THE LEAVING was a blur. Trevize had gathered up his futile weapons, had opened the airlock, and they had tumbled in. Trevize didn't notice until they were off the surface that Fallom had been brought in as well.
They probably would not have made it in time if the Solarian use of airflight had not been so comparatively unsophisticated. It took the approaching Solarian vessel an unconscionable time to descend and land. On the other hand, it took virtually no time for the computer of the Far Star to take the gravitic ship vertically upward.
And although the cut-off of the gravitational interaction and, therefore, of inertia wiped out the otherwise unbearable effects of acceleration that would have accompanied so speedy a takeoff, it did not wipe out the effects of air resistance. The outer hull temperature rose at a distinctly more rapid rate than navy regulations (or ship specifications, for that matter) would have considered suitable.
As they rose, they could see the second Solarian ship land and several more approaching. Trevize wondered how many robots Bliss could have handled, and decided they would have been overwhelmed if they had remained on the surface fifteen minutes longer.
Once out in space (or space enough, with only tenuous wisps of the planetary exosphere around them), Trevize made for the nightside of the planet. It was a hop away, since they had left the surface as sunset was approaching. In the dark, the Far Star would have a chance to cool more rapidly, and there the ship could continue to recede from the surface in a slow spiral.
Pelorat came out of the room he shared with Bliss. He said, "The child is sleeping normally now. We've showed it how to use the toilet and it had no trouble understanding."
"That's not surprising. It must have had similar facilities in the mansion."
"I didn't see any there and I was looking," said Pelorat feelingly. "We didn't get back on the ship a moment too soon for me."
"Or any of us. But why did we bring that child on board?"
Pelorat shrugged apologetically. "Bliss wouldn't let go. It was like saving a life in return for the one she took. She can't bear-"
"I know," said Trevize.
Pelorat said, "It's a very oddly shaped child."
"Being hermaphroditic, it would have to be," said Trevize.
"It has testicles, you know."
"It could scarcely do without them."
"And what I can only describe as a very small vagina."
Trevize made a face. "Disgusting."
"Not really, Golan," said Pelorat, protesting. "It's adapted to its needs. It only delivers a fertilized egg-cell, or a very tiny embryo, which is then developed under laboratory conditions, tended, I dare say, by robots."
"And what happens if their robot-system breaks down? If that happens, they would no longer be able to produce viable young."
"Any world would be in serious trouble if its social structure broke down completely."
"Not that I would weep uncontrollably over the Solarians."
"Well," said Pelorat, "I admit it doesn't seem a very attractive world-to us, I mean. But that's only the people and the social structure, which are not our type at all, dear chap. But subtract the people and the robots, and you have a world which otherwise-"
"Might fall apart as Aurora is beginning to do," said Trevize. "How's Bliss, Janov?"
"Worn out, I'm afraid. She's sleeping now. She had a very bad time, Golan."
"I didn't exactly enjoy myself either."
Trevize closed his eyes, and decided he could use some sleep himself and would indulge in that relief as soon as he was reasonably certain the Solarians had no space capability-and so far the computer had reported nothing of artifactitious nature in space.
He thought bitterly of the two Spacer planets they had visited-hostile wild dogs on one-hostile hermaphroditic loners on the other-and in neither place the tiniest hint as to the location of Earth. All they had to show for the double visit was Fallom.
He opened his eyes. Pelorat was still sitting in place at the other side of the computer, watching him solemnly.
Trevize said, with sudden conviction, "We should have left that Solarian child behind."
Pelorat said, "The poor thing. They would have killed it."
"Even so," said Trevize, "it belonged there. It's part of that society. Being put to death because of being superfluous is the sort of thing it's born to."
"Oh, my dear fellow, that's a hardhearted way to look at it."
"It's a rational way. We don't know how to care for it, and it may suffer more lingeringly with us and die anyway. What does it eat?"
"Whatever we do, I suppose, old man. Actually, the problem is what do we eat? How much do we have in the way of supplies?"
"Plenty. Plenty. Even allowing for our new passenger."
Pelorat didn't look overwhelmed with happiness at this remark. He said, "It's become a pretty monotonous diet. We should have taken some items on board on Comporellon-not that their cooking was excellent."
"We couldn't. We left, if you remember, rather hurriedly, as we left Aurora, and as we left, in particular, Solaria. But what's a little monotony? It spoils one's pleasure, but it keeps one alive."
"Would it be possible to pick up fresh supplies if we need to?"
"Anytime, Janov. With a gravitic ship and hyperspatial engines, the Galaxy is a small place. In days, we can be anywhere. It's just that half the worlds in the Galaxy are alerted to watch for our ship and I would rather stay out of the way for a time."
"I suppose that's so. Bander didn't seem interested in the ship."
"It probably wasn't even consciously aware of it. I suspect that the Solarians long ago gave up space flight. Their prime desire is to be left completely alone and they can scarcely enjoy the security of isolation if they are forever moving about in space and advertising their presence."
"What are we going to do next, Golan?"
Trevize said, "We have a third world to visit."
Pelorat shook his head. "Judging from the first two, I don't expect much from that."
"Nor do I at the moment, but just as soon as I get a little sleep, I'm going to get the computer to plot our course to that third world."
TREVIZE slept considerably longer than he had expected to, but that scarcely mattered. There was neither day nor night, in any natural-sense, on board ship, and the circadian rhythm never worked absolutely perfectly. The hours were what they were made to be, and it wasn't uncommon for Trevize and Pelorat (and particularly Bliss) to be somewhat out-of-sync as far as the natural rhythms of eating and sleeping were concerned.
Trevize even speculated, in the course of his scrapedown (the importance of conserving water made it advisable to scrape off the suds rather than rinse them off), about sleeping another hour or two, when he turned and found himself staring at Fallom, who was as undressed as he was.
He could not help jumping back, which, in the restricted area of the Personal, was bound to bring part of his body against something hard. He grunted-
Fallom was staring curiously at him and was pointing at Trevize's penis. What it said was incomprehensible but the whole bearing of the child seemed to bespeak a sense of disbelief. For his own peace of mind, Trevize had no choice but to put his hands over his penis.
Then Fallom said, in its high-pitched voice, "Greetings."
Trevize started slightly at the child's unexpected use of Galactic, but the word had the sound of having been memorized.
Fallom continued, a painstaking word at a time, "Bliss-say-you-wash-me.
"Yes?" said Trevize. He put his hands on Fallom's shoulders. "You-stay-here."
He pointed downward at the floor and Fallom, of course, looked instantly at the place to which the finger pointed. It showed no comprehension of the phrase at all.
"Don't move," said Trevize, holding the child tightly by both arms, pressing them toward the body as though to symbolize immobility. He hastily dried himself and put on his shorts, and over them his trousers.
He stepped out and roared, "Bliss!"
It was difficult for anyone to be more than four meters from any one else on the ship and Bliss came to the door of her room at once. She said, smiling, "Are you calling me, Trevize; or was that the soft breeze sighing through the waving grass?"
"Let's not be funny, Bliss. What is that?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Bliss looked past him and said, "Well, it looks like the young Solarian we brought on board yesterday."
"You brought on board. Why do you want me to wash it?"
"I should think you'd want to. It's a very bright creature. It's picking up Galactic words quickly. It never forgets once I explain something. Of course, I'm helping it do so."
"Naturally."
"Yes. I keep it calm. I kept it in a daze during most of the disturbing events on the planet. I saw to it that it slept on board ship and I'm trying to divert its mind just a little bit from its lost robot, Jemby, that, apparently, it loved very much."
"So that it ends up liking it here, I suppose."
"I hope so. It's adaptable because it's young, and I encourage that by as much as I dare influence its mind. I'm going to teach it to speak Galactic."
"Then you wash it. Understood?"
Bliss shrugged. "I will, if you insist, but I would want it to feel friendly with each of us. It would be useful to have each of us perform functions. Surely you can co-operate in that."
"Not to this extent. And when you finish washing it, get rid of it. I want to talk to you."
Bliss said, with a sudden edge of hostility, "How do you mean, get rid of it?"
"I don't mean dump it through the airlock. I mean, put it in your room. Sit it down in a corner. I want to talk at you."
"I'll be at your service," she said coldly.
He stared after her, nursing his wrath for the moment, then moved into the pilot-room, and activated the viewscreen.
Solaria was a dark circle with a curving crescent of light at the left. Trevize placed his hands on the desk to make contact with the computer and found his anger cooling at once. One had to be calm to link mind and computer effectively and, eventually, conditioned reflex linked handhold and serenity.
There were no artifactitious objects about the ship in any direction, out as far as the planet itself. The Solarians (or their robots, most likely) could not, or would not, follow.
Good enough. He might as well get out of the night-shadow, then. If he continued to recede, it would, in any case, vanish as Solaria's disc grew smaller than that of the more distant, but much larger, sun that it circled.
He set the computer to move the ship out of the planetary plane as well, since that would make it possible to accelerate with greater safety. They would then more quickly reach a region where space curvature would be low enough to make the Jump secure.
And, as often on such occasions, he fell to studying the stars. They were almost hypnotic in their quiet changelessness. All their turbulence and instability were wiped out by the distance that left them only dots of light.
One of those dots might well be the sun about which Earth revolved-the original sun, under whose radiation life began, and under whose beneficence humanity evolved.
Surely, if the Spacer worlds circled stars that were bright and prominent members of the stellar family, and that were nevertheless unlisted in the computer's Galactic map, the same might be true of the sun.
Or was it only the suns of the Spacer worlds that were omitted because of some primeval treaty agreement that left them to themselves? Would Earth's sun be included in the Galactic map, but not marked off from the myriads of stars that were sun-like, yet had no habitable planet in orbit about itself?
There were after all, some thirty billion sun-like stars in the Galaxy, and only about one in a thousand had habitable planets in orbits about them. There might be a thousand such habitable planets within a few hundred parsecs of his present position. Should he sift through the sun-like stars one by one, searching for them?
Or was the original sun not even in this region of the Galaxy? How many other regions were convinced the sun was one of their neighbors, that they were primeval Settlers-?
He needed information, and so far he had none.
He doubted strongly whether even the closest examination of the millennial ruins on Aurora would give information concerning Earth's location. He doubted even more strongly that the Solarians could be made to yield information.
Then, too, if all information about Earth had vanished out of the great Library at Trantor; if no information about Earth remained in the great Collective Memory of Gaia; there seemed little chance that any information that might have existed on the lost worlds of the Spacers would have been overlooked.
And if he found Earth's sun and, then, Earth itself, by the sheerest good fortune-would something force him to be unaware of the fact? Was Earth's defense absolute? Was its determination to remain in hiding unbreakable?
What was he looking for anyway?
Was it Earth? Or was it the flaw in Seldon's Plan that he thought (for no clear reason) he might find on Earth?
Seldon's Plan had been working for five centuries now, and would bring the human species (so it was said) to safe harbor-at last in the womb of a Second Galactic Empire, greater than the First, a nobler and a freer one-and yet he, Trevize, had voted against it, and for Galaxia.
Galaxia would be one large organism, while the Second Galactic Empire would, however great in size and variety, be a mere union of individual organisms of microscopic size in comparison with itself. The Second Galactic Empire would be another example of the kind of union of individuals that humanity had set up ever since it became humanity. The Second Galactic Empire might be the largest and best of the species, but it would still be but one more member of that species.
For Galaxia, a member of an entirely different species of organization, to be better than the Second Galactic Empire, there must be a flaw in the Plan, something the great Hari Seldon had himself overlooked.
But if it were something Seldon had overlooked, how could Trevize correct the matter? He was not a mathematician; knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the details of the Plan; would understand nothing, furthermore, even if it were explained to him.
