. 
+
+"You won't understand why that was, unless you can once again feel the intellectual 
+atmosphere of the days of the dying Empire. It was a time of absolutes, of the great final 
+generalities, at least in thought. It was a sign of decaying culture, of course, that dams had 
+been built against the further development of ideas. It was his revolt against these dams that 
+made Seldon famous. It was that one last spark of youthful creation in him that lit the Empire in 
+a sunset glow and dimly foreshadowed the rising sun of the Second Empire." 
+
+"Very dramatic. So what?" 
+
+"So he created his Foundations according to the laws of psychohistory, but who knew better 
+than he that even those laws were relative. He never created a finished product. Finished 
+products are for decadent minds. His was an evolving mechanism and the Second Foundation 
+was the instrument of that evolution. We, First Citizen of your Temporary Union of Worlds, we 
+are the guardians of Seldon's Plan. Only we!" 
+
+"Are you trying to talk yourself into courage," inquired the Mule, contemptuously, "or are you 
+
+
+
+trying to impress me? For the Second Foundation, Seldon's Plan, the Second Empire all 
+impresses me not the least, nor touches any spring of compassion, sympathy, responsibility, 
+nor any other source of emotional aid you may be trying to tap in me. And in any case, poor 
+fool, speak of the Second Foundation in the past tense, for it is destroyed." 
+
+Channis felt the emotional potential that pressed upon his mind rise in intensity as the Mule 
+rose from his chair and approached. Fie fought back furiously, but something crept relentlessly 
+on within him, battering and bending his mind back - and back. 
+
+Fie felt the wall behind him, and the Mule faced him, skinny arms akimbo, lips smiling terribly 
+beneath that mountain of nose. 
+
+The Mule said: "Your game is through, Channis. The game of all of you-of all the men of what 
+used to be the Second Foundation. Used to be! Used to be! 
+
+"What were you sitting here waiting for all this time, with your babble to Pritcher, when you 
+might have struck him down and taken the blaster from him without the least effort of physical 
+force? You were waiting for me, weren't you, waiting to greet me in a situation that would not 
+too arouse my suspicions. 
+
+"Too bad for you that I needed no arousal. I knew you. I knew you well, Channis of the Second 
+Foundation. 
+
+"But what are you waiting for now? You still throw words at me desperately, as though the mere 
+sound of your voice would freeze me to my seat. And all the while you speak, something in 
+your mind is waiting and waiting and is still waiting. But no one is coming. None of those you 
+expect - none of your allies. You are alone here, Channis, and you will remain alone. Do you 
+know why? 
+
+"It is because your Second Foundation miscalculated me to the very dregs of the end. I knew 
+their plan early. They thought I would follow you here and be proper meat for their cooking. You 
+were to be a decoy indeed - a decoy for a poor, foolish weakling mutant, so hot on the trail of 
+Empire that he would fall blindly into an obvious pit. But am I their prisoner? 
+
+"I wonder if it occurred to them that I’d scarcely be here without my fleet - against the artillery of 
+any unit of which they are entirely and pitifully helpless? Did it occur to them that I would not 
+pause for discussion or wait for events? 
+
+"My ships were launched against Tazenda twelve hours ago and they are quite, quite through 
+with their mission. Tazenda is laid in ruins; its centers of population are wiped out. There was 
+no resistance. The Second Foundation no longer exists, Channis - and I, the queer, ugly 
+weakling, am the ruler of the Galaxy." 
+
+Channis could do nothing but shake his head feebly. "No- No-" 
+
+"Yes- Yes-" mimicked the Mule. "And if you are the last one alive, and you may be, that will not 
+be for long either." 
+
+And then there followed a short, pregnant pause, and Channis almost howled with the sudden 
+pain of that tearing penetration of the innermost tissues of his mind. 
+
+
+
+The Mule drew back and muttered: "Not enough. You do not pass the test after all. Your 
+despair is pretense. Your fear is not the broad overwhelming that adheres to the destruction of 
+an ideal, but the puny seeping fear of personal destruction." 
+
+And the Mule’s weak hand seized Channis by the throat in a puny grip that Channis was 
+somehow unable to break. 
+
+"You are my insurance, Channis. You are my director and safeguard against any 
+underestimation I may make." The Mule's eyes bore down upon him. Insistent- Demanding- 
+
+"Have I calculated rightly, Channis? Have I outwitted your men of the Second Foundation? 
+Tazenda is destroyed, Channis, tremendously destroyed; so why is your despair pretense? 
+Where is the reality? I must have reality and truth! Talk, Channis talk. Have I penetrated then, 
+not deeply enough? Does the danger still exist? Talk, Channis. Where have I done wrong?" 
+
+Channis felt the words drag out of his mouth. They did not come willingly. He clenched his teeth 
+against them. He bit his tongue. He tensed every muscle of his throat. 
+
+And they came out - gasping - pulled out by force and tearing his throat and tongue and teeth 
+on the way. 
+
+"Truth," he squeaked, "truth-" 
+
+"Yes, truth. What is left to be done?" 
+
+"Seldon founded Second Foundation here. Here, as I said. I told no lie. The psychologists 
+arrived and took control of the native population." 
+
+"Of Tazenda?" The Mule plunged deeply into the flooding torture of the other's emotional 
+upwellings - tearing at them brutally. "It is Tazenda I have destroyed. You know what I want. 
+Give it to me." 
+
+"Not Tazenda. I said Second Foundationers might not be those apparently in power; Tazenda 
+is the figurehead-" The words were almost unrecognizable, forming themselves against every 
+atom of will of the Second Foundationer, "Rossem- Rossem- Rossem is the world-" 
+
+The Mule loosed his grip and Channis dropped into a huddle of pain and torture. 
+
+"And you thought to fool me?" said the Mule, softly. 
+
+"You were fooled." It was the last dying shred of resistance in Channis. 
+
+"But not long enough for you and yours. I am in communication with my Fleet. And after 
+Tazenda can come Rossem. But first-" 
+
+Channis felt the excruciating darkness rise against him, and the automatic lift of his arm to his 
+tortured eyes could not ward it off. It was a darkness that throttled, and as he felt his tom, 
+wounded mind reeling backwards, backwards into the everlasting black - there was that final 
+picture of the triumphant Mule - laughing matchstick - that long, fleshy nose quivering with 
+laughter. 
+
+
+
+The sound faded away. The darkness embraced him lovingly. 
+
+It ended with a cracking sensation that was like the jagged glare of a lightning flash, and 
+Channis came slowly to earth while sight returned painfully in blurry transmission through 
+tear-drenched eyes. 
+
+His head ached unbearably, and it was only with a stab of agony that he could bring up a hand 
+to it. 
+
+Obviously, he was alive. Softly, like feathers caught up in an eddy of air that had passed, his 
+thoughts steadied and drifted to rest. He felt comfort suck in - from outside. Slowly, torturedly, 
+he bent his neck - and relief was a sharp pang. 
+
+For the door was open; and the First Speaker stood just inside the threshold. He tried to speak, 
+to shout, to warn - but his tongue froze and he knew that a part of the Mule's mighty mind still 
+held him and clamped all speech within him. 
+
+He bent his neck once more. The Mule was still in the room. He was angry and hot-eyed. He 
+laughed no longer, but his teeth were bared in a ferocious smile. 
+
+Channis felt the First Speaker's mental influence moving gently over his mind with a healing 
+touch and then there was the numbing sensation as it came into contact with the Mule's 
+defense for an instant of struggle and withdrew. 
+
+The Mule said gratingly, with a fury that was grotesque in his meagre body: "Then another 
+comes to greet me." His agile mind reached its tendrils out of the room- out- out- 
+
+"You are alone," he said. 
+
+And the First Speaker interrupted with an acquiescence: "I am thoroughly alone. It is necessary 
+that I be alone, since it was I who miscalculated your future five years ago. There would be a 
+certain satisfaction to me in correcting that matter without aid. Unfortunately, I did not count on 
+the strength of your Field of Emotional Repulsion that surrounded this place. It took me long to 
+penetrate. I congratulate you upon the skill with which it was constructed." 
+
+"Thank you for nothing," came the hostile rejoinder. "Bandy no compliments with me. Have you 
+come to add your brain splinter to that of yonder cracked pillar of your realm?" 
+
+The First Speaker smiled: "Why, the man you call Bail Channis performed his mission well, the 
+more so since he was not your mental equal by far. I can see, of course, that you have 
+mistreated him, yet it may be that we may restore him fully even yet. He is a brave man, sir. He 
+volunteered for this mission although we were able to predict mathematically the huge chance 
+of damage to his mind - a more fearful alternative than that of mere physical crippling." 
+
+Channis' mind pulsed futilely with what he wanted to say and couldn't; the warning he wished to 
+shout and was unable to. He could only emit that continuous stream of fear- fear- 
+
+The Mule was calm. "You know, of course, of the destruction of Tazenda." 
+
+"I do. The assault by your fleet was foreseen." 
+
+
+
+Grimly: "Yes, so I suppose. But not prevented, eh?" 
+
+"No, not prevented." The First Speaker's emotional symbology was plain. It was almost a 
+self-horror; a complete self-disgust: "And the fault is much more mine than yours. Who could 
+have imagined your powers five years ago. We suspected from the start - from the moment 
+you captured Kalgan - that you had the powers of emotional control. That was not too 
+surprising, First Citizen, as I can explain to you. 
+
+"Emotional contact such as you and I possess is not a very new development. Actually it is 
+implicit in the human brain. Most humans can read emotion in a primitive manner by 
+associating it pragmatically with facial expression, tone of voice and so on. A good many 
+animals possess the faculty to a higher degree; they use the sense of smell to a good extent 
+and the emotions involved are, of course, less complex. 
+
+"Actually, humans are capable of much more, but the faculty of direct emotional contact tended 
+to atrophy with the development of speech a million years back. It has been the great advance 
+of our Second Foundation that this forgotten sense has been restored to at least some of its 
+potentialities. 
+
+"But we are not born with its full use. A million years of decay is a formidable obstacle, and we 
+must educate the sense, exercise it as we exercise our muscles. And there you have the main 
+difference. You were born with it. 
+
+"So much we could calculate. We could also calculate the effect of such a sense upon a person 
+in a world of men who did not possess it. The seeing man in the kingdom of the blind- We 
+calculated the extent to which a megalomania would take control of you and we thought we 
+were prepared. But for two factors we were not prepared. 
+
+"The first was the great extent of your sense. We can induce emotional contact only when in 
+eyeshot, which is why we are more helpless against physical weapons than you might think. 
+Sight plays such an enormous part. Not so with you. You are definitely known to have had men 
+under control, and, further, to have had intimate emotional contact with them when out of sight 
+and out of earshot. That was discovered too late. 
+
+"Secondly, we did not know of your physical shortcomings, particularly the one that seemed so 
+important to you, that you adopted the name of the Mule. We didn't foresee that you were not 
+merely a mutant, but a sterile mutant and the added psychic distortion due to your inferiority 
+complex passed us by. We allowed only for a megalomania - not for an intensely psychopathic 
+paranoia as well. 
+
+"It is myself that bears the responsibility for having missed all that, for I was the leader of the 
+Second Foundation when you captured Kalgan. When you destroyed the First Foundation, we 
+found out - but too late - and for that fault millions have died on Tazenda." 
+
+"And you will correct things now?" The Mules thin lips curled, his mind pulsing with hate: "What 
+will you do? Fatten me? Restore me to a masculine vigor? Take away from my past the long 
+childhood in an alien environment. Do you regret my sufferings? Do you regret my 
+unhappiness? I have no sorrow for what I did in my necessity. Let the Galaxy Protect itself as 
+best it can, since it stirred not a whit for my protection when I needed it." 
+
+
+
+Your emotions are, of course," said the First Speaker, "only the children of your background 
+and are not to be condemned - merely changed. The destruction of Tazenda was unavoidable. 
+The alternative would have been a much greater destruction generally throughout the Galaxy 
+over a period of centuries. We did our best in our limited way. We withdrew as many men from 
+Tazenda as we could. We decentralized the rest of the world. Unfortunately, our measures 
+were of necessity far from adequate. It left many millions to die - do you not regret that?" 
+
+"Not at all - any more than I regret the hundred thousand that must die on Rossem in not more 
+than six hours." 
+
+"On Rossem?" said the First Speaker, quickly. 
+
+Fie turned to Channis who had forced himself into a half-sitting posture, and his mind exerted 
+its force. Channis, felt the duel of minds strain over him, and then there was a short snapping of 
+the bond and the words came tumbling out of his mouth: "Sir, I have failed completely. He 
+forced it from me not ten minutes before your arrival. I could not resist him and I offer no 
+excuses. He knows Tazenda is not the Second Foundation. He knows that Rossem is." 
+
+And the bonds closed down upon him again. 
+
+The First Speaker frowned: "I see. What is it you are planning to do?" 
+
+"Do you really wonder? Do you really find it difficult to penetrate the obvious? All this time that 
+you have preached to me of the nature of emotional contact - all this time that you have been 
+throwing words such as megalomania and paranoia at me, I have been working. I have been in 
+contact with my Fleet and it has its orders. In six hours, unless I should for some reason 
+counteract my orders, they are to bombard all of Rossem except this lone village and an area 
+of a hundred square miles about it. They are to do a thorough job and are then to land here. 
+
+"You have six hours, and in six hours, you cannot beat down my mind, nor can you save the 
+rest of Rossem." 
+
+The Mule spread his hands and laughed again while the First Speaker seemed to find difficulty 
+in absorbing this new state of affairs. 
+
+He said: "The alternative?" 
+
+"Why should there even be an alternative? I can stand to gain no more by any alternative. Is it 
+the lives of those on Rossem I'm to be chary of? Perhaps if you allow my ships to land and 
+submit, all of you - all the men on the Second Foundation - to mental control sufficient to suit 
+myself, I may countermand the bombardment orders. It may be worthwhile to put so many men 
+of high intelligence under my control. But then again it would be a considerable effort and 
+perhaps not worth it after all, so I'm not particularly eager to have you agree to it. What do you 
+say, Second Foundationer? What weapon have you against my mind which is as strong as 
+yours at least and against my ships which are stronger than anything you have ever dreamed 
+of possessing?" 
+
+"What have I?" repeated the First Speaker, slowly: "Why nothing - except a little grain - such a 
+little grain of knowledge that even yet you do not possess." 
+
+
+
+"Speak quickly," laughed the Mule, "speak inventively. For squirm as you might, you won't 
+squirm out of this." 
+
+"Poor mutant," said the First Speaker, "I have nothing to squirm out of. Ask yourself - why was 
+Bail Channis sent to Kalgan as a decoy - Bail Channis, who though young and brave is almost 
+as much your mental inferior as is this sleeping officer of yours, this Han Pritcher. Why did not I 
+go, or another of our leaders, who would be more your match?" 
+
+"Perhaps," came the supremely confident reply, "you were not sufficiently foolish, since 
+perhaps none of you are my match." 
+
+"The true reason is more logical. You knew Channis to be a Second Foundationer. He lacked 
+the capacity to hide that from you. And you knew, too, that you were his superior, so you were 
+not afraid to play his game and follow him as he wished you to in order to outwit him later. Had I 
+gone to Kalgan, you would have killed me for I would have been a real danger, or had I avoided 
+death by concealing my identity, I would yet have failed in persuading you to follow me into 
+space. It was only known inferiority that lured you on. And had you remained on Kalgan, not all 
+the force of the Second Foundation could have harmed you, surrounded as you were by your 
+men, your machines, and your mental power." 
+
+"My mental power is yet with me, squirmer," said the Mule, "and my men and machines are not 
+far off." 
+
+"Truly so, but you are not on Kalgan. You are here in the Kingdom of Tazenda, logically 
+presented to you as the Second Foundation - very logically presented. It had to be so 
+presented, for you are a wise man, First Citizen, and would follow only logic." 
+
+"Correct, and it was a momentary victory for your side, but there was still time for me to worm 
+the truth from your man, Channis, and still wisdom in me to realize that such a truth might 
+exist." 
+
+"And on our side, oh, not-quite-sufficiently-subtle one, was the realization that you might go that 
+one step further and so Bail Channis was prepared for you." 
+
+"That he most certainly was not, for I stripped his brain clean as any plucked chicken. It 
+quivered bare and open before me and when he said Rossem was the Second Foundation, it 
+was basic truth for I had ground him so flat and smooth that not the smidgeon of a deceit could 
+have found refuge in any microscopic crevice." 
+
+"True enough. So much the better for our foresight. For I have told you already that Bail 
+Channis was a volunteer. Do you know what sort of a volunteer? Before he left our Foundation 
+for Kalgan and you, he submitted to emotional surgery of a drastic nature. Do you think it was 
+sufficient to deceive you? Do you think Bail Channis, mentally untouched, could possibly 
+deceive you? No, Bail Channis was himself deceived, of necessity and voluntarily. Down to the 
+inmost core of his mind, Bail Channis honestly believes that Rossem is the Second Foundation. 
+
+"And for three years now, we of the Second Foundation have built up the appearance of that 
+here in the Kingdom of Tazenda, in preparation and waiting for you. And we have succeeded, 
+have we not? You penetrated to Tazenda, and beyond that, to Rossem - but past that, you 
+
+
+
+could not go." 
+
+The Mule was upon his feet: "You dare tell me that Rossem also, is not the Second 
+Foundation?" 
+
+Channis, from the floor, felt his bonds burst for good, under a stream of mental force on the part 
+of the First Speaker and strained upright. Fie let out one long, incredulous cry: "You mean 
+Rossem is not the Second Foundation?" 
+
+The memories of life, the knowledge of his mind - everything - whirled mistily about him in 
+confusion. 
+
+The First Speaker smiled: "You see, First Citizen, Channis is as upset as you are. Of course, 
+Rossem is not the Second Foundation. Are we madmen then, to lead you, our greatest, most 
+powerful, most dangerous enemy to our own world? Oh, no! 
+
+"Let your Fleet bombard Rossem, First Citizen, if you must have it so. Let them destroy all they 
+can. For at most they can kill only Channis and myself - and that will leave you in a situation 
+improved not in the least. 
+
+"For the Second Foundation's Expedition to Rossem which has been here for three years and 
+has functioned, temporarily, as Elders in this village, embarked yesterday and are returning to 
+Kalgan. They will evade your Fleet, of course, and they will arrive in Kalgan at least a day 
+before you can, which is why I tell you all this. Unless I countermand my orders, when you 
+return, you will find a revolting Empire, a disintegrated realm, and only the men with you in your 
+Fleet here will be loyal to you. They will be hopelessly outnumbered. And moreover, the men of 
+the Second Foundation will be with your Flome Fleet and will see to it that you reconvert no 
+one. Your Empire is done, mutant." 
+
+Slowly, the Mule bowed his head, as anger and despair cornered his mind completely, "Yes. 
+Too late- Too late- Now I see it." 
+
+"Now you see it," agreed the First Speaker, "and now you don't." 
+
+In the despair of that moment, when the Mule's mind lay open, the First Speaker - ready for 
+that moment and pre-sure of its nature - entered quickly. It required a rather insignificant 
+fraction of a second to consummate the change completely. 
+
+The Mule looked up and said: "Then I shall return to Kalgan? 
+
+"Certainly. Flow do you feel?" 
+
+"Excellently well." Flis brow puckered: "Who are you?" 
+
+"Does it matter?" 
+
+"Of course not." Fie dismissed the matter, and touched Pritcher's shoulder: "Wake up, Pritcher, 
+we're going home." 
+
+It was two hours later that Bail Channis felt strong enough to walk by himself. Fie said: "Fie 
+won't ever remember?" 
+
+
+
+"Never. He retains his mental powers and his Empire - but his motivations are now entirely 
+different. The notion of a Second Foundation is a blank to him, and he is a man of peace. He 
+will be a far happier man henceforward, too, for the few years of life left him by his maladjusted 
+physique. And then, after he is dead Seldon's Plan will go on - somehow." 
+
+"And it is true," urged Channis, "it is true that Rossem is not the Second Foundation? I could 
+swear - I tell you I know it is. I am not mad." 
+
+"You are not mad, Channis, merely, as I have said, changed. Rossem is not the Second 
+Foundation. Come! We, too, will return home." 
+
+LAST INTERLUDE 
+
+Bail Channis sat in the small white-tiled room and allowed his mind to relax. He was content to 
+live in the present. There were the walls and the window and the grass outside. They had no 
+names. They were just things. There was a bed and a chair an books that developed 
+themselves idly on the screen at the foot of his bed. There was the nurse who brought him his 
+food. 
+
+At first he had made efforts to piece together the scraps of things he had heard. Such as those 
+two men talking together. 
+
+One had said: "Complete aphasia now. It’s cleaned out, and I think without damage. It will only 
+be necessary to return the recording of his original brain-wave makeup." 
+
+He remembered the sounds by rote, and for some reason they seemed peculiar sounds - as if 
+they meant something. But why bother. 
+
+Better to watch the pretty changing colors on the screen at the foot of the thing he lay on. 
+
+And then someone entered and did things to him and for a long time, he slept. 
+
+And when that had passed, the bed was suddenly a bed and he knew he was in a hospital, and 
+the words he remembered made sense. 
+
+He sat up: "What's happening?" 
+
+The First Speaker was beside him, "You're on the Second Foundation, and you have your mind 
+back - your original mind." 
+
+"Yes! Yes !" Channis came to the realization that he was himself, and there was incredible 
+triumph and joy in that. 
+
+"And now tell me," said the First Speaker, "do you know where the Second Foundation is now?" 
+
+And the truth came flooding down in one enormous wave and Channis did not answer. Like 
+Ebling Mis before him, he was conscious of only one vast, numbing surprise. 
+
+Until he finally nodded, and said: "By the Stars of the Galaxy - now, I know." 
+
+
+
+PART II 
+
+SEARCH BY THE FOUNDATION 
+
+
+7 
+
+Arcadia 
+
+DARELL, ARKADY novelist, born 1 1, 5, 362 F.E., died 1, 7, 443 F.E. Although primarily a writer 
+of fiction, Arkady Darell is best known for her biography of her grandmother, Bayta Darell. 
+
+Based on first-hand information, it has for centuries served as a primary source of information 
+concerning the Mule and his times. ... Like "Unkeyed Memories", her novel "Time and Time and 
+Over" is a stirring reflection of the brilliant Kalganian society of the early Interregnum, based, it 
+is said, on a visit to Kalgan in her youth.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Arcadia Darell declaimed firmly into the mouthpiece of her transcriber: 
+
+"The Future of Seldon's Plan, by A. Darell" and then thought darkly that some day when she 
+was a great writer, she would write all her masterpieces under the pseudonym of Arkady. Just 
+Arkady. No last name at all. 
+
+"A. Darell" would be just the sort of thing that she would have to put on all her themes for her 
+class in Composition and Rhetoric - so tasteless. All the other kids had to do it, too, except for 
+Olynthus Dam, because the class laughed so when he did it the first time, And "Arcadia" was a 
+little girls name, wished on her because her great-grandmother had been called that; her 
+parents just had no imagination at all. 
+
+Now that she was two days past fourteen, you'd think they'd recognize the simple fact of 
+adulthood and call her Arkady. Her lips tightened as she thought of her father looking up from 
+his book-viewer just long enough to say, "But if you're going to pretend you're nineteen, 
+
+Arcadia, what will you do when you're twenty-five and all the boys think you're thirty?" 
+
+From where she sprawled across the arms and into the hollow of her own special armchair, she 
+could see the mirror on her dresser. Her foot was a little in the way because her house slipper 
+kept twirling about her big toe, so she pulled it in and sat up with an unnatural straightness to 
+her neck that she felt sure, somehow, lengthened it a full two inches into slim regality. 
+
+For a moment, she considered her face thoughtfully - too fat. She opened her jaws half an inch 
+behind closed lips, and caught the resultant trace of unnatural gauntness at every angle. She 
+licked her lips with a quick touch of tongue and let them pout a bit in moist softness. Then she 
+let her eyelids droop in a weary, worldly way- Oh, golly if only her cheeks weren't that silly pink. 
+
+
+
+
+She tried putting her fingers to the outer comers of her eye and tilting the lids a bit to get that 
+mysterious exotic languor of the women of the inner star systems, but her hands were in the 
+way and she couldn't see her face very well. 
+
+Then she lifted her chin, caught herself at a half-profile, and with her eyes a little strained from 
+looking out the comer and her neck muscles faintly aching, she said, in a voice one octave 
+below its natural pitch, "Really, father, if you think it makes a particle of difference to me what 
+some silly old boys think you just-" 
+
+And then she remembered that she still had the transmitter open in her hand and said, drearily, 
+"Oh, golly," and shut it off. 
+
+The faintly violet paper with the peach margin line on the left had upon it the following: 
+
+"THE FUTURE OF SELDON'S PLAN 
+
+"Really, father, if you think it makes a particle of difference to me what some silly old boys think 
+you just 
+
+"Oh, golly." 
+
+She pulled the sheet out of the machine with annoyance and another clicked neatly into place. 
+
+But her face smoothed out of its vexation, nevertheless, and her wide, little mouth stretched 
+into a self-satisfied smile. She sniffed at the paper delicately, just right. Just that proper touch of 
+elegance and charm. And the penmanship was just the last word. 
+
+The machine had been delivered two days ago on her first adult birthday. She had said, "But 
+father, everybody - just everybody in the class who has the slightest pretensions to being 
+anybody has one. Nobody but some old drips would use hand machines-" 
+
+The salesman had said, "There is no other model as compact on the one hand and as 
+adaptable on the other. It will spell and punctuate correctly according to the sense of the 
+sentence. Naturally, it is a great aid to education since it encourages the user to employ careful 
+enunciation and breathing in order to make sure of the correct spelling, to say nothing of 
+demanding a proper and elegant delivery for correct punctuation." 
+
+Even then her father had tried to get one geared for type-print as if she were some dried-up, 
+old-maid teacher. 
+
+But when it was delivered, it was the model she wanted - obtained perhaps with a little more 
+wail and sniffle than quite went with the adulthood of fourteen - and copy was turned out in a 
+charming and entirely feminine handwriting, with the most beautifully graceful capitals anyone 
+ever saw. 
+
+Even the phrase, "Oh, golly." somehow breathed glamour when the Transcriber was done with 
+it. 
+
+But just the same she had to get it right, so she sat up straight in her chair, placed her first draft 
+before her in businesslike fashion, and began again, crisply and clearly; her abdomen flat, her 
+chest lifted, and her breathing carefully controlled. She intoned, with dramatic fervor: 
+
+
+
+The Future of Seldon's Plan. 
+
+
+"The Foundation's past history is, I am sure, well-known to all of us who have had the good 
+fortune to be educated in our planet's efficient and well-staffed school system. 
+
+(There! That would start things off right with Miss Erlking, that mean old hag.) 
+
+That past history is largely the past history of the great Plan of Hari Seldon. The two are one. 
+But the question in the mind of most people today is whether this Plan will continue in all its 
+great wisdom, or whether it will be foully destroyed, or, perhaps, has been so destroyed 
+already. 
+
+"To understand this, it may be best to pass quickly over some of the highlights of the Plan as it 
+has been revealed to humanity thus far. 
+
+(This part was easy because she had taken Modern History the semester before.) 
+
+"In the days, nearly four centuries ago, when the First Galactic Empire was decaying into the 
+paralysis that preceded final death, one man - the great Hari Seldon - foresaw the 
+approaching end. Through the science of psychohistory, the intrissacies of whose mathematics 
+has long since been forgotten, 
+
+(She paused in a trifle of doubt. She was sure that "intricacies" was pronounced with soft c's 
+but the spelling didn't look right. Oh, well, the machine couldn't very well be wrong-) 
+
+he and the men who worked with him are able to foretell the course of the great social and 
+economic currents sweeping the Galaxy at the time. It was possible for them to realize that, left 
+to itself, the Empire would break up, and that thereafter there would be at least thirty thousand 
+years of anarchic chaos prior to the establishment of a new Empire. 
+
+"It was too late to prevent the great Fall, but it was still possible, at least, to cut short the 
+intermediate period of chaos. The Plan was, therefore, evolved whereby only a single 
+millennium would separate the Second Empire from the First. We are completing the fourth 
+century of that millennium, and many generations of men have lived and died while the Plan 
+has continued its inexorable workings. 
+
+"Hari Seldon established two Foundations at the opposite ends of the Galaxy, in a manner and 
+under such circumstances as would yield the best mathematical solution for his 
+psychohistorical problem. In one of these, our Foundation, established here on Terminus, there 
+was concentrated the physical science of the Empire, and through the possession of that 
+science, the Foundation was able to withstand the attacks of the barbarous kingdoms which 
+had broken away and become independent, out at the hinge of the Empire. 
+
+"The Foundation, indeed, was able to conquer in its turn these short-lived kingdoms by means 
+of the leadership of a series of wise and heroic men like Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow who 
+were able to interpret the Plan intelligently and to guide our land through its 
+
+(She had written "intricacies" here also, but decided not to risk it a second time.) 
+
+complications. All our planets still revere their memories although centuries have passed. 
+
+
+
+"Eventually, the Foundation established a commercial system which controlled a large portion 
+of the Siwennian and Anacreonian sectors of the Galaxy, and even defeated the remnants of 
+the old Empire under its last great general, Bel Riose. It seemed that nothing could now stop 
+the workings of Seldon's plan. Every crisis that Seldon had planned had come at its appropriate 
+time and had been solved, and with each solution the Foundation had taken another giant 
+stride toward Second Empire and peace. 
+
+"And then, 
+
+(Her breath came short at this point, and she hissed the word, between her teeth, but the 
+Transmitter simply wrote them calmly and gracefully.) 
+
+with the last remnants of the dead First Empire gone and with only ineffectual warlords ruling 
+over the splinters and remnants of the decayed colossus, 
+
+(She got that phrase out of a thriller on the video last week, but old Miss Erlking never listened 
+to anything but symphonies and lectures, so she'd never know.) 
+
+there came the Mule. 
+
+"This strange man was not allowed for in the Plan. Fie was a mutant, whose birth could not 
+have been predicted. Fie had strange and mysterious power of controlling and manipulating 
+human emotions and in this manner could bend all men to his will. With breath-taking swiftness, 
+he became a conqueror and Empire-builder, until, finally, he even defeated the Foundation 
+itself. 
+
+"Yet he never obtained universal dominion, since in his first overpowering lunge he was 
+stopped by the wisdom and daring of a great woman 
+
+(Now there was that old problem again. Father would insist that she never bring up the fact that 
+she was the grandchild of Bayta Darell. Everyone knew it and Bayta was just about the greatest 
+woman there ever was and she had stopped the Mule singlehanded.) 
+
+in a manner the true story of which is known in its entirety to very few. 
+
+(There! If she had to read it to the class, that last could he said in a dark voice, and someone 
+would be sure to ask what the true story was, and then - well, and then she couldn't help tell 
+the truth if they asked her, could she? In her mind, she was already wordlessly whizzing 
+through a hurt and eloquent explanation to a stern and questioning paternal parent.) 
+
+"After five years of restricted rule, another change took place, the reasons for which are not 
+known, and the Mule abandoned all plans for further conquest. His last five years were those of 
+an enlightened despot. 
+
+"It is said by some that the change in the Mule was brought about by the intervention of the 
+Second Foundation. Flowever, no man has ever discovered the exact location of this other 
+Foundation, nor knows its exact function, so that theory remains unproven. 
+
+"A whole generation has passed since the death of the Mule. What of the future, then, now that 
+he has come and gone? Fie interrupted Seldon's Plan and seemed to have burst it to 
+
+
+
+fragments, yet as soon as he died, the Foundation rose again, like a nova from the dead ashes 
+of a dying star. 
+
+(She had made that up herself.) 
+
+Once again, the planet Terminus houses the center of a commercial federation almost as great 
+and as rich as before the conquest, and even more peaceful and democratic. 
+
+"Is this planned? Is Seldon's great dream still alive, and will a Second Galactic Empire yet be 
+formed six hundred years from now? I, myself, believe so, because 
+
+(This was the important part. Miss Erlking always had those large, ugly red-pencil scrawls that 
+went: 'But this is only descriptive. What are your personal reactions? Think! Express yourself! 
+Penetrate your own soul!' Penetrate your own soul. A lot she knew about souls, with her lemon 
+face that never smiled in its life-) 
+
+never at any time has the political situation been so favorable. The old Empire is completely 
+dead and the period of the Mule's rule put an end to the era of warlords that preceded him. 
+Most of the surrounding portions of the Galaxy are civilized and peaceful. 
+
+"Moreover the internal health of the Foundation is better than ever before. The despotic times 
+of the pre-Conquest hereditary mayors have given way to the democratic elections of early 
+times. There are no longer dissident worlds of independent Traders; no longer the injustices 
+and dislocations that accompanied accumulations of great wealth in the hands of a few. 
+
+"There is no reason, therefore, to fear failure, unless it is true that the Second Foundation itself 
+presents a danger. Those who think so have no evidence to back their claim, but merely vague 
+fears and superstitions. I think that our confidence in ourselves, in our nation, and in Hari 
+Seldon's great Plan should drive from our hearts and minds all uncertainties and 
+
+(Hm-m-m. This was awfully corny, but something like this was expected at the end.) 
+
+so I say-" 
+
+That is as far as "The Future of Seldon's Plan" got, at that moment, because there was the 
+gentlest little tap on the window, and when Arcadia shot up to a balance on one arm of the 
+chair, she found herself confronted by a smiling face beyond the glass, its even symmetry of 
+feature interestingly accentuated by the short, vertical fine of a finger before its lips. 
+
+With the slight pause necessary to assume an attitude of bepuzzlement, Arcadia dismounted 
+from the armchair, walked to the couch that fronted the wide window that held the apparition 
+and, kneeling upon it, stared out thoughtfully. 
+
+The smile upon the man's face faded quickly. While the fingers of one hand tightened whitely 
+upon the sill, the other made a quick gesture. Arcadia obeyed calmly, and closed the latch that 
+moved the lower third of the window smoothly into its socket in the wall, allowing the warm 
+spring air to interfere with the conditioning within. 
