Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge

“At least you can still reason, Janov, my friend—you can still be tranquil. My nerves seem to be forcing their way through whatever tranquilization they have put us under. I have an extraordinary desire to stand up and pace. Why doesn’t that blasted ship arrive?”

Pelorat said, “I am a man of passivity, Golan. I have spent my life doubled over records while waiting for other records to arrive. I do nothing but wait. You are a man of action and you are in deep pain when action is impossible.”

Trevize felt some of his tension leave. He muttered, “I underestimate your good sense, Janov.”

“No, you don’t,” said Pelorat placidly, “but even a naïve academic can sometimes make sense out of life.”

“And even the cleverest politician can sometimes fail to do so.”

“I didn’t say that, Golan.”

“No, but I did. —So let me become active. I can still observe. The approaching ship is close enough to seem distinctly primitive.”

“Seem?”

Trevize said, “If it’s the product of nonhuman minds and hands, what may seem primitive may, in actual fact, be merely nonhuman.”

“Do you think it might be a nonhuman artifact?” asked Pelorat, his face reddening slightly.

“I can’t tell. I suspect that artifacts, however much they may vary from culture to culture, are never quite as plastic as products of genetic differences might be.”

“That’s just a guess on your part. All we know are different cultures. We don’t know different intelligent species and therefore have no way of judging how different artifacts might be.”

“Fish, dolphins, penguins, squids, even the ambiflexes, which are not of Earthly origin—assuming the others are—all solve the problem of motion through a viscous medium by streamlining, so that their appearances are not as different as their genetic makeup might lead one to believe. It might be so with artifacts.”

“The squid’s tentacles and the ambiflex’s helical vibrators,” responded Pelorat, “are enormously different from each other, and from the fins, flippers, and limbs of vertebrates. It might be so with artifacts.”

“In any case,” said Trevize, “I feel better. Talking nonsense with you, Janov, quiets my nerves. And I suspect we’ll know what we’re getting into soon, too. The ship is not going to be able to dock with ours and whatever is on it will come across on an old-fashioned tether—or we will somehow be urged to cross to it on one—since the unilock will be useless. —Unless some nonhuman will use some other system altogether.”

“How big is the ship?”

“Without being able to use the ship’s computer to calculate the distance of the ship by radar, we can’t possibly know the size.”

A tether snaked out toward the Far Star .

Trevize said, “Either there’s a human aboard or nonhumans use the same device. Perhaps nothing but a tether can possibly work.”

“They might use a tube,” said Pelorat, “or a horizontal ladder.”

“Those are inflexible things. It would be far too complicated to try to make contact with those. You need something that combines strength and flexibility.”

The tether made a dull clang on the Far Star as the solid hull (and consequently the air within) was set to vibrating. There was the usual slithering as the other ship made the fine adjustments of speed required to bring the two into a common velocity. The tether was motionless relative to both.

A black dot appeared on the hull of the other ship and expanded like the pupil of an eye.

Trevize grunted. “An expanding diaphragm, instead of a sliding panel.”

“Nonhuman?”

“Not necessarily, I suppose. But interesting.”

A figure emerged.

Pelorat’s lips tightened for a moment and then he said in a disappointed voice, “Too bad. Human.”

“Not necessarily,” said Trevize calmly. “All we can make out is that there seem to be five projections. That could be a head, two arms, and two legs—but it might not be. —Wait!”

“What?”

“It moves more rapidly and smoothly than I expected. —Ah!”

“What?”

“There’s some sort of propulsion. It’s not rocketry, as nearly as I can tell, but neither is it hand over hand. Still, not necessarily human.”

There seemed an incredibly long wait despite the quick approach of the figure along the tether, but there was finally the noise of contact.

Trevize said, “It’s coming in, whatever it is. My impulse is to tackle it the minute it appears.” He balled a fist.

“I think we had better relax,” said Pelorat. “It may be stronger than we. It can control our minds. There are surely others on the ship. We had better wait till we know more about what we are facing.”

“You grow more and more sensible by the minute, Janov,” said Trevize, “and I, less and less.”

They could hear the airlock moving into action and finally the figure appeared inside the ship.

“About normal size,” muttered Pelorat. “The space suit could fit a human being.”

“I never saw or heard of such a design, but it doesn’t fall outside the limits of human manufacture, it seems to me. —It doesn’t say anything.”

The space-suited figure stood before them and a forelimb rose to the rounded helmet, which—if it were made of glass—possessed one-way transparency only. Nothing could be seen inside.

The limb touched something with a quick motion that Trevize did not clearly make out and the helmet was at once detached from the rest of the suit. It lifted off.

What was exposed was the face of a young and undeniably pretty woman.

Pelorat’s expressionless face did what it could to look stupefied. He said hesitantly, “Are you human?”

The woman’s eyebrows shot up and her lips pouted. There was no way of telling from the action whether she was faced with a strange language and did not understand or whether she understood and wondered at the question.

Her hand moved quickly to the left side of her suit, which opened in one piece as though it were on a set of hinges. She stepped out and the suit remained standing without content for a moment. Then, with a soft sigh that seemed almost human, it collapsed.

She looked even younger, now that she had stepped out. Her clothing was loose and translucent, with the skimpy items beneath visible as shadows. The outer robe reached to her knees.

She was small-breasted and narrow-waisted, with hips rounded and full. Her thighs, which were seen in shadow, were generous, but her legs narrowed to graceful ankles. Her hair was dark and shoulder-length, her eyes brown and large, her lips full and slightly asymmetric.

She looked down at herself and then solved the problem of her understanding of the language by saying, “Don’t I look human?”

She spoke Galactic Standard with just a trifle of hesitation, as though she were straining a bit to get the pronunciation quite right.

Pelorat nodded and said with a small smile, “I can’t deny it. Quite human. Delightfully human.”

The young woman spread her arms as though inviting closer examination. “I should hope so, gentlemen. Men have died for this body.”

“I would rather live for it,” said Pelorat, finding a vein of gallantry which faintly surprised him.

“Good choice,” said the woman solemnly. “Once this body is attained, all sighs become sighs of ecstasy.”

She laughed and Pelorat laughed with her.

Trevize, whose forehead had puckered into a frown through this exchange, rapped out, “How old are you?”

The woman seemed to shrink a little. “Twenty-three—gentleman.”

“Why have you come? What is your purpose here?”

“I have come to escort you to Gaia.” Her command of Galactic Standard was slipping slightly and her vowels tended to round into diphthongs. She made “come” sound like “comb” and “Gaia” like “Gay-uh.”