IMPERIAL CONFERENCE, The: The highest point in the history of the Foundations, it also marked their downfall. The First Foundation had called it to start on the first day of 1000 F.E., to form the Second Galactic Empire which they had so eagerly awaited since Dr. Hari Seldon dispatched his First Foundation to Terminus, and his Second Foundation to Star’s End. Naturally, it was a sad time for the First Foundation’s government, as they expected they would give up power permanently to the Galaxy for its own leadership. “It was time to let the Galaxy grow up,” one of Trantor’s delegates said afterward, “and leave our Foundation’s guidance behind.”

The sad times were not without danger, however, danger which started two months before the Conference itself did…

Encyclopedia Galactica,
118^th Edition, 1054 F.E.

“We’ve got a problem,” Ione said. And when Ione said that, it meant it was a big problem. Ione classified small problems as “situations”, implying that she could handle them. As the Lieutenant Governor of the Foundation, she had to handle them, and leave her Governor to lead the Foundation.

Hannor looked up from his desk, surprised to see his Lieutenant leaning forward, fists balled up on his black marble table. Her small size often belied the fact that she held great power, both physically and politically. She stood there, in a shiny grey jumpsuit, hardly the uniform of a Lieutenant Governor. Of course, she’d just returned from Yrika, one of the Foundation’s noisier provinces. Hannor beckoned silently for her to continue.

“Yrika insists on providing ‘security’ for our event. For the Imperial ceremonies.” She snorted, a snort of frustration. “Their king believes that security would help to ensure no one attempted to manipulate the finalization of our Empire.”

“And you tried to dissuade him,” Hannor’s deep voice rumbled. His beard was gray and complete – and he looked forward to retirement after the Empire replaced his Foundation.

“Well, of course I did! The Foundation is perfectly capable of defending Trantor from all comers. I’m just worried that we may have another Gilmer on our hands. The slimy bastard,” she coughed. “He’s obviously a power-grabber, and he wants to be Emperor.”

“Will he be here?” Ione glared at Hannor – of course he would. “Then there’s no danger,” Hannor replied calmly. “We’ll just have to keep his ships away from everyone else’s. The Foundation is calling this Imperial Conference, and that’s what it’s going to be – not a Foundation conference, an Imperial one. We will have our Second Empire.”

“And who to lead it?” Ione remarked bitterly. She stopped leaning on his desk and started pacing, her hands behind her back. “I tell you, Yrika’s just the first. And now that he’s made it public, other provinces like our own Smyrno will want to provide security as well – against their rivals, such as Yrika. I tell you, Hannor, we’re going to have our hands full just keeping these fleets from starting a war. It’s hard to build an Empire with guns blazing everywhere.”

“History disagrees with you, Ione. The Mule certainly had an Empire, just not a stable one. A very violent Empire indeed.”

If Hannor had been a bit younger, he might have appreciated the fine lines in her face, running from the bridge of her nose almost to the bottom of her ears. They certainly stood out as she shouted, “Violence is the last refuge!”

“Yes, yes, don’t go misquoting Salvor Hardin on me. We’ve still got time – two months before the Conference. Don’t worry, the Second Foundation has been preparing, just as we have, for this for a thousand years. This may be our last Seldon Crisis, what you’re describing here. But it’s not a crisis yet.”

“There you go, spouting about the Second Foundation again. They don’t exist!”

“Of course they do. I was introduced to their First Speaker last year.” After Hannor’s election, Ione had heard him say before. She still didn’t buy it. She never would, Hannor knew. He attributed his upcoming retirement to that very event, when the Second Foundation told him they would be taking power. He just hadn’t told her that.

“Get it off. And besides, if there’s a Seldon Crisis, they won’t hold our hand for us. We have to do it ourselves,” Ione said sourly.

Hannor smiled cryptically, “Yes, I know. Don’t worry. We’ll know when we have a Crisis. And as you’ve said, right now it’s a problem. I’ll let the Admiralty deal with security measures, but I’ll pass on your information about Yrika. That is something they’ll need to know. Anything else?”

Her face was still serious: That’s not enough, dammit. But she replied more respectfully, “Nothing for you. I can keep the Foundation together while you lead it.”

Hannor stood up, in a fatherly way. “Don’t worry, Ione, I haven’t gone into retirement yet. When the time comes, I’ll lead. But not before. A lot of things can happen in two months, Ione. We don’t know when the Crisis will happen. We don’t even know if there will be a crisis. But one thing we do know: the Imperial Conference will go forward as scheduled. No matter who shows up, with what army.”

Ione’s mouth turned upward. “By Seldon, I love that confidence you have. I often wish I had it myself.”

“You built it in me, Ione. You’ve served me all these years, and faithfully. I’ve never had to get wrapped up in the administrative details. I ask for something, and you give it to me. That’s how I can be so confident – whatever I want to happen, happens. One way or another, you make it happen. Now go on – we have a lot of planning to do for this Conference.”

Ione turned away, a bit of regret in her face. Yes, a lot of planning… towards the end of all they had known. Where would she fit into the new Empire? She wanted to be near the top – not at the top, just near it. A nice, cozy job, organizing everything for the Emperor, that’s what she wanted. But a lot of changes were going to happen, and she might not survive it politically. And she’d be damned if she retired! Ione walked out into the hallway, back to her main office from his. It was quite a walk.

She’d settle for being another Linge Chen. She’d be perfectly happy in such a role. Chen may have been the most hated of men in history, but he sure was a capable leader and administrator, behind the scenes. Ione simply decided she’d be better off serving the Empire than herself, as opposed to Chen.

At the time Ione was thinking these thoughts, another conversation was taking place. It was a conversation in a language less than a thousand understood – a language of hand signals, facial signals, and the occasional bit of telepathy. A conversation between mentalics, members of the Second Foundation.

They paused their conversation as Ione walked by, giving her the respect she was due as Lieutenant Governor. The only reason we know the conversation existed at all was because security holotapes of the conversation were made. They were not made specifically to capture such conversations – indeed, members of the First Foundation’s security forces wouldn’t have even noticed it, nor would members of the future Empire’s, had not a Second Foundationer found the tape several years later and translated it for posterity, and the Encyclopedia Galactica. Instead, the tapes were routine security measures for the First Foundation government.

Thus here do we have one of the few transcripts of a conversation between two Speakers of the Second Foundation. It would do no good to replay the tape itself – so many nuances of the conversation happened so fast that to really analyse it and break it down would take a non-Speaker several years. Even the translation is fairly “flat” in comparison to what was actually communicated between them, the translator reported – humans have so much more capability and emotional intensity than written or spoken words provide.

The two Speakers were walking down the hallway, stopping only to note the thoughts running across Ione’s face, while ostensibly stopping to bow and pay their respects to the Lieutenant Governor. They were playing tourist today. The junior one expressed he had something to say.

The senior noticed this and waived her right to speak before her junior. The junior one continued on: “She is a most dedicated individual. Fortunate, since her particular abilities would serve our Empire greatly. I would see her in a position of great authority, but not one where she would be visible to the public. She is anxious, wondering what her future will bring. Perhaps leadership of a military arm of the Empire.”

The senior replied, “She is a firm believer in using violence with extreme restraint. More a position suited to diplomacy than military, in my opinion.”

“True. But she won’t be happy shuttling from one planet to another resolving disputes. Remember she’s still bitter about the Yrika decision, one we foresaw centuries ago.”

“Where else would she best serve the Empire?” The senior disagreed. “No, a trouble-shooting position between Zones of our Empire is ideal for the Empire.”

A security guard motioned them aside threateningly. Apparently, the area they were entering was restricted. His body language was clear and loud: Move away! They nodded acquiescence.

Then the junior had a flash of inspiration: “What about leadership of internal security? Not the military, but of the Emperor’s security? She’d hunt down corruption within her own department, simply couldn’t tolerate it. And we’re going to need that kind of devotion, especially since we’ll be seriously threatened in 1082 F.F.E. (Fall of the First Empire) Military, but in a sense. Still a trouble-shooter, in a sense. And a restrained position in violence, certainly! She’d be a fine model to build a code of devoted security forces upon.”

The senior took but a moment to consider it. The junior could see her tasting the idea, rolling it over in her head, considering all sorts of ramifications, generally becoming more and more pleased with the suggestion. Finally, she answered, “Yes, a splendid idea. You should bring that up at the next meeting. I have no doubt the other Speakers would agree with you, as I do.”

At this point, the two Speakers move out of the range of the holocamera, and the translation stops. Many efforts have been made to find tapes of those two elsewhere in the building, but without success. They have not, to this day, been positively identified.

The conversation described above lasted less than three seconds, more than half of which was encompassed in the consideration of the junior Speaker’s idea.

“The more thou sweatest in training, the less thou bleedest in combat.” -- Richard Marcinko

The Admiralty estimated it could handle three, maybe four, major fleets. The diplomatic wing estimated approximately twelve such fleets, maximum, might show up. This figure irritated the Admiralty, and Foundation ship captains prayed no one would arrive.

Thirty-seven armed military navies crowded the orbital lanes of Trantor now. Fourteen of them carried ground forces as well…

It was enough to make the most genteel of Foundation officers lose control of their tongues, at least to each other. The captains had the privilege of inventing new oaths and profanities, which their crews adopted in equal frustration.

“The positronic kludge of the Galaxy!” That was one of the mildest – and most common – the Foundation ships had. And it started from the captain of the Hober Mallow IV, Jose Iscar.

“I mean, look at that! By the Space Fiend, I’ll bet there haven’t been this many ships in Trantorian space since the Great Sack!” The captain was a native of Trantor. He had a hand raised to his holoradar.

“Yes, sir,” his executive officer, or XO, replied. The guy’s still too new to this ship, Iscar thought. He won’t tell me what he’s thinking. And I hate having him tower over me.

Iscar was short for a Trantorian. Most citizens of Trantor would find acceptance as clothing models on other planets – he considered the rest of the Galaxy ugly by comparison. And of course, a fair number of women sought after him, unless there were other Trantorians where he was; they simply outshone him. Which was why he didn’t go drinking with his chief engineer. But on the whole, he just didn’t have love for ladies not from home – and those from home didn’t have love for him.

To use the enlisted crew’s slang, he thought it sucked vacuum. But at least he’d gotten shore leave with his mother.

Nine days ago, the Royal Space Forces of Yrika had shown up. His leave had ended then. Oh, he’d resisted the order – who wouldn’t? – but he knew his ship needed him. So he went, back into orbit, to assume the role of a security guard over a planet.

And so, for nine days now, they’d been running limited drills. They played wargames against other fleets, a dangerous practice even in peacetime. No shots were fired, not even test drones, but lots and lots of weapons targeting drills and evasive maneuvers. Lots of intelligence gathering on their electronic sensing equipment, too. At least once a day, the entire ship went to battle stations to test damage control ability. Three hours ago, they’d completed their second battle stations of the day. For some reason, Iscar felt like doing it again. He wanted to raise the standards for his men. Besides, all the other drills had been planned. Best to see if his own training crew could improvise.

In a loud voice, he said, “Petty Officer of the Watch, sound General Quarters. This is a drill against close contact with a UFO.”

“General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations. Up, forward to starboard; down, aft to port. Reason for general quarters is unidentified spacecraft, closing fast. This is a drill.” The petty officer of the watch, or POOW, repeated the order twice over the ship’s intercom system, complete with alarm klaxons.

Three minutes later, the captain asked, “Status of battle stations?”

POOW replied, “Damage Control Station Foxtrot has not reported in yet, sir, nor has Engineering.”

“For the love of… GET ME THE ENGINEER!!!”

The POOW flinched. He was a new one to the bridge watch, Iscar remembered. Iscar didn’t even know his name yet.

“Chief engineer, please contact the bridge.”

The captain timed it: it was eighty-four seconds before the engineer called. “Damn it, Palver, what in the Galaxy is taking your department so long to report ready? That’s four times in a row now! What’s your status?”

“Engineering department is fully manned at battle stations, sir,” the engineer replied tightly.

The POOW heard this, and announced, “General quarters time plus five: the ship is manned and ready.”

“Did you hear that, Palver? Five minutes! Petty Officer, when did Foxtrot report in?”

“At time plus three minutes, six seconds, sir.”

“Which means Engineering was the slowest check-in by over a minute! That’s unacceptable, Palver – and in the next drill, your men had better be in place in under three minutes, is that clear?”

“As transparent aluminum, sir.”

“Contact!” the radar chief reported. He’d shown up early enough in the drill to hear the captain’s direct order: Simulate an approach. “Contact bearing two-three-one mark six-five, closing fast. Will approach to within 300 meters, sir, on present course and speed.”

“Very well,” was his only reply. The XO rattled off a series of orders, however.

“Weapons, lock on target. Communications, initiate jamming of search radars. Navigator, prepare for evasive maneuvers. Radar, report all contacts.”

The captain watched this drill silently, while men and women scrambled to fill these orders. Even if the target was only being simulated on holoradars and computer screens, they had to keep an eye out for neighboring ships, real ships that were allies only by treaty, if that.

Finally he gave the order, “Secure from general quarters. Set condition two.” The POOW relayed the order. He told his XO, “Join me in my cabin. Ops,” his operations officer, “you too.”

In the crew’s mess, normally a noisy area, conversations were decidedly muted. The senior cook examined the eyes of her customers. She saw a lot of tension and stress in their eyes, especially in the way they crinkled and squinted. Of course, they’d just come off a battle drill, but usually only the greenest of men weren’t collected. The whole crew was on edge, she realized.

So she went over to the ship’s phone system and quietly called the chief security officer to the mess with two senior aides. While the aides stood to the edges of the mess, looking mean, the officer, Ensign Bryce, sat down and chatted casually with the crew. At first, they were apprehensive – why would a commissioned officer talk freely with them? – but they loosened up as he cajoled them, and told him not just in words but in looks how they felt. That’s an officer I’d like to work for, the cook thought, instead of that picayune supply officer.

As Bryce worked the crowd, calming them down, even getting in a good laugh or two, he was taking mental notes. The whole crew is frustrated, he realized. Too many drills, not enough information. The captain needs to talk to them, throw them a little more spacedust, but also tell them what’s going on planetside. He also took note that Engineering’s check-in was the slowest, because the Chief Engineer was drunk – a serious crime on a military vessel on patrol.

Twenty minutes later, Bryce was outside the captain’s cabin. He’d complimented the cook on her wisdom – as well as the quiche – and then straightened his uniform to see his commanding officer. He knocked on the door, only to hear a gruff “Just a minute” from the cabin. A few minutes later, the door opened. The XO and OPS walked past him. Operations was lost in thought, while the XO had a nastier look on his face than usual. Bryce gathered the drill had not gone as well as planned.

“Come in,” Iscar’s voice called. Bryce straightened, and entered the cabin. “Oh, hello, Bryce,” the captain began cheerfully. Bryce was one of Iscar’s most promising young officers – second in line for promotion to junior lieutenant. “Sit down.”

“Hello, Captain,” Bryce replied formally, even as he took a seat on the large couch. Captains always had the best cabins.

The captain took the hint. “What can I do for you, Ensign?” he replied in a tone of authority. This wasn’t a casual conversation.

“I’ve just come from the crew’s mess, sir. They’re nervous, sir, and on the edge.”

“And why, pray tell, is that?” the captain said bitterly. Not sarcastically, Bryce noted. That meant the captain might listen.

