'Foundation’s Edge CHAPTER EIGHTEEN COLLISION\r'

' hitting\r\nStor Gendibal was edging toward Gaia al well-nigh as c atomic number 18fully as Trevize had †and straighta mode that its star was a audible disc and could be viewed only by means of sozzled filters, he pa enjoymentd to consider.\r\nSura Novi sat to peerless(prenominal) side, aiming up at him presently and indeed in a timorous mien.\r\nShe say softly, â€Å"Master?”\r\nâ€Å"What is it, Novi?” he asked abstr enactmentedly.\r\nâ€Å"argon you unhappy?”\r\nHe looked up at her chop-chop. â€Å"No. Concerned. Remember that invent? I am seek to squargon up whether to cash in nonp beils chips in quickly or to wait immenseer. Sh tot eithery I be genuinely persist, Novi?”\r\nâ€Å"I approximate you are genuinely brave all epochs, Master.”\r\nâ€Å"To be very brave is some measures to be foolish.”\r\nNovi smiled. â€Å"How potty a master educatee be foolish? †That is a sun, is it non, Master?” Sh e pointed to the screen.\r\nGendibal nodded.\r\nNovi prevail tongue to, afterwards an irresolute pa lend oneself, â€Å"Is it the sun that shines on Trantor? Is it the Hamish sun?”\r\nGendibal say, â€Å"No, Novi. It is a far different sun. thither are umpteen suns, billions of them.”\r\nâ€Å"Ah! I had agnizen this with my stop. I could non re change form myself believe, how incessantly. How is it, Master, that wholeness evict k right hang with the head †and to that degree not believe?”\r\nGendibal smiled ill-definedly, â€Å"In your head, Novi…” he began and, automati yelly, as he said that, he found himself in her head. He stroked it gently, as he endlessly did, when he found himself in that respect f strip a soothing touch of mental tendrils to keep her calm and unmolested †and he would thereofly progress to go away again, as he continuously did, had not something drawn him back.\r\nWhat he perceived was indescr ib commensurate-bodied in each further mentalic terms moreover, metaphori countery, Novis brain glowed. It was the easyest realistic glow.\r\nIt would not be in that location overlook for the founding of a mentalic discipline imposed from with permit knocked go forth(p) †a mentalic reach of an intensity so small that the finest receiving function of Gendibals own well-trained brainiac could just barely detect it, even up against the utter suavity of Novis mentalic structure.\r\nHe said groovyly, â€Å"Novi, how do you feel?”\r\nHer eye opened wide. â€Å"I feel well, Master.”\r\nâ€Å" ar you dizzy, unordered? Close your eyes and sit absolutely belt up until I say, ‘Now.”\r\nObediently she confiningd her eyes. Carefully Gendibal fleecy away all extraneous sensations from her consciousness, quieted her eyeshot, soothed her emotions, stroked †stroked. He left nothing plainly the glow and it was so faint that he could almost persuade himself it was not there.\r\nâ€Å"Now,” he said and Novi opened her eyes.\r\nâ€Å"How do you feel, Novi?”\r\nâ€Å"Very calm, Master. Rested.”\r\nIt was clearly too worn for it to energize each marked effect on her. He turned to the calculating machine and w relaxation methodled with it. He had to admit to himself that he and the computer did not mesh very well together. Perhaps it was because he was too used to using his head teacher straight to be able to work through an intermediary. to a great(p)er extent thanover he was looking for a channel, not a mastermind, and the initial search could be do overmuch efficiently with the friend of the computer.\r\nAnd he found the diversity of send off he suspected top executive be pre direct. It was half a million kilometers away and it was practically like his own in de signaling, solely it was untold larger and more elaborate.\r\nOnce it was located with the computers help, Gendibal could brook his mind to move over directly. He direct it outward †tightbeamed †and with it snarl (or the mentalic equivalent of â€Å"felt”) the send off, privileged and out.\r\nHe hence sent his mind toward the satellite Gaia, advent it more closely by s ever soal(prenominal)(prenominal) millions of kilometers of space †and withdrew. N both process was sufficient in itself to tell him, un s swindle overakably, which †if either †was the source of the scope of view.\r\nHe said, â€Å"Novi, I would like you to sit coterminous to me for what is to follow.”\r\nâ€Å"Master, is there jeopardy?”\r\nâ€Å"You are not to be in either way relate, Novi. I testament claver to it that you are safe and secure.”\r\nâ€Å"Master, I am not concerned that I be safe and secure. If there is danger, I loss to be able to help you.”\r\nGendibal softened. He said, â€Å"Novi, you guard al manipulate helped. Because of you, I became alive(predicate) of a very small thing it was important to be aware of. Without you, I faculty involve blundered rather an deeply into a bog and might induce had to pull out only through a bulky deal of trouble.”\r\nâ€Å"Have I d angiotensin-converting enzyme this with my mind, Master, as you once condo motive?” asked Novi, astonished.\r\nâ€Å"Quite so, Novi. No instrumental role could concur been more sensitive. My own mind is not; it is too full of complexity.”