All he knew were the assumptions-that a great number of human beings be involved and that they not be aware of the conclusions reached. The first assumption was self-evidently true, considering the vast population of the Galaxy, and the second had to be true since only the Second Foundationers knew the details of the Plan, and they kept it to themselves securely enough.
That left an added unacknowledged assumption, a taken-for-granted assumption, one so taken for granted it was never mentioned nor thought of-and yet one that might be false. An assumption that, if it were false, would alter the grand conclusion of the Plan and make Galaxia preferable to Empire.
But if the assumption was so obvious and so taken for granted that it was never even expressed, how could it be false? And if no one ever mentioned it, or thought of it, how could Trevize know it was there, or have any idea of its nature even if he guessed its existence?
Was he truly Trevize, the man with the flawless intuition-as Gaia insisted? Did he know the right thing to do even when he didn't know why he was doing it?
Now he was visiting every Spacer world he knew about. Was that the right thing to do? Did the Spacer worlds hold the answer? Or at least the beginning of the answer?
What was there on Aurora but ruins and wild dogs? (And, presumably, other feral creatures. Raging bulls? Overgrown rats? Stalking green-eyed cats?) Solaria was alive, but what was there on it but robots and energy-transducing human beings? What had either world to do with Seldon's Plan unless they contained the secret of the location of the Earth?
And if they did, what had Earth to do with Seldon's Plan? Was this all madness? Had he listened too long and too seriously to the fantasy of his own infallibility?
An overwhelming weight of shame came over him and seemed to press upon him to the point where he could barely breathe. He looked at the stars-remote, uncaring-and thought: I must be the Great Fool of the Galaxy.
BLISS'S voice broke in on him. "Well, Trevize, why do you want to see-Is anything wrong?" Her voice had twisted into sudden concern.
Trevize looked up and, for a moment, found it momentarily difficult to brush away his mood. He stared at her, then said, "No, no. Nothing's wrong. I-I was merely lost in thought. Every once in a while, after all, I find myself thinking."
He was uneasily aware that Bliss could read his emotions. He had only her word that she was voluntarily abstaining from any oversight of his mind.
She seemed to accept his statement, however. She said, "Pelorat is with Fallom, teaching it Galactic phrases. The child seems to eat what we do without undue objection. But what do you want to see me about?"
"Well, not here," said Trevize. "The computer doesn't need me at the moment. If you want to come into my room, the bed's made and you can sit on it while I sit on the chair. Or vice versa, if you prefer."
"It doesn't matter." They walked the short distance to Trevize's room. She eyed him narrowly. "You don't seem furious anymore."
"Checking my mind?"
"Not at all. Checking your face."
"I'm not furious. I may lose my temper momentarily, now and then, but that's not the same as furious. If you don't mind, though, there are questions I must ask you."
Bliss sat down on Trevize's bed, holding herself erect, and with a solemn expression on her wide-cheeked face and in her dark brown eyes. Her shoulder-length black hair was neatly arranged and her slim hands were clasped loosely in her lap. There was a faint trace of perfume about her.
Trevize smiled. "You've dolled yourself up. I suspect you think I won't yell quite so hard at a young and pretty girl."
"You can yell and scream all you wish if it will make you feel better. I just don't want you yelling and screaming at Fallom."
"I don't intend to. In fact, I don't intend to yell and scream at you. Haven't we decided to be friends?"
"Gaia has never had anything but feelings of friendship toward you, Trevize."
"I'm not talking about Gaia. I know you're part of Gaia and that you are Gaia. Still there's part of you that's an individual, at least after a fashion. I'm talking to the individual. I'm talking to someone named Bliss without regard-or with as little regard as possible-to Gaia. Haven't we decided to be friends, Bliss?"
"Yes, Trevize."
"Then how is it you delayed dealing with the robots on Solaria after we had left the mansion and reached the ship? I was humiliated and physically hurt, yet you did nothing. Even though every moment might bring additional robots to the scene and the number might overwhelm us, you did nothing."
Bliss looked at him seriously, and spoke as though she were intent on explaining her actions rather than defending them. "I was not doing nothing, Trevize. I was studying the Guardian Robots' minds, and trying to learn how to handle them."
"I know that's what you were doing. At least you said you were at the time. I just don't see the sense of it. Why handle the minds when you were perfectly capable of destroying them-as you finally did?"
"Do you think it so easy to destroy an intelligent being?"
Trevize's lips twisted into an expression of distaste. "Come, Bliss. An intelligent being? It was just a robot."
"Just a robot?" A little passion entered her voice. "That's the argument always. Just. Just! Why should the Solarian, Bander, have hesitated to kill us? We were just human beings without transducers. Why should there be any hesitation about leaving Fallom to its fate? It was just a Solarian, and an immature specimen at that. If you start dismissing anyone or anything you want to do away with as just a this or just a that, you can destroy anything you wish. There are always categories you can find for them."
Trevize said, "Don't carry a perfectly legitimate remark to extremes just to make it seem ridiculous. The robot was just a robot. You can't deny that. It was not human. It was not intelligent in our sense. It was a machine mimicking an appearance of intelligence."
Bliss said, "How easily you can talk when you know nothing about it. I am Gaia. Yes, I am Bliss, too, but I am Gaia. I am a world that finds every atom of itself precious and meaningful, and every organization of atoms even more precious and meaningful. I/we/Gaia would not lightly break down an organization, though we would gladly build it into something still more complex, provided always that that would not harm the whole.
"The highest form of organization we know produces intelligence, and to be willing to destroy intelligence requires the sorest need. Whether it is machine intelligence or biochemical intelligence scarcely matters. In fact, the Guardian Robot represented a kind of intelligence I/we/Gaia had never encountered. To study it was wonderful. To destroy it, unthinkable-except in a moment of crowning emergency."
Trevize said dryly, "There were three greater intelligences at stake: your own, that of Pelorat, the human being you love, and, if you don't mind my mentioning it, mine."
"Four! You still keep forgetting to include Fallom. They were not yet at stake. So I judged. See here-**Suppose you were faced with a painting, a great artistic masterpiece, the existence of which meant death to you. All you had to do was to bring a wide brush of paint slam-bang, and at random, across the face of that painting and it would be destroyed forever, and you would be safe. But suppose, instead, that if you studied the painting carefully, and added just a touch of paint here, a speck there, scraped off a minute portion in a third place, and so on, you would alter the painting enough to avoid death, and yet leave it a masterpiece. Naturally, the revision couldn't be done except with the most painstaking care. It would take time, but surely, if that time existed, you would try to save the painting as well as your life."
Trevize said, "Perhaps. But in the end you destroyed the painting past redemption. The wide paintbrush came down and wiped out all the wonderful little touches of color and subtleties of form and shape. And you did that instantly when a little hermaphrodite was at risk, where our danger and your own had not moved you."
"We Outworlders were still not at immediate risk, while Fallom, it seemed to me, suddenly was. I had to choose between the Guardian Robots and Fallom, and, with no time to lose, I had to choose Fallom."
"Is that what it was, Bliss? A quick calculation weighing one mind against another, a quick judging of the greater complexity and the greater worth?"
"Yes."
Trevize said, "Suppose I tell you, it was just a child that was standing before you, a child threatened with death. An instinctive maternalism gripped you then, and you saved it where earlier you were all calculation when only three adult lives were at stake."
Bliss reddened slightly. "There might have been something like that in it; but it was not after the fashion of the mocking way in which you say it. It had rational thought behind it, too."
"I wonder. If there had been rational thought behind it, you might have considered that the child was meeting the common fate inevitable in its own society. Who knows how many thousands of children had been cut down to maintain the low number these Solarians think suitable to their world?"
"There's more to it than that, Trevize. The child would be killed because it was too young to be a Successor, and that was because it had a parent who had died prematurely, and that was because I had killed that parent."
"At a time when it was kill or be killed."
"Not important. I killed the parent. I could not stand by and allow the child to be killed for my deed. Besides, it offers for study a brain of a kind that has never been studied by Gaia."
"A child's brain."
"It will not remain a child's brain. It will further develop the two transducer-lobes on either side of the brain. Those lobes give a Solarian abilities that all of Gaia cannot match. Simply to keep a few lights lit, just to activate a device to open a door, wore me out. Bander could have kept all the power going over an estate as great in complexity and greater in size than that city we saw on Comporellon-and do it even while sleeping."
Trevize said, "Then you see the child as an important bit of fundamental brain research."
"In a way, yes."
"That's not the way I feel. To me, it seems we have taken danger aboard. Great danger."
"Danger in what way? It will adapt perfectly-with my help. It is highly intelligent, and already shows signs of feeling affection for us. It will eat what we eat, go where we go, and I/we/Gala will gain invaluable knowledge concerning its brain."
"What if it produces young? It doesn't need a mate. It is its own mate."
"It won't be of child-bearing age for many years. The Spacers lived for centuries and the Solarians had no desire to increase their numbers. Delayed reproduction is probably bred into the population. Fallom will have no children for a long time."
"How do you know this?"
"I don't know it. I'm merely being logical."
"And I tell you Fallom will prove dangerous."
"You don't know that. And you're not being logical, either."
"I feel it Bliss, without reason. At the moment. And it is you, not I, who insists my intuition is infallible."
And Bliss frowned and looked uneasy.
PELORAT paused at the door to the pilot-room and looked inside in a rather ill-at-ease manner. It was as though he were trying to decide whether Trevize was hard at work or not.
Trevize had his hands on the table, as he always did when he made himself part of the computer, and his eyes were on the viewscreen. Pelorat judged, therefore, he was at work, and he waited patiently, trying not to move or, in any way, disturb the other.
Eventually, Trevize looked up at Pelorat. It was not a matter of total awareness. Trevize's eyes always seemed a bit glazed and unfocused when he was in computer-communion, as though he were looking, thinking, living in some other way than a person usually did.
But he nodded slowly at Pelorat, as though the sight, penetrating with difficulty, did, at last, sluggishly impress itself on the optic lobes. Then, after a while, he lifted his hands and smiled and was himself again.
Pelorat said apologetically, "I'm afraid I'm getting in your way, Golan."
"Not seriously, Janov. I was just testing to see if we were ready for the Jump. We are, just about, but I think I'll give it a few more hours, just for luck."
"Does luck-or random factors-have anything to do with it?"
"An expression only," said Trevize, smiling, "but random factors do have something to do with it, in theory. What's on your mind?"
"May I sit down?"
"Surely, but let's go into my room. How's Bliss?"
"Very well." He cleared his throat. "She's sleeping again. She must have her sleep, you understand."
"I understand perfectly. It's the hyperspatial separation."
"Exactly, old chap."
"And Fallom?" Trevize reclined on the bed, leaving Pelorat the chair.
"Those books out of my library that you had your computer print up for me? The folk tales? It's reading them. Of course, it understands very little Galactic, but it seems to enjoy sounding out the words. He's-I keep wanting to use the masculine pronoun for it. Why do you suppose that is, old fellow?"
Trevize shrugged. "Perhaps because you're masculine yourself."
"Perhaps. It's fearfully intelligent, you know."
"I'm sure."
Pelorat hesitated. "I gather you're not very fond of Fallom."
"Nothing against it personally, Janov. I've never had children and I've never been particularly fond of them generally. You've had children, I seem to remember."
"One son. It was a pleasure, I recall, having my son when he was a little boy. Maybe that's why I want to use the masculine pronoun for Fallom. It takes me back a quarter of a century or so."
"I've no objection to your liking it, Janov."
"You'd like him, too, if you gave yourself a chance."
"I'm sure I would, Janov, and maybe someday I will give myself a chance to do so."
