Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

Bliss shrugged. “I’ll try. —But, then, what made you suddenly think of trying the satellite?”

Trevize said quietly, “Something Fallom did when she was at the controls.”

Bliss waited, as though expecting more, then shrugged again. “Whatever it was, I suspect you wouldn’t have gotten the inspiration if you had followed your own impulse and killed her.”

“I had no intention of killing her, Bliss.”

Bliss waved her hand. “All right. Let it be. Are we moving toward the moon now?”

“Yes. As a matter of caution, I’m not going too fast, but if all goes well, we’ll be in its vicinity in thirty hours.”

The moon was a wasteland. Trevize watched the bright daylit portion drifting past them below. It was a monotonous panorama of crater rings and mountainous areas, and of shadows black against the sunlight. There were subtle color changes in the soil and occasional sizable stretches of flatness, broken by small craters.

As they approached the nightside, the shadows grew longer and finally fused together. For a while, behind them, peaks glittered in the sun, like fat stars, far outshining their brethren in the sky. Then they disappeared and below was only the fainter light of the Earth in the sky, a large bluish-white sphere, a little more than half full. The ship finally outran the Earth, too, which sank beneath the horizon so that under them was unrelieved blackness, and above only the faint powdering of stars, which, to Trevize, who had been brought up on the starless world of Terminus, was always miracle enough.

Then, new bright stars appeared ahead, first just one or two, then others, expanding and thickening and finally coalescing. And at once they passed the terminator into the daylit side. The sun rose with infernal splendor, while the viewscreen shifted away from it at once and polarized the glare of the ground beneath.

Trevize could see quite well that it was useless to hope to find any way into the inhabited interior (if that existed) by mere eye inspection of this perfectly enormous world.

He turned to look at Bliss, who sat beside him. She did not look at the viewscreen; indeed, she kept her eyes closed. She seemed to have collapsed into the chair rather than to be sitting in it.

Trevize, wondering if she were asleep, said softly, “Do you detect anything else?”

Bliss shook her head very slightly. “No,” she whispered. “There was just that faint whiff. You’d better take me back there. Do you know where that region was?”

“The computer knows.”

It was like zeroing in on a target, shifting this way and that and then finding it. The area in question was still deep in the nightside and, except that the Earth shone fairly low in the sky and gave the surface a ghostly ashen glow between the shadows, there was nothing to make out, even though the light in the pilot-room had been blacked out for better viewing.

Pelorat had approached and was standing anxiously in the doorway. “Have we found anything?” he asked, in a husky whisper.

Trevize held up his hand for silence. He was watching Bliss. He knew it would be days before sunlight would return to this spot on the moon, but he also knew that for what Bliss was trying to sense, light of any kind was irrelevant.

She said, “It’s there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s the only spot?”

“It’s the only spot I’ve detected. Have you been over every part of the moon’s surface?”

“We’ve been over a respectable fraction of it.”

“Well, then, in that respectable fraction, this is all I have detected. It’s stronger now, as though it has detected us and it doesn’t seem dangerous. The feeling I get is a welcoming one.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s the feeling I get.”

Pelorat said, “Could it be faking the feeling?”

Bliss said, with a trace of hauteur, “I would detect a fake, I assure you.”

Trevize muttered something about overconfidence, then said, “What you detect is intelligence, I hope.”

“I detect strong intelligence. Except—” And an odd note entered her voice.

“Except what?”

“Ssh. Don’t disturb me. Let me concentrate.” The last word was a mere motion of her lips.

Then she said, in faint elated surprise, “It’s not human.”

“Not human,” said Trevize, in much stronger surprise. “Are we dealing with robots again? As on Solaria?”

“No.” Bliss was smiling. “It’s not quite robotic, either.”

“It has to be one or the other.”

“Neither.” She actually chuckled. “It’s not human, and yet it’s not like any robot I’ve detected before.”

Pelorat said, “I would like to see that.” He nodded his head vigorously, his eyes wide with pleasure. “It would be exciting. Something new.”

“Something new,” muttered Trevize with a sudden lift of his own spirits—and a flash of unexpected insight seemed to illuminate the interior of his skull.

Down they sank to the moon’s surface, in what was almost jubilation. Even Fallom had joined them now and, with the abandonment of a youngster, was hugging herself with unbearable joy as though she were truly returning to Solaria.

As for Trevize, he felt within himself a touch of sanity telling him that it was strange that Earth—or whatever of Earth was on the moon—which had taken such measures to keep off all others, should now be taking measures to draw them in. Could the purpose be the same in either way? Was it a case of “If you can’t make them avoid you, draw them in and destroy them?” Either way, would not Earth’s secret remain untouched?

But that thought faded and drowned in the flood of joy that deepened steadily as they came closer to the moon’s surface. Yet over and beyond that, he managed to cling to the moment of illumination that had reached him just before they had begun their gliding dive to the surface of the Earth’s satellite.

He seemed to have no doubt as to where the ship was going. They were just above the tops of the rolling hills now, and Trevize, at the computer, felt no need to do anything. It was as though he and the computer, both, were being guided, and he felt only an enormous euphoria at having the weight of responsibility taken away from him.

They were sliding parallel to the ground, toward a cliff that raised its menacing height as a barrier against them; a barrier glistening faintly in Earth-shine and in the light-beam of the Far Star . The approach of certain collision seemed to mean nothing to Trevize, and it was with no surprise whatever that he became aware that the section of cliff directly ahead had fallen away and that a corridor, gleaming in artificial light, had opened before them.

The ship slowed to a crawl, apparently of its own accord, and fitted neatly into the opening—entering—sliding along— The opening closed behind it, and another then opened before it. Through the second opening went the ship, into a gigantic hall that seemed the hollowed interior of a mountain.

The ship halted and all aboard rushed to the airlock eagerly. It occurred to none of them, not even to Trevize, to check whether there might be a breathable atmosphere outside—or any atmosphere at all.

There was air, however. It was breathable and it was comfortable. They looked about themselves with the pleased air of people who had somehow come home and it was only after a while that they became aware of a man who was waiting politely for them to approach.

He was tall, and his expression was grave. His hair was bronze in color, and cut short. His cheekbones were broad, his eyes were bright, and his clothing was rather after the fashion one saw in ancient history books. Although he seemed sturdy and vigorous there was, just the same, an air of weariness about him—not in anything that one could see, but rather in something appealing to no recognizable sense.