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.
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
