Foundation and Earth

“I’m afraid, though,” said Trevize, “that there’s no giant satellite. In fact, no satellite of any kind has been detected so far. So it isn’t Earth. At least, not if we go by tradition.”

“Don’t worry about that, Golan.” said Pelorat. “I rather suspected we weren’t going to encounter Earth here when I saw that neither of the gas giants had an unusual ring system.”

“Very well, then,” said Trevize. “The next step is to find out the nature of the life inhabiting it. From the fact that it has an oxygen atmosphere, we can be absolutely certain that there is plant life upon it, but—”

“Animal life, too,” said Bliss abruptly. “And in quantity.”

“What?” Trevize turned to her.

“I can sense it. Only faintly at this distance, but the planet is unquestionably not only habitable, but inhabited.”

33.

The Far Star was in polar orbit about the Forbidden World, at a distance great enough to keep the orbital period at a little in excess of six days. Trevize seemed in no hurry to come out of orbit.

“Since the planet is inhabited,” he explained, “and since, according to Deniador, it was once inhabited by human beings who were technologically advanced and who represent a first wave of Settlers—the so-called Spacers—they may be technologically advanced still and may have no great love for us of the second wave who have replaced them. I would like them to show themselves, so that we can learn a little about them before risking a landing.”

“They may not know we are here,” said Pelorat.

“We would, if the situation were reversed. I must assume, then, that, if they exist, they are likely to try to make contact with us. They might even want to come out and get us.”

“But if they did come out after us and were technologically advanced, we might be helpless to—”

“I can’t believe that,” said Trevize. “Technological advancement is not necessarily all one piece. They might conceivably be far beyond us in some ways, but it’s clear they don’t indulge in interstellar travel. It is we, not they, who have settled the Galaxy, and in all the history of the Empire, I know of nothing that would indicate that they left their worlds and made themselves evident to us. If they haven’t been space traveling, how could they be expected to have made serious advances in astronautics? And if they haven’t, they can’t possibly have anything like a gravitic ship. We may be essentially unarmed but even if they come lumbering after us with a battleship, they couldn’t possibly catch us. —No, we wouldn’t be helpless.”

“Their advance may be in mentalics. It may be that the Mule was a Spacer—”

Trevize shrugged in clear irritation. “The Mule can’t be everything. The Gaians have described him as an aberrant Gaian. He’s also been considered a random mutant.”

Pelorat said, “To be sure, there have also been speculations—not taken very seriously, of course—that he was a mechanical artifact. A robot, in other words, though that word wasn’t used.”

“If there is something that seems mentally dangerous, we will have to depend on Bliss to neutralize that. She can— Is she asleep now, by the way?”

“She has been,” said Pelorat, “but she was stirring when I came out here.”

“Stirring, was she? Well, she’ll have to be awake on short notice if anything starts happening. You’ll have to see to that, Janov.”

“Yes, Golan,” said Pelorat quietly.

Trevize shifted his attention to the computer. “One thing that bothers me are the entry stations. Ordinarily, they are a sure sign of a planet inhabited by human beings with a high technology. But these—”

“Is there something wrong with them?”

“Several things. In the first place, they’re very archaic. They might be thousands of years old. In the second, there’s no radiation but thermals.”

“What are thermals?”

“Thermal radiation is given off by any object warmer than its surroundings. It’s a familiar signature that everything yields and it consists of a broad band of radiation following a fixed pattern depending on temperature. That is what the entry stations are radiating. If there are working human devices aboard the stations, there is bound to be a leakage of nonthermal, nonrandom radiation. Since only thermals are present we can assume that either the stations are empty, and have been, perhaps, for thousands of years; or, if occupied, it is by people with a technology so advanced in this direction that they leak no radiation.”

“Perhaps,” said Pelorat, “the planet has a high civilization, but the entry stations are empty because the planet has been left so strictly alone for so long by our kind of Settlers that they are no longer concerned about any approach.”

“Perhaps. —Or perhaps it is a lure of some sort.”

Bliss entered, and Trevize, noting her out of the corner of his eyes, said grumpily, “Yes, here we are.”

“So I see,” said Bliss, “and still in an unchanged orbit. I can tell that much.”

Pelorat explained hastily. “Golan is being cautious, dear. The entry stations seem unoccupied and we’re not sure of the significance of that.”

“There’s no need to worry about it,” said Bliss indifferently. “There are no detectable signs of intelligent life on the planet we’re orbiting.”

Trevize bent an astonished glare at her. “What are you talking about? You said—”

“I said there was animal life on the planet, and so there is, but where in the Galaxy were you taught that animal life necessarily implies human life?”

“Why didn’t you say this when you first detected animal life?”

“Because at that distance, I couldn’t tell. I could barely detect the unmistakable wash of animal neural activity, but there was no way I could, at that intensity, tell butterflies from human beings.”

“And now?”

“We’re much closer now, and you may have thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t—or, at least, only briefly. I was, to use an inappropriate word, listening as hard as I could for any sign of mental activity complex enough to signify the presence of intelligence.”

“And there isn’t any?”

“I would suppose,” said Bliss, with sudden caution, “that if I detect nothing at this distance, there can’t possibly be more than a few thousand human beings on the planet. If we come closer, I can judge it still more delicately.”

“Well, that changes things,” said Trevize, with some confusion.

“I suppose,” said Bliss, who looked distinctly sleepy and, therefore, irritable. “You can now discard all this business of analyzing radiation and inferring and deducing and who knows what else you may have been doing. My Gaian senses do the job much more efficiently and surely. Perhaps you see what I mean when I say it is better to be a Gaian than an Isolate.”

Trevize waited before answering, clearly laboring to hold his temper. When he spoke, it was with a polite, and almost formal tone, “I am grateful to you for the information. Nevertheless, you must understand that, to use an analogy, the thought of the advantage of improving my sense of smell would be insufficient motive for me to decide to abandon my humanity and become a bloodhound.”

34.

They could see the Forbidden World now, as they moved below the cloud layer and drifted through the atmosphere. It looked curiously moth-eaten.

The polar regions were icy, as might be expected, but they were not large in extent. The mountainous regions were barren, with occasional glaciers, but they were not large in extent, either. There were small desert