Pelorat hesitated again. "I also know that you must get tired of arguing with Bliss."
"Actually, I don't think we'll be arguing much, Janov. She and I are actually getting along quite well. We even had a reasonable discussion just the other day-no shouting, no recrimination-about her delay in inactivating the Guardian Robots. She keeps saving our lives, after all, so I can't very well offer her less than friendship, can I?"
"Yes, I see that, but I don't mean arguing, in the sense of quarreling. I mean this constant wrangle about Galaxia as opposed to individuality."
"Oh, that! I suppose that will continue-politely."
"Would you mind, Golan, if I took up the argument on her behalf?"
"Perfectly all right. Do you accept the idea of Galaxia on your own, or is it that you simply feel happier when you agree with Bliss?"
"Honestly, on my own. I think that Galaxia is what should be forthcoming. You yourself chose that course of action and I am constantly becoming more convinced that that is correct."
"Because I chose it? That's no argument. Whatever Gaia says, I may be wrong, you know. So don't let Bliss persuade you into Galaxia on that basis."
"I don't think you are wrong. Solaria showed me that, not Bliss."
"How?"
"Well, to begin with, we are Isolates, you and I"
"Her term, Janov. I prefer to think of us as individuals."
"A matter of semantics, old chap. Call it what you will, we are enclosed in our private skins surrounding our private thoughts, and we think first and foremost of ourselves. Self-defense is our first law of nature, even if that means harming everyone else in existence."
"People have been known to give their lives for others."
"A rare phenomenon. Many more people have been known to sacrifice the dearest needs of others to some foolish whim of their own."
"And what has that to do with Solaria?"
"Why, on Solaria, we see what Isolates-or individuals, if you prefer-can become. The Solarians can hardly bear to divide a whole world among themselves. They consider living a life of complete isolation to be perfect liberty.
They have no yearning for even their own offspring, but kill them if there are too many. They surround themselves with robot slaves to which they supply the power, so that if they die, their whole huge estate symbolically dies as well. Is this admirable, Golan? Can you compare it in decency, kindness, and mutual concern with Gaia? Bliss has not discussed this with me at all. It is my own feeling."
Trevize said, "And it is like you to have that feeling, Janov. I share it. I think Solarian society is horrible, but it wasn't always like that. They are descended from Earthmen, and, more immediately, from Spacers who lived a much more normal life. The Solarians chose a path, for one reason or another, which led to an extreme, but you can't judge by extremes. In all the Galaxy, with its millions of inhabited worlds, is there one you know that now, or in the past, has had a society like that of Solaria, or even remotely like that of Solaria? And would even Solaria have such a society if it were not riddled with robots? Is it conceivable that a society of individuals could evolve to such a pitch of Solarian horror without robots?"
Pelorat's face twitched a little. "You punch holes in everything, Golan or at least I mean you don't ever seem to be at a loss in defending the type of Galaxy you voted against."
"I won't knock down everything. There is a rationale for Galaxia and when I find it, I'll know it, and I'll give in. Or perhaps, more accurately, if I find it.
"Do you think you might not?"
Trevize shrugged. "How can I say? Do you know why I'm waiting a few hours to make the Jump, and why I'm in danger of talking myself into waiting a few days?"
"You said it would be safer if we waited."
"Yes, that's what I said, but we'd be safe enough now. What I really fear is that those Spacer worlds for which we have the co-ordinates will fail us altogether. We have only three, and we've already used up two, narrowly escaping death each time. In doing so, we have still not gained any hint as to Earth's location, or even, in actual fact, Earth's existence. Now I face the third and last chance, and what if it, too, fails us?"
Pelorat sighed. "You know there are old folk tales-one, in fact, exists among those I gave Fallom to practice upon-in which someone is allowed three wishes, but only three. Three seems to be a significant number in these things, perhaps because it is the first odd number so that it is the smallest decisive number. You know, two out of three wins. The point is that in these stories, the wishes are of no use. No one ever wishes correctly, which, I have always supposed, is ancient wisdom to the effect that the satisfaction of your wants must be earned, and not-"
He fell suddenly silent and abashed. "I'm sorry, old man, but I'm wasting your time. I do tend to rattle on when I get started on my hobby."
"I find you always interesting, Janov. I am willing to see the analogy. We have been given three wishes, and we have had two and they have done us no good. Now only one is left. Somehow, I am sure of failure again and so I wish to postpone it. That is why I am putting off the Jump as long as possible."
"What will you do if you do fail again? Go back to Gaia? To Terminus?"
"Oh no," said Trevize in a whisper, shaking his head. "The search must continue-if I only knew how."
TREVIZE felt depressed. What few victories he had had since the search began had never been definitive; they had merely been the temporary staving off of defeat
Now he had delayed the Jump to the third of the Spacer worlds till he had spread his unease to the others. When he finally decided that he simply must tell the computer to move the ship through hyperspace, Pelorat was standing solemnly in the doorway to the pilot-room, and Bliss was just behind him and to one side. Even Fallom was standing there, gazing at Trevize owlishly, while one hand gripped Bliss's hand tightly.
Trevize had looked up from the computer and had said, rather churlishly, "Quite the family group!" but that was only his own discomfort speaking.
He instructed the computer to Jump in such a way as to reenter space at a further distance from the star in question than was absolutely necessary. He told himself that that was because he was learning caution as a result of events on the first two Spacer worlds, but he didn't believe that. Well underneath, he knew, he was hoping that he would arrive in space at a great enough distance from the star to be uncertain as to whether it did or did not have a habitable planet. That would give him a few more days of in-space travel before he could find out, and (perhaps) have to stare bitter defeat in the face.
So now, with the "family group" watching, he drew a deep breath, held it, then expelled it in a between-the-lips whistle as he gave the computer its final instruction.
The star-pattern shifted in a silent discontinuity and the viewscreen became barer, for he had been taken into a region in which the stars were somewhat sparser. And there, nearly in the center, was a brightly gleaming star.
Trevize grinned broadly, for this was a victory of sorts. After all, the third set of co-ordinates might have been wrong and there might have been no appropriate G-type star in sight. He glanced toward the other three, and said, "That's it. Star number three."
"Are you sure?" asked Bliss softly.
"Watch!" said Trevize. "I will switch to the equi-centered view in the computer's Galactic map, and if that bright star disappears, it's not recorded on the map, and it's the one we want."
The computer responded to his command, and the star blinked out without any prior dimming. It was as though it had never been, but the rest of the starfield remained as it was, in sublime indifference.
"We've got it," said Trevize.
And yet he sent the Far Star forward at little more than half the speed he might easily have maintained. There was still the question of the presence or absence of a habitable planet, and he was in no hurry to find out. Even after three days of approach, there was still nothing to be said about that, either way.
Or, perhaps, not quite nothing. Circling the star was a large gas giant. It was very far from its star and it gleamed a very pale yellow on its daylight side, which they could see, from their position, as a thick crescent.
Trevize did not like its looks, but he tried not to show it and spoke as matter-of-factly as a guidebook. "There's a big gas giant out there," he said. "It's rather spectacular. It has a thin pair of rings and two sizable satellites that can be made out at the moment."
Bliss said, "Most systems include gas giants, don't they?"
"Yes, but this is a rather large one. Judging from the distance of its satellites, and their periods of revolution, that gas giant is almost two thousand times as massive as a habitable planet would be."
"What's the difference?" said Bliss. "Gas giants are gas giants and it doesn't matter what size they are, does it? They're always present at great distances from the star they circle, and none of them are habitable, thanks to their size and distance. We just have to look closer to the star for a habitable planet."
Trevize hesitated, then decided to place the facts on the table. "The thing is," he said, "that gas giants tend to sweep a volume of planetary space clean. What material they don't absorb into their own structures will coalesce into fairly large bodies that come to make up their satellite system. They prevent other coalescences at even a considerable distance from themselves, so that the larger the gas giant, the more likely it is to be the only sizable planet of a particular star. There'll just be the gas giant and asteroids."
"You mean there is no habitable planet here?"
"The larger the gas giant, the smaller the chance of a habitable planet and that gas giant is so massive it is virtually a dwarf star."
Pelorat said, "May we see it?"
All three now stared at the screen (Fallom was in Bliss's room with the j books).
The view was magnified till the crescent filled the screen. Crossing that crescent a distance above center was a thin dark line, the shadow of the ring system which could itself be seen a small distance beyond the planetary surface as a gleaming curve that stretched into the dark side a short distance before it entered the shadow itself.
Trevize said, "The planet's axis of rotation is inclined about thirty-five degrees to its plane of revolution, and its ring is in the planetary equatorial plane, of course, so that the star's light comes in from below, at this point in its orbit, and casts the ring's shadow well above the equator."
Pelorat watched raptly. "Those are thin rings."
"Rather above average size, actually," said Trevize.
"According to legend, the rings that circle a gas giant in Earth's planetary system are much wider, brighter, and more elaborate than this one. The rings actually dwarf the gas giant by comparison."
"I'm not surprised," said Trevize. "When a story is handed on from person to person for thousands of years, do you suppose it shrinks in the telling?"
Bliss said, "It's beautiful. If you watch the crescent, it seems to writhe and wriggle before your eyes."
"Atmospheric storms," said Trevize. "You can generally see that more clearly if you choose an appropriate wavelength of light. Here, let me try." He placed his hands on the desk and ordered the computer to work its way through the spectrum and stop at the appropriate wavelength.
The mildly lit crescent went into a wilderness of color that shifted so rapidly it almost dazed the eyes that tried to follow. Finally, it settled into a red-orange, and, within the crescent, clear spirals ** drifted, coiling and uncoiling as they moved.
"Unbelievable," muttered Pelorat.
"Delightful," said Bliss.
Quite believable, thought Trevize bitterly, and anything but delightful. Neither Pelorat nor Bliss, lost in the beauty, bothered to think that the planet they admired lowered the chances of solving the mystery Trevize was trying to unravel. But, then, why should they? Both were satisfied that Trevize's decision had been correct, and they accompanied him in his search for certainty without an emotional bond to it. It was useless to blame them for that.
He said, "The dark side seems dark, but if our eyes were sensitive to the range just a little beyond the usual long-wave limit, we would see it as a dull, deep, angry red. The planet is pouring infrared radiation out into space in great quantities because it is massive enough to be almost red-hot. It's more than a gas giant; it's a sub-star."
He waited a little longer and then said, "And now let's put that object out of our mind and look for the habitable planet that may exist."
"Perhaps it does," said Pelorat, smiling. "Don't give up, old fellow."
"I haven't given up," said Trevize, without true conviction. "The formation of planets is too complicated a matter for rules to be hard and fast. We speak only of probabilities. With that monster out in space, the probabilities decrease, but not to zero."
Bliss said, "Why don't you think of it this way? Since the first two sets of co-ordinates each gave you a habitable planet of the Spacers, then this third set, which has already given you an appropriate star, should give you a habitable planet as well. Why speak of probabilities?"
"I certainly hope you're right," said Trevize, who did not feel at all consoled. "Now we will shoot out of the planetary plane and in toward the star."
The computer took care of that almost as soon as he had spoken his intention. He sat back in his pilot's chair and decided, once again, that the one evil of piloting a gravitic ship with a computer so advanced was that one could never-never-pilot any other type of ship again.
Could he ever again bear to do the calculations himself? Could he bear to have to take acceleration into account, and limit it to a reasonable level? In all likelihood, he would forget and pour on the energy till he and everyone on board were smashed against one interior wall or another.
Well, then, he would continue to pilot this one ship-or another exactly like it, if he could even bear to make so much of a change-always.
