Foundation and Earth

"In that case," said Trevize, "let me tell you what we're going to do with the ship."

"I know what you're going to do. It's back to New Earth and another try at the lovely Hiroko, if she'll promise not to infect you this time."

Trevize kept his face expressionless. He said, "No, as a matter of fact. I've changed my mind. We're going to the moon-which is the name of the satellite, according to Janov."

"The satellite? Because it's the nearest world at hand? I hadn't thought of that."

"Nor I. Nor would anyone have thought of it. Nowhere in the Galaxy is there a satellite worth thinking about-but this satellite, in being large, is unique. What's more, Earth's anonymity covers it as well. Anyone who can't find the Earth can't find the moon, either."

"Is it habitable?"

"Not on the surface, but it is not radioactive, not at all, so it isn't absolutely uninhabitable. It may have life-it may be teeming with life, in fact-under the surface. And, of course, you'll be able to tell if that's so, once we get close enough."

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."

99.

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?"