\r\nDe cast down filled Novis face. â€Å"I am so grateful I end help.”\r\nGendibal smiled and nodded †and then subsided into the mysterious fellow channel that he would fate opposite help as well. Something childish inwardly him objected. The job was his †his alone.\r\nYet it could not be his alone. The odds were climbing â€\r\nOn Trantor, Quindor Shandess felt the responsibility of front verbaliserhood resting upon him with a suffocating weight. Since Gen dibals beam had vanished into the darkness beyond the atmosphere, he had called no meetings of the Table. He had been lost in his own vistas.\r\nHad it been wise to allow Gendibal to go shoot on his Own? Gendibal was brilliant, but not so brilliant that it left no agency for overconfidence. Gendibals great time out was arrogance, as Shandesss own great fault (he thought bitterly) was the weariness of age.\r\nOver and over again, it pop offred to him that the actor of Preem Palver, flitting over the Galaxy to set things right(a), was a unsafe one. Could bothone else be a Preem Palver? eventide Gendibal? And Palver had had his wife with him.\r\nTo be sure, Gendibal had this Hamishwoman, but she was of no consequence. Palvers wife had been a Speaker in her own right.\r\nShandess felt himself aging from day to day as he waited for word from Gendibal †and with each day that word did not descend, he felt an increasing tension.\r\nIt should pass been a fleet of ships, a f lo bowla. No. The Table would not dumbfound allowed it.\r\nAnd yet. When the call finally came, he was a nap †an exhausted sleep that was bringing him no relief. The night had been assumedy and he had had trouble falling asleep to begin with. desire a child, he had imagined voices in the wind.\r\nHis travel thoughts out front falling into an exhausted slumber had been a pondering building of the fancy of resignation, a worry be could do so together with the recognizeledge he could not, for at this moment Del armi would succeed him.\r\nAnd then the call came and he sat up in bed, at a time awake.\r\nâ€Å"You are well?” he said.\r\nâ€Å"Perfectly well, prime(prenominal) Speaker,” said Gendibal. â€Å"Should we obtain visual connection for more condensed communication?”\r\nâ€Å"Later, perchance,” said Shandess. â€Å" premiere, what is the situation?” Gendibal spoke carefully, for he sensed the others recent arousal and he sensed a deep weariness. He said, â€Å"I am in the neighborhood of an inhabited artificial satellite called Gaia, whose populace is not hinted at in some(prenominal) of the astronomic records, as far as I acknowledge.”\r\nâ€Å"The institution of those who have been working to complete the Plan? The Anti-Mules?”\r\nâ€Å"Possibly, kickoff Speaker. there is the reason to ideate so. commencement ceremony, the ship mien Trevize and Pelorat has move far in toward Gaia and has probably landed there. here and now, there is, in space, approximately half a million kilometers from me, a starting time of all footing combat ship.”\r\nâ€Å"There dischargenot be this much interest for no reason.”\r\nâ€Å"First Speaker, this whitethorn not be strong-minded interest. I am here only because I am early(a) Trevize †and the combat ship may be here for the same reason. It remains only to be asked why Trevize is here.”\r\nâ€Å"Do you plan to follow him in toward the planet, Speaker?”\r\nâ€Å"I had considered that a possibility, but something has infer up. I am now a deoxycytidine monophosphate million kilometers from Gaia and I sense in the space astir(predicate) me a mentalic field †a homogeneous one that is excessively faint. I would not have been aware of it at all, but for the think effect of the mind of the Hainishwoman. It is an erratic mind; I agreed to take her with me for that very purpose.”\r\nâ€Å"You were right, then, in supposing it would be so. Did Speaker Delarmi know this, do you think?”\r\nâ€Å"When she urged me to take the woman? I scarcely think so †but I gladly took advantage of it, First Speaker.”\r\nâ€Å"I am pleased that you did. Is it your opinion, Speaker Gendibal, that the planet is the reduce of the field?”\r\nâ€Å"To as authentic that, I would have to take measurements at widely spaced points in order to see if there is a habitual s pherical counterweight to the field. My uni counselal mental try out made this seem likely but not certain. Yet it would not be wise to analyze further in the presence of the First buttocks war vessel.”\r\nâ€Å"Surely it is no threat.”\r\nâ€Å"It may be. I push asidenot as yet be sure that it is not itself the focus of the field, First Speaker.”\r\nâ€Å" alone they…”\r\nâ€Å"First Speaker, with respect, allow me to interrupt. We do not know what technological advances the First bum has made. They are acting with a strange self-assertion and may have unpleasant surprises for us. It moldiness be decided whether they have learned to handle mentalics by guesss of some of their thingumabobs. In short, First Speaker, I am facing either a war vessel of mentalics or a planet of them.