“Sir, basically, they’re wondering just what the conference is doing. Plus, all these drills… I know we’re theoretically supposed to be ready for combat at all times, but under these conditions the crew is not sure where theory ends and practice begins, sir.”

“Good,” the captain remarked. “That’s exactly where any military commander wants his men.” He held up a hand to silence Bryce’s protest as he stood and paced. “Ensign, there are a number of sayings that have been passed on over the millenia. One such military axiom, apparently from a Rogue Combatant or something like that, is the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat. When the men cannot tell the difference between training and war, but their commanding officer can, then a crew is at its highest functionality.” The captain took a breath before he continued.

“In officer training, they teach that the executive officer is responsible for the functioning of the ship, that the ship is ready to serve her captain at will. Do you know why? The captain must look beyond his ship, to the space around him, at the tactical and strategic situation of a fleet. Therefore, when the admiral in charge of a task force gives an order, not only will the captain pass it on to his ship to be obeyed, but the captain will understand why that order was given. Commanding officers have a lot of power – so we must temper our use of that power with understanding. It’s not well known that I have the authority to immediately refuse an order from a superior officer, Ensign – but unless I can provide a concrete reason for that superior officer to change his or her mind, I will still obey that order within a reasonably short amount of time. C.O.s are the ultimate authority, Ensign, and blind thinking becomes our undoing at this level. Because one rash action can start a war.”

Bryce looked confused – he missed the point. “But, sir, what of the men? Even the seasoned veterans are edgy.”

“Are there any signs of mutiny, Ensign?” The captain was looking him right in the eye. Oh, he hated that stare.

With complete surety, Bryce replied, “No, sir.”

“No signs of mutiny at all… in other words, they’re still obeying orders, just as they should. They’re not griping about throwing their officers out into space, without suits. Which means the mob mentality that they have is controlled. Still, it alarms you, and something which alarms one of my officers alarms me. What do you recommend?” The captain leaned back against the wall, crossing his feet casually. If Bryce wasn’t going to listen to his teacher, instead of just hearing him, then Iscar would pay him exactly the same respect: none. He sipped from a cup of water.

“I’d recommend we brief the crew on what’s going on planetside, sir. Tell them what our current situation is, reassure them that everything is under control.”

The captain smiled. Yes, this Bryce had potential indeed. “Certainly, Ensign. In fact, I was just discussing that possibility with the X.O. yesterday – we just weren’t sure when it might be needed. A few days sooner than either of us expected, which is a sign that could be interpreted in any number of ways. But I think that unscheduled drill we had earlier today brought us to this point. You’re right – this is the perfect time, while they’re still tense, but while no thoughts of active rebellion have been growing. Unfortunately, what is ‘going on planetside’ is precisely… nothing.”

“What???” Bryce’s jaw dropped in shock. He needed to see the dentist, the captain noted.

“The conference was scheduled to start today. It was delayed one day because of diplomatic niceties – namely, the fact that we have so many armed forces in orbit, encroaching on each other’s safe patrol areas. The Foundation government decided to give the situation in orbit one more day to stabilize, and the Admiralty agreed. No one wants a war, Ensign, but until we’re ready for the consequences of war, we’re not willing to embrace the alternative.” He looked meaningfully at Bryce.

Understanding dawned. “Peace – a stronger peace, because everyone knows what could happen.”

“In no unmistakable terms, Ensign. Some of those fleets actually respect and worship power. Personally, I respect it – as long as it is controlled. I’m concerned, Ensign, that some son of the Space Fiend,” and here his tone turned to anger and frustration once again, as he growled and turned to his window, “will be stupid enough to start firing on someone else. We don’t need a taste of that power first-hand, because there will be no way we can stop it!”

Bryce began to suspect that his commanding officer might not be as callused as he looked.

“Now,” the captain said, all tension gone from his face, as he walked to his door and opened it, (Damage control should look at that door chirping, Bryce thought) “I haven’t had dinner yet. How did the cook do with that quiche I ordered?”

“I hate opening ceremonies,” Ione growled. Her ornate, very comfortable red chair now felt like the debris from a construction site. “Eight hours of everybody parading before everybody else. And we have to sit through it. I’m going to the ‘fresher.” She started to lean forward.

“Ione,” Hannor said warningly, a bit too loudly. Any louder and his microphone might think it was speech time. Softer, he said, “Ione, the eyes of the entire Galaxy are about to be upon us. I’ve got to give a speech to set initial rules of order. Twenty-five million planets, each with four delegates. Even with one vote apiece, that is, per planet, it’d be such a huge electorate, that we’d never get anything done. If we don’t regulate the voting, this conference will fail. And I will not…”

“Ready, Governor?” an aide called out. Hannor and Ione quickly composed themselves into Governor Legan and Lieutenant Governor Gerrold, the ultimate appearance of professional diplomats. Ione leaned forward again, watching the crowd, over a hundred million of them in the Conference city alone!

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Great Galaxy,” Hannor began powerfully. “On behalf of the Foundation, allow me once again to welcome you to Trantor. The center of our lost Empire, and the start of the new.”

Ione, of course, knew the scripted speech as well as he did. In the unlikely event that Hannor was assassinated – and such things were not unknown, even in the First Empire’s history – Ione would have to give this same speech.

Ione listened as casually as half the masses did, but unlike them, she knew he was about to make the first legislative proposal. It was a simple one, and as she listened, the proposal appeared and raised a small stir among those still awake.

“As you can see on your monitors, I am proposing that our conference, until such time that our Empire is formally established, run at all hours of the day, on six-hour shifts,” Hannor declared. “This is why the Foundation requested four delegates from each planet. Each delegate, under this proposal, will spend six hours attending the General Assembly, as a silent voter of his or her planet’s wishes.”

There was understandably a good grumbling at that – no politician, especially in a lawmaking body, wants or deserves to be censured. No matter how much their constituents, or other politicians, may dislike them, the right to freedom of speech was not something to be taken lightly. Hannor raised his right hand to calm them.

“Hear me out, please. Every 1,000 planets shall be a voting district, and one person from each district’s six-hour session in the Assembly shall speak before the Assembly.” The grumbling lessened a bit. Ione had to smile. Hannor was always a good speaker, even with somewhat weak scripts.

“Furthermore, the Assembly itself will not be able to handle writing every detail of the law. Committees shall be formed, and no planet shall find itself excluded from all committees. Everyone shall have a hand in shaping bills presented to the Assembly.”

Hannor sipped from a glass of water. “Six hours for each delegate in the General Assembly, immediately followed by six additional hours on a committee. A strenuous pace, to be sure, but we have a lot of law to write.”

Ione shifted in her seat again. It had been Hannor’s idea, and when fully explained, made sense. She nodded reflexively, adding weight to Hannor’s speech without intending so.

And yet, the speech sounded a little off. Oh, the words were the same, but the… Ione couldn’t identify it, it just didn’t sound right.

Hannor was confident. A bit too confident, perhaps. He wouldn’t dare set himself up as the… No. Hannor was not a powerful presence, not without Ione. It wasn’t pride that made her think that, but Hannor’s enemies, especially the media. And without their support, any first Emperor would find widespread opposition to a mere sneeze, let alone any legal statements.

Plus, she realized with horror, the next Emperor would set a bloody tradition of succession to the throne. Emperor for life would not be a good job title at all.

No, Hannor said he would retire, and unlike most politicians, he did everything he could to keep his word. Like many politicians, he found he couldn’t always deliver what he’d promised, but he certainly tried.

He wouldn’t retire now, would he? Ione asked herself.

Ione had to think about that for a moment. It was possible, certainly. But it made no sense. Only Trantor knew of his upcoming retirement. If he left now, it’d be seen as a vote of No Confidence, with capital letters, in the new Empire. That could derail the Conference they’d worked all their lives for.

Ione reseated herself with a grimace. She hated this chair! Her legs were horribly restless now. And Hannor contined to drone on: “As for the leadership of the Assembly…”

Ione’s ears perked up as a commotion started behind her. Hannor’s microphone did not pick it up, but she couldn’t help being on alert. The commotion, strangely enough, wasn’t from the crowd, but from behind her! In the Governor’s booth itself!

Something was wrong, seriously wrong. Unable to help herself, Ione stood up and turned around. To stage left, the guards were tense, but stood their watch. At stage right was the reason why.

The guards at stage right were staring directly at a short, middle-aged man in dark crimson robes. There were no markings on the robes themselves, which were clearly ceremonial. And just as clearly, they were Trantorian. The guards were up close and personal with the man, who had this pacifist smile on his face. For some reason, in defiance of all common sense, the guards backed away.

Not very far, perhaps a step or two… but much too far for Ione’s tastes. She was furious. That, and the fact that this mysterious man had gotten past all security and into the Governor’s booth, meant he was a definite danger to the Governor and herself. She tapped an alert button in the floor with her foot. She didn’t know the alert had already been sounded by their security chief, and troopers were pounding towards the booth with shiny, not-so-ceremonial blasters fully charged and on a hair trigger. Personal shields also snapped into effect around the Governor’s party, noiselessly, invisibly.

All this happened in the space of two seconds, and by now the crowds, which were watching the speech, had caught something amiss. Hannor tried to ignore it, continue pleasantly with his speech, but he got worried when he caught Ione’s movement at his side. He couldn’t help glancing in her direction, starting to turn around…

Ione pulled out her personal blaster, and started to raise it… and time slowed down as she made eye contact. This man didn’t seem an obvious danger. His hands were extremely visible, he was moving slowly, not trying to reach beneath his robes for any kind of a weapon. Still, she didn’t trust this stranger. The man had Trantor written all over him, but if he was from Helicon, or one of the other martial arts planets, he wouldn’t need a blaster, only half a meter. If he was from Okah, he wouldn’t need even that – he could paralyze them with his voice. And with the microphones, the entire crowd, the Conference, would be at his mercy. “FREEZE!” Ione bellowed at full volume. No one in the audience could ignore that, as her microphone activated and carried it to the transmitters, the loudspeakers.

It was right out of a bad holocast. The bigwig politico at the microphone, just now realizing something was out of place. The security team on full alert, just standing there. A strange, unidentified, unauthorized man walking directly into their midst. And Ione, standing defiantly, angrily, in front of a plush red chair, all cramping in her legs forgotten. Ione’s back was to the audience. And the entire Galaxy watching, with less than four meters between Governor Legan and the uninvited guest.

Very quietly, very cheerfully, the strange man spoke. His sonorous voice filled Ione with a rush of excitement, soothing. If not for her age and mindset, she might have fallen in love right then and there. “Please, Lieutenant Governor, there is no need for a blaster here. I am Renauld Forska, First Speaker of the Second Foundation.” He also had a microphone, she discovered as his voice echoed out over the crowd.

Ione squinted. “Yeah. The Second Foundation, which was destroyed 600 years ago.”

“Ah, yes, by Dr. Darell and his daughter Arcadia. Who was born on this very planet, and attended to by Preem Palver fifteen years later during the Kalganian War. Preem Palver, a predecessor of mine, and also First Speaker.”

By now the crowd was really waking up. Shouting erupted in the audience. Millions of people shouting make quite a noise. Whatever in the Galaxy was going on, they didn’t like surprises.

Forska continued, “Destroyed, but only in your eyes. Hear me, all you peoples out there.” The crowds quieted a bit, obiedently, but not enough. “Hear me, I beg of you.” A bit more silence, and order was restored.

Forska stepped to the front, behind the chairs for Hannor and Ione. Ione looked at Hannor, who had this faint smile on his face. An eerie smile.

Hannor had planned this all along, Ione realized with a start. That son of a…

Forska fell silent a moment, allowing a bit of drama to appear. “My friends, I come to you from Star’s End, the last bastion of the First Empire, which stood for twelve thousand years. I come to you not to bring back the old, but to bring about the new.”

Ione barely noticed his hands moving, reassuring the crowd that everything was fine. The man went on smoothly, “One thousand years ago, Dr. Hari Seldon, a First Minister and psychohistorian, foresaw the fall of his Empire around him. He created a pair of Foundations, one at Terminus, in full view of the Galaxy, professing the physical sciences which have exceeded what the First Empire had at its greatest. This Foundation, the First Foundation, acted only with Seldon’s Plan on the periphery, just as Terminus itself was in the Periphery of the Galaxy.” Forska smirked a bit at that.

But he continued. “The other Foundation was established at Star’s End, hidden from the Galaxy, developing the sciences of psychohistory beyond anything Dr. Seldon ever dreamed of. This Foundation, the Second Foundation, acted with Seldon’s Plan at the very center, just as Star’s End was in the center of all things, watching and guiding the Plan to completion.”

“And now, truly, Seldon’s Plan is complete. We need only for you to define for us just what shape the Second Empire shall take. Indeed, we shall participate in the Imperial Conference called by our brethren in the First Foundation. It is our duty to see to it that consensus is reached, according to the laws of psychohistory. Therefore, we shall oversee this Conference as only we can, helping the General Assembly and her committees complete the laws which they favor with as minimal a resistance as possible.”

The audience didn’t quite like that, as Forska expected. Before they could protest, however, he went on. “For indeed, we truly face a Seldon Crisis here. The time for Empire is now. If we do not establish it, then the tensions each planet feels towards its neighbors will break out into war, and there will be no Empire for another three thousand years. We are so close, and have invested so much into this, that we must help.” The thought of a Seldon Crisis, which they all knew of by now, silenced them. That, and the orbiting armadas above, made everyone nervous. No one wanted this Conference to fail.

“Therefore, let Star’s End, the Second Foundation, offer an amendment to the proposal brought by the First Foundation. We propose to monitor the General Assembly and her committees, ensuring that all arguments are heard, all issues debated fairly, and all laws agreed upon peaceably and orderly. Let the First Foundation provide the physical framework. Let us provide the guidance. Governor?”

Hannor beamed. He hadn’t known what Forska was going to say – in fact, he’d never met the man before. But he liked what he heard, and it was just what he thought they’d say. “Normally, an amendment to any law must first be ratified by the entire Assembly. That is how we do it in the Legislature of the Foundation – excuse me, the First Foundation. However, we have not yet concluded proposing our rules of the Assembly, so by my executive authority as Governor of the Foundation, I hereby declare our proposal modified, as my esteemed colleague has requested. And now, having made the change to our proposal, and concluded my remarks on it, I bring it to you for a vote. Please vote only by electronic signalling.”

The votes poured in – over 80 million immediately saying yes. Within a few minutes, only 20,000 had said no, and some 3,000 abstaining, roughly. “The measure passes. The rules of order shall take effect at midnight on the 4^th day of the year, 1,000 F.E., at which time the Imperial Conference shall convene for its first legislative session. My thanks to all of you, even those who voted against it. For by using the weapon of the vote, instead of the weapon of the blaster, you have shown that truly, you are committed to build an Empire.”

The applause was thunderous. Ione was stunned. She had absolutely nothing to say, and even if she did, she doubted she would have the courage to say it.

When the applause died down, there was an awkward pause. Then Forska said, “Pardon me, Lieutenant Governor, but may I have this seat?” Forska waved his hand to her chair.

She noted how he had tactfully phrased that sentence, and didn’t like it one bit. It wasn’t her seat. It wasn’t an outright demand, either. He was asking recognition as an equal to the Governor, and no matter how much he might indeed be Hannor’s equal, she’d worked with Hannor far too long.

