“Metal,” was the curt answer. “Look for yourself. We have an infinite supply, ready processed. They come from Neotrantor with ships, demolish an indicated area—increasing our growing space—and leave us in exchange meat, canned fruit, food concentrates, farm machinery, and so on. They carry off the metal and both sides profit.”
They feasted on bread and cheese, and a vegetable stew that was unreservedly delicious. It was over the dessert of frosted fruit, the only imported item on the menu, that, for the first time, the Outlanders became other than mere guests. The young man produced a map of Trantor.
Calmly, Lee Senter studied it. He listened—and said gravely, “The University Grounds are a static area. We farmers do not grow crops on it. We do not, by preference, even enter it. It is one of our few relics of another time we would keep undisturbed.”
“We are seekers after knowledge. We would disturb nothing. Our ship would be our hostage.” The old man offered this—eagerly, feverishly.
“I can take you there then,” said Senter.
That night the strangers slept, and that night Lee Senter sent a message to Neotrantor.
24
CONVERT
The thin life of Trantor trickled to nothing when they entered among the wide-spaced buildings of the University Grounds. There was a solemn and lonely silence over it.
The strangers of the Foundation knew nothing of the swirling days and nights of the bloody Sack that had left the University untouched. They knew nothing of the time after the collapse of the Imperial power, when the students, with their borrowed weapons, and their pale-faced inexperienced bravery, formed a protective volunteer army to protect the central shrine of the science of the Galaxy. They knew nothing of the Seven Days Fight, and the armistice that kept the University free, when even the Imperial palace clanged with the boots of Gilmer and his soldiers, during the short interval of their rule.
Those of the Foundation, approaching for the first time, realized only that in a world of transition from a gutted old to a strenuous new this area was a quiet, graceful museum piece of ancient greatness.
They were intruders in a sense. The brooding emptiness rejected them. The academic atmosphere seemed still to live and to stir angrily at the disturbance.
The library was a deceptively small building which broadened out vastly underground into a mammoth volume of silence and reverie. Ebling Mis paused before the elaborate murals of the reception room.
He whispered—one had to whisper here: “I think we passed the catalog rooms back a way. I’ll stop there.”
His forehead was flushed, his hand trembling, “I mustn’t be disturbed, Toran. Will you bring my meals down to me?”
“Anything you say. We’ll do all we can to help. Do you want us to work under you—”
“No, I must be alone—”
“You think you will get what you want.”
And Ebling Mis replied with a soft certainty, “I know I will!”
Toran and Bayta came closer to “setting up housekeeping” in normal fashion than at any time in their year of married life. It was a strange sort of “housekeeping.” They lived in the middle of grandeur with an inappropriate simplicity. Their food was drawn largely from Lee Senter’s farm and was paid for in the little nuclear gadgets that may be found on any Trader’s ship.
Magnifico taught himself how to use the projectors in the library reading room, and sat over adventure novels and romances to the point where he was almost as forgetful of meals and sleep as was Ebling Mis.
Ebling himself was completely buried. He had insisted on a hammock being slung up for him in the Psychology Reference Room. His face grew thin and white. His vigor of speech was lost and his favorite curses had died a mild death. There were times when the recognition of either Toran or Bayta seemed a struggle.
He was more himself with Magnifico, who brought him his meals and often sat watching him for hours at a time, with a queer, fascinated absorption, as the aging psychologist transcribed endless equations, cross-referred to endless book-films, scurried endlessly about in a wild mental effort toward an end he alone saw.
Toran came upon her in the darkened room, and said sharply, “Bayta!”
Bayta started guiltily. “Yes? You want me, Torie?”
“Sure I want you. What in Space are you sitting there for? You’ve been acting all wrong since we got to Trantor. What’s the matter with you?”
“Oh, Torie, stop,” she said, wearily.
And “Oh, Torie, stop!” he mimicked impatiently. Then, with sudden softness, “Won’t you tell me what’s wrong, Bay? Something’s bothering you.”
“No! Nothing is, Torie. If you keep on just nagging and nagging, you’ll have me mad. I’m just— thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
“About nothing. Well, about the Mule, and Haven, and the Foundation, and everything. About Ebling Mis and whether he’ll find anything about the Second Foundation, and whether it will help us when he does find it—and a million other things. Are you satisfied?” Her voice was agitated.
“If you’re just brooding, do you mind stopping? It isn’t pleasant and it doesn’t help the situation.”
Bayta got to her feet and smiled weakly. “All right. I’m happy. See, I’m smiling and jolly.”
Magnifico’s voice was an agitated cry outside. “My lady—”
“What is it? Come—”
Bayta’s voice choked off sharply when the opening door framed the large, hard-faced—
“Pritcher,” cried Toran.
Bayta gasped, “Captain! How did you find us?”
Han Pritcher stepped inside. His voice was clear and level, and utterly dead of feeling, “My rank is colonel now—under the Mule.”
“Under the .?.?. Mule!” Toran’s voice trailed off. They formed a tableau there, the three.
Magnifico stared wildly and shrank behind Toran. Nobody stopped to notice him.
Bayta said, her hands trembling in each other’s tight grasp, “You are arresting us? You have really gone over to them?”
The colonel replied quickly, “I have not come to arrest you. My instructions make no mention of you. With regard to you, I am free, and I choose to exercise our old friendship, if you will let me.”
Toran’s face was a twisted suppression of fury, “How did you find us? You were in the Filian ship, then? You followed us?”
The wooden lack of expression on Pritcher’s face might have flickered in embarrassment. “I
“It is a chance that is mathematically impossible.”
“No. Simply rather improbable, so my statement will have to stand. In any case, you admitted to the Filians—there is, of course, no such nation as Filia actually—that you were heading for the Trantor sector, and since the Mule already had his contacts upon Neotrantor, it was easy to have you detained there. Unfortunately, you got away before I arrived, but not long before. I had time to have the farms on Trantor ordered to report your arrival. It was done and I am here. May I sit down? I come in friendliness, believe me.”
He sat. Toran bent his head and thought futilely. With a numbed lack of emotion, Bayta prepared tea.
Toran looked up harshly. “Well, what are you waiting for—
Patiently, Pritcher shook his head. “No, Toran. I come of my own will to speak to you, to persuade you of the uselessness of what you are doing. If I fail I shall leave. That is all.”
“That is all? Well, then, peddle your propaganda, give us your speech, and leave. I don’t want any tea, Bayta.”
