2.
On Trantor, Quindor Shandess felt the responsibility of First Speakerhood resting upon him with a suffocating weight. Since Gendibal’s ship had vanished into the darkness beyond the atmosphere, he had called no meetings of the Table. He had been lost in his own thoughts.
Had it been wise to allow Gendibal to go off on his own? Gendibal was brilliant, but not so brilliant that it left no room for overconfidence. Gendibal’s great fault was arrogance, as Shandess’s own great fault (he thought bitterly) was the weariness of age.
Over and over again, it occurred to him that the precedent of Preem Palver, flitting over the Galaxy to set things right, was a dangerous one. Could anyone else be a Preem Palver? Even Gendibal? And Palver had had his wife with him.
To be sure, Gendibal had this Hamishwoman, but she was of no consequence. Palver’s wife had been a Speaker in her own right.
Shandess felt himself aging from day to day as he waited for word from Gendibal—and with each day that word did not come, he felt an increasing tension.
It should have been a fleet of ships, a flotilla—
No. The Table would not have allowed it.
And yet—
When the call finally came, he was asleep—an exhausted sleep that was bringing him no relief. The night had been windy and he had had trouble falling asleep to begin with. Like a child, he had imagined voices in the wind.
His last thoughts before falling into an exhausted slumber had been a wistful building of the fancy of resignation, a wish he could do so together with the knowledge he could not, for at this moment Delarmi would succeed him.
And then the call came and he sat up in bed, instantly awake.
“You are well?” he said.
“Perfectly well, First Speaker,” said Gendibal. “Should we have visual connection for more condensed communication?”
“Later, perhaps,” said Shandess. “First, what is the situation?”
Gendibal spoke carefully, for he sensed the other’s recent arousal and he perceived a deep weariness. He said, “I am in the neighborhood of an inhabited planet called Gaia, whose existence is not hinted at in any of the Galactic records, as far as I know.”
“The world of those who have been working to perfect the Plan? The Anti-Mules?”
“Possibly, First Speaker. There is the reason to think so. First, the ship bearing Trevize and Pelorat has moved far in toward Gaia and has probably landed there. Second, there is, in space, about half a million kilometers from me, a First Foundation warship.”
“There cannot be this much interest for no reason.”
“First Speaker, this may not be independent interest. I am here only because I am following Trevize—and the warship may be here for the same reason. It remains only to be asked why Trevize is here.”
“Do you plan to follow him in toward the planet, Speaker?”
“I had considered that a possibility, but something has come up. I am now a hundred million kilometers from Gaia and I sense in the space about me a mentalic field—a homogeneous one that is excessively faint. I would not have been aware of it at all, but for the focusing effect of the mind of the Hamishwoman. It is an unusual mind; I agreed to take her with me for that very purpose.”
“You were right, then, in supposing it would be so—Did Speaker Delarmi know this, do you think?”
“When she urged me to take the woman? I scarcely think so—but I gladly took advantage of it, First Speaker.”
“I am pleased that you did. Is it your opinion, Speaker Gendibal, that the planet is the focus of the field?”
“To ascertain that, I would have to take measurements at widely spaced points in order to see if there is a general spherical symmetry to the field. My unidirectional mental probe made this seem likely but not certain. Yet it would not be wise to investigate further in the presence of the First Foundation warship.”
“Surely it is no threat.”
“It may be. I cannot as yet be sure that it is not itself the focus of the field, First Speaker.”
“But they—”
“First Speaker, with respect, allow me to interrupt. We do not know what technological advances the First Foundation has made. They are acting with a strange self-confidence and may have unpleasant surprises for us. It must be decided whether they have learned to handle mentalics by means of some of their devices. In short, First Speaker, I am facing either a warship of mentalics or a planet of them.
“If it is the warship, then the mentalics may be far too weak to immobilize me, but they might be enough to slow me—and the purely physical weapons on the warship may then suffice to destroy me. On the other hand, if it is the planet that is the focus, then to have the field detectable at such a distance could mean enormous intensity at the surface—more than even I can handle.
“In either case, it will be necessary to set up a network—a total network—in which, at need, the full resources of Trantor can be placed at my disposal.”
The First Speaker hesitated. “A
“This crisis may well be even greater than that of the Mule, First Speaker.”
“I do not know that the Table would agree.”
“I do not think you should ask them to agree, First Speaker. You should invoke a state of emergency.”
“What excuse can I give?”
“Tell them what I have told you, First Speaker.”
“Speaker Delarmi will say that you are an incompetent coward, driven to madness by your own fears.”
Gendibal paused before answering. Then he said, “I imagine she will say something like that, First Speaker, but let her say whatever she likes and I will survive it. What is at stake now is not my pride or self-love but the actual existence of the Second Foundation.”
3.
Harla Branno smiled grimly, her lined face setting more deeply into its fleshy crags. She said, “I think we can push on with it. I’m ready for them.”
Kodell said, “Do you still feel sure you know what you’re doing?”
“If I were as mad as you pretend you think I am, Liono, would you have insisted on remaining on this ship with me?”
Kodell shrugged and said, “Probably. I would then be here on the off chance, Madam Mayor, that I might stop you, divert you, at least slow you, before you went too far. And, of course, if you’re not mad—”
“Yes?”
“Why, then I wouldn’t want to have the histories of the future give you all the mention. Let them state that I was here with you and wonder, perhaps, to whom the credit really belongs, eh, Mayor?”
“Clever, Liono, clever—but quite futile. I was the power behind the throne through too many Mayoralties for anyone to believe I would permit such a phenomenon in my own administration.”
“We shall see.”
“No, we won’t, for such historical judgments will come after we are dead. However, I have no fears. Not about my place in history and not about
“Compor’s ship,” said Kodell.
“Compor’s ship, true,” said Branno, “but without Compor aboard. One of our scoutships observed the changeover. Compor’s ship was stopped by another. Two people from the other ship boarded that one and Compor