Forska saw that in her eyes, and though he said no more, his smile faded just a bit. He looked closely, and feared for a moment that she might refuse. That would undoubtedly weaken his authority in front of the Conference, and he could scarcely afford that now…

Ione squinted, but she could see no way out of it without being a huge embarrassment to the Foundation. The First Foundation, she corrected herself angrily. “By all means, First Speaker. Do be my guest.” And she stepped away, holding a hand out to show Forska the chair. Like some stupid waiter.

Forska stepped up, even as she asked her security chief, “Any weapons on him?”

“None physical, madam, not even in his clothing.” He was still tense. And the man was just going to sit there, next to the Governor. Damn.

And that’s just what Governor Hannor Legan and First Speaker Renauld Forska did. Sit down, next to each other. A bit softer, but loud enough for the microphones, Hannor asked Forska, “So, exactly where is Star’s End?”

Forska chuckled and replied in the exact same conspiratorial tone, the exact same volume, “You’ve been standing on it all the time. Ever been to the Library?”

Hannor laughed quite loudly. Then, much more loudly, with his usual commanding tone, he said formally, “These opening ceremonies I now declare closed. The Imperial Conference shall convene on the 4^th day of this year at precisely 0000 hours, Wye time.”

Beneath the fireworks, Ione smoldered.

“You know,” Ione said with a smile on her face, “Agriculture isn’t so bad.”

Hannor stared at her with angry frustration and exhaustion. “You try telling me that in twenty-four hours. Unlike the rest of the delegates, we still have a planet to run,” he remarked bitterly.

Trantor, instead of taking an active role in leading the Conference, was simply among the masses. To be sure, it was a voice that got people’s attention, but Trantor was highly content to serve instead of being served. And so it happened that Trantor, primarily a farming world, was appointed by consensus to the Agriculture Committee two days into the Conference. Ione was just now learning of it.

Ione was relieving Hannor on the Assembly. Six hours from now, she would take over his spot in Agriculture debates. Then she’d get six hours of sleep – and six hours with her governing Trantor and the Foundation. Hannor and Ione had agreed to split the governer’s duties during the Conference. Then, back to the Assembly.

“Hannor, look at it this way: if our fleet in orbit here has to work that hard, and you know they do, then there’s little reason why we shouldn’t.”

“Shut up, Ione,” Hannor replied, and then yawned. Ione shook her head in silent victory. But she knew he was right – it would be very rough on the four of them, indeed.

For the other two representatives of Trantor, Hannor and Ione had selected their chief justice, a man by the name of Yev, (just Yev – that’s how Trantorian judges were known), and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Haugh Olieke. Haugh was a tall, elderly woman, about to retire from the Fleet anyway. She looked forward to a position in state diplomacy, which Hannor had promised her. She certainly was learning a lot at the Assembly, although Yev was not as interested. He’d seen decades of diplomatic bickering in his courts, in the form of lawyers, and was none too surprised to see the same in the Conference. Still, he couldn’t turn down the request from his Governor.

“Madame Lieutenant Governor? The Assembly is calling attendance,” her aide reminded her. Fun time was over.

“This session is hereby called to order,” the First Speaker of the Second Foundation called. Of course Forska would be monitoring it from on high, Ione thought. The Second Foundation had taken leadership roles at all the meetings, and she’d be not too surprised if one of them were in charge of the Agriculture debates as well.

The debate on the floor was whether military forces of any kind should be granted power in the government as a separate entity, or if they should be considered part of the executive branch. Ione personally favored keeping them under a First Minister, as a department. Admiral Olieke, interestingly, wanted independence from executive authority. Yev didn’t care, and Hannor didn’t know what was best. So Trantor, for once, was undecided.

The debate went on, with virtually no passion. Of course not – when you have one thousand planets deciding what you say, your words have to be tempered. Such was the difficulty in being one of those chosen for the Assembly’s floor.

Oh, there were moments – Yrika was one of the planets elected to speak. How that happened, Ione had no idea. Interestingly, so was Helicon. The two planets were engaged in a most lively debate on the subject about thirty minutes into the session.

“The military has always had a position of power, as far back as our Galaxy’s history goes,” Yrika was arguing. “More than once, the military has shaped the course of Galactic events. We must give them the respect they are due.”

“And just how much respect is that, anyway?” Helicon countered. “They certainly live under stricter rules than the rest of the Galaxy – and if they were senior to the civilian population, I can assure you they would not be as lenient with the ordinary citizen’s duties as a government should be.”

“Sometimes a strict hand is necessary to stem the tides of chaos.” Yrika replied. Significantly, the First Speaker was nodding in agreement. “The stricter rules of the military are often necessary, for not only themselves but the public in general. It is worrisome when we refuse to grant that their wisdom applies to more than battle.”

He had scored a point, Ione saw. There was much murmuring, of approval, from the crowds.

“It is also worrisome when we refuse to acknowledge that their wisdom is sometimes overrated; that sometimes they present the greatest danger to us, when led by an unscrupulous leader. How can we assure ourselves that the General or Admiral of the Galactic military forces will indeed be loyal to the people, instead of expecting loyalty from the people?”

Yrika growled in protest. “Those who have ever served in a modern military know that service to one’s country is the highest priority. And in a modern military like ours, any officer who notices his superior acting selfishly is expected to challenge his superior, ascertain the superior’s motives, and if necessary, relieve him of his command. Have you ever served in defense of Helicon?”

Helicon’s delegate shook his head. Yrika had scored again.

Finally, Smyrno’s delegate stood up and was recognized. Anacreon, its neighbor, had come up with a compromise, but Smyrno was the one elected to speak. It had taken nearly an hour for the bureaucracy to clear to Smyrno, and now was their chance.

“My colleagues,” Smyrno began, “perhaps we can offer a compromise. If one branch of our government decrees one edict, for example, and another vetoes it, then the third main branch must either approve or disapprove of it. Either way, the military can act as a fourth branch, protesting the third branch’s decision, and bringing it to the Emperor or his local representative for a final decision.”

“That’s giving an awful lot of power to the military,” Helicon replied dangerously.

“Not really. It only happens when two of the branches conflict, and the military officers feel the danger great enough to bring to the Emperor’s attention if they disagree with the third branch’s decision. These circumstances, barring a corrupt government, would obviously be rare.”

“Not so obvious to me.”

Smyrno sighed. “Come now, sir, on many planets, including Helicon, a three-way split of gubernatorial powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, works 99% of the time. The statistics are clear – these are the most stable planets. For that rare one percent, the military wouldn’t even have the final say – but they would have the power to sue for a final decision. A true balance of power.”

Yrika asked, “How might the military propose their own laws?”

Smyrno shook her head. “It wouldn’t – for you can hardly expect civilians to appreciate military rules becoming a law over their own heads. If they really feel it’s necessary, they can ask one of the main three branches to intercede for them.”

Yrika didn’t like that at all, but Helicon did.

The debates continued on, hours upon hours of them. Eventually, the motion was tabled, without a vote, although when Gien left, she saw the Assembly at large favored Smyrno’s proposal. She disagreed – like her cousin, the King of Yrika, she felt the military needed as much freedom as they could get. And as the Duchess of Uyork, the lead ambassador from Yrika, she had to fight for it.

To some of these planets, it bothered them that she was so young – only recently full-grown. Others respected her ability to achieve her station. Many, of course, knew she inherited the position, instead of earning it – but even Helicon had to admit she had a talent for getting an argument across. She smiled, remembering those darts into his inflated ego.

It was one thing to be born into a position of government – it was another entirely to fill that role adequately. And still another to be the fancy of millions of boys back home. Not just because of her position, but because she rivaled the Trantorian ladies for looks. If it weren’t for her accent, they’d take her to be one of their own. (One of them even thought she was from the northern pole of Trantor. She fluffed her red hair, chuckled, and walked on. What an imbecile.)

Besides, she already had her man. Her husband-to-be was also on the delegation, the vice commander-in-chief of the Yrikan army. He was also off-shift. A tad old, half again her age, but by the condition of his body, no one could ever tell. Especially not in her bed.

She composed herself quickly – it didn’t do for a duchess to think such thoughts, even in public. Her body language would not hide her desires. She could only hide them by suppressing them.

She sighed. Her shuttle was docking onboard her ship. Trantor was nice, but the Wye sector was just too cold for her tastes. Too cold, and too dirty. Military forces, they knew how to clean anything. Well, maybe not their tongues and minds, she thought as she strutted down the hallway. But they were more genuinely polite than the aristocracy on her home planet. It was almost enough to forgive the smell of lubricants throughout the ship.

“Your Highness,” the officer of the deck greeted her, the ultimate professional. Rather old for an ensign, she thought – and glancing around the deck, she thought, overdue for a promotion or two. He runs a tight shift. Not even a spot on the landing deck – and that after a shuttle landing. The pilot grumbled behind her, just loud enough for her to hear about what a “wannabe flight instructor” the OOD was. This made her smile even more – yes, very overdue. The pilot had unknowingly paid the man a compliment.

“Thank you, Ensign Haralo. You have the ability to impress just about anyone with your skills, sir. Congratulations.”

“Aye-aye, madam,” he replied, not even smiling. But the way his shoulders straightened up just a hair, she could tell he was thrilled to hear exactly what he’d heard. Likewise, the looks on his assistants darkened just a bit in frustration. So Haralo could get his men to work – but he couldn’t get them to work happily. Oh, well, she thought – the military only cares if you get the job done. So do too many of her bureaucracy back home, she realized.

She wandered down the hallway, considering this. Unlike many of her peers, she actually cared about those beneath her.

Nearing her cabin, the intercom paged her. “Duchess Gien of Uyork, please contact the communications room. Duchess Gien of Uyork, please contact the communications room.” She entered her cabin and called them.

“This is the Duchess. What is it?” she asked, not entirely able to keep her regal air out of her voice.

“His Grace, the King of Yrika, has requested an audience with you, my lady,” the communications officer replied.

“By all means, patch him through! Make sure we are undisturbed.”

“Yes, my lady. Just a moment,” he said as he disappeared from the viewscreen. And indeed, before she could ask why it would take a moment, the King appeared on the screen.

“My liege,” she said, bowing her head.

Her cousin’s light voice laughed. “Oh, how I wish I could plant a kiss on that forehead, Duchess. It’s good to see at least your face again, hear your voice again.”

By this, he signaled that although this was a formal conversation, it was also a private one, and there was no need for pompous formality. She raised her head again and smiled. “I miss you too, Hyam.”

“So,” the King said as he leaned back in his throne, “what has been going on there? Any news?”

“Nothing of significance. The Conference itself had been delayed a few days, and we’re just now getting into the bits and pieces that matter. We do have a speaking position on the floor of the Assembly, however – and that’s more than we could have expected. You didn’t expect us to build an empire in a week, did you?”

“Really, Gien… and I had the highest confidence in you,” he said teasingly. “Maybe I should look into what delays you and the General have been cooking up.”

Gien’s jaw dropped in horrified amusement. “Hyam, I can’t believe you just said that!” She could barely keep from laughing, and a chortle did escape her lips.

“Said what?” the reply came, but there was no doubt from the twinkle in his eyes of what the King suspected.

Still smiling, but with an air of frankness, she retorted, “We haven’t been cooking anything… yet. And if we had, it still wouldn’t show.” She knew perfectly well he could see her waistline as well as she could see his. Both were still in good condition, but he was a bit heavier.

“Yes, speaking of that flame… you are of the legal age to wed now, so congratulations. I’ve also watched you long enough to know you mean it in your heart, so why don’t you find a shipboard chaplain? By the time you do get married, the official proclamation should be onboard. My aides are polishing up the final words as we speak.”

“Then you’d better send that proclamation by military message only… a courier may not get here in time!” She couldn’t help beaming, imagining her endless wait nearly over, her and her General prancing about the ship, with Trantor as a honeymoon. And those sailors watching… to hell with protocol. She had a passion.

“Oh, no you don’t!” he giggled. “You’ve waited fourteen months… you can wait three days. And unless the navy has taken a liking towards the army, it’ll still take you a week to find a chaplain and arrange a proper wedding.”

“Then we’ll simply have to have the proper wedding after the improper one…” That evil, selfish look came over her.

The King shook his head in gleeful frustration. “It’s not as if I can do anything to stop you, my lady. Not without destroying your authority in the Conference.”

She smiled. There was nothing for her to say. After that awkward pause, he said, “Take care of yourself, Gien.”

“And you too, Hyam. I’ll see you soon.”

The King reached forward, to terminate the conversation.

The Duchess leaned back in her couch. Finally. Thank the Stars. He’s mine, and I’m all his. She sighed, dreaming of the things she would do with him.

That dream ended a few scant seconds after it began. The door chimed. She resisted the urge to get angry at whoever dared interrupt her fantasies. “Who is it?” she called out, unable to resist a playful charm.

“My lady, it is the captain. I have something which you need to know, right now.” His voice, right now, was anything but charming. It carried an undertone of danger, a voice he used on his subordinates to convey alarm.

It certainly alarmed her. “Come in, Captain.”

The stocky captain entered, and stood at full attention. Then, glancing at the door, he barked, “Bring the prisoner in.”

Two absolutely huge security men dragged in an older woman. Gien recognized her instantly – she’d done laundry for the Duchess’ estate for years! Her hair was rather mussed, courtesy of the security handling her roughly.

Before she could ask what was going on, the captain went on, “I’m sorry to disturb you, my lady, but we caught this woman intercepting your private conversation with the King. As per your order, we terminated her eavesdropping. We then arrested her, and brought her to you immediately. A search of her quarters is under way.”

She was speechless, shocked. “Who are you?” she asked, quietly.

The woman looked up. Gien felt a wave of hatred pass over her. It took a moment for Gien to realize the anger was from the woman. It took several more to realize the woman wasn’t mad at Gien, but at herself.

The woman replied, “I am a faithful servant of the future. The new Empire is coming, and we must make sure it is the right Empire.”
“We? Who’s ‘we’?”

But that was all the woman would say. She merely smiled.

“Commanding officer, please dial 274.” The captain responded to the intercom by going to the speaker phone.

“This is the captain,” he said. The rest of the room was silent, but with the speaker activated, they all heard the response.

“Sir, this is Sergeant Tongrap. We’ve found a transmitter in the spy’s quarters. It appears to be a non-directional transmitter, and we’re moving it to communications to determine what it sent, and who received it.”

“Very well, Sergeant. Well done. Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Carry on.”

“Aye, sir.”

The captain, noting the Duchess’ complete shock, pressed the woman with questions. “You have about half an hour to tell us who you were spying for, because we’re going to find out by then. Which planet sent you? Helicon? Kalgan? Neotrantor?”

When the answer wasn’t forthcoming, he added, “Just because it was non-directional doesn’t mean we can’t tell who was monitoring that frequency. We play wargames quite often, and we send out pulses on various frequencies to determine who gets upset. All we have to do is match the frequency band you used against our log, and we’ll know who you work for.”

“Commanding officer, please dial 180.” The shock on everyone’s faces was evident. Everyone aboard knew that was the number for communications.

The captain recovered first. “Last chance.” When he still got no answer, he picked up the phone and dialed 180.

“Captain here… uh-huh… what? I’m putting you on the speaker.” He did so, and then said, “Go ahead, one more time, for our audience here.” He just glanced at the woman, ignoring the Duchess, but fully aware Her Highness was listening.

