Second Foundation

The Student's lips compressed themselves into a pale line. "Then all is over. It is the basic incompatibility with the Plan. Speaker, would I have known of this if I had lived - outside?"

The First Speaker spoke seriously, "You feel humiliated, my young man, because, thinking you understood so much so well, you suddenly find that many very apparent things were unknown to you. Thinking you were one of the Lords of the Galaxy; you suddenly find that you stand near to destruction. Naturally, you will resent the ivory tower in which you lived; the seclusion in which you were educated; the theories on which you were reared.

"I once had that feeling. It is normal. Yet it was necessary that in your formative years you have no direct contact with the Galaxy, that you remain here, where all knowledge is filtered to you, and your mind carefully sharpened. We could have shown you this… this part-failure of the Plan earlier and spared you the shock now, but you would not have understood the significance properly, as you now will. Then you find no solution at all to the problem?"

The Student shook his head and said hopelessly, "None!"

"Well, it is not surprising. Listen to me, young man. A course of action exists and has been followed for over a decade. It is not a usual course, but one that we have been forced into against our will. It involves low probabilities, dangerous assumptions - We have even been forced to deal with individual reactions at times, because that was the only possible way, and you know that Psychostatistics by its very nature has no meaning when applied to less than planetary numbers."

"Are we succeeding?" gasped the Student.

"There's no way of telling yet. We have kept the situation stable so far - but for the first time in the history of the Plan, it is possible for the unexpected actions of a single individual to destroy it. We have adjusted a minimum number of outsiders to a needful state of mind; we have our agents - but their paths are planned. They dare not improvise. That should be obvious to you. And I will not conceal the worst - if we are discovered, here, on this world, it will not only be the Plan that is destroyed, but ourselves, our physical selves. So you see, our solution is not very good."

"But the little you have described does not sound like a solution at all, but like a desperate guess."

"No. Let us say, an intelligent guess."

"When is the crisis, Speaker? When will we know whether we have succeeded or not?"

"Well within the year, no doubt."

The Student considered that, then nodded his head. He shook hands with the Speaker. "Well, it's good to know."

He turned on his heel and left.

The first Speaker looked out silently as the window gained transparency. Past the giant structures to the quite, crowding stars.

A year would pass quickly. Would any of them, any of Seldon's heritage, be alive at its end?

11. Stowaway

It was a little over a month before the summer could be said to have started. Started, that is, to the extent that Homir Munn had written his final financial report of the fiscal year, seen to it that the substitute librarian supplied by the Government was sufficiently aware of the subtleties of the post - last year's man had been quite unsatisfactory - and arranged to have his little cruiser the Unimara - named after a tender and mysterious episode of twenty years past - taken out of its winter cobwebbery.

He left Terminus in a sullen distemper. No one was at the port to see him off. That would not have been natural since no one ever had in the past. He knew very well that it was important to have this trip in no way different from any he had made in the past, yet he felt drenched in a vague resentment. He, Homir Munn, was risking his neck in derring-doery of the most outrageous sort, and yet he left alone.

At least, so he thought.

And it was because he thought wrongly, that the following day was one of confusion, both on the Unimara and in Dr. Darell's suburban home.

It hit Dr. Darell's home first, in point of time, through the medium of Poli, the maid, whose month's vacation was now quite a thing of the past. She flew down the stairs in a flurry and stutter.

The good doctor met her and she tried vainly to put emotion into words but ended by thrusting a sheet of paper and a cubical object at him.

He took them unwillingly and said: "What's wrong, Poli?"

"She's gone, doctor."

"Who's gone?"

"Arcadia!"

"What do you mean, gone? Gone where? What are you talking about?"

And she stamped her foot: 'I don't know. She's gone, and there's a suitcase and some clothes gone with her and there's that letter. Why don't you read it, instead of just standing there? Oh, you men!"

Dr. Darell shrugged and opened the envelope. The letter was not long, and except for the angular signature, "Arkady," was in the ornate and flowing handwriting of Arcadia's transcriber.

Dear Father: