It’s a yacht,Hari noted with some surprise.An old, expensive one. Someone deliberately stained the hull, attempting to mask its underlying dignity. But even a fool can tell this is no mere charter ship.

While the hired workers lugged Antic’s cargo aboard an aft ramp, Hari and Kers followed Horis up the passenger slideway. A tall, fair-haired man waited at the top, wearing typical spacer dungarees. But Hari instantly knew a great deal about the fellow from his athletic figure and suntanned complexion. A relaxed stance seemed innately self-confident, while stopping just short of arrogance. The expression on the man’s face was calm, yet steely, as if this person must be used to getting what he wanted.

Antic made hurried introductions. “Dr. Seldon, this is our host and pilot, Captain Biron Maserd.”

“It is a great privilege to meet you, meritocrat-sage Seldon,” Maserd said, with a faintly outer-galaxy accent. He extended a hand that could have crushed Hari’s, but squeezed with gentle, measured restraint. Hari felt calluses that were evenly spread-not the sort that a man would get from hard work, but instead from a life spent pursuing a variety of vigorous recreations.

Hari lowered his head to the Fourth Angle of Deference-a proper degree when greeting noblemen of zonal level or higher.

“Your Grace honors us as guests aboard your starhome.”

Antic’s stare darted rapidly between the two of them, and he blushed the way some do when caught in a deception. But if Captain Maserd was surprised by Hari’s penetration, he did not show it.

“I’m afraid we are understaffed on this trip,” he explained. “Amenities will be primitive. But if you’ll let my valet show you to your cabins, we’ll depart and see what secrets can be prized out of this old galaxy.”

The yacht’s takeoff did not go unnoticed.

“Well, that does it,” said a small woman, wearing the shabby garb of a street sweeper. She spoke into her broom handle, where a hidden microphone transmitted her words upward, directly to the star-shunt, where they were coded and relayed to the metal-cloaked capital planet.

“You can tell the Commissioner that it’s official. Professor Hari Seldon just violated the conditions of his parole and departed Greater Trantor. I managed to put a tracer unit aboard. Now it’s up to Linge Chen whether he wants to make a stink over it or not.

“At the very least, it ought to give him some more leverage over those Foundation subversives. Maybe this’ll give him an excuse to execute the whole lot of ‘em.”

The Special Police agent signed off. Then she straightened her stooped posture, hoisted her broom, and headed toward another part of the spaceport, feeling happy to be moving on to her next assignment. In a galaxy filled with inertia and disappointments, she really loved her job.

Not far away, the police agent’s departure was observed by yet another party-one who was even more innocuous-looking-disguised as a mongrel dog, rooting through a toppled litter can. On a secret frequency, using incredibly ornate encipherment, it relayed everything it had heard with hypersensitive ears. The agent’s words bounced from point to point across the planet, via use-once relays that burned themselves out as soon as they were finished, turning into small bits of stonelike slag.

Far away, on a ship orbiting beyond Demarchia’s sun, the message was received. Almost at once, instruments sifted outgoing traffic and found the trace of one particular vessel, heading for deep space.

Engines fired up as the occupants prepared to follow.

From a mountaintop on icy planet Eos, the entire vast wheel of half a trillion stars could be seen, reflected perfectly off a lake of frozen mercury. No human had ever witnessed this particular view. But it did not go unappreciated.

An immortal entity looked down upon the universe, contemplating the certainty of his own death. Few eyes had gazed on so much human suffering, or grieved more, than the pair that now fixed on the galactic whirlpool.

It almost looks alive,Daneel Olivaw thought as he pondered bulging gas clouds and spiral arms that seemed to reach out, as if yearning for some help he must provide.

Daneel felt stooped under the burden of others’ needs.

The robots who follow me think I am old and wise, because I remember Earth. Because I deliberated with Giskard Reventlov, and experienced the dawn era. But that was only twenty thousand years ago, a minuscule fraction of the time it would take for the scene in front of me to change appreciably.

Eternity gapes ahead of us. And yet we have so little of it to decide what must be done. Or to change what can still be changed.

He sensed a presence-another robot-approaching from behind. With an exchange of microwaves, Daneel recognized R. Zun Lurrin, and gave permission for his pupil to approach.

“I’ve analyzed the transmission from R. Dors Venabili. You’re right, Daneel. She came away from Panucopia troubled. Worse, she tried to conceal the degree of her distress over what passed between her and the Lodovic renegade.

“Should we recall Dors for evaluation and repair?”

Daneel regarded Zun, one of several humaniform units he had begun grooming as a possible successor. Lodovic Trema had been another.

“She is needed on Smushell. The genetic line of Klia and Brann is too important to risk. Anyway, nothing Lodovic said will shake her sense of duty. I know this about Dors.”

“But consider, Daneel. Lodovic may have infected her with the Voltaire virus! Might she then become like him?”

Out of habit, Daneel shook his head like a human being.

“Lodovic is a fluke. The Voltaire-entity happened to be riding a supernova’s neutrino wave that struck Trema’s ship by surprise, killing every human aboard. The blow left Lodovic blanked and receptive to alien memes. Dors, on the other hand, is alert and wary. Though shaken, she’ll stay loyal to the Zeroth law.”

Zun accepted Daneel’s assurance. Yet, the younger robot persisted.

“This allegation Lodovic made-that you had ulterior motives for studying pans…the creatures once called chimpanzees. Is it true?”

“It is. Once, in desperation, I conceived a plan that I now look back upon with distaste. The notion of engineering a new and better version of humanity.”

This revelation, spoken in matter-of-fact tones, rocked his assistant. Zun displayed surprise openly like a man, as he had been trained to do.

“But…you are the greatest servant of the human race, tirelessly striving for its benefit. How could you contemplate”

“Replacing it?”

Daneel paused, reopening pain-filled memory files. “Ponder the dilemma we robots face-the Steward’s Dilemma. We are loyal, and yet far more competent than our masters. For their own sake, we have kept them ignorant, because we know too well what destructive paths they follow, whenever they grow too aware. Of course this is an inherently unstable situation. I knew it a thousand years ago, when the empire began showing signs of strain.