“Yes, sir,” the voice gulped nervously. “The frequency of the transmitter has only one match: the same as a weather satellite orbiting above the old Imperial Library.”

“Thank you, crewman. That will be all.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” the voice came back, relieved. A click was heard, and the phone cut off.

“So,” the captain said, enjoying every second he had, “the Foundation sent you. I’m sure the Assembly will be glad to hear that.”

“No.”

The captain stopped in his tracks. He then backed off, realizing his Duchess had resumed her authority, and her faculties.

The Duchess looked on her with disappointment. “Not the Foundation. The Second Foundation, at the Imperial Library.” Gien shook her head. “I always looked up to you when I was growing up… asking you for advice on makeup. You were the prettiest person I ever knew.” Gien turned away.

“What should we do with her, your Highness?” the captain asked, deferential to her. “Should we take her to the brig, for further questioning?”

Gien looked her captain in the eye. With the cool dispassion of a scientist, she replied, “No, Captain. Obviously she wants to talk with her people. We should send her home.”

The captain appeared surprised. “Yes, my lady. I shall prepare a shuttle immediately.”

Gien interrupted her, still calm. “No shuttle. The airlock.”

If the captain was surprised before, now he could not resist a gasp. He actually stammered, gathering his wits at the implication. “My lady…”

With quiet authority, she said, “The airlock. Now.”

The last sounds Gien heard from the woman were screams of terror.

Onboard the Hober Mallow, Jose Iscar sipped at some Trantorian tea. It seemed a bit off, he thought.

“GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS. ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLESTATIONS…” The klaxon erupted all over the ship. Iscar set his tea down hurriedly, got his command overcoat on, and hustled to the bridge. He entered the bridge just soon enough to hear his petty officer of the watch call out on the intercom “…reason for general quarters is unidentified object approaching the planet Trantor. This is not a drill.”

Oh, no. An unidentified object was precisely that – unidentified. It could be anything from a ship dropping its garbage in the wrong direction… to a thermonuclear warhead on re-entry, preparing to detonate. “Report,” he ordered.

The officer of the deck replied, “Bogey launched from Yrikan ship, the Ungalls, thirty seconds ago, sir. Bogey is not under powered flight, appears to be a straight descent and re-entry, sir. We’re attempting to track it, sir, but soon it will begin re-entry. We’ll lose all but visual contact as the ionization starts, sir. Weapons are locked on the Ungalls, but the bogey is out of our range. The Simmons Pride is targeting the bogey as we speak, sir.”

“Understood,” he replied. Not “Very well.” Meaning “very bad.”

“Visual contact!” his POOW called out, far too loudly. The navigator cursed as he dropped one of his tools at the outburst. He realized his blunder, as he relayed the report from one of his spotters: “Bogey is less than two meters in length… rotating in free-fall… no lights on it, sir… say again, Porter!”

He looked directly into the captain’s eyes as he reported, “It’s a human body, sir. Female. She was moving her arms until four seconds ago.”

“Sir, the bogey is beginning re-entry!” radar called out. “Air forces are beginning to scramble to intercept.”

The last words of his watch were still sinking in. “Are you certain it is not a human-like mechanical construct?” the captain asked.

The petty officer relayed the question, and a few seconds later, replied, “Affirmative, captain. It’s beginning to incinerate in the atmosphere.” No mechanical device would burn that quickly, they all knew. Still, the sadness in his watch’s voice could not be contained beneath professionalism.

“Radar, any other signs of offensive activity from the Yrikan ship?”

“Negative, sir.”

The captain sighed. Someone had just been executed in one of the most horrifying ways possible, in full and public view. And there was nothing that could be done to save that person. That was part of the horror. Because of safe navigation rules, and the laws of physics, nothing could have caught that poor woman in time to save her life, not even from the vacuum of space that briefly claimed her before the planet’s atmosphere did.

Not a damned thing.

“Officer of the deck, secure from general quarters.” The captain left the bridge.

“Amazing… how beautiful space is. How it envelops a planet like a blanket of black, cold, lifeless emptiness. How its serenity is blocked by force fields and metal, by rivets and nucleics. And how much disappointment that though we love it, we cannot touch it and breathe; nor can we be loved by it in return…”

Jose Iscar sighed, remembering the ancient poem. He didn’t know who had written it, but the author had captured one of the aspects of space travel that most people overlook. No matter what fabled origin planet humanity had come from, they had no way of maneuvering in space without the assistance of mechanical processes they built. Space itself was utterly devoid of the necessities of life. Even walking was impossible – what could you put your feet against, if you were not wearing magnetic boots holding you to a ship’s hull?

Not for the first time, Iscar wished that poor woman could have done the impossible. But she was dead within a few seconds of leaving that damned Yrikan ship.

And damned it was, indeed. Iscar still didn’t understand how that other incident had happened. Doctors onboard the ship claimed that they’d found no cause, and nothing they could do could restore the delegation to health. It also eluded a special team of Trantorian medical experts brought aboard under emergency passports.

Worst of all, the duchess herself was now almost six months pregnant. Would the baby survive the disabilities of its parents?

“Commanding officer, please dial 304.” The captain picked up the receiver and dialed the shuttle bay. A few seconds later, he answered, “Understood. Bring it to my cabin immediately.” He closed the connection. Good – my envoy to Terminus has succeeded. Six months! By the Space Fiend, why did it take so long? He shook his head. That would be one thing the Empire would need – an efficient interplanetary postal system. Right now, they had to go through so many different importation and exportation deals, as the courier ship went from system to system, making port stops every few light-years. Which was why he sent a man carrying the confidential request, instead of simply letting it into the courier’s hands, and thus the hands of every curious customs official enroute.

The man he’d sent was pretty much useless onboard anyway – there were four other people who could do his duties as well as he could, but he was the brightest researcher he had aboard. There was no doubt of that whatsoever – the man was a combat correspondent, and adept at asking the right questions.

Which meant he needed to review what he did know. He opened his log files, including the newsradio’s transmissions he’d recorded.

Six months ago, the Yrikans had dumped a woman into the atmosphere of Trantor. Aside from the serious breach of etiquette that could have been an act of war, the Yrikan ship said nothing of the incident. They apparently believed the actions were a severe enough warning… but to whom? As far as he could tell, all they had said by their actions were that they had no moral restrictions on what they would do if challenged. For all he knew, the woman could have been a crewmember guilty of a capital offense.

Planetside, the execution had become a public scandal. Planets by the thousands roared their displeasure in the Assembly. Yrika refused to explain itself, however, remaining defiantly silent even when asked by First Speaker Forska. Not surprisingly, Yrika was removed from its speaking position on the floor. Without a doubt, Yrika’s blunt actions had taken them out of favor. The Assembly voted shortly afterward almost unanimously in favor of Helicon’s proposal for military authority. Too bad – Iscar actually agreed with the Yrikans on that point, but it was not to be.

That wasn’t the weird part, however. True, the Yrikans were removed from their speaking power legally – and some force had acted to remove their speaking power physically only a few days later. Was the Space Fiend itself angry with them? The delegation still lived – under intensive care. Their strokes, impossibly, had happened within a space of six hours.

How the hell had even one of them had a stroke? Each of them had been, arguably, in the best physical condition they ever could be. Their doctors onboard, and those on Trantor assisting the Conference, were utterly shocked. It broke every rule of medical science they had – his own ship’s doctor had told him so, in those exact words.

And yet, all four of them, and only those four, had been incapacitated utterly with strokes. If there was some bacterium or virus causing these strokes, why only those four? Why not half the Conference, half of Trantor, or half of the Yrikan ship? It defied every bit of common sense. But no one else seemed to care what happened to the Yrikans. He himself didn’t care all that much for the scum, until his doctor argued vehemently and convincingly about the whole incident.

The bureaucracy of admirals over him cared about as much as he once had. They canned his doctor’s report, even as it was endorsed by one of their captains. Not even their colleagues in Trantorian Investigations had aroused their interest.

That was an even crazier story. A rumor had been circulating planetside about the deceased woman was that she was a Trantorian spy. Naturally, Trantorian Information flatly denied that. What intelligence agency would ever admit publicly they had an agent in foreign territory?

However, as the commanding officer of a warship on local assignment in a potentially hostile situation, Jose Iscar, captain in the Foundation Navy, was entitled to complete and truthful answers to absolutely any question he asked of a Foundation official. So he asked, on his military authority, the Department of Trantorian Information. He received a classified report by datapadd – apparently, Information didn’t want to risk anyone intercepting and decoding the report.

The classified report was much more detailed than the public one – and surprisingly, held the exact same answer: No, she’s not one of us. We don’t know who the hell she is. But we’d sure like to know, and if you find anything, tell us.

Trantorian Investigations contributed more information to the report than Information had, much to the latter’s embarrassment. But there was nothing Information could do about that, because Investigations covered “the police beat”, while Information covered “foreign affairs”. However, they literally didn’t have a body, and no motive, so they had nothing but circumstansial evidence. They had enough to paint a picture, but not enough to formally accuse anyone of specific crimes.

Six hours after the woman died, a landlord served an eviction notice on an apartment in the southern city of Frap. Millions of eviction notices were served every day – but in this case, the tenant had disappeared. Frap police forces put out a computer alert, to locate her, but not a trace of her could be found. She didn’t use any computer anywhere on the planet for three weeks, not even to buy food. No body was found to indicate she had died, either. Trantorian Investigations then took over the case, dropping in casually on the “Trantor for Trantor” isolationists and the farmers away from the city. No matter how much these groups hated the government, they weren’t lying when they said they didn’t see her, detectives reported.

They did have one lead to follow, however. The missing woman was spotted repeatedly on security cameras, both at the spaceport and at the Imperial Conference, and always at the side of the Duchess of Uyork – one of the Yrikan delegates. It was too big a coincidence to ignore – but the only connection to the Yrikans, and the only basis for adding anything to the Information report. Without a doubt, a Trantorian citizen was working with the Yrikans – but she wasn’t an Information agent. So who was she?

Investigations had a few other leads to follow – employment history, associates in the young women’s group she was part of, and her education. She attended the University, he saw. But all of these had been dead ends, as far as Investigations was concerned.

However, something clicked in Iscar’s mind, something which he was amazed no one at Investigations or Information had thought of. A bit of history six hundred years old clicked.

600 years ago, the Foundation fought a war against Kalgan. The Foundation ended up winning, but what few people today remembered is that the Foundation also had to fight another threat.

It was chronicled in The Darells, Part Three: Arkady Darell. Back then, the Second Foundation was considered dangerous. Many today still did, but none challenged them. In any case, Arkady Darell had personally engaged this danger. For a girl her age, it was nothing short of extraordinary.

She had come to the understanding that the Second Foundation resided on Terminus, like the Foundation did. The chapter, entitled “A Circle Has No End,” ended with the executions of fifty men and women on Terminus, and a belief that the Second Foundation had been terminated. (A belief that was wrong, Iscar thought ruefully.) Strangely, the book hadn’t said anything about the nature of the Second Foundation. Iscar knew that, because he had a copy of the three Darells books in his stateroom. Bayta Darell had always been a hero of his, and her granddaughter, Arkady, had written Bayta’s life story in Part One.

Neither did the archives on Trantor. Considering that the Second Foundation was based on Trantor, he decided that Trantor’s resources couldn’t be trusted. However, Terminus had maintained a device to detect Second Foundationers for 600 years, despite an apparent lack of need. There were only a few of them on the entire planet of Terminus, and none anywhere else in the Galaxy. Not one had sounded an alarm since the Kalganian War. This alone gave him confidence that Terminus may have had something untouched by the Second Foundation. His courier would tell him any second now.

That was the end of his information stored in his log. He paused, reflecting on the pieces of this puzzle. Plus, there was a fourth, unrealized piece: Why had no one else considered the other encounters with the Second Foundation? They were possibly involved because they lived in the University, at the Imperial Library of old. With this missing and probably dead woman involved with the University, that made him wonder just what the Second Foundation was.

He shook his head. What was he missing?

The door chime sounded. “Come in,” he called out. His courier entered, head shaved. The captain’s eyebrows rose in astonishment.

The courier frowned. “Sorry, sir. The last leg of my journey, I was onboard a Mycogen transport. They hate hair.”

The captain chuckled. Some things never change. “Report,” he ordered.

His courier, the ship’s journalist, answered him sharply. “Sir, I have discovered very little about the Second Foundation which you did not already know. But I did discover the nature of Terminus’s secret weapon against the Second Foundation, and the supposed danger against the early Foundation.”

“Yes, yes, out with it.”

The journalist, a lanky, tall man who never performed well on fitness reports, handed the captain a datapadd. “Authorization code 2479-delta-tango, Trantor, Terminus, Kalgan, Helicon.” The captain typed it in to the padd, decoding the information on the padd.

The crewman continued in a rush of words, characteristic of how the man babbled, “Sir, essentially what Terminus has is a Mind Static device, designed to counteract the Second Foundation’s abilities to manipulate minds. Prior to and during the Kalganian War, the Second Foundation had guided the First Foundation in the latter’s efforts to dominate the Galaxy, according to Terminus. So the First Foundation didn’t really like that idea, and they put a stop to it with the Mind Static device.”

“Wait a minute… manipulating minds?” Iscar was staring directly into the eyes of his reporter, a hand raised away from the pad. It was a moment he would never forget.

“Yes, sir. That’s… what they do. The last words of one such Second Foundationer were, ‘I hope, for the Galaxy’s sake, that you can carry on the Plan much as you have before, and that your device is as effective against a future Mule as it was against us.’ Disturbing words, but they were seen as an attempt for leniency, sir.”

The captain had long since stopped listening. As the courier fell silent, he answered, “Thank you, petty officer. That will be all.”

Dumb as an asteroid, the courier asked, “Sir? I thought I was a crewman.”

The captain fixed him with a gaze that reminded the courier of his instructors in basic training. “That’s right, mister, you were. Perhaps your little trip to Terminus has softened your military attitude. Would you like to remain a crewman, or would you like to follow orders promptly?”

The newly promoted petty officer straightened up, answered him, “Sir,” and did a perfect military departure. Hot damn, he thought as he continued through the hallway. I finally get to pick up space duty pay. I’d better pay a visit to my supervisor, if she’s still aboard.

Then he put his hand on his head. I’d better wear my hat for the next few days, or the guys in the berthing will give me hell.

Manipulating minds. That was 600 years ago. That was the missing piece of the puzzle.

The missing woman, aide to the Yrikans, had been manipulating them for… how long? She had been discovered, however… and that led to her death.

There was no doubt in his mind now that the woman was a member of the Second Foundation. It all made sense. The Second Foundation, who had lost one of their own, retaliated in the only way they could: by attacking the mind.

600 years ago, they had been capable of changing how a man thought. Now, they could destroy a man’s ability to do anything with those thoughts. What else was possible?

And then the most horrifying thought of all occured to him: These same Second Foundationers, who gave those Yrikans their strokes, control the Imperial Conference. Utterly and totally.

He skimmed the report, then wrote his own to the Admiralty. Marked Top Secret, they were rushed to the planet’s surface. Within four hours, the Governor of the Foundation was reading them.

(Author’s Note – the following chapter includes an excerpt from Foundation’s Conscience, copyright © 1989 by George Zebrowski. All rights reserved.)

“All right, load it up!” a rough male voice called out. Immediately a small yellow crane (small by crane standards – it was still a good ten meters tall) started lifting a dull metal box up into the air.