+
+"You can't get in," she said, with comfortable smugness. "The windows are all screened, and 
+keyed only to people who belong here. If you come in, all sorts of alarms will break loose." A 
+
+
+
+pause, then she added, "You look sort of silly balancing on that ledge underneath the window. 
+
+If you're not careful, you'll fall and break your neck and a lot of valuable flowers." 
+
+"In that case," said the man at the window, who had been thinking that very thing - with a 
+slightly different arrangement of adjectives- "will you shut off the screen and let me in?" 
+
+"No use in doing that'" said Arcadia. "You're probably thinking of a different house, because I'm 
+not the kind of girl who lets strange men into their ... her bedroom this time of night." Her eyes, 
+as she said it, took on a heavy-lidded sultriness - or an unreasonable facsimile thereof. 
+
+All traces of humor whatever had disappeared from the young stranger's face. He muttered, 
+"This is Dr. Darell's house, isn't it?" 
+
+"Why should I tell you?" 
+
+"Oh, Galaxy- Good-by-" 
+
+"If you jump off, young man, I will personally give the alarm." (This was intended as a refined 
+and sophisticated thrust of irony, since to Arcadia's enlightened eyes, the intruder was an 
+obviously mature thirty, at least - quite elderly, in fact.) 
+
+Quite a pause. Then, tightly, he said, "Well, now, look here, girlie, if you don't want me to stay, 
+and don't want me to go, what do you want me to do?" 
+
+"You can come in, I suppose. Dr. Darell does live here. I’ll shut off the screen now." 
+
+Warily, after a searching look, the young man poked his hand through the window, then 
+hunched himself up and through it. He brushed at his knees with an angry, slapping gesture, 
+and lifted a reddened face at her. 
+
+"You're quite sure that your character and reputation won't suffer when they find me here, are 
+you?" 
+
+"Not as much as yours would, because just as soon as I hear footsteps outside, I'll just shout 
+and yell and say you forced your way in here." 
+
+"Yes?" he replied with heavy courtesy, "And how do you intend to explain the shut-off protective 
+screen?" 
+
+"Poof! That would be easy. There wasn't any there in the first place." 
+
+The man's eyes were wide with chagrin. "That was a bluff? How old are you, kid?" 
+
+"I consider that a very impertinent question, young man. And I am not accustomed to being 
+addressed as 'kid.'" 
+
+"I don't wonder. You're probably the Mule's grandmother in disguise. Do you mind if I leave now 
+before you arrange a lynching party with myself as star performer?" 
+
+"You had better not leave - because my father's expecting you." 
+
+The man's look became a wary one, again. An eyebrow shot up as he said, lightly, "Oh? 
+
+
+
+Anyone with your father?' 
+
+"No." 
+
+"Anyone called on him lately?' 
+
+"Only tradespeople - and you." 
+
+"Anything unusual happen at all?" 
+
+"Only you." 
+
+"Forget me, will you? No, don't forget me. Tell me, how did you know your father was expecting 
+me?" 
+
+"Oh, that was easy. Last week, he received a Personal Capsule, keyed to him personally, with 
+a self-oxidizing message, you know. He threw the capsule shell into the Trash Disinto, and 
+yesterday, he gave Poli - that's our maid, you see - a month's vacation so she could visit her 
+sister in Terminus City, and this afternoon, he made up the bed in the spare room. So I knew 
+he expected somebody that I wasn't supposed to know anything about. Usually, he tells me 
+everything." 
+
+"Really! I'm surprised he has to. I should think you'd know everything before he tells you." 
+
+'I usually do." Then she laughed. She was beginning to feel very much at ease. The visitor was 
+elderly, but very distinguished-looking with curly brown hair and very blue eyes. Maybe she 
+could meet somebody like that again, sometimes, when she was old herself. 
+
+"And just how," he asked, "did you know it was I he expected." 
+
+"Well, who else could \\ be? He was expecting somebody in so secrety a way, if you know what 
+I mean - and then you come gumping around trying to sneak through windows, instead of 
+walking through the front door, the way you would if you had any sense." She remembered a 
+favorite line, and used it promptly. "Men are so stupid!" 
+
+"Pretty stuck on yourself, aren't you, kid? I mean, Miss. You could be wrong, you know. What if 
+I told you that all this is a mystery to me and that as far as I know, your father is expecting 
+someone else, not me." 
+
+"Oh, I don't think so. I didn't ask you to come in, until after I saw you drop your briefcase." 
+
+"My what?" 
+
+"Your briefcase, young man. I'm not blind. You didn't drop it by accident, because you looked 
+down first, so as to make sure it would land right. Then you must have realized it would land 
+just under the hedges and wouldn't be seen, so you dropped it and didn't look down afterwards. 
+Now since you came to the window instead of the front door, it must mean that you were a little 
+afraid to trust yourself in the house before investigating the place. And after you had a little 
+trouble with me, you took care of your briefcase before taking care of yourself, which means 
+that you consider whatever your briefcase has in it to be more valuable than your own safety, 
+and that means that as long as you're in here and the briefcase is out there and we know that 
+
+
+
+it's out there, you're probably pretty helpless." 
+
+She paused for a much-needed breath, and the man said, grittily, "Except that I think I'll choke 
+you just about medium dead and get out of here, with the briefcase." 
+
+"Except, young man, that I happen to have a baseball bat under my bed, which I can reach in 
+two seconds from where I'm sitting, and I'm very strong for a girl." 
+
+Impasse. Finally, with a strained courtesy, the "young man" said, "Shall I introduce myself, 
+since we're being so chummy. I'm Pelleas Anthor. And your name?" 
+
+"I'm Area- Arkady Darell. Pleased to meet you." 
+
+"And now Arkady, would you be a good little girl and call your father?" 
+
+Arcadia bridled. "I'm not a little girl. I think you're very rude - especially when you're asking a 
+favor." 
+
+Pelleas Anthor sighed. "Very well. Would you be a good, kind, dear, little old lady, just chock full 
+of lavender, and call your father?" 
+
+"That's not what I meant either, but I’ll call him. Only not so I'll take my eyes off you , young 
+man." And she stamped on the floor. 
+
+There came the sound of hurrying footsteps in the hall, and the door was flung open. 
+
+"Arcadia-" There was a tiny explosion of exhaled air, and Dr. Darell said, "Who are you, sir?" 
+
+Pelleas sprang to his feet in what was quite obviously relief. "Dr. Toran Darell? I am Pelleas 
+Anthor. You've received word about me, I think. At least, your daughter says you have." 
+
+"My daughter says I have?" He bent a frowning glance at her which caromed harmlessly off the 
+wide-eyed and impenetrable web of innocence with which she met the accusation. 
+
+Dr. Darell said, finally: "I have been expecting you. Would you mind coming down with me, 
+please?" And he stopped as his eye caught a flicker of motion, which Arcadia caught 
+simultaneously. 
+
+She scrambled toward her Transcriber, but it was quite useless, since her father was standing 
+right next to it. He said, sweetly, "You've left it going all this time, Arcadia." 
+
+"Father," she squeaked, in real anguish, "it is very ungentlemanly to read another person's 
+private correspondence, especially when it's talking correspondence." 
+
+"Ah," said her father, "but 'talking correspondence' with a strange man in your bedroom! As a 
+father, Arcadia, I must protect you against evil." 
+
+"Oh, golly - it was nothing like that." 
+
+Pelleas laughed suddenly, "Oh, but it was, Dr. Darell. The young lady was going to accuse me 
+of all sorts of things, and I must insist that you read it, if only to clear my name." 
+
+
+Oh-" Arcadia held back her tears with an effort. Her own father didn't even trust her. And that 
+
+
+
+darned Transcriber- If that silly fool hadn't come gooping at the window, and making her forget 
+to turn it off. And now her father would be making long, gentle speeches about what young 
+ladies aren't supposed to do. There just wasn't anything they were supposed to do, it looked 
+like, except choke and die, maybe. 
+
+"Arcadia," said her father, gently, "it strikes me that a young lady-" 
+
+She knew it. She knew it. 
+
+"-should not be quite so impertinent to men older than she is. 
+
+"Well, what did he want to come peeping around my window for? A young lady has a right to 
+privacy- Now I'll have to do my whole darned composition over." 
+
+"It's not up to you to question his propriety in coming to your window. You should simply not 
+have let him in. You should have called me instantly - especially if you thought I was expecting 
+him." 
+
+She said, peevishly, "It's just as well if you didn't see him - stupid thing. Hell give the whole 
+thing away if he keeps on going to windows, instead of doors." 
+
+"Arcadia, nobody wants your opinion on matters you know nothing of." 
+
+"I do, too. It's the Second Foundation, that's what it is." 
+
+There was a silence. Even Arcadia felt a little nervous stirring in her abdomen. 
+
+Dr. Darell said, softly, "Where have you heard this?" 
+
+"Nowheres, but what else is there to be so secret about? And you don't have to worry that I’ll 
+tell anyone." 
+
+"Mr. Anthor," said Dr. Darell, "I must apologize for all this." 
+
+"Oh, that's all right," came Anthor's rather hollow response. "It's not your fault if she's sold 
+herself to the forces of darkness. But do you mind if I ask her a question before we go. Miss 
+Arcadia-" 
+
+"What do you want?" 
+
+"Why do you think it is stupid to go to windows instead of to doors?" 
+
+"Because you advertise what you're trying to hide, silly. If I have a secret, I don't put tape over 
+my mouth and let everyone know I have a secret. I talk just as much as usual, only about 
+something else. Didn't you ever read any of the sayings of Salvor Hardin? He was our first 
+Mayor, you know." 
+
+"Yes, I know." 
+
+"Well, he used to say that only a he that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed. He 
+also said that nothing had to be true, but everything had to sound true. Well, when you come in 
+through a window, it's a lie that's ashamed of itself and it doesn't sound true." 
+
+
+
+"Then what would you have done?" 
+
+"If I had wanted to see my father on top secret business, I would have made his acquaintance 
+openly and seen him about all sorts of strictly legitimate things. And then when everyone knew 
+all about you and connected you with my father as a matter of course, you could be as top 
+secret as you want and nobody would ever think of questioning it." 
+
+Anthor looked at the girl strangely, then at Dr. Darell. He said, "Let's go. I have a briefcase I 
+want to pick up in the garden. Wait! Just one last question. Arcadia, you don't really have a 
+baseball bat under your bed, do you?" 
+
+"No! I don't." 
+
+"Hah. I didn't think so." 
+
+Dr. Darell stopped at the door. "Arcadia," he said, "when you rewrite your composition on the 
+Seldon Plan, don't be unnecessarily mysterious about your grandmother. There is no necessity 
+to mention that part at all." 
+
+He and Pelleas descended the stairs in silence. Then the visitor asked in a strained voice, "Do 
+you mind, sir? How old is she?" 
+
+"Fourteen, day before yesterday." 
+
+"Fourteen? Great Galaxy- Tell me, has she ever said she expects to marry some day?" 
+
+"No, she hasn't. Not to me." 
+
+Well, if she ever does, shoot him. The one she's going to marry, I mean." He stared earnestly 
+into the older man's eyes. "I'm serious. Life could hold no greater horror than living with what 
+shell be like when she's twenty. I don't mean to offend you, of course." 
+
+"You don't offend me. I think I know what you mean." 
+
+Upstairs, the object of their tender analyses faced the Transcriber with revolted weariness and 
+said, dully: "Thefutureofseldonsplan." The Transcriber with infinite aplomb, translated that into 
+elegantly, complicated script capitals as: 
+
+"The Future of Seldon's Plan." 
+
+
+8 
+
+Seldon's Plan 
+
+MATHEMATICS The synthesis of the calculus of n-variables and of n-dimensional geometry is 
+the basis of what Seldon once called "my little algebra of humanity".... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Consider a room! 
+
+
+
+The location of the room is not in question at the moment. It is merely sufficient to say that in 
+that room, more than anywhere, the Second Foundation existed. 
+
+It was a room which, through the centuries, had been the abode of pure science - yet it had 
+none of the gadgets with which, through millennia of association, science has come to be 
+considered equivalent. It was a science, instead, which dealt with mathematical concepts only, 
+in a manner similar to the speculation of ancient, ancient races in the primitive, prehistoric days 
+before technology had come to be; before Man had spread beyond a single, now-unknown 
+world. 
+
+For one thing, there was in that room - protected by a mental science as yet unassailable by 
+the combined physical might of the rest of the Galaxy - the Prime Radiant, which held in its 
+vitals the Seldon Plan - complete. 
+
+For another, there was a man, too, in that room - The First Speaker. 
+
+Fie was the twelfth in the line of chief guardians of the Plan, and his title bore no deeper 
+significance than the fact that at the gatherings of the leaders of the Second Foundation, he 
+spoke first. 
+
+His predecessor had beaten the Mule, but the wreckage of that gigantic struggle still littered the 
+path of the Plan- For twenty-five years, he, and his administration, had been trying to force a 
+Galaxy of stubborn and stupid human beings back to the path- It was a terrible task. 
+
+The First Speaker looked up at the opening door. Even while, in the loneliness of the room, he 
+considered his quarter century of effort, which now so slowly and inevitably approached its 
+climax; even while he had been so engaged, his mind had been considering the newcomer with 
+a gentle expectation. A youth, a student, one of those who might take over, eventually. 
+
+The young man stood uncertainly at the door, so that the First Speaker had to walk to him and 
+lead him in, with a friendly hand upon the shoulder. 
+
+The Student smiled shyly, and the First Speaker responded by saying, "First, I must tell you 
+why you are here." 
+
+They faced each other now, across the desk. Neither was speaking in any way that could be 
+recognized as such by any man in the Galaxy who was not himself a member of the Second 
+Foundation. 
+
+Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts 
+and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to 
+represent certain mental nuances, be developed a method of communication - but one which 
+in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into 
+gross and guttural signaling. 
+
+Down- down- the results can be followed; and all the suffering that humanity ever knew can be 
+traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy, until Hari Seldon, and very few 
+men thereafter, could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an 
+impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were 
+the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located-so that each 
+
+
+
+might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not 
+understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and 
+insecurity of that ultimate isolation - there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage 
+rapacity of man toward man. 
+
+Feet, for tens of thousands of years, had clogged and shuffled in the mud - and held down the 
+minds which, for an equal time, had been fit for the companionship of the stars. 
+
+Grimly, Man had instinctively sought to circumvent the prison bars of ordinary speech. 
+Semantics, symbolic logic, psychoanalysis - they had all been devices whereby speech could 
+either be refined or by-passed. 
+
+Psychohistory had been the development of mental science, the final mathematicization 
+thereof, rather, which had finally succeeded. Through the development of the mathematics 
+necessary to understand the facts of neural physiology and the electrochemistry of the nervous 
+system, which themselves had to be, had to be, traced down to nuclear forces, it first became 
+possible to truly develop psychology. And through the generalization of psychological 
+knowledge from the individual to the group, sociology was also mathematicized. 
+
+The larger groups; the billions that occupied planets; the trillions that occupied Sectors; the 
+quadrillions that occupied the whole Galaxy, became, not simply human beings, but gigantic 
+forces amenable to statistical treatment - so that to Hari Seldon, the future became clear and 
+inevitable, and the Plan could be set up. 
+
+The same basic developments of mental science that had brought about the development of 
+the Seldon Plan, thus made it also unnecessary for the First Speaker to use words in 
+addressing the Student. 
+
+Every reaction to a stimulus, however slight, was completely indicative of all the trifling 
+changes, of all the flickering currents that went on in another's mind. The First Speaker could 
+not sense the emotional content of the Student's instinctively, as the Mule would have been 
+able to do - since the Mule was a mutant with powers not ever likely to become completely 
+comprehensible to any ordinary man, even a Second Foundationer - rather he deduced them, 
+as the result of intensive training. 
+
+Since, however, it is inherently impossible in a society based on speech to indicate truly the 
+method of communication of Second Foundationers among themselves, the whole matter will 
+be hereafter ignored. The First Speaker will be represented as speaking in ordinary fashion, 
+and if the translation is not always entirely valid, it is at least the best that can be done under 
+the circumstances. 
+
+It will be pretended therefore, that the First Speaker did actually say, "First, I must tell you why 
+you are here," instead of smiling just so and lifting a finger exactly thus. 
+
+The First Speaker said, "You have studied mental science hard and well for most of your life. 
+You have absorbed all your teachers could give you. It is time for you and a few others like 
+yourself to begin your apprenticeship for Speakerhood." 
+
+Agitation from the other side of the desk. 
+
+
+
+"No - now you must take this phlegmatically. You had hoped you would qualify. You had feared 
+you would not. Actually, both hope and fear are weaknesses. You knew you would qualify and 
+you hesitate to admit the fact because such knowledge might stamp you as cocksure and 
+therefore unfit. Nonsense! The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is 
+wise. It is part of your qualification that you knew you would qualify." 
+
+Relaxation on the other side of the desk. 
+
+"Exactly. Now you feel better and your guard is down. You are fitter to concentrate and fitter to 
+understand. Remember, to be truly effective, it is not necessary to hold the mind under a tight, 
+controlling barrier which to the intelligent probe is as informative as a naked mentality. Rather, 
+one should cultivate an innocence, an awareness of self, and an unself-consciousness of self 
+which leaves one nothing to hide. My mind is open to you. Let this be so for both of us." 
+
+He went on. "It is not an easy thing to be a Speaker. It is not an easy thing to be a 
+Psychohistorian in the first place; and not even the best Psychohistorian need necessarily 
+qualify to be a Speaker. There is a distinction here. A Speaker must not only be aware of the 
+mathematical intricacies of the Seldon Plan; he must have a sympathy for it and for its ends. He 
+must love the Plan; to him it must be life and breath. More than that it must even be as a living 
+friend. 
+
+"Do you know what this is?" 
+
+The First Speaker's hand hovered gently over the black, shining cube in the middle of the desk. 
+It was featureless. 
+
+"No, Speaker, I do not." 
+
+"You have heard of the Prime Radiant?" 
+
+"This?" -Astonishment. 
+
+"You expected something more noble and awe-inspiring? Well, that is natural. It was created in 
+the days of the Empire, by men of Seldon's time. For nearly four hundred years, it has served 
+our needs perfectly, without requiring repairs or adjustment. And fortunately so, since none of 
+the Second Foundation is qualified to handle it in any technical fashion." He smiled gently. 
+"Those of the First Foundation might be able to duplicate this, but they must never know, of 
+course." 
+
+He depressed a lever on his side of the desk and the room was in darkness. But only for a 
+moment, since with a gradually livening flush, the two long walls of the room glowed to life. 
+
+First, a pearly white, unrelieved, then a trace of faint darkness here and there, and finally, the 
+fine neatly printed equations in black, with an occasional red hairline that wavered through the 
+darker forest like a staggering rillet. 
+
+"Come, my boy, step here before the wall. You will not cast a shadow. This light does not 
+radiate from the Radiant in an ordinary manner. To tell you the truth, I do not know even faintly 
+by what medium this effect is produced, but you will not cast a shadow. I know that." 
+
+They stood together in the light. Each wall was thirty feet long, and ten high. The writing was 
+
+
+
+small and covered every inch. 
+
+"This is not the whole Plan," said the First Speaker. "To get it all upon both walls, the individual 
+equations would have to be reduced to microscopic size - but that is not necessary. What you 
+now see represents the main portions of the Plan till now. You have learned about this, have 
+you not?" 
+
+"Yes, Speaker, I have." 
+
+"Do you recognize any portion." 
+
+A slow silence. The student pointed a finger and as he did so, the line of equations marched 
+down the wall, until the single series of functions he had thought of - one could scarcely 
+consider the quick, generalized gesture of the finger to have been sufficiently precise - was at 
+eye-level. 
+
+The First Speaker laughed softly, "You will find the Prime Radiant to be attuned to your mind. 
+You may expect more surprises from the little gadget. What were you about to say about the 
+equation you have chosen?" 
+
+"It," faltered the Student, "is a Rigellian integral, using a planetary distribution of a bias 
+indicating the presence of two chief economic classes on the planet, or maybe a Sector, plus 
+an unstable emotional pattern." 
+
+"And what does it signify?" 
+
+"It represents the limit of tension, since we have here" - he pointed, and again the equations 
+veered - "a converging series." 
+
+"Good," said the First Speaker. "And tell me, what do you think of all this. A finished work of art, 
+is it not?" 
+
+"Definitely!" 
+
+"Wrong! It is not." This, with sharpness. "It is the first lesson you must unlearn. The Seldon Plan 
+is neither complete nor correct. Instead, it is merely the best that could be done at the time. 
+Over a dozen generations of men have pored over these equations, worked at them, taken 
+them apart to the last decimal place, and put them together again. They've done more than 
+that. They've watched nearly four hundred years pass and against the predictions and 
+equations, they've checked reality, and they have learned. 
+
+"They have learned more than Seldon ever knew, and if with the accumulated knowledge of the 
+centuries we could repeat Seldon's work, we could do a better job. Is that perfectly clear to 
+you?" 
+
+The Student appeared a little shocked. 
+
+"Before you obtain your Speakerhood," continued the First Speaker, "you yourself will have to 
+make an original contribution to the Plan. It is not such great blasphemy. Every red mark you 
+see on the wall is the contribution of a man among us who lived since Seldon. Why ... why-" Fie 
+looked upward, "There!" 
+
+
+
+The whole wall seemed to whirl down upon him. 
+
+"This," he said, "is mine." A fine red line encircled two forking arrows and included six square 
+feet of deductions along each path. Between the two were a series of equations in red. 
+
+"It does not," said the Speaker, "seem to be much. It is at a point in the Plan which we will not 
+reach yet for a time as long as that which has already passed. It is at the period of 
+coalescence, when the Second Empire that is to be is in the grip of rival personalities who will 
+threaten to pull it apart if the fight is too even, or clamp it into rigidity, if the fight is too uneven. 
+Both possibilities are considered here, followed, and the method of avoiding either indicated. 
+
+"Yet it is all a matter of probabilities and a third course can exist. It is one of comparatively low 
+likelihood - twelve point six four percent, to be exact - but even smaller chances have already 
+come to pass and the Plan is only forty percent complete. This third probability consists of a 
+possible compromise between two or more of the conflicting personalities being considered. 
+This, I showed, would first freeze the Second Empire into an unprofitable mold, and then, 
+eventually, inflict more damage through civil wars than would have taken place had a 
+compromise never been made in the first place. Fortunately, that could be prevented, too. And 
+that was my contribution." 
+
+"If I may interrupt, Speaker- How is a change made?" 
+
+"Through the agency of the Radiant. You will find in your own case, for instance, that your 
+mathematics will be checked rigorously by five different boards; and that you will be required to 
+defend it against a concerted and merciless attack. Two years will then pass, and your 
+development will be reviewed again. It has happened more than once that a seemingly perfect 
+piece of work has uncovered its fallacies only after an induction period of months or years. 
+Sometimes, the contributor himself discovers the flaw. 
+
+"If, after two years, another examination, not less detailed than the first, still passes it, and - 
+better still - if in the interim the young scientist has brought to light additional details, subsidiary 
+evidence, the contribution will be added to the Plan. It was the climax of my career; it will be the 
+climax of yours. 
+
+"The Prime Radiant can be adjusted to your mind, and all corrections and additions can be 
+made through mental rapport. There will be nothing to indicate that the correction or addition is 
+yours. In all the history of the Plan there has been no personalization. It is rather a creation of 
+all of us together. Do you understand?" 
+
+"Yes, Speaker!" 
+
+"Then, enough of that." A stride to the Prime Radiant, and the walls were blank again save for 
+the ordinary room-lighting region along the upper borders. "Sit down here at my desk, and let 
+me talk to you. It is enough for a Psychohistorian, as such, to know his Biostatistics and his 
+Neurochemical Electromathematics. Some know nothing else and are fit only to be statistical 
+technicians. But a Speaker must be able to discuss the Plan without mathematics. If not the 
+Plan itself, at least its philosophy and its aims. 
+
+"First of all, what is the aim of the Plan? Please tell me in your own words - and don't grope for 
+
+
+
+fine sentiment. You won't be judged on polish and suavity, I assure you." 
+
+It was the Student's first chance at more than a bisyllable, and he hesitated before plunging into 
+the expectant space cleared away for him. He said, diffidently: "As a result of what I have 
+learned, I believe that it is the intention of the Plan to establish a human civilization based on an 
+orientation entirely different from anything that ever before existed. An orientation which, 
+according to the findings of Psychohistory, could never spontaneously come into being-" 
+
+"Stop!" The First Speaker was insistent. 'You must not say 'never.' That is a lazy slurring over of 
+the facts. Actually, Psychohistory predicts only probabilities. A particular event may be 
+infinitesimally probable, but the probability is always greater than zero." 
+
+"Yes, Speaker. The orientation desired, if I may correct myself, then, is well known to possess 
+no significant probability of spontaneously coming to pass." 
+
+"Better. What is the orientation?" 
+
+"It is that of a civilization based on mental science. In all the known history of Mankind, 
+advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the 
+inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to chance or to the vague 
+gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result, no culture of 
+greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of 
+great human misery." 
+
+"And why is the orientation we speak of a nonspontaneous one?" 
+
+"Because a large minority of human beings are mentally equipped to take part in the advance 
+of physical science, and all receive the crude and visible benefits thereof. Only an insignificant 
+minority, however, are inherently able to lead Man through the greater involvements of Mental 
+Science; and the benefits derived therefrom, while longer lasting, are more subtle and less 
+apparent. Furthermore, since such an orientation would lead to the development of a 
+benevolent dictatorship of the mentally best - virtually a higher subdivision of Man - it would be 
+resented and could not be stable without the application of a force which would depress the 
+rest of Mankind to brute level. Such a development is repugnant to us and must be avoided." 
+
+"What, then, is the solution?" 
+
+"The solution is the Seldon Plan. Conditions have been so arranged and so maintained that in a 
+millennium from its beginnings - six hundred years from now, a Second Galactic Empire will 
+have been established in which Mankind will be ready for the leadership of Mental Science. In 
+that same interval, the Second Foundation in its development, will have brought forth a group of 
+Psychologists ready to assume leadership. Or, as I have myself often thought, the First 
+Foundation supplies the physical framework of a single political unit, and the Second 
+Foundation supplies the mental framework of a ready-made ruling class." 
+
+"I see. Fairly adequate. Do you think that any Second Empire, even if formed in the time set by 
+Seldon, would do as a fulfillment of his Plan?" 
+
+"No, Speaker, I do not. There are several possible Second Empires that may be formed in the 
+period of time stretching from nine hundred to seventeen hundred years after the inception of 
+
+
+
+the Plan, but only one of these is the Second Empire." 
+
+"And in view of all this, why is it necessary that the existence of the Second Foundation be 
+hidden - above all, from the First Foundation?" 
+
+The Student probed for a hidden meaning to the question and failed to find it. Fie was troubled 
+in his answer, "For the same reason that the details of the Plan as a whole must be hidden from 
+Mankind in general. The laws of Psychohistory are statistical in nature and are rendered invalid 
+if the actions of individual men are not random in nature. If a sizable group of human beings 
+learned of key details of the Plan, their actions would be governed by that knowledge and 
+would no longer be random in the meaning of the axioms of Psychohistory. In other words, they 
+would no longer be perfectly predictable. Your pardon, Speaker, but I feel that the answer is not 
+satisfactory." 
+
+"It is well that you do. Your answer is quite incomplete. It is the Second Foundation itself which 
+must be hidden, not simply the Plan. The Second Empire is not yet formed. We have still a 
+society which would resent a ruling class of psychologists, and which would fear its 
+development and fight against it. Do you understand that?" 
+
+"Yes, Speaker, I do. The point has never been stressed-" 
+
+"Don't minimize. It has never been made - in the classroom, though you should be capable of 
+deducing it yourself. This and many other points we will make now and in the near future during 
+your apprenticeship. You will see me again in a week. By that time, I would like to have 
+comments from you as to a certain problem which I now set before you. I don't want complete 
+and rigorous mathematical treatment. That would take a year for an expert, and not a week for 
+you. But I do want an indication as to trends and directions 
+
+"You have here a fork in the Plan at a period in time of about half a century ago. The necessary 
+details are included. You will note that the path followed by the assumed reality diverges from 
+all the plotted predictions; its probability being under one percent. You will estimate for how 
+long the divergence may continue before it becomes uncorrectable. Estimate also the probable 
+end if uncorrected, and a reasonable method of correction." 
+
+The Student flipped the Viewer at random and looked stonily at the passages presented on the 
+tiny, built-in screen. 
+
+Fie said: "Why this particular problem, Speaker? It obviously has significance other than purely 
+academic." 
+
+"Thank you, my boy. You are as quick as I had expected. The problem is not supposititious. 
+Nearly half a century ago, the Mule burst into Galactic history and for ten years was the largest 
+single fact in the universe. Fie was unprovided for; uncalculated for. Fie bent the Plan seriously, 
+but not fatally. 
+
+"To stop him before he did become fatal, however, we were forced to take active part against 
+him. We revealed our existence, and infinitely worse, a portion of our power. The First 
+Foundation has learned of us, and their actions are now predicated on that knowledge. 
+
+Observe in the problem presented. Here. And here. 
+
+
+
+"Naturally, you will not speak of this to anyone." 
+
+There was an appalled pause, as realization seeped into the Student. He said: "Then the 
+Seldon Plan has failed!" 
+
+"Not yet. It merely may have failed. The probabilities of success are still twenty-one point four 
+percent, as of the last assessment." 
+
+
+9 
+
+The Conspirators 
+
+For Dr. Darell and Pelleas Anthor, the evenings passed in friendly intercourse; the days in 
+pleasant unimportance. It might have been an ordinary visit. Dr. Darell introduced the young 
+man as a cousin from across space, and interest was dulled by the cliche. 
+
+Somehow, however, among the small talk, a name might be mentioned. There would be an 
+easy thoughtfulness. Dr. Darell might say, "No," or he might say, "Yes." A call on the open 
+Communi-wave issued a casual invitation, "Want you to meet my cousin." 
+
+And Arcadia's preparations proceeded in their own manner. In fact, her actions might be 
+considered the least straightforward of all. 
+
+For instance, she induced Olynthus Dam at school to donate to her a home-built, self-contained 
+sound-receiver by methods which indicated a future for her that promised peril to all males with 
+whom she might come into contact. To avoid details, she merely exhibited such an interest in 
+Olynthus' self-publicized hobby - he had a home workshop-combined with such a 
+well-modulated transfer of this interest to Olynthus' own pudgy features, that the unfortunate 
+youth found himself: 1 ) discoursing at great and animated length upon the principles of the 
+hyperwave motor; 2) becoming dizzyingly aware of the great, absorbed eyes that rested so 
+lightly upon his; and 3) forcing into her willing hands his own greatest creation, the aforesaid 
+sound-receiver. 
+
+Arcadia cultivated Olynthus in diminishing degree thereafter for just long enough to remove all 
+suspicion that the sound-receiver had been the cause of the friendship. For months afterwards, 
+Olynthus felt the memory of that short period in his life over and over again with the tendrils of 
+his mind, until finally, for lack of further addition, he gave up and let it slip away. 
+
+When the seventh evening came, and five men sat in the Darell living room with food within and 
+tobacco without, Arcadia's desk upstairs was occupied by this quite unrecognizable 
+home-product of Olynthus' ingenuity. 
+
+Five men then. Dr. Darell, of course, with graying hair and meticulous clothing, looking 
+somewhat older than his forty-two years. Pelleas Author, serious and quick-eyed at the moment 
+looking young and unsure of himself. And the three new men: Jole Turbor, visicastor, bulky and 
+plump-lipped; Dr. Elvett Semic, professor-emeritus of physics at the University, scrawny and 
+wrinkled, his clothes only half-filled; Homir Munn, librarian, lanky and terribly ill-at-ease. 
+
+
+
+Dr. Darell spoke easily, in a normal, matter-of-fact tone: "This gathering has been arranged, 
+gentlemen, for a trifle more than merely social reasons. You may have guessed this. Since you 
+have been deliberately chosen because of your backgrounds, you may also guess the danger 
+involved. I won't minimize it, but I will point out that we are all condemned men, in any case. 
+
+"You will notice that none of you have been invited with any attempt at secrecy. None of you 
+have been asked to come here unseen. The windows are not adjusted to non-insight. No 
+screen of any sort is about the room. We have only to attract the attention of the enemy to be 
+ruined; and the best way to attract that attention is to assume a false and theatrical secrecy. 
+
+(Hah, thought Arcadia, bending over the voices coming - a bit screechily - out of the little box.) 
+
+"Do you understand that?" 
+
+Elvett Semic twitched his lower lip and bared his teeth in the screwup, wrinkled gesture that 
+preceded his every sentence. "Oh, get on with it. Tell us about the youngster." 
+
+Dr. Darell said, "Pelleas Anthor is his name. He was a student of my old colleague, Kleise, who 
+died last year. Kleise sent me his brain-pattern to the fifth sublevel, before he died, which 
+pattern has been now checked against that of the man before you. You know, of course, that a 
+brain-pattern cannot be duplicated that far, even by men of the Science of Psychology. If you 
+don't know that, you'll have to take my word for it." 
+
+Turbor said, purse-lipped, "We might as well make a beginning somewheres. We'll take your 
+word for it, especially since you're the greatest electroneurologist in the Galaxy now that Kleise 
+is dead. At least, that is the way I've described you in my visicast comment, and I even believe 
+it myself. How old are you, Anthor?" 
+
+"Twenty-nine, Mr. Turbor." 
+
+"Hm-m-m. And are you an electroneurologist, too? A great one?" 
+
+"Just a student of the science. But I work hard, and I've had the benefit of Kleise's training." 
+
+Munn broke in. He had a slight stammer at periods of tension. "I ... I wish you'd g ... get started. 
+I think everyone's t ... talking too much." 
+
+Dr. Darell lifted an eyebrow in Munn's direction, you're right, Homir. Take over, Pelleas." 
+
+"Not for a while," said Pelleas Anthor, slowly, "because before we can get started - although I 
+appreciate Mr. Munn's sentiment - I must request brain-wave data." 
