Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

“Good. Where’s Janov?”

“He’s with Fallom.”

“Very well. Go and take over. I want to talk to him.”

Trevize was still studying the planetary surface when Pelorat walked in, clearing his throat to announce his presence. He said, “Is anything wrong, Golan?”

“Not exactly wrong, Janov. I’m just uncertain. This is a peculiar world and I don’t know what happened to it. The seas must have been extensive, judging from the basins left behind, but they were shallow. As nearly as I can tell from the traces left behind, this was a world of desalinization and canals—or perhaps the seas weren’t very salty. If they weren’t very salty, that would account for the absence of extensive salt flats in the basins. Or else, when the ocean was lost, the salt content was lost with it—which certainly makes it look like a human deed.”

Pelorat said hesitantly, “Excuse my ignorance about such things, Golan, but does any of this matter as far as what we are looking for is concerned?”

“I suppose not, but I can’t help being curious. If I knew just how this planet was terraformed into human habitability and what it was like before terraforming, then perhaps I would understand what has happened to it after it was abandoned—or just before, perhaps. And if we did know what happened to it, we might be forewarned against unpleasant surprises.”

“What kind of surprises? It’s a dead world, isn’t it?”

“Dead enough. Very little water; thin, unbreathable atmosphere; and Bliss detects no signs of mental activity.”

“That should settle it, I should think.”

“Absence of mental activity doesn’t necessarily imply lack of life.”

“It must surely imply lack of dangerous life.”

“I don’t know. —But that’s not what I want to consult you about. There are two cities that might do for our first inspection. They seem to be in excellent shape; all the cities do. Whatever destroyed the air and oceans did not seem to touch the cities. Anyway, those two cities are particularly large. The larger, however, seems to be short on empty space. There are spaceports far in the outskirts but nothing in the city itself. The one not so large does have empty space, so it will be easier to come down in its midst, though not in formal spaceports—but then, who would care about that?”

Pelorat grimaced. “Do you want me to make the decision, Golan?”

“No, I’ll make the decision. I just want your thoughts.”

“For what they’re worth, a large sprawling city is likely to be a commercial or manufacturing center. A smaller city with open space is likely to be an administrative center. It’s the administrative center we’d want. Does it have monumental buildings?”

“What do you mean by a monumental building?”

Pelorat smiled his tight little stretching of the lips. “I scarcely know. Fashions change from world to world and from time to time. I suspect, though, that they always look large, useless, and expensive. —Like the place where we were on Comporellon.”

Trevize smiled in his turn. “It’s hard to tell looking straight down, and when I get a sideways glance as we approach or leave, it’s too confusing. Why do you prefer the administrative center?”

“That’s where we’re likely to find the planetary museum, library, archives, university, and so on.”

“Good. That’s where we’ll go, then; the smaller city. And maybe we’ll find something. We’ve had two misses, but maybe we’ll find something this time.”

“Perhaps it will be three times lucky.”

Trevize raised his eyebrows. “Where did you get that phrase?”

“It’s an old one,” said Pelorat. “I found it in an ancient legend. It means success on the third try, I should think.”

“That sounds right,” said Trevize. “Very well, then—three times lucky, Janov.”

Trevize looked grotesque in his space suit. The only part of him that remained outside were his holsters—not the ones that he strapped around his hips ordinarily, but more substantial ones that were part of his suit. Carefully, he inserted the blaster in the right-hand holster, the neuronic whip in the left. Again, they had been recharged and this time, he thought grimly, nothing would take them away from him.

Bliss smiled. “Are you going to carry weapons even on a world without air or—Never mind! I won’t question your decisions.”

Trevize said, “Good!” and turned to help Pelorat adjust his helmet, before donning his own.

Pelorat, who had never worn a space suit before, said, rather plaintively, “Will I really be able to breathe in this thing, Golan?”

“I promise you,” said Trevize.

Bliss watched as the final joints were sealed, her arm about Fallom’s shoulder. The young Solarian stared at the two space-suited figures in obvious alarm. She was trembling, and Bliss’s arm squeezed her gently and reassuringly.

The airlock door opened, and the two stepped inside, their bloated arms waving a farewell. It closed. The mainlock door opened and they stepped clumsily onto the soil of a dead world.

It was dawn. The sky was clear, of course, and purplish in color, but the sun had not yet risen. Along the lighter horizon where the sun would come, there was a slight haze.

Pelorat said, “It’s cold.”

“Do you feel cold?” said Trevize, with surprise. The suits were well insulated and if there was a problem, now and then, it was with the need for getting rid of body heat.

Pelorat said, “Not at all, but look—” His radioed voice sounded clear in Trevize’s ear, and his finger pointed.

In the purplish light of dawn, the crumbling stone front of the building they were approaching was sheathed in hoar frost.

Trevize said, “With a thin atmosphere, it would get colder at night than you would expect, and warmer in the day. Right now it’s the coldest part of the day and it should take several hours before it gets too hot for us to remain in the sun.”

As though the word had been a cabalistic incantation, the rim of the sun appeared above the horizon.

“Don’t look at it,” said Trevize conversationally. “Your face-plate is reflective and ultraviolet-opaque, but it would still be dangerous.”

He turned his back to the rising sun and let his long shadow fall on the building. The sunlight was causing the frost to disappear, even as he watched. For a few moments, the wall looked dark with dampness and then that disappeared, too.

Trevize said, “The buildings don’t look as good down here as they looked from the sky. They’re cracked and crumbling. That’s the result of the temperature change, I suppose, and of having the water traces freeze and melt each night and day for maybe as much as twenty thousand years.”

Pelorat said, “There are letters engraved in the stone above the entrance, but crumbling has made them difficult to read.”

“Can you make it out, Janov?”

“A financial institution of some sort. At least I make out a word which may be ‘bank.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“A building in which assets were stored, withdrawn, traded, invested, loaned—if it’s what I think it is.”

“A whole building devoted to it? No computers?”

“Without computers taking over altogether.”

Trevize shrugged. He did not find the details of ancient history inspiring.

They moved about, with increasing haste, spending less time at each building. The silence, the deadness , was completely depressing. The slow millennial-long collapse into which they had intruded made the place seem like the skeleton of a city, with everything gone but the bones.

They were well up in the temperate zone, but Trevize imagined he could feel the heat of the sun on his back.