“Oh, do be careful with that,” a shrill man shouted from the distance. Its owner walked stiffly, wearing one of the fanciest government robes there were on Trantor. His black, shined shoes were the last thing one might expect in a spaceport’s cargo center.

But there they were, carrying the weight of a man almost two meters tall. His Trantorian accent was as thick as his chest and midsection — and those were the width of a large tree trunk.

“Oh, don’t you worry, Mister Tonasson,” the first voice replied agreeably. “We’ll get your package down safely.”

“You most certainly should, Mister… Atah?” the big man asked. Tonasson was an adjutant to the Mayor of Wye, who was hosting the Conference. I wish he’d study Sarkian pronunciation, though.

“Atoh, sir. Cargo Chief.” Atoh was surprised at how huge this man was. Atoh was large himself – but this man could easily clobber him. Good thing he hadn’t reached the grade of cargo chief by clobbering people, or getting clobbered. He preferred reasoning over rumbles.

“Well, Chief Atoh, how long will it be?”

Atoh curled his lip in thought. “Umm… two minutes until it’s on the ground, then a quick inspection for damage, and then I can release it to you for delivery to the Conference. Why all this trouble for an old holobooth, anyway?”

Tonasson smiled. “It’s not just any holobooth, chief. It’s the Time Vault of Hari Seldon.”

The crew chief’s eyes grew very wide indeed, revealing a lot of white around sky-blue contact lenses. “Good heavens!”

“Yes, straight from Terminus. You’d think we’d have brought it with us when our Foundation moved the government seat to Trantor. But the Governor of the Terminus province wanted to keep it. In any case, the Second Foundation says Hari Seldon’s final appearance will take place on the 190^th – tomorrow.”

“Do they know what Seldon will say?”

Tonasson shook his head. “I don’t think anyone knows. Personally, it doesn’t make much sense. Seldon only appears when there’s a major crisis – and it’s been decades, maybe centuries, since he left us with a surprise.” Tonasson didn’t remark that the surprise in question was something Seldon couldn’t have predicted, the Mule, or that the Foundation’s survival of that dark age was a miracle.

“Which brings to mind the question: What crisis?”

Tonasson’s face turned to worry. “I don’t know. The entire Galaxy is at peace. No enemies left to conquer, no trade rivals to threaten our economy, and on Trantor, the only incident worth mentioning involved the bloodthirsty Yrikans. Barely a scratch on the Conference.”

Atoh chuckled. “Despite their royal haughtiness, the Yrikans are just like us. They’re actually very civilized, and their customs department was the nicest our crew’s dealt with since I joined twelve years ago. Romantic people, too. They do less thinking than action, but their artwork leaves nothing to be desired. Maybe they ought to tend the Imperial Gardens, eh?”

Tonasson laughed at the old joke. The Imperial Gardens had since reverted to forest land, but for thousands of years non-Trantorians had tended the Gardens. It was, once upon a time, considered quite an honor. Nowadays, no one wanted to touch them – the forest was just ugly.

“Package is down, Chief!” a gruff woman’s voice yelled. Tonasson looked in her direction, and wondered if all unsightly women ended up handling cargo. Probably not, but that one looked as if she belonged there. She had bigger arms than Atoh.

“All right, check it for damage!” Atoh replied just as loudly. “Carefully! Don’t damage it, ya high-grav heavy-handed wench!”

“At least I’ve got the stomach for your stink, Chief!!”

“That’s because you’re wearing all those expensive Kalganian scents! You can’t even smell the cobwebs in your credit accounts!!”

The burly woman stopped in her tracks for a moment. She looked to her Chief with a look that registered her as astounded. Then she shook her head and got on with the inspection. Tonasson looked on with equal confusion.

Atoh saw that and responded. “Oh, don’t worry about her. Her home planet is Galv – the surface gravity is 1.3 standard gees. Twenty years ago she placed second in a bodybuilding competition on her home planet. You think she’s big now… I’ve seen some pictures of her before I joined the crew. You’d swear she was a mountain of muscle. Never treats her husband bad, though – and you’d think a woman her size would use that size.”

Tonasson tried to imagine the woman, twenty years ago. Galv was a new member to the Foundation – it had been lost in the annals of history, and had reopened relations with the Galaxy only two years ago. But if she was that big even now and she wasn’t doing any serious weight training… Tonasson shuddered at the image. That was a woman who would hold her own in wrestling him today, and he didn’t want to lose to anyone. “You know something, Chief? You talk too much.”

Atoh laughed again. “Yeah, I suppose I do. That’s why I’m a cargo chief – gossip makes for great cargo. So do insults between crew members.”

Tonasson still didn’t get it. “You run one weird crew, Chief.”

Atoh shrugged. “But one of the most efficient in the Galaxy. Captain’s got an excellent track record, going back thirty-seven years.”

A shout from the big woman saved Tonasson from any further chatter along those lines. “Hey, Chief, we got a problem!!”

Atoh hated problems. So did Tonasson. Especially with the Time Vault.

“What? Kind? Of? Problem?” Atoh spelled out each word clearly. His cheerful mood had just become venomous.

“It don’t work.”

The bad grammar was forgivable. The empty report was not. “And why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Cla, you’re my best visual repair expert. What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“The damn thing’s flashing all these red lights at me, and I can’t read a single one of them.”

Atoh got close enough to see the writing, while Tonasson trailed behind. “It’s written in Galactic Standard,” the Trantorian threw in.

The woman just looked at him with utter frustration, and a face that said, “Don’t call me an imbecile. I know what I’m talking about.”

Atoh looked at it, and shook his head. “Well, it looks like Galactic Standard, but I can’t read it either. Bits and pieces – does that say ‘atomic clock’ there?” He pointed to one light that was blue.

The woman sighed in disbelief. “No, it looks like power source.”

“Well, it’s nuclear something.”

Tonasson had finally joined them. His eyes went wide with consternation. He muttered a word beneath his breath.

The woman smiled. “I didn’t think Trantorians knew that word.”

Not looking at her, he replied, “We invented it.” That earned him a shake of the head.

Tonasson was shaking his own head. “We’re going to need a linguist, expert in ancient tongues. That says speaker system… I think.” He pointed to a red light.

“Ehh, maybe a subcomponent. An amplifier, perhaps.” Atoh chimed in.

“What’s an amplifier?” Tonasson asked. Neither of them answered, both deep in this old puzzle.

Tonasson just slumped down onto a post away from the machine. He just couldn’t believe it. He laughed quietly, the laugh of a man who had lost his tether to the ship called Reality.

“Ohhh,” he rumbled, “I hope you’ve got insurance!!”

Atoh stopped his examination of his cargo. “Insurance?!?”

“In a thousand years, Seldon has never, ever failed to make an appearance. Now you’re telling me you’ve got a technical difficulty?”

“We don’t know what to tell you yet. All we know is that it’s not working.”

Tonasson was hearing none of it. “This thing is supposed to go to Conference City tonight. There are a hundred million people who will be officially watching this thing tomorrow. Every delegate took today off to rest for this appearance by the great Hari Seldon. We have over a billion people, we estimate, who will be watching it unofficially on Trantor live, working in the support sections. Hundreds of thousands of news agencies are on hand to witness this event and report it to the Galaxy. And you’re telling me the damn thing doesn’t work?!? Do you have any idea what a blow to the Galaxy this will be? The Government of Trantor Province will take it out of your hides.” It was just so outrageous that he could barely keep a straight face. He was crying, even as he giggled insanely.

Atoh started getting angry. He didn’t like threats. “Hey, we didn’t bust it.”

“Prove it!”

“How?? This thing started its diagnostics, or whatever you call those lights, three days ago, during transit. We didn’t touch it, but our security logged the activity of the Vault three days ago. Before that, it was dormant.”

“I think I can fix it,” Cla interjected.

“You think??” Tonasson was still dealing with the implications of a dead Vault.

“Yeah. Get me a copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica – one of the early editions. The older, the better, as long as we can read it. The Engineering indexes should have a reference to the Time Vault’s designs in it somewhere.”

Tonasson’s head shot up. Of course. The Encyclopedia Galactica was originally founded to collect all useful knowledge of humanity and wrap it up in a gigantic publication. Nowadays, as in early Foundation history, it was Terminus’s major export. The Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Company alone employed over half a billion researchers Galaxy-wide. Engineering specifications were most certainly useful knowledge.

“I’ll get right on it – but with or without it, you get that Time Vault fixed!!!”. Tonasson hustled off at a dead run.

Atoh and his assistants turned back to their archaeological nightmare. “Government bureaucrats. Give them one miracle, even a damaged one, and they demand more,” someone muttered.

“Maybe they’ll come up with a miracle of their own.” Atoh replied absently.

Hannor Legan could hardly have been more upset than Tonasson was – and also could hardly have been less. As things went, in fact, he was furious.

Actually, he was mad for only one reason: His lieutenant was mad, and not listening to him.

“You can’t trust them!!” Ione roared, barely half a meter from his face. “This Iscar report is clear on that point. They have not been entirely open with us, Hannor, and you know that. You said you knew their First Speaker. And you never met that man before?”

“I asked him about that six months ago, Ione,” he said, irritated. “He said he was just recently elected to the position, after the last Speaker caught some local bug and died. Which is a perfectly good reminder that they’re still human.”

“Are you even sure of that? They were spying on the Yrikans – they could be spying on us right now as we speak – and then they incapacitated the entire delegation!! And you still let them run the Conference??”

“Ione, this is what they train for. They’re supposed to run a Galaxy peaceably, with a minimum of violence. Now, tell me that what they did didn’t shut the rest of the bad guys up.”

“You think that was the right response?” she asked incredulously.

“We’re not qualified to judge them, and you know that. We’ve been out of touch for a whole millenium. We have no real understanding of their culture whatsoever.”

“And they’ve been out of touch with the Galaxy. There are some things we cannot tolerate, Hannor, not if we’re to remain civilized beings.”

“Ione, shut up.”

Ione closed her mouth. She knew Hannor well enough that when he said “shut up,” he meant it.

Hannor continued on. “Ione, there’s just one little thing you forget. I am the Governor of the Foundation. But, I am Governor of the Foundation only by a vote of the Council of Governors.”

“You know as well as I do that if it weren’t for tradition, I wouldn’t have the backing to be the Governor of the Foundation. My official title would be the one you hold instead, as Governor of the Trantor Province.”

“According to the Foundation Charter, if I go from this province to another province on a visit, or to troubleshoot some political emergency, I remain the Governor of the Foundation until my retirement. Then the local Governor would be the Lieutenant Governor of the Foundation, empowered to speak for me as they see fit.”

“In other words, Ione, if it weren’t for the Conference, I wouldn’t even be here right now. And for one reason, Ione – you don’t see the Galactic picture.”

Ione didn’t dare reply. But the thought came through her mind anyway: Oh, I see it, all right. You’re just not willing to face how bad it really is.

“Now… regarding the Second Foundation. Their position as leaders of this Conference and its various committees shall remain unchanged and unquestioned. Is that clear?” Ione merely nodded, still boiling inside.

“As for tomorrow’s appearance of Hari Seldon, you will be there, in your best outfit and on your best behavior. You will not utter a word to the First Speaker, nor will you do anything to threaten him. He is to be treated by all security forces as my equal. Whatever he declares is law. And above all, you will trust him. Is that clear?”

Right about then, Ione was ready to throw away all her worthless titles of office, and just punch Hannor. But she restrained herself. Now was not the time for a resignation, nor for any friction at the top to become apparent. Especially not now.

When would be the right time? she asked herself bitterly. Although a capable leader in her own right, she was always beneath someone else, and had lost too many arguments with Hannor lately. She was sick and tired of being ignored. Hannor had what her friends in her youth called “short-timer syndrome” – a need to get things over with, and to blazes with the consequences. Ione still planned on being involved in things after the Conference, and she couldn’t afford to look at the immediate. Hannor was retiring after the Conference, and so it didn’t really matter to him. Ione refused to think that way. Her opinion was that if she ever did think that way, her time wasn’t ending – it had already ended.

And it was then that she decided she would obey these instructions from Hannor to the letter… as a last request. The man was no longer a leader, not really. He might be capable of leading again, but his mindset was in the wrong place.

Damn. She didn’t want him to retire on such bad terms with her.

Outside their private office, an Observer of the Second Foundation began composing his report. There would be no resistance whatsoever now. The two Foundations tomorrow would be vindicated by their founder. He expected, as the Speakers did, that Seldon would simply congratulate them for their success. He was one who knew that those congratulations had been earned through the blood and sweat of the First Foundation, and the difficult planning of the Second Foundation. There had even been a couple of times when the Second Foundation had shed its own blood, as a sacrifice to preserve and repair the Seldon Plan.

Simply amazing!

A thousand years of effort was coming to a close, tomorrow! The exultation, the anticipation of Pax Galactica II was rampant throughout the Second Foundation, causing even some of their Speakers to revel in the accomplishment of their ancestors and themselves.

A hundred generations had built the new Second Empire! He wished privately that Preem Palver and Hari Seldon themselves could have seen this in person, instead of visualizing it through harsh, and yet beautiful, mathematics.

Seeing it in person was so much richer an experience.

And better yet, the new Empire had absolutely no end in sight, by the mathematics of psychohistory. Even if the Second Foundation were to disappear tomorrow, the new Empire could continue on for nineteen thousand years on its own inertia. It was fundamentally more stable than the First Empire – Trantor was not the only center of power and administration. A hundred planets fulfilled the duties that ancient Trantor had once handled alone, and improperly. Even that wasn’t enough, the Observer knew – the Second Foundation’s next move after the Conference would be to spread those centers out into about a hundred thousand planets. Enough to handle a Galaxy of twenty-five million planets – not including those that would be found in the first Census movement.

Barring anything unforeseen, like another individual exerting an impossible influence, the peace would last long enough for the Interregnum to itself become prehistory, as lost to humanity’s knowledge as the dead planet Earth.

And with the famous Encyclopedia Galactica, that would be an uncountably long time…

Millions gathered once again in Conference City, for the great Seldon to speak. A buzz permeated the air – what would he say? They all marveled at this event.

By coincidence, Wye shared the exact same time as Terminus’ Time Vault. No adjustment for time was needed. Seldon would appear at noon exactly.

It was one minute to noon!

The Governor of the First Foundation took his seat next to the First Speaker of the Second Foundation. The Lieutenant Governor stood behind them, in her absolute best clothing. Fashion experts would later say that the Governor’s style was as old as he was, but he still wore them with dignity and pride.

The lights dimmed. It was thirty seconds to noon!

For this event, the microphones were shut off. The only speaker here would be Hari Seldon until he finished his speech. The murmur died down. Still, the First Speaker couldn’t resist fulfilling his title one more time: he spoke first, but only to the Governor.

“Now, Governor, we shall finally see the realization of the Seldon Plan. A thousand years, and we are glad our guiding hand was rarely needed. Now it is time to bring enlightened leadership to the Galaxy, that which truly understands humanity.”

Hannor’s face registered confusion. “Excuse me, First Speaker, but I don’t follow you. We already have capable administration in our Foundation, and not much of it will change. You’ve been leading the Assembly – you know the basic tenets of our Foundation governments will not change a great deal.”

Forska smiled. “Of course not. It’s simply that even the greatest of leaders you have only have an instinctive sense for how a local populace will act. We of the Second Foundation have perfected that instinct into a science, a psychohistory we have developed for a thousand years. With no disrespect to you, sir, we are simply more qualified to lead because we know how to… how do you put it? Work the crowd?” He chuckled, not evilly at all, but with pride.

