Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge

He felt the gentle wind and its temperature, and the sounds of the world about him. He detected the planet’s magnetic field and the tiny electrical charges on the wall of the ship.

He became aware of the controls of the ship, without even knowing what they were in detail. He knew only that if he wanted to lift the ship, or turn it, or accelerate it, or make use of any of its abilities, the process was the same as that of performing the analogous process to his body. He had but to use his will.

Yet his will was not unalloyed. The computer itself could override. At the present moment, there was a formed sentence in his head and he knew exactly when and how the ship would take off. There was no flexibility where that was concerned. Thereafter, he knew just as surely, he would himself be able to decide.

He found—as he cast the net of his computer-enhanced consciousness outward—that he could sense the condition of the upper atmosphere; that he could see the weather patterns; that he could detect the other ships that were swarming upward and the others that were settling downward. All of this had to be taken into account and the computer was taking it into account. If the computer had not been doing so, Trevize realized, he need only desire the computer to do so—and it would be done.

So much for the volumes of programming; there were none. Trevize thought of Technical Sergeant Krasnet and smiled. He had read often enough of the immense revolution that gravitics would make in the world, but the fusion of computer and mind was still a state secret. It would surely produce a still greater revolution.

He was aware of time passing. He knew exactly what time it was by Terminus Local and by Galactic Standard.

How did he let go?

And even as the thought entered his mind, his hands were released and the desk top moved back to its original position—and Trevize was left with his own unaided senses.

He felt blind and helpless as though, for a time, he had been held and protected by a superbeing and now was abandoned. Had he not known that he could make contact again at any time, the feeling might have reduced him to tears.

As it was he merely struggled for re-orientation, for adjustment to limits, then rose uncertainly to his feet and walked out of the room.

Pelorat looked up. He had adjusted his Reader, obviously, and he said, “It works very well. It has an excellent Search Program. —Did you find the controls, my boy?”

“Yes, Professor. All is well.”

“In that case, shouldn’t we do something about takeoff? I mean, self-protection? Aren’t we supposed to strap ourselves in or something? I looked about for instructions, but I didn’t find anything and that made me nervous. I had to turn to my library. Somehow when I am at my work—”

Trevize had been pushing his hands at the professor as though to dam and stop the flood of words. Now he had to speak loudly in order to override him. “None of that is necessary, Professor. Antigravity is the equivalent of non-inertia. There is no feeling of acceleration when velocity changes, since everything on the ship undergoes the change simultaneously.”

“You mean, we won’t know when we are off the planet and out in space?”

“It’s exactly what I mean, because even as I speak to you, we have taken off. We will be cutting through the upper atmosphere in a very few minutes and within half an hour we will be in outer space.”

Pelorat seemed to shrink a little as he stared at Trevize. His long rectangle of a face grew so blank that, without showing any emotion at all, it radiated a vast uneasiness.

Then his eyes shifted right—left.

Trevize remembered how he had felt on his own first trip beyond the atmosphere.

He said, in as matter-of-fact a manner as he could, “Janov,” (it was the first time he had addressed the professor familiarly, but in this case experience was addressing inexperience and it was necessary to seem the older of the two) “we are perfectly safe here. We are in the metal womb of a warship of the Foundation Navy. We are not fully armed, but there is no place in the Galaxy where the name of the Foundation will not protect us. Even if some ship went mad and attacked, we could move out of its reach in a moment. And I assure you I have discovered that I can handle the ship perfectly.”

Pelorat said, “It is the thought, Go—Golan, of nothingness—”

“Why, there’s nothingness all about Terminus. There’s just a thin layer of very tenuous air between ourselves on the surface and the nothingness just above. All we’re doing is to go past that inconsequential layer.”

“It may be inconsequential, but we breathe it.”

“We breathe here, too. The air on this ship is cleaner and purer, and will indefinitely remain cleaner and purer than the natural atmosphere of Terminus.”

“And the meteorites?”

“What about meteorites?”

“The atmosphere protects us from meteorites. Radiation, too, for that matter.”

Trevize said, “Humanity has been traveling through space for twenty millennia, I believe—”

“Twenty-two. If we go by the Hallblockian chronology, it is quite plain that, counting the—”

“Enough! Have you heard of meteorite accidents or of radiation deaths? —I mean, recently? —I mean, in the case of Foundation ships?”

“I have not really followed the news in such matters, but I am a historian, my boy, and—”

“Historically, yes, there have been such things, but technology improves. There isn’t a meteorite large enough to damage us that can possibly approach us before we take the necessary evasive action. Four meteorites—coming at us simultaneously from the four directions drawn from the vertices of a tetrahedron—might conceivably pin us down, but calculate the chances of that and you’ll find that you’ll die of old age a trillion trillion times over before you will have a fifty-fifty chance of observing so interesting a phenomenon.”

“You mean, if you were at the computer?”

“No,” said Trevize in scorn. “If I were running the computer on the basis of my own senses and responses, we would be hit before I ever knew what was happening. It is the computer itself that is at work, responding millions of times faster than you or I could.” He held out his hand abruptly. “Janov, come let me show you what the computer can do, and let me show you what space is like.”

Pelorat stared, goggling a bit. Then he laughed briefly. “I’m not sure I wish to know, Golan.”

“Of course you’re not sure, Janov, because you don’t know what it is that is waiting there to be known. Chance it! Come! Into my room!”

Trevize held the other’s hand, half leading him, half drawing him. He said, as he sat down at the computer, “Have you ever seen the Galaxy, Janov? Have you ever looked at it?”

Pelorat said, “You mean in the sky?”

“Yes, certainly. Where else?”

“I’ve seen it. Everyone has seen it. If one looks up, one sees it.”

“Have you ever stared at it on a dark, clear night, when the Diamonds are below the horizon?”

The “Diamonds” referred to those few stars that were luminous enough and close enough to shine with moderate brightness in the night sky of Terminus. They were a small group that spanned a width of no more than twenty degrees, and for large parts of the night they were all below the horizon. Aside from the group, there was a scattering of dim stars just barely visible to the unaided eye. There was nothing more but the faint milkiness of the Galaxy—the view one might expect when one dwelt on a world like Terminus which was at the extreme edge of the outermost spiral of the Galaxy.

“I suppose so, but why stare? It’s a common sight.”