Pritcher intervened sharply: “Was a hyper-relay placed upon our ship by your orders, sir?”
The Mule turned cool eyes upon him, “Certainly. Is it very likely that any organization in the Galaxy other than the Union of Worlds would have access to one?”
“He said—”
“Well, he’s here, general. Indirect quotation is not necessary. Have you been saying anything, Channis?”
“Yes. But mistakes apparently, sir. It has been my opinion that the hyper-relay was put there by someone in the pay of the Second Foundation and that we had been led here for some purpose of theirs, which I was prepared to counter. I was under the further impression that the general was more or less in their hands.”
“You sound as if you think so no longer.”
“I’m afraid not. Or it would not have been you at the door.”
“Well, then, let us thresh this out.” The Mule peeled off the outer layers of padded and electrically heated clothing. “Do you mind if I sit down as well? Now—we are safe here and perfectly free of any danger of intrusion. No native of this lump of ice will have any desire to approach this place. I assure you of that,” and there was a grim earnestness about his insistence upon his powers.
Channis showed his disgust. “Why privacy? Is someone going to serve tea and bring out the dancing girls?”
“Scarcely. What was this theory of yours, young man? A Second Foundationer was tracing you with a device which no one but I have and—how did you say you found this place?”
“Apparently, sir, it seems obvious, in order to account for known facts, that certain notions have been put into my head—”
“By these same Second Foundationers?”
“No one else, I imagine.”
“Then it did not occur to you that if a Second Foundationer could force, or entice, or inveigle you into going to the Second Foundation for purposes of his own—and I assume you imagined he used methods similar to mine, though, mind you, I can implant only emotions, not ideas—it did not occur to you that if he could do that there was little necessity to put a hyper-relay on you.”
And Channis looked up sharply and met his sovereign’s large eyes with sudden startle. Pritcher grunted and a visible relaxation showed itself in his shoulders.
“No,” said Channis, “that hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Or that if they were obliged to trace you, they couldn’t feel capable of directing you, and that, undirected, you could have precious little chance of finding your way here as you did. Did
“That, neither.”
“Why not? Has your intellectual level receded to a so-much-greater-than-probable degree?”
“The only answer is a question, sir. Are you joining General Pritcher in accusing me of being a traitor?”
“Have you a defense in case I am?”
“Only the one I presented to the general. If I were a traitor and knew the whereabouts of the Second Foundation, you could Convert me and learn the knowledge directly. If you felt it necessary to trace me, then I hadn’t the knowledge beforehand and wasn’t a traitor. So I answer your paradox with another.”
“Then your conclusion?”
“That I am not a traitor.”
“To which I must agree, since your argument is irrefutable.”
“Then may I ask you why you had us secretly followed?”
“Because to all the facts there is a third explanation. Both you and Pritcher explained some facts in your own individual ways, but not all. I—if you can spare me the time—will explain all. And in a rather short time, so there is little danger of boredom. Sit down, Pritcher, and give me your blaster. There is no danger of attack on us any longer. None from in here and none from out there. None in fact even from the Second Foundation. Thanks to you, Channis.”
The room was lit in the usual Rossemian fashion of electrically heated wire. A single bulb was suspended from the ceiling and in its dim yellow glow, the three cast their individual shadows.
The Mule said: “Since I felt it necessary to trace Channis, it was obvious I expected to gain something thereby. Since he went to the Second Foundation with a startling speed and directness, we can reasonably assume that that was what I was expecting to happen. Since I did not gain the knowledge from him directly, something must have been preventing me. Those are the facts. Channis, of course, knows the answer. So do I. Do you see it, Pritcher?”
And Pritcher said doggedly: “No, sir.”
“Then I’ll explain. Only one kind of man can both know the location of the Second Foundation and prevent me from learning it. Channis, I’m afraid you’re not actually a traitor; you are, rather, a Second Foundationer.”
And Channis’ elbows rested on his knees as he leaned forward, and through stiff and angry lips said: “What is your direct evidence? Deduction has proven wrong twice today.”
“There is direct evidence, too, Channis. It was easy enough. I told you that my men had been tampered with. The tamperer must have been, obviously, someone who was a) Unconverted, and b) fairly close to the center of things. The field was large but not entirely unlimited. You were too successful, Channis. People liked you too much. You got along too well. I wondered—
“And then I summoned you to take over this expedition and it didn’t set you back. I watched your emotions. It didn’t bother you. You overplayed the confidence there, Channis. No man of real competence could have avoided a dash of uncertainty at a job like that. Since your mind did avoid it, it was either a foolish one or a controlled one.
“It was easy to test the alternatives. I seized your mind at a moment of relaxation and filled it with grief for an instant and then removed it. You were angry afterwards with such accomplished art that I could have sworn it was a natural reaction, but for that which went first. For when I wrenched at your emotions, for just one instant, for one tiny instant before you could catch yourself your mind resisted. It was all I needed to know.
“No one could have resisted me, even for that tiny instant, without control similar to mine.”
Channis’ voice was low and bitter: “Well, then? Now what?”
“And now you die—as a Second Foundationer. Quite necessary, as I believe you realize.”
And once again Channis stared into the muzzle of a blaster. A muzzle guided this time by a mind, not like Pritcher’s capable of offhand twisting to suit himself, but by one as mature as his own and as resistant to force as his own.
And the period of time allotted him for a correction of events was small.
What followed thereafter is difficult to describe by one with the normal complement of senses and the normal incapacity for emotional control.
Essentially, this is what Channis realized in the tiny space of time involved in the pushing of the Mule’s thumb upon the trigger-contact.
The Mule’s current emotional makeup was one of a hard and polished determination, unmisted by hesitation in the least. Had Channis been sufficiently interested afterward to calculate the time involved from the determination to shoot to the arrival of the disintegrating energies, he might have realized that his leeway was about one-fifth of a second.
That was barely time.
What the Mule realized in that same tiny space of time was that the emotional potential of Channis’ brain had surged suddenly upwards without his own mind feeling any impact and that, simultaneously, a flood of pure, thrilling hatred cascaded upon him from an unexpected direction.
It was that new emotional element that jerked his thumb off the contact. Nothing else could have done it, and almost together with his change of action came complete realization of the new situation.
It was a tableau that endured far less than the significance adhering to it should require from a dramatic standpoint. There was the Mule, thumb off the blaster, staring intently upon Channis. There was Channis, taut, not quite daring to breathe yet. And there was Pritcher, convulsed in his chair; every muscle at a spasmodic breaking
