Foundation and Earth (43 page)

Trevize followed, sprayed the rim of the lock with his toned-down blaster. He sprayed the steps, too, once they had lowered. He then signaled the close of the lock and kept on spraying till they were totally enclosed.

Trevize said, “We’re in the lock, Bliss. We’ll stay here a few minutes. Continue to do nothing!”

Bliss’s voice said, “Give me a hint. Are you all right? How is Pel?”

Pel said, “I’m here, Bliss, and perfectly well. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“If you say so, Pel, but there’ll have to be explanations later. I hope you know that.”

“It’s a promise,” said Trevize, and activated the lock light.

The two space-suited figures faced each other.

Trevize said, “We’re pumping out all the planetary air we can, so let’s just wait till that’s done.”

“What about the ship air? Are we going to let that in?”

“Not for a while. I’m as anxious to get out of the space suit as you are, Janov. I just want to make sure that we get rid of any spores that have entered with us—or upon us.”

By the not entirely satisfactory illumination of the lock light, Trevize turned his blaster on the inner meeting of lock and hull, spraying the heat methodically along the floor, up and around, and back to the floor.

“Now you, Janov.”

Pelorat stirred uneasily, and Trevize said, “You may feel warm. It shouldn’t be any worse than that. If it grows uncomfortable, just say so.”

He played the invisible beam over the face-plate, the edges particularly, then, little by little, over the rest of the space suit.

He muttered, “Lift your arms, Janov.” Then, “Rest your arms on my shoulder, and lift one foot—I’ve got to do the soles—now the other. —Are you getting too warm?”

Pelorat said, “I’m not exactly bathed in cool breezes, Golan.”

“Well, then, give me a taste of my own medicine. Go over me.”

“I’ve never held a blaster.”

“You
must
hold it. Grip it so, and, with your thumb, push that little knob—and squeeze the holster tightly. Right. —Now play it over my face-plate. Move it steadily, Janov, don’t let it linger in one place too long. Over the rest of the helmet, then down the cheek and neck.”

He kept up the directions, and when he had been heated everywhere and was in an uncomfortable perspiration as a result, he took back the blaster and studied the energy level.

“More than half gone,” he said, and sprayed the interior of the lock methodically, back and forth over the wall, till the blaster was emptied of its charge, having
itself heated markedly through its rapid and sustained discharge. He then restored it to its holster.

Only then did he signal for entry into the ship. He welcomed the hiss and feel of air coming into the lock as the inner door opened. Its coolness and its convective powers would carry off the warmth of the space suit far more quickly than radiation alone would do. It might have been imagination, but he felt the cooling effect at once. Imagination or not, he welcomed that, too.

“Off with your suit, Janov, and leave it out here in the lock,” said Trevize.

“If you don’t mind,” said Pelorat, “a shower is what I would like to have before anything else.”

“Not before anything else. In fact, before that, and before you can empty your bladder, even, I suspect you will have to talk to Bliss.”

Bliss was waiting for them, of course, and with a look of concern on her face. Behind her, peeping out, was Fallom, with her hands clutching firmly at Bliss’s left arm.

“What happened?” Bliss asked severely. “What’s been going on?”

“Guarding against infection,” said Trevize dryly, “so I’ll be turning on the ultraviolet radiation. Break out the dark glasses. Please don’t delay.”

With ultraviolet added to the wall illumination, Trevize took off his moist garments one by one and shook them out, turning them in one direction and another.

“Just a precaution,” he said. “You do it, too, Janov. —And, Bliss, I’ll have to peel altogether. If that will make you uncomfortable, step into the next room.”

Bliss said, “It will neither make me uncomfortable, nor embarrass me. I have a good notion of what you look like, and it will surely present me with nothing new. —What infection?”

“Just a little something that, given its own way,”
said Trevize, with a deliberate air of indifference, “could do great damage to humanity, I think.”

IT WAS ALL DONE. THE ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT HAD done its part. Officially, according to the complex films of information and instructions that had come with the
Far Star
when Trevize had first gone aboard back on Terminus, the light was there precisely for purposes of disinfection. Trevize suspected, however, that the temptation was always there, and sometimes yielded to, to use it for developing a fashionable tan for those who were from worlds where tans were fashionable. The light was, however, disinfecting, however used.