And because he wanted to keep his mind off the question of the habitable planet, yes or no, he mused on the fact that he had directed the ship to move above the plane, rather than below. Barring any definite reason to go below a plane, pilots almost always chose to go above. Why?
For that matter, why be so intent on considering one direction above and the other below? In the symmetry of space that was pure convention.
Just the same, he was always aware of the direction in which any planet under observation rotated about its axis and revolved about its star. When both were counterclockwise, then the direction of one's raised arm was north, and the direction of one's feet was south. And throughout the Galaxy, north was pictured as above and south as below.
It was pure convention, dating back into the primeval mists, and it was followed slavishly. If one looked at a familiar map with south above, one didn't recognize it. It had to be turned about to make sense. And all things being equal, one turned north-and "above."
Trevize thought of a battle fought by Bel Riose, the Imperial general of three centuries before, who had veered his squadron below the planetary plane at a crucial moment, and caught a squadron of vessels, waiting and unprepared. There were complaints that it had been an unfair maneuver-by the losers, of course.
A convention, so powerful and so primordially old, must have started on Earth-and that brought Trevize's mind, with a jerk, back to the question of the habitable planet.
Pelorat and Bliss continued to watch the gas giant as it slowly turned on the viewscreen in a slow, slow back-somersault. The sunlit portion spread and, as Trevize kept its spectrum fixed in the orange-red wavelengths, the storm-writhing of its surface became ever madder and more hypnotic.
Then Fallom came wandering in and Bliss decided it must take a nap and that so must she.
Trevize said to Pelorat, who remained, "I have to let go of the gas giant, Janov. I want to have the computer concentrate on the search for a gravitational blip of the right size."
"Of course, old fellow," said Pelorat.
But it was more complicated than that. It was not just a blip of the right size that the computer had to search for, it was one of the right size and at the right distance. It would still be several days before he could be sure.
TREVIZE walked into his room, grave, solemn-indeed somber-and started perceptibly.
Bliss was waiting for him and immediately next to her was Fallow, with its loincloth and robe bearing the unmistakable fresh odor of steaming and vacupressing. The youngster looked better in that than in one of Bliss's foreshortened nightgowns.
Bliss said, "I didn't want to disturb you at the computer, but now listen. Go on, Fallow."
Fallow said, in its high-pitched musical voice, "I greet you, Protector Trevize. It is with great pleasure that I am ap-ad-accompanying you on this ship through space. I am happy, too, for the kindness of my friends, Bliss and Pel."
Fallow finished and smiled prettily, and once again Trevize thought to himself: Do I think of it as a boy or as a girl or as both or as neither?
He nodded his head. "Very well memorized. Almost perfectly pronounced."
"Not at all memorized," said Bliss warmly. "Fallow composed this itself and asked if it would be possible to recite it to you. I didn't even know what Fallow would say till I heard it said."
Trevize forced a smile, "In that case, very good indeed." He noticed Bliss avoided pronouns when she could.
Bliss turned to Fallow and said, "I told you Trevize would like it. Now go to Pel and you can have some more reading if you wish."
Fallow ran off, and Bliss said, "It's really astonishing how quickly Fallow is picking up Galactic. The Solarians must have a special aptitude for languages. Think how Bander spoke Galactic merely from hearing it on hyperspatial communications. Those brains may be remarkable in ways other than energy transduction."
Trevize grunted.
Bliss said, "Don't tell me you still don't like Fallom."
"I neither like nor dislike. The creature simply makes me uneasy. For one thing, it's a grisly feeling to be dealing with a hermaphrodite."
Bliss said, "Come, Trevize, that's ridiculous. Fallom is a perfectly acceptable living creature. To a society of hermaphrodites, think how disgusting you and I must seem-males and females generally. Each is half of a whole and, in order to reproduce, there must be a temporary and clumsy union."
"Do you object to that, Bliss?"
"Don't pretend to misunderstand. I am trying to view us from the hermaphroditic standpoint. To them, it must seem repellent in the extreme; to us, it seems natural. So Fallom seems repellent to you, but that's just a shortsighted parochial reaction."
"Frankly," said Trevize, "it's annoying not to know the pronoun to use in connection with the creature. It impedes thought and conversation to hesitate forever at the pronoun."
"But that's the fault of our language," said Bliss, "and not of Fallom. No human language has been devised with hermaphroditism in mind. And I'm glad you brought it up, because I've been thinking about it myself. Saying 'it,' as Bander itself insisted on doing, is no solution. That is a pronoun intended for objects to which sex is irrelevant, and there is no pronoun at all for objects that are sexually active in both senses. Why not just pick one of the pronouns arbitrarily, then? I think of Fallom as a girl. She has the high voice of one, for one thing, and she has the capacity of producing young, which is the vital definition of femininity. Pelorat has agreed; why don't you do so, too? Let it be 'she' and 'her.' "
Trevize shrugged. "Very well. It will sound peculiar to point out that she has testicles, but very well."
Bliss sighed. "You do have this annoying habit of trying to turn everything into a joke, but I know you are under tension and I'll make allowance for that. Just use the feminine pronoun for Fallom, please."
"I will." Trevize hesitated, then, unable to resist, said, "Fallom seems more your surrogate-child every time I see you together. Is it that you want a child and don't think Janov can give you one?"
Bliss's eyes opened wide. "He's not there for children! Do you think I use him as a handy device to help me have a child? It is not time for me to have a child, in any case. And when it is time, it will have to be a Gaian child, something for which Pel doesn't qualify."
"You mean Janov will have to be discarded?"
"Not at all. A temporary diversion, only. It might even be brought about by artificial insemination."
"I presume you can only have a child when Gaia's decision is that one is necessary; when there is a gap produced by the death of an already-existing, Gaian human fragment."
"That is an unfeeling way of putting it, but it is true enough. Gaia must be well proportioned in all its parts and relationships."
"As in the case of the Solarians."
Bliss's lips pressed together and her face grew a little white. "Not at all. '' The Solarians produce more than they need and destroy the excess. We produce just what we need and there is never a necessity of destroying-as you replace the dying outer layers of your skin by just enough new growth for renewal and by not one cell more."
"I see what you mean," said Trevize. "I hope, by the way, that you are considering Janov's feelings."
"In connection with a possible child for me? That has never come up for discussion; nor will it."
"No, I don't mean that. It strikes me you are becoming more and more interested in Fallom. Janov may feel neglected."
"He's not neglected, and he is as interested in Fallom as I am. She is another point of mutual involvement that draws us even closer together. Can it be that you are the one who feels neglected?"
"I?" He was genuinely surprised.
"Yes, you. I don't understand Isolates any more than you understand Gaia, but I have a feeling that you enjoy being the central point of attention on this ship, and you may feel cut out by Fallom."
"That's foolish."
"No more foolish than your suggestion that I am neglecting Pel."
"Then let's declare a truce and stop. I'll try to view Fallom as a girl, and I shall not worry excessively about you being inconsiderate of Janov's feelings."
Bliss smiled. "Thank you. All is well, then."
Trevize turned away, and Bliss then said, "Wait!"
Trevize turned back and said, just a bit wearily, "Yes?"
"It's quite clear to me, Trevize, that you're sad and depressed. I am not going to probe your mind, but you might be willing to tell me what's wrong. Yesterday, you said there was an appropriate planet in this system and you seemed quite pleased. It's still there, I hope. The finding hasn't turned out to be mistaken, has it?"
"There's an appropriate planet in the system, and it's still there," said Trevize.
"Is it the right size?"
Trevize nodded. "Since it's appropriate, it's of the right size. And it's at the right distance from the star as well."
"Well, then, what's wrong?"
"We're close enough now to analyze the atmosphere. It turns out that it has none to speak of."
"No atmosphere?"
"None to speak of. It's a nonhabitable planet, and there is no other circling the sun that has even the remotest capacity for habitability. We have come up with zero on this third attempt."
PELORAT, looking grave, was clearly unwilling to intrude on Trevize's unhappy silence. He watched from the door of the pilot-room, apparently hoping that Trevize would initiate a conversation.
Trevize did not. If ever a silence seemed stubborn, his did.
And finally, Pelorat could stand it no longer, and said, in a rather timid way, "What are we doing?"
Trevize looked up, stared at Pelorat for a moment, turned away, and then said, "We're zeroing in on the planet."
"But since there's no atmosphere-"
"The computer says there's no atmosphere. Till now, it's always told me what I've wanted to hear and I've accepted it. Now it has told me something I don't want to hear, and I'm going to check it. If the computer is ever going to be wrong, this is the time I want it to be wrong."
"Do you think it's wrong?"
"No; I don't."
"Can you think of any reason that might make it wrong?"
"No, I can't."
"Then why are you bothering, Golan?"
And Trevize finally wheeled in his seat to face Pelorat, his face twisted in near-despair, and said, "Don't you see, Janov, that I can't think of anything else to do? We drew blanks on the first two worlds as far as Earth's location is concerned, and now this world is a blank. What do I do now? Wander from world to world, and peer about and say, 'Pardon me. Where's Earth?' Earth has covered its tracks too well. Nowhere has it left any hint. I'm beginning to think that it will see to it that we're incapable of picking up a hint even if one exists."
Pelorat nodded, and said, "I've been thinking along those lines myself. Do you mind if we discuss it? I know you're unhappy, old chap, and don't want to talk, so if you want me to leave you alone, I will."
"Go ahead, discuss it," said Trevize, with something that was remarkably like a groan. "What have I got better to do than listen?"
Pelorat said, "That doesn't sound as though you really want me to talk, but perhaps it will do us good. Please stop me at any time if you decide you can stand it no longer. It seems to me, Golan, that Earth need not take only passive and negative measures to hide itself. It need not merely wipe out references to itself. Might it not plant false evidence and work actively for obscurity in that fashion?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, we've heard of Earth's radioactivity in several places, and that sort of thing would be designed to make anyone break off any attempt to locate it. If it were truly radioactive, it would be totally unapproachable. In all likelihood, we would not even be able to set foot on it. Even robot explorers, if we had any, might not survive the radiation. So why look? And if it is not radioactive, it remains inviolate, except for accidental approach, and even then it might have other means of masking itself."
Trevize managed a smile. "Oddly enough, Janov, that thought has occurred to me. It has even occurred to me that that improbable giant satellite has been invented and planted in the world's legends. As for the gas giant with the monstrous ring system, that is equally improbable and may be equally planted. It is all designed, perhaps, to have us look for something that doesn't exist, so that we go right through the correct planetary system, staring at Earth and dismissing it because, in actual fact, it lacks a large satellite or a triple-ringed cousin or a radioactive crust. We don't recognize it, therefore, and don't dream we are looking at it. I imagine worse, too."
Pelorat looked downcast. "How can there be worse?"
"Easily-when your mind gets sick in the middle of the night and begins searching the vast realm of fantasy for anything that can deepen despair. What if Earth's ability to hide is ultimate? What if our minds can be clouded? What if we can move right past Earth, with its giant satellite and with its distant ringed gas giant, and never see any of it? What if we have already done so?"
"But if you believe that, why are we-?"
"I don't say I believe that. I'm talking about mad fancies. We'll keep on looking."
Pelorat hesitated, then said, "For how long, Trevize? At some point, surely, we'll have to give up."
"Never," said Trevize fiercely. "If I have to spend the rest of my life going from planet to planet and peering about and saying, 'Please, sir, where's Earth?' then that's what I'll do. At any time, I can take you and Bliss and even Fallom, if you wish, back to Gaia and then take of on my own."
"Oh no. You know I won't leave you, Golan, and neither will Bliss. We'll go planet-hopping with you, if we must. But why?"
