Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [75]
“Their advance may be in mentalics. It may be that the Mule was a Spacer—”
Trevize shrugged in clear irritation. “The Mule can’t be everything. The Gaians have described him as an aberrant Gaian. He’s also been considered a random mutant.”
Pelorat said, “To be sure, there have also been speculations—not taken very seriously, of course—that he was a mechanical artifact. A robot, in other words, though that word wasn’t used.”
“If there is something that seems mentally dangerous, we will have to depend on Bliss to neutralize that. She can—Is she asleep now, by the way?”
“She has been,” said Pelorat, “but she was stirring when I came out here.”
“Stirring, was she? Well, she’ll have to be awake on short notice if anything starts happening. You’ll have to see to that, Janov.”
“Yes, Golan,” said Pelorat quietly.
Trevize shifted his attention to the computer. “One thing that bothers me are the entry stations. Ordinarily, they are a sure sign of a planet inhabited by human beings with a high technology. But these—”
“Is there something wrong with them?”
“Several things. In the first place, they’re very archaic. They might be thousands of years old. In the second, there’s no radiation but thermals.”
“What are thermals?”
“Thermal radiation is given off by any object warmer than its surroundings. It’s a familiar signature that everything yields and it consists of a broad band of radiation following a fixed pattern depending on temperature. That is what the entry stations are radiating. If there are working human devices aboard the stations, there is bound to be a leakage of nonthermal, nonrandom radiation. Since only thermals are present we can assume that either the stations are empty, and have been, perhaps, for thousands of years; or, if occupied, it is by people with a technology so advanced in this direction that they leak no radiation.”
“Perhaps,” said Pelorat, “the planet has a high civilization, but the entry stations are empty because the planet has been left so strictly alone for so long by our kind of Settlers that they are no longer concerned about any approach.”
“Perhaps. —Or perhaps it is a lure of some sort.”
Bliss entered, and Trevize, noting her out of the corner of his eyes, said grumpily, “Yes, here we are.”
“So I see,” said Bliss, “and still in an unchanged orbit. I can tell that much.”
Pelorat explained hastily. “Golan is being cautious, dear. The entry stations seem unoccupied and we’re not sure of the significance of that.”
“There’s no need to worry about it,” said Bliss indifferently. “There are no detectable signs of intelligent life on the planet we’re orbiting.”
Trevize bent an astonished glare at her. “What are you talking about? You said—”
“I said there was animal life on the planet, and so there is, but where in the Galaxy were you taught that animal life necessarily implies human life?”
“Why didn’t you say this when you first detected animal life?”
“Because at that distance, I couldn’t tell. I could barely detect the unmistakable wash of animal neural activity, but there was no way I could, at that intensity, tell butterflies from human beings.”
“And now?”
“We’re much closer now, and you may have thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t—or, at least, only briefly. I was, to use an inappropriate word, listening as hard as I could for any sign of mental activity complex enough to signify the presence of intelligence.”
“And there isn’t any?”
“I would suppose,” said Bliss, with sudden caution, “that if I detect nothing at this distance, there can’t possibly be more than a few thousand human beings on the planet. If we come closer, I can judge it still more delicately.”
“Well, that changes things,” said Trevize, with some confusion.
“I suppose,” said Bliss, who looked distinctly sleepy and, therefore, irritable. “You can now discard all this business