They took the ship up into space and Trevize maneuvered it as close to Melpomenia’s sun as he might without making them all unpleasantly uncomfortable, turning and twisting the vessel so as to make sure that its entire surface was drenched in ultraviolet.

Finally, they rescued the two space suits that had been left in the lock and examined them until even Trevize was satisfied.

“All that,” said Bliss, at last, “for moss. Isn’t that what you said it was, Trevize? Moss?”

“I call it moss,” said Trevize, “because that’s what it reminded me of. I’m not a botanist, however. All I can say is that it’s intensely green and can probably make do on very little light-energy.”

“Why very little?”

“The moss is sensitive to ultraviolet and can’t grow, or even survive, in direct illumination. Its spores are everywhere and it grows in hidden corners, in cracks in statuary, on the bottom surface of structures, feeding on the energy of scattered photons of light wherever there is a source of carbon dioxide.”

Bliss said, “I take it you think they’re dangerous.”

“They might well be. If some of the spores were
clinging to us when we entered, or swirled in with us, they would find illumination in plenty without the harmful ultraviolet. They would find ample water and an unending supply of carbon dioxide.”

“Only 0.03 percent of our atmosphere,” said Bliss.

“A great deal to them—and 4 percent in our exhaled breath. What if spores grew in our nostrils, and on our skin? What if they decomposed and destroyed our food? What if they produced toxins that killed us? Even if we labored to kill them but left some spores alive, they would be enough, when carried to another world by us, to infest it, and from there be carried to other worlds. Who knows what damage they might do?”

Bliss shook her head. “Life is not necessarily dangerous because it is different. You are so ready to kill.”

“That’s Gaia speaking,” said Trevize.

“Of course it is, but I hope I make sense, nevertheless. The moss is adapted to the conditions of this world. Just as it makes use of light in small quantities but is killed by large; it makes use of occasional tiny whiffs of carbon dioxide and may be killed by large amounts. It may not be capable of surviving on any world but Melpomenia.”

“Would you want me to take a chance on that?” demanded Trevize.

Bliss shrugged. “Very well. Don’t be defensive. I see your point. Being an Isolate, you probably had no choice but to do what you did.”

Trevize would have answered, but Fallom’s clear high-pitched voice broke in, in her own language.

Trevize said to Pelorat, “What’s she saying?”

Pelorat began, “What Fallom is saying—”

Fallom, however, as though remembering a moment too late that her own language was not easily understood, began again. “Was there Jemby there where you were?”

The words were pronounced meticulously, and Bliss beamed. “Doesn’t she speak Galactic well? And in almost no time.”

Trevize said, in a low voice, “I’ll mess it up if I try, but you explain to her, Bliss, that we found no robots on the planet.”

“I’ll explain it,” said Pelorat. “Come, Fallom.” He placed a gentle arm about the youngester’s shoulders. “Come to our room and I’ll get you another book to read.”

“A book? About Jemby?”

“Not exactly—” And the door closed behind them.

“You know,” said Trevize, looking after them impatiently, “we waste our time playing nursemaid to that child.”

“Waste? In what way does it interfere with your search for Earth, Trevize? —In no way. Playing nursemaid establishes communication, however, allays fear, supplies love. Are these achievements nothing?”

“That’s Gaia speaking again.”

“Yes,” said Bliss. “Let us be practical, then. We have visited three of the old Spacer worlds and we have gained nothing.”

Trevize nodded. “True enough.”

“In fact, we have found each one dangerous, haven’t we? On Aurora, there were feral dogs; on Solaria, strange and dangerous human beings; on Melpomenia, a threatening moss. Apparently, then, when a world is left to itself, whether it contains human beings or not, it becomes dangerous to the interstellar community.”

“You can’t consider that a general rule.”

“Three out of three certainly seems impressive.”

“And how does it impress you, Bliss?”