+
+Darell frowned. "What is this, Anthor? What brain-wave data do you refer to?" 
+
+"The patterns of all of you. You have taken mine, Dr. Darell. I must take yours and those of the 
+rest of you. And I must take the measurements myself." 
+
+Turbor said, "There's no reason for him to trust us, Darell. The young man is within his rights." 
+
+"Thank you," said Anthor. "If you’ll lead the way to your laboratory then, Dr. Darell, well 
+proceed. I took the liberty this morning of checking your apparatus." 
+
+
+
+The science of electroencephalography was at once new and old. It was old in the sense that 
+the knowledge of the microcurrents generated by nerve cells of living beings belonged to that 
+immense category of human knowledge whose origin was completely lost It was knowledge 
+that stretched back as far as the earliest remnants of human history— 
+
+And yet it was new, too. The fact of the existence of microcurrents slumbered through the tens 
+of thousands of years of Galactic Empire as one of those vivid and whimsical, but quite 
+useless, items of human knowledge. Some had attempted to form classifications of waves into 
+waking and sleeping, calm and excited, well and ill - but even the broadest conceptions had 
+had their hordes of vitiating exceptions. 
+
+Others had tried to show the existence of brain-wave groups, analogous to the well-known 
+blood groups, and to show that external environment was the defining factor. These were the 
+race-minded people who claimed that Man could be divided into subspecies. But such a 
+philosophy could make no headway against the overwhelming ecumenical drive involved in the 
+fact of Galactic Empire - one political unit covering twenty million stellar systems, involving all 
+of Man from the central world of Trantor - now a gorgeous and impossible memory of the great 
+past - to the loneliest asteroid on the periphery. 
+
+And then again, in a society given over, as that of the First Empire was, to the physical 
+sciences and inanimate technology, there was a vague but mighty sociological push away from 
+the study of the mind. It was less respectable because less immediately useful; and it was 
+poorly financed since it was less profitable. 
+
+After the disintegration of the First Empire, there came the fragmentation of organized science, 
+back, back - past even the fundamentals of atomic power into the chemical power of coal and 
+oil. The one exception to this, of course, was the First Foundation where the spark of science, 
+revitalized and grown more intense was maintained and fed to flame. Yet there, too, it was the 
+physical that ruled, and the brain, except for surgery, was neglected ground. 
+
+Hari Seldon was the first to express what afterwards came to be accepted as truth. 
+
+"Neural microcurrents," he once said, "carry within them the spark of every varying impulse and 
+response, conscious and unconscious. The brain-waves recorded on neatly squared paper in 
+trembling peaks and troughs are the mirrors of the combined thought-pulses of billions of cells. 
+Theoretically, analysis should reveal the thoughts and emotions of the subject, to the last and 
+least. Differences should be detected that are due not only to gross physical defects, inherited 
+or acquired, but also to shifting states of emotion, to advancing education and experience, even 
+to something as subtle as a change in the subject's philosophy of life." 
+
+But even Seldon could approach no further than speculation. 
+
+And now for fifty years, the men of the First Foundation had been tearing at that incredibly vast 
+and complicated storehouse of new knowledge. The approach, naturally, was made through 
+new techniques - as, for example, the use of electrodes at skull sutures by a newly-developed 
+means which enabled contact to be made directly with the gray cells, without even the 
+necessity of shaving a patch of skull. And then there was a recording device which 
+automatically recorded the brain-wave data as an overall total, and as separate functions of six 
+
+
+
+independent variables. 
+
+What was most significant, perhaps, was the growing respect in which encephalography and 
+the encephalographer was held. Kleise, the greatest of them, sat at scientific conventions on an 
+equal basis with the physicist. Dr. Darell, though no longer active in the science, was known for 
+his brilliant advances in encephalographic analysis almost as much as for the fact that he was 
+the son of Bayta Darell, the great heroine of the past generation. 
+
+And so now, Dr. Darell sat in his own chair, with the delicate touch of the feathery electrodes 
+scarcely hinting at pressure upon his skull, while the vacuum-incased needles wavered to and 
+fro. His back was to the recorder - otherwise, as was well known, the sight of the moving 
+curves induced an unconscious effort to control them, with noticeable results - but he knew that 
+the central dial was expressing the strongly rhythmic and little-varying Sigma curve, which was 
+to be expected of his own powerful and disciplined mind. It would be strengthened and purified 
+in the subsidiary dial dealing with the Cerebellar wave. There would be the sharp, 
+near-discontinuous leaps from the frontal lobe, and the subdued shakiness from the subsurface 
+regions with its narrow range of frequencies- 
+
+He knew his own brain-wave pattern much as an artist might be perfectly aware of the color of 
+his eyes. 
+
+Pelleas Anthor made no comment when Darell rose from the reclining chair. The young man 
+abstracted the seven recordings, glanced at them with the quick, all-embracing eyes of one 
+who knows exactly what tiny facet of near-nothingness is being looked for. 
+
+"If you don't mind, Dr. Semic." 
+
+Semic's age-yellowed face was serious. Electroencephalography was a science of his old age 
+of which he knew little; an upstart that he faintly resented. He knew that he was old and that his 
+wave-pattern would show it. The wrinkles on his face showed it, the stoop in his walk, the 
+shaking of his hand - but they spoke only of his body. The brain-wave patterns might show that 
+his mind was old, too. An embarrassing and unwarranted invasion of a man's last protecting 
+stronghold, his own mind. 
+
+The electrodes were adjusted. The process did not hurt, of course, from beginning to end. 
+
+There was just that tiny tingle, far below the threshold of sensation. 
+
+And then came Turbor, who sat quietly and unemotionally through the fifteen minute process, 
+and Munn, who jerked at the first touch of the electrodes and then spent the session rolling his 
+eyes as though he wished he could turn them backwards and watch through a hole in his 
+occiput. 
+
+"And now-" said Darell, when all was done. 
+
+"And now," said Anthor, apologetically, "there is one more person in the house." 
+
+Darell, frowning, said: "My daughter?" 
+
+'Yes. I suggested that she stay home tonight, if you'll remember." 
+
+
+
+"For encephalographical analysis? What in the Galaxy for?" 
+
+"I cannot proceed without it." 
+
+Darell shrugged and climbed the stairs. Arcadia, amply warned, had the sound-receiver off 
+when he entered; then followed him down with mild obedience. It was the first time in her life - 
+except for the taking of her basic mind pattern as an infant, for identification and registration 
+purposes - that she found herself under the electrodes. 
+
+"May I see," she asked, when it was over, holding out her hand. 
+
+Dr. Darell said, "You would not understand, Arcadia. Isn't it time for you to go to bed?" 
+
+"Yes, father," she said, demurely. "Good night, all." 
+
+She ran up the stairs and plumped into bed with a minimum of basic preparation. With 
+Olynthus' sound-receiver propped beside her pillow, she felt like a character out of a book-film, 
+and hugged every moment of it close to her chest in an ecstasy of "Spy-stuff." 
+
+The first words she heard were Anthor's and they were: "The analyses, gentlemen, are all 
+satisfactory. The child's as well." 
+
+Child, she thought disgustedly, and bristled at Anthor in the darkness. 
+
+Anthor had opened his briefcase now, and out of it, he took several dozen brain-wave records. 
+They were not originals. Nor had the briefcase been fitted with an ordinary lock. Had the key 
+been held in any hand other than his own, the contents thereof would have silently and instantly 
+oxidized to an indecipherable ash. Once removed from the briefcase, the records did so 
+anyway after half an hour. 
+
+But during their short lifetime, Anthor spoke quickly. "I have the records here of several minor 
+government officials at Anacreon. This is a psychologist at Locris University; this an industrialist 
+at Siwenna. The rest are as you see." 
+
+They crowded closely. To all but Darell, they were so many quivers on parchment. To Darell, 
+they shouted with a million tongues. 
+
+Anthor pointed lightly, "I call your attention, Dr. Darell, to the plateau region among the 
+secondary Tauian waves in the frontal lobe, which is what all these records have in common. 
+Would you use my Analytical Rule, sir, to check my statement?" 
+
+The Analytical Rule might be considered a distant relation - as a skyscraper is to a shack - of 
+that kindergarten toy, the logarithmic Slide Rule. Darell used it with the wristflip of long practice. 
+He made freehand drawings of the result and, as Anthor stated, there were featureless 
+plateaus in frontal lobe regions where strong swings should have been expected. 
+
+"How would you interpret that, Dr. Darell?" asked Anthor. 
+
+"I'm not sure. Offhand, I don't see how it's possible. Even in cases of amnesia, there is 
+suppression, but not removal. Drastic brain surgery, perhaps?" 
+
+"Oh, something's been cut out," cried Anthor, impatiently, "yes! Not in the physical sense, 
+
+
+
+however. You know, the Mule could have done just that. He could have suppressed completely 
+all capacity for a certain emotion or attitude of mind, and leave nothing but just such a flatness. 
+Or else-" 
+
+"Or else the Second Foundation could have done it. Is that it?" asked Turbor, with a slow smile. 
+There was no real need to answer that thoroughly rhetorical question. 
+
+"What made you suspicious, Mr. Anthor?" asked Munn. 
+
+"It wasn't I. It was Dr. Kleise. He collected brain-wave patterns much as the Planetary Police 
+do, but along different lines. He specialized in intellectuals, government officials and business 
+leaders. You see, it's quite obvious that if the Second Foundation is directing the historical 
+course of the Galaxy - of us - that they must do it subtly and in as minimal a fashion as 
+possible. If they work through minds, as they must, it is the minds of people with influence; 
+culturally, industrially, or politically. And with those he concerned himself." 
+
+"Yes," objected Munn, "but is there corroboration? How do these people act - I mean the ones 
+with the plateau. Maybe it's all a perfectly normal phenomenon." He looked hopelessly at the 
+others out of his, somehow, childlike blue eyes, but met no encouraging return. 
+
+"I leave that to Dr. Darell," said Anthor. "Ask him how many times he's seen this phenomenon 
+in his general studies, or in reported cases in the literature over the past generation. Then ask 
+him the chances of it being discovered in almost one out of every thousand cases among the 
+categories Dr. Kleise studied." 
+
+"I suppose that there is no doubt," said Darell, thoughtfully, "that these are artificial mentalities. 
+They have been tampered with. In a way, I have suspected this-" 
+
+"I know that, Dr. Darell," said Author. "I also know you once worked with Dr. Kleise. I would like 
+to know why you stopped." 
+
+There wasn't actually hostility in his question. Perhaps nothing more than caution; but, at any 
+rate, it resulted in a long pause. Darell looked from one to another of his guests, then said 
+brusquely, "Because there was no point to Kleise's battle. He was competing with an adversary 
+too strong for him. He was detecting what we - he and I - knew he would detect - that we were 
+not our own masters. And I didn't want to know! I had my self-respect. I liked to think that our 
+Foundation was captain of its collective soul; that our forefathers had not quite fought and died 
+for nothing. I thought it would be most simple to turn my face away as long as I was not quite 
+sure. I didn't need my position since the Government pension awarded to my mother's family in 
+perpetuity would take care of my uncomplicated needs. My home laboratory would suffice to 
+keep boredom away, and life would some day end- Then Kleise died-" 
+
+Semic showed his teeth and said: "This fellow Kleise; I don't know him. How did he die?" 
+
+Anthor cut in: "He died. He thought he would. He told me half a year before that he was getting 
+too close-" 
+
+"Now we're too c ... close, too, aren't we?" suggested Munn, dry-mouthed, as his Adam's apple 
+jiggled. 
+
+
+
+"Yes," said Anthor, flatly, "but we were, anyway - all of us. It's why you've all been chosen. I'm 
+Kleise's student. Dr. Darell was his colleague. Jole Turbor has been denouncing our blind faith 
+in the saving hand of the Second Foundation on the air, until the government shut him off - 
+through the agency, I might mention, of a powerful financier whose brain shows what Kleise 
+used to call the Tamper Plateau. Homir Munn has the largest home collection of Muliana - if I 
+may use the phrase to signify collected data concerning the Mule - in existence, and has 
+published some papers containing speculation on the nature and function of the Second 
+Foundation. Dr. Semic has contributed as much as anyone to the mathematics of 
+encephalographic analysis, though I don't believe he realized that his mathematics could be so 
+applied." 
+
+Semic opened his eyes wide and chuckled gaspingly, "No, young fellow. I was analyzing 
+intranuclear motions - the n-body problem, you know. I'm lost in encephalography." 
+
+"Then we know where we stand. The government can, of course, do nothing about the matter. 
+Whether the mayor or anyone in his administration is aware of the seriousness of the situation, 
+
+I don't know. But this I do know - we five have nothing to lose and stand to gain much. With 
+every increase in our knowledge, we can widen ourselves in safe directions. We are but a 
+beginning, you understand." 
+
+"Flow widespread," put in Turbor, "is this Second Foundation infiltration?" 
+
+"I don't know. There's a flat answer. All the infiltrations we have discovered were on the outer 
+fringes of the nation. The capital world may yet be clean, though even that is not certain - else I 
+would not have tested you. You were particularly suspicious, Dr. Darell, since you abandoned 
+research with Kleise. Kleise never forgave you, you know. I thought that perhaps the Second 
+Foundation had corrupted you, but Kleise always insisted that you were a coward. You'll forgive 
+me, Dr. Darell, if I explain this to make my own position clear. I, personally, think I understand 
+your attitude, and, if it was cowardice, I consider it venial." 
+
+Darell drew a breath before replying. "I ran away! Call it what you wish. I tried to maintain our 
+friendship, however, yet he never wrote nor called me until the day he sent me your brainwave 
+data, and that was scarcely a week before he died-" 
+
+"If you don't mind," interrupted Flomir Munn, with a flash of nervous eloquence, "I d ... don't see 
+what you think you're doing. We're a p ... poor bunch of conspirators, if we're just going to talk 
+and talk and t ... talk. And I don't see what else we can do, anyway. This is v ... very childish. B 
+... brain-waves and mumbo jumbo and all that. Is there just one thing you intend to do?' 
+
+Pelleas Author's eyes were bright, "Yes, there is. We need more information on the Second 
+Foundation. It's the prime necessity. The Mule spent the first five years of his rule in just that 
+quest for information and failed - or so we have all been led to believe. But then he stopped 
+looking. Why? Because he failed? Or because he succeeded?" 
+
+"M ... more talk," said Munn, bitterly. "Flow are we ever to know?" 
+
+"If you'll listen to me- The Mule's capital was on Kalgan. Kalgan was not part of the 
+Foundation's commercial sphere of influence before the Mule and it is not part of it now. Kalgan 
+is ruled, at the moment, by the man, Stettin, unless there's another palace revolution by 
+
+
+
+tomorrow. Stettin calls himself First Citizen and considers himself the successor of the Mule. If 
+there is any tradition in that world, it rests with the super-humanity and greatness of the Mule - 
+a tradition almost superstitious in intensity. As a result, the Mule's old palace is maintained as a 
+shrine. No unauthorized person may enter; nothing within has ever been touched." 
+
+"Well?" 
+
+"Well, why is that so? At times like these, nothing happens without a reason. What if it is not 
+superstition only that makes the Mule's palace inviolate? What if the Second Foundation has so 
+arranged matters? In short what if the results of the Mule's five-year search are within-" 
+
+"Oh, p ... poppycock." 
+
+"Why not?" demanded Anthor. "Throughout its history the Second Foundation has hidden itself 
+and interfered in Galactic affairs in minimal fashion only. I know that to us it would seem more 
+logical to destroy the Palace or, at the least, to remove the data. But you must consider the 
+psychology of these master psychologists. They are Seldons; they are Mules and they work by 
+indirection, through the mind. They would never destroy or remove when they could achieve 
+their ends by creating a state of mind. Eh?" 
+
+No immediate answer, and Anthor continued, "And you, Munn, are just the one to get the 
+information we need." 
+
+"I?" It was an astounded yell. Munn looked from one to the other rapidly, "I can't do such a 
+thing. I'm no man of action; no hero of any teleview. I'm a librarian. If I can help you that way, all 
+right, and I'll risk the Second Foundation, but I'm not going out into space on any qu ... quixotic 
+thing like that." 
+
+"Now, look," said Anthor, patiently, "Dr. Darell and I have both agreed that you're the man. It's 
+the only way to do it naturally. You say you're a librarian. Fine! What is your main field of 
+interest? Muliana! You already have the greatest collection of material on the Mule in the 
+Galaxy. It is natural for you to want more; more natural for you than for anyone else. You could 
+request entrance to the Kalgan Palace without arousing suspicion of ulterior motives. You might 
+be refused but you would not be suspected. What's more, you have a one-man cruiser. You're 
+known to have visited foreign planets during your annual vacation. You've even been on Kalgan 
+before. Don't you understand that you need only act as you always have?" 
+
+"But I can't just say, 'W ... won't you kindly let me in to your most sacred shrine, M ... Mr. First 
+Citizen?’" 
+
+"Why not?" 
+
+"Because, by the Galaxy, he won't let me!" 
+
+"All right, then. So he won't Then you'll come home and we’ll think of something else." 
+
+Munn looked about in helpless rebellion. Fie felt himself being talked into something he hated. 
+No one offered to help him extricate himself. 
+
+
+So in the end two decisions were made in Dr. Darell's house. The first was a reluctant one of 
+
+
+
+agreement on the part of Munn to take off into space as soon as his summer vacation began. 
+
+The other was a highly unauthorized decision on the part of a thoroughly unofficial member of 
+the gathering, made as she clicked off a sound-receiver and composed herself for a belated 
+sleep. This second decision does not concern us just yet. 
+
+10 
+
+Approaching Crisis 
+
+A week had passed on the Second Foundation, and the First Speaker was smiling once again 
+upon the Student. 
+
+"You must have brought me interesting results, or you would not be so filled with anger." 
+
+The Student put his hand upon the sheaf of calculating paper he had brought with him and 
+said, "Are you sure that the problem is a factual one?" 
+
+"The premises are true. I have distorted nothing." 
+
+"Then I must accept the results, and I do not want to." 
+
+"Naturally. But what have your wants to do with it? Well, tell me what disturbs you so. No, no, 
+put your derivations to one side. I will subject them to analysis afterward. Meanwhile, talkto 
+me. Let me judge your understanding." 
+
+"Well, then, Speaker- It becomes very apparent that a gross overall change in the basic 
+psychology of the First Foundation has taken place. As long as they knew of the existence of a 
+Seldon Plan, without knowing any of the details thereof, they were confident but uncertain. 
+They knew they would succeed, but they didn't know when or how. There was, therefore, a 
+continuous atmosphere of tension and strain - which was what Seldon desired. The First 
+Foundation, in other words, could be counted upon to work at maximum potential." 
+
+"A doubtful metaphor," said the First Speaker, "but I understand you." 
+
+"But now, Speaker, they know of the existence of a Second Foundation in what amounts to 
+detail, rather merely than as an ancient and vague statement of Seldon's. They have an inkling 
+as to its function as the guardian of the Plan. They know that an agency exists which watches 
+their every step and will not let them fall. So they abandon their purposeful stride and allow 
+themselves to be carried upon a litter. Another metaphor, I'm afraid." 
+
+"Nevertheless, go on." 
+
+"And that very abandonment of effort; that growing inertia; that lapse into softness and into a 
+decadent and hedonistic culture, means the ruin of the Plan. They must be self-propelled." 
+
+"Is that all?" 
+
+"No, there is more. The majority reaction is as described. But a great probability exists for a 
+
+
+
+minority reaction. Knowledge of our guardianship and our control will rouse among a few, not 
+complacence, but hostility. This follows from Korillov's Theorem-" 
+
+"Yes, yes. I know the theorem." 
+
+"I'm sorry, Speaker. It is difficult to avoid mathematics. In any case, the effect is that not only is 
+the Foundation's effort diluted, but part of it is turned against us, actively against us." 
+
+"And is that all?" 
+
+"There remains one other factor of which the probability is moderately low—" 
+
+"Very good. What is that?" 
+
+"While the energies of the First Foundation were directed only to Empire; while their only 
+enemies were huge and outmoded hulks that remained from the shambles of the past, they 
+were obviously concerned only with the physical sciences. With us forming a new, large part of 
+their environment, a change in view may well be imposed on them. They may try to become 
+psychologists-" 
+
+"That change," said the First Speaker, coolly , " has already taken place." 
+
+The Student's lips compressed themselves into a pale line. "Then all is over. It is the basic 
+incompatibility with the Plan. Speaker, would I have known of this if I had lived - outside?" 
+
+The First Speaker spoke seriously, "You feel humiliated, my young man, because, thinking you 
+understood so much so well, you suddenly find that many very apparent things were unknown 
+to you. Thinking you were one of the Lords of the Galaxy; you suddenly find that you stand near 
+to destruction. Naturally, you will resent the ivory tower in which you lived; the seclusion in 
+which you were educated; the theories on which you were reared. 
+
+"I once had that feeling. It is normal. Yet it was necessary that in your formative years you have 
+no direct contact with the Galaxy, that you remain here, where all knowledge is filtered to you, 
+and your mind carefully sharpened. We could have shown you this ... this part-failure of the 
+Plan earlier and spared you the shock now, but you would not have understood the significance 
+properly, as you now will. Then you find no solution at all to the problem?" 
+
+The Student shook his head and said hopelessly, "None!" 
+
+"Well, it is not surprising. Listen to me, young man. A course of action exists and has been 
+followed for over a decade. It is not a usual course, but one that we have been forced into 
+against our will. It involves low probabilities, dangerous assumptions- We have even been 
+forced to deal with individual reactions at times, because that was the only possible way, and 
+you know that Psychostatistics by its very nature has no meaning when applied to less than 
+planetary numbers." 
+
+"Are we succeeding?" gasped the Student. 
+
+"There's no way of telling yet. We have kept the situation stable so far - but for the first time in 
+the history of the Plan, it is possible for the unexpected actions of a single individual to destroy 
+it. We have adjusted a minimum number of outsiders to a needful state of mind; we have our 
+
+
+
+agents - but their paths are planned. They dare not improvise. That should be obvious to you. 
+And I will not conceal the worst - if we are discovered, here, on this world, it will not only be the 
+Plan that is destroyed, but ourselves, our physical selves. So you see, our solution is not very 
+good." 
+
+"But the little you have described does not sound like a solution at all, but like a desperate 
+guess." 
+
+"No. Let us say, an intelligent guess." 
+
+"When is the crisis, Speaker? When will we know whether we have succeeded or not?" 
+
+"Well within the year, no doubt." 
+
+The Student considered that, then nodded his head. He shook hands with the Speaker. "Well, 
+it's good to know." 
+
+He turned on his heel and left. 
+
+The first Speaker looked out silently as the window gained transparency. Past the giant 
+structures to the quite, crowding stars. 
+
+A year would pass quickly. Would any of them, any of Seldon's heritage, be alive at its end? 
+
+11 
+
+Stowaway 
+
+It was a little over a month before the summer could be said to have started. Started, that is, to 
+the extent that Homir Munn had written his final financial report of the fiscal year, seen to it that 
+the substitute librarian supplied by the Government was sufficiently aware of the subtleties of 
+the post - last year's man had been quite unsatisfactory - and arranged to have his little cruiser 
+the Unimara - named after a tender and mysterious episode of twenty years past - taken out of 
+its winter cobwebbery. 
+
+He left Terminus in a sullen distemper. No one was at the port to see him off. That would not 
+have been natural since no one ever had in the past. He knew very well that it was important to 
+have this trip in no way different from any he had made in the past, yet he felt drenched in a 
+vague resentment. He, Homir Munn, was risking his neck in derring-doery of the most 
+outrageous sort, and yet he left alone. 
+
+At least, so he thought. 
+
+And it was because he thought wrongly, that the following day was one of confusion, both on 
+the Unimara and in Dr. Darell's suburban home. 
+
+It hit Dr. Darell's home first, in point of time, through the medium of Poli, the maid, whose 
+month's vacation was now quite a thing of the past. She flew down the stairs in a flurry and 
+stutter. 
+
+
+
+The good doctor met her and she tried vainly to put emotion into words but ended by thrusting 
+a sheet of paper and a cubical object at him. 
+
+He took them unwillingly and said: "What's wrong, Poli?" 
+
+"She's gone, doctor." 
+
+"Who's gone?" 
+
+"Arcadia!" 
+
+"What do you mean, gone? Gone where? What are you talking about?" 
+
+And she stamped her foot: 'I don't know. She's gone, and there's a suitcase and some clothes 
+gone with her and there's that letter. Why don't you read it, instead of just standing there? Oh, 
+you men!" 
+
+Dr. Darell shrugged and opened the envelope. The letter was not long, and except for the 
+angular signature, "Arkady," was in the ornate and flowing handwriting of Arcadia's transcriber. 
+
+Dear Father: 
+
+It would have been simply too heartbreaking to say good-by to you in person. I 
+might have cried like a little girl and you would have been ashamed of me. So I'm 
+writing a letter instead to tell you how much III miss you, even while I'm having this 
+perfectly wonderful summer vacation with Uncle Homir. Ill take good care of myself 
+and it won't be long before I’m home again. Meanwhile, I'm leaving you something 
+that's all my own. You can have it now. 
+
+Your loving daughter, 
+
+Arkady. 
+
+He read it through several times with an expression that grew blanker each time. He said stiffly, 
+"Have you read this, Poli?" 
+
+Poli was instantly on the defensive. "I certainly can't be blamed for that, doctor. The envelope 
+has 'Poli' written on the outside, and I had no way of telling there was a letter for you on the 
+inside. I'm no snoop, doctor, and in the years I've been with-" 
+
+Darell held up a placating hand, "Very well, Poli. It's not important. I just wanted to make sure 
+you understood what had happened." 
+
+He was considering rapidly. It was no use telling her to forget the matter. With regard to the 
+enemy, "forget" was a meaningless word; and the advice, insofar as it made the matter more 
+important, would have had an opposite effect. 
+
+He said instead, "She's a queer little girl, you know. Very romantic. Ever since we arranged to 
+have her go off on a space trip this summer, she's been quite excited." 
+
+"And just why has no one told me about this space trip?" 
+
+
+
+"It was arranged while you were away, and we forgot It's nothing more complicated than that." 
+
+Poli's original emotions now concentrated themselves into a single, overwhelming indignation, 
+"Simple, is it? The poor chick has gone off with one suitcase, without a decent stitch of clothes 
+to her, and alone at that. How long will she be away?" 
+
+"Now I won't have you worrying about it, Poli. There will be plenty of clothes for her on the ship. 
+It's been all arranged. Will you tell Mr. Anthor, that I want to see him? Oh, and first - is this the 
+object that Arcadia has left for me?" He turned it over in his hand. 
+
+Poli tossed her head. "I'm sure I don't know. The letter was on top of it and that's every bit I can 
+tell you. Forget to tell me, indeed. If her mother were alive-" 
+
+Darell, waved her away. "Please call Mr. Anthor." 
+
+Anthor's viewpoint on the matter differed radically from that of Arcadia's father. He punctuated 
+his initial remarks with clenched fists and tom hair, and from there, passed on to bitterness. 
+
+"Great Space, what are you waiting for? What are we both waiting for? Get the spaceport on 
+the viewer and have them contact the Unimara." 
+
+"Softly, Pelleas, she's my daughter." 
+
+"But it's not your Galaxy." 
+
+"Now, wait. She's an intelligent girl, Pelleas, and she's thought this thing out carefully. We had 
+better follow her thoughts while this thing is fresh. Do you know what this thing is?" 
+
+"No. Why should it matter what it is?' 
+
+"Because it's a sound-receiver." 
+
+"That thing?" 
+
+"It's homemade, but it will work. I've tested it. Don't you see? It's her way of telling us that she's 
+been a party to our conversations of policy. She knows where Homir Munn is going and why. 
+She's decided it would be exciting to go along." 
+
+"Oh, Great Space," groaned the younger man. "Another mind for the Second Foundation to 
+pick." 
+
+"Except that there's no reason why the Second Foundation should, a priori, suspect a 
+fourteen-year-old girl of being a danger - unless we do anything to attract attention to her, such 
+as calling back a ship out of space for no reason other than to take her off. Do you forget with 
+whom we're dealing? How narrow the margin is that separates us from discovery? How 
+helpless we are thereafter?" 
+
+"But we can't have everything depend on an insane child." 
+
+She's not insane, and we have no choice. She need not have written the letter, but she did it to 
+keep us from going to the police after a lost child. Her letter suggests that we convert the entire 
+matter into a friendly offer on the part of Munn to take an old friend's daughter off for a short 
+
+
+
+vacation. And why not? He's been my friend for nearly twenty years. He's known her since she 
+was three, when I brought her back from Trantor. It's a perfectly natural thing, and, in fact, 
+ought to decrease suspicion. A spy does not carry a fourteen-year-old niece about with him." 
+
+"So. And what will Munn do when he finds her?" 
+
+Dr. Darell heaved his eyebrows once. "I can't say - but I presume she’ll handle him." 
+
+But the house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the 
+Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter's mad little life was in danger. 
+
+The excitement on the Unimara, if involving fewer people, was considerably more intense. 
+
+In the luggage compartment, Arcadia found herself, in the first place, aided by experience, and 
+in the second, hampered by the reverse. 
+
+Thus, she met the initial acceleration with equanimity and the more subtle nausea that 
+accompanied the inside-outness of the first jump through hyperspace with stoicism. Both had 
+been experienced on space hops before, and she was tensed for them. She knew also that 
+luggage compartments were included in the ship's ventilation-system and that they could even 
+be bathed in wall-light. This last, however, she excluded as being too unconscionably 
+unromantic. She remained in the dark, as a conspirator should, breathing very softly, and 
+listening to the little miscellany of noises that surrounded Homir Munn. 
+
+They were undistinguished noises, the kind made by a man alone. The shuffling of shoes, the 
+rustle of fabric against metal, the soughing of an upholstered chair seat retreating under weight, 
+the sharp click of a control unit, or the soft slap of a palm over a photoelectric cell. 
+
+Yet, eventually, it was the lack of experience that caught up with Arcadia. In the book films and 
+on the videos, the stowaway seemed to have such an infinite capacity for obscurity. Of course, 
+there was always the danger of dislodging something which would fall with a crash, or of 
+sneezing - in videos you were almost sure to sneeze; it was an accepted matter. She knew all 
+this, and was careful. There was also the realization that thirst and hunger might be 
+encountered. For this, she was prepared with ration cans out of the pantry. But yet things 
+remained that the films never mentioned, and it dawned upon Arcadia with a shock that, 
+despite the best intentions in the world, she could stay hidden in the closet for only a limited 
+time. 
+
+And on a one-man sports-cruiser, such as the Unimara, living space consisted, essentially, of a 
+single room, so that there wasn't even the risky possibility of sneaking out of the compartment 
+while Munn was engaged elsewhere. 
+
+She waited frantically for the sounds of sleep to arise. If only she knew whether he snored. At 
+least she knew where the bunk was and she could recognize the rolling protest of one when 
+she heard it. There was a long breath and then a yawn. She waited through a gathering 
+silence, punctuated by the bunk's soft protest against a changed position or a shifted leg. 
+
+The door of the luggage compartment opened easily at the pressure of her finger, and her 
+craning neck- 
+
+
+
+There was a definite human sound that broke off sharply. 
+
+Arcadia solidified. Silence! Still silence! 
+
+She tried to poke her eyes outside the door without moving her head and failed. The head 
+followed the eyes. 
+
+Homir Munn was awake, of course - reading in bed, bathed in the soft, unspreading bed light, 
+staring into the darkness with wide eyes, and groping one hand stealthily under the pillow. 
+
+Arcadia's head moved sharply back of itself. Then, the light went out entirely and Munn's voice 
+said with shaky sharpness, "I've got a blaster, and I'm shooting, by the Galaxy-" 
+
+And Arcadia wailed, "It's only me. Don't shoot." 
+
+Remarkable what a fragile flower romance is. A gun with a nervous operator behind it can spoil 
+the whole thing. 
+
+The light was back on - all over the ship - and Munn was sitting up in bed. The somewhat 
+grizzled hair on his thin chest and the sparse one-day growth on his chin lent him an entirely 
+fallacious appearance of disreputability. 
+
+Arcadia stepped out, yanking at her metallene jacket which was supposed to be guaranteed 
+wrinkleproof. 
+
+After a wild moment in which he almost jumped out of bed, but remembered, and instead 
+yanked the sheet up to his shoulders, Munn gargled, "W ... wha ... what-" 
+
+He was completely incomprehensible. 
+
+Arcadia said meekly, "Would you excuse me for a minute? I've got to wash my hands." She 
+knew the geography of the vessel, and slipped away quickly. When she returned, with her 
+courage oozing back, Homir Munn was standing before her with a faded bathrobe on the 
+outside and a brilliant fury on the inside. 
+
+"What the black holes of Space are you d ... doing aboard this ship? H ... how did you get on 
+here? What do you th ... think I'm supposed to do with you? What's going on here?" 
+
+He might have asked questions indefinitely, but Arcadia interrupted sweetly, "I just wanted to 
+come along, Uncle Homir." 
+
+"Why?\'m not going anywhere?" 
+
+"You're going to Kalgan for information about the Second Foundation." 
+
+And Munn let out a wild howl and collapsed completely. For one horrified moment, Arcadia 
+thought he would have hysterics or beat his head against the wall. He was still holding the 
+blaster and her stomach grew ice-cold as she watched it. 
+
+"Watch out-Take it easy-" was all she could think of to say. 
+
+But he struggled back to relative normality and threw the blaster on to the bunk with a force that 
+
+
+
+should have set it off and blown a hole through the ship's hull. 
+
+"How did you get on?" he asked slowly, as though gripping each word with his teeth very 
+carefully to prevent it from trembling before letting it out. 
+
+"It was easy. I just came into the hangar with my suitcase, and said, 'Mr. Munn's baggage!' and 
+the man in charge just waved his thumb without even looking up." 
+
+"I'll have to take you back, you know," said Homir, and there was a sudden wild glee within him 
+at the thought. By Space, this wasn't his fault. 
+
+"You can't," said Arcadia, calmly, "it would attract attention." 
+
+"What?" 