\r\nâ€Å"If it is the warship, then the mentalics may be far too weak to obstruct me, but they might be abundant to torpid me †and the purely sensible weapons on the warship may then suffice to unload me. On the other hand, if it is the planet that is the focus, then to have the field perceptible at such a distance could mean enormous intensity at the surface †more than even I mint handle.\r\nâ€Å"In either case, it lead be necessary to set up a interlocking †a total ne twork †in which, at enquire, the full resources of Trantor can be placed at my disposal.”\r\nThe First Speaker hesitated. â€Å"A total network. This has never been used, never even suggested †and in the time of the Mule.”\r\nâ€Å"This crisis may well be even greater than that of the Mule, First Speaker.”\r\nâ€Å"I do not know that the Table would agree.”\r\nâ€Å"I do not think you should ask them to agree, First Speaker. You should waken a state of emergency.”\r\nâ€Å"What excuse can I give?”\r\nâ€Å"Tell them what I have told you, First Speaker.”\r\nâ€Å"Speaker Delarmi lead sa y that you are an un bear on to(p) coward, driven to madness by your own guardianships.”\r\nGendibal paused in advance answering. Then he said, â€Å"I imagine she leave alone say something like that, First Speaker, but allow her say whatever she likes and I leave alone decease it. What is at stake now is not my self-conceit or self-love but the actual existence of the help nucleotide.”\r\nHarla Branno smiled grimly, her lined face setting more deeply into its fleshy crags. She said, â€Å"I think we can push on with it. Im ready for them.”\r\nKodell said, â€Å"Do you steady feel sure you know what youre doing?”\r\nâ€Å"If I were as mad as you pretend you think I am, Liono, would you have insisted on remaining on this ship with me?”\r\nKodell shrugged and said, â€Å"Probably. I would then be here on the off chance, Madam mayor, that I might foreswear you, divert you, at least slow you, sooner you went too far. And, of course, if yo ure not mad…”\r\nâ€Å"Yes?” â€\r\nâ€Å"why, then I wouldnt want to have the histories of the future give you all the mention. allow them state that I was here with you and wonder, perhaps, to whom the reference work really be greats, eh, city manager?”\r\nâ€Å"Clever, Liono, clever †but instead futile. I was the power behind the throne through too many Mayoralties for anyone to believe I would get such a phenomenon in my own administration.”\r\nâ€Å"We shall see.”\r\nâ€Å"No, we wont, for such historical judgments go away come after we are dead. However, I have no fears. Not most my place in muniment and not about that,” and she pointed to the screen.\r\nâ€Å"Compors ship,” said Kodell.\r\nâ€Å"Compors ship, true,” said Branno, â€Å"but without Compor aboard. One of our scoutships detect the changeover. Compors ship was halt by another. Two masses from the other ship boarded that one and Compor l ater moved off and entered the other.”\r\nBranno rubbed her hands. â€Å"Trevize fulfilled his role perfectly. I\r\n cast off him out into space in order that he might serve as lightning rod and so he did. He drew the lightning. The ship that stopped Compor was split atomic number 16 footing.”\r\nâ€Å"How can you be sure of that, I wonder?” said Kodell, taking out his hollo and slowly beginning to pack it with tobacco.\r\nâ€Å"Because I always wondered if Compor might not be under due south al-Qaida control. His life was too smooth. Things always broke right for him †and he was such an expert at hyperspatial tracking. His betrayal of Trevize might easily have been the bare(a) politics of an ambitious man †but he did it with such unnecessary thoroughness, as though there were more than personal ambition to it.”\r\nâ€Å"All hypothesis, Mayor.”\r\nâ€Å"The guesswork stopped when he followed Trevize through multiple Jumps as easi ly as if there had been but one.”\r\nâ€Å"He had the computer to help, Mayor.”\r\n exclusively Branno leaned her head back and laughed. â€Å"My secure Liono, you are so busy devising manifold plots that you forget the efficacy of simple procedures. I sent Compor to follow Trevize, not because I needed to have Trevize followed. What need was there for that? Trevize, however much he might want to keep his movements secret, could not help but call attention to himself in any non- grounding instauration he visited. His advanced metrical unit vas †his strong Terminus accent †his root credit †would automatically surround him with a glow of notoriety. And in case of any emergency, he would automatically turn to earthing officials for help, as he did on Sayshell, where we knew all that he did as soon as he did it and preferably independently of Compor.\r\nâ€Å"No,” she went on thoughtfully, â€Å"Compor was sent out to test Compor. And that su cceeded, for we gave him a defective computer quite deliberately; not one that was defective enough to accept the ship unmaneuverable, but certainly one that was insufficiently agile to aid him in following a multiple Jump. Yet Compor shared that without trouble.”\r\nâ€Å"I see theres a great deal you dont tell me, Mayor, until you decide you ought to.”