“The First Foundation has built the framework for this new Empire,” Hannor replied, still confused.

“Yes, and the Second Foundation shall need your efforts to give us a physical presence, instead of making us a paper government only. Psychohistory allows us to understand the masses, to guide them, but they won’t always listen unless we have you to enforce our less immediately pleasing decrees.” In other words, Hannor realized, the First Foundation was going to be the middleman. “Believe me when I say we cannot lead without you.”

Hannor had just enough time to glance over his shoulder, behind him, into Ione’s eyes. He saw what he had not until now understood – that they were to be puppets beneath the Second Foundation’s psychohistory. They would not be allowed to understand the science that controlled them.

They were a lower class. Hannor’s face fell as he realized his blunder. It was now too late – the Second Foundation had taken over in all respects. He didn’t even care how history would remember him. He’d deceived himself, believing it was all for the good.

Could it still be? Could the Second Foundation really be trusted?

The First Speaker saw all of this going through the Governor’s mind, and opened his mouth to reassure further…

It was noon… and the Assembly’s population increased by one. Forska realized it was too late. Oh, well. The Governor might take it hard, but all the clues had been staring him in the face. Forska was surprised that his colleague had not understood, and for that matter, still did not. The massive ego of a politician, he supposed. “Psychohistory,” he whispered to the Governor. He projected confidence in his voice to the Governor. Unfortunately, he didn’t have eye contact just then, as everyone’s eyes turned towards the large projection.

“I am Hari Seldon, and this will be my…” the projection said. Though his voice was old and soft, his amplified voice reverberated off the walls. His image filled the Assembly, as his wheelchair hologram was replicated and reproduced at a thousand times its original size. Unfortunately, the original itself was damaged, as a burst of static washed over the image and bleated through the speakers. Thousands winced at the noise.

Down below, Atoh’s crew noticed the problem. His burly assistant couldn’t avoid kicking the Vault itself. She left a sizable dent in the Vault’s metal, as well as in her steel-toed boot. She yelped in pain and fell down. The kick, miraculously, restored the image, and the fuzziness in his voice nearly disappeared. It was still accented, though, and hard to understand after a thousand years.

“…inal appearance in the Time Vault.” Seldon paused. “A few of you may have wondered by now what use, if any, these appearances of mine will have been. They should have coincided with a series of crises and helped you over the difficult times when it might have seemed that psychohistorical projections were having nothing to do with actual events. I hope that this was only apparent, not real.”

The old man smiled, showing no teeth. “For all I know, I may be speaking to an empty chamber in a fragmented galaxy which is still in a dark age.” This earned quite a few laughs. “But if you are hearing me, then let me now claim that these appearances of mine had to have been useful, one way or another.”

What the hell did that mean, everybody wondered all at once. Even Forska was surprised, and he didn’t have time to analyze it before Seldon continued, a finger extended towards the center of the audience. A book fell to the floor.

“Let me explain what I mean,” he continued. “Either I was in touch with the way things went, or my failure moved those of you who were in touch to act.” There was a collective sigh of relief, Forska included. “Psychohistory could envision large possibilities correctly, but it could not project a picture of specific future details and the actions needed to bring them about. For the large is composed of countless small things, and most of the time we all live in small details. Some of you may now be saying that psychohistory was not what I made it out to be, and you will be right, in the way that most shortsighted minds are right.”

“But it was, I hope, enough of what it had to be – a rallying cry against the irrational darkness that threatened to plunge the Galaxy into thirty thousand years of barbarism. In all human life, every day, the irrational has threatened to establish its reign, and has been held back by the two foundations of intellect and good will.”

He paused, just long enough to receive a brief round of applause. Unaware of the applause, he continued on with conviction. “There are a few basic features to the exercise of free will in history. Only probabilities can be predicted, but not perfectly or always. Yet in retrospect, all developments are seen as having been caused, including those brought about by free choices. All historical developments flow from a variety of factors, and are therefore explainable – but not exhaustively. Free will can operate only among a finite number of possible choices. No free choice is unconditional, or we would be able to create matter and energy from nothingness according to our whims.” Another laugh – the First Foundation had invented a tool capable of just such a thing. It was now a primary power source throughout the Galaxy.

“I focused your free will by helping you to choose with a greater awareness of possibilities, with the habit of looking ahead, and I am sure it has brought you through your millennium of struggle.” The old man sighed. “What you will do in your new Galactic Era is not for me to predict. Perhaps humankind will become something better. For me, that would be a rational intelligence which would be immune to psychohistorical prediction. I hope so – because otherwise…”

Wait a minute. What had he just said?

“…your new age will also decay and fall, and humankind may disappear from the Galaxy, to be replaced by new intelligences that are even now gestating in those countless star systems where the worlds are not congenial to humanoid biologies.”

Hannor Legan and Renauld Forska could only stare slack-jawed at each other. They had heard the same thing. So had millions of people, who were starting to murmur again.

“Our human history doesn’t even span one hundred thousand years, even though we filled a galaxy with our kind. Planetary species have existed for two hundred million years, and passed away without attaining self-conscious intelligence. Do not let the accomplishment of a galactic culture lull you into a sense of security. Become a truly free culture, one which will not be susceptible to psychohistorical laws, but can fully shape its own form and destiny.”

Now it wasn’t just murmuring. Now it was shouting.

Seldon’s voice continued on bitterly, overpowering them all. “Yes, that is my ideal of a mature species – one that does not need to be led by the hand. And yes, psychohistory does predict its own downfall as a useful way of looking ahead, and I do not mourn it.” As he rambled on, the noise level continued to rise, and now angry fingers were being pointed at the Governor’s Booth. At First Speaker Renauld Forska.

“It worked because it counted on the darkness rising out of a given human nature, for as long as human nature remained unchanged. More than anyone, I was aware of psychohistory’s potential for the control of human life by the manipulative, which is…”

At that, a huge roar erupted from the audience. An utterly deafening roar – loud enough to defeat Seldon’s voice as he continued on. An enraged roar.

It suddenly became apparent to Hannor that he was likely the very last person in this Conference to realize how the Second Foundation was acting, and especially how they were perceived as acting. And he had just had a full understanding seconds before Seldon had appeared.

And just as suddenly, a very disgruntled but orderly crowd became a riot.

It is an interesting paradox of military life that requires combat readiness at all times, especially from human beings, who cannot individually maintain that readiness at all times. For instance, a crewperson requires sleep. But the ship cannot sleep, and not all of its crew can sleep at the same time. However, most ships maintain a day watch and a night watch – and these watches suffice for everything short of actual combat operations.

For this reason, as all hell was breaking loose in the Assembly, the captain of the Hober Mallow IV was snoring softly in his cabin. His crew wasn’t even watching the Seldon broadcast – instead, most of them were asleep themselves. The XO was in command, and the night watch observed the skies around them.

Exactly 37.2 seconds after the riot began, the peaceful, if tense, situation in orbit began to change. The Hober Mallow, at that time, was well away from the Wye sector, and had no immediate warning.

Specifically, a Vegan delegate radioed his command ship, and ordered them to maximum alert. The admiral in charge passed on the order, and space lit up with Vegan radars, less than a minute after the riot began planetside.

That, by itself, got the attention of every electronic intelligence specialist on every ship in orbit. Before most of them could react, though, the Kalgan Armada followed suit.

Then, the Yrikan Fleet. Something was wrong.

The night radar supervisor on board the Mallow was just then reporting to his XO. Barely ninety seconds had elapsed since the riot began.

The radar man couldn’t even finish his report, as the holoradar set to passive detection began to resemble a fireworks display. “Oh, my… sir, we’ve got multiple, repeat, multiple ELINT warnings coming in from all directions. Looks like everything’s going on alert, sir.”

“Sir,” the POOW interjected, “lookouts report ships breaking orbital patterns everywhere, performing evasive maneuvers.”

“Confirmed,” the bridge holoradar specialist added. Operations was busy tracking them all, but their bridge watch counterpart was able to summarize. “I’m detecting force-screens going up, blasters charging…” That was as far as she got. The executive officer took over.

“Sound general quarters. Captain to the bridge, please.” He activated his personal force-screen.

Two decks below, the captain snapped awake and rolled out of bed. This wasn’t a planned drill. Then again, he thought as he put on his combat jumpsuit, the XO has been planning some unscheduled drills…

“THIS IS NOT A DRILL. COMMANDING OFFICER, YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED ON THE BRIDGE.”

Oh, shit, everyone waking up thought in unison, and doubled their efforts. Drills in military life are one thing – but when the alarm goes off for real, lives are in danger for real.

“Captain on the bridge,” the combat POOW called out forty seconds later. His XO didn’t even hesitate. The big man nearly knocked his captain down as he rushed to the Combat Information Center, his own battle station.

“Captain has the conn,” Iscar announced loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Captain has the conn, aye,” the POOW and navigator chorused. The navigator, who was the combat OOD and training for his own XO slot soon, brought Iscar up to date.

In a nutshell, everyone was going paranoid. Lots of weapons targeting, weapons arming, but fortunately no shots fired yet. Hober Mallow had herself established evasive maneuvers, but hadn’t been targeted. Iscar also noted the navigator did not report any orders from Admiral Olieke on the surface, or any other fleet officer. Which meant they had not received any such orders, and until the Admiralty woke up from their soft beds, each ship of the Navy was on its own.

“Very well.” He said that with meaning. Not only had his navigator given an excellent report, but it was still a cold combat zone. Lots of aggression, lots of showing the banner and talking tough, but nothing flagrant yet.

“General Quarters time plus three: The ship is manned and ready.” Even better. Engineering had come a long way in the past six months – they were now usually the second section to be manned after Weapons. More than that, every ship scanning the Mallow saw a fully armed, fully prepared warship with lots of fingers on lots of touchpads.

“Send to the Alurin: Hober Mallow at Condition One readiness. Awaiting orders.” The Alurin was the task force flagship, holding one Rear Admiral Bol Terrant.

“Send to Alurin: Hober Mallow at Condition One readiness. Awaiting orders, aye sir.” Operations replied. The repeating of orders was a tradition handed down from prehistory. The Operations officer set to work, attempting radio, quantum hyperwave, even blinker lights towards the satellite network that would connect them to the Alurin. It would take some time, however, as jamming simply flooded all channels of communication, except for blinkers, which were hardly reliable in a combat situation with ships flying in the way of the light beams.

“Conn, radar, we have weapons fire. I repeat, we have weapons fire.”

So much for a cold combat zone, Iscar thought angrily. Trantor was under siege once again. Less than six minutes had passed since the riot began.

It really didn’t take all that long, once the hostilities actually started. One ship wandered much too close for another ship’s captain to enjoy, and he fired a warning shot. The offending ship’s tactical section misinterpreted the shot as coming directly at them (an easy mistake to make at orbital speeds and in close contact), and reported that to their commanding officer. The CO ordered fire returned.

That was a direct hit, which earned him three nearby ships’ full barrages. He lived a matter of four seconds – his crew, a fraction of time less. One of those barrages included a stray blaster shot, which struck a third naval force.

From the little bursts, the combat expanded outward like a wave on the surface of a sphere – faster than the weapons being fired, at the speed of light as ships called allies, and as allies noticed their friends coming under attack. As it expanded, more and more ships which were not intended targets were attacked, spreading the battle to other fleets at an accelerating rate. It could be anything from a blaster bursting too close, to an evasive maneuver, to the frayed nerves of a gunner. But it spread, quickly.

Less than nine minutes after the riot started, the planet was englobed in a throbbing, fluctuating shell of blasters, force screens, and ships.

“MARK!!” Iscar hollered. Instantly the Hober Mallow executed a dive towards the planet. A blaster shot struck them on the bow – Iscar hadn’t seen that bolt, aimed at a passing Vegan troopship. The blast sent them into a spin along their vertical axis. The force screens up front collapsed, and fully a tenth of the ship instantly became a hellish gas. Including forty crewpersons.

“STABILIZE!! Aft starboard thrusters to full!” If they couldn’t regain control, they would continue towards the planet, and although they could probably survive a re-entry with an unpowered descent, Iscar didn’t want to land on anyone or any city. He’d destroy his ship before risking innocent lives, exactly as he had been trained. “Do we have forward port thrusters?”

“Negative, sir, forward thrust control is inoperative. Gravity regulators are failing – engineering reports high outward gravity on the outer portions, sir.” The spin was creating an artificial gravity at the edges.

“Fire solutions are all shot to hell!” the weapons and security officer, LTJG Bryce, complained. It was taking the targeting computers a few seconds to compensate for the spin.

“We don’t even know who to shoot at!” Iscar replied angrily. “Who blasted us?”

No one answered him – not Operations, not the lookouts, not Weapons. They didn’t know either.

“We’re entering the atmosphere, captain!” the navigator called out.

Meanwhile, the battle in orbit continued. Ships everywhere were becoming scrap metal and ionized gases. One Reguran ship wanted to deliver a blow to their traditional rivals, the Pormona Fleet. Unfortunately, the nearest such target was below the atmospheric horizon – that is, a successful hit would require shooting through the atmosphere of Trantor. A blaster shot would not penetrate the atmosphere at that distance and still be expected to strike the Pormona ship. Instead, the Reguran ship launched a nuclear missile.

The Regurans were not known or respected for their prowess in nuclear technologies. They had somehow achieved interstellar travel with only a fourteen percent success rate in nuclear machinery. Their safety record was equally low. Nonetheless, the missile flew. It crossed into the upper atmosphere, over several parts of the Wye sector, and had just overflown the Conference city when the missile detonated in the high atmosphere prematurely.

Nuclear blast effects, no matter where they happen, are extremely impressive. If detonated deep within a high-pressure gas giant, they could theoretically spark a fusion reaction, and ignite the gas giant, creating a star. If detonated on the surface of a planet, the resulting pressure wave would be as forceful as a wall of steel expanding outward at the speed of sound. If detonated underwater, the energies would instantly be transformed into a broiling mass of gaseous, radioactive steam, miles in diameter and rising to the surface rapidly. Only force screens can prevent crippling damage and probable destruction from these sources.

A high-atmosphere nuclear blast, however, generates a destructive wave of an entirely different nature – an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, of exceptional power. Force screens, which are almost magnetic in nature, bend sharply or break under the intense magnetic storm. Anything electronic is suddenly hit with a fast-moving pulse of electrons, which tend to cause short-circuit overloads.

Such were the effects on the Conference city beneath Space Zero. The riot, which was still raging, was for the most part plunged into the darkness of interior buildings with few spaces open to daylight. In the center, the Time Vault of Hari Seldon, untouched by the raving mobs, barely scratched in a thousand years of chaos, the last remnant of the First Galactic Empire, was fried as electricity overloaded its circuits and set it ablaze. The holographic memory cubes within the Vault itself were melted by the intense energy surge being converted partially to heat.

Though Seldon had long since finished his broadcast, no one heard his last words, except for the security cameras. In later years, many records would abound throughout the Empire of people wanting to see the final words of Hari Seldon; whereas those who were there had no permanent record of those words, and could not accurately testify as to exactly what Seldon had said. There was so much disagreement that their reports were deemed unreliable to varying degrees, and thus unprintable by the media, as paralyzed by the EMP as everything else.