+
+"You know. The whole purpose of your going to Kalgan was because it was natural for you to 
+go and ask for permission to look into the Mule's records. And you've got to be so natural that 
+you're to attract no attention at all. If you go back with a girl stowaway, it might even get into the 
+tele-news reports." 
+
+"Where did you g ... get those notions about Kalgan? These ... uh ... childish-" He was far too 
+flippant for conviction, of course, even to one who knew less than did Arcadia. 
+
+"I heard," she couldn't avoid pride completely, "with a sound-recorder. I know all about it - so 
+you've got to let me come along." 
+
+"What about your father?" He played a quick trump. "For all he knows, you're kidnapped ... 
+dead." 
+
+"I left a note," she said, overtrumping, "and he probably knows he mustn't make a fuss, or 
+anything. You'll probably get a space-gram from him." 
+
+To Munn the only explanation was sorcery, because the receiving signal sounded wildly two 
+seconds after she finished. 
+
+She said: "That's my father, I bet," and it was. 
+
+The message wasn't long and it was addressed to Arcadia. It said: "Thank you for your lovely 
+present, which I'm sure you put to good use. Have a good time." 
+
+"You see," she said, "that's instructions." 
+
+Homir grew used to her. After a while, he was glad she was there. Eventually, he wondered 
+how he would have made it without her. She prattled! She was excited! Most of all, she was 
+completely unconcerned. She knew the Second Foundation was the enemy, yet it didn't bother 
+her. She knew that on Kalgan, he was to deal with a hostile officialdom, but she could hardly 
+wait. 
+
+Maybe it came of being fourteen. 
+
+At any rate, the week-long trip now meant conversation rather than introspection. To be sure, it 
+wasn't a very enlightening conversation, since it concerned, almost entirely, the girl's notions on 
+
+
+
+the subject of how best to treat the Lord of Kalgan. Amusing and nonsensical, and yet delivered 
+with weighty deliberation. 
+
+Homir found himself actually capable of smiling as he listened and wondered out of just which 
+gem of historical fiction she got her twisted notion of the great universe. 
+
+It was the evening before the last jump. Kalgan was a bright star in the scarcely-twinkling 
+emptiness of the outer reaches of the Galaxy. The ship's telescope made it a sparkling blob of 
+barely-perceptible diameter. 
+
+Arcadia sat cross-legged in the good chair. She was wearing a pair of slacks and a 
+none-too-roomy shirt that belonged to Homir. Her own more feminine wardrobe had been 
+washed and ironed for the landing. 
+
+She said, "I'm going to write historical novels, you know." She was quite happy about the trip. 
+Uncle Homir didn't the least mind listening to her and it made conversation so much more 
+pleasant when you could talk to a really intelligent person who was serious about what you 
+said. 
+
+She continued: "I've read books and books about all the great men of Foundation history. You 
+know, like Seldon, Hardin, Mallow, Devers and all the rest. I've even read most of what you've 
+written about the Mule, except that it isn't much fun to read those parts where the Foundation 
+loses. Wouldn't you rather read a history where they skipped the silly, tragic parts?" 
+
+"Yes, I would," Munn assured her, gravely. "But it wouldn't be a fair history, would it, Arkady? 
+You'd never get academic respect, unless you give the whole story." 
+
+"Oh, poof. Who cares about academic respect?" She found him delightful. He hadn't missed 
+calling her Arkady for days. "My novels are going to be interesting and are going to sell and be 
+famous. What's the use of writing books unless you sell them and become well-known? I don't 
+want just some old professors to know me. It's got to be everybody." 
+
+Her eyes darkened with pleasure at the thought and she wriggled into a more comfortable 
+position. "In fact, as soon as I can get father to let me, I'm going to visit Trantor, so's I can get 
+background material on the First Empire, you know. I was born on Trantor; did you know that?" 
+
+He did, but he said, "You were?" and put just the right amount of amazement into his voice. He 
+was rewarded with something between a beam and a simper. 
+
+"Uh-huh. My grandmother ... you know, Bayta Darell, you've heard of her ... was on Trantor 
+once with my grandfather. In fact, that's where they stopped the Mule, when all the Galaxy was 
+at his feet; and my father and mother went there also when they were first married. I was born 
+there. I even lived there till mother died, only I was just three then, and I don't remember much 
+about it. Were you ever on Trantor, Uncle Homir?" 
+
+"No, can't say I was." He leaned back against the cold bulkhead and listened idly. Kalgan was 
+very close, and he felt his uneasiness flooding back. 
+
+"Isn't it just the most romantic world? My father says that under Stannel V, it had more people 
+than any ten worlds nowadays. He says it was just one big world of metals - one big city - that 
+
+
+
+was the capital of all the Galaxy. He's shown me pictures that he took on Trantor. It's all in ruins 
+now, but it's still stupendous. I'd just love to see it again. In fact ... Homir!" 
+
+"Yes?" 
+
+"Why don't we go there, when we're finished with Kalgan?" 
+
+Some of the fright hurtled back into his face. "What? Now don't start on that. This is business, 
+not pleasure. Remember that." 
+
+"But it is business" she squeaked. "There might be incredible amounts of information on 
+Trantor, don't you think so?* 
+
+"No, I don't He scrambled to his feet "Now untangle yourself from the computer. We've got to 
+make the last jump, and then you turn in." One good thing about landing, anyway; he was about 
+fed up with trying to sleep on an overcoat on the metal floor. 
+
+The calculations were not difficult. The "Space Route Handbook" was quite explicit on the 
+Foundation-Kalgan route. There was the momentary twitch of the timeless passage through 
+hyperspace and the final light-year dropped away. 
+
+The sun of Kalgan was a sun now - large, bright, and yellow-white; invisible behind the 
+portholes that had automatically closed on the sun-lit side. 
+
+Kalgan was only a night's sleep away. 
+
+
+12 
+
+Lord 
+
+Of all the worlds of the Galaxy, Kalgan undoubtedly had the most unique history. That of the 
+planet Terminus, for instance, was that of an almost uninterrupted rise. That of Trantor, once 
+capital of the Galaxy, was that of an almost uninterrupted fall. But Kalgan- 
+
+Kalgan first gained fame as the pleasure world of the Galaxy two centuries before the birth of 
+Hari Seldon. It was a pleasure world in the sense that it made an industry - and an immensely 
+profitable one, at that - out of amusement. 
+
+And it was a stable industry. It was the most stable industry in the Galaxy. When all the Galaxy 
+perished as a civilization, little by little, scarcely a feather's weight of catastrophe fell upon 
+Kalgan. No matter how the economy and sociology of the neighboring sectors of the Galaxy 
+changed, there was always an elite; and it is always the characteristic of an elite that it 
+possesses leisure as the great reward of its elite-hood. 
+
+Kalgan was at the service, therefore, successively - and successfully - of the effete and 
+perfumed dandies of the Imperial Court with their sparkling and libidinous ladies; of the rough 
+and raucous warlords who ruled in iron the worlds they had gained in blood, with their unbridled 
+and lascivious wenches; of the plump and luxurious businessmen of the Foundation, with their 
+lush and flagitious mistresses. 
+
+
+
+It was quite undiscriminating, since they all had money. And since Kalgan serviced all and 
+barred none; since its commodity was in unfailing demand; since it had the wisdom to interfere 
+in no world's politics, to stand on no one's legitimacy, it prospered when nothing else did, and 
+remained fat when all grew thin. 
+
+That is, until the Mule. Then, somehow, it fell, too, before a conqueror who was impervious to 
+amusement, or to anything but conquest. To him all planets were alike, even Kalgan. 
+
+So for a decade, Kalgan found itself in the strange role of Galactic metropolis; mistress of the 
+greatest Empire since the end of the Galactic Empire itself. 
+
+And then, with the death of the Mule, as sudden as the zoom, came the drop. The Foundation 
+broke away. With it and after it, much of the rest of the Mule's dominions. Fifty years later there 
+was left only the bewildering memory of that short space of power, like an opium dream. Kalgan 
+never quite recovered. It could never return to the unconcerned pleasure world it had been, for 
+the spell of power never quite releases its bold. It lived instead under a succession of men 
+whom the Foundation called the Lords of Kalgan, but who styled themselves First Citizen of the 
+Galaxy, in imitation of the Mule's only title, and who maintained the fiction that they were 
+conquerors too. 
+
+The current Lord of Kalgan had held that position for five months. Fie had gained it originally by 
+virtue of his position at the head of the Kalganian navy, and through a lamentable lack of 
+caution on the part of the previous lord. Yet no one on Kalgan was quite stupid enough to go 
+into the question of legitimacy too long or too closely. These things happened, and are best 
+accepted. 
+
+Yet that sort of survival of the fittest in addition to putting a premium on bloodiness and evil, 
+occasionally allowed capability to come to the fore as well. Lord Stettin was competent enough 
+and not easy to manage. 
+
+Not easy for his eminence, the First Minister, who, with fine impartiality, had served the last lord 
+as well as the present; and who would, if he lived long enough, serve the next as honestly. 
+
+Nor easy for the Lady Callia, who was Stettin's more than friend, yet less than wife. 
+
+In Lord Stettin's private apartments the three were alone that evening. The First Citizen, bulky 
+and glistening in the admiral's uniform that he affected, scowled from out the unupholstered 
+chair in which he sat as stiffly as the plastic of which it was composed. His First Minister Lev 
+Meirus, faced him with a far-off unconcern, his long, nervous fingers stroking absently and 
+rhythmically the deep line that curved from hooked nose along gaunt and sunken cheek to the 
+point, nearly, of the gray-bearded chin. The Lady Callia disposed of herself gracefully on the 
+deeply furred covering of a foamite couch, her full lips trembling a bit in an unheeded pout. 
+
+"Sir," said Meirus - it was the only title adhering to a lord who was styled only First Citizen, "you 
+lack a certain view of the continuity of history. Your own life, with its tremendous revolutions, 
+leads you to think of the course of civilization as something equally amenable to sudden 
+change. But it is not." 
+
+
+The Mule showed otherwise. 
+
+
+
+"But who can follow in his footsteps. He was more than man, remember. And be, too, was not 
+entirely successful." 
+
+"Poochie," whimpered the Lady Callia, suddenly, and then shrank into herself at the furious 
+gesture from the First Citizen. 
+
+Lord Stettin said, harshly, "Do not interrupt, Callia. Meirus, I am tired of inaction. My 
+predecessor spent his life polishing the navy into a finely-turned instrument that has not its 
+equal in the Galaxy. And he died with the magnificent machine lying idle. Am I to continue that? 
+I, an Admiral of the Navy? 
+
+"How long before the machine rusts? At present, it is a drain on the Treasury and returns 
+nothing. Its officers long for dominion, its men for loot. All Kalgan desires the return of Empire 
+and glory. Are you capable of understanding that?" 
+
+"These are but words that you use, but I grasp your meaning. Dominion, loot, glory - pleasant 
+when they are obtained, but the process of obtaining them is often risky and always 
+unpleasant. The first fine flush may not last. And in all history, it has never been wise to attack 
+the Foundation. Even the Mule would have been wiser to refrain-" 
+
+There were tears in the Lady Callia's blue, empty eyes. Of late, Poochie scarcely saw her, and 
+now, when he had promised the evening to her, this horrible, thin, gray man, who always 
+looked through her rather than at her, had forced his way in. And Poochie let him. She dared 
+not say anything; was frightened even of the sob that forced its way out. 
+
+But Stettin was speaking now in the voice she hated, hard and Impatient. He was saying: 
+"You're a slave to the far past. The Foundation is greater in volume and population, but they 
+are loosely knit and will fall apart at a blow. What holds them together these days is merely 
+inertia; an inertia I am strong enough to smash. You are hypnotized by the old days when only 
+the Foundation had atomic power. They were able to dodge the last hammer blows of the dying 
+Empire and then faced only the unbrained anarchy of the warlords who would counter the 
+Foundation's atomic vessels only with hulks and relics. 
+
+"But the Mule, my dear Meirus, has changed that. He spread the knowledge, that the 
+Foundation had hoarded to itself, through half the Galaxy and the monopoly in science is gone 
+forever. We can match them." 
+
+"And the Second Foundation?" questioned Meirus, coolly. 
+
+"And the Second Foundation?" repeated Stettin as coolly. "Do you know its intentions? It took 
+ten years to stop the Mule, if, indeed, it was the factor, which some doubt. Are you unaware 
+that a good many of the Foundation's psychologists and sociologists are of the opinion that the 
+Seldon Plan has been completely disrupted since the days of the Mule? If the Plan has gone, 
+then a vacuum exists which I may fill as well as the next man." 
+
+"Our knowledge of these matters is not great enough to warrant the gamble." 
+
+"Our knowledge, perhaps, but we have a Foundation visitor on the planet. Did you know that? A 
+Homir Munn - who, I understand, has written articles on the Mule, and has expressed exactly 
+
+
+
+that opinion, that the Seldon Plan no longer exists." 
+
+The First Minister nodded, "I have heard of him, or at least of his writings. What does he 
+desire?" 
+
+"He asks permission to enter the Mule's palace." 
+
+"Indeed? It would be wise to refuse. It is never advisable to disturb the superstitions with which 
+a planet is held." 
+
+"I will consider that - and we will speak again." 
+
+Meirus bowed himself out. 
+
+Lady Callia said tearfully, "Are you angry with me, Poochie?" Stettin turned on her savagely. 
+"Have I not told you before never to call me by that ridiculous name in the presence of others?" 
+
+"You used to like it." 
+
+"Well, I don't any more, and it is not to happen again." 
+
+He stared at her darkly. It was a mystery to him that he tolerated her these days. She was a 
+soft, empty-headed thing, comfortable to the touch, with a pliable affection that was a 
+convenient facet to a hard life. Yet, even that affection was becoming wearisome. She dreamed 
+of marriage, of being First Lady. 
+
+Ridiculous! 
+
+She was all very well when he had been an admiral only - but now as First Citizen and future 
+conqueror, he needed more. He needed heirs who could unite his future dominions, something 
+the Mule had never had, which was why his Empire did not survive his strange nonhuman life. 
+He, Stettin, needed someone of the great historic families of the Foundation with whom he 
+could fuse dynasties. 
+
+He wondered testily why he did not rid himself of Callia now. It would be no trouble. She would 
+whine a bit- He dismissed the thought. She had her points, occasionally. 
+
+Callia was cheering up now. The influence of Graybeard was gone and her Poochie's granite 
+face was softening now. She lifted herself in a single, fluid motion and melted toward him. 
+
+"You're not going to scold me, are you?" 
+
+"No." He patted her absently. "Now just sit quietly for a while, will you? I want to think." 
+
+"About the man from the Foundation?" 
+
+"Yes." 
+
+"Poochie?" This was a pause. 
+
+"What?" 
+
+"Poochie, the man has a little girl with him, you said. Remember? Could I see her when she 
+
+
+
+comes? I never-' 
+
+
+"Now what do you think I want him to bring his brat with him for? Is my audience room to be a 
+grammar school? Enough of your nonsense, Callia." 
+
+"But I’ll take care of her, Poochie. You won't even have to bother with her. It's just that I hardly 
+ever see children, and you know how I love them." 
+
+He looked at her sardonically. She never tired of this approach. She loved children; i.e. his 
+children; i.e. his legitimate children; i.e. marriage. He laughed. 
+
+"This particular little piece," he said, "is a great girl of fourteen or fifteen. She's probably as tall 
+as you are." 
+
+Callia looked crushed. "Well, could I, anyway? She could tell me about the Foundation? I've 
+always wanted to go there, you know. My grandfather was a Foundation man. Won't you take 
+me there, sometime, Poochie?" 
+
+Stettin smiled at the thought. Perhaps he would, as conqueror. The good nature that the 
+thought supplied him with made itself felt in his words, "I will, I will. And you can see the girl and 
+talk Foundation to her all you want. But not near me, understand." 
+
+"I won't bother you, honestly. I'll have her in my own rooms." She was happy again. It was not 
+very often these days that she was allowed to have her way. She put her arms about his neck 
+and after the slightest hesitation, she felt its tendons relax and the large head come softly down 
+upon her shoulder. 
+
+
+13 
+
+Lady 
+
+Arcadia felt triumphant. How life had changed since Pelleas Anthor had stuck his silly face up 
+against her window - and all because she had the vision and courage to do what needed to be 
+done. 
+
+Here she was on Kalgan. She had been to the great Central Theater - the largest in the Galaxy 
+- and seen in person some of the singing stars who were famous even in the distant 
+Foundation. She had shopped all on her own along the Flowered Path, fashion center of the 
+gayest world in Space. And she had made her own selections because Homir just didn't know 
+anything about it at all. The saleswomen raised no objections at all to long, shiny dresses with 
+those vertical sweeps that made her look so tall - and Foundation money went a long, long 
+way. Homir had given her a ten-credit bill and when she changed it to Kalganian "Kalganids," it 
+made a terribly thick sheaf. 
+
+She had even had her hair redone - sort of half-short in back, with two glistening curls over 
+each temple. And it was treated so that it looked goldier than ever; it just shone. 
+
+But this, this was best of all. To be sure, the Palace of Lord Stettin wasn't as grand and lavish 
+
+
+
+as the theaters, or as mysterious and historical as the old palace of the Mule - of which, so far 
+they had only glimpsed the lonely towers in their air flight across the planet - but, imagine, a 
+real Lord. She was rapt in the glory of it. 
+
+And not only that. She was actually face to face with his Mistress. Arcadia capitalized the word 
+in her mind, because she knew the role such women had played in history; knew their glamour 
+and power. In fact, she had often thought of being an all-powerful and glittering creature, 
+herself, but somehow mistresses weren't in fashion at the Foundation just then and besides, 
+her father probably wouldn't let her, if it came to that. 
+
+Of course, the Lady Callia didn't quite come up to Arcadia's notion of the part. For one thing, 
+she was rather plump, and didn't look at all wicked and dangerous, just sort of faded and 
+near-sighted. Her voice was high, too, instead of throaty, and- 
+
+Callia said, "Would you like more tea, child?" 
+
+"I'll have another cup, thank you, your grace," - or was it your highness? 
+
+Arcadia continued with a connoisseur's condescension, "Those are lovely pearls you are 
+wearing, my lady." (On the whole, "my lady" seemed best.) 
+
+"Oh? Do you think so?" Callia seemed vaguely pleased. She removed them and let them swing 
+milkily to and fro. "Would you like them? You can have them, if you like." 
+
+"Oh, my- You really mean-" She found them in her hand, then, repelling them mournfully, she 
+said, "Father wouldn't like it." 
+
+"Fie wouldn't like the pearls? But they're quite nice pearls." 
+
+"Fie wouldn't like my taking them, I mean. You're not supposed to take expensive presents from 
+other people, he says." 
+
+"You aren't? But ... I mean, this was a present to me from Poo ... from the First Citizen. Was 
+that wrong, do you suppose?" 
+
+Arcadia reddened. "I didn't mean-" 
+
+But Callia had tired of the subject. She let the pearls slide to the ground and said, "You were 
+going to tell me about the Foundation. Please do so right now." 
+
+And Arcadia was suddenly at a loss. What does one say about a world dull to tears. To her, the 
+Foundation was a suburban town, a comfortable house, the annoying necessities of education, 
+the uninteresting eternities of a quiet life. She said, uncertainly, "It's just like you view in the 
+book-films, I suppose." 
+
+"Oh, do you view book-films? They give me such a headache when I try. But do you know I 
+always love video stories about your Traders - such big, savage men. It's always so exciting. Is 
+your friend, Mr. Munn, one of them? Fie doesn't seem nearly savage enough. Most of the 
+Traders had beards and big bass voices, and were so domineering with women - don't you 
+think so?" 
+
+
+
+Arcadia smiled, glassily. "That's just part of history, my lady. I mean, when the Foundation was 
+Young, the Traders were the pioneers pushing back the frontiers and bringing civilization to the 
+rest of the Galaxy. We learned all about that in school. But that time has passed. We don't have 
+Traders any more; just corporations and things." 
+
+"Really? What a shame. Then what does Mr. Munn do? I mean, if he's not a Trader." 
+
+"Uncle Homir's a librarian." 
+
+Callia put a hand to her lips and tittered. "You mean he takes care of book-films. Oh, my! It 
+seems like such a silly thing for a grown man to do." 
+
+"He's a very good librarian, my lady. It is an occupation that is very highly regarded at the 
+Foundation." She put down the little, iridescent teacup upon the milky-metaled table surface. 
+
+Her hostess was all concern. "But my dear child. I'm sure I didn't mean to offend you. He must 
+be a very intelligent man. I could see it in his eyes as soon as I looked at him. They were so ... 
+so intelligent. And he must be brave, too, to want to see the Mule's palace." 
+
+"Brave?" Arcadia's internal awareness twitched. This was what she was waiting for. Intrigue! 
+Intrigue! With great indifference, she asked, staring idly at her thumbtip: "Why must one be 
+brave to wish to see the Mule's palace?" 
+
+"Didn't you know?" Her eyes were round, and her voice sank. "There's a curse on it. When he 
+died, the Mule directed that no one ever enter it until the Empire of the Galaxy is established. 
+Nobody on Kalgan would dare even to enter the grounds." 
+
+Arcadia absorbed that. "But that's superstition-" 
+
+"Don't say that," Callia was distressed. "Poochie always says that. He says it's useful to say it 
+isn't though, in order to maintain his hold over the people. But I notice he's never gone in 
+himself. And neither did Thallos, who was First Citizen before Poochie." A thought struck her 
+and she was all curiosity again: "But why does Mr. Munn want to see the Palace?" 
+
+And it was here that Arcadia's careful plan could be put into action. She knew well from the 
+books she had read that a ruler's mistress was the real power behind the throne, that she was 
+the very well-spring of influence. Therefore, if Uncle Homir failed with Lord Stettin - and she 
+was sure he would - she must retrieve that failure with Lady Callia. To be sure, Lady Callia was 
+something of a puzzle. She didn't seem at all bright. But, well, all history proved- 
+
+She said, "There's a reason, my lady - but will you keep it in confidence?" 
+
+"Cross my heart," said Callia, making the appropriate gesture on the soft, billowing whiteness of 
+her breast. 
+
+Arcadia's thoughts kept a sentence ahead of her words. "Uncle Homir is a great authority on 
+the Mule, you know. He's written books and books about it, and he thinks that all of Galactic 
+history has been changed since the Mule conquered the Foundation." 
+
+"Oh, my." 
+
+
+
+He thinks the Seldon Plan-' 
+
+
+Callia clapped her hands. "I know about the Seldon Plan. The videos about the Traders were 
+always all about the Seldon Plan. It was supposed to arrange to have the Foundation win all 
+the time. Science had something to do with it, though I could never quite see how. I always get 
+so restless when I have to listen to explanations. But you go right ahead, my dear. It's different 
+when you explain. You make everything seem so clear." 
+
+Arcadia continued, "Well, don't you see then that when the Foundation was defeated by the 
+Mule, the Seldon Plan didn't work and it hasn't worked since. So who will form the Second 
+Empire?" 
+
+"The Second Empire?" 
+
+"Yes, one must be formed some day, but how? That's the problem, you see. And there's the 
+Second Foundation." 
+
+"The Second Foundation?" She was quite completely lost. 
+
+'Yes, they're the planners of history that are following in the footsteps of Seldon. They stopped 
+the Mule because he was premature, but now, they may be supporting Kalgan." 
+
+"Why?" 
+
+"Because Kalgan may now offer the best chance of being the nucleus for a new Empire." 
+
+Dimly, Lady Callia seemed to grasp that. "You mean Poochie is going to make a new Empire." 
+
+"We can't tell for sure. Uncle Homir thinks so, but hell have to see the Mule's records to find 
+out." 
+
+"It's all very complicated," said Lady Callia, doubtfully. 
+
+Arcadia gave up. She had done her best. 
+
+Lord Stettin was in a more-or-less savage humor. The session with the milksop from the 
+Foundation had been quite unrewarding. It had been worse; it had been embarrassing. To be 
+absolute ruler of twenty-seven worlds, master of the Galaxy's greatest military machine, owner 
+of the universe's most vaulting ambition - and left to argue nonsense with an antiquarian. 
+
+Damnation! 
+
+He was to violate the customs of Kalgan, was he? To allow the Mule's palace to be ransacked 
+so that a fool could write another book? The cause of science! The sacredness of knowledge! 
+Great Galaxy! Were these catchwords to be thrown in his face in all seriousness? Besides - 
+and his flesh prickled slightly - there was the matter of the curse. He didn't believe in it; no 
+intelligent man could. But if he was going to defy it, it would have to be for a better reason than 
+any the fool had advanced. 
+
+"What do you want?" he snapped, and Lady Callia cringed visibly in the doorway. 
+
+"Are you busy?" 
+
+
+
+"Yes. I am busy." 
+
+"But there's nobody here, Poochie. Couldn't I even speak to you for a minute?" 
+
+"Oh, Galaxy! What do you want? Now hurry." 
+
+Her words stumbled. "The little girl told me they were going into the Mule's palace. I thought we 
+could go with her. It must be gorgeous inside." 
+
+"She told you that, did she? Well, she isn't and we aren't. Now go tend your own business. I've 
+had about enough of you." 
+
+"But, Poochie, why not? Aren't you going to let them? The little girl said that you were going to 
+make an Empire!" 
+
+"I don't care what she said- What was that?" He strode to Callia, and caught her firmly above 
+the elbow, so that his fingers sank deeply into the soft flesh, "What did she tell you?" 
+
+"You're hurting me. I can't remember what she said, if you're going to look at me like that." 
+
+He released her, and she stood there for a moment, rubbing vainly at the red marks. She 
+whimpered, "The little girl made me promise not to tell." 
+
+"That's too bad. Tell me! Now!" 
+
+"Well, she said the Seldon Plan was changed and that there was another Foundation 
+somewheres that was arranging to have you make an Empire. That's all. She said Mr. Munn 
+was a very important scientist and that the Mule's palace would have proof of all that. That's 
+every bit of what she said. Are you angry?" 
+
+But Stettin did not answer. He left the room, hurriedly, with Callia's cowlike eyes staring 
+mournfully after him. Two orders were sent out over the official seal of the First Citizen before 
+the hour was up. One had the effect of sending five hundred ships of the line into space on 
+what were officially to be termed as "war games." The other had the effect of throwing a single 
+man into confusion. 
+
+Homir Munn ceased his preparations to leave when that second order reached him. It was, of 
+course, official permission to enter the palace of the Mule. He read and reread it with anything 
+but joy. 
+
+But Arcadia was delighted. She knew what had happened. 
+
+Or, at any rate, she thought she did. 
+
+
+14 
+
+
+
+Anxiety 
+
+Poli placed the breakfast on the table, keeping one eye on the table news-recorder which 
+quietly disgorged the bulletins of the day. It could be done easily enough without loss of 
+efficiency, this one-eye-absent business. Since all items of food were sterilely packed in 
+containers which served as discardable cooking units, her duties vis-a-vis breakfast consisted 
+of nothing more than choosing the menu, placing the items on the table, and removing the 
+residue thereafter. 
+
+She clacked her tongue at what she saw and moaned softly in retrospect. 
+
+"Oh, people are so wicked," she said, and Darell merely hemmed in reply. 
+
+Her voice took on the high-pitched rasp which she automatically assumed when about to bewail 
+the evil of the world. "Now why do these terrible Kalganese" - she accented the second 
+syllable and gave it a long "a" - "do like that? You'd think they'd give a body peace. But no, it's 
+just trouble, trouble, all the time. 
+
+"Now look at that headline: 'Mobs Riot Before Foundation Consulate.’ Oh, would I like to give 
+them a piece of my mind, if I could. That's the trouble with people; they just don't remember. 
+They just don't remember, Dr. Darell - got no memory at all. Look at the last war after the Mule 
+died - of course I was just a little girl then - and oh, the fuss and trouble. My own uncle was 
+killed, him being just in his twenties and only two years married, with a baby girl. I remember 
+him even yet - blond hair he had, and a dimple in his chin. I have a trimensional cube of him 
+somewheres- 
+
+"And now his baby girl has a son of her own in the navy and most like if anything happens- 
+
+"And we had the bombardment patrols, and all the old men taking turns in the stratospheric 
+defense - I could imagine what they would have been able to do if the Kalganese had come 
+that far. My mother used to tell us children about the food rationing and the prices and taxes. A 
+body could hardly make ends meet- 
+
+"You'd think if they had sense people would just never want to start it again; just have nothing 
+to do with it. And I suppose it's not people that do it, either; I suppose even Kalganese would 
+rather sit at home with their families and not go fooling around in ships and getting killed. It's 
+that awful man, Stettin. It's a wonder people like that are let live. He kills the old man - what's 
+his name - Thallos, and now he's just spoiling to be boss of everything. 
+
+"And why he wants to fight us, I don't know. He's bound to lose - like they always do. Maybe it's 
+all in the Plan, but sometimes I'm sure it must be a wicked plan to have so much fighting and 
+killing in it, though to be sure I haven't a word to say about Hari Seldon, who I'm sure knows 
+much more about that than I do and perhaps I'm a fool to question him. And the other 
+Foundation is as much to blame. They could stop Kalgan now and make everything fine. They'll 
+do it anyway in the end, and you'd think they'd do it before there's any damage done." 
+
+Dr. Darell looked up. "Did you say something, Poli?" 
+
+Poli's eyes opened wide, then narrowed angrily. "Nothing, doctor, nothing at all. I haven't got a 
+
+
+
+word to say. A body could as soon choke to death as say a word in this house. It's jump here, 
+and jump there, but just try to say a word-" and she went off simmering. 
+
+Her leaving made as little impression on Darell as did her speaking. 
+
+Kalgan! Nonsense! A merely physical enemy! Those had always been beaten! 
+
+Yet he could not divorce himself of the current foolish crisis. Seven days earlier, the mayor had 
+asked him to be Administrator of Research and Development. He had promised an answer 
+today. 
+
+Well- 
+
+He stirred uneasily. Why, himself! Yet could he refuse? It would seem strange, and he dared 
+not seem strange. After all, what did he care about Kalgan. To him there was only one enemy. 
+Always had been. 
+
+While his wife had lived, he was only too glad to shirk the task; to hide. Those long, quiet days 
+on Trantor, with the ruins of the past about them! The silence of a wrecked world and the 
+forgetfulness of it all! 
+
+But she had died. Less than five years, all told, it had been; and after that he knew that he 
+could live only by fighting that vague and fearful enemy that deprived him of the dignity of 
+manhood by controlling his destiny; that made life a miserable struggle against a foreordained 
+end; that made all the universe a hateful and deadly chess game. 
+
+Call it sublimation; he, himself did can it that - but the fight gave meaning to his life. 
+
+First to the University of Santanni, where he had joined Dr. Kleise. It had been five years 
+well-spent. 
+
+And yet Kleise was merely a gatherer of data. He could not succeed in the real task - and 
+when Darell had felt that as certainty, he knew it was time to leave. 
+
+Kleise may have worked in secret, yet he had to have men working for him and with him. He 
+had subjects whose brains he probed. He had a University that backed him. All these were 
+weaknesses. 
+
+Kleise could not understand that; and he, Darell, could not explain that. They parted enemies. It 
+was well; they had to. He had to leave in surrender - in case someone watched. 
+
+Where Kleise worked with charts; Darell worked with mathematical concepts in the recesses of 
+his mind. Kleise worked with many; Darell with none. Kleise in a University; Darell in the quiet 
+of a suburban house. 
+
+And he was almost there. 
+
+A Second Foundationer is not human as far as his cerebrum is concerned. The cleverest 
+physiologist, the most subtle neurochemist might detect nothing - yet the difference must be 
+there. 
+
+
+
+And since the difference was one of the mind, it was there that it must be detectable. 
+
+
+Given a man like the Mule - and there was no doubt that the Second Foundationers had the 
+Mule's powers, whether inborn or acquired - with the power of detecting and controlling human 
+emotions, deduce from that the electronic circuit required, and deduce from that the last details 
+of the encephalograph on which it could not help but be betrayed. 
+
+And now Kleise had returned into his life, in the person of his ardent young pupil, Anthor. 
+
+Folly! Folly! With his graphs and charts of people who had been tampered with. Fie had learned 
+to detect that years ago, but of what use was it. Fie wanted the arm; not the tool. Yet he had to 
+agree to join Anthor, since it was the quieter course. 
+
+Just as now he would become Administrator of Research and Development. It was the quieter 
+course! And so he remained a conspiracy within a conspiracy. 
+
+The thought of Arcadia teased him for a moment, and he shuddered away from it. Left to 
+himself, it would never have happened. Left to himself, no one would ever have been 
+endangered but himself. Left to himself- 
+
+Fle felt the anger rising-against the dead Kleise, the living Anthor, all the well-meaning fools- 
+Well, she could take care of herself. She was a very mature little girl. 
+
+She could take care of herself! 
+
+It was a whisper in his mind- 
+Yet could she? 
+
+At the moment, that Dr. Darell told himself mournfully that she could, she was sitting in the 
+coldly austere anteroom of the Executive Offices of the First Citizen of the Galaxy. For half an 
+hour she had been sitting there, her eyes sliding slowly about the walls. There had been two 
+armed guards at the door when she had entered with Flomir Munn. They hadn't been there the 
+other times. 
+
+She was alone, now, yet she sensed the unfriendliness of the very furnishings of the room. And 
+for the first time. 
+
+Now, why should that be? 
+
+Flomir was with Lord Stettin. Well, was that wrong? 
+
+It made her furious. In similar situations in the book-films and the videos, the hero foresaw the 
+conclusion, was prepared for it when it came, and she - she just sat there. Anything could 
+happen. Anything! And she just sat there. 
+
+Well, back again. Think it back. Maybe something would come. 
+
+For two weeks, Flomir had nearly lived inside the Mule's palace. Fie had taken her once, with 
+Stettin's permission. It was large and gloomily massive, shrinking from the touch of life to lie 
+sleeping within its ringing memories, answering the footsteps with a hollow boom or a savage 
+
+
+
+clatter. She hadn't liked it. 
+
+
+Better the great, gay highways of the capital city; the theaters and spectacles of a world 
+essentially poorer than the Foundation, yet spending more of its wealth on display. 