"Because I must find Earth, and because I will. I don't know how, but I will. Now, look, I'm trying to reach a position where I can study the sunlit side of the planet without its suit** being too close, so just let me be for a while."
Pelorat fell silent, but did not leave. He continued to watch while Trevize studied the planetary image, more than half in daylight, on the screen. To Pelorat, it seemed featureless, but he knew that Trevize, bound to the computer, saw it under enhanced circumstances.
Trevize whispered, "There's a haze."
"Then there must be an atmosphere," blurted out Pelorat.
"Not necessarily much of one. Not enough to support life, but enough to support a thin wind that will raise dust. It's a well-known characteristic of planets with thin atmospheres. There may even be small polar ice caps. A little water-ice condensed at the poles, you know. This world is too warm for solid carbon dioxide. -I'll have to switch to radar-mapping. And if I do that I can work more easily on the nightside."
"Really?"
"Yes. I should have tried it first, but with a virtually airless and, therefore, cloudless planet, the attempt with visible light seems so natural."
Trevize was silent for a long time, while the viewscreen grew fuzzy with radar-reflections that produced almost the abstraction of a planet, something that an artist of the Cleonian period might have produced. Then he said, "Well-" emphatically, holding the sound for a while, and was silent again.
Pelorat said, at last, "What's the 'well' about?"
Trevize looked at him briefly. "No craters that I can see."
"No craters? Is that good?"
"Totally unexpected," said Trevize. His face broke into a grin, "And very good. In fact, possibly magnificent."
FALLOM remained with her nose pressed against the ship's porthole, where a small segment of the Universe was visible in the precise form in which the eye saw it, without computer enlargement or enhancement.
Bliss, who had been trying to explain it all, sighed and said in a low voice to Pelorat, "I don't know how much she understands, Pel dear. To her, her father's mansion and a small section of the estate it stood upon was all the Universe. I don't think she was ever out at night, or ever saw the stars."
"Do you really think so?"
"I really do. I didn't dare show her any part of it until she had enough vocabulary to understand me just a little-and how fortunate it was that you could speak with her in her own language."
"The trouble is I'm not very good at it," said Pelorat apologetically. "And the Universe is rather hard to grasp if you come at it suddenly. She said to me that if those little lights are giant worlds, each one just like Solaria-they're much larger than Solaria, of course-that they couldn't hang in nothing. They ought to fall, she says."
"And she's right, judging by what she knows. She asks sensible questions, and little by little, she'll understand. At least she's curious and she's not frightened."
"The thing is, Bliss, I'm curious, too. Look how Golan changed as soon as he found out there were no craters on the world we're heading for. I haven't the slightest idea what difference that makes. Do you?"
"Not a bit. Still he knows much more planetology than we do. We can only assume he knows what he's doing."
"I wish I knew."
"Well, ask him."
Pelorat grimaced. "I'm always afraid I'll annoy him. I'm sure he thinks I ought to know these things without being told."
Bliss said, "That's silly, Pel. He has no hesitation in asking you about any aspect of the Galaxy's legends and myths which he thinks might be useful. You're always willing to answer and explain, so why shouldn't he be? You go ask him. If it annoys him, then he'll have a chance to practice sociability, and that will be good for him."
"Will you come with me?"
"No, of course not. I want to stay with Fallom and continue to try to get the concept of the Universe into her head. You can always explain it to me afterward-once he explains it to you."
PELORAT entered the pilot-room diffidently. He was delighted to note that Trevize was whistling to himself and was clearly in a good mood.
"Golan," he said, as brightly as he could.
Trevize looked up. "Janov! You're always tiptoeing in as though you think it's against the law to disturb me. Close the door and sit down. Sit down! Look at that thing."
He pointed to the planet on the viewscreen, and said, "I haven't found more than two or three craters, each quite small."
"Does that make a difference, Golan? Really?"
"A difference? Certainly. How can you ask?"
Pelorat gestured helplessly. "It's all a mystery to me. I was a history major at college. I took sociology and psychology in addition to history, also languages and literature, mostly ancient, and specialized in mythology in graduate school. I never came near planetology, or any of the physical sciences."
"That's no crime, Janov. I'd rather you know what you know. Your facility in ancient languages and in mythology has been of enormous use to us. You know that. And when it comes to a matter of planetology, I'll take care of that."
He went on, "You see, Janov, planets form through the smashing together of smaller objects. The last few objects to collide leave crater marks. Potentially, that is. If the planet is large enough to be a gas giant, it is essentially liquid under a gaseous atmosphere and the final collisions are just splashes and leave no marks.
"Smaller planets which are solid, whether icy or rocky, do show crater marks, and these remain indefinitely unless an agency for removal exists. There are three types of removals.
"First, a world may have an icy surface overlying a liquid ocean. In that case, any colliding object breaks through the ice and splashes water. Behind it the ice refreezes and heals the puncture, so to speak. Such a planet, or satellite, would have to be cold, and would not be what we would consider a habitable world.
"Second, if a planet is intensely active, volcanically, then a perpetual lava flow or ash fallout is forever filling in and obscuring any craters that form. However, such a planet or satellite is not likely to be habitable either.
"That brings us to habitable worlds as a third case. Such worlds may have polar ice caps, but most of the ocean must be freely liquid. They may have active volcanoes, but these must be sparsely distributed. Such worlds can neither heal craters, nor fill them in. There are, however, erosion effects. Wind and flowing water will erode craters, and if there is life, the actions of living things are strongly erosive as well. See?"
Pelorat considered that, then said, "But, Golan, I don't understand you at all. This planet we're approaching-"
"We'll be landing tomorrow," said Trevize cheerfully.
"This planet we're approaching doesn't have an ocean."
"Only some thin polar ice caps."
"Or much of an atmosphere."
"Only a hundredth the density of the atmosphere on Terminus."
"Or life."
"Nothing I can detect."
"Then what could have eroded away the craters?"
"An ocean, an atmosphere, and life," said Trevize. "Look, if this planet had been airless and waterless from the start, any craters that had been formed would still exist and the whole surface would be cratered. The absence of craters proves it can't have been airless and waterless from the start, and may even have had a sizable atmosphere and ocean in the near past. Besides, there are huge basins, visible on this world, that must have held seas, and oceans once, to say nothing of the marks of rivers that are now dry. So you see there was erosion and that erosion has ceased so short a time ago, that new cratering has not yet had time to accumulate."
Pelorat looked doubtful. "I may not be a planetologist, but it seems to me that if a planet is large enough to hang on to a dense atmosphere for perhaps billions of years, it isn't going to suddenly lose it, is it?"
"I shouldn't think so," said Trevize. "But this world undoubtedly held life before its atmosphere vanished, probably human life. My guess is that it was a terraformed world as almost all the human-inhabited worlds of the Galaxy are. The trouble is that we don't really know what its condition was before human life arrived, or what was done to it in order to make it comfortable for human beings, or under what conditions, actually, life vanished. There may have been a catastrophe that sucked off the atmosphere and that brought about the end of human life. Or there may have been some strange imbalance on this planet that human beings controlled as long as they were here and that went into a vicious cycle of atmospheric reduction once they were gone. Maybe we'll find the answer when we land, or maybe we won't. It doesn't matter."
"But surely neither does it matter if there was life here once, if there isn't now. What's the difference if a planet has always been uninhabitable, or is only uninhabitable now?"
"If it is only uninhabitable now, there will be ruins of the one-time inhabitants."
"There were ruins on Aurora-"
"Exactly, but on Aurora there had been twenty thousand years of rain and snow, freezing and thawing, wind and temperature change. And there was also life-don't forget life: There may not have been human beings there, but there was plenty of life. Ruins can be eroded just as craters can. Faster. And in twenty thousand years, not enough was left to do us any good. Here on this planet, however, there has been a passage of time, perhaps twenty thousand years, perhaps less, without wind, or storm, or life. There has been temperature change, I admit, but that's all. The ruins will be in good shape."
"Unless," murmured Pelorat doubtfully, "there are no ruins. Is it possible that there was never any life on the planet, or never any human life at any rate, and that the loss of the atmosphere was due to some event that human beings had nothing to do with?"
"No, no," said Trevize. "You can't turn pessimist on me, because it won't work. Even from here, I've spotted the remains of what I'm sure was a city. So we land tomorrow."
BLISS said, in a worried tone, "Fallow is convinced we're going to take her back to Jemby, her robot.' "
"Umm," said Trevize, studying the surface of the world as it slid back under the drifting ship. Then he looked up as though he had heard the remark only after a delay. "Well, it was the only parent she knew, wasn't it?"
"Yes, of course, but she thinks we've come back to Solaria."
"Does it look like Solaria?"
"How would she know?"
"Tell her it's not Solaria. Look, I'll give you one or two reference bookfilms with graphic illustrations. Show her close-ups of a number of different inhabited worlds and explain that there are millions of them. You'll have time for it. I don't know how long Janov and I will have to wander around, once we pick a likely target and land."
"You and Janov?"
"Yes. Fallom can't come with us, even if I wanted her to, which I would only want if I were a madman. This world requires space suits, Bliss. There's no breathable air. And we don't have a space suit that would fit Fallom. So she and you stay on the ship."
"Why it?"
Trevize's lips stretched into a humorless smile. "I admit," he said, "I would feel safer if you were along, but we can't leave Fallom on this ship alone. She can do damage even if she doesn't mean to. I must have Janov with me because he might be able to make out whatever archaic writing they have here. That means you will have to stay with Fallom. I should think you would want to."
Bliss looked uncertain.
Trevize said, "Look. You wanted Fallom along, when I didn't. I'm convinced she'll be nothing but trouble. So her presence introduces constraints, and you'll have to adjust yourself to that. She's here, so you'll have to be here, too. That's the way it is."
Bliss sighed. "I suppose so."
"Good. Where's Janov?"
"He's with Fallom."
"Very well. Go and take over. I want to talk to him."
Trevize was still studying the planetary surface when Pelorat walked in, clearing his throat to announce his presence. He said, "Is anything wrong, Golan?"
"Not exactly wrong, Janov. I'm just uncertain. This is a peculiar world and I don't know what happened to it. The seas must have been extensive, judging from the basins left behind, but they were shallow. As nearly as I can tell from the traces left behind, this was a world of desalinization and canals-or perhaps the seas weren't very salty. If they weren't very salty, that would account for the absence of extensive salt flats in the basins. Or else, when the ocean was lost, the salt content was lost with it-which certainly makes it look like a human deed."
Pelorat said hesitantly, "Excuse my ignorance about such things, Golan, but does any of this matter as far as what we are looking for is concerned?"
"I suppose not, but I can't help being curious. If I knew just how this planet was terraformed into human habitability and what it was like before terraforming, then perhaps I would understand what has happened to it after it was abandoned-or just before, perhaps. And if we did know what happened to it, we might be forewarned against unpleasant surprises."
"What kind of surprises? It's a dead world, isn't it?"
"Dead enough. Very little water; thin, unbreathable atmosphere; and Bliss detects no signs of mental activity."
"That should settle it, I should think."
"Absence of mental activity doesn't necessarily imply lack of life."
"It must surely imply lack of dangerous life."
"I don't know. But that's not what I want to consult you about. There are two cities that might do for our first inspection. They seem to be in excellent shape; all the cities do. Whatever destroyed the air and oceans did not seem to touch the cities. Anyway, those two cities are particularly large. The larger, however, seems to be short on empty space. There are spaceports far in the outskirts but nothing in the city itself. The one not so large does have empty space, so it will be easier to come down in its midst, though not in formal spaceports-but then, who would care about that?"
Pelorat grimaced. "Do you want me to make the decision, Golan?"
"No, I'll make the decision. I just want your thoughts."