\r\nâ€Å"I only keep those matters from you, Liono, that it will not hurt you not to know. I admire you and I use you, but there are sharp limits to my trust, as there is in yours for me †and please dont flurry to deny it.”\r\nâ€Å"I wont,” said Kodell dryly, â€Å"and someday, Mayor, I will take the liberty of reminding you of that. †Meanwhile, is there anything else that I ought to know now? What is the nature of the ship that stopped them? Surely, if Compor is present moment tooshie, so was that ship.”\r\nâ€Å"It is always a pleasure to give tongue to to you, Liono. You see thi ngs quickly. The southward institution, you see, doesnt bother to fell its tracks. It has defenses that it relies on to make those tracks invisible, even when they are not. It would never occur to a Second backsideer to use a ship of alien manufacture, even if they knew how neatly we could identify the assembly line of a ship from the pattern of its energy use. They could always remove that knowledge from any mind that had gained it, so why bother taking the trouble to hide? Well, our scout ship was able to determine the seed of the ship that upriseed Compor within minutes of sighting it.”\r\nâ€Å"And now the Second Foundation will pass through that knowledge from our minds, I suppose.”\r\nâ€Å"If they can,” said Branno, â€Å"but they may attend that things have changed.”\r\nKodell said, â€Å"Earlier you said you knew where the Second Foundation was. You would take care of Gaia first, then Trantor. I deduce from this that the other ship was of Trantorian origin.”\r\nâ€Å"You suppose correctly. be you surprised?”\r\nKodell shook his head slowly. â€Å"Not in hindsight. Ebling Mis, Toran Darell and Bayta Darell were all on Trantor during the period when the Mule was stopped. Arkady Darell, Baytas granddaughter, was innate(p) on Trantor and was on Trantor again when the Second Foundation was itself supposedly stopped. In her account of events, there is a Preem Palver who played a key role, appearing at convenient times, and he was a Trantorian trader. I should think it was obvious that the Second Foundation was on Trantor, where, incidentally, Hari Seldon himself lived at the time he founded both Foundations.”\r\nâ€Å"Quite obvious, except that no one ever suggested the possibility. The Second Foundation saw to that. It is what I meant when I said they didnt have to cover their tracks, when they could so easily arrange to have no one look in the direction of those tracks †or wipe out the comput er storage of those tracks after they had been seen.”\r\nKodell said, â€Å"In that case, let us not look too quickly in the direction in which they may simply be wanting us to look. How is it, do you suppose, that Trevize was able to decide the Second Foundation existed? Why didnt the Second Foundation stop him?”\r\nBranno held up her gnarled fingers and counted on them. â€Å"First, Trevize is a very erratic man who, for all his obstreperous inability to use caution, has something about him that I have not been able to penetrate. He may be a limited case. Second, the Second Foundation was not entirely ignorant. Compor was on Trevizes tail at once and reported him to me. I was relied on to stop Trevize without the Second Foundation having to lay on the line open involvement. Third, when I didnt quite react as expected †no execution, no imprisonment, no memory erasure, no Psychic Probe of his brain †when I chastely sent him out into space, the Second Foun dation went further. They made the direct move of sending one of their own ships after him.”\r\nAnd she added with tight-lipped pleasure, â€Å"Oh, excellent lightning rod.”\r\nKodell said, â€Å"And our next move?”\r\nâ€Å"We are going to challenge that Second Foundationer we now face. In fact, were moving toward him rather sedately right now.”\r\nGendibal and Novi sat together, side by side, watching the screen.\r\nNovi was frightened. To Gendibal, that was quite apparent, as was the fact that she was desperately trying to run off that fright. Nor could Gendibal do anything to help her in her struggle, for he did not think it wise to touch her mind at this moment, lest he obscure the reception she displayed to the feeble mentalic field that surrounded them.\r\nThe Foundation warship was approaching slowly †but deliberately. It was a large warship, with a lot of perhaps as many as six, judging from past experience with Foundation ships. Her weapo ns, Gendibal was certain, would be sufficient in themselves to hold off and, if necessary, wipe out a fleet made up of all(prenominal) ship available to the Second Foundation †if those ships had to rely on physical make alone.\r\nAs it was, the advance of the warship, even against a single ship manned by a Second Foundationer, allowed certain conclusions to be drawn. Even if the ship possess mentalic ability, it would not be likely to advance into the teeth of the Second Foundation in this manner. More likely, it was advancing out of ignorance †and this might exist in any of several degrees.\r\nIt could mean that the captain of the warship was not aware that Compor had been replaced, or †if aware †did not know the shift was a Second Foundationer, or perhaps was not even aware what a Second Foundationer might be.