+
+Homir would return in the evening, awed- 
+
+"It's a dream-world for me," he would whisper. "If I could only chip the palace down stone by 
+stone, layer by layer of the aluminum sponge. If I could carry it back to Terminus- What a 
+museum it would make." 
+
+He seemed to have lost that early reluctance. He was eager, instead; glowing. Arcadia knew 
+that by the one sure sign; he practically never stuttered throughout that period. 
+
+One time, he said, "There are abstracts of the records of General Pritcher-" 
+
+"I know him. He was the Foundation renegade, who combed the Galaxy for the Second 
+Foundation, wasn't he?" 
+
+"Not exactly a renegade, Arkady. The Mule had Converted him." 
+
+"Oh, it's the same thing." 
+
+"Galaxy, that combing you speak of was a hopeless task. The original records of the Seldon 
+Convention that established both Foundations five hundred years ago, make only one 
+reference to the Second Foundation. They say if's located 'at the other end of the Galaxy at 
+Star's End.' That's all the Mule and Pritcher had to go on. They had no method of recognizing 
+the Second Foundation even if they found it. What madness! 
+
+"They have records" - he was speaking to himself, but Arcadia listened eagerly - "which must 
+cover nearly a thousand worlds, yet the number of worlds available for study must have been 
+closer to a million. And we are no better off-" 
+
+Arcadia broke in anxiously, "Shhh-h" \n a tight hiss. 
+
+Homir froze, and slowly recovered. "Let's not talk," he mumbled. 
+
+And now Homir was with Lord Stettin and Arcadia waited outside alone and felt the blood 
+squeezing out of her heart for no reason at all. That was more frightening than anything else. 
+That there seemed no reason. 
+
+On the other side of the door, Homir, too, was living in a sea of gelatin. He was fighting, with 
+furious intensity, to keep from stuttering and, of course, could scarcely speak two consecutive 
+words clearly as a result. 
+
+Lord Stettin was in full uniform, six-feet-six, large-jawed, and hard-mouthed. His balled, 
+arrogant fists kept a powerful time to his sentences. 
+
+"Well, you have had two weeks, and you come to me with tales of nothing. Come, sir, tell me 
+the worst. Is my Navy to be cut to ribbons? Am I to fight the ghosts of the Second Foundation 
+as well as the men of the First?" 
+
+
+
+"I ... I repeat, my lord, I am no p ... pre ... predictor. I ... I am at a complete ... loss." 
+
+"Or do you wish to go back to warn your countrymen? To deep Space with your play-acting. I 
+want the truth or I’ll have it out of you along with half your guts." 
+
+"I'm t ... telling only the truth, and I'll have you re ... remember, my I ... lord, that I am a citizen of 
+the Foundation. Y ... you cannot touch me without harvesting m ... m ... more than you count 
+on." 
+
+The Lord of Kalgan laughed uproariously. "A threat to frighten children. A horror with which to 
+beat back an idiot. Come, Mr. Munn, I have been patient with you. I have listened to you for 
+twenty minutes while you detailed wearisome nonsense to me which must have cost you 
+sleepless nights to compose. It was wasted effort. I know you are here not merely to rake 
+through the Mule's dead ashes and to warm over the cinders you findyou come here for more 
+than you have admitted. Is that not true?" 
+
+Homir Munn could no more have quenched the burning horror that grew in his eyes than, at 
+that moment, he could have breathed. Lord Stettin saw that, and clapped the Foundation man 
+upon his shoulder so that he and the chair he sat on reeled under the impact. 
+
+"Good. Now let us be frank. You are investigating the Seldon Plan. You know that it no longer 
+holds. You know, perhaps, that I am the inevitable winner now; I and my heirs. Well, man, what 
+matters it who established the Second Empire, so long as it is established. History plays no 
+favorites, eh? Are you afraid to tell me? You see that I know your mission." 
+
+Munn said thickly, "What is it y ... you w ... want?" 
+
+"Your presence. I would not wish the Plan spoiled through overconfidence. You understand 
+more of these things than I do; you can detect small flaws that I might miss. Come, you will be 
+rewarded in the end; you will have your fair glut of the loot. What can you expect at the 
+Foundation? To turn the tide of a perhaps inevitable defeat? To lengthen the war? Or is it 
+merely a patriotic desire to die for your country?" 
+
+"I ... I-" He finally spluttered into silence. Not a word would come. 
+
+"You will stay," said the Lord of Kalgan, confidently. "You have no choice. Wait" - an almost 
+forgotten afterthought - "I have information to the effect that your niece is of the family of Bayta 
+Darell." 
+
+Homir uttered a startled: "Yes." He could not trust himself at this point to be capable of weaving 
+anything but cold truth. 
+
+"It is a family of note on the Foundation?" 
+
+Homir nodded, "To whom they would certainly b ... brook no harm." 
+
+"Harm! Don't be a fool, man; I am meditating the reverse. How old is she?" 
+
+"Fourteen." 
+
+"Sol Well, not even the Second Foundation, or Hari Seldon, himself, could stop time from 
+
+
+
+passing or girls from becoming women." 
+
+With that, he turned on his heel and strode to a draped door which he threw open violently. 
+
+He thundered, "What in Space have you dragged your shivering carcass here for?" 
+
+The Lady Callia blinked at him, and said in a small voice, "I didn't know anyone was with you." 
+"Well, there is. I'll speak to you later of this, but now I want to see your back, and quickly." 
+
+Her footsteps were a fading scurry in the corridor. 
+
+Stettin returned, "She is a remnant of an interlude that has lasted too long. It will end soon. 
+Fourteen, you say?" 
+
+Homir stared at him with a brand-new horror! 
+
+Arcadia started at the noiseless opening of a door - jumping at the jangling sliver of movement 
+it made in the comer of her eye. The finger that crooked frantically at her met no response for 
+long moments, and then, as if in response to the cautions enforced by the very sight of that 
+white, trembling figure, she tiptoed her way across the floor. 
+
+Their footsteps were a taut whisper in the corridor. It was the Lady Callia, of course, who held 
+her hand so tightly that it hurt, and for some reason, she did not mind following her. Of the Lady 
+Callia, at least, she was not afraid. 
+
+Now, why was that? 
+
+They were in a boudoir now, all pink fluff and spun sugar. Lady Callia stood with her back 
+against the door. 
+
+She said, "This was our private way to me ... to my room, you know, from his office. His, you 
+know." And she pointed with a thumb, as though even the thought of him were grinding her soul 
+to death with fear. 
+
+"It's so lucky ... it’s so lucky-" Her pupils had blackened out the blue with their size. 
+
+"Can you tell me-" began Arcadia timidly. 
+
+And Callia was in frantic motion. "No, child, no. There is no time. Take off your clothes. Please. 
+Please. I'll get you more, and they won't recognize you." 
+
+She was in the closet, throwing useless bits of flummery in reckless heaps upon the ground, 
+looking madly for something a girl could wear without becoming a living invitation to dalliance. 
+
+"Here, this will do. It will have to. Do you have money? Here, take it all - and this." She was 
+stripping her ears and fingers. "Just go home - go home to your Foundation." 
+
+"But Homir ... my uncle." She protested vainly through the muffling folds of the sweet-smelling 
+and luxurious spun-metal being forced over her head. 
+
+"He won't leave. Poochie will hold him forever, but you mustn't stay. Oh, dear, don't you 
+understand?" 
+
+
+
+No." Arcadia forced a standstill, "I don't understand. 
+
+
+Lady Callia squeezed her hands tightly together. "You must go back to warn your people there 
+will be war. Isn't that clear?" Absolute terror seemed paradoxically to have lent a lucidity to her 
+thoughts and words that was entirely out of character. "Now come!" 
+
+Out another way! Past officials who stared after them, but saw no reason to stop one whom 
+only the Lord of Kalgan could stop with impunity. Guards clicked heels and presented arms 
+when they went through doors. 
+
+Arcadia breathed only on occasion through the years the trip seemed to take - yet from the first 
+crooking of the white finger to the time she stood at the outer gate, with people and noise and 
+traffic in the distance was only twenty-five minutes. 
+
+She looked back, with a sudden frightened pity. "I ... I ... don't know why you're doing this, my 
+lady, but thanks- What's going to happen to Uncle Homir?" 
+
+"I don't know," wailed the other. "Can't you leave? Go straight to the spaceport. Don't wait. He 
+may be looking for you this very minute." 
+
+And still Arcadia lingered. She would be leaving Homir; and, belatedly, now that she felt the 
+free air about her, she was suspicious. "But what do you care if he does?" 
+
+Lady Callia bit her lower lip and muttered, "I can't explain to a little girl like you. It would be 
+improper. Well, you'll be growing up and I ... I met Poochie when I was sixteen. I can't have you 
+about, you know." There was a half-ashamed hostility in her eyes. 
+
+The implications froze Arcadia. She whispered: "What will he do to you when he finds out?" 
+
+And she whimpered back: "I don't know," and threw her arm to her head as she left at a 
+half-run, back along the wide way to the mansion of the Lord of Kalgan. 
+
+But for one eternal second, Arcadia sf/7/ did not move, for in that last moment before Lady Callia 
+left, Arcadia had seen something. Those frightened, frantic eyes had momentarily - flashingly - 
+lit up with a cold amusement. 
+
+Avast, inhuman amusement. 
+
+It was much to see in such a quick flicker of a pair of eyes, but Arcadia had no doubt of what 
+she saw. 
+
+She was running now - running wildly - searching madly for an unoccupied public booth at 
+which one could press a button for public conveyance. 
+
+She was not running from Lord Stettin; not from him or from all the human hounds he could 
+place at her heels - not from all his twenty-seven worlds rolled into a single gigantic 
+phenomenon, hallooing at her shadow. 
+
+She was running from a single, frail woman who had helped her escape. From a creature who 
+had loaded her with money and jewels; who had risked her own life to save her. From an entity 
+she knew, certainly and finally, to be a woman of the Second Foundation. 
+
+
+
+An air-taxi came to a soft clicking halt in the cradle. The wind of its coming brushed against 
+Arcadia's face and stirred at the hair beneath the softly-furred hood Callia had given her. 
+
+"Where'll it be, lady?" 
+
+She fought desperately to low-pitch her voice to make it not that of a child. "How many 
+spaceports in the city?" 
+
+"Two. Which one ya want?" 
+
+"Which is closer?" 
+
+He stared at her: "Kalgan Central, lady." 
+
+"The other one, please. I’ve got the money." She had a twenty-Kalganid note in her hand. The 
+denomination of the note made little difference to her, but the taxi-man grinned appreciatively. 
+
+"Anything ya say, lady. Sky-line cabs take ya anywhere." 
+
+She cooled her cheek against the slightly musty upholstery. The lights of the city moved 
+leisurely below her. 
+
+What should she do? What should she do? 
+
+It was in that moment that she knew she was a stupid , stupid little girl, away from her father, 
+and frightened. Her eyes were full of tears, and deep down in her throat, there was a small, 
+soundless cry that hurt her insides. 
+
+She wasn't afraid that Lord Stettin would catch her. Lady Callia would see to that. Lady Callia! 
+Old, fat, stupid, but she held on to her lord, somehow. Oh, it was clear enough, now. Everything 
+was clear. 
+
+That tea with Callia at which she had been so smart. Clever little Arcadia! Something inside 
+Arcadia choked and hated itself. That tea had been maneuvered, and then Stettin had probably 
+been maneuvered so that Homir was allowed to inspect the Palace after all. She, the foolish 
+Callia, has wanted it so, and arranged to have smart little Arcadia supply a foolproof excuse, 
+one which would arouse no suspicions in the minds of the victims, and yet involve a minimum 
+of interference on her part. 
+
+Then why was she free? Homir was a prisoner, of course- 
+Unless- 
+
+Unless she went back to the Foundation as a decoy - a decoy to lead others into the hands of 
+...of them. 
+
+So she couldn't return to the Foundation- 
+
+"Spaceport, lady." The air-taxi had come to a halt. Strange! She hadn't even noticed. 
+
+What a dream-world it was. 
+
+
+
+"Thanks," she pushed the bill at him without seeing anything and was stumbling out the door, 
+then running across the springy pavement. 
+
+Lights. Unconcerned men and women. Large gleaming bulletin boards, with the moving figures 
+that followed every single spaceship that arrived and departed. 
+
+Where was she going? She didn't care. She only knew that she wasn't going to the Foundation! 
+Anywhere else at all would suit. 
+
+Oh, thank Seldon, for that forgetful moment - that last split-second when Callia wearied of her 
+act because she had to do only with a child and had let her amusement spring through. 
+
+And then something else occurred to Arcadia, something that had been stirring and moving at 
+the base of her brain ever since the flight began - something that forever killed the fourteen in 
+her. 
+
+And she knew that she must escape. 
+
+That above all. Though they located every conspirator on the Foundation; though they caught 
+her own father; she could not dared not, risk a warning. She could not risk her own life - not in 
+the slightest - for the entire realm of Terminus. She was the most important person in the 
+Galaxy. She was the only important person in the Galaxy. 
+
+She knew that even as she stood before the ticket-machine and wondered where to go. 
+
+Because in all the Galaxy, she and she alone, except for they, themselves, knew the location of 
+the Second Foundation. 
+
+
+15 
+
+Through the Grid 
+
+TRANTOR By the middle of the Interregnum, Trantor was a shadow. In the midst of the 
+colossal ruins, there lived a small community of farmers.... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+There is nothing, never has been anything, quite like a busy spaceport on the outskirts of a 
+capital city of a populous planet. There are the huge machines resting mightily in their cradles. 
+If you choose your time properly, there is the impressive sight of the sinking giant dropping to 
+rest or, more hair-raising still, the swiftening departure of a bubble of steel. All processes 
+involved are nearly noiseless. The motive power is the silent surge of nucleons shifting into 
+more compact arrangements 
+
+In terms of area, ninety-five percent of the port has just been referred to. Square miles are 
+reserved for the machines, and for the men who serve them and for the calculators that serve 
+both. 
+
+
+Only five percent of the port is given over to the floods of humanity to whom it is the way station 
+
+
+
+to all the stars of the Galaxy. It is certain that very few of the anonymous many-headed stop to 
+consider the technological mesh that knits the spaceways. Perhaps some of them might itch 
+occasionally at the thought of the thousands of tons represented by the sinking steel that looks 
+so small off in the distance. One of those cyclopean cylinders could, conceivably, miss the 
+guiding beam and crash half a mile from its expected landing point - through the glassite roof 
+of the immense waiting room perhaps - so that only a thin organic vapor and some powdered 
+phosphates would be left behind to mark the passing of a thousand men. 
+
+It could never happen, however, with the safety devices in use; and only the badly neurotic 
+would consider the possibility for more than a moment. 
+
+Then what do they think about? It is not just a crowd, you see. It is a crowd with a purpose. 
+
+That purpose hovers over the field and thickens the atmosphere. Lines queue up; parents herd 
+their children; baggage is maneuvered in precise masses - people are going somewheres. 
+
+Consider then the complete psychic isolation of a single unit of this terribly intent mob that does 
+not know where to go; yet at the same time feels more intensely than any of the others possibly 
+can, the necessity of going somewheres; anywhere! Or almost anywhere! 
+
+Even lacking telepathy or any of the crudely definite methods of mind touching mind, there is a 
+sufficient clash in atmosphere, in intangible mood, to suffice for despair. 
+
+To suffice? To overflow, and drench, and drown. 
+
+Arcadia Darell, dressed in borrowed clothes, standing on a borrowed planet in a borrowed 
+situation of what seemed even to be a borrowed life, wanted earnestly the safety of the womb. 
+She didn't know that was what she wanted. She only knew that the very openness of the open 
+world was a great danger. She wanted a closed spot somewhere - somewhere far - 
+somewhere in an unexplored nook of the universe - where no one would ever look. 
+
+And there she was, age fourteen plus, weary enough for eighty plus, frightened enough for five 
+minus. 
+
+What stranger of the hundreds that brushed past her - actually brushed past her, so that she 
+could feel their touch - was a Second Foundationer? What stranger could not help but instantly 
+destroy her for her guilty knowledge - her unique knowledge - of knowing where the Second 
+Foundation was? 
+
+And the voice that cut in on her was a thunderclap that iced the scream in her throat into a 
+voiceless slash. 
+
+"Look, miss," it said, irritably, "are you using the ticket machine or are you just standing there?" 
+
+It was the first she realized that she was standing in front of a ticket machine. You put a high 
+denomination bill into the clipper which sank out of sight. You pressed the button below your 
+destination and a ticket came out together with the correct change as determined by an 
+electronic scanning device that never made a mistake. It was a very ordinary thing and there is 
+no cause for anyone to stand before it for five minutes. 
+
+Arcadia plunged a two-hundred credit into the clipper, and was suddenly aware of the button 
+
+
+
+labeled "Trantor." Trantor, dead capital of the dead Empire - the planet on which she was born. 
+She pressed it in a dream. Nothing happened, except that the red letters flicked on and off, 
+reading 172.18- 172.18— 172.18— 
+
+It was the amount she was short. Another two-hundred credit. The ticket was spit out towards 
+her. It came loose when she touched it, and the change tumbled out afterward. 
+
+She seized it and ran. She felt the man behind her pressing close, anxious for his own chance 
+at the machine, but she twisted out from before him and did not look behind. 
+
+Yet there was nowhere to run. They were all her enemies. 
+
+Without quite realizing it, she was watching the gigantic, glowing signs that puffed into the air: 
+Steffani, Anacreon, Fermus- There was even one that ballooned, Terminus, and she longed for 
+it, but did not dare- 
+
+For a trifling sum, she could have hired a notifier which could have been set for any destination 
+she cared and which would, when placed in her purse, make itself heard only to her, fifteen 
+minutes before take-off time. But such devices are for people who are reasonably secure, 
+however; who can pause to think of them. 
+
+And then, attempting to look both ways simultaneously, she ran head-on into a soft abdomen. 
+She felt the startled outbreath and grunt, and a hand come down on her arm. She writhed 
+desperately but lacked breath to do more than mew a bit in the back of her throat. 
+
+Her captor held her firmly and waited. Slowly, he came into focus for her and she managed to 
+look at him. He was rather plump and rather short. His hair was white and copious, being 
+brushed back to give a pompadour effect that looked strangely incongruous above a round and 
+ruddy face that shrieked its peasant origin. 
+
+"What's the matter?" he said finally, with a frank and twinkling curiosity. "You look scared." 
+"Sorry," muttered Arcadia in a frenzy. "I’ve got to go. Pardon me." 
+
+But he disregarded that entirely, and said, "Watch out, little girl. You'll drop your ticket." And he 
+lifted it from her resistless white fingers and looked at it with every evidence of satisfaction. 
+
+"I thought so," he said, and then bawled in bull-like tones, "Mommuh!" 
+
+A woman was instantly at his side, somewhat more short, somewhat more round, somewhat 
+more ruddy. She wound a finger about a stray gray lock to shove it beneath a well-outmoded 
+hat. 
+
+"Pappa," she said, reprovingly, "why do you shout in a crowd like that? People look at you like 
+you were crazy. Do you think you are on the farm?" 
+
+And she smiled sunnily at the unresponsive Arcadia, and added, "He has manners like a bear." 
+Then, sharply, "Pappa, let go the little girl. What are you doing?" 
+
+But Pappa simply waved the ticket at her. "Look," he said, "she's going to Trantor." 
+
+
+
+Mamma's face was a sudden beam, "You're from Trantor? Let go her arm, I say, Pappa." She 
+turned the overstuffed valise she was carrying onto its side and forced Arcadia to sit down with 
+a gentle but unrelenting pressure. "Sit down," she said, "and rest your little feet. It will be no 
+ship yet for an hour and the benches are crowded with sleeping loafers. You are from Trantor?" 
+
+Arcadia drew a deep breath and gave in. Huskily, she said, "I was born there." 
+
+And Mamma clapped her hands gleefully, "One month we've been here and till now we met 
+nobody from home. This is very nice. Your parents-" she looked about vaguely. 
+
+"I'm not with my parents," Arcadia said, carefully. 
+
+"All alone? A little girl like you?" Mamma was at once a blend of indignation and sympathy, 
+"How does that come to be?" 
+
+"Mamma," Pappa plucked at her sleeve, "let me tell you. There's something wrong. I think she's 
+frightened." His voice, though obviously intended for a whisper was quite plainly audible to 
+Arcadia. "She was running - I was watching her - and not looking where she was going. Before 
+I could step out of the way, she bumped into me. And you know what? I think she's in trouble." 
+
+"So shut your mouth, Pappa. Into you, anybody could bump." But she joined Arcadia on the 
+valise, which creaked wearily under the added weight and put an arm about the girl's trembling 
+shoulder. "You're running away from somebody, sweetheart? Don't be afraid to tell me. Ill help 
+you." 
+
+Arcadia looked across at the kind gray eyes of the woman and felt her lips quivering. One part 
+of her brain was telling her that here were people from Trantor, with whom she could go, who 
+could help her remain on that planet until she could decide what next to do, where next to go. 
+And another part of her brain, much the louder, was telling her in jumbled incoherence that she 
+did not remember her mother, that she was weary to death of fighting the universe, that she 
+wanted only to curl into a little hall with strong, gentle arms about her, that if her mother had 
+lived, she might ... she might- 
+
+And for the first time that night, she was crying; crying like a little baby, and glad of it; clutching 
+tightly at the old-fashioned dress and dampening a corner of it thoroughly, while soft arms held 
+her closely and a gentle hand stroked her curls. 
+
+Pappa stood helplessly looking at the pair, fumbling futilely for a handkerchief which, when 
+produced, was snatched from his hand. Mamma glared an admonition of quietness at him. The 
+crowds surged about the little group with the true indifference of disconnected crowds 
+everywhere. They were effectively alone. 
+
+Finally, the weeping trickled to a halt, and Arcadia smiled weakly as she dabbed at red eyes 
+with the borrowed handkerchief. "Golly," she whispered, 
+
+"S/7/7. S/7/7. Don't talk," said Mamma, fussily, "just sit and rest for a while. Catch your breath. 
+Then tell us what's wrong, and you'll see, we'll fix it up, and everything will be all right." 
+
+Arcadia scrabbled what remained of her wits together. She could not tell them the truth. She 
+could tell nobody the truth- And yet she was too worn to invent a useful lie. 
+
+
+
+She said, whisperingly, "I'm better, now." 
+
+"Good," said Mamma. "Now tell me why you’re in trouble. You did nothing wrong? Of course, 
+whatever you did, well help you; but tell us the truth." 
+
+"For a friend from Trantor, anything," added Pappa, expansively, "eh, Mamma?" 
+
+"Shut your mouth, Pappa," was the response, without rancor. 
+
+Arcadia was groping in her purse. That, at least, was still hers, despite the rapid 
+clothes-changing forced upon her in Lady Callia's apartments. She found what she was looking 
+for and handed it to Mamma. 
+
+"These are my papers," she said, diffidently. It was shiny, synthetic parchment which had been 
+issued her by the Foundation's ambassador on the day of her arrival and which had been 
+countersigned by the appropriate Kalganian official. It was large, florid, and impressive. 
+
+Mamma looked at it helplessly, and passed it to Pappa who absorbed its contents with an 
+impressive pursing of the lips. 
+
+Fie said, "You're from the Foundation?" 
+
+"Yes. But I was born in Trantor. See it says that-" 
+
+"Ah-hah. It looks all right to me. You're named Arcadia, eh? That's a good Trantorian name. But 
+where's your uncle? It says here you came in the company of Homir Munn, uncle." 
+
+"He's been arrested," said Arcadia, drearily. 
+
+"Arrested!" - from the two of them at once. "What for?" asked Mamma. "He did something?" 
+
+She shook her head. "I don't know. We were just on a visit. Uncle Homir had business with 
+Lord Stettin but-" She needed no effort to act a shudder. It was there. 
+
+Pappa was impressed. "With Lord Stettin. Mm-m-m, your uncle must be a big man." 
+
+"I don't know what it was all about, but Lord Stettin wanted me to stay-" She was recalling the 
+last words of Lady Callia, which had been acted out for her benefit. Since Callia, as she now 
+knew, was an expert, the story could do for a second time. 
+
+She paused, and Mamma said interestedly, "And why you?" 
+
+"I'm not sure. He ... he wanted to have dinner with me all alone, but I said no, because I wanted 
+Uncle Homir along. He looked at me funny and kept holding my shoulder." 
+
+Pappa's mouth was a little open, but Mamma was suddenly red and angry. "How old are you, 
+Arcadia?" 
+
+"Fourteen and a half, almost." 
+
+Mamma drew a sharp breath and said, "That such people should be let live. The dogs in the 
+streets are better. You're running from him, dear, is not?" 
+
+
+
+Arcadia nodded. 
+
+Mamma said, "Pappa, go right to Information and find out exactly when the ship to Trantor 
+comes to berth. Hurry!" 
+
+But Pappa took one step and stopped. Loud metallic words were booming overhead, and five 
+thousand pairs of eyes looked startledly upwards. 
+
+"Men and women," it said, with sharp force. "The airport is being searched for a dangerous 
+fugitive, and it is now surrounded. No one can enter and no one can leave. The search will, 
+however, be conducted with great speed and no ships will reach or leave berth during the 
+interval, so you will not miss your ship. I repeat, no one will miss his ship. The grid will descend. 
+None of you will move outside your square until the grid is removed, as otherwise we will be 
+forced to use our neuronic whips." 
+
+During the minute or less in which the voice dominated the vast dome of the spaceport's 
+waiting room, Arcadia could not have moved if all the evil in the Galaxy had concentrated itself 
+into a ball and hurled itself at her. 
+
+They could mean only her. It was not even necessary to formulate that idea as a specific 
+thought. But why- 
+
+Callia had engineered her escape. And Callia was of the Second Foundation. Why, then, the 
+search now? Had Callia failed? Could Callia fail? Or was this part of the plan, the intricacies of 
+which escaped her? 
+
+For a vertiginous moment, she wanted to jump up and shout that she gave up, that she would 
+go with them, that ... that- 
+
+But Mamma's hand was on her wrist. "Quick! "Quick! Well go to the lady's room before they 
+start." 
+
+Arcadia did not understand. She merely followed blindly. They oozed through the crowd, frozen 
+as it was into clumps, with the voice still booming through its last words. 
+
+The grid was descending now, and Pappa, openmouthed, watched it come down. He had 
+heard of it and read of it, but had never actually been the object of it. It glimmered in the air, 
+simply a series of cross-hatched and tight radiation-beams that set the air aglow in a harmless 
+network of flashing light. 
+
+It always was so arranged as to descend slowly from above in order that it might represent a 
+falling net with all the terrific psychological implications of entrapment. 
+
+It was at waist-level now, ten feet between glowing lines in each direction. In his own hundred 
+square feet, Pappa found himself alone, yet the adjoining squares were crowded. He felt 
+himself conspicuously isolated but knew that to move into the greater anonymity of a group 
+would have meant crossing one of those glowing lines, stirring an alarm, and bringing down the 
+neuronic whip. 
+
+
+He waited. 
+
+
+
+He could make out over the heads of the eerily quiet and waiting mob, the far-off stir that was 
+the line of policemen covering the vast floor area, lighted square by lighted square. 
+
+It was a long time before a uniform stepped into his square and carefully noted its co-ordinates 
+into an official notebook. 
+
+"Papers!" 
+
+Pappa handed them over, and they were flipped through in expert fashion. 
+
+"You're Preem Palver, native of Trantor, on Kalgan for a month, returning to Trantor. Answer, 
+yes or no." 
+
+"Yes, yes." 
+
+"What's your business on Kalgan?" 
+
+"I'm trading representative of our farm co-operative. I've been negotiating terms with the 
+Department of Agriculture on Kalgan. 
+
+"Um-m-m. Your wife is with you? Where is she? She is mentioned in your papers." 
+
+"Please. My wife is in the-" He pointed. 
+
+"Hanto," roared the policeman. Another uniform joined him. 
+
+The first one said, dryly, "Another dame in the can, by the Galaxy. The place must be busting 
+with them. Write down her name." He indicated the entry in the papers which gave it. 
+
+"Anyone else with you?" 
+
+"My niece." 
+
+"She's not mentioned in the papers." 
+
+"She came separately." 
+
+"Where is she? Never mind, I know. Write down the niece's name, too, Hanto. What's her 
+name? Write down Arcadia Palver. You stay right here, Palver. We'll take care of the women 
+before we leave." 
+
+Pappa waited interminably. And then, long, long after, Mamma was marching toward him, 
+Arcadia's hand firmly in hers, the two policemen trailing behind her. 
+
+They entered Pappa's square, and one said, "Is this noisy old woman your wife?" 
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pappa, placatingly. 
+
+"Then you'd better tell her she's liable to get into trouble if she talks the way she does to the 
+First Citizen's police." He straightened his shoulders angrily. "Is this your niece?" 
+
+"Yes, sir." 
+
+"I want her papers." 
+
+
+
+Looking straight at her husband, Mamma slightly, but no less firmly, shook her head. 
+
+A short pause, and Pappa said with a weak smile, "I don't think I can do that." 
+
+"What do you mean you can't do that?" The policeman thrust out a hard palm. "Hand it over." 
+"Diplomatic immunity," said Pappa, softly. 
+
+"What do you mean?" 
+
+"I said I was trading representative of my farm co-operative. I'm accredited to the Kalganian 
+government as an official foreign representative and my papers prove it. I showed them to you 
+and now I don't want to be bothered any more." 
+
+For a moment, the policeman was taken aback. "I got to see your papers. It's orders." 
+
+"You go away," broke in Mamma, suddenly. "When we want you, we'll send for you, you ... you 
+bum. " 
+
+The policeman's lips tightened. "Keep your eye on them, Hanto. I'll get the lieutenant." 
+
+"Break a leg!" called Mamma after him. Someone laughed, and then choked it off suddenly. 
+
+The search was approaching its end. The crowd was growing dangerously restless. Forty-five 
+minutes had elapsed since the grid had started falling and that is too long for best effects. 
+Lieutenant Dirige threaded his way hastily, therefore, toward the dense center of the mob. 
+
+"Is this the girl?" he asked wearily. He looked at her and she obviously fitted the description. All 
+this for a child. 
+
+He said, "Her papers, if you please?" 
+
+Pappa began, "I have already explained-" 
+
+"I know what you have explained, and I'm sorry," said the lieutenant, "but I have my orders, and 
+I can't help them. If you care to make a protest later, you may. Meanwhile, if necessary, I must 
+use force." 
+
+There was a pause, and the lieutenant waited patiently. 
+
+Then Pappa said, huskily, "Give me your papers, Arcadia." 
+
+Arcadia shook her head in panic, but Pappa nodded his head. "Don't be afraid. Give them to 
+me." 
+
+Helplessly she reached out and let the documents change hands. Pappa fumbled them open 
+and looked carefully through them, then handed them over. The lieutenant in his turn looked 
+through them carefully. For a long moment, he raised his eyes to rest them on Arcadia, and 
+then he closed the booklet with a sharp snap. 
+
+"All in order," he said. "All right, men." 
+
+He left, and in two minutes, scarcely more, the grid was gone, and the voice above signified a 
+
+
+
+back-to-normal. The noise of the crowd, suddenly released, rose high. 
+
+Arcadia said: "How ... how-" 
+
+Pappa said, "Sh-h. Don't say a word. Let's better go to the ship. It should be in the berth soon." 
+
+They were on the ship. They had a private stateroom and a table to themselves in the dining 
+room. Two light-years already separated them from Kalgan, and Arcadia finally dared to broach 
+the subject again. 
+
+She said, "But they were after me, Mr. Palver, and they must have had my description and all 
+the details. Why did he let me go?" 
+
+And Pappa smiled broadly over his roast beef. "Well, Arcadia, child, it was easy. When you've 
+been dealing with agents and buyers and competing co-operatives, you learn some of the 
+tricks. I've had twenty years or more to learn them in. You see, child, when the lieutenant 
+opened your papers, he found a five hundred credit bill inside, folded up small. Simple, no?" 
+
+"I’ll pay you back- Honest, I've got lots of money." 
+
+"Well," Pappa's broad face broke into an embarrassed smile, as he waved it away. "For a 
+country-woman-" 
+
+Arcadia desisted. "But what if he'd taken the money and turned me in anyway. And accused me 
+of bribery." 
+
+"And give up five hundred credits? I know these people better than you do, girl." 
+
+But Arcadia knew that he did not know people better. Not these people. In her bed that night, 
+she considered carefully, and knew that no bribe would have stopped a police lieutenant in the 
+matter of catching her unless that had been planned. They didn't want to catch her, yet had 
+made every motion of doing so, nevertheless. 
+
+Why? To make sure she left? And for Trantor? Were the obtuse and soft-hearted couple she 
+was with now only a pair of tools in the hands of the Second Foundation, as helpless as she 
+herself? 
+
+They must be! 
+
+Or were they? 
+
+It was all so useless. How could she fight them. Whatever she did, it might only be what those 
+terrible omnipotents wanted her to do. 
+
+Yet she had to outwit them. Had to. Had to! Had to!! 
+
+
+16 
+
+
+
+Beginning of War 
+
+For reason or reasons unknown to members of the Galaxy at the time of the era under 
+discussion, Intergalactic Standard Time defines its fundamental unit, the second, as the time in 
+which light travels 299,776 kilometers. 86,400 seconds are arbitrarily set equal to one 
+Intergalactic Standard Day; and 365 of these days to one Intergalactic Standard Year. 
+
+Why 299,776?- Or 86,400?- Or 365? 
+
+Tradition, says the historian, begging the question. Because of certain and various mysterious 
+numerical relationships, say the mystics, cultists, numerologists, metaphysicists. Because the 
+original home-planet of humanity had certain natural periods of rotation and revolution from 
+which those relationships could be derived, say a very few. 
+
+No one really knew. 