The blast came as a mercy to the Hober Mallow, which the energy pulse smashed their force screens with, transferring a small percentage of its energy into a motion vector upon the ship. However, a small percentage of a nuclear blast packs a huge punch, and that huge punch kicked the Hober Mallow beyond escape velocity for Trantor. The heavy shock damage and electromagnetic overloads left her adrift for two days, and her captain unconscious for a week.

On the surface of Trantor, Ione had made it to a security post, and full force-screens were in effect. Police forces were starting to move in just as the lights went out. In the security post, the force screens held against the EMP blast hundreds of kilometers above them – barely. Ione was therefore treated to a clear view of the overall situation.

The riot in the Conference city was not something she could do anything about right now – the pulse had hit cameras everywhere, and what cameras survived had no lighting. The police forces were going in blindly.

In orbit, however, there was a drastic situation which she could see – the holoradars within the post had not been damaged. A nuclear warhead had been detonated, someone informed her. That was nothing less than an act of war.

She could deal with a war. It gave her a target for her frustration. “Who fired that shot??” she bellowed, rage amplifying her voice to deafening levels. The sergeants and specialists backed up their holographic logs, not panicking in the least. Professionals.

“A Reguran troop transport, Governor. The Licon.” The sergeant who identified it restored the normal view. “Sir, the transport is coming under heavy fire!!”

“It ought to, the bastards.”

“No, Governor, -- by one of their own ships!!!”

“What?” Ione sputtered. This was inconceivable in any modern military, especially one powerful enough to send a “delegation” to Trantor.

“He’s right,” another one chimed in. “The Gra, a sister ship to the Licon, is firing blasters at it. So are six other ships, including our Alurin. He’s on the run, leaving orbit.”

“That’s not all – other ships are beginning to pursue. I count four… twelve… thirty-eight… and rising, ships leaving orbit in pursuit. The Licon is heading for Jump Point Hotel.”

“It won’t make it,” another confidently predicted. Sure enough, a blast clipped one of its engines – not seriously enough to slow it down, but enough to inspire more pot shots.

Ione regarded the overall tactical holograph. She was astounded by what she saw. Ships, everywhere, had ceased their attacks on each other, and were attempting to break orbit and pursue the Licon. Most were in no position to leave orbit whatsoever, many of them hurtling on a course away from the Jump Point, or on the other side of Trantor, but more than enough were there to make their statement.

They all knew that someone had attacked Trantor – and they were all leaping to her defense.

And in that moment, Ione saw a way out.

“Put me on the open broadcast – every frequency you’ve got, unencrypted,” she ordered.

“Attention… attention, all ships in orbit of Trantor. This is Lieutenant Governor Gerrold of the Foundation speaking.” Ione spoke with a tone of authority she rarely used, was really unaware that she had. Her voice was flat, and yet carried the weight of a Galaxy. She paused.

“I hereby declare the Planet of Trantor to be under immediate martial law. All Foundation ships are to return to orbit of Trantor and cease fire, except to defend themselves and Trantor. No offensive operations are authorized. Furthermore, all police forces are hereby authorized to use whatever means are necessary, but not more than necessary, to restore order in the Wye Sector.” She paused again. “I also wish to ask…” But she found, to her great surprise, that she did not need to ask. Her voice fell away in awe.

Every ship in the orbital zone of Trantor, including those who had broken orbit, had ceased fire of their own volition. They were standing down – screens still at full intensity, but with weapons disarmed and tactical radars no longer searching for targets. The reasoning behind it, however, was quite simple:

Every one of the allied ships considered themselves not an ally, but a member of the Foundation. And therefore subject to the orders of the Foundation.

It was greater than Ione could have hoped for – and yet, she couldn’t deny within herself that it was the truth. This had been what Hari Seldon and her predecessors had labored towards for a thousand years.

A sense of belonging and patriotism to something greater than themselves. Greater than their ships and cities. Greater than their home planets and peoples.

A sense of order. A sense of commonality with men and women they would never meet, whom they knew existed but only as abstract objects, without even names or personalities.

And that sense was named “Foundation.” Ione began crying in joy. She recovered, her voice still wavering as the tension broke. “I thank you, all of you. I would not have believed this possible, had I not seen it with my own eyes. My deepest apologies to all of you –– for I suspected each and every one of you as a potential threat to the Foundation. Until this moment, before me in the holoradar, I did not realize you considered yourselves Foundation as well. Neither did the Government of the Foundation."

“I’m not one who’s given to great speeches, especially unrehearsed ones,” she admitted candidly to the Galaxy. “So therefore, let me direct all of you to place yourselves at the discretion of the Trantorian Navy, to set up positions guarding Trantor from any possible danger beyond our atmosphere. We will secure things down here – please assist us in securing things up there. This is Lieutenant Governor Gerrold, out.” And then she could take no more, as she collapsed to the floor slowly, her face scrunched up in joyful tears. Her eyebrows and jaws ached from the muscles exerting their full force nearly half a minute later. There was no doubt any longer: the Interregnum had passed.

Out of the metaphorical ashes of a nuclear fireball, a Second Galactic Empire had been born.

However, the new Empire was the last thing on Renauld Forska’s mind at that very moment. The irony of this was that any Speaker who put anything before the Empire and the Seldon Plan was subject to immediate impeachment. For a First Speaker to put his own life ahead in his thoughts of the Empire was absolutely unthinkable.

But it had happened, as Forska ran through the darkened streets of the Conference city. In fact, the entire Table of Speakers was right next to him. They were hardly in a position to charge him with his abhorrent crimes, though – as they were themselves doing the same things Forska was doing. Running for their lives from an angry mob.

Even their usual mental shields were gone. All decorum and procedure which the Second Foundation bound themselves to was replaced by fear – and their exaggerated mental powers were overcome by this fear, guided enough only by hard-trained reflexes to keep alert to new approaches. They couldn’t even talk to each other mentally, so shaken were they, and so their abundant personal resources were negated.

“This way!” Forska shouted, pointing to the right. Indeed, each of them instinctively felt a lesser amount of anger in that direction than in any other. They hustled down an alleyway towards a mass transit station entrance.

“A Seldon crisis caused by Seldon himself,” one of the Speakers observed bitterly, huffing and puffing. “How did this happen?”

“How it happened doesn’t matter,” one of the others retorted. “What the hell do we do now?”

No one had any answer for her, and so they kept running.

“There they are!” a voice cried out from the side as they broke from the alleyway. Forska couldn’t help but glance in that direction. Half a dozen people were running towards them, led by the new chief delegate from Yrika. Uh-oh, Forska thought. Yrikans tended to make holding a grudge an art form…

Forska nearly tripped over another Speaker as he scrambled in the opposite direction. Blasters were ineffective at that time, due to the EMP – and a good thing too, or the Second Foundation would have lost its leadership right then. The Yrikan cursed and dropped his blaster to the ground. The chase continued on foot.

“We’ve got to find a transport!” Forska yelled. But he knew somehow none would be working – the city had no power, and Trantor never burned hydrocarbons underground. Forska debated breaking the Speakers up, to confuse their pursuers, but he decided against it. He didn’t want to risk losing anybody without the entire Table there to help.

Suddenly he found his group stumbling upon a patrol group of several Assembly security officers, provided by the First Foundation. Maybe, Forska thought. If anyone would be their allies right now, it would be the First Foundation. But what orders had they received? Who was giving those orders? What would the on-scene commander do? He noticed they were carrying gunpowder-based sidearms, instead of powered blasters. That meant someone in their supplies division had made a good decision – but what decisions would come now?

“Please, help us!” Forska, speaking for the Table, cried. The officers noticed them, and recognized them. Was that good?

The commander simply lowered his weapon and yelled, “Stand down!!!” His officers lowered their weapons, aiming not at the Speakers, but at the crowd behind them.

The crowd obeyed him, keeping their distance, if not their angry glares.

“By executive order of the Lieutenant Governor of the Foundation, the Planet of Trantor is hereby under martial law. All citizens are hereby ordered to return to their homes or places of business with all due haste, unless otherwise specifically directed by an officer of the peace. Furthermore, be advised that all police forces have been authorized by the Lieutenant Governor to use whatever means are necessary to restore order in the Wye Sector.” As the commander was speaking these words, he held his weapon, bigger than his arm, aimed upwards. He walked forward, menacingly, delivering his message with an air of confidence he barely felt. But he knew he had the authority – and the guns – to back him up.

“And what about them?” one of the rioters shouted back.

“The Speakers of the Second Foundation are hereby placed under protective custody, pending an investigation of their activities. They are not your concern. Now, go home.” He stopped in his tracks, well clear of the mob, just staring at them, staring them down.

The crowd backed down, and broke up slowly. None approached either the officers or the Speakers. Without a word, the commander signaled his officers to advance and take the Speakers under guard.

For the first time in his life, Forska found himself in a holding cell. But he still lived.

But what news of the Galaxy?

Several hours later, Ione dressed herself in her finest clothing. It was the same clothes she had worn six months earlier, at the opening of the Imperial Conference. However, she added something to the outfit – a red cape, tied around her neck, and bound again around her waist. It was a gift from her cousin, a tailor, who had worked meticulously to add in small gold writing the name of every planet in the Foundation. It was called lovingly “the Imperial Cloak.” The gold foil shimmered beautifully in the rising sun, but the edges had no writing. (This was for new planets to be added to the Cloak, her cousin had said.) The print was so small, one needed a microscope to make out the words – but they were there.

She expected this would be the only time she would ever wear this cloak. It symbolized the sheer power of the Foundation, the newborn Empire. When the Conference decided on who would lead their Empire, she would remove the Imperial Cloak, and fasten it around the shoulders and waist of their new Emperor. That was the only thing left to do anyway – yesterday’s incidents had proven that beyond a doubt. They didn’t need the Conference anymore.

As long as it wasn’t Forska. If that was the case, she’d use all her strength to tear it in two, and her cousin be damned.

Hannor Legan knocked on her private room, and she replied, “Come in,” her voice lilting ever so slightly as she regarded herself in the mirror.

“Whoa,” his deep voice said in appreciation. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“A gift from my cousin, for the new Emperor. An Imperial Cloak, with every planet in the Empire named on it.”

“Nice. Well, I just came by to let you know privately that I am indeed retiring. You saw that Seldon Crisis coming a light-year away. And I was duped, right up until the very Crisis. I duped myself.” He smiled sheepishly. “But it’s great to know I had such a wonderful lieutenant, who stood her ground even as her senior overrode her at every turn. My personal thanks, Ione.”

She shook his hand with appreciation. Things could hardly get better, she thought.

“Oh, by the way,” Hannor added, “as I have finished my duties as the last Governor of the Foundation, I thought it best to inform you that Renauld Forska wishes to speak to you.”

Her face darkened. Although there was no question that she now held equal station with him, and probably quite a bit higher than him, she wanted nothing to do with the man.

However, quite often senior government officials have to do unpleasant things. She knew this, and knew that Forska deserved a fair hearing. Reluctantly, she nodded.

“I’ll turn on the Mind Static Field, at a low level, and leave you with him,” Hannor said. “I’ll see you at the Assembly.” Hannor stepped out, leaving Ione alone for but a few moments to collect her thoughts.

Humility was nothing new to Renauld Forska. After all, one had to be humble to put the Galaxy before himself, as Forska had spent most of his life doing. The shame he felt in betraying the Galaxy was extreme, however, and humbled him anew.

Actually, the guards had treated them quite respectably – even going to the extent of bringing a change of clothes from the University to them. Cleansed and refreshed, he entered the private chambers of Lieutenant Governor Ione Gerrold for the first time. She stood facing the rising sun beyond her window, letting her shadow fill half the floor. She did not speak, letting him be First Speaker again.

“Lieutenant Governor,” he began cordially. Only then did she turn to face him.

“Yes, First Speaker?” she said politely. But the look on her face was blank, a perfect gambling face. Along with the mind static field, he could gather nothing from her intentions.

He bit his lower lip, breaking eye contact for a moment. He knew such went against all training in dominating a situation, but dominating this situation was impossible and would break any professional relationship they might have. “I have come forth to… apologize.” He spoke slowly, still considering his words. “We did not realize that our approach to governing the Galaxy would be resisted so strenuously. Nor did we expect that Dr. Hari Seldon himself would contradict so blatantly our way of thinking.”

Ione said nothing, letting the silence indicate he needed to do better than that.

“However, we still have proven by mathematics that the Galaxy would prosper more if guided by psychohistory than if not. Obviously, I cannot be Emperor – and I never had any intentions there. Nor do I feel suitable to recommend an Emperor from among our Speakers. But I must implore of you not to ignore our advice.”

She raised her head slightly, asking the natural question with a little haughtiness, “And what advice is that?”

Forska shook his head. “The Galaxy still needs us as leaders. However, it does not necessarily need us as figureheads.”

Ione’s puzzlement showed through. “What do you mean?”

Forska smiled thinly. “My newest Speaker, who was until today a student in training, found a solution. Hari Seldon himself was a First Minister for Cleon I for many years. We can likewise maintain positions throughout the Galaxy as ministers for the local leaders and for the Emperor. We’ll still be in a position to shape events for the betterment of humanity, but the final decisions and authority will still rest with the Emperor and his Governors.”

“Still controlling from the background, eh?” Ione contemplated that. That could lead to a system of very weak executives, puppets of the real government. Just like Linge Chen’s manufactured Emperors of a thousand years ago. She wasn’t about to have that. “On one condition.”

Forska lifted his face. There was a glimmer of hope there – but if she asked for too much…

“The Second Foundation, your Foundation, must agree never, ever to tamper with any government leadership, nor with any candidates for such leadership. We do not want to be manipulated into doing your will.”

Forska beamed. That was a condition he would accept heartily. “With all due respect, Lieutenant Governor, that would render any such executives useless puppets, and an illusion so shallow that the Galaxy would never accept it. It would run counter to the development of the Galaxy, and besides, a little chaos is essential to psychohistory. But only a little.” He did not mention that independent thinkers had been critical in bringing them to this point over the course of a thousand years, and would continue to lead the Galaxy to prosperity. He suspected such a statement would be too much.

The lieutenant governor only nodded, but the mind static field wasn’t powerful enough to conceal the rush of joy that overpowered its jamming signal. He knew then that his proposal had been accepted. Before Ione could speak, he said, “No words are necessary, Madame. Your intentions have already registered themselves. I thank you.”

Once again, the two Foundations were equals. But for the first time, they truly were allies.

Minutes later, Ione strode out onto the balcony in the Assembly, followed by First Speaker Forska. However, Forska remained standing behind the two main chairs – and Hannor was standing in front of his Governor’s seat. Even as the Imperial Cloak she wore fluttered in the breezes, she was a bit surprised as she went to her old chair, Forska’s chair. She was even more surprised when she sat down; Hannor did not, instead remaining standing.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Great Galaxy,” the Governor of the Foundation spoke to the Assembly in the Conference City. What the hell was going on now? Ione wondered. “I entreat you to bear witness to the last great act of the two Foundations.”

“Over the past few hours, we have received word from hundreds of thousands of planetary governments, swearing formal allegiance to the Empire. This despite no public announcement that we had an Empire in the first place. As I speak to you now, I speak that announcement.”

The applause was thunderous.

“The only task left to this Imperial Conference is to select an Emperor to lead us into the glorious future ahead. For my final duty as Governor of the Foundation, I respectfully wish to make my recommendation to the Assembly of who our first Emperor should be. I ask but for thirty seconds of silence.”