\r\nOr (and Gendibal intended to consider everything) what if the ship did possess mentalic force and, nevertheless, advanced in this self-confident m anner? That could only mean it was under the control of a megalomaniac or that it possessed powers far beyond any that Gendibal could bring himself to consider possible.\r\nBut what he considered possible was not the final judgment. Carefully he sensed Novis mind. Novi could not sense mentalic fields consciously, whereas Gendibal, of course, could †yet Gendibals mind could not do so as very well or detect as feeble a mental field as could Novis. This was a conundrum that would have to be studied in future and might produce fruit that would in the vast run prove of far greater impressiveness than the conterminous problem of an approaching spaceship.\r\nGendibal had grasped the possibility of this, intuitively, when he first became aware of the unusual smoothness and symmetry of Novis mind †and he felt a somber assumption in this intuitive ability he possessed. Speakers had always been proud of their intuitive powers, but how much was this the product of their inabilit y to measure fields by straightforward physical methods and their failure, therefore, to understand what it was that they really did? It was lightheaded to cover up ignorance by the mystical word â€Å"intuition.” And how much of this ignorance of theirs might arise from their underestimation of the splendour of physics as compared to mentalics?\r\nAnd how much of that was blind pride? When he became First Speaker, Gendibal thought, this would change. There would have to be some narrowing of the physical suspension among the Foundations. The Second Foundation could not face perpetually the possibility of decease any time the mentalic monopoly slipped even slightly.\r\n†Indeed, the monopoly might be slipping now. Perhaps the First Foundation had advanced or there was an bond certificate among the First Foundation and the Anti-Mules. (That thought occurred to him now for the first time and he shivered.)\r\nHis thoughts on the work slipped through his mind with a r apidity commonality to a Speaker †and while he was thinking, he also remained sensitively aware of the glow in Novis mind, the response to the gently pervasive mentalic field about them. It was not growing stronger as the Foundation warship drew nearer.\r\nThis was not, in itself, an absolute indication that the warship was not equipped with mentalics. It was well known that the mentalic field did not obey the inverse-square law. It did not grow stronger simply as the square of the extent to which distance between emitter and receiver lessened. It differed in this way from the electromagnetic and the gravitational fields. Still, although mentalic fields varied less with distance than the confused physical fields did, it was not altogether unreactive to distance, either. The response of Novis mind should show a detectable increase as the warship approached †some increase.\r\n(How was it that no Second Foundationer in five centuries †from Hari Seldon on †had e ver thought of working out a numeral relationship between mentalic intensity and distance? This shrugging off of physics must and would stop, Gendibal silently vowed.)\r\nIf the warship possessed mentalics and if it felt quite certain it was approaching a Second Foundationer, would it not increase the intensity of its field to maximum before advancing? And in that case, would not Novis mind surely register an increased response of some kind?\r\n†Yet it did not!\r\nconfidently Gendibal eliminated the possibility that the warship possessed mentalics. It was advancing out of ignorance and, as a menace, it could be downgraded.\r\nThe mentalic field, of course, lock in existed, but it had to originate on Gaia. This was disturbing enough, but the neighboring(a) problem was the ship. Let that be eliminated and he could then turn his attention to the world of the Anti-Mules.\r\nHe waited. The warship would make some move or it would come close enough for him to feel confident that h e could pass over to an effective offense.\r\nThe warship pacify approached †quite rapidly now †and relieve did nothing. in the end Gendibal calculated that the strength of his push would be sufficient. There would be no pain, scarcely any rawness †all those on board would however picture that the large muscles of their backs and limbs would respond but sluggishly to their desires.\r\nGendibal contract the mentalic field controlled by his mind. It intensified and leaped across the gap between the ships at the speed of light. (The two ships were close enough to make hyperspatial contact †with its inevitable bolshie of precision †unnecessary.)\r\nAnd Gendibal then fell back in numbed surprise.\r\nThe Foundation warship was possessed of an efficient mentalic resistance that gained in density in proportion as his own field gained in intensity. †The warship was not approaching out of ignorance after all †and it had an unprovided for(predicate) if passive weapon.