+
+Nevertheless, the date on which the Foundation cruiser, the Hober Mallow met the Kalganian 
+squadron, headed by the Fearless, and, upon refusing to allow a search party to board, was 
+blasted into smoldering wreckage was 185; 11692 G.E. That is, it was the 185th day of the 
+1 1 ,692nd year of the Galactic Era which dated from the accession of the first Emperor of the 
+traditional Kamble dynasty. It was also 1 85; 41 9 A.S. - dating from the birth of Seldon - or 1 85; 
+348 Y.F. - dating from the establishment of the Foundation. On Kalgan it was 185; 56 F.C. - 
+dating from the establishment of the First Citizenship by the Mule. In each case, of course, for 
+convenience, the year was so arranged as to yield the same day number regardless of the 
+actual day upon which the era began. 
+
+And, in addition, to all the millions of worlds of the Galaxy, there were millions of local times, 
+based on the motions of their own particular heavenly neighbors. 
+
+But whichever you choose: 185; 11 692-41 9-348-56 - or anything - it was this day which 
+historians later pointed to when they spoke of the start of the Stettinian war. 
+
+Yet to Dr. Darell, it was none of these at all. It was simply and quite precisely the thirty-second 
+day since Arcadia had left Terminus. 
+
+What it cost Darell to maintain stolidity through these days was not obvious to everyone. 
+
+But Elvett Semic thought he could guess. Fie was an old man and fond of saying that his 
+neuronic sheaths had calcified to the point where his thinking processes were stiff and 
+unwieldy. Fie invited and almost welcomed the universal underestimation of his decaying 
+powers by being the first to laugh at them. But his eyes were none the less seeing for being 
+faded; his mind none the less experienced and wise, for being no longer agile. 
+
+Fie merely twisted his pinched lips and said, "Why don't you do something about it?" 
+
+The sound was a physical jar to Darell, under which he winced. Fie said, gruffly, "Where were 
+we?" 
+
+
+Semic regarded him with grave eyes. "You'd better do something about the girl." FHis sparse, 
+yellow teeth showed in a mouth that was open in inquiry. 
+
+
+
+But Darell replied coldly, "The question is: Can you get a Symes-Molff Resonator in the range 
+required?" 
+
+Well, I said I could and you weren't listening-" 
+
+"I'm sorry, Elvett. It's like this. What we're doing now can be more important to everyone in the 
+Galaxy than the question of whether Arcadia is safe. At least, to everyone but Arcadia and 
+myself, and I'm willing to go along with the majority. How big would the Resonator be?" 
+
+Semic looked doubtful, "I don't know. You can find it somewheres in the catalogues." 
+
+"About how big. A ton? A pound? A block long?" 
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant exactly. It's a little jigger." He indicated the first joint of his thumb. 
+"About that." 
+
+"All right, can you do something like this?" He sketched rapidly on the pad he held in his lap, 
+then passed it over to the old physicist, who peered at it doubtfully, then chuckled. 
+
+"Y'know, the brain gets calcified when you get as old as I am. What are you trying to do?" 
+
+Darell hesitated. He longed desperately, at the moment, for the physical knowledge locked in 
+the other's brain, so that he need not put his thought into words. But the longing was useless, 
+and he explained. 
+
+Semic was shaking his head. "You'd need hyper-relays. The only things that would work fast 
+enough. A thundering lot of them." 
+
+"But it can be built?" 
+
+"Well, sure." 
+
+"Can you get all the parts? I mean, without causing comment? In line with your general work." 
+
+Semic lifted his upper lip. "Can't get fifty hyper-relays? I wouldn't use that many in my whole 
+life." 
+
+"We're on a defense project, now. Can't you think of something harmless that would use them? 
+We've got the money." 
+
+"Hm-m-m. Maybe I can think of something." 
+
+"How small can you make the whole gadget?" 
+
+"Hyper-relays can be had micro-size ... wiring ... tubes - Space, you've got a few hundred 
+circuits there." 
+
+"I know. How big?" 
+
+Semic indicated with his hands. 
+
+"Too big," said Darell. "I've got to swing it from my belt" 
+
+
+
+Slowly, he was crumpling his sketch into a tight ball. When it was a hard, yellow grape, he 
+dropped it into the ash tray and it was gone with the tiny white flare of molecular decomposition. 
+
+He said, "Who's at your door?" 
+
+Semic leaned over his desk to the little milky screen above the door signal. He said, "The 
+young fellow, Anthor. Someone with him, too." 
+
+Darell scraped his chair back. "Nothing about this, Semic, to the others yet. It's deadly 
+knowledge, if they find out, and two lives are enough to risk." 
+
+Pelleas Anthor was a pulsing vortex of activity in Semic's office, which, somehow, managed to 
+partake of the age of its occupant. In the slow turgor of the quiet room, the loose, summery 
+sleeves of Anthor's tunic seemed still a-quiver with the outer breezes. 
+
+He said, "Dr. Darell, Dr. Semic - Orum Dirige." 
+
+The other man was tall. A long straight nose that lent his thin face a saturnine appearance. Dr. 
+Darell held out a hand. 
+
+Anthor smiled slightly. "Police Lieutenant Dirige," he amplified. Then, significantly, "Of Kalgan." 
+
+And Darell turned to stare with force at the young man. "Police Lieutenant Dirige of Kalgan," he 
+repeated, distinctly. "And you bring him here. Why?" 
+
+"Because he was the last man on Kalgan to see your daughter. Hold, man." 
+
+Anthor's look of triumph was suddenly one of concern, and he was between the two, struggling 
+violently with Darell. Slowly, and not gently, he forced the older man back into the chair. 
+
+"What are you trying to do?" Anthor brushed a lock of brown hair from his forehead, tossed a 
+hip lightly upon the desk, and swung a leg, thoughtfully. "I thought I was bringing you good 
+news." 
+
+Darell addressed the policeman directly, "What does he mean by calling you the last man to 
+see my daughter? Is my daughter dead? Please tell me without preliminary." His face was 
+white with apprehension. 
+
+Lieutenant Dirige said expressionlessly, "‘Last man on Kalgan' was the phrase. She's not on 
+Kalgan now. I have no knowledge past that." 
+
+"Here," broke in Anthor, "let me put it straight. Sorry if I overplayed the drama a bit, Doc. You're 
+so inhuman about this, I forget you have feelings. In the first place, Lieutenant Dirige is one of 
+us. He was born on Kalgan, but his father was a Foundation man brought to that planet in the 
+service of the Mule. I answer for the lieutenant's loyalty to the Foundation. 
+
+"Now I was in touch with him the day after we stopped getting the daily report from Munn-" 
+
+"Why?" broke in Darell, fiercely. "I thought it was quite decided that we were not to make a 
+move in the matter. You were risking their lives and ours." 
+
+"Because," was the equally fierce retort, "I've been involved in this game for longer than you. 
+
+
+
+Because I know of certain contacts on Kalgan of which you know nothing. Because I act from 
+deeper knowledge, do you understand?" 
+
+"I think you're completely mad." 
+
+"Will you listen?" 
+
+A pause, and Darell's eyes dropped. 
+
+Anthor's lips quirked into a half smile, "All right, Doc. Give me a few minutes. Tell him, Dirige." 
+
+Dirige spoke easily: "As far as I know, Dr. Darell, your daughter is at Trantor. At least, she had 
+a ticket to Trantor at the Eastern Spaceport. She was with a Trading Representative from that 
+planet who claimed she was his niece. Your daughter seems to have a queer collection of 
+relatives, doctor. That was the second uncle she had in a period of two weeks, eh? The 
+Trantorian even tried to bribe me - probably thinks that's why they got away." He smiled grimly 
+at the thought. 
+
+"How was she?" 
+
+"Unharmed, as far as I could see. Frightened. I don't blame her for that. The whole department 
+was after her. I still don't know why." 
+
+Darell drew a breath for what seemed the first time in several minutes. He was conscious of the 
+trembling of his hands and controlled them with an effort. "Then she's all right. This Trading 
+Representative, who was he? Go back to him. What part does he play in it?" 
+
+"I don't know. Do you know anything about Trantor?" 
+
+"I lived there once." 
+
+"It's an agricultural world, now. Exports animal fodder and grains, mostly. High quality! They sell 
+them all over the Galaxy. There are a dozen or two farm co-operatives on the planet and each 
+has its representatives overseas. Shrewd sons of guns, too- I knew this one's record. He'd 
+been on Kalgan before, usually with his wife. Perfectly honest. Perfectly harmless." 
+
+"Um-m-m," said Anthor. "Arcadia was born in Trantor, wasn't she, Doc?" 
+
+Darell nodded. 
+
+"It hangs together, you see. She wanted to go away - quickly and far - and Trantor would 
+suggest itself. Don't you think so?" 
+
+Darell said: "Why not back here?" 
+
+"Perhaps she was being pursued and felt that she had to double off in a new angle, eh?' 
+
+Dr. Darell lacked the heart to question further. Well, then, let her be safe on Trantor, or as safe 
+as one could be anywhere in this dark and horrible Galaxy. He groped toward the door, felt 
+Anthor's light touch on his sleeve, and stopped, but did not turn. 
+
+"Mind if I go home with you, Doc?" 
+
+
+
+"You're welcome," was the automatic response. 
+
+By evening, the exteriormost reaches of Dr. Darell's personality, the ones that made immediate 
+contact with other people had solidified once more. He had refused to eat his evening meal and 
+had, instead, with feverish insistence, returned to the inchwise advance into the intricate 
+mathematics of encephalographic analysis. 
+
+It was not till nearly midnight, that he entered the living room again. 
+
+Pelleas Anthor was still there, twiddling at the controls of the video. The footsteps behind him 
+caused him to glance over his shoulder. 
+
+"Hi. Aren't you in bed yet? I've been spending hours on the video, trying to get something other 
+than bulletins. It seems the F.S. Hober Mallow is delayed in course and hasn't been heard 
+from" 
+
+"Really? What do they suspect?" 
+
+"What do you think? Kalganian skulduggery. There are reports that Kalganian vessels were 
+sighted in the general space sector in which the Hober Mallow was last heard from?" 
+
+Darell shrugged, and Anthor rubbed his forehead doubtfully. 
+
+"Look doc," he said, "why don't you go to Trantor?" 
+
+"Why should I?" 
+
+"Because "You're no good to us here. You're not yourself. You can't be. And you could 
+accomplish a purpose by going to Trantor, too. The old Imperial Library with the complete 
+records of the Proceedings of the Seldon Commission are there-" 
+
+"No! The Library has been picked clean and it hasn't helped anyone." 
+
+"It helped Ebling Mis once." 
+
+"How do you know? Yes, he said he found the Second Foundation, and my mother killed him 
+five seconds later as the only way to keep him from unwittingly revealing its location to the 
+Mule. But in doing so, she also, you realize, made it impossible ever to tell whether Mis really 
+did know the location. After all, no one else has ever been able to deduce the truth from those 
+records." 
+
+"Ebling Mis, if you'll remember, was working under the driving impetus of the Mule's mind." 
+
+"I know that, too, but Mis' mind was, by that very token, in an abnormal state. Do you and I 
+know anything about the properties of a mind under the emotional control of another; about its 
+abilities and shortcomings? In any case, I will not go to Trantor." 
+
+Anthor frowned, "Well, why the vehemence? I merely suggested it as - well, by Space, I don't 
+understand you. You look ten years older. You're obviously having a hellish time of it. You're 
+not doing anything of value here. If I were you, I'd go and get the girl." 
+
+"Exactly! It's what I want to do, too. That's why I won't do it. Look, Anthor, and try to understand. 
+
+
+
+You're playing - we're both playing - with something completely beyond our powers to fight. In 
+cold blood, if you have any, you know that, whatever you may think in your moments of 
+quixoticism. 
+
+"For fifty years, we've known that the Second Foundation is the real descendent and pupil of 
+Seldonian mathematics. What that means, and you know that, too, is that nothing in the Galaxy 
+happens which does not play a part in their reckoning. To us, all life is a series of accidents, to 
+be met with by improvisations To them, all life is purposive and should be met by 
+precalculation. 
+
+"But they have their weakness. Their work is statistical and only the mass action of humanity is 
+truly inevitable. Now how / play a part, as an individual, in the foreseen course of history, I don't 
+know. Perhaps I have no definite part, since the Plan leaves individuals to indeterminacy and 
+free will. But I am important and they - they , you understand - may at least have calculated my 
+probable reaction. So I distrust, my impulses, my desires, my probable reactions. 
+
+"I would rather present them with an improbable reaction. I will stay here, despite the fact that I 
+yearn very desperately to leave. "No! Because I yearn very desperately to leave." 
+
+The younger man smiled sourly. "You don't know your own mind as well as they might. 
+
+Suppose that - knowing you - they might count on what you think, merely think, is the 
+improbable reaction, simply by knowing in advance what your line of reasoning would be." 
+
+"In that case, there is no escape. For if I follow the reasoning you have just outlined and go to 
+Trantor, they may have foreseen that, too. There is an endless cycle of 
+
+double-double-double-double-crosses. No matter how far I follow that cycle, I can only either go 
+or stay. The intricate act of luring my daughter halfway across the Galaxy cannot be meant to 
+make me stay where I am, since I would most certainly have stayed if they had done nothing. It 
+can only be to make me move, and so I will stay. 
+
+"And besides, Anthor, not everything bears the breath of the Second Foundation; not all events 
+are the results of their puppeting. They may have had nothing to do with Arcadia's leave-taking, 
+and she may be safe on Trantor when all the rest of us are dead." 
+
+"No," said Anthor, sharply, "now you are off the track." 
+
+"You have an alternative interpretation?" 
+
+"I have - if you’ll listen." 
+
+"Oh, go ahead. I don't lack patience." 
+
+"Well, then - how well do you know your own daughter?" 
+
+"Flow well can any individual know any other? Obviously, my knowledge is inadequate." 
+
+"So is mine on that basis, perhaps even more so - but at least, I viewed her with fresh eyes. 
+Item one: She is a ferocious little romantic, the only child of an ivory-tower academician, 
+growing up in an unreal world of video and book-film adventure. She lives in a weird 
+self-constructed fantasy of espionage and intrigue. Item two: She's intelligent about it; intelligent 
+
+
+
+enough to outwit us, at any rate. She planned carefully to overhear our first conference and 
+succeeded. She planned carefully to go to Kalgan with Munn and succeeded. Item three: She 
+has an unholy hero-worship of her grandmother - your mother - who defeated the Mule. 
+
+"I'm right so far, I think? All right, then. Now, unlike you, I've received a complete report from 
+Lieutenant Dirige and, in addition, my sources of information on Kalgan are rather complete, 
+and all sources check. We know, for instance, that Homir Munn, in conference with the Lord of 
+Kalgan was refused admission to the Mule's Palace, and that this refusal was suddenly 
+abrogated after Arcadia had spoken to Lady Callia, the First Citizen's very good friend." 
+
+Darell interrupted. "And how do you know all this?" 
+
+"For one thing, Munn was interviewed by Dirige as part of the police campaign to locate 
+Arcadia. Naturally, we have a complete transcript of the questions and answers. 
+
+"And take Lady Callia herself. It is rumored that she has lost Stettin's interest, but the rumor 
+isn't borne out by facts. She not only remains unreplaced; is not only able to mediate the lord's 
+refusal to Munn into an acceptance; but can even engineer Arcadia's escape openly. Why, a 
+dozen of the soldiers about Stettin's executive mansion testified that they were seen together 
+on the last evening. Yet she remains unpunished. This despite the fact that Arcadia was 
+searched for with every appearance of diligence." 
+
+"But what is your conclusion from all this torrent of ill-connection?" 
+
+"That Arcadia's escape was arranged." 
+
+"As I said." 
+
+"With this addition. That Arcadia must have known it was arranged; that Arcadia, the bright little 
+girl who saw cabals everywhere, saw this one and followed your own type of reasoning. They 
+wanted her to return to the Foundation, and so she went to Trantor, instead. But why Trantor?" 
+
+"Well, why?" 
+
+"Because that is where Bayta, her idolized grandmother, escaped when she was in flight. 
+Consciously or unconsciously, Arcadia imitated that. I wonder, then, if Arcadia was fleeing the 
+same enemy." 
+
+"The Mule?" asked Darell with polite sarcasm. 
+
+"Of course not. I mean, by the enemy, a mentality that she could not fight. She was running 
+from the Second Foundation, or such influence thereof as could be found on Kalgan." 
+
+"What influence is this you speak of?" 
+
+"Do you expect Kalgan to be immune from that ubiquitous menace? We both have come to the 
+conclusion, somehow, that Arcadia's escape was arranged. Right? She was searched for and 
+found, but deliberately allowed to slip away by Dirige. By Dirige, do you understand? But how 
+was that? Because he was our man. But how did they know that? Were they counting on him to 
+be a traitor? Eh, doc?" 
+
+
+
+"Now you're saying that they honestly meant to recapture her. Frankly, you're tiring me a bit, 
+Anthor. Finish your say; I want to go to bed." 
+
+"My say is quickly finished." Anthor reached for a small group of photo-records in his inner 
+pocket. It was the familiar wigglings of the encephalograph. "Dirige's brainwaves," Anthor said, 
+casually, "taken since he returned." 
+
+It was quite visible to Darell's naked eye, and his face was gray when he looked up. "Fie is 
+Controlled." 
+
+"Exactly. Fie allowed Arcadia to escape not because he was our man but because he was the 
+Second Foundation's." 
+
+"Even after he knew she was going to Trantor, and not to Terminus." 
+
+Anthor shrugged. "Fie had been geared to let her go. There was no way he could modify that. 
+Fie was only a tool, you see. It was just that Arcadia followed the least probable course, and is 
+probably safe. Or at least safe until such time as the Second Foundation can modify the plans 
+to take into account this changed state of affairs-" 
+
+Fie paused. The little signal light on the video set was flashing. On an independent circuit, it 
+signified the presence of emergency news. Darell saw it, too, and with the mechanical 
+movement of long habit turned on the video. They broke in upon the middle of a sentence but 
+before its completion, they knew that the Hober Mallow, or the wreck thereof, had been found 
+and that, for the first time in nearly half a century, the Foundation was again at war. 
+
+Anthor's jaw was set in a hard line. "All right, doc, you heard that. Kalgan has attacked; and 
+Kalgan is under the control of the Second Foundation. Will you follow your daughter's lead and 
+move to Trantor?" 
+
+"No. I will risk it. Here." 
+
+"Dr. Darell. You are not as intelligent as your daughter. I wonder how far you can be trusted." 
+His long level stare held Darell for a moment, and then without a word, he left. 
+
+And Darell was left in uncertainty and - almost - despair. 
+
+Unheeded, the video was a medley of excited sight-sound, as it described in nervous detail the 
+first hour of the war between Kalgan and the Foundation. 
+
+17 
+
+War 
+
+The mayor of the Foundation brushed futilely at the picket fence of hair that rimmed his skull. 
+He sighed. "The years that we have wasted; the chances we have thrown away. I make no 
+recriminations, Dr. Darell, but we deserve defeat." 
+
+
+Darell said, quietly, "I see no reason for lack of confidence in events, sir. 
+
+
+
+"Lack of confidence! Lack of confidence! By the Galaxy, Dr. Darell, on what would you base 
+any other attitude? Come here-" 
+
+He half-led half-forced Darell toward the limpid ovoid cradled gracefully on its tiny force-field 
+support. At a touch of the mayor's hand, it glowed within - an accurate three-dimensional 
+model of the Galactic double-spiral. 
+
+"In yellow," said the mayor, excitedly, "we have that region of Space under Foundation control; 
+in red, that under Kalgan." 
+
+What Darell saw was a crimson sphere resting within a stretching yellow fist that surrounded it 
+on all sides but that toward the center of the Galaxy. 
+
+"Galactography," said the mayor, "is our greatest enemy. Our admirals make no secret of our 
+almost hopeless, strategic position. Observe. The enemy has inner lines of communication. He 
+is concentrated; can meet us on all sides with equal ease. He can defend himself with minimum 
+force. 
+
+"We are expanded. The average distance between inhabited systems within the Foundation is 
+nearly three times that within Kalgan. To go from Santanni to Locris, for instance, is a voyage of 
+twenty-five hundred parsecs for us, but only eight hundred parsecs for them, if we remain within 
+our respective territories-" 
+
+Darell said, "I understand all that, sir." 
+
+"And you do not understand that it may mean defeat." 
+
+"There is more than distance to war. I say we cannot lose. It is quite impossible." 
+
+"And why do you say that?" 
+
+"Because of my own interpretation of the Seldon Plan." 
+
+"Oh," the mayor's lips twisted, and the hands behind his back flapped one within the other, 
+
+"then you rely, too, on the mystical help of the Second Foundation." 
+
+"No. Merely on the help of inevitability - and of courage and persistence." 
+
+And yet behind his easy confidence, he wondered- 
+
+What if- 
+
+Well- What if Anthor were right, and Kalgan were a direct tool of the mental wizards. What if it 
+was their purpose to defeat and destroy the Foundation. No! It made no sense! 
+
+And yet- 
+
+He smiled bitterly. Always the same. Always that peering and peering through the opaque 
+granite which, to the enemy, was so transparent. 
+
+Nor were the galactographic verities of the situation lost upon Stettin. 
+
+
+
+The Lord of Kalgan stood before a twin of the Galactic model which the mayor and Darell had 
+inspected. Except that where the mayor frowned, Stettin smiled. 
+
+His admiral's uniform glistered imposingly upon his massive figure. The crimson sash of the 
+Order of the Mule awarded him by the former First Citizen whom six months later he had 
+replaced somewhat forcefully, spanned his chest diagonally from right shoulder to waist. The 
+Silver Star with Double Comets and Swords sparkled brilliantly upon his left shoulder. 
+
+He addressed the six men of his general staff whose uniforms were only less grandiloquent 
+than his own, and his First Minister as well, thin and gray - a darkling cobweb, lost in the 
+brightness. 
+
+Stettin said, "I think the decisions are clear. We can afford to wait. To them, every day of delay 
+will be another blow at their morale. If they attempt to defend all portions of their realm, they will 
+be spread thin and we can strike through in two simultaneous thrusts here and here." He 
+indicated the directions on the Galactic model - two lances of pure white shooting through the 
+yellow fist from the red ball it inclosed, cutting Terminus off on either side in a tight arc. "In such 
+a manner, we cut their fleet into three parts which can be defeated in detail. If they concentrate, 
+they give up two-thirds of their dominions voluntarily and will probably risk rebellion." 
+
+The First Minister's thin voice alone seeped through the hush that followed. "In six months," he 
+said, "the Foundation will grow six months stronger. Their resources are greater, as we all 
+know, their navy is numerically stronger; their manpower is virtually inexhaustible. Perhaps a 
+quick thrust would be safer." 
+
+His was easily the least influential voice in the room. Lord Stettin smiled and made a flat 
+gesture with his hand. "The six months - or a year, if necessary - will cost us nothing. The men 
+of the Foundation cannot prepare; they are ideologically incapable of it. It is in their very 
+philosophy to believe that the Second Foundation will save them. But not this time, eh?" 
+
+The men in the room stirred uneasily. 
+
+"You lack confidence, I believe," said Stettin, frigidly. "Is it necessary once again to describe the 
+reports of our agents in Foundation territory, or to repeat the findings of Mr. Homir Munn, the 
+Foundation agent now in our ... uh ... service? Let us adjourn, gentlemen." 
+
+Stettin returned to his private chambers with a fixed smile still on his face. He sometimes 
+wondered about this Homir Munn. A queer water-spined fellow who certainly did not bear out 
+his early promise. And yet he crawled with interesting information that carried conviction with it 
+- particularly when Callia was present. 
+
+His smile broadened. That fat fool had her uses, after all. At least, she got more with her 
+wheedling out of Munn than he could, and with less trouble. Why not give her to Munn? He 
+frowned. Callia. She and her stupid jealousy. Space! If he still had the Darell girl- Why hadn't he 
+ground her skull to powder for that? 
+
+He couldn't quite put his finger on the reason. 
+
+Maybe because she got along with Munn. And he needed Munn. It was Munn, for instance, 
+who had demonstrated that, at least in the belief of the Mule, there was no Second Foundation. 
+
+
+
+His admirals needed that assurance. 
+
+
+He would have liked to make the proofs public, but it was better to let the Foundation believe in 
+their nonexistent help. Was it actually Callia who had pointed that out? That's right. She had 
+said- 
+
+Oh, nonsense! She couldn't have said anything. 
+
+And yet- 
+
+He shook his head to clear it and passed on. 
+
+
+18 
+
+Ghost of a World 
+
+Trantor was a world in dregs and rebirth. Set like a faded jewel in the midst of the bewildering 
+crowd of suns at the center of the Galaxy - in the heaps and clusters of stars piled high with 
+aimless prodigality - it alternately dreamed of past and future. 
+
+Time had been when the insubstantial ribbons of control had stretched out from its metal 
+coating to the very edges of stardom. It had been a single city, housing four hundred billion 
+administrators; the mightiest capital that had ever been. 
+
+Until the decay of the Empire eventually reached it and in the Great Sack of a century ago, its 
+drooping powers had been bent back upon themselves and broken forever. In the blasting ruin 
+of death, the metal shell that circled the planet wrinkled and crumpled into an aching mock of its 
+own grandeur. 
+
+The survivors tore up the metal plating and sold it to other planets for seed and cattle. The soil 
+was uncovered once more and the planet returned to its beginnings. In the spreading areas of 
+primitive agriculture, it forgot its intricate and colossal past. 
+
+Or would have but for the still mighty shards that heaped their massive ruins toward the sky in 
+bitter and dignified silence. 
+
+Arcadia watched the metal rim of the horizon with a stirring of the heart. The village in which the 
+Palvers lived was but a huddle of houses to her - small and primitive. The fields that 
+surrounded it were golden-yellow, wheat-clogged tracts. 
+
+But there, just past the reaching point was the memory of the past, still glowing in unrusted 
+splendor, and burning with fire where the sun of Trantor caught it in gleaming highlights. She 
+had been there once during the months since she had arrived at Trantor. She had climbed onto 
+the smooth, unjointed pavement and ventured into the silent dust-streaked structures, where 
+the light entered through the jags of broken walls and partitions. 
+
+It had been solidified heartache. It had been blasphemy. 
+
+She had left, clangingly - running until her feet pounded softly on earth once more. 
+
+
+
+And then she could only look back longingly. She dared not disturb that mighty brooding once 
+more. 
+
+Somewhere on this world, she knew, she had been born - near the old Imperial Library, which 
+was the veriest Trantor of Trantor. It was the sacred of the sacred; the holy of holies! Of all the 
+world, it alone had survived the Great Sack and for a century it had remained complete and 
+untouched; defiant of the universe. 
+
+There Hari Seldon and his group had woven their unimaginable web. There Ebling Mis pierced 
+the secret, and sat numbed in his vast surprise, until he was killed to prevent the secret from 
+going further. 
+
+There at the Imperial Library, her grandparents had lived for ten years, until the Mule died, and 
+they could return to the reborn Foundation. 
+
+There at the Imperial Library, her own father returned with his bride to find the Second 
+Foundation once again, but failed. There, she had been born and there her mother had died. 
+
+She would have liked to visit the Library, but Preem Palver shook his round head. "It's 
+thousands of miles, Arkady, and there's so much to do here. Besides, it's not good to bother 
+there. You know; it's a shrine-" 
+
+But Arcadia knew that he had no desire to visit the Library; that it was a case of the Mule's 
+Palace over again. There was this superstitious fear on the part of the pygmies of the present 
+for the relies of the giants of the past. 
+
+Yet it would have been horrible to feel a grudge against the funny little man for that. She had 
+been on Trantor now for nearly three months and in all that time, he and she - Pappa and 
+Mamma - had been wonderful to her- 
+
+And what was her return? Why, to involve them in the common ruin. Had she warned them that 
+she was marked for destruction, perhaps? No! She let them assume the deadly role of 
+protectors. 
+
+Her conscience panged unbearably - yet what choice had she? 
+
+She stepped reluctantly down the stairs to breakfast. The voices reached her. 
+
+Preem Palver had tucked the napkin down his shirt collar with a twist of his plump neck and 
+had reached for his poached eggs with an uninhibited satisfaction. 
+
+"I was down in the city yesterday, Mamma," he said, wielding his fork and nearly drowning the 
+words with a capacious mouthful. 
+
+"And what is down in the city, Pappa?" asked Mamma indifferently, sitting down, looking 
+sharply about the table, and rising again for the salt. 
+
+"Ah, not so good. A ship came in from out Kalgan-way with newspapers from there. It's war 
+there." 
+
+
+War! So! Well, let them break their heads, if they have no more sense inside. Did your pay 
+
+
+
+check come yet? Pappa, I'm telling you again. You warn old man Cosker this isn't the only 
+cooperative in the world. It's bad enough they pay you what I'm ashamed to tell my friends, but 
+at least on time they could be!" 
+
+"Time; shmime," said Pappa, irritably. "Look, don't make me silly talk at breakfast, it should 
+choke me each bite in the throat," and he wreaked havoc among the buttered toast as he said 
+it. He added, somewhat more moderately, "The fighting is between Kalgan and the Foundation, 
+and for two months, they've been at it." 
+
+His hands lunged at one another in mock-representation of a space fight. 
+
+"Um-m-m. And what's doing?" 
+
+"Bad for the Foundation. Well, you saw Kalgan; all soldiers. They were ready. The Foundation 
+was not, and so - poof T 
+
+And suddenly, Mamma laid down her fork and hissed, "Fool!" 
+
+"Huh?" 
+
+"Dumb-head! Your big mouth is always moving and wagging." 
+
+She was pointing quickly and when Pappa looked over his shoulder, there was Arcadia, frozen 
+in the doorway. 
+
+She said, "The Foundation is at war?" 
+
+Pappa looked helplessly at Mamma, then nodded. 
+
+"And they're losing?" 
+
+Again the nod. 
+
+Arcadia felt the unbearable catch in her throat, and slowly approached the table. "Is it over?" 
+she whispered. 
+
+"Over?" repeated Pappa, with false heartiness. "Who said it was over? In war, lots of things can 
+happen. And ... and-" 
+
+"Sit down, darling," said Mamma, soothingly. "No one should talk before breakfast. You're not in 
+a healthy condition with no food in the stomach." 
+
+But Arcadia ignored her. "Are the Kalganians on Terminus?" 
+
+"No," said Pappa, seriously. "The news is from last week, and Terminus is still fighting. This is 
+honest. I'm telling the truth. And the Foundation is still strong. Do you want me to get you the 
+newspapers?" 
+
+"Yes!" 
+
+She read them over what she could eat of her breakfast and her eyes blurred as she read. 
+Santanni and Korell were gone - without a fight. A squadron of the Foundation's navy had been 
+trapped in the sparsely-sunned Ifni sector and wiped out to almost the last ship. 
+
+
+
+And now the Foundation was back to the Four-Kingdom core - the original Realm which had 
+been built up under Salvor Hardin, the first mayor. But still it fought - and still there might be a 
+chance-and whatever happened, she must inform her father. She must somehow reach his ear. 
+She must! 
+
+But how? With a war in the way. 
+
+She asked Pappa after breakfast, "Are you going out on a new mission soon, Mr. Palver?" 
+
+Pappa was on the large chair on the front lawn, sunning himself. A fat cigar smoldered between 
+his plump fingers and he looked like a beatific pug-dog. 
+
+"A mission?" he repeated, lazily. "Who knows? It's a nice vacation and my leave isn't up. Why 
+talk about new missions? You're restless, Arkady?" 
+
+"Me? No, I like it here. You're very good to me, you and Mrs. Palver." 
+
+Fie waved his hand at her, brushing away her words. 
+
+Arcadia said, "I was thinking about the war." 
+
+"But don't think about it. What can you do? If it's something you can't help, why hurt yourself 
+over it?" 
+
+"But I was thinking that the Foundation has lost most of its farming worlds. They're probably 
+rationing food there." 
+
+Pappa looked uncomfortable. "Don't worry. It'll be all right." 
+
+She scarcely listened. "I wish I could carry food to them, that's what. You know after the Mule 
+died, and the Foundation rebelled, Terminus was just about isolated for a time and General 
+Flan Pritcher, who succeeded the Mule for a while was laying siege to it. Food was running 
+awfully low and my father says that his father told him that they only had dry amino-acid 
+concentrates that tasted terrible. Why, one egg cost two hundred credits. And then they broke 
+the siege just in time and food ships came through from Santanni. It must have been an awful 
+time. Probably it's happening all over, now." 
+
+There was a pause, and then Arcadia said, "You know, I'll bet the Foundation would be willing 
+to pay smuggler's prices for food now. Double and triple and more. Gee, if any co-operative, f'r 
+instance, here on Trantor took over the job, they might lose some ships, but, I'll bet they'd be 
+war millionaires before it was over. The Foundation Traders in the old days used to do that all 
+the time. There'd be a war, so they'd sell whatever was needed bad and take their chances. 
+Golly, they used to make as much as two million dollars out of one trip - profit. That was just 
+out of what they could carry on one ship, too." 
+
+Pappa stirred. His cigar had gone out, unnoticed. "A deal for food, huh? Hm-m-m- But the 
+Foundation is so far away." 
+
+"Oh, I know. I guess you couldn't do it from here. If you took a regular liner you probably 
+couldn't get closer than Massena or Smushyk, and after that you'd have to hire a small 
+
+
+
+scoutship or something to slip you through the lines." 
+
+Pappa's hand brushed at his hair, as he calculated. 
+
+Two weeks later, arrangements for the mission were completed. Mamma railed for most of the 
+time- First, at the incurable obstinacy with which he courted suicide. Then, at the incredible 
+obstinacy with which he refused to allow her to accompany him. 
+
+Pappa said, "Mamma, why do you act like an old lady. I can't take you. It's a man's work. What 
+do you think a war is? Fun? Child's play?" 
+
+"Then why do you go? Are you a man, you old fool - with a leg and half an arm in the grave. 
+
+Let some of the young ones go - not a fat bald-head like you?" 
+
+"I'm not a bald-head," retorted Pappa, with dignity. "I got yet lots of hair. And why should it not 
+be me that gets the commission? Why, a young fellow? Listen, this could mean millions?" 
+
+She knew that and she subsided. 
+
+Arcadia saw him once before he left. 
