Foundation and Earth

“There’s more,” said Pelorat excitedly. “As far as I could check in my records there is no world in the Galaxy today with the name of ‘Aurora,’ and I’m sure your computer will verify that. As I said, there are all sorts of world and other objects named ‘Dawn’ in various ways, but no one uses the actual word ‘Aurora.’?”

“Why should they? If it’s a pre-Galactic word, it wouldn’t be likely to be popular.”

“But names do remain, even when they’re meaningless. If this were the first settled world, it would be famous; it might even, for a while, have been the dominant world of the Galaxy. Surely, there would be other worlds calling themselves ‘New Aurora,’ or ‘Aurora Minor,’ or something like that. And then others—”

Trevize broke in. “Perhaps it wasn’t the first settled world. Perhaps it was never of any importance.”

“There’s a better reason in my opinion, my dear chap.”

“What would that be, Janov?”

“If the first wave of settlements was overtaken by a second wave to which all the worlds of the Galaxy now belong—as Deniador said—then there is very likely to have been a period of hostility between the two waves. The second wave—making up the worlds that now exist—would not use the names given to any of the worlds of the first wave. In that way, we can infer from the fact that the name ‘Aurora’ has never been repeated that there were two waves of Settlers, and that this is a world of the first wave.”

Trevize smiled. “I’m getting a glimpse of how you mythologists work, Janov. You build a beautiful superstructure, but it may be standing on air. The legends tell us that the Settlers of the first wave were accompanied by numerous robots, and that these were supposed to be their undoing. Now if we could find a robot on this world, I’d be willing to accept all this first-wave supposition, but we can’t expect after twenty thou—”

Pelorat, whose mouth had been working, managed to find his voice. “But, Golan, haven’t I told you? —No, of course I haven’t. I’m so excited I can’t put things in the right order. There was a robot.”

40.

Trevize rubbed his forehead, almost as though he were in pain. He said, “A robot? There was a robot?”

“Yes,” said Pelorat, nodding his head emphatically.

“How do you know?”

“Why, it was a robot. How could I fail to know one if I see one?”

“Have you ever seen a robot before?”

“No, but it was a metal object that looked like a human being. Head, arms, legs, torso. Of course, when I say metal, it was mostly rust, and when I walked toward it, I suppose the vibration of my tread damaged it further, so that when I reached to touch it—”

“Why should you touch it?”

“Well, I suppose I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. It was an automatic response. As soon as I touched it, it crumbled. But—”

“Yes?”

“Before it quite did, its eyes seemed to glow very faintly and it made a sound as though it were trying to say something.”

“You mean it was still functioning?”

“Just barely, Golan. Then it collapsed.”

Trevize turned to Bliss. “Do you corroborate all this, Bliss?”

“It was a robot, and we saw it,” said Bliss.

“And was it still functioning?”

Bliss said tonelessly, “As it crumbled, I caught a faint sense of neuronic activity.”

“How can there have been neuronic activity? A robot doesn’t have an organic brain built of cells.”

“It has the computerized equivalent, I imagine,” said Bliss, “and I would detect that.”

“Did you detect a robotic rather than a human mentality?”

Bliss pursed her lips and said, “It was too feeble to decide anything about it except that it was there.”

Trevize looked at Bliss, then at Pelorat, and said, in a tone of exasperation, “This changes everything.”

PART IV SOLARIA

10 ROBOTS

41.

Trevize seemed lost in thought during dinner, and Bliss concentrated on the food.

Pelorat, the only one who seemed anxious to speak, pointed out that if the world they were on was Aurora and if it was the first settled world, it ought to be fairly close to Earth.

“It might pay to scour the immediate stellar neighborhood,” he said. “It would only mean sifting through a few hundred stars at most.”

Trevize muttered that hit-and-miss was a last resort and he wanted as much information about Earth as possible before attempting to approach it even if he found it. He said no more and Pelorat, clearly squelched, dwindled into silence as well.

After the meal, as Trevize continued to volunteer nothing, Pelorat said tentatively, “Are we to be staying here, Golan?”

“Overnight, anyway,” said Trevize. “I need to do a bit more thinking.”

“Is it safe?”

“Unless there’s something worse than dogs about,” said Trevize, “we’re quite safe here in the ship.”

Pelorat said, “How long would it take to lift off, if there is something worse than dogs about?”

Trevize said, “The computer is on launch alert. I think we can manage to take off in between two and three minutes. And it will warn us quite effectively if anything unexpected takes place, so I suggest we all get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, I’ll come to a decision as to the next move.”

Easy to say, thought Trevize, as he found himself staring at the darkness. He was curled up, partly dressed, on the floor of the computer room. It was quite uncomfortable, but he was sure that his bed would be no more conducive to sleep at this time and here at least he could take action at once if the computer sounded an alarm.

Then he heard footsteps and automatically sat up, hitting his head against the edge of the desk—not hard enough to do damage, but hard enough to make rubbing and grimacing a necessity.

“Janov?” he said in a muffled voice, eyes tearing.

“No. It’s Bliss.”

Trevize reached over the edge of the table with one hand to make at least semicontact with the computer, and a soft light showed Bliss in a light pink wraparound.

Trevize said, “What is it?”