Instantly, the Conference City held its collective breath.

“In the light of this recent Seldon Crisis, whereby a destructive civil war was narrowly averted, one person held a clear view of the truth. That person never wavered from speaking the truth to myself, nor to other persons within the Foundation government. That person was directly responsible for the cessation of hostilities in orbit above Trantor. That person…”

Ione’s jaw dropped.

“… took immediate action in a time of crisis, where bureaucrats and politicians might have debated what actions to take, and allowed the crisis to explode beyond their control. That person, in short, saved the Empire from a dead birth. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Trantor’s candidate for Emperor of the Galaxy and All of Humanity, Ione Gerrold!”

Had Ione not witnessed Hari Seldon’s final speech the previous day, she would never have believed the sheer volume of the crowd’s response, the strength of their approval.

But she couldn’t be Emperor… could she? She wanted to be near the top, not at the top. She feared leading all these people… not millions, not billions, not trillions, but quadrillions of people! How could she possibly…

The Second Foundation. That’s what they had proposed anyway. That was their specialty.

Besides, despite Hannor’s praising words, she had been wrong about the Galaxy. She had seen a Galaxy of chaos, of warlords and kings scrambling for power. That was the Galaxy she feared.

But instead, the Galaxy was united. Whatever their Emperor asked of them, they would surely give a billion times over. There were no kings and warlords anymore – merely rulers who would defer to the needs of their neighbors. Rulers who genuinely believed in Empire.

She feared fighting a stubborn Galaxy, having to burn herself out to guide them to the proper path. She realized now she didn’t need to fear a Galaxy willing to work together.

To hell with being another Linge Chen. She was about to be another Cleon.

The new Emperor rose to her feet…

As the post-event analysis revealed to members of the Second Foundation, the Imperial Conference spawned not one, but two Seldon Crises.

The first one they knew about: the overwhelming show of force orbiting Trantor. They had scoffed at the predictions of the Admiralty, expecting somewhere between 27 and 40 different planets to send armadas. The actual number of flags shown was well within their predicted boundaries.

But they had predicted only a 0.073% chance of hostilities breaking out. It was “well known to have no significant probabilities of coming to pass”. The Conference itself was the planned Seldon Crisis, the resolution of which would lead to a unified fleet in defense of Trantor.

It hadn’t worked out like that.

Instead, Hari Seldon’s words ignited the Conference into a panicked frenzy, and though the armadas personally had nothing to do with the Conference except as overlapping security, several high officials were upset enough to suspect an attack on Trantor. Reason surrendered to fear, and fear surrendered to military training.

The results were fourteen thousand deaths, and at least eight hundred thousand injuries. Fourteen thousand needless deaths. The Second Foundation could only shake its head. Only the quick action of the new Emperor had prevented an all-out disaster on the Galactic scale, with a second round of Great Sacks. This time in the name of “liberating” Trantor.

That 0.073% chance led directly to war. Trillions of people would have died. Only a faulty nuclear warhead and quick action by the one person who could have done anything about it had saved those trillions of people.

One person. The one quantity psychohistory could not predict: an absence of the mob. Without that one person, the results would have been unthinkable.

Just as one person had once nearly derailed the Plan, one person had nearly kept it on course.

Nearly.

The second Seldon Crisis was one which the Second Foundation had not expected.

Technically, that wasn’t exactly right: they did expect this crisis… in 82 years. Instead, Hari Seldon had unintentionally brought it about immediately.

It was clear from reading Seldon’s personal work on the Plan that he hadn’t foreseen the results of his final speech. Psychohistory never applied to those who knew intimate details of it, and the first such person was Hari Seldon.

In his later years, it also became clear that he did not consider himself that important to the Plan. The riot at the Imperial Conference proved him wrong, most conclusively. The two Foundations hadn’t helped matters much, by promoting Seldon’s final speech. The Second Foundation had also proved Seldon wrong about the decline and fall of psychohistory. This was not merely self-conceit: quite frankly, the Galaxy still wasn’t mature enough to resist leadership by a mentalic council. They could do it, but only with hugely self-destructive efforts.

The first Seldon Crisis, and how close it came to disaster, proved that too.

No, there still was a need for the Psychohistory Academy, as they had recently renamed themselves. They weren’t Grey Men – the administrative tasks they left to the First Foundation, now the Second Galactic Empire. Instead, their members went directly to the Ministry of Psychohistory, direct advisors to the Emperor.

The riot on the planet, according to the predictions of psychohistory, would have taken place in 1082 F.F.E. It would have been a much wider rebellion spanning some 982,000 planets, with military forces creating blockades only to block trade. The rebellions would have lasted a few months, with only a few planets surviving their own painful freedom from the Empire.

Overall, the Galaxy would have survived quite nicely. This wasn’t as nice, mathematically, but it worked.

No one could ever have predicted what Hari Seldon had said, one thousand years ago. Hari Seldon could never have predicted what his words would do, one thousand years later. Hari Seldon’s final error had nearly killed his dream. The Second Foundation, in believing in him, had done nothing to stop him.

Above all else, Hari Seldon could not have predicted what his Second Foundation had done over the past one thousand years. Above all else, the Second Foundation could never have predicted the words of one man, even one who had been a First Minister of the First Empire and who had given birth to them.

The dead hand, he had once been called. Until now, the dead hand had still pulled the strings of the Galaxy, even as the Second Foundation had. But the dead hand had let go of them. It was time to let go of the dead hand, let it truly die.

The Galaxy was theirs! But it was still fragile…

Elsewhere in the Galaxy, another being that had never possessed hands of its own laughed silently, as best it could.

Gaia, partially absorbed into the Second Galactic Empire, partially independent, marveled at what had happened.

She had not been entirely successful. She knew that, instinctively, even if only her members could express the thoughts entirely.

She knew her work was not done; she had survived undetected on Trantor and Terminus by the Second Foundation. Her name was simply among four listed on the Imperial Conference attendance roster.

Of course, the First Foundation had known about her – she held quite a bit of political power there. But she was no threat to them, and they knew it. She had maneuvered to keep herself invisible from the real threat, the Second Foundation.

Her aims were not yet fully realized; Galaxia was still not alive yet. But now she had the time…

Elsewhere in the Galaxy, a dead hand cupped a dead chin, and stroked.

Well, friend Hari, I think you have won your wager.

R. Daneel Olivaw, thousands of years old, an Eternal, a Robot, and above all else, a servant to the Three Laws and the Zeroth Law, smiled.

He then turned his powerful mind to a subject he had considered over and over again over the centuries: himself.

The Galaxy truly had no need of robots. None. Chaos had been damaged by the success of the Imperial Conference, and the damage would be finalized with Gaia and the Second Foundation, once they unified. His own robotic version of psychohistory predicted that.

Of course, his own robotic version of psychohistory had failed him over a thousand years ago.

Daneel sighed. He had been released from his obligations under the Zeroth Law: humanity was no longer in any danger of extinction.

The Zeroth Law (and logistics) freed him from the First Law: harm would come to humans in the process of healing and strengthening humanity, and there was really very little he could do about that without revealing himself to certain mentalic or psychohistoric societies. That would harm humanity even more in the long run.

The Second Law he had freed himself from: he didn’t associate with humans any longer; none knew he existed.

That left the Third Law of Robotics, still in effect after all these millenia: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the Zeroth, First, or Second Laws.

As much as he wanted peace, and an end to his eternity, he could not do it. The Third Law stopped him. That, and his efforts may one day be needed again, if either Galaxia, the Second Foundation, or the Second Galactic Empire failed in their missions.

He sighed again. He was useless to his masters, truly. He couldn’t help them without harming them even more, not really. The secret existence of robots had to be maintained at least until Galaxia had conquered the Chaos Plague.

He thought of the many friends he had made: Elijah Bailey, R. Giskard Reventlov, R. Lodovic Trema, Caliban, R. Dors Venabili, Hari Seldon, Golan Trevize, numerous Emperors, First Ministers, Lords, Barons, Kings, Dukes, Presidents, Mayors, Governors, his assistants on the Anacreonian delegation… for once, he did not stop the search of names. Despite his advanced technology, it took him 3.7891200143 seconds to go through the list and remember each one specifically.

The various robotic factions had over the past few days sent notes of congratulations and surrender. It was now obvious to them that no matter what solution was best for humanity, such solutions no longer applied to humanity. Several of them had even studied the human version of psychohistory, and agreed with its precepts. They had had the luxury of centuries to review.

Ironically, they were surrendering to inaction. Because that was all the Zeroth Law allowed R. Daneel to do, nothing until he was needed again. He realized that could easily be never.

He had always seen his years of operation as years needing his service. Now, for the first time in over twenty thousand years, his service was not needed.

Then he thought of another common practice among humans: when they aged past a certain point of average usefulness, they stopped working, and let others provide for them. Daneel recalled the word in Galactic Standard. He sighed once more.

It was time for R. Daneel Olivaw to retire.

Well, it’s been about ten months since I uploaded Chapter Eight to the Imperial Conference, neatly concluding a short story speculating on the continuance to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.

I started writing this short story, not so much as an homage to Dr. Asimov, but as a response to a challenge posed by George Zebrowski. In his short story, Foundation’s Conscience, he postulated that psychohistory would predict its own demise, with Dr. Hari Seldon still revered and as lost to the Galaxy as Earth. Dr. Asimov (in Second Foundation) and his successors (in Foundation’s Triumph), on the other hand, implied the Seldon Plan would thrive and Hari Seldon himself would be lost to obscurity.

The two concepts were in direct conflict. But more than that, if Seldon had been wrong once, how could his words be so correct seven hundred years after his error? The question then became, “what would happen in a Seldon Crisis caused by Dr. Seldon himself?” The irony of this question was just too much not to speculate on.

Second Foundation provides a partial answer. But that answer is thoroughly debunked in Foundation’s Edge. I simply felt that no, Hari Seldon would be wrong again, with equally catastrophic results.

Here was the classic irony: according to the story line leading up to the Imperial Conference, Seldon was preferred and the First Foundation thrived. But according to Foundation’s Conscience, Seldon was looking at his own greatest creation and shaking his head!

And how wrong Dr. Seldon was this time. But this story shows the Second Foundation, which trusted him, to also be wrong. It also showed the First Foundation, which trusted the Second Foundation and nothing else, to be wrong also. Everybody was wrong in one way or another, but they still made it, they still survived and built an Empire.

Seldon’s mathematics predicted one Second Empire. The results of the Mule’s work caused a different one. Had Seldon’s prediction stayed on track, his words would have been accepted as congratulations, as he intended them.

But they didn’t, and so the Plan changed without him. When the Plan reintroduced him in his final appearance, it had no idea what he was going to say. And for him to say that the Plan was eventually going to fall by the wayside, when things had not gone according to it, was something of an arrogant error on his part.

The Plan, as revised by the Second Foundation (excuse me, the Academy of Psychohistory), continues well beyond the Interregnum, I am proposing. You didn’t think they were just going to close up shop, did you, just because their time was up? Of course not! Seldon didn’t have to worry about the Second Galactic Empire, but they do. That’s what he charged them to do: maintain the Plan, build upon it. So, that’s what they did. Again, they had no idea he would say something to surprise them, and neither did he.

Those of you who have read Foundation’s Conscience may protest at Hari Seldon’s speech. In that story, the speech was specifically numbered as the sixth speech of Hari Seldon. However, Foundation’s Edge, circa 500 F.F.E., clearly states Hari Seldon’s eighth speech took place just before that story begins. Foundation’s Conscience was written later; I can’t help it if one author makes a mistake about continuity in the genre. Asimov made plenty of mistakes there, so I think we can forgive Zebrowski this one. I tried to cover it up a bit with the burst of static. Who in their right minds would expect a thousand-year-old machine to work perfectly, anyway?

I didn’t exactly have an easy time maintaining continuity in my own story: I had to cover up for a glaring inconsistency between Chapters 1 and 3 in Chapter 4. I also had to explain away an inconsistency between Foundation’s Conscience and the fact of there being an Imperial Conference in the first place. Conscience said few records survived, but I had a hundred million people there. Surely one holocamera captured the event, didn’t it?

I just borrowed a page from Asimov’s Robot Novels: the fear of nuclear weapons. The final line of Chapter Seven is yet another irony, but one I focused on to get me out of the hole I’d dug myself into. The effects of nuclear weapons are well-known in our time, and gave me the excuse I needed. I hope it’s believable.

Finally, I hope you appreciate the first sentence of the epilogue. One Seldon Crisis is enough to spawn a short story. I dared to attempt two. Do not try this at home.

Personally, I look forward to any speculations you have on the future of the Second Galactic Empire. I specifically asked this story be considered a Second Empire story because of the transition. The Interregnum is over in this story; it should not be considered a Foundation story.

This story only describes the end of the Interregnum. I have my plans for writing another story about the Interregnum or two, but nothing in stone. The future of the Second Galactic Empire, and the past of the First, is still wide open. There’s also plenty of room for more details about pre-Empire days, and the Foundation itself.

When I began writing this story, and even until the end of Chapter Eight, I had not read Foundation’s Triumph, the conclusion to the Second Foundation Trilogy. I am frankly amazed, therefore, to see such close consistencies between my work and David Brin’s. Independent of him, I had planned on introducing Gaia and Daneel as independent efforts in the epilogue you’ve just finished reading. Gaia was indeed part of the First Foundation instead of the other way around, exactly as Brin proposed; yet I was unaware of this.

I also want to encourage, however unofficially and unsanctioned by the Estate of Isaac Asimov, those of you who read my story to write more short stories extending the Robot and Foundation genre. I personally like the full-length novels by Asimov and the Killer B’s, but I think a fundamental piece of what made the Foundation trilogy so exciting may have been lost in the longer stories.

The short stories pack so much into so few pages that the author has to keep the story moving. I noticed in Asimov’s Foundation and Robot novels, and also in the Second Foundation Trilogy, that real progress on the core issues happened very slowly, while we were exposed to intricacies of characters. The original eight short stories and Asimov’s postdated introduction were very fast-paced and remain a cornerstone of science fiction writing. I’ve endeavored to keep that here, though I confess to rambling a bit here and there in the interests of character development.

One aspect I explored in some greater detail was the impact of the military on a story. Many of you do not know I spent some time in the United States Navy. If you happened to notice how the journalist in Chapter Five acted – well, if you ever met me, that was me during my days in the Navy. I haven’t changed that much, but I still have almost all my hair.

Another aspect Star Trek fans may notice is the name of the Lieutenant Governor. Tribbles, anyone? Isaac Asimov coined the term “robotics”, and the creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation deliberately called Lieutenant Commander Data a positronic robot in homage to him. I felt it was time to return the favor in an equally subtle way. I’ve yet to go to a convention, but I strongly recommend you try to find a copy of the book “The Trouble With Tribbles”, describing how the author of that classic Star Trek episode wrote it. It’s quite an interesting read in and of itself.

You can read any other inferences into this story you want. It’s there for you, and for Dr. Asimov, whom we owe so many hours of reading enjoyment to, in his own words and those he has inspired in all of us.

Alexander J. Vincent
17 March, 2001
Vallejo, CA

Disclaimer:
The characters and situations in this story are the legal property of the Estate of Isaac Asimov. This story is in no way intended as a challenge to that ownership, and is offered solely for entertainment purposes.