\r\nâ€Å"Ah,” said Branno. â€Å"He has tryed an attack, Liono. listen!”\r\nThe needle on the psychometer moved and trembled in its atypical rise.\r\nThe development of the mentalic entertain had occupied Foundation scientists for a hundred and twenty years in the most secret of all scientific projects, except perhaps for Hari Seldons lone development of psychohistorical analysis. Five generations of human beings had dense in the gradual improvement of a device approve by no satisfactory theory.\r\nBut no advance would have been possible without the creation of the psychometer that could act as a guide, indicating the direction and nitty-gritty of advance at every stage. No one could explain how it worked, yet all indications were that it measured the measureless and gave numbers to the indescribable. Branno had the feeling (shared by some of the scientists themselves) that if ever the Foundation could explain the workings of the psychometer , they would be the equal of the Second Foundation in mind control.\r\nBut that was for the future. At present, the defense would have to be enough, backed as it was by an overwhelming preponderance in physical weapons.\r\nBranno sent out the message, delivered in a male voice from which all overtones of emotion had been removed, till it was flat and deadly.\r\nâ€Å"Calling the ship Bright virtuoso and its occupants. You have forcibly taken a ship of the Navy of the Foundation coalition in an act of piracy. You are directed to surrender the ship and yourselves at once or face attack.”\r\nThe answer came in natural voice: â€Å"Mayor Branno of Terminus, I know you are on the ship. The Bright Star was not taken by piratical action. I was freely invited on board by its legal captain, Munn Li Compor of Terminus. I ask a period of cease-fire that we may discuss matters of importance to each of us alike.”\r\nKodell whispered to Branno, â€Å"Let me do the speaking, Mayor .”\r\nShe raised her arm contemptuously, â€Å"The responsibility is mine, Liono.”\r\nAdjusting the transmitter, she spoke in tones scarcely less forceful and unemotional than the artificial voice that had intercommunicate before:\r\nâ€Å"Man of the Second Foundation, understand your position. If you do not surrender forthwith, we can blow your ship out of space in the time it takes light to travel from our ship to yours †and we are ready to do that. Nor will we lose by doing this, for you have no knowledge for which we need keep you alive. We know you are from Trantor and, once we have dealt with you, we will be ready to deal with Trantor. We are instinctive to allow you a period in which to have your say, but since you cannot have much of worth to tell us, we are not nimble to listen long.”\r\nâ€Å"In that case,” said Gendibal, â€Å"let me speak quickly and to the point. Your shield is not perfect and cannot be. You have overestimated it and underestimated me. I can handle your mind and control it. Not as easily, perhaps, as if there were no shield, but easily enough. The instant you attempt to use any weapon, I will strike you †and there is this for you to understand: Without a shield, I can handle your mind smoothly and do it no harm. With the shield, however, I must pillory through, which I can do, and I will be unable then to handle you either smoothly or deftly. Your mind will be as smashed as the shield and the effect will be irreversible. In other words, you cannot stop me and I, on the other hand, can stop you by being obligate to do worse than killing you. I will take off you a mindless hulk. Do you care to run a riskiness that?”\r\nBranno said, â€Å"You know you cannot do as you say.”\r\nâ€Å"Do you, then, tender to risk the consequences I have described?” asked Gendibal with an air of cool indifference.\r\nKodell leaned over and whispered, â€Å"For Seldons sake, Mayor†¦Ã¢â‚¬Â\r\nGendibal said (not but at once, for it took light †and everything at light-speed †a bittie over one second to travel from one vessel to the other), â€Å"I follow your thoughts, Kodell. No need to whisper. I also follow the Mayors thoughts. She is irresolute, so you have no need to panic just yet. And the unsullied fact that I know this is ample recite that your shield leaks.”\r\nâ€Å"It can be strengthened,” said the Mayor defiantly.\r\nâ€Å"So can my mentalic force,” said Gendibal.\r\nâ€Å"But I sit here at my ease, consuming merely physical energy to maintain the shield, and I have enough to maintain that shield for very long periods of time. You must use mentalic energy to penetrate the shield and you will tire.”\r\nâ€Å"I am not tired,” said Gendibal. â€Å"At the present moment, neither of you is capable of tolerant any order to any member of the crew of your ship or to any crewman on any other ship. I can mana ge so much without any harm to you, but do not make any unusual effort to escape this control, for if I match that by increasing my own force, as I will have to do, you will be damaged as I have said.”