“I’ll tell you. Please listen to me with an open mind. If you have millions of interacting worlds in the Galaxy, as is, of course, the actual case, and if each is made up entirely of Isolates, as they are, then on each world, human beings are dominant and can force their will on nonhuman life-forms, on the inanimate geological background, and even on each other. The Galaxy is, then, a very primitive and fumbling and misfunctioning
Galaxia. The beginnings of a unit. Do you see what I mean?”

“I see what you’re trying to say—but that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you when you’re done saying it.”

“Just listen to me. Agree or not, as you please, but listen. The only way the Galaxy will work is as a proto-Galaxia, and the less proto and the more Galaxia, the better. The Galactic Empire was an attempt at a strong proto-Galaxia, and when it fell apart, times grew rapidly worse and there was the constant drive to strengthen the proto-Galaxia concept. The Foundation Confederation is such an attempt. So was the Mule’s Empire. So is the Empire the Second Foundation is planning. But even if there were no such Empires or Confederations; even if the entire Galaxy were in turmoil, it would be a connected turmoil, with each world interacting, even if only hostilely, with every other. That would, in itself, be a kind of union and it would not yet be the worst case.”

“What would be the worst, then?”

“You know the answer to that, Trevize. You’ve seen it. If a human-inhabited world breaks up completely, is truly Isolate, and if it loses all interaction with other human worlds, it develops—malignantly.”

“A cancer, then?”

“
Yes
. Isn’t Solaria just that? Its hand is against all worlds. And on it, the hand of each individual is against those of all others. You’ve seen it. And if human beings disappear altogether, the last trace of discipline goes. The each-against-each becomes unreasoning, as with the dogs, or is merely an elemental force as with the moss. You see, I suppose, that the closer we are to Galaxia, the better the society. Why, then, stop at anything short of Galaxia?”

For a while, Trevize stared silently at Bliss. “I’m thinking about it. But why this assumption that dosage is a one-way thing; that if a little is good, a lot is better, and all there is is best of all? Didn’t you yourself point
out that it’s possible the moss is adapted to very little carbon dioxide so that a plentiful supply might kill it? A human being two meters tall is better off than one who is one meter tall; but is also better off than one who is three meters tall. A mouse isn’t better off, if it is expanded to the size of an elephant. He wouldn’t live. Nor would an elephant be better off reduced to the size of a mouse.

“There’s natural size, a natural complexity, some optimum quality for everything, whether star or atom, and it’s certainly true of living things and living societies. I don’t say the old Galactic Empire was ideal, and I can certainly see flaws in the Foundation Confederation, but I’m not prepared to say that because total Isolation is bad, total Unification is good. The extremes may both be equally horrible, and an old-fashioned Galactic Empire, however imperfect, may be the best we can do.”

Bliss shook her head. “I wonder if you believe yourself, Trevize. Are you going to argue that a virus and a human being are equally unsatisfactory, and wish to settle for something in-between—like a slime mold?”

“No. But I might argue that a virus and a superhuman being are equally unsatisfactory, and wish to settle for something in-between—like an ordinary person. —There is, however, no point in arguing. I will have my solution when I find Earth. On Melpomenia, we found the co-ordinates of forty-seven other Spacer worlds.”

“And you’ll visit them all?”

“Every one, if I have to.”

“Risking the dangers on each.”

“Yes, if that’s what it takes to find Earth.”

Pelorat had emerged from the room within which he had left Fallom, and seemed about to say something when he was caught up in the rapid-fire exchange between Bliss and Trevize. He stared from one to the other as they spoke in turn.

“How long would it take?” asked Bliss.

“However long it takes,” said Trevize, “and we might find what we need on the next one we visit.”

“Or on none of them.”

“That we cannot know till we search.”

And now, at last, Pelorat managed to insert a word. “But why look, Golan? We have the answer.”

Trevize waved an impatient hand in the direction of Pelorat, checked the motion, turned his head, and said blankly, “What?”

“I said we have the answer. I tried to tell you this on Melpomenia at least five times, but you were so wrapped up in what you were doing—”

“What answer do we have? What are you talking about?”

“About
Earth
. I think we know where Earth is.”