Foundation's Edge

produced was a moss-like growth on rocks; the highest forms of animal life were small coral-like growths in the ocean and insectlike flying organisms on land. We just about wiped them out and stocked sea and land with fish and rabbits and goats and grass and grain and trees and so on. We have nothing left of the indigenous life, except for what exists in zoos and aquaria.”

“Hmm,” said Trevize.

Pelorat stared at him for a full minute, then sighed and said, “You don’t really care, do you? Remarkable! I find no one who does, somehow. My fault, I think. I cannot make it interesting, even though it interests me so much.”

Trevize said, “It’s interesting. It is. But—but—so what?”

“It doesn’t strike you that it might be interesting scientifically to study a world that gave rise to the only really flourishing indigenous ecological balance the Galaxy has ever seen?”

“Maybe, if you’re a biologist. —I’m not, you see. You must forgive me.”

“Of course, dear fellow. It’s just that I never found any biologists who were interested, either. I told you I was a biology major. I took it up with my professor and he wasn’t interested. He told me to turn to some practical problem. That so disgusted me I took up history instead—which had been rather a hobby of mine from my teenage years, in any case—and tackled the ‘Origin Question’ from that angle.”

Trevize said, “But at least it has given you a lifework, so you must be pleased that your professor was so unenlightened.”

“Yes, I suppose one might look at it that way. And the lifework is an interesting one, of which I have never tired. —But I do wish it interested you. I hate this feeling of forever talking to myself.”

Trevize leaned his head back and laughed heartily.

Pelorat’s quiet face took on a trace of hurt. “Why are you laughing at me?”

“Not you, Janov,” said Trevize. “I was laughing at my own stupidity. Where you’re concerned, I am completely grateful. You were perfectly right, you know.”

“To take up the importance of human origins?”

“No, no. —Well, yes, that too. —But I meant you were right to tell me to stop consciously thinking of my problem and to turn my mind elsewhere. It worked. When you were talking about the manner in which life evolved, it finally occurred to me that I knew how to find that hyper-relay—if it existed.”

“Oh, that!”

“Yes, that! That’s my monomania at the moment. I’ve been looking for that hyper-relay as though I were on my old scow of a training ship, studying every part of the ship by eye, looking for something that stood out from the rest. I had forgotten that this ship is a developed product of thousands of years of technological evolution. Don’t you see?”

“No, Golan.”

“We have a computer aboard. How could I have forgotten?”

He waved his hand and passed into his own room, urging Pelorat along with him.

“I need only try to communicate,” he said, placing his hands onto the computer contact.

It was a matter of trying to reach Terminus, which was now some thousands of kilometers behind.

Reach! Speak! It was as though nerve endings sprouted and extended, reaching outward with bewildering speed—the speed of light, of course—to make contact.

Trevize felt himself touching—well, not quite touching, but sensing—well, not quite sensing, but—it didn’t matter, for there wasn’t a word for it.

He was aware of Terminus within reach and, although the distance between himself and it was lengthening by some twenty kilometers per second, contact persisted as though planet and ship were motionless and separated by a few meters.

He said nothing. He clamped shut. He was merely testing the principle of communication; he was not actively communicating.

Out beyond, eight parsecs away, was Anacreon, the nearest large planet—in their backyard, by Galactic standards. To send a message by the same light-speed system that had just worked for Terminus—and to receive an answer as well—would take fifty-two years.

Reach for Anacreon! Think Anacreon! Think it as clearly as you can. You know its position relative to Terminus and the Galactic core; you’ve studied its planetography and history; you’ve solved military problems where it was necessary to recapture Anacreon (in the impossible case—these days—that it was taken by an enemy).

Space! You’ve been on Anacreon. Picture it! Picture it! You will sense being on it via hyper-relay.

Nothing! His nerve endings quivered and came to rest nowhere.

Trevize pulled loose. “There’s no hyper-relay on board the Far Star, Janov. I’m positive. —And if I hadn’t followed your suggestion, I wonder how long it would have taken me to reach this point.”

Pelorat, without moving a facial muscle, positively glowed. “I’m so pleased to have been of help. Does this mean we Jump?”

“No, we still wait two more days, to be safe. We have to get away from mass, remember? —Ordinarily, considering that I have a new and untried ship with which I am thoroughly unacquainted, it would probably take me two days to calculate the exact procedure—the proper hyperthrust for the first Jump, in particular. I have a feeling, though, the computer will do it all.”

“Dear me! That leaves us facing a rather boring stretch of time, it seems to me.”

“Boring?” Trevize smiled broadly. “Anything but! You and I, Janov, are going to talk about Earth.”

Pelorat said, “Indeed? You are trying to please an old man? That is kind of you. Really it is.”

“Nonsense! I’m trying to please myself. Janov, you have made a convert. As a result of what you have told me, I realize that Earth is the most important and the most devouringly interesting object in the Universe.”

2.

It must surely have struck Trevize at the moment that Pelorat had presented his view of Earth. It was only because his mind was reverberating with the problem of the hyper-relay that he hadn’t responded at once. And the instant the problem had gone, he had responded.

Perhaps the one statement of Hari Seldon’s that was most often repeated was his remark concerning the Second Foundation being “at the other end of the Galaxy” from Terminus. Seldon had even named the spot. It was to be “at Star’s End.”

This had been included in Gaal Dornick’s account of the day of the trial before the Imperial court. “The other end of the Galaxy”—those were the words Seldon had used to Dornick and ever since that day their significance had been debated.

What was it that connected one end of the Galaxy with “the other end”? Was it a straight line, a spiral, a circle, or what?

And now, luminously, it was suddenly clear to Trevize that it was no line and no curve that should—or could—be drawn on the map of the Galaxy. It was more subtle than that.

It was perfectly clear that the one end of the Galaxy was Terminus. It was at the edge of the Galaxy, yes— our Foundation’s edge—which gave the word “end” a literal meaning. It was, however, also the newest world of the Galaxy at the time Seldon was speaking, a world that was about to be founded, that had not as yet been in existence for a single moment.

What would be the other end of the Galaxy, in that light? The other Foundation’s edge? Why, the oldest world of the Galaxy? And according to the argument Pelorat had presented—without knowing what he was presenting—that could only be Earth. The Second Foundation might well be on Earth.

Yet Seldon had said the other end of the Galaxy was “at Star’s End.” Who could say he was not speaking metaphorically? Trace the history of humanity backward as Pelorat did and the line would stretch back from each