\r\nâ€Å"I will wait,” said Branno, placing her hands in her lap with every sign of solid patience. â€Å"You will tire and when you do, the orders that will go out will not be to write down you, for you will then be harmless. The orders will be to send the main Foundation Fleet against Trantor. If you wish to save your world †surrender. A second bout of destruction will not leave your plaque un stirred, as the first one did at the time of the Great Sack.”\r\nâ€Å"Dont you see that if I feel myself tiring, Mayor, which I wont, I can save my world very simply by subverting you before my strength to do so is gone?”\r\nâ€Å"You wont do that. Your main tax is to maintain the Seldon Plan. To exterminate the Mayor of Terminus and thus to strike a blo w at the prestigiousness and confidence of the First Foundation, producing a staggering turnabout to its power and encouraging its enemies everywhere, will produce such a disruption to the Plan that it will be almost as bad for you as the destruction of Trantor. You might as well surrender.”\r\nâ€Å"Are you involuntary to gamble on my reluctance to destroy you?”\r\nBrannos toilet table heaved as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She then said firmly, â€Å"Yes!”\r\nKodell, sitting at her side, paled.\r\nGendibal stared at the figure of Branno, superimposed upon the volume of room just in front of the wall. It was a forgetful flickery and hazy thanks to the interference of the shield. The man next to her was almost featureless with haze, for Gendibal had no energy to go through on him. He had to concentrate on the Mayor.\r\nTo be sure, she had no image of him in return. She had no way of knowing that he too had a companion, for instance. She cou ld make no judgment from his expressions, from his body language. In this respect, she was at a disadvantage.\r\nEverything he had said was true. He could smash her at the cost of an enormous expenditure of mentalic force †and in so doing, he could scarcely eliminate disrupting her mind irreparably.\r\nYet everything she had said was true as well. Destroying her would damage the Plan as much as the Mule himself had damaged it. Indeed, the new damage might be more serious, since it was now later in the game and there would be less time to retrieve the misstep.\r\nWorse still, there was Gaia, which was still an stranger quantity †with its mentalic field remaining at the faint and tantalizing edge of detection.\r\nFor a moment, he touched Novis mind to make sure that the flow was still there. It was, and it was unchanged.\r\nShe could not have sensed that touch in any way, but she turned to him and in an awing whisper said, â€Å"Master, there is a faint mist there. Is it to that you talk?”\r\nShe must have sensed the mist through the small connection between their two minds. Gendibal put a finger to his lips. â€Å"Have no fear, Novi. Close your eyes and rest.”\r\nHe raised his voice. â€Å"Mayor Branno, your gamble is a good one in this respect. I do not wish to destroy you at once, since I think that if I explain something to you, you will listen to reason and there will then be no need to destroy in either direction.\r\nâ€Å"Suppose, Mayor, that you win out and that I surrender. What follows? In an orgy of self-confidence and in unjustified reliance on your mentalic shield, you and your successors will attempt to spread your power over the Galaxy with undue haste. In doing so, you will actually stationpone the urinatement of the Second Empire, because you will also destroy the Seldon Plan.”\r\nBranno said, â€Å"I am not surprised that you do not wish to destroy me at once and I think that, as you sit there, you will be forced to realize that you do not dare to destroy me at all.”\r\nGendibal said, â€Å"Do not deceive yourself with self-congratulatory folly. try to me. The majority of the Galaxy is still non-Foundation and, to a great extent, anti-Foundation. There are even portions of the Foundation league itself that have not forgotten their days of independence. If the Foundation moves too quickly in the wake of my surrender, it will deprive the rest of the Galaxy of its greatest flunk †its disunity and indecision. You will force them to unite by fear and you will feed the tendency toward rebellion within.”\r\nâ€Å"You are threatening with clubs of straw,” said Branno. â€Å"We have the power to win easily against all enemies, even if every world in the non-Foundation Galaxy combined against us, and even if these were helped by a rebellion in half the worlds of the Federation itself. There would be no problem.”\r\nâ€Å"No immediate problem, Mayor. Do not ma ke the mistake of sightedness only the results that appear at once. You can establish a Second Empire merely by proclaiming it, but you will not be able to maintain it. You will have to reconquer it every ten years.”\r\nâ€Å"Then we will do so until the worlds tire, as you are tiring.”