“Why, what was it before that?”

“Empty? At least of human beings.”

“That's hard to believe.”

“It's true. The old records show it.”

“Where did the people come from who first settled Trantor?”

“No one is certain. There are hundreds of planets which claim to have been populated in the dim mists of antiquity and whose people present fanciful tales about the nature of the first arrival of humanity. Historians tend to dismiss such things and to brood over the ‘Origin Question.’”

“What is that? I've never heard of it.”

“That doesn't surprise me. It's not a popular historical problem now, I admit, but there was a time during the decay of the Empire when it roused a certain interest among intellectuals. Salvor Hardin mentions it briefly in his memoirs. It's the question of the identity and location of the one Planet from which it all started. If ,we look backward in time, humanity flows inward from the most recently established worlds to older ones, to still older ones, until all concentrates on one—the original.”

Trevize thought at once of the obvious flaw in the argument. “Might there not have been a large number of originals?”

“Of course not. All human beings all over the Galaxy are of a single species. A single species cannot originate on more than one planet. Quite impossible.”

“How do you know?”

“In the first place.” Pelorat ticked off the first finger of his left hand with the first finger of his right, and then seemed to think better of what would undoubtedly have been a long and intricate exposition. He put both hands at his side and said with great earnestness, “My dear fellow, I give you my word of honor.”

Trevize bowed formally and said, “I would not dream of doubting it, Professor Pelorat. Let us say, then, that there is one planet of origin, but might there not be hundreds who lay claim to the honor?”

“There not only might be, there are. Yet every claim is without merit. Not one of those hundreds that aspire to the credit of priority shows any trace of a prehyperspatial society, let alone any trace of human evolution from prehuman organisms.”

“Then are you saying that there is a planet of origin, but that, for some reason, it is not making the claim?”

“You have hit it precisely.”

“And you are going to search for it?”

“We are. That is our mission. Mayor Branno has arranged it all. You will pilot our ship to Trantor.”

“To Trantor? It's not the planet of origin. You said that much a while ago.”

“Of course Trantor isn't. Earth is.”

“Then why aren't you telling me to pilot the ship to Earth?”

“I am not making myself clear. Earth is a legendary name. It is enshrined in ancient myths. It has no meaning we can be certain of, but it is convenient to use the word as a one-syllable synonym for ‘the planet of origin of the human species.’ just which planet in real space is the one we are defining as ‘Earth’ is not known.”

“Will they know on Trantor?”

“I hope to find information there, certainly. Trantor possesses the Galactic Library, the greatest in the system.”

“Surely that Library has been searched by those people you said were interested in the ‘Origin Question’ in the time of the First Empire.”

Pelorat nodded thoughtfully, “Yes, but perhaps not well enough. I have learned a great deal about the ‘Origin Question’ that perhaps the Imperials of five centuries back did not know. I might search the old records with greater understanding, you see. I have been thinking about this for a long time and I have an excellent possibility in mind.”

“You have told Mayor Branno all this, I imagine, and she approves?”

“Approves? My dear fellow, she was ecstatic. She told me that Trantor was surely the place to find out all I needed to know.”

“No doubt,” muttered Trevize.

That was part of what occupied him that night. Mayor Branno was sending him out to find out what he could about the Second Foundation. She was sending him with Pelorat so that he might mask his real aim with the pretended search for Earth—a search that could carry him anywhere in the Galaxy. It was a perfect cover, in fact, and he admired the Mayor's ingenuity.

But Trantor? Where was the sense in that? Once they were on Trantor, Pelorat would find his way into the Galactic Library and would never emerge. With endless stacks of books, films, and recordings, with innumerable computerizations and symbolic representations, he would surely never want to leave.

Besides that—

Ebling Mis had once gone to Trantor, in the Mule's time. The story was that he had found the location of the Second Foundation there and had died before he could reveal it. But then, so had Arkady Darell, and she had succeeded in locating the Second Foundation. But the location she had found was on Terminus itself, and there the nest of Second Foundationers was wiped out. Wherever the Second Foundation was now would be elsewhere, so what more had Trantor to tell? If be were looking for the Second Foundation, it was best to go anywhere but Trantor.

Besides that—

What further plans Branno had, he did not know, but he was not in the mood to oblige her. Branno had been ecstatic, had she, about a trip to Trantor? Well, if Branno wanted Trantor, they were not going to Trantor!—Anywhere else.—But not Trantor!

And worn out, with the night verging toward dawn, Trevize fell at last into a fitful slumber.

Mayor Branno had had a good day on the one following the arrest of Trevize. She had been extolled far beyond her deserts and the incident was never mentioned.

Nevertheless, she knew well that the Council would soon emerge from its paralysis and that questions would be raised. She would have to act quickly. So, putting a great many matters to one side, she pursued the matter of Trevize.

At the time when Trevize and Pelorat were discussing Earth, Branno was facing Councilman Munn Li Compor in the Mayoralty Office. As he sat across the desk from her, perfectly at ease, she appraised him once again.

He was smaller and slighter than Trevize and only two years older. Both were freshmen Councilmen, young and brash, and that must have been the only thing that held them together, for they were different in all other respects.

Where Trevize seemed to radiate a glowering intensity, Compor shone with an almost serene self-confidence. Perhaps it was his blond hair and blue eyes, not at all common among Foundationers. They lent him an almost feminine delicacy that (Branno judged) made him less attractive to women than Trevize was. He was clearly vain of his looks, though, and made the most of them, wearing his hair rather long and making sure that it was carefully waved. He wore a faint blue shadowing under his eyebrows to accentuate the eye color. (Shadowing of various tints had become common among men these last ten years.)

He was no womanizer. He lived sedately with his wife, but had not yet registered parental intent and was not known to have a clandestine second companion. That, too, was different from Trevize, who changed housemates as often as he changed the loudly colored sashes for which he was notorious.

There was little about either young Councilman that Kodell's department had not uncovered, and Kodell himself sat quietly in one corner of the room, exuding a comfortable good cheer as always.

Branno said, “Councilman Compor, you have done the Foundation good service, but unfortunately for yourself, it is not of the sort that can be praised in public or repaid in ordinary fashion.”

Compor smiled. He had white and even teeth, and Branno idly wondered, for one flashing moment if all the inhabitants of the Sirius Sector looked like that. Compor's tale of stemming from that particular, rather peripheral, region went back to his maternal grandmother, who had also been blond-haired and blue-eyed and who had maintained that her mother was from the Sirius Sector. According to Kodell, however, there was no hard evidence in favor of that.