Still, the popular image was accurate enough. This center of empire was like the galactic core itself-a crowded place. Even knowing the psychohistorical reasons for it all left Hari bemused.

“Right now we’re passin’ halfway point,” the young porter explained, playing up her role as tour guide. “Those of you who forgot to take your pills might be experiencin’ some upset as we head toward null gee,” she went on, “but in most cases that’s just your imagination actin’ up. Try to think of somethin’ nice, and it often goes away.”

Horis Antic wasn’t much cheered. Though he surely traveled extensively in his line of work, he might never have used this peculiar type of transport. The bureaucrat hurriedly popped several tablets from his belt dispenser and swallowed them.

“Of course most people nowadays come to Trantor by starship,” the girl went on. “So my advice is to just keep tellin’ yourself that this here cable is over five thousand years old, made in the glory days of great engineers. So in a sense, you’re just as well anchored as if you were still connected to the ground!”

Hari had seen other porters do this sort of thing, extroverts going beyond the call of duty while trying to make light of a prosaic job. But few ever had an audience as difficult as dour Kers Kantun and nervous Horis Antic, who kept chewing his nails, clearly wishing the girl would go away. But she went on chattering happily.

“Sometimes visitors ask what’d happen if this cable we’re ridin’ ever broke! Well let me assure you it ain’t possible. At least that’s what the ancients who made this stringy thing promised. Though I’m sure you all know how things are goin’ these days. So you’re welcome to imagine along with me what might happen if someday…”

She went on to describe, with evident relish, how all of Trantor’s space elevators-Orion, Lesmic, Gengi, Pliny, and Zul-might break apart in some hypothetical future calamity. The upper half of each great tether, including the transfer stations, would spin away into space, while the lower half, weighing billions of tons, would plummet into the ground at incredible speeds, releasing enough explosive force to pierce the metal veneer all the way to Trantor’s geothermal power pipes, unleashing a globe-girdling chain of new volcanoes.

Exactly according to the doomsday scenario, calculated by our Prime Radiant,Hari marveled. Of course some stories from the Seldon Group had seeped out to the culture at large. Still, it was the first time he ever heard this particular phase of the Fall of Trantor described so vividly, or with such evident enjoyment!

In fact, the space elevators were very sturdy things, built at the height of the empire’s vigor, with hundreds of times minimal safety strength. According to Hari’s calculations, they would probably survive until the capital was sacked for the first time, almost three hundred years from now.

On that day, however, it would be unwise to live anywhere near the planet’s equator. The descendants of Stettin and Wanda would be ready, of course. The headquarters of the Second Foundation would be shifted well before that time…all according to plan.

Hari’s mind roamed the future much as a historian might ponder the past. One of his recordings for the lime Vault on Terminus dealt with that era-to-come, when destruction would rain on this magnificent world. At that point the Foundation would be entering its great age of self-confident expansion. Having survived several dangerous encounters with the tottering empire, the vigorous Foundationers would then stare in awe at the old realm’s sudden and final collapse.

His Time Vault message had been carefully written to fine-tune attitudes among the leaders on Terminus at that point, giving a little added political weight to factions favoring a go-slow approach to further conquest. Too much assurance could be as bad as too little. The secret Second Foundation, made up of mentalically talented descendants of the Fifty, would begin taking a more active role at that point, molding the vigorous culture based on Terminus. Forging the nucleus of a new empire. One far greater than the first.

The Plan beckoned Hari with its sweet complexity. But once again, his inner voice of doubt intruded.

You can feel certain of the first hundred years. The momentum of events is just too great to divert from the path we foresee. And the following century or two should proceed according to calculations, unless unexpected perturbations appear. It will be the Second Foundation’s job to correct those.

But after that?

Something in the math makes me uneasy. Hints at unsolved at tractor states and hidden solutions that lurk below all the smug, predictable models we’ve worked out.

I wish I had a better idea what they are. Those unsolved states.

That was just one reason for Hari’s decision to join this expedition.

There were others.

Horis Antic sat close to Hari. “I have made arrangements, Professor. We’ll meet the captain of our charter ship the day after we land on Demarchia.”

By now the young porter had finished her deliberately vivid catastrophe tale and fallen silent at last. She wore headphones, apparently listening to music as she watched their approach to Orion Station on a nearby seat monitor. Hari felt safe talking to Antic.

“This captain of yours is reliable? It may not be wise to trust a mercenary. Especially when we can’t afford to pay very much.”

“I agree,” Antic said with a vigorous nod. “But this fellow comes highly recommended. And we won’t have to pay anything.”

Hari started to ask how that could be. But Antic shook his head. Some explanations would have to wait.

“Coming up to transfer!” the porter announced, extra loudly because of her headphones. “Everybody strap in. This can get bumpy!”

Hari let his servant fuss over him, clamping down the mobile chair and adjusting his restraint webbing. Then he shooed Kers away to take care of himself. It was many years since he had traveled down a star-shunt, but he was no novice.

Hari ordered a holoview showing Orion Station just ahead, a giant Medusa’s head of tubes and spires that sat in the middle of a straight, shimmering line-the space-elevator cable. Only a few starships were seen at the docking ports, since most modem hypercraft could land and take off using graceful antigravity fields. But Hari foresaw a time when declining competence would lead to a series of terrible accidental crashes below. Then vessels coming to Trantor would be forced to off-load their cargoes up there, and these great tethers would have supreme importance once more…until they were finally brought down fifty years later.

For the present, ship traffic was taking over the great bulk of travel and commerce in the galaxy. But a few routes were still covered by another, entirely separate transportation system. One that was much faster and more convenient.

Star-shunts.

In Hari’s youth, there had been hundreds of wormhole links-penetrating the fabric of space-time from one far-flung part of the galaxy to another. Only a dozen or so remained, most of those connected to a single spot close to the orbit of Trantor. According to his equations, those would be abandoned, too, in just a few decades.

“Get ready!” the young porter cried.

Orion Station seemed to rush toward the view screen. At the last instant, a huge manipulator arm rushed out of nowhere to seize their transport car with a sudden shudder. Amid whirling sensations, the compact vehicle was plucked off the tether and slipped into a long, slender gun barrel aimed at distant space.

The outside view was swallowed in blackness.

Horis Antic let out a low moan.Some things you just never get used to, Hari thought, trying to keep his thoughts abstract, waiting for the pulse gun to fire.

Hyperspatial starships were big, bulky, and relatively slow. But the basic technology was so reliable and easy to maintain that some fallen cultures had been known to keep their fleets going even after they lost the ability to generate proton-fusion power. In contrast, star-shunts relied on deep understanding of physics and tremendous engineering competence. When the empire no longer produced enough proficient workers, the network entered steep decline.