Foundation and Earth

“Perhaps.” And then the smile that had hovered about his lips faded and he said, “Oddly enough, Bliss, I’m a little uneasy about this place. I can’t say why.”

Pelorat said, “Come, Bliss. I’ve been a home-body collector of old tales all my life, so I’ve never actually put my hands on ancient documents. Just imagine if we could find—”

Trevize watched them walk away, Pelorat’s voice fading as he walked eagerly toward the ruins, Bliss swinging along at his side.

Trevize listened absently and then turned back to continue his study of the surroundings. What could there be to rouse apprehension?

He had never actually set foot upon a world without a human population, but he had viewed many from space. Usually, they were small worlds, not large enough to hold either water or air, but they had been useful as marking a meeting site during naval maneuvers (there had been no war in his lifetime, or for a century before his birth—but maneuvers went on), or as an exercise in simulated emergency repairs. Ships he had been on had been in orbit about such worlds, or had even rested on them, but he had never had occasion to step off the ships at those times.

Was it that he was now actually standing on an empty world? Would he have felt the same if he had been standing on one of the many small, airless worlds he had encountered in his student days—and even since?

He shook his head. It wouldn’t have bothered him. He was sure of that. He would have been in a space suit, as he had been innumerable times when he was free of his ship in space. It was a familiar situation and contact with a mere lump of rock would have produced no alteration in the familiarity. Surely!

Of course— He was not wearing a space suit now.

He was standing on a habitable world, as comfortable to the feel as Terminus would be—far more comfortable than Comporellon had been. He experienced the wind against his cheek, the warmth of the sun on his back, the rustle of vegetation in his ears. Everything was familiar, except that there were no human beings on it—at least, not any longer.

Was that it? Was it that that made the world seem so eerie? Was it that it was not merely an uninhabited world, but a deserted one?

He had never been on a deserted world before; never heard of a deserted world before; never thought a world could be deserted. All the worlds he had known of till now, once they had been populated by human beings, remained so populated forever.

He looked up toward the sky. Nothing else had deserted it. An occasional bird flew across his line of vision, seeming more natural, somehow, than the slate-blue sky between the orange-tinted fair-weather clouds. (Trevize was certain that, given a few days on the planet, he would become accustomed to the off-color so that sky and clouds would grow to seem normal to him.)

He heard birdsongs from the trees, and the softer noise of insects. Bliss had mentioned butterflies earlier and here they were—in surprising numbers and in several colorful varieties.

There were also occasional rustlings in the clumps of grass that surrounded the trees, but he could not quite make out what was causing them.

Nor did the obvious presence of life in his vicinity rouse fear in him. As Bliss had said, terraformed worlds had, from the very first, lacked dangerous animals. The fairy tales of childhood, and the heroic fantasies of his teenage years were invariably set on a legendary world that must have been derived from the vague myths of Earth. The hyperdrama holoscreen had been filled with monsters—lions, unicorns, dragons, whales, brontosaurs, bears. There were dozens of them with names he could not remember; some of them surely mythical, and perhaps all of them. There were smaller animals that bit and stung, even plants that were fearful to the touch—but only in fiction. He had once heard that primitive honeybees were able to sting, but certainly no real bees were in any way harmful.

Slowly, he walked to the right, skirting the border of the hill. The grass was tall and rank, but sparse, growing in clumps. He made his way among the trees, also growing in clumps.

Then he yawned. Certainly, nothing exciting was happening, and he wondered if he might not retreat to the ship and take a nap. No, unthinkable. Clearly, he had to stand on guard.

Perhaps he ought to do sentry duty—marching, one, two, one two, swinging about with a snap and performing complicated maneuverings with a parade electro-rod. (It was a weapon no warrior had used in three centuries, but it was still absolutely essential at drill, for no reason anyone could ever advance.)

He grinned at the thought of it, then wondered if he ought to join Pelorat and Bliss in the ruins. Why? What good would he do?

Suppose he saw something that Pelorat had happened to overlook? —Well, time enough to make the attempt after Pelorat returned. If there was anything that might be found easily, by all means let Pelorat make the discovery.

Might the two be in trouble? Foolish! What possible kind of trouble?

And if there were trouble, they would call out.

He stopped to listen. He heard nothing.

And then the irresistible thought of sentry duty recurred to him and he found himself marching, feet moving up and down with a stamp, an imaginary electro-rod coming off one shoulder, whirling, and being held out straight before him, exactly vertical—whirling again, end over end, and back over the other shoulder. Then, with a smart about-face, he was looking toward the ship (rather far-off now) once more.

And when he did that, he froze in reality, and not in sentry make-believe.

He was not alone.

Until then, he had not seen any living creature other than plant growth, insects, and an occasional bird. He had neither seen nor heard anything approach—but now an animal stood between him and the ship.

Sheer surprise at the unexpected event deprived him, for a moment, of the ability to interpret what he saw. It was not till after a perceptible interval that he knew what he was looking at.

It was only a dog.

Trevize was not a dog person. He had never owned a dog and he felt no surge of friendliness toward one when he encountered it. He felt no such surge this time, either. He thought, rather impatiently, that there was no world on which these creatures had not accompanied men. They existed in countless varieties and Trevize had long had the weary impression that each world had at least one variety characteristic of itself. Nevertheless, all varieties were constant in this: whether they were kept for entertainment, show, or some form of useful work—they were bred to love and trust human beings.

It was a love and trust Trevize had never appreciated. He had once lived with a woman who had had a dog. That dog, whom Trevize tolerated for the sake of the woman, conceived a deep-seated adoration for him, followed him about, leaned against him when relaxing (all fifty pounds of him), covered him with saliva and hair at unexpected moments, and squatted outside the door and moaned whenever he and the woman were trying to engage in sex.

From that experience, Trevize had emerged with the firm conviction that for some reason known only to the canine mind and its odor-analyzing ability, he was a fixed object of doggish devotion.

Therefore, once the initial surprise was over, he surveyed the dog without concern. It was a large dog, lean and rangy, and with long legs. It was staring at him with no obvious sign of adoration. Its mouth was open in what might have been taken as a welcoming grin, but the teeth displayed were somehow large and dangerous, and Trevize decided that he would be more comfortable without the dog in his line of view.

It occurred to him, then, that the dog had never seen a human being, and that countless canine generations preceding had never seen one. The dog might have been as astonished and uncertain at the sudden appearance of a human being as Trevize had been at that of the dog. Trevize, at least, had quickly recognized the dog for what it was, but the dog did not have that advantage. It was still puzzled, and perhaps alarmed.

Clearly, it would not be safe to leave an animal that large, and with such teeth, in an alarmed state. Trevize realized that it would be necessary to establish a friendship at once.

Very slowly, he approached the dog (no sudden motions, of course). He held out his hand, ready to allow it to be sniffed, and made soft, soothing sounds, most of which consisted of “Nice doggy”—something he found intensely embarrassing.

The dog, eyes fixed on Trevize, backed away a step or two, as though in distrust, and then its upper lip wrinkled into a snarl and from its mouth there issued a rasping growl. Although Trevize had never seen a dog