Second Foundation

‘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 sub-consciously did he question that. Emotional control went deep.

He handed Channis the little oval object without a word.

Channis lifted 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 pinpoint 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 centre.

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 positions 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 sizeable star at the moment was Vincetori, according to ‘hop’ calculations, and on the visiplate now, a bright star was centred. 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 centred, but otherwise there seemed no relationship. He adjusted the Lens along the Z-axis and expanded the Field to where the photometer showed both centred stars to be of equal brightness.

Channis looked for a second star, sizeably 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 unreliable, 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 Han 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? How?

Could it be Tazenda? An ordinary world? One without distinction? A slum lost amid the wreckage of an Empire? A splinter among the fragments? He remembered, as from a distance, the Mule’s shrivelled 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. He had to. Otherwise, nothing made sense.

Pritcher’s last conscious thought had a touch of grimness. That hypertracer along the Etheric tube was still there. He 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 centres 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 worldlings 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 grey homespun, 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 food 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 fuelled 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 grey 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 neighbours?’ 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 world 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.