"For what they're worth, a large sprawling city is likely to be a commercial or manufacturing center. A smaller city with open space is likely to be an administrative center. It's the administrative center we'd want. Does it have monumental buildings?"
"What do you mean by a monumental building?"
Pelorat smiled his tight little stretching of the lips. "I scarcely know. Fashions change from world to world and from time to time. I suspect, though, that they always look large, useless, and expensive. Like the place where we were on Comporellon."
Trevize smiled in his turn. "It's hard to tell looking straight down, and when I get a sideways glance as we approach or leave, it's too confusing. Why do you prefer the administrative center?"
"That's where we're likely to find the planetary museum, library, archives, university, and so on."
"Good. That's where we'll go, then; the smaller city. And maybe we'll find something. We've had two misses, but maybe we'll find something this time."
"Perhaps it will be three times lucky."
Trevize raised his eyebrows. "Where did you get that phrase?"
"It's an old one," said Pelorat. "I found it in an ancient legend. It means success on the third try, I should think."
"That sounds right," said Trevize. "Very well, then-three times lucky, Janov."
TREVIZE looked grotesque in his space suit. The only part of him that remained outside were his holsters-not the ones that he strapped around his hips ordinarily, but more substantial ones that were part of his suit. Carefully, he inserted the blaster in the right-hand holster, the neuronic whip in the left. Again, they had been recharged and this time, he thought grimly, nothing would take them away from him.
Bliss smiled. "Are you going to carry weapons even on a world without air or-Never mind! I won't question your decisions."
Trevize said, "Good!" and turned to help Pelorat adjust his helmet, before donning his own.
Pelorat, who had never worn a space suit before, said, rather plaintively, "Will I really be able to breathe in this thing, Golan?"
"I promise you," said Trevize.
Bliss watched as the final joints were sealed, her arm about Fallom's shoulder. The young Solarian stared at the two space-suited figures in obvious alarm. She was trembling, and Bliss's arm squeezed her gently and reassuringly.
The airlock door opened, and the two stepped inside, their bloated arms waving a farewell. It closed. The mainlock door opened and they stepped clumsily onto the soil of a dead world.
It was dawn. The sky was clear, of course, and purplish in color, but the sun had not yet risen. Along the lighter horizon where the sun would come, there was a slight haze.
Pelorat said, "It's cold."
"Do you feel cold?" said Trevize, with surprise. The suits were well insulated and if there was a problem, now and then, it was with the getting rid of body heat.
Pebrat said, "Not at all, but look-" His radioed voice sounded Trevize's ear, and his finger pointed.
In the purplish light of dawn, the crumbling stone front of the building they were approaching was sheathed in hoar frost.
Trevize said, "With a thin atmosphere, it would get colder at night than you would expect, and warmer in the day. Right now it's the coldest part of the day and it should take several hours before it gets too hot for us to remain in the sun."
As though the word had been a cabalistic incantation, the rim of the sun appeared above the horizon.
"Don't look at it," said Trevize conversationally. "Your face-plate is reflective and ultraviolet-opaque, but it would still be dangerous."
He turned his back to the rising sun and let his long shadow fall on the building. The sunlight was causing the frost to disappear, even as he watched. For a few moments, the wall looked dark with dampness and then that disappeared, too.
Trevize said, "The buildings don't look as good down here as they looked from the sky. They're cracked and crumbling. That's the result of the temperature change, I suppose, and of having the water traces freeze and melt each night and day for maybe as much as twenty thousand years."
Pelorat said, "There are letters engraved in the stone above the entrance, but crumbling has made them difficult to read."
"Can you make it out, Janov?"
"A financial institution of some sort. At least I make out a word which may be 'bank.' "'
"What's that?"
"A building in which assets were stored, withdrawn, traded, invested, loaned-if it's what I think it is."
"A whole building devoted to it? No computers?"
"Without computers taking over altogether."
Trevize shrugged. He did not find the details of ancient history inspiring.
They moved about, with increasing haste, spending less time at each building. The silence, the deadness, was completely depressing. The slow millennial-long collapse into which they had intruded made the place seem like the skeleton of a city, with everything gone but the bones.
They were well up in the temperate zone, but Trevize imagined he could feel the heat of the sun on his back.
Pelorat, about a hundred meters to his right, said sharply, "Look at that."
Trevize's ears rang. He said, "Don't shout, Janov. I can hear your whispers clearly no matter how far away you are. What is it?"
Pelorat, his voice moderating at once, said, "This building is the 'Hall of the Worlds.' At least, that's what I think the inscription reads."
Trevize joined him. Before them was a three-story structure, the line of its roof irregular and loaded with large fragments of rock, as though some sculptured object that had once stood there had fallen to pieces.
"Are you sure?" said Trevize.
"If we go in, we'll find out."
They climbed five low, broad steps, and crossed a space-wasting plaza. In the thin sir, their metal-shod footsteps made a whispering vibration rather than a sound.
"I see what you mean by 'large, useless, and expensive,' " muttered Trevize.
They entered a wide and high hall, with sunlight shining through tall windows and illuminating the interior too harshly where it struck and yet leaving things obscure in the shadow. The thin atmosphere scattered little light.
In the center was a larger than life-size human figure in what seemed to be a synthetic stone. One arm had fallen off. The other arm was cracked at the shoulder and Trevize felt that if he tapped it sharply that arm, too, would break off. He stepped back as though getting too near might tempt him into such unbearable vandalism.
"I wonder who that is?" said Trevize. "No markings anywhere. I suppose those who set it up felt that his fame was so obvious he needed no identification, but now-" He felt himself in danger of growing philosophical and turned his attention away.
Pelorat was looking up, and Trevize's glance followed the angle of Pelorat's head. There were markings-carvings-on the wall which Trevize could not read.
"Amazing," said Pelorat. "Twenty thousand years old, perhaps, and, in here, protected somewhat from sun and damp, they're still legible."
"Not to me," said Trevize.
"It's in old script and ornate even for that. Let's see now-seven-one-two-" His voice died away in a mumble, and then he spoke up again. "There are fifty names listed and there are supposed to have been fifty Spacer worlds and this is 'The Hall of the Worlds.' I assume those are the names of the fifty Spacer worlds, probably in the order of establishment. Aurora is first and Solaria is last. If you'll notice, there are seven columns, with seven names in the first six columns and then eight names in the last. It is as though they had planned a seven-by-seven grid and then added Solaria after the fact. My guess, old chap, is that that list dates back to before Solaria was terraformed and populated."
"And which one is this planet we're standing on? Can you tell?"
Pelorat said, "You'll notice that the fifth one down in the third column, the nineteenth in order, is inscribed in letters a little larger than the others. The listers seem to have been self-centered enough to give themselves some pride of place. Besides-"
"What does the name read?"
"As near as I can make out, it says Melpomenia. It's a name I'm totally unfamiliar with."
"Could it represent Earth?"
Pelorat shook his head vigorously, but that went unseen inside his helmet. He said, "There are dozens of words used for Earth in the old legends. Gaia is one of them, as you know. So is Terra, and Erda, and so on. They're all short. I don't know of any long name used for it, or anything even resembling a short version of Melpomenia."
"Then we're standing on Melpomenia, and it's not Earth."
"Yes. And besides-as I started to say earlier-an even better indication than the larger lettering is that the co-ordinates of Melpomenia are given as 0, 0, 0, and you would expect co-ordinates to be referred to one's own planet."
"Co-ordinates?" Trevize sounded dumbfounded. "That list gives the coordinates, too?"
"They give three figures for each and I presume those are co-ordinates. What else can they be?"
Trevize did not answer. He opened a small compartment in the portion of the space suit that covered his right thigh and took out a compact device with wire connecting it to the compartment. He put it up to his eyes and carefully focused it on the inscription on the wall, his sheathed fingers making a difficult job out of something that would ordinarily have been a moment's work.
"Camera?" asked Pelorat unnecessarily.
"It will feed the image directly into the ship's computer," said Trevize.
He took several photographs from different angles; then said, "Wait! I've got to get higher. Help me, Janov."
Pelorat clasped his hands together, stirrup-fashion, but Trevize shook his head. "That won't support my weight. Get on your hands and knees."
Pelorat did so, laboriously, and, as laboriously, Trevize, having tucked the camera into its compartment again, stepped on Pelorat's shoulders and from them on to the pedestal of the statue. He tried to rock the statue carefully to judge its firmness, then placed his foot on one bent knee and used it as a base for pushing himself upward and catching the armless shoulder. Wedging his toes against some unevenness at the chest, he lifted himself and, finally, after several grunts, managed to sit on the shoulder. To those long-dead who had revered the statue and what it represented, what Trevize did would have seemed blasphemy, and Trevize was sufficiently influenced by that thought to try to sit lightly.
"You'll fall and hurt yourself," Pelorat called out anxiously.
"I'm not going to fall and hurt myself, but you might deafen me." Trevize unslung his camera and focused once more. Several more photographs were taken and then he replaced the camera yet again and carefully lowered himself till his feet touched the pedestal. He jumped to the ground and the vibration of his contact was apparently the final push, for the still intact arm crumbled, and produced a small heap of rubble at the foot of the statue. It made virtually no noise as it fell.
Trevize froze, his first impulse being that of finding a place to hide before the watchman came and caught him. Amazing, he thought afterward, how quickly one relives the days of one's childhood in a situation like that-when you've accidentally broken something that looks important. It lasted only a moment, but it cut deeply.
Pelorat's voice was hollow, as befitted one who had witnessed and even abetted an act of vandalism, but he managed to find words of comfort. "It's-it's all right, Golan. It was about to come down by itself, anyway."
He walked over to the pieces on the pedestal and floor as though he were going to demonstrate the point, reached out for one of the larger fragments, and then said, "Golan, come here."
Trevize approached and Pelorat, pointing at a piece of stone that had clearly been the portion of the arm that had been joined to the shoulder, said, "What is this?"
Trevize stared. There was a patch of fuzz, bright green in color. Trevize rubbed it gently with his suited finger. It scraped off without trouble.
"It looks a lot like moss," he said.
"The life-without-mind that you mentioned?"
"I'm not completely sure how far without mind. Bliss, I imagine, would insist that this had consciousness, too-but she would claim this stone also had it."
Pelorat said, "Do you suppose that moss stuff is what's crumbling the rock?"
Trevize said, "I wouldn't be surprised if it helped. The world has plenty of sunlight and it has some water. Half what atmosphere it has is water vapor. The rest is nitrogen and inert gases. Just a trace of carbon dioxide, which would lead one to suppose there's no plant life-but it could be that the carbon dioxide is low because it is virtually all incorporated into the rocky crust. Now if this rock has some carbonate in it, perhaps this moss breaks it down by secreting acid, and then makes use of the carbon dioxide generated. This may be the dominant remaining form of life on this planet."
"Fascinating," said Pelorat.
"Undoubtedly," said Trevize, "but only in a limited way. The co-ordinates of the Spacer worlds are rather more interesting but what we really want are the co-ordinates of Earth. If they're not here, they may be elsewhere in the building-or in another building. Come, Janov."
"But you know-"began Pelorat.
"No, no," said Trevize impatiently. "We'll talk later. We've got to see what else, if anything, this building can give us. It's getting warmer." He looked.the small temperature reading on the back of his left glove. "Come, Janov."
They tramped through the rooms, walking as gently as possible, not because they were making sounds in the ordinary sense, or because there was anyone to hear them, but because they were a little shy of doing further damage through vibration.
They kicked up some dust, which moved a short way upward and settled quickly through the thin air, and they left footmarks behind them.