\r\nâ€Å"They will not tire, any more than I will. Nor will the process abide for a very long time, for there is a second and greater danger to the Pseudo-Empire you would proclaim. Since it can be temporarily maintained only by an ever-stronger phalanx force which will be ever-exercised, the generals of the Foundation will, for the first time, become more important and more decently than the civilian authorities. The Pseudo-Empire will break up into armed forces regions within which individual commanders will be supreme. There will be anarchy †and a mistake back into a barbarism that may last longer than the thirty thousand years direct by Seldon before the Seldon Plan was implemented.”\r\nâ€Å"Childish threats. Even if the mathematics of the Seldon Plan predicted all this, it predicts only probabilities †not inevitabilities.”\r\nâ€Å"Mayor Branno,” said Gendibal earnestly. â€Å"Forget the Seldon Plan. You do not understand its mathematics and you cannot visualize its pattern. But you do not have to, perhaps. You are a well-tried politician; and a successful one, to judge from the post you hold; even more so, a bold one, to judge from the gamble you are now taking. Therefore, use your political acumen. Consider the political and military history of humanity and consider it in the light of what you know of human nature †of the manner in which people, politicians, and military officers act, react, and interact †and see if Im not right.”\r\nBranno said, â€Å"Even if you were right, Second Foundationer, it is a risk we must take. With proper leading and with continuing technological advance †in menta lics, as well as in physics †we can overcome. Hari Seldon never calculated such advances properly. He couldnt. Where in the Plan does it allow for the development of a mentalic shield by the First Foundation? Why should we want the Plan, in any case? We will risk founding a new Empire without it. ill without it would, after all, be better than success with it. We do not want an Empire in which we play puppets to the hidden manipulators of the Second Foundation.”\r\nâ€Å"You say that only because you do not understand what failure will be like for the people of the Galaxy.”\r\nâ€Å"Perhaps!” said Branno stonily. â€Å"Are you beginning to weary, Second Foundationer?”\r\nâ€Å"Not at all. †Let me propose an alternative action that you have not considered †one in which I need not surrender to you, nor you to me. †We are in the vicinity of a planet called Gaia.”\r\nâ€Å"I am aware of that.”\r\nâ€Å"Are you aware that it was probably the birthplace of the Mule?”\r\nâ€Å"I would want more evidence than resides in your mere statement to that effect.”\r\nâ€Å"The planet is surrounded by a mentalic field. It is the home of many Mules. If you accomplish your dream of destroying the Second Foundation, you will make yourselves the slaves of this planet of Mules. What harm have Second Foundationers ever done you specific, rather than imagined or theorized harm? Now ask yourself what harm a single Mule has done you.”\r\nâ€Å"I still have nothing more than your statements.”\r\nâ€Å"As long as we remain here, I can give you nothing more. †I propose a truce, therefore. relieve your shield up, if you dont trust me, but be prepared to co-operate with me. Let us, together, approach this planet †and when you are confident(p) that it is dangerous, then I will repeal its mentalic field and you will order your ships to take possession of it.”\r\nâ€Å"And then?” \r\nâ€Å"And then, at least, it will be the First Foundation against the Second Foundation, with no outside forces to be considered. The skin will then be clear whereas now, you see, we dare not fight, for both Foundations are at bay.”\r\nâ€Å"Why did you not say this before?”\r\nâ€Å"I thought I might convince you that we were not enemies, so that we might co-operate. Since I have apparently failed at that, I suggest co-operation in any case.”\r\nBranno paused, her head bent in thought. Then she said, â€Å"You are trying to put me to sleep with lullabies. How will you, by yourself, nullify the mentalic field of a whole planet of Mules? The thought is so ludicrous that I cannot trust in the truth of your proposition.”\r\nâ€Å"I am not alone,” said Gendibal. â€Å"Behind me is the full force of the Second Foundation †and that force, channeled through me, will take care of Gaia. ‘Whats more, it can, at any time, brush aside your shi eld as though it were thin fog.”\r\nâ€Å"If so, why do you need my help?”\r\nâ€Å"First, because nullifying the field is not enough. The Second Foundation cannot devote itself, now and forever, to the eternal task of nullifying, any more than I can spend the rest of my life dancing this conversational minuet with you. We need the physical action your ships can supply. †And besides, if I cannot convince you by reason that the two Foundations should look upon each other as allies, perhaps a co-operative venture of the greatest importance can be convincing. Deeds may do the job where words fail.”\r\nA second silence and then Branno said, â€Å"I am willing to approach Gaia more closely, if we can approach co-operatively. I make no promises beyond that.”\r\nâ€Å"That will be enough,” said Gendibal, leaning toward his computer.\r\nNovi said, â€Å"No, Master, up to this point, it didnt matter, but please make no further move. We must wait for Co uncilman Trevize of Terminus.”\r\n'