In that case, why would Chen keep paying professional officers to watch a dying crackpot professor, when their skills could better be employed dealing with other crises?

Soon a chime announced the car’s arrival at the Grand Vestibule. Hari and Kers emerged into a mammoth chamber that stretched twenty kilometers across and tapered vertically toward heights that vanished in a misty haze.

Anchored to the ground in the very center was a huge black pillar, more than a hundred meters wide, that reared straight upward. The eye assumed that this mighty column held up the distant roof, but the eye was fooled. It wasn’t a pillar, but a greatcable, stretching outward through a hole in that remote ceiling, continuing past Trantor’s atmosphere, linking the solid surface to a massive space station that whirled in orbit, fifty thousand kilometers above.

Along its great length, Orion elevator seemed infested with countlessbulges that kept flowing up and down like parasites burrowing under the skin of a slender stalk. These were elevator cars, partly masked by a flexible membrane that protected passengers against dangerous radiation, and from having to look upon vertiginous views.

At the very bottom of this monumental structure, people could be seen debarking from newly arrived capsules, passing through brief immigration formalities, then moving toward a maze of ramps and moving walkways. Other streams of individuals flowed in the opposite direction, aiming to depart. There were several lines for each social caste. Kers chose one of the shorter queues, clearly marked as reserved for meritocrat VIPs.

In theory, I could use the special portal for high nobility,Hari thought, glancing toward an aisle lined with silky fabrics, where fawning attendants saw to the needs of super-planetary gentry.Any former First Minister of the Empire has that right. Even a disgraced one, like me. But that would surely attract too much attention.

They paused at a little kiosk labeled EMIGRATION CONTROL and presented their identity cards. Kers had offered to acquire false papers through his contacts in the black market, but that act would transform this little adventure from a misdemeanor into a felony. Hari had no intention of risking harm to the Seldon Project simply to satisfy his curiosity. If this worked, fine. Otherwise, he might as well go home and let things end gracefully.

The screen seemed to glare at Hari with its inquiry.

DESTINATION? 

This was a crucial moment. Everything depended on a matter of legal definition.

“Demarchia,” he said aloud. “I want to observe the imperial legislature in session for a week or two. Ultimately, I plan to return from there to my residence at Streeling University.”

He wasn’t lying. But a lot could lie in that word-”ultimately.”

The unit seemed to ponder his statement for a moment, while Hari mulled silently.

Demarchia is one of twenty nearby worlds that are officially part of Trantor. There are strong political and traditional reasons for this arrangement, one that’s been reinforced by generations of emperors and ministers…But maybe the police don’t look at things the same way.

If Hari was wrong, the computer would refuse to issue a ticket. News of this “escape attempt” would flash at the Commission of Public Safety. And Hari would have no choice but to go home and wait for Linge Chen’s agents to come and question him. Worse, Stettin Palver and the other psychohistorians would cluck and fuss, wagging their fingers and tightening their reverent guardianship. Hari would never have another unsupervised moment.

Come on,he urged, wishing he had some of the mental powers that enabled Daneel Olivaw to meddle in the thoughts of both men and machines.

Abruptly, the screen came alight again.

HAPPY VOYAGE. LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR. 

Hari nodded.

“Long life,” he answered perfunctorily, having to swallow a knot of released tension. The machine extruded a pair of tickets, assigning them to a specific elevator car, appropriate to their social class and destination. Hari looked at one of the billets as Kers picked them up.

INTRA-TRANTOR COMMUTE, it said.

He nodded with satisfaction.I’m not breaking the letter of my agreement with the Commission. Not yet at least.

A crowd of uniformed figures milled nearby, wearing polished buttons and white gloves-young porters assigned to assist nongentry VIP passengers. Several of them glanced up, but they turned back to their gossip and dice games when Kers and Hari refrained from making any beckoning motions. Kers needed no assistance with their meager luggage.

Moments later, however, a small figure suddenly spilled out of the crowd of purple uniforms, striding at a rapid pace to intercept them. The girl-wiry and no more than fifteen years old-snapped a jaunty salute at the rim of her pillbox cap. Her Corrin Sector accent was unabashed and friendly to the point of overfamiliarity.

“Greets, m’lords! I’ll be takin’ your bags an’ seeing you safely along if it pleases ya.”

Her name tag said JENI.

Kers made a dismissing gesture, but in a blur she snatched the tickets from his hand. Grinning, the porter nodded with a vigorous swirl of unruly platinum hair.

“Right this way to your chariot, m’lords!”

When Kers refused to hand over any of the luggage, she only grinned. “No need to be afeared. I’ll see you safely all the way to Orion Station. Just follow me.”

Kers rumbled as the girl sped ahead with their tickets, but Hari smiled and patted his servant’s burly hand. In a world of dull jobs and soul-grinding routine, it was pleasant to see someone having a little fun, even at the expense of her betters.

They found the third member of their party at the agreed spot, next to an elevator car with DEMARCHIA flashing on its placard. Horis Antic looked infinitely relieved to see them. The Grey bureaucrat barely glanced at the porter, but he bowed to Hari more deeply than protocol required, then motioned toward the gaping door of a waiting elevator car.

“This way, Professor. I saved us good seats.”

Hari took a deep breath as they went aboard, and the opening slithered shut behind them.

Here we go.Already he could feel his heart begin to lift.

One last adventure.

Unfortunately there were no windows. Passengers could watch the view outside through seat monitors, but few bothered. Hari’s car was half-empty, since the space elevators were being used much less these days.

I’m partly responsible for that,he recalled. Most traffic to and from Trantor arrived by hyperspatial jump ships, which floated to the ground on their own self-generated gravity fields. A growing swarm of them shuttled up and down with food and other necessities for the empire’s administrative center. Twenty agricultural worlds had been dedicated to supplying this lifeline-up from a mere eight before Hari became First Minister.

Trantor used to create its own basic food supply in huge solar-powered vats, operated by swarms of busy automatons who didn’t mind the stench and grinding labor.When that system collapsed during the infamous Tiktok Revolt, one of his first duties in office had been to make up the difference, multiplying the flow of imported food and other goods.

But the new system is expensive and inefficient. And that lifeline will become a deadly trap in coming centuries.He knew this from the equations of psychohistory.Emperors and oligarchs will pay ever-greater attention to preserving it, at the expense of important business elsewhere.

To enhance their loyalty, the agricultural worlds had been joined even closer to Trantor itself, sharing the same “planetary” government, an act that now helped to justify Hari’s ruse.

Though he did not turn on the outside viewer, it was easy to visualize the planet’s gleaming anodized metal coat, reflecting the densely packed starfield of the galaxy’s crowded center-millions of dazzling suns that glittered like fiery gems, making night almost like day. Though many in the empire envisioned Trantor as one giant city, much of the stainless steel surface was only a veneer, just a few stories thick, laid down for show after mountains and valleys had been leveled. Those flat warrens were mostly used for storing old records. Actual office towers, factories, and habitations occupied no more than ten percent of the planet’s area…easily enough room for forty billion people to live and work efficiently.