Occasionally, in some dim corner, one or the other would silently point out more samples of moss that were growing. There seemed a little comfort in the presence of life, however low in the scale, something that lifted the deadly, suffocating feel of walking through a dead world, especially one in which artifacts all about showed that once, long ago, it had been an elaborately living one.
And then, Pelorat said, "I think this must be a library."
Trevize looked about curiously. There were shelves and, as he looked more narrowly, what the corner of his eye had dismissed as mere ornamentation, seemed as though they might well be book-films. Gingerly, he reached for one. They were thick and clumsy and then he realized they were only cases. He fumbled with his thick fingers to open one, and inside he saw several discs. They were thick, too, and seemed brittle, though he did not test that.
He said, "Unbelievably primitive."
"Thousands of years old," said Pelorat apologetically, as though defending the old Melpomenians against the accusation of retarded technology.
Trevize pointed to the spine of the film where there were dim curlicues of the ornate lettering that the ancients had used. "Is that the title? What does it say?"
Pelorat studied it. "I'm not really sure, old man. I think one of the words refers to microscopic life. It's a word for 'microorganism,' perhaps. I suspect these are technical microbiological terms which I wouldn't understand even in Standard Galactic."
"Probably," said Trevize morosely. "And, equally probably, it wouldn't do us any good even if we could read it. We're not interested in germs. Do me a favor, Janov. Glance through some of these books and see if there's anything there with an interesting title. While you're doing that, I'll look over these book-viewers."
"Is that what they are?" said Pelorat, wondering. They were squat, cubical structures, topped by a slanted screen and a curved extension at the top that might serve as an elbow rest or a place on which to put an electro-notepad-if they had had such on Melpomenia.
Trevize said, "if this is a library, they must have book-viewers of one kind or another, and this seems as though it might suit."
He brushed the dust off the screen very gingerly and was relieved that the screen, whatever it might be made of, did not crumble at his touch. He manipulated the controls lightly, one after another. Nothing happened. He tried another book-viewer, then another, with the same negative results.
He wasn't surprised. Even if the device were to remain in working order for twenty millennia in a thin atmosphere and was resistant to water vapor, there was still the question of the power source. Stored energy had a way of leaking, no matter what was done to stop it. That was another aspect of the all embracing, irresistible second law of thermodynamics.
Pelorat was behind him. "Golan?"
"Yes."
"I have a book-film here-"
"What kind?"
"I think it's a history of space flight."
"Perfect but it won't do us any good if I can't make this viewer work."
His hands clenched in frustration.
"We could take the film back to the ship."
"I wouldn't know how to adapt it to our viewer. It wouldn't fit and our scanning system is sure to be incompatible."
"But is all that really necessary, Golan? If we-"
"It is really necessary, Janov. Now don't interrupt me. I'm trying to decide what to do. I can try adding power to the viewer. Perhaps that is all it needs."
"Where would you get the power?"
"Well-" Trevize drew his weapons, looked at them briefly, then settled his blaster back into its holster. He cracked open his neuronic whip, and studied the energy-supply level. It was at maximum.
Trevize threw himself prone upon the floor and reached behind the viewer (he kept assuming that was what it was) and tried to push it forward. It moved a small way and he studied what he found in the process.
One of those cables had to carry the power supply and surely it was the one that came out of the wall. There was no obvious plug or joining. (How does one deal with an alien and ancient culture where the simplest taken-for granted matters are made unrecognizable?)
He pulled gently at the cable, then harder. He turned it one way, then the other. He pressed the wall in the vicinity of the cable, and the cable in the vicinity of the wall. He turned his attention, as best he could, to the halfhidden back of the viewer and nothing he could do there worked, either.
He pressed one hand against the floor to raise himself and, as he stood up, the cable came with him. What he had done that had loosened it, he hadn't the slightest idea.
It didn't look broken or torn away. The end seemed quite smooth and it had left a smooth spot in the wall where it had been attached.
Pelorat said softly, "Golan, may I-"
Trevize waved a peremptory arm at the other. "Not now, Janov. Pleasel" He was suddenly aware of the green material caking the creases on his left glove. He must have picked up some of the moss behind the viewer and crushed it. His glove had a faint dampness to it, but it dried as he watched, and the greenish stain grew brown.
He turned his attention toward the cable, staring at the detached end carefully. Surely there were two small holes there. Wires could enter.
He sat on the floor again and opened the power unit of his neuronic whip. Carefully, he depolarized one of the wires and clicked it loose. He then, slowly and delicately, inserted it into the hole, pushing it in until it stopped. When he tried gently to withdraw it again, it remained put, as though it had been seized. He suppressed his first impulse to yank it out again by force. He depolarized the other wire and pushed it into the other opening. It was conceivable that that would close the circuit and supply the viewer with power.
"Janov," he said, "you've played about with book-films of all kinds. See if you can work out a way of inserting that book into the viewer."
"Is it really nece-"
"Please, Janov, you keep trying to ask unnecessary questions. We only have so much time. I don't want to have to wait far into the night for the building to cool off to the point where we can return."
"It must go in this way," said Janov, "but-"
"Good," said Trevize. "If it's a history of space flight, then it will have to begin with Earth, since it was on Earth that space flight was invented. Let's see if this thing works now."
Pelorat, a little fussily, placed the book-film into the obvious receptacle and then began studying the markings on the various controls for any hint as to direction.
Trevize spoke in a low voice, while waiting, partly to ease his own tension. "I suppose there must be robots on this world, too-here and there-in reasonable order to all appearances-glistening in the near-vacuum. The trouble is their power supply would long since have been drained, too, and, even if repowered, what about their brains? Levers and gears might withstand the millennia, but what about whatever microswitches or subatomic gizmos they had in their brains? They would have to have deteriorated, and even if they had not, what would they know about Earth. What would they"
Pelorat said, "The viewer is working, old chap. See here."
In the dim light, the book-viewer screen began to flicker. It was only faint, but Trevize turned up the power slightly on his neuronic whip and it grew brighter. The thin air about them kept the area outside the shafts of sunlight comparatively dim, so that the room was faded and shadowy, and the screen seemed the brighter by contrast.
It continued to flicket, with occasional shadows drifting across the screen.
"It needs to be focused," said Trevize.
"I know," said Pelorat, "but this seems the best I can do. The film itself must have deteriorated."
The shadows came and went rapidly now, and periodically there seemed something like a faint caricature of print. Then, for a moment, there was sharpness and it faded again.
"Get that back and hold it, Janov," said Trevize.
Pelorat was already trying. He passed it going backward, then again forward, and then got it and held it.
Eagerly, Trevize tried to read it, then said, in frustration, "Can you make it out, Janov?"
"Not entirely," said Pelorat, squinting at the screen. "It's about Aurora. I can tell that much. I think it's dealing with the first hyperspatial expedition-the 'prime outpouring,' it says."
He went forward, and it blurred and shadowed again. He said finally, "All the pieces I can get seem to deal with the Spacer worlds, Golan. There's nothing I can find about Earth."
Trevize said bitterly, "No, there wouldn't be. It's all been wiped out on this world as it has on Trantor. Turn the thing off."
"But it doesn't matter-" began Pelorat, turning it off:
"Because we can try other libraries? It will be wiped out there, too. Everywhere. Do you know-" He had looked at Pelorat as he spoke, and now he stared at him with a mixture of horror and revulsion. "What's wrong with your face-plate?" he asked.
PELORAT automatically lifted his gloved hand to his face-plate and then took it away and looked at it.
"What is it?" he said, puzzled. Then, he looked at Trevize and went on, rather squeakily, "There's something peculiar about your face-plate, Golan."
Trevize looked about automatically for a mirror. There was none and he would need a light if there were. He muttered, "Come into the sunlight, will you?"
He half-led, half-pulled Pelorat into the shaft of sunlight from the nearest window. He could feel its warmth upon his back despite the insulating effect of the space suit.
He said, "Look toward the sun, Janov, and close your eyes."
It was at once clear what was wrong with the face-plate. There was moss growing luxuriantly where the glass of the face-plate met the metallized fabric of the suit itself. The face-plate was rimmed with green fuzziness and Trevize knew his own was, too.
He brushed a finger of his glove across the moss on Pelorat's face-plate. Some of it came off, the crushed green staining the glove. Even as he watched it glisten in the sunlight, however, it seemed to grow stiffer and drier. He tried again, and this time, the moss crackled off. It was turning brown. He brushed the edges of Pelorat's face-plate again, rubbing hard.
"Do mine, Janov," he said. Then, later, "Do I look clean? Good, so do you. Let's go. I don't think there's more to do here."
The sun was uncomfortably hot in the deserted airless city. The stone buildings gleamed brightly, almost achingly. Trevize squinted as he looked at them and, as far as possible, walked on the shady side of the thoroughfares. He stopped at a crack in one of the building fronts, one wide enough to stick his little finger into, gloved as it was. He did just that, looked at it, muttered, "Moss," and deliberately walked to the end of the shadow and held that finger out in the sunlight for a while.
He said, "Carbon dioxide is the bottleneck. Anywhere they can get carbon dioxide-decaying rock-anywhere-it will grow. We're a good source of carbon dioxide, you know, probably richer than anything else on this nearly dead planet, and I suppose traces of the gas leak out at the boundary of the face-plate."
"So the moss grows there."
"Yes."
It seemed a long walk back to the ship, much longer and, of course, hotter than the one they had taken at dawn. The ship was still in the shade when they got there, however; that much Trevize had calculated correctly, at least.
Pelorat said, "Look!"
Trevize saw. The boundaries of the mainlock were outlined in green moss.
"More leakage?" said Pelorat.
"Of course. Insignificant amounts, I'm sure, but this moss seems to be a better indicator of trace amounts of carbon dioxide than anything I ever heard of. Its spores must be everywhere and wherever a few molecules of carbon dioxide are to be found, they sprout." He adjusted his radio for ship's wavelength and said, "Bliss, can you hear me?"
Bliss's voice sounded in both sets of oars. "Yes. Are you ready to come in? Any luck?"
"We're just outside," said Trevize, "but don't open the lock. We'll open it from out here. Repeat, don't open the lock."
"Why not?"
"Bliss, just do as I ask, will you? We can have a long discussion afterward."
Trevize brought out his blaster and carefully lowered, its intensity to minimum, then gazed at it uncertainly. He had never used it at minimum. He looked about him. There was nothing suitably fragile to test it on.
In sheer desperation, he turned it on the rocky hillside in whose shadow the Far Star lay. The target didn't turn red-hot. Automatically, he felt the spot he had hit. Did 'it feel warm? He couldn't tell with any degree of certainty through the insulated fabric of his suit.
He hesitated again, then thought that the hull of the ship would be as resistant, within an order of magnitude at any rate, as the hillside. He turned the blaster on the rim of the lock and flicked the contact briefly, holding his breath.
Several centimeters of the moss-like growth browned at once. He waved his hand in the vicinity of the browning and even the mild breeze set up in the thin air in this way sufficed to set the light skeletal remnants that made up the brown material to scattering.
"Does it work?" said Pelorat anxiously.
"Yes, it does," said Trevize. "I turned the blaster into a mild heat ray."
He sprayed the heat all around the edge of the lock and the green vanished at the touch. All of it. He struck the mainlock to create a vibration that would knock off what remained and a brown dust fell to the ground-a dust so fine that it even lingered in the thin atmosphere, buoyed up by wisps of gas.
"I think we can open it now," said Trevize, and, using his wrist controls, he tapped out the emission of the radio-wave combination that activated the opening mechanism from inside. The lock gaped and had not opened more than halfway when Trevize said, "Don't dawdle, Janov, get inside. Don't wait for the steps. Climb in."