+
+She said, "Are you going to Terminus?" 
+
+"Why not? You say yourself they need bread and rice and potatoes. Well, I'll make a deal with 
+them, and they'll get it." 
+
+"Well, then - just one thing: If you're going to Terminus, could you ... would you see my father?" 
+
+And Pappa's face crinkled and seemed to melt into sympathy, "Oh - and I have to wait for you 
+to tell me. Sure, I'll see him. I'll tell him you're safe and everything's O.K., and when the war is 
+over, I'll bring you back." 
+
+"Thanks. I'll tell you how to find him. His name is Dr. Toran Darell and he lives in Stanmark. 
+That's just outside Terminus City, and you can get a little commuting plane that goes there. 
+We’re at 55 Channel Drive." 
+
+"Wait, and I’ll write it down." 
+
+"No, no," Arcadia's arm shot out. "You mustn't write anything down. You must remember - and 
+find him without anybody's help." 
+
+Pappa looked puzzled. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "All right, then. It's 55 Channel Drive 
+in Stanmark, outside Terminus City, and you commute there by plane. All right?" 
+
+"One other thing." 
+
+"Yes?" 
+
+"Would you tell him something from me?" 
+
+"Sure." 
+
+"I want to whisper it to you." 
+
+
+
+He leaned his plump cheek toward her, and the little whispered sound passed from one to the 
+other. 
+
+Pappa's eyes were round. "That's what you want me to say? But it doesn't make sense." 
+
+"He'll know what you mean. Just say I sent it and that I said he would know what it means. And 
+you say it exactly the way I told you. No different. You won't forget it?" 
+
+"How can I forget it? Five little words. Look-" 
+
+"No, no." She hopped up and down in the intensity of her feelings. "Don't repeat it. Don't ever 
+repeat it to anyone. Forget all about it except to my father. Promise me." 
+
+Pappa shrugged again. "I promise! All right!" 
+
+"All right," she said, mournfully, and as he passed down the drive to where the air taxi waited to 
+take him to the spaceport, she wondered if she had signed his death warrant. She wondered if 
+she would ever see him again. 
+
+She scarcely dared to walk into the house again to face the good, kind Mamma. Maybe when it 
+was all over, she had better kill herself for what she had done to them. 
+
+19 
+
+End of War 
+
+QUORISTON, BATTLE OF Fought on 9, 17, 377 F.E. between the forces of the Foundation 
+and those of Lord Stettin of Kalgan, it was the last battle of consequence during the 
+Interregnum .... 
+
+ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 
+
+Jole Turbor, in his new role of war correspondent, found his bulk incased in a naval uniform, 
+and rather liked it. He enjoyed being back on the air, and some of the fierce helplessness of the 
+futile fight against the Second Foundation left him in the excitement of another sort of fight with 
+substantial ships and ordinary men. 
+
+To be sure, the Foundation's fight had not been remarkable for victories, but it was still possible 
+to be philosophic about the matter. After six months, the hard core of the Foundation was 
+untouched, and the hard core of the Fleet was still in being. With the new additions since the 
+start of the war, it was almost as strong numerically, and stronger technically, than before the 
+defeat at Ifni. 
+
+And meanwhile, planetary defenses were being strengthened; the armed forces better trained; 
+administrative efficiency was having some of the water squeezed out of it - and much of the 
+Kalganian's conquering fleet was being wallowed down through the necessity of occupying the 
+"conquered" territory. 
+
+
+At the moment, Turbor was with the Third Fleet in the outer reaches of the Anacreonian sector. 
+
+
+
+In line with his policy of making this a "little man's war," he was interviewing Fennel Leemor, 
+Engineer Third Class, volunteer. 
+
+"Tell us a little about yourself, sailor," said Turbor. 
+
+"Ain't much to tell," Leemor shuffled his feet and allowed a faint, bashful smile to cover his face, 
+as though he could see all the millions that undoubtedly could see him at the moment. I’m a 
+Locrian. Got a job in an air-car factory; section head and good pay. I'm married; got two kids, 
+both girls. Say, I couldn't say hello to them, could I - in case they're listening." 
+
+"Go ahead, sailor. The video is all yours." 
+
+"Gosh, thanks." He burbled, "Hello, Milla, in case you're listening, I'm fine. Is Sunni all right? 
+
+And Tomma? I think of you all the time and maybe I'll be back on furlough after we get back to 
+port. I got your food parcel but I'm sending it back. We get our regular mess, but they say the 
+civilians are a little tight. I guess that's all." 
+
+"I'll look her up next time I'm on Locris, sailor, and make sure she's not short of food. O.K.?" 
+
+The young man smiled broadly and nodded his head. "Thank you, Mr. Turbor. I’d appreciate 
+that." 
+
+"All right. Suppose you tell us, then- You're a volunteer, aren't you?" 
+
+"Sure am. If anyone picks a fight with me, I don't have to wait for anyone to drag me in. I joined 
+up the day I heard about the Hober Mallow." 
+
+"That's a fine spirit. Have you seen much action? I notice "You're wearing two battle stars." 
+
+"Ptah."The sailor spat. "Those weren't battles, they were chases. The Kalganians don't fight, 
+unless they have odds of five to one or better in their favor. Even then they just edge in and try 
+to cut us up ship by ship. Cousin of mine was at Ifni and he was on a ship that got away, the old 
+Ebling Mis. He says it was the same there. They had their Main Fleet against just a wing 
+division of ours, and down to where we only had five ships left, they kept stalking instead of 
+fighting. We got twice as many of their ships at that fight." 
+
+"Then you think we're going to win the war?" 
+
+Sure bet; now that we aren't retreating. Even if things got too bad, that's when I'd expect the 
+Second Foundation to step in. We still got the Seldon Plan - and they know it, too." 
+
+Turbor's lips curled a bit. "You're counting on the Second Foundation, then?" 
+
+The answer came with honest surprise. "Well, doesn't everyone?" 
+
+Junior Officer Tippellum stepped into Turbor's room after the visicast. He shoved a cigarette at 
+the correspondent and knocked his cap back to a perilous balance on the occiput. 
+
+
+We picked up a prisoner," he said. 
+Yes?" 
+
+
+
+"Little crazy fellow. Claims to be a neutral - diplomatic immunity, no less. I don't think they know 
+what to do with him. His name's Palvro, Palver, something like that, and he says he's from 
+Trantor. Don't know what in space he's doing in a war zone." 
+
+But Turbor had swung to a sitting position on his bunk and the nap he had been about to take 
+was forgotten. He remembered quite well his last interview with Darell, the day after war had 
+been declared and he was shoving off. 
+
+"Preem Palver," he said. It was a statement. 
+
+Tippellum paused and let the smoke trickle out the sides of his mouth. "Yeah," he said, "how in 
+space did you know?" 
+
+"Never mind. Can I see him?" 
+
+"Space, / can't say. The old man has him in his own room for questioning. Everyone figures 
+he's a spy." 
+
+"You tell the old man that I know him, if he's who he claims he is. I’ll take the responsibility." 
+
+Captain Dixyl on the flagship of the Third Fleet watched unremittingly at the Grand Detector. No 
+ship could avoid being a source of subatomic radiation - not even if it were lying an inert mass 
+- and each focal point of such radiation was a little sparkle in the three-dimensional field. 
+
+Each one of the Foundation's ships were accounted for and no sparkle was left over, now that 
+the little spy who claimed to be a neutral had been picked up. For a while, that outside ship had 
+created a stir in the captain's quarters. The tactics might have needed changing on short notice. 
+As it was- 
+
+"Are you sure you have it?" he asked. 
+
+Commander Cenn nodded. "I will take my squadron through hyperspace: radius, 10.00 
+parsecs; theta, 268.52 degrees; phi, 84.15 degrees. Return to origin at 1330. Total absence 
+11.83 hours." 
+
+"Right. Now we are going to count on pin-point return as regards both space and time. 
+Understand?" 
+
+"Yes, captain." He looked at his wrist watch, "My ships will be ready by 0140." 
+
+"Good," said Captain Dixyl. 
+
+The Kalganian squadron was not within detector range now, but they would be soon. There 
+was independent information to that effect. Without Cenn's squadron the Foundation forces 
+would be badly outnumbered, but the captain was quite confident. Quite confident. 
+
+Preem Palver looked sadly about him. First at the tall, skinny admiral; then at the others, 
+everyone in uniform; and now at this last one, big and stout, with his collar open and no tie - 
+not like the rest - who said he wanted to speak to him. 
+
+Jole Turbor was saying: "I am perfectly aware, admiral, of the serious possibilities involved 
+
+
+
+here, but I tell you that if I can be allowed to speak to him for a few minutes, I may be able to 
+settle the current uncertainty." 
+
+"Is there any reason why you can't question him before me?" 
+
+Turbor pursed his lips and looked stubborn. "Admiral," he said, "while I have been attached to 
+your ships, the Third Fleet has received an excellent press. You may station men outside the 
+door, if you like, and you may return in five minutes. But, meanwhile, humor me a bit, and your 
+public relations will not suffer. Do you understand me?" 
+
+He did. 
+
+Then Turbor in the isolation that followed, turned to Palver, and said, "Quickly - what is the 
+name of the girl you abducted." 
+
+And Palver could simply stare round-eyed, and shake his head. 
+
+"No nonsense," said Turbor. "If you do not answer, you will be a spy and spies are blasted 
+without trial in war time." 
+
+"Arcadia Darell!" gasped Palver. 
+
+"Well! All right, then. Is she safe?" 
+
+Palver nodded. 
+
+"You had better be sure of that, or it won't be well for you." 
+
+"She is in good health, perfectly safe," said Palver, palely. 
+
+The admiral returned, "Well?" 
+
+"The man, sir, is not a spy. You may believe what he tells you. I vouch for him." 
+
+"That so?" The admiral frowned. "Then he represents an agricultural co-operative on Trantor 
+that wants to make a trade treaty with Terminus for the delivery of grains and potatoes. Well, all 
+right, but he can't leave now." 
+
+"Why not?" asked Palver, quickly. 
+
+"Because we're in the middle of a battle. After it is over - assuming we're still alive - we'll take 
+you to Terminus." 
+
+The Kalganian fleet that spanned through space detected the Foundation ships from an 
+incredible distance and were themselves detected. Like little fireflies in each other's Grand 
+Detectors, they closed in across the emptiness. 
+
+And the Foundation's admiral frowned and said, "This must be their main push. Look at the 
+numbers." Then, "They won't stand up before us, though; not if Cenn's detachment can be 
+counted on." 
+
+
+Commander Cenn had left hours before - at the first detection of the coming enemy. There was 
+no way of altering the plan now. It worked or it didn't, but the admiral felt quite comfortable. As 
+
+
+
+did the officers. As did the men. 
+
+Again watch the fireflies. 
+
+Like a deadly ballet dance, in precise formations, they sparked. 
+
+The Foundation fleet edged slowly backwards. Hours passed and the fleet veered slowly off, 
+teasing the advancing enemy slightly off course, then more so. 
+
+In the minds of the dictators of the battle plan, there was a certain volume of space that must 
+be occupied by the Kalganian ships. Out from that volume crept the Foundationers; into it 
+slipped the Kalganians. Those that passed out again were attacked, suddenly and fiercely. 
+Those that stayed within were not touched. 
+
+It all depended on the reluctance of the ships of Lord Stettin to take the initiative themselves - 
+on their willingness to remain where none attacked. 
+
+Captain Dixyl stared frigidly at his wrist watch. It was 1310, "We've got twenty minutes," he 
+said. 
+
+The lieutenant at his side nodded tensely, "It looks all right so far, captain. We've got more than 
+ninety percent of them boxed. If we can keep them that way-" 
+
+"Yes! If-" 
+
+The Foundation ships were drifting forward again - very slowly. Not quick enough to urge a 
+Kalganian retreat and just quickly enough to discourage a Kalganian advance. They preferred 
+to wait. 
+
+And the minutes passed. 
+
+At 1325, the admiral's buzzer sounded in seventy-five ships of the Foundation's line, and they 
+built up to a maximum acceleration towards the front-plane of the Kalganian fleet, itself three 
+hundred strong. Kalganian shields flared into action, and the vast energy beams flicked out. 
+Every one of the three hundred concentrated in the same direction, towards their mad attackers 
+who bore down relentlessly, uncaringly and- 
+
+At 1330, fifty ships under Commander Cenn appeared from nowhere, in one single bound 
+through hyperspace to a calculated spot at a calculated time - and were spaced in tearing fury 
+at the unprepared Kalganian rear. 
+
+The trap worked perfectly. 
+
+The Kalganians still had numbers on their side, but they were in no mood to count. Their first 
+effort was to escape and the formation once broken was only the more vulnerable, as the 
+enemy ships bumbled into one another's path. 
+
+After a while, it took on the proportions of a rat hunt. 
+
+Of three hundred Kalganian ships, the core and pride of their fleet, some sixty or less, many in 
+a state of near-hopeless disrepair, reached Kalgan once more. The Foundation loss was eight 
+
+
+
+ships out of a total of one hundred twenty-five. 
+
+Preem Palver landed on Terminus at the height of the celebration. He found the furore 
+distracting, but before he left the planet, he had accomplished two things, and received one 
+request. 
+
+The two things accomplished were: 1) the conclusion of an agreement whereby Palver's 
+co-operative was to deliver twenty shiploads of certain foodstuffs per month for the next year at 
+a war price, without, thanks to the recent battle, a corresponding war risk, and 2) the transfer to 
+Dr. Darell of Arcadia's five short words. 
+
+For a startled moment, Darell had stared wide-eyed at him, and then he had made his request. 
+It was to carry an answer back to Arcadia. Palver liked it; it was a simple answer and made 
+sense. It was: "Come back now. There won't be any danger." 
+
+Lord Stettin was in raging frustration. To watch his every weapon break in his hands; to feel the 
+firm fabric of his military might part like the rotten thread it suddenly turned out to be - would 
+have turned phlegmaticism itself into flowing lava. And yet he was helpless, and knew it. 
+
+He hadn't really slept well in weeks. He hadn't shaved in three days. He had canceled all 
+audiences. His admirals were left to themselves and none knew better than the Lord of Kalgan 
+that very little time and no further defeats need elapse before he would have to contend with 
+internal rebellion. 
+
+Lev Meirus, First Minister, was no help. He stood there, calm and indecently old, with his thin, 
+nervous finger stroking, as always, the wrinkled line from nose to chin. 
+
+"Well," shouted Stettin at him, "contribute something. We stand here defeated, do you 
+understand? Defeated! And why? I don't know why. There you have it. I don't know why. Do 
+you know why?" 
+
+"I think so," said Meirus, calmly. 
+
+"Treason!" The word came out softly, and other words followed as softly. "You've known of 
+treason, and you've kept quiet. You served the fool I ejected from the First Citizenship and you 
+think you can serve whatever foul rat replaces me. If you have acted so, I will extract your 
+entrails for it and burn them before your living eyes." 
+
+Meirus was unmoved. "I have tried to fill you with my own doubts, not once, but many times. I 
+have dinned it in your ears and you have preferred the advice of others because it stuffed your 
+ego better. Matters have turned out not as I feared, but even worse. If you do not care to listen 
+now, say so, sir, and I shall leave, and, in due course, deal with your successor, whose first act, 
+no doubt, will be to sign a treaty of peace." 
+
+Stettin stared at him red-eyed, enormous fists slowly clenching and unclenching. "Speak, you 
+gray slug. Speak!" 
+
+"I have told you often, sir, that you are not the Mule. You may control ships and guns but you 
+cannot control the minds of your subjects. Are you aware, sir, of who it is you are fighting? You 
+fight the Foundation, which is never defeated - the Foundation, which is protected by the 
+
+
+
+Seldon Plan - the Foundation, which is destined to form a new Empire." 
+
+"There is no Plan. No longer. Munn has said so." 
+
+"Then Munn is wrong. And if he were right, what then? You and I, sir, are not the people. The 
+men and women of Kalgan and its subject worlds believe utterly and deeply in the Seldon Plan 
+as do all the inhabitants of this end of the Galaxy. Nearly four hundred years of history teach 
+the fact that the Foundation cannot be beaten. Neither the kingdoms nor the warlords nor the 
+old Galactic Empire itself could do it." 
+
+"The Mule did it." 
+
+"Exactly, and he was beyond calculation - and you are not. What is worse, the people know 
+that you are not. So your ships go into battle fearing defeat in some unknown way. The 
+insubstantial fabric of the Plan hangs over them so that they are cautious and look before they 
+attack and wonder a little too much. While on the other side, that same insubstantial fabric fills 
+the enemy with confidence, removes fear, maintains morale in the face of early defeats. Why 
+not? The Foundation has always been defeated at first and has always won in the end. 
+
+"And your own morale, sir? You stand everywhere on enemy territory. Your own dominions 
+have not been invaded; are still not in danger of invasion - yet you are defeated. You don't 
+believe in the possibility, even, of victory, because you know there is none. 
+
+"Stoop, then, or you will be beaten to your knees. Stoop voluntarily, and you may save a 
+remnant. You have depended on metal and power and they have sustained you as far as they 
+could. You have ignored mind and morale and they have failed you. Now, take my advice. You 
+have the Foundation man, Homir Munn. Release him. Send him back to Terminus and he will 
+carry your peace offers." 
+
+Stettin's teeth ground behind his pale, set lips. But what choice had he? 
+
+On the first day of the new year, Homir Munn left Kalgan again. More than six months had 
+passed since he had left Terminus and in the interim, a war had raged and faded. 
+
+He had come alone, but he left escorted. He had come a simple man of private life; he left the 
+unappointed but nevertheless, actual, ambassador of peace. 
+
+And what had most changed was his early concern over the Second Foundation. He laughed at 
+the thought of that: and pictured in luxuriant detail the final revelation to Dr. Darell, to that 
+energetic, young competent, Anthor, to all of them- 
+
+He knew. He, Homir Munn, finally knew the truth. 
+
+20 
+
+
+
+"I Know ..." 
+
+
+The last two months of the Stettinian war did not lag for Homir. In his unusual office as Mediator 
+Extraordinary, he found himself the center of interstellar affairs, a role he could not help but find 
+pleasing. 
+
+There were no further major battles - a few accidental skirmishes that could scarcely count - 
+and the terms of the treaty were hammered out with little necessity for concessions on the part 
+of the Foundation. Stettin retained his office, but scarcely anything else. His navy was 
+dismantled; his possessions outside the home system itself made autonomous and allowed to 
+vote for return to previous status, full independence or confederation within the Foundation, as 
+they chose. 
+
+The war was formally ended on an asteroid in Terminus' own stellar system; site of the 
+Foundation's oldest naval base. Lev Meirus signed for Kalgan, and Homir was an interested 
+spectator. 
+
+Throughout all that period he did not see Dr. Darell, nor any of the others. But it scarcely 
+mattered. His news would keep - and, as always, he smiled at the thought. 
+
+Dr. Darell returned to Terminus some weeks after VK day, and that same evening, his house 
+served as the meeting place for the five men who, ten months earlier, had laid their first plans. 
+
+They lingered over dinner and then over wine as though hesitating to return again to the old 
+subject. 
+
+It was Jole Turbor, who, peering steadily into the purple depths of the wineglass with one eye, 
+muttered, rather than said, "Well, Homir, you are a man of affairs now, I see. You handled 
+matters well." 
+
+"I?" Munn laughed loudly and joyously. For some reason, he had not stuttered in months. "I 
+hadn't a thing to do with it. It was Arcadia. By the by, Darell, how is she? She's coming back 
+from Trantor, I heard?" 
+
+"You heard correctly," said Darell, quietly. "Her ship should dock within the week." He looked, 
+with veiled eyes, at the others, but there were only confused, amorphous exclamations of 
+pleasure. Nothing else. 
+
+Turbor said, "Then it's over, really. Who would have predicted all this ten months ago. Munn's 
+been to Kalgan and back. Arcadia's been to Kalgan and Trantor and is coming back. We've had 
+a war and won it, by Space. They tell you that the vast sweeps of history can be predicted, but 
+doesn't it seem conceivable that all that has just happened, with its absolute confusion to those 
+of us who lived through it, couldn't possibly have been predicted." 
+
+"Nonsense," said Anthor, acidly. "What makes you so triumphant, anyway? You talk as though 
+we have really won a war, when actually we have won nothing but a petty brawl which has 
+served only to distract our minds from the real enemy." 
+
+There was an uncomfortable silence, in which only Homir Munn's slight smile struck a 
+
+
+
+discordant note. 
+
+
+And Anthor struck the arm of his chair with a balled and furyfilled fist, "Yes, I refer to the 
+Second Foundation. There is no mention of it and, if I judge correctly, every effort to have no 
+thought of it. Is it because this fallacious atmosphere of victory that palls over this world of idiots 
+is so attractive that you feel you must participate? Turn somersaults then, handspring your way 
+into a wall, pound one another's back and throw confetti out the window. Do whatever you 
+please, only get it out of your system - and when you are quite done and you are yourselves 
+again, return and let us discuss that problem which exists now precisely as it did ten months 
+ago when you sat here with eyes cocked over your shoulders for fear of you knew not what. Do 
+you really think that the Mind-masters of the Second Foundation are less to be feared because 
+you have beat down a foolish wielder of spaceships." 
+
+Fie paused, red-faced and panting. 
+
+Munn said quietly, "Will you hear me speak now, Anthor? Or do you prefer to continue your role 
+as ranting conspirator?" 
+
+"Flave your say, Flomir," said Darell, "but let's all of us refrain from over-picturesqueness of 
+language. It's a very good thing in its place, but at present, it bores me." 
+
+Flomir Munn leaned back in his armchair and carefully refilled his glass from the decanter at his 
+elbow. 
+
+"I was sent to Kalgan," he said, "to find out what I could from the records contained in the 
+Mule's Palace. I spent several months doing so. I seek no credit for that accomplishment. As I 
+have indicated, it was Arcadia whose ingenuous intermeddling obtained the entry for me. 
+Nevertheless, the fact remains that to my original knowledge of the Mule's life and times, which, 
+I submit, was not small, I have added the fruits of much labor among primary evidence which 
+has been available to no one else. 
+
+"I am, therefore, in a unique position to estimate the true danger of the Second Foundation; 
+much more so than is our excitable friend here." 
+
+"And," grated Anthor, "what is your estimate of that danger?" 
+
+"Why, zero." 
+
+A short pause, and Elvett Semic asked with an air of surprised disbelief, "You mean zero 
+danger?" 
+
+"Certainly. Friends, there is no Second Foundation!" 
+
+Anthor's eyelids closed slowly and he sat there, face pale and expressionless. 
+
+Munn continued, attention-centering and loving it, "And what is more, there was never one." 
+
+"On what," asked Darell, "do you base this surprising conclusion?" 
+
+"I deny," said Munn, "that it is surprising. You all know the story of the Mule's search for the 
+Second Foundation. But what do you know of the intensity of that search - of the 
+
+
+
+single-mindedness of it. He had tremendous resources at his disposal and he spared none of it. 
+He was single-minded - and yet he failed. No Second Foundation was found." 
+
+"One could scarcely expect it to be found," pointed out Turbor, restlessly. "It had means of 
+protecting itself against inquiring minds." 
+
+"Even when the mind that is inquiring is the Mule's mutant mentality? I think not. But come, you 
+do not expect me to give you the gist of fifty volumes of reports in five minutes. All of it, by the 
+terms of the peace treaty will be part of the Seldon Historical Museum eventually, and you will 
+all be free to be as leisurely in your analysis as I have been. You will find his conclusion plainly 
+stated, however, and that I have already expressed. There is not, and has never been, any 
+Second Foundation." 
+
+Semic interposed, "Well, what stopped the Mule, then?" 
+
+"Great Galaxy, what do you suppose stopped him? Death did; as it will stop all of us. The 
+greatest superstition of the age is that the Mule was somehow stopped in an all-conquering 
+career by some mysterious entities superior even to himself. It is the result of looking at 
+everything in wrong focus. 
+
+"Certainly no one in the Galaxy can help knowing that the Mule was a freak, physical as well as 
+mental. He died in his thirties because his ill-adjusted body could no longer struggle its creaking 
+machinery along. For several years before his death he was an invalid. His best health was 
+never more than an ordinary man's feebleness. All right, then. He conquered the Galaxy and, in 
+the ordinary course of nature, proceeded to die. It's a wonder he proceeded as long and as well 
+as he did. Friends, it's down in the very clearest print. You have only to have patience. You 
+have only to try to look at all facts in new focus." 
+
+Darell said, thoughtfully, "Good, let us try that Munn. It would be an interesting attempt and, if 
+nothing else, would help oil our thoughts. These tampered men - the records of which Anthor 
+brought to us nearly a year ago, what of them? Help us to see them in focus." 
+
+"Easily. How old a science is encephalographic analysis? Or, put it another way, how 
+well-developed is the study of neuronic pathways." 
+
+"We are at the beginning in this respect. Granted," said Darell. 
+
+"Right. How certain can we be then as to the interpretation of what I've heard Anthor and 
+yourself call the Tamper Plateau. You have your theories, but how certain can you be. Certain 
+enough to consider it a firm basis for the existence of a mighty force for which all other 
+evidence is negative? It's always easy to explain the unknown by postulating a superhuman 
+and arbitrary will. 
+
+"It's a very human phenomenon. There have been cases all through Galactic history where 
+isolated planetary systems have reverted to savagery, and what have we learned there? In 
+every case, such savages attribute the to-them-incomprehensible forces of Nature - storms, 
+pestilences, droughts - to sentient beings more powerful and more arbitrary than men. 
+
+"It is called anthropomorphism, I believe, and in this respect, we are savages and indulge in it. 
+Knowing little of mental science, we blame anything we don't know on supermen - those of the 
+
+
+
+Second Foundation in this case, based on the hint thrown us by Seldon." 
+
+"Oh," broke in Anthor, "then you do remember Seldon. I thought you had forgotten. Seldon did 
+say there was a Second Foundation. Get that in focus. 
+
+"And are you aware then of all Seldon's purposes. Do you know what necessities were involved 
+in his calculations? The Second Foundation may have been a very necessary scarecrow, with 
+a highly specific end in view. Flow did we defeat Kalgan, for instance? What were you saying in 
+your last series of articles, Turbor?" 
+
+Turbor stirred his bulk. "Yes, I see what "You're driving at. I was on Kalgan towards the end, 
+Darell, and it was quite obvious that morale on the planet was incredibly bad. I looked through 
+their news-records and - well, they expected to be beaten. Actually, they were completely 
+unmanned by the thought that eventually the Second Foundation would take a hand, on the 
+side of the First, naturally." 
+
+"Quite right," said Munn. "I was there all through the war. I told Stettin there was no Second 
+Foundation and he believed me. He felt safe. But there was no way of making the people 
+suddenly disbelieve what they had believed all their lives, so that the myth eventually served a 
+very useful purpose in Seldon's cosmic chess game." 
+
+But Anthor's eyes opened, quite suddenly, and fixed themselves sardonically on Munn's 
+countenance. "I say you lie. " 
+
+Flomir turned pale, "I don't see that I have to accept, much less answer, an accusation of that 
+nature." 
+
+"I say it without any intention of personal offense. You cannot help lying; you don't realize that 
+you are. But you lie just the same." 
+
+Semic laid his withered hand on the young man's sleeve. "Take a breath, young fella." 
+
+Anthor shook him off, none too gently, and said, "I'm out of patience with all of you. I haven't 
+seen this man more than half a dozen times in my life, yet I find the change in him 
+unbelievable. The rest of you have known him for years, yet pass it by. It is enough to drive one 
+mad. Do you call this man you've been listening to Flomir Munn? Fie is not the Flomir Munn / 
+knew." 
+
+A medley of shock; above which Munn's voice cried, "You claim me to be an impostor?" 
+
+"Perhaps not in the ordinary sense," shouted Anthor above the din, "but an impostor 
+nonetheless. Quiet, everyone! I demand to be heard." 
+
+Fie frowned them ferociously into obedience. "Do any of you remember Flomir Munn as I do - 
+the introverted librarian who never talked without obvious embarrassment; the man of tense 
+and nervous voice, who stuttered out his uncertain sentences? Does this man sound like him? 
+Fle's fluent, he's confident, he's fun of theories, and, by Space, he doesn't stutter. Is he the 
+same person?" 
+
+
+Even Munn looked confused, and Pelleas Anthor drove on. "Well, shall we test him? 
+
+
+
+How?" asked Darell. 
+
+
+"You ask how? There is the obvious way. You have his encephalographic record of ten months 
+ago, haven't you? Run one again, and compare." 
+
+He pointed at the frowning librarian, and said violently, "I dare him to refuse to subject himself 
+to analysis." 
+
+"I don't object," said Munn, defiantly. "I am the man I always was." 
+
+"Can you know?" said Anthor with contempt. "I’ll go further. I trust no one here. I want everyone 
+to undergo analysis. There has been a war. Munn has been on Kalgan; Turbor has been on 
+board ship and all over the war areas. Darell and Semic have been absent, too - I have no idea 
+where. Only I have remained here in seclusion and safety, and I no longer trust any of the rest 
+of you. And to play fair, I’ll submit to testing as well. Are we agreed then? Or do I leave now and 
+go my own way?" 
+
+Turbor shrugged and said, "I have no objection." 
+
+"I have already said I don't," said Munn. 
+
+Semic moved a hand in silent assent, and Anthor waited for Darell. Finally, Darell nodded his 
+head. 
+
+"Take me first," said Anthor. 
+
+The needles traced their delicate way across the cross-hatchings as the young neurologist sat 
+frozen in the reclining seat, with lidded eyes brooding heavily. From the files, Darell removed 
+the folder containing Anthor's old encephalographic record. He showed them to Anthor. 
+
+"That's your own signature, isn't it?" 
+
+"Yes, yes. It's my record. Make the comparison." 
+
+The scanner threw old and new on to the screen. All six curves in each recording were there, 
+and in the darkness, Munn's voice sounded in harsh clarity. "Well, now, look there. There's a 
+change." 
+
+"Those are the primary waves of the frontal lobe. It doesn't mean a thing, Homir. Those 
+additional jags you're pointing to are just anger. It's the others that count." 
+
+He touched a control knob and the six pairs melted into one another and coincided. The deeper 
+amplitude of primaries alone introduced doubling. 
+
+"Satisfied?" asked Anthor. 
+
+Darell nodded curtly and took the seat himself. Semic followed him and Turbor followed him. 
+Silently the curves were collected; silently they were compared. 
+
+Munn was the last to take his seat. For a moment, he hesitated, then, with a touch of 
+desperation in his voice, he said, "Well now, look, I'm coming in last and I'm under tension. I 
+expect due allowance to be made for that." 
+
+
+
+"There will be," Darell assured him. "No conscious emotion of yours will affect more than the 
+primaries and they are not important." 
+
+It might have been hours, in the utter silence that followed 
+
+And then in the darkness of the comparison, Anthor said huskily: "Sure, sure, it's only the onset 
+of a complex. Isn't that what he told us? No such thing as tampering; it's all a silly 
+anthropomorphic notion - but look at it! A coincidence I suppose." 
+
+"What's the matter?" shrieked Munn. 
+
+Darell's hand was tight on the librarian's shoulder. "Quiet, Munn - you've been handled; you've 
+been adjusted by them." 
+
+Then the light went on, and Munn was looking about him with broken eyes, making a horrible 
+attempt to smile. 
+
+"You can't be serious, surely. There is a purpose to this. You're testing me." 
+
+But Darell only shook his head. "No, no, Homir. It's true." 
+
+The librarian's eyes were filled with tears, suddenly. "I don't feel any different. I can't believe it." 
+With sudden conviction: "You are all in this. It's a conspiracy." 
+
+Darell attempted a soothing gesture, and his hand was struck aside. Munn snarled, "You're 
+planning to kill me. By Space, you're planning to kill me." 
+
+With a lunge, Anthor was upon him. There was the sharp crack of bone against bone, and 
+Homir was limp and flaccid with that look of fear frozen on his face. 
+
+Anthor rose shakily, and said, "We'd better tie and gag him. Later, we can decide what to do." 
+He brushed his long hair back. 
+
+Turbor said, "How did you guess there was something wrong with him?" 
+
+Anthor turned sardonically upon him. "It wasn't difficult. You see, / happen to know where the 
+Second Foundation really is. " 
+
+Successive shocks have a decreasing effect- 
+
+It was with actual mildness that Semic asked, "Are you sure? I mean we’ve just gone through 
+this sort of business with Munn-" 
+
+This isn't quite the same," returned Anthor. "Darell, the day the war started, I spoke to you most 
+seriously. I tried to have you leave Terminus. I would have told you then what I will tell you now, 
+if I had been able to trust you." 
+
+"You mean you have known the answer for half a year?" smiled Darell. 
+
+"I have known it from the time I learned that Arcadia had left for Trantor." 
+
+And Darell started to his feet in sudden consternation. "What had Arcadia to do with it? What 
+
+
+
+are you implying?" 
+
+"Absolutely nothing that is not plain on the face of all the events we know so well. Arcadia goes 
+to Kalgan and flees in terror to the very center of the Galaxy, rather than return home. 
+Lieutenant Dirige, our best agent on Kalgan is tampered with. Homir Munn goes to Kalgan and 
+he is tampered with. The Mule conquered the Galaxy, but, queerly enough, he made Kalgan his 
+headquarters, and it occurs to me to wonder if he was conqueror or, perhaps, tool. At every 
+turn, we meet with Kalgan, Kalgan - nothing but Kalgan, the world that somehow survived 
+untouched all the struggles of the warlords for over a century." 
+
+"Your conclusion, then." 
+
+"Is obvious," Anthor's eyes were intense. "The Second Foundation is on Kalgan." 
+
+Turbor interrupted. "I was on Kalgan, Anthor. I was there last week. If there was any Second 
+Foundation on it, I'm mad. Personally, I think you're mad." 
+
+The young man whirled on him savagely. "Then you're a fat fool. What do you expect the 
+Second Foundation to be? A grammar school? Do you think that Radiant Fields in tight beams 
+spell out ‘Second Foundation' in green and purple along the incoming spaceship routes? Listen 
+to me, Turbor. Wherever they are, they form a tight oligarchy. They must be as well hidden on 
+the world on which they exist, as the world itself is in the Galaxy as a whole." 