Trevize followed, sprayed the rim of the lock with his toned-down blaster. He sprayed the steps, too, once they had lowered. He then signaled the close** of the lock and kept on spraying till they were totally enclosed.
Trevize said, "We're in the lock, Bliss. We'll stay here a few minutes. Continue to do nothing!"
Bliss's voice said, "Give me a hint. Are you all right? How is Pel?"
Pel said, "I'm here, Bliss, and perfectly well. There's nothing to worry about."
"If you say so, Pel, but there'll have to be explanations later. I hope you know that."
"It's a promise," said Trevize, and activated the lock light.
The two space-suited figures faced each other.
Trevize said, "We're pumping out all the planetary air we can, so let's just wait till that's done."
"What about the ship air? Are we going to let that in?"
"Not for a while. I'm as anxious to get out of the space suit as you are, Janov. I just want to make sure that we get rid of any spores that have entered with us-or upon us."
By the not entirely satisfactory illumination of the lock light, Trevize turned his blaster on the inner meeting of lock and hull, spraying the heat methodically along the floor, up and around, and back to the floor.
"Now you, Janov."
Pelorat stirred uneasily, and Trevize said, "You may feel warm. It shouldn't be any worse than that. If it grows uncomfortable, just say so."
He played the invisible beam over the face-plate, the edges particularly, then, little by little, over the rest of the space suit.
He muttered, "Lift your arms, Janov." Then, "Rest your arms on my shoulder, and lift one foot-I've got to do the soles-now the other. Are you getting too warm?"
Pelorat said, "I'm not exactly bathed in cool breezes, Golan."
"Well, then, give me a taste of my own medicine. Go over me."
"I've never held a blaster."
"You must hold it. Grip it so, and, with your thumb, push that little knob-and squeeze the holster tightly. Right. Now play it over my face-plate. Move it steadily, Janov, don't let it linger in one place too long. Over the rest of the helmet, then down the cheek and neck."
He kept up the directions, and when he had been heated everywhere and was in an uncomfortable perspiration as a result, he took back the blaster and studied the energy level.
"More than half gone," he said, and sprayed the interior of the lock methodically, back and forth over the wall, till the blaster was emptied of its charge, having itself heated markedly through its rapid and sustained discharge. He then restored it to its holster.
Only then did he signal for entry into the ship. He welcomed the hiss and feel of air coming into the lock as the inner door opened. Its coolness and its convective powers would carry off the warmth of the space suit far more quickly than radiation alone would do. It might have been imagination, but he felt the cooling effect at once. Imagination or not, he welcomed that, too.
"Off with your suit, Janov, and leave it out here in the lock," said Trevize.
"If you don't mind," said Pelorat, "a shower is what I would like to have before anything else."
"Not before anything else. In fact, before that, and before you can empty your bladder, even, I suspect you will have to talk to Bliss."
Bliss was waiting for them, of course, and with a look of concern on her face. Behind her, peeping out, was Fallom, with her hands clutching firmly at Bliss's left arm.
"What happened?" Bliss asked severely. "What's been going on?"
"Guarding against infection," said Trevize dryly, "so I'll be turning on the ultraviolet radiation. Break out the dark glasses. Please don't delay."
With ultraviolet added to the wall illumination, Trevize took off his moist garments one by one and shook them out, turning them in one direction and another.
"Just a precaution," he said. "You do it, too, Janov. And, Bliss, I'll have to peel altogether. If that will make you uncomfortable, step into the next room."
Bliss said, "It will neither make me uncomfortable, nor embarrass me. I have a good notion of what you look like, and it will surely present me with nothing new. What infection?"
"Just a little something that, given its own way," said Trevize, with a deliberate air of indifference, "could do great damage to humanity, I think."
IT was all done. The ultraviolet light had done its part. Officially, according to the complex films of information and instructions that had come with the Far Star when Trevize had first gone aboard back on Terminus, the light was there precisely for purposes of disinfection. Trevize suspected, however, that the temptation was always there, and sometimes yielded to, to use it for developing a fashionable tan for those who were from worlds where tans were fashionable. The light was, however, disinfecting, however used.
They took the ship up into space and Trevize maneuvered it as close to Melpomenia's sun as he might without making them all unpleasantly uncomfortable, turning and twisting the vessel so as to make sure that its entire surface was drenched in ultraviolet.
Finally, they rescued the two space suits that had been left in the lock and examined them until even Trevize was satisfied.
"All that," said Bliss, at last, "for moss. Isn't that what you said it was, Trevize? Moss?"
"I call it moss," said Trevize, "because that's what it reminded me of. I'm not a botanist, however. All I can say is that it's intensely green and can probably make do on very little light-energy."
"Why very little?"
"The moss is sensitive to ultraviolet and can't grow, or even survive, in direct illumination. Its spores are everywhere and it grows in hidden corners, in cracks in statuary, on the bottom surface of structures, feeding on the energy of scattered photons of light wherever there is a source of carbon dioxide."
Bliss said, "I take it you think they're dangerous."
"They might well be. If some of the spores were clinging to us when we entered, or swirled in with us, they would find illumination in plenty without the harmful ultraviolet. They would find ample water and an unending supply of carbon dioxide."
"Only 0.03 percent of our atmosphere," said Bliss.
"A great deal to them-and 4 percent in our exhaled breath. What if spores grew in our nostrils, and on our skin? What if they decomposed and destroyed our food? What if they produced toxins that killed us? Even if we labored to kill them but left some spores alive, they would be enough, when carried to another world by us, to infest it, and from there be carried to other worlds. Who knows what damage they might do?"
Bliss shook her head. "Life is not necessarily dangerous because it is different. You are so ready to kill."
"That's Gaia speaking," said Trevize.
"Of course it is, but I hope I make sense, nevertheless. The moss is adapted to the conditions of this world. Just as it makes use of light in small quantities but is killed by large; it makes use of occasional tiny whiffs of carbon dioxide and may be killed by large amounts. It may not be capable of surviving on any world but Melpomenia."
"Would you want me to take a chance on that?" demanded Trevize.
Bliss shrugged. "Very well. Don't be defensive. I see your point. Being an Isolate, you probably had no choice but to do what you did."
Trevize would have answered, but Fallom's clear high-pitched voice broke in, in her own language.
Trevize said to Pelorat, "What's she saying?"
Pelorat began, "What Fallom is saying-"
Fallom, however, as though remembering a moment too late that her own language was not easily understood, began again. "Was there Jemby there where you were?"
The words were pronounced meticulously, and Bliss beamed. "Doesn't she speak Galactic well? And in almost no time."
Trevize said, in a low voice, "I'll mess it up if I try, but you explain to her, Bliss, that we found no robots on the planet."
"I'll explain it," said Pelorat. "Come, Fallom." He placed a gentle arm about the youngster's shoulders. "Come to our room and I'll get you another book to read."
"A book? About Jemby?"
"Not exactly-" And the door closed behind them.
"You know," said Trevize, looking after them impatiently, "we waste our time playing nursemaid to that child."
"Waste? In what way does it interfere with your search for Earth, Trevize? In no way. Playing nursemaid establishes communication, however, allays fear, supplies love. Are these achievements nothing?"
"That's Gaia speaking again."
"Yes," said Bliss. "Let us be practical, then. We have visited three of the old Spacer worlds and we have gained nothing."
Trevize nodded. "True enough."
"In fact, we have found each one dangerous, haven't we? On Aurora, there were feral dogs; on Solaria, strange and dangerous human beings; on Melpomenia, a threatening moss. Apparently, then, when a world is left to itself, whether it contains human beings or not, it becomes dangerous to the Interstellar community."
"You can't consider, that a general rule."
"Three out of three certainly seems impressive."
"And how does it impress you, Bliss?"
"I'll tell you. Please listen to me with an open mind. If you have millions of interacting worlds in the Galaxy, as is, of course, the affil case, and if each is made up entirely of Isolates, as they are, then on each world, human beings are dominant and can force their will on nonhuman life-forms, on the inanimate geological background, and even on each other. The Galaxy is, then, a very primitive and fumbling and misfunctioning Galaxia. The beginnings of a unit. Do you see what I mean?"
"I see what you're trying to say-but that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with you when you're done saying it."
"Just listen to me. Agree or not, as you please, but listen. The only way the Galaxy will work is as a proto-Galaxia, and the less proto and the more Galaxia, the better. The Galactic Empire was an attempt at a strong proto-Galaxia, and when it fell apart, times grew rapidly worse and there was the constant drive to strengthen the proto-Galaxia concept. The Foundation Confederation is such an attempt. So was the Mule's Empire. So is the Empire the Second Foundation is planning. But even if there were no such Empires or Confederations; even if the entire Galaxy were in turmoil, it would be a connected turmoil, with each world interacting, even if only hostilely, with every other. That would, in itself, be a kind of union and it would not yet be the worst case."
"What would be the worst, then?"
"You know the answer to that, Trevize. You've seen it. If a human-inhabited world breaks up completely, is truly Isolate, and if it loses all interaction with other human worlds, it develops-malignantly."
"A cancer, then?"
"Yes. Isn't Solaria just that? Its hand is against all worlds. And on it, the hand of each individual is against those of all others. You've seen it. And if human beings disappear altogether, the last trace of discipline goes. The each-against-each becomes unreasoning, as with the dogs, or is merely an elemental force as with the moss. You see, I suppose, that the closer we are to Galaxia, the better the society. Why, then, stop at anything short of Galaxia?"
For a while, Trevize stared silently at Bliss. "I'm thinking about it. But why this assumption that dosage is a one-way thing; that if a little is good, a lot is better, and all there is is best of all? Didn't you yourself point out that it's possible the moss is adapted to very little carbon dioxide so that a plentiful supply might kill it? A human being two meters tall is better off than one who is one meter tall; but is also better off than one who is three meters tall. A mouse isn't better off, if it is expanded to the size of an elephant. He wouldn't live. Nor would an elephant be better off reduced to the size of a mouse.
"There's natural size, a natural complexity, some optimum quality for everything, whether star or atom, and it's certainly true of living things and living societies. I don't say the old Galactic Empire was ideal, and I can certainly see flaws in the Foundation Confederation, but I'm not prepared to** say that because total Isolation is bad, total Unification is good. They each** may both be equally horrible, and an old-fashioned Galactic Empire, however imperfect, may be the best we can do."
Bliss shook her head. "I wonder if you believe yourself, Trevize. Are you going to argue that a virus and a human being are equally unsatisfactory, and wish to settle for something in-between-like a slime mold?"
"No. But I might argue that a virus and a superhuman being are equally unsatisfactory, and wish to settle for something in-between-like an ordinary person. There is, however, no point in arguing. I will have my solution when I find Earth. On Melpomenia, we found the co-ordinates of forty-seven other Spacer worlds."
"And you'll visit them all?"
"Every one, if I have to."
"Risking the dangers on each."
"Yes, if that's what it takes to find Earth.”
Pelorat had emerged from the room within which he had left Fallow, and seemed about to say something when he was caught up in the rapid-fire exchange between Bliss and Trevize. He stared from one to the other as they spoke in turn.
"How long would it take?" asked Bliss.
"However long it takes," said Trevize, "and we ought find what we need on the next one we visit."
"Or on none of them."
"That we cannot know till we search."
And now, at last, Pelorat managed to insert a word. "But why look, Golan? We have the answer."
Trevize waved an impatient hand in the direction of Pelorat, checked the motion, turned his head, and said blankly, "What?"
"I said we have the answer. I tried to tell you this on Melpomenia at least five times, but you were so wrapped up in what you were doing-"
"What answer do we have? What are you talking about?”
"About Earth. I think we know where Earth is."