+
+Turbor's jaw muscles writhed. "I don't like your attitude, Anthor." 
+
+"That certainly disturbs me," was the sarcastic response. "Take a look about you here on 
+Terminus. We’re at the center - the core - the origin of the First Foundation with all its 
+knowledge of physical science. Well, how many of the population are physical scientists? Can 
+you operate an Energy Transmitting Station? What do you know of the operation of a 
+hyperatomic motor? Eh? The number of real scientists on Terminus - even on Terminus - can 
+be numbered at less than one percent of the population. 
+
+"And what then of the Second Foundation where secrecy must be preserved. There will still be 
+less of the cognoscenti, and these will be hidden even from their own world." 
+
+"Say," said Semic, carefully. "We just licked Kalgan-" 
+
+"So we did. So we did," said Anthor, sardonically. "Oh, we celebrate that victory. The cities are 
+still illuminated; they are still shooting off fireworks; they are still shouting over the televisors. 
+
+But now, now, when the search is on once more for the Second Foundation, where is the last 
+place well look; where is the last place anyone will look? Right!" Kalgan! 
+
+"We haven't hurt them, you know; not really. We've destroyed some ships, killed a few 
+thousands, torn away their Empire, taken over some of their commercial and economic power - 
+but that all means nothing. I'll wager that not one member of the real ruling class of Kalgan is in 
+the least discomfited. On the contrary, they are now safe from curiosity. But not from my 
+curiosity. What do you say, Darell?" 
+
+Darell shrugged his shoulders. "Interesting. I’m trying to fit it in with a message I received from 
+Arcadia a few months since." 
+
+
+
+"Oh, a message?" asked Anthor. "And what was it?" 
+
+"Well, I'm not certain. Five short words. But its interesting." 
+
+"Look," broke in Semic, with a worried interest, "there's something / don't understand." 
+
+"What's that?" 
+
+Semic chose his words carefully, his old upper lip lifting with each word as if to let them out 
+singly and reluctantly. "Well, now, Homir Munn was saying just a while ago that Hari Seldon 
+was faking when he said that he had established a Second Foundation. Now you're saying that 
+it's not so; that Seldon wasn't faking, eh?" 
+
+"Right, he wasn't faking. Seldon said he had established a Second Foundation and so he had." 
+
+"All right, then, but he said something else, too. Fie said he established the two Foundations at 
+opposite ends of the Galaxy. Now, young man, was that a. fake - because Kalgan isn't at the 
+opposite end of the Galaxy." 
+
+Anthor seemed annoyed, "That's a minor point. That part may well have been a cover up to 
+protect them. But after all, think- What real use would it serve to have the Mind-masters at the 
+opposite end of the Galaxy? What is their function? To help preserve the Plan. Who are the 
+main card players of the Plan? We, the First Foundation. Where can they best observe us, 
+then, and serve their own ends? At the opposite end of the Galaxy? Ridiculous! They're within 
+fifty parsecs, actually, which is much more sensible." 
+
+"I like that argument," said Darell. "It makes sense. Look here, Munn's been conscious for some 
+time and I propose we loose him. Fie can't do any harm, really." 
+
+Anthor looked rebellious, but Flomir was nodding vigorously. Five seconds later he was rubbing 
+his wrists just as vigorously. 
+
+"Flow do you feel?" asked Darell. 
+
+"Rotten," said Munn, sulkily, "but never mind. There's something I want to ask this bright young 
+thing here. I've heard what he's had to say, and I’d just like permission to wonder what we do 
+next." 
+
+There was a queer and incongruous silence. 
+
+Munn smiled bitterly. "Well, suppose Kalgan is the Second Foundation. Who on Kalgan are 
+they? Flow are you going to find them? Flow are you going to tackle them if you find them, eh?" 
+
+"Ah," said Darell, "I can answer that, strangely enough. Shall I tell you what Semic and I have 
+been doing this past half-year? It may give you another reason, Anthor, why I was anxious to 
+remain on Terminus all this time." 
+
+"In the first place," he went on, "I've been working on encephalographic analysis with more 
+purpose than any of you may suspect. Detecting Second Foundation minds is a little more 
+subtle than simply finding a Tamper Plateau - and I did not actually succeed. But I came close 
+enough. 
+
+
+
+"Do you know, any of you, how emotional control works? It's been a popular subject with fiction 
+writers since the time of the Mule and much nonsense has been written, spoken, and recorded 
+about it. For the most part, it has been treated as something mysterious and occult. Of course, 
+it isn't. That the brain is the source of a myriad, tiny electromagnetic fields, everyone knows. 
+Every fleeting emotion varies those fields in more or less intricate fashion, and everyone should 
+know that, too. 
+
+"Now it is possible to conceive a mind which can sense these changing fields and even 
+resonate with them. That is, a special organ of the cerebrum can exist which can take on 
+whatever field-pattern it may detect. Exactly how it would do this, I have no idea, but that 
+doesn't matter, if I were blind, for instance, I could still learn the significance of photons and 
+energy quanta and it could be reasonable to me that the absorption of a photon of such energy 
+could create chemical changes in some organ of the body such that its presence would be 
+detectable. But, of course, I would not be able, thereby, to understand color. 
+
+"Do all of you follow?" 
+
+There was a firm nod from Anthor; a doubtful nod from the others. 
+
+"Such a hypothetical Mind Resonating Organ, by adjusting itself to the Fields emitted by other 
+minds could perform what is popularly known as 'reading emotion’ or even 'reading minds,’ 
+which is actually something even more subtle. It is but an easy step from that to imagining a 
+similar organ which could actually force an adjustment on another mind. It could orient with its 
+stronger Field the weaker one of another mind - much as a strong magnet will orient the atomic 
+dipoles in a bar of steel and leave it magnetized thereafter. 
+
+"I solved the mathematics of Second Foundationism in the sense that I evolved a function that 
+would predict the necessary combination of neuronic paths that would allow for the formation of 
+an organ such as I have just described - but, unfortunately, the function is too complicated to 
+solve by any of the mathematical tools at present known. That is too bad, because it means 
+that I can never detect a Mind-worker by his encephalographic pattern alone. 
+
+"But I could do something else. I could, with Semic's help, construct what I shall describe as a 
+Mental Static device. It is not beyond the ability of modem science to create an energy source 
+that will duplicate an encephalograph-type pattern of electromagnetic field. Moreover, it can be 
+made to shift at complete random, creating, as far as this particular mind-sense is concerned, a 
+sort of 'noise' or 'static' which masks other minds with which it may be in contact. 
+
+"Do you still follow?" 
+
+Semic chuckled. Fie had helped create blindly, but he had guessed, and guessed correctly. The 
+old man had a trick or two left— 
+
+Anthor said, "I think I do." 
+
+"The device," continued Darell, "is a fairly easy one to produce, and I had all the resources of 
+the Foundation under my control as it came under the heading of war research. And now the 
+mayor's offices and the Legislative assemblies are surrounded with Mental Static. So are most 
+of our key factories. So is this building. Eventually, any place we wish can be made absolutely 
+
+
+
+safe from the Second Foundation or from any future Mule. And that's it." 
+
+He ended quite simply with a flat-palmed gesture of the hand. 
+
+Turbor seemed stunned. "Then it's all over. Great Seldon, it's all over." 
+
+"Well," said Darell, "not exactly." 
+
+"How, not exactly? Is there something more?" 
+
+"Yes, we haven't located the Second Foundation yet!" 
+
+"What," roared Anthor, "are you trying to say-" 
+
+"Yes, I am. Kalgan is not the Second Foundation." 
+
+"How do you know?" 
+
+"It's easy," grunted Darell. "You see / happen to know where the Second Foundation really is. " 
+
+21 
+
+The Answer That Satisfied 
+
+Turbor laughed suddenly - laughed in huge, windy gusts that bounced ringingly off the walls 
+and died in gasps. He shook his head, weakly, and said, "Great Galaxy, this goes on all night. 
+One after another, we put up our straw men to be knocked down. We have fun, but we don't get 
+anywhere. Space! Maybe all planets are the Second Foundation. Maybe they have no planet, 
+just key men spread on all the planets. And what does it matter, since Darell says we have the 
+perfect defense?" 
+
+Darell smiled without humor. "The perfect defense is not enough, Turbor. Even my Mental 
+Static device is only something that keeps us in the same place. We cannot remain forever with 
+our fists doubled, frantically staring in all directions for the unknown enemy. We must know not 
+only how to win, but whom to defeat. And there is a specific world on which the enemy exists." 
+
+"Get to the point," said Anthor, wearily. "What's your information?" 
+
+"Arcadia," said Darell, "sent me a message, and until I got it, I never saw the obvious. I 
+probably would never have seen the obvious. Yet it was a simple message that went: 'A circle 
+has no end.’ Do you see?" 
+
+"No," said Anthor, stubbornly, and he spoke, quite obviously, for the others. 
+
+"A circle has no end," repeated Munn, thoughtfully, and his forehead furrowed. 
+
+"Well," said Darell, impatiently, "it was clear to me- What is the one absolute fact we know 
+about the Second Foundation, eh? I'll tell you! We know that Hari Seldon located it at the 
+opposite end of the Galaxy. Homir Munn theorized that Seldon lied about the existence of the 
+Foundation. Pelleas Anthor theorized that Seldon had told the truth that far, but lied about the 
+
+
+
+location of the Foundation. But I tell you that Hari Seldon lied in no particular; that he told the 
+absolute truth. 
+
+
+"But, what is the other end? The Galaxy is a flat, lens-shaped object. A cross section along the 
+flatness of it is a circle, and a circle had no end - as Arcadia realized. We - we, the First 
+Foundation - are located on Terminus at the rim of that circle. We are at an end of the Galaxy, 
+by definition. Now follow the rim of that circle and find the other end. Follow it, follow it, follow it, 
+and you will find no other end. You will merely come back to your starting point- 
+
+"And there you will find the Second Foundation." 
+
+"There?" repeated Anthor. "Do you mean here?" 
+
+"Yes, I mean here!" cried Darell, energetically. "Why, where else could it possibly be? You said 
+yourself that if the Second Foundationers were the guardians of the Seldon Plan, it was unlikely 
+that they could be located at the so-called other end of the Galaxy, where they would be as 
+isolated as they could conceivably be. You thought that fifty parsecs distance was more 
+sensible. I tell you that that is also too far. That no distance at all is more sensible. And where 
+would they be safest? Who would look for them here? Oh, it's the old principle of the most 
+obvious place being the least suspicious. 
+
+"Why was poor Ebling Mis so surprised and unmanned by his discovery of the location of the 
+Second Foundation? There he was, looking for it desperately in order to warn it of the coming 
+of the Mule, only to find that the Mule had already captured both Foundations at a stroke. And 
+why did the Mule himself fail, in his search? Why not? If one is searching for an unconquerable 
+menace, one would scarcely look among the enemies already conquered. So the 
+Mind-masters, in their own leisurely time, could lay their plans to stop the Mule, and succeeded 
+in stopping him. 
+
+"Oh, it is maddeningly simple. For here we are with our plots and our schemes, thinking that we 
+are keeping our secrecy - when all the time we are in the very heart and core of our enemy's 
+stronghold. It's humorous." 
+
+Anthor did not remove the skepticism from his face, "You honestly believe this theory, Dr. 
+Darell?" 
+
+"I honestly believe it." 
+
+"Then any of our neighbors, any man we pass in the street might be a Second Foundation 
+superman, with his mind watching yours and feeling the pulse of its thoughts." 
+
+"Exactly." 
+
+"And we have been permitted to proceed all this time, without molestation?" 
+
+"Without molestation? Who told you we were not molested? You, yourself, showed that Munn 
+has been tampered with. What makes you think that we sent him to Kalgan in the first place 
+entirely of our own volition - or that Arcadia overheard us and followed him on her own volition? 
+Hah ! We have been molested without pause, probably. And after all, why should they do more 
+than they have? It is far more to their benefit to mislead us, than merely to stop us." 
+
+
+
+Anthor buried himself in meditation and emerged therefrom with a dissatisfied expression. 
+
+"Well, then, I don't like it. Your Mental Static isn't worth a thought. We can't stay in the house 
+forever and as soon as we leave, we're lost, with what we now think we know. Unless you can 
+build a little machine for every inhabitant in the Galaxy." 
+
+"Yes, but we're not quite helpless, Anthor. These men of the Second Foundation have a special 
+sense which we lack. It is their strength and also their weakness. For instance, is there any 
+weapon of attack that will be effective against a normal, sighted man which is useless against a 
+blind man?" 
+
+"Sure," said Munn, promptly. "A light in the eyes." 
+
+"Exactly," said Darell. "A good, strong blinding light." 
+
+"Well, what of it?" asked Turbor. 
+
+"But the analogy is clear. I have a Mind Static device. It sets up an artificial electromagnetic 
+pattern, which to the mind of a man of the Second Foundation would be like a beam of light to 
+us. But the Mind Static device is kaleidoscopic. It shifts quickly and continuously, faster than the 
+receiving mind can follow. All right then, consider it a flickering light; the kind that would give 
+you a headache, if continued long enough. Now intensify that light or that electromagnetic field 
+until it is blinding - and it will become a pain, an unendurable pain. But only to those with the 
+proper sense; not to the unsensed." 
+
+"Really?" said Anthor, with the beginnings of enthusiasm. "Flave you tried this?" 
+
+"On whom? Of course, I haven't tried it. But it will work." 
+
+"Well, where do you have the controls for the Field that surrounds the house? Id like to see this 
+thing." 
+
+"Flere." Darell reached into his jacket pocket. It was a small thing, scarcely bulging his pocket. 
+Fie tossed the black, knob-studded cylinder to the other. 
+
+Anthor inspected it carefully and shrugged his shoulders. "It doesn't make me any smarter to 
+look at it. Look Darell, what mustn't I touch? I don't want to turn off the house defense by 
+accident, you know." 
+
+"You won't," said Darell, indifferently. "That control is locked in place." Fie flicked at a toggle 
+switch that didn't move. 
+
+"And what's this knob?" 
+
+"That one varies rate of shift of pattern. Flere - this one varies the intensity. It's that which I've 
+been referring to." 
+
+"May I-" asked Anthor, with his finger on the intensity knob. The others were crowding close. 
+"Why not?" shrugged Darell. "It won't affect us." 
+
+Slowly, almost wincingly, Anthor turned the knob, first in one direction, then in another. Turbor 
+
+
+
+was gritting his teeth, while Munn blinked his eyes rapidly. It was as though they were keening 
+their inadequate sensory equipment to locate this impulse which could not affect them. 
+
+Finally, Anthor shrugged and tossed the control box back into Darell's lap. "Well, I suppose we 
+can take your word for it. But it's certainly hard to imagine that anything was happening when I 
+turned the knob." 
+
+"But naturally, Pelleas Anthor," said Darell, with a tight smile. "The one I gave you was a 
+dummy. You see I have another." He tossed his jacket aside and seized a duplicate of the 
+control box that Anthor had been investigating, which swung from his belt. 
+
+"You see," said Darell, and in one gesture turned the intensity knob to maximum. 
+
+And with an unearthly shriek, Pelleas Anthor sank to the floor. He rolled in his agony; whitened, 
+gripping fingers clutching and tearing futilely at his hair. 
+
+Munn lifted his feet hastily to prevent contact with the squirming body, and his eyes were twin 
+depths of horror. Semic and Turbor were a pair of plaster casts; stiff and white. 
+
+Darell, somber, turned the knob back once more. And Anthor twitched feebly once or twice and 
+lay still. He was alive, his breath racking his body. 
+
+"Lift him on to the couch," said Darell, grasping the young man's head. "Help me here." 
+
+Turbor reached for the feet. They might have been lifting a sack of flour. Then, after long 
+minutes, the breathing grew quieter, and Anthor's eyelids fluttered and lifted. His face was a 
+horrid yellow; his hair and body was soaked in perspiration, and his voice, when he spoke, was 
+cracked and unrecognizable. 
+
+"Don't," he muttered, "don't! Don't do that again! You don't know- You don't know- Oh-h-h." It 
+was a long, trembling moan. 
+
+"We won't do it again," said Darell, "if you will tell us the truth. You are a member of the Second 
+Foundation?" 
+
+"Let me have some water," pleaded Anthor. 
+
+"Get some, Turbor," said Darell, "and bring the whiskey bottle." 
+
+He repeated the question after pouring a jigger of whiskey and two glasses of water into 
+Anthor. Something seemed to relax in the young man- 
+
+"Yes," he said, wearily. "I am a member of the Second Foundation." 
+
+"Which," continued Darell, "is located on Terminus - here?" 
+
+"Yes, yes. You are right in every particular, Dr. Darell." 
+
+"Good! Now explain what's been happening this past half year. Tell us!" 
+
+"I would like to sleep," whispered Anthor. 
+
+"Later! Speak now!" 
+
+
+
+A tremulous sigh. Then words, low and hurried. The others bent over him to catch the sound, 
+"The situation was growing dangerous. We knew that Terminus and its physical scientists were 
+becoming interested in brain-wave patterns and that the times were ripe for the development of 
+something like the Mind Static device. And there was growing enmity toward the Second 
+Foundation. We had to stop it without ruining Seldon's Plan. 
+
+"We ... we tried to control the movement. We tried to join it. It would turn suspicion and efforts 
+away from us. We saw to it that Kalgan declared war as a further distraction. That's why I sent 
+Munn to Kalgan. Stettin's supposed mistress was one of us. She saw to it that Munn made the 
+proper moves-" 
+
+"Callia is-" cried Munn, but Darell waved him silent. 
+
+Anthor continued, unaware of any interruption, "Arcadia followed. We hadn't counted on that - 
+can't foresee everything - so Callia maneuvered her to Trantor to prevent interference. That's 
+all. Except that we lost." 
+
+"You tried to get me to go to Trantor, didn't you?" asked Darell. 
+
+Anthor nodded, "Had to get you out of the way. The growing triumph in your mind was clear 
+enough. You were solving the problems of the Mind Static device." 
+
+"Why didn't you put me under control?" 
+
+"Couldn't ... couldn't. Had my orders. We were working according to a Plan. If I improvised, I 
+would have thrown everything off. Plan only predicts probabilities ... you know that ... like 
+Seldon's Plan." He was talking in anguished pants, and almost incoherently. His head twisted 
+from side to side in a restless fever. "We worked with individuals ... not groups ... very low 
+probabilities involved ... lost out. Besides ... if control you ... someone else invent device ... no 
+use ... had to control times ... more subtle ... First Speaker's own plan ... don't know all angles 
+... except ... didn't work a-a-a-" He ran down. 
+
+Darell shook him roughly, "You can't sleep yet. How many of you are there?" 
+
+"Huh? Whatjasay ... oh ... not many ... be surprised fifty ... don't need more." 
+
+"All here on Terminus?" 
+
+"Five ... six out in Space ... like Callia ... got to sleep." 
+
+He stirred himself suddenly as though to one giant effort, and his expressions gained in clarity. 
+It was a last attempt at self-justification, at moderating his defeat. 
+
+"Almost got you at the end. Would have turned off defenses and seized you. Would have seen 
+who was master. But you gave me dummy controls ... suspected me all along-" 
+
+And finally he was asleep. 
+
+Turbor said, in awed tones, "How long did you suspect him, Darell?" 
+
+"Ever since he first came here," was the quiet response. "He came from Kleise, he said. But I 
+
+
+
+knew Kleise; and I knew on what terms we parted. He was a fanatic on the subject of the 
+Second Foundation and I had deserted him. My own purposes were reasonable, since I 
+thought it best and safest to pursue my own notions by myself. But I couldn't tell Kleise that; 
+and he wouldn't have listened if I had. To him, I was a coward and a traitor, perhaps even an 
+agent of the Second Foundation. He was an unforgiving man and from that time almost to the 
+day of his death he had no dealings with me. Then, suddenly, in his last few weeks of life, he 
+writes me - as an old friend - to greet his best and most promising pupil as a co-worker and 
+begin again the old investigation. 
+
+"It was out of character. How could he possibly do such a thing without being under outside 
+influence, and I began to wonder if the only purpose might not be to introduce into my 
+confidence a real agent of the Second Foundation. Well, it was so-" 
+
+He sighed and closed his own eyes for a moment. 
+
+Semic put in hesitantly, "What will we do with all of them ... these Second Foundation fellas?" 
+
+"I don't know," said Darell, sadly. "We could exile them, I suppose. There's Zoranel, for 
+instance. They can be placed there and the planet saturated with Mind Static. The sexes can 
+be separated, or, better still, they can be sterilized - and in fifty years, the Second Foundation 
+will be a thing of the past. Or perhaps a quiet death for all of them would be kinder." 
+
+"Do you suppose," said Turbor, "we could learn the use of this sense of theirs. Or are they born 
+with it, like the Mule." 
+
+"I don't know. I think it is developed through long training, since there are indications from 
+encephalography that the potentialities of it are latent in the human mind. But what do you want 
+that sense for? It hasn't helped them." 
+
+He frowned. 
+
+Though he said nothing, his thoughts were shouting. 
+
+It had been too easy - too easy. They had fallen, these invincibles, fallen like book-villains, and 
+he didn't like it. 
+
+Galaxy! When can a man know he is not a puppet? How can a man know he is not a puppet? 
+
+Arcadia was coming home, and his thoughts shuddered away from that which he must face in 
+the end. 
+
+She was home for a week, then two, and he could not loose the tight check upon those 
+thoughts. How could he? She had changed from child to young woman in her absence, by 
+some strange alchemy. She was his link to life; his fink to a bittersweet marriage that scarcely 
+outlasted his honeymoon. 
+
+And then, late one evening, he said as casually as he could, "Arcadia, what made you decide 
+that Terminus contained both Foundations?" 
+
+
+They had been to the theater; in the best seats with private trimensional viewers for each; her 
+dress was new for the occasion, and she was happy. 
+
+
+
+She stared at him for a moment, then tossed it off. "Oh, I Don't know, Father. It just came to 
+me." 
+
+A layer of ice thickened about Dr. Darell's heart. 
+
+"Think," he said, intensely. "This is important. What made you decide both Foundations were 
+on Terminus." 
+
+She frowned slightly. "Well, there was Lady Callia. I knew she was a Second Foundationer. 
+Anthor said so, too." 
+
+"But she was on Kalgan," insisted Darell. "What made you decide on Terminus?" 
+
+And now Arcadia waited for several minutes before she answered. What had made her decide? 
+What had made her decide? 
+
+She had the horrible sensation of something slipping just beyond her grasp. 
+
+She said, "She knew about things - Lady Callia did - and must have had her information from 
+Terminus. Doesn't that sound right, Father? 
+
+But he just shook his head at her. 
+
+"Father," she cried, "I knew. The more I thought, the surer I was. It just made sense." 
+
+There was that lost look in her father's eyes, "It's no good, Arcadia. Its no good. Intuition is 
+suspicious when concerned with the Second Foundation. You see that, don't you? It might have 
+been intuition - and it might have been control!" 
+
+"Control! You mean they changed me? Oh, no. No, they couldn't." She was backing away from 
+him. "But didn't Anthor say I was right? Fie admitted it. He admitted everything. And you've 
+found the whole bunch right here on Trantor. Didn't you? Didn't you?" She was breathing 
+quickly. 
+
+"I know, but- Arcadia, will you let me make an encephalographic analysis of your brain?' 
+
+She shook her head violently, "No, no! I'm too scared." 
+
+"Of me, Arcadia? There's nothing to be afraid of. But we must know. You see that, don't you?" 
+
+She interrupted him only once, after that. She clutched at his arm just before the last switch 
+was thrown. "What if I am different, Father? What will you have to do?" 
+
+"I won't have to do anything, Arcadia. If you're different, well leave. Well go back to Trantor, you 
+and I, and ... and we won't care about anything else in the Galaxy." 
+
+Never in Darell's life had an analysis proceeded so slowly, cost him so much, and when it was 
+over, Arcadia huddled down and dared not look. Then she heard him laugh and that was 
+information enough. She jumped up and threw herself into his opened arms. 
+
+He was babbling wildly as they squeezed one another, "The house is under maximum Mind 
+Static and your brain-waves are normal. We really have trapped them, Arcadia, and we can go 
+
+
+
+back to living." 
+
+"Father," she gasped, "can we let them give us medals now?" 
+
+"How did you know I’d asked to be left out of it?" He held her at arm's mind; you know 
+everything. All right, you can have your medal on a platform, with speeches." 
+
+"And Father?" 
+
+"Yes?" 
+
+"Can you call me Arkady from now on." 
+
+"But- Very well, Arkady." 
+
+Slowly the magnitude of the victory was soaking into him and saturating him. The Foundation - 
+the First Foundation - now the only Foundation - was absolute master of the Galaxy. No 
+further barrier stood between themselves and the Second Empire - the final fulfillment of 
+Seldon's Plan. 
+
+They had only to reach for it- 
+Thanks to- 
+
+
+22 
+
+The Answer That Was True 
+
+An unlocated room on an unlocated world! 
+
+And a man whose plan had worked. 
+
+The First Speaker looked up at the Student, "Fifty men and women," he said. "Fifty martyrs! 
+They knew it meant death or permanent imprisonment and they could not even be oriented to 
+prevent weakening - since orientation might have been detected. Yet they did not weaken. 
+They brought the plan through, because they loved the greater Plan." 
+
+"Might they have been fewer?" asked the Student, doubtfully. 
+
+The First Speaker slowly shook his head, "It was the lower limit. Less could not possibly have 
+carried conviction. In fact, pure objectivism would have demanded seventy-five to leave margin 
+for error. Never mind. Have you studied the course of action as worked out by the Speakers' 
+Council fifteen years ago?" 
+
+"Yes, Speaker." 
+
+"And compared it with actual developments?" 
+
+"Yes, Speaker." Then, after a pause- 
+"I was quite amazed, Speaker." 
+
+
+
+"I know. There is always amazement. If you knew how many men labored for how many 
+months - years, in fact - to bring about the polish of perfection, you would be less amazed. 
+
+Now tell me what happened - in words. I want your translation of the mathematics." 
+
+"Yes, Speaker." The young man marshaled his thoughts. "Essentially, it was necessary for the 
+men of the First Foundation to be thoroughly convinced that they had located and destroyed 
+the Second Foundation. In that way, there would be reversion to the intended original. To all 
+intents, Terminus would once again know nothing about us; include us in none of their 
+calculations. We are hidden once more, and safe - at the cost of fifty men." 
+
+"And the purpose of the Kalganian war?" 
+
+"To show the Foundation that they could beat a physical enemy - to wipe out the damage done 
+to their self-esteem and self-assuredness by the Mule." 
+
+"There you are insufficient in your analysis. Remember, the population of Terminus regarded us 
+with distinct ambivalence. They hated and envied our supposed superiority; yet they relied on 
+us implicitly for protection. If we had been 'destroyed' before the Kalganian war, it would have 
+meant panic throughout the Foundation. They would then never have had the courage to stand 
+up against Stettin, when he then attacked; and he would have. Only in the full flush of victory 
+could the 'destruction' have taken place with minimum ill-effects. Even waiting a year, 
+thereafter, might have meant a too-great cooling off spirit for success." 
+
+The Student nodded. "I see. Then the course of history will proceed without deviation in the 
+direction indicated by the Plan." 
+
+"Unless," pointed out the First Speaker, "further accidents, unforeseen and individual, occur." 
+
+"And for that," said the Student, "we still exist. Except- Except- One facet of the present state 
+of affairs worries me, Speaker. The First Foundation is left with the Mind Static device - a 
+powerful weapon against us. That, at least, is not as it was before." 
+
+"A good point. But they have no one to use it against. It has become a sterile device; just as 
+without the spur of our own menace against them, encephalographic analysis will become a 
+sterile science. Other varieties of knowledge will once again bring more important and 
+immediate returns. So this first generation of mental scientists among the First Foundation will 
+also be the last - and, in a century, Mind Static will be a nearly forgotten item of the past." 
+
+"Well-" The Student was calculating mentally. "I suppose you're right." 
+
+But what I want you most to realize, young man, for the sake of your future in the Council is the 
+consideration given to the tiny intermeshings that were forced into our plan of the last decade 
+and a half simply because we dealt with individuals. There was the manner in which Anthor had 
+to create suspicion against himself in such a way that it would mature at the right time, but that 
+was relatively simple. 
+
+"There was the manner in which the atmosphere was so manipulated that to no one on 
+Terminus would it occur, prematurely, that Terminus itself might be the center they were 
+seeking. That knowledge had to be supplied to the young girl, Arcadia, who would be heeded 
+
+
+
+by no one but her own father. She had to be sent to Trantor, thereafter, to make certain that 
+there would be no premature contact with her father. Those two were the two poles of a 
+hyperatomic motor; each being inactive without the other. And the switch had to be thrown - 
+contact had to be made - at just the right moment. I saw to that! 
+
+"And the final battle had to be handled properly. The Foundation's fleet had to be soaked in 
+self-confidence, while the fleet of Kalgan made ready to run. I saw to that, also!" 
+
+Said the Student, "It seems to me, Speaker, that you ... I mean, all of us ... were counting on 
+Dr. Darell not suspecting that Arcadia was our tool. According to my check on the calculations, 
+there was something like a thirty percent probability that he would so suspect. What would have 
+happened then?" 
+
+"We had taken care of that. What have you been taught about Tamper Plateaus? What are 
+they? Certainly not evidence of the introduction of an emotional bias. That can be done without 
+any chance of possible detection by the most refined conceivable encephalographic analysis. A 
+consequence of Leffert's Theorem, you know. It is the removal, the cutting-out, of previous 
+emotional bias, that shows. It must show. 
+
+"And, of course, Anthor made certain that Darell knew all about Tamper Plateaus. 
+
+"However- When can an individual be placed under Control without showing it? Where there is 
+no previous emotional bias to remove. In other words, when the individual is a new-born infant 
+with a blank slate of a mind. Arcadia Darell was such an infant here on Trantor fifteen years 
+ago, when the first line was drawn into the structure of the plan. She will never know that she 
+has been Controlled, and will be all the better for it, since her Control involved the development 
+of a precocious and intelligent personality." 
+
+The First Speaker laughed shortly, "In a sense, it is the irony of it all that is most amazing. For 
+four hundred years, so many men have been blinded by Seldon's words 'the other end of the 
+Galaxy.' They have brought their own peculiar, physical-science thought to the problem, 
+measuring off the other end with protractors and rulers, ending up eventually either at a point in 
+the periphery one hundred eighty degrees around the rim of the Galaxy, or back at the original 
+point. 
+
+"Yet our very greatest danger lay in the fact that there was a possible solution based on 
+physical modes of thought. The Galaxy, you know, is not simply a flat ovoid of any sort; nor is 
+the periphery a closed curve. Actually, it is a double spiral, with at least eighty percent of the 
+inhabited planets on the Main Arm. Terminus is the extreme outer end of the spiral arm, and we 
+are at the other - since, what is the opposite end of a spiral? Why, the center. 
+
+"But that is trifling. It is an accidental and irrelevant solution. The solution could have been 
+reached immediately, if the questioners had but remembered that Hari Seldon was a social 
+scientist not a physical scientist and adjusted their thought processes accordingly. What could 
+'opposite ends’ mean to a social scientist? Opposite ends on the map? Of course not. That's 
+the mechanical interpretation only. 
+
+"The First Foundation was at the periphery, where the original Empire was weakest, where its 
+civilizing influence was least, where its wealth and culture were most nearly absent. And where 
+
+
+
+is the social opposite end of the Galaxy? Why, at the place where the original Empire was 
+strongest, where its civilizing influence was most, where its wealth and culture were most 
+strongly present. 
+
+"Here! At the center! At Trantor, capital of the Empire of Seldon's time. 
+
+"And it is so inevitable. Hari Seldon left the Second Foundation behind him to maintain, 
+improve, and extend his work That has been known, or guessed at, for fifty years. But where 
+could that best be done? At Trantor, where Seldon's group had worked, and where the data of 
+decades had been accumulated. And it was the purpose of the Second Foundation to protect 
+the Plan against enemies. That, too, was known! And where was the source of greatest danger 
+to Terminus and the Plan? 
+
+"Here! Here at Trantor, where the Empire dying though it was, could, for three centuries, still 
+destroy the Foundation, if it could only have decided to do so. 
+
+"Then when Trantor fell and was sacked and utterly destroyed, a short century ago, we were 
+naturally able to protect our headquarters, and, on all the planet, the Imperial Library and the 
+grounds about it remained untouched. This was well-known to the Galaxy, but even that 
+apparently overwhelming hint passed them by. 
+
+"It was here at Trantor that Ebling Mis discovered us; and here that we saw to it that he did not 
+survive the discovery. To do so, it was necessary to arrange to have a normal Foundation girl 
+defeat the tremendous mutant powers of the Mule. Surely, such a phenomenon might have 
+attracted suspicion to the planet on which it happened- It was here that we first studied the 
+Mule and planned his ultimate defeat. It was here that Arcadia was born and the train of events 
+begun that led to the great return to the Seldon Plan. 
+
+"And all those flaws in our secrecy; those gaping holes; remained unnoticed because Seldon 
+had spoken of 'the other end’ in his way, and they had interpreted it in their way." 
+
+The First Speaker had long since stopped speaking to the Student. It was an exposition to 
+himself, really, as he stood before the window, looking up at the incredible blaze of the 
+firmament, at the huge Galaxy that was now safe forever. 
+
+"Hari Seldon called Trantor, 'Star's End,’" he whispered, "and why not that bit of poetic imagery. 
+All the universe was once guided from this rock; all the apron strings of the stars led here. 'All 
+roads lead to Trantor,' says the old proverb, 'and that is where all stars end.'" 
+
+Ten months earlier, the First Speaker had viewed those same crowding stars - nowhere as 
+crowded as at the center of that huge cluster of matter Man calls the Galaxy - with misgivings; 
+but now there was a somber satisfaction on the round and ruddy face of Preem Palver - First 
+Speaker. 
+