Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [78]
Trevize said, “It’s my idea that we ought to study the spoiled areas particularly. It seems to me that those places where human beings were most concentrated would be where the ecological balance was most lacking. Those areas might be the nucleus of the spreading blight of unterraforming. What do you think, Bliss?”
“It’s possible. In any case, in the absence of definite knowledge, we might as well look where it’s easiest to see. The grasslands and forest would have swallowed most signs of human habitation so that looking there might prove a waste of time.”
“It strikes me,” said Pelorat, “that a world might eventually establish a balance with what it has; that new species might develop; and that the bad areas might be recolonized on a new basis.”
“Possibly, Pel,” said Bliss. “It depends on how badly out of balance the world was in the first place. And for a world to heal itself and achieve a new balance through evolution would take far more than twenty thousand years. We’d be talking millions of years.”
The Far Star was no longer circling the world. It was drifting slowly across a five-hundred-kilometer-wide stretch of scattered heath and furze, with occasional clumps of trees.
“What do you think of that?” said Trevize suddenly, pointing. The ship came to a drifting halt and hovered in mid-air. There was a low, but persistent, hum as the gravitic engines shifted into high, neutralizing the planetary gravitational field almost entirely.
There was nothing much to see where Trevize pointed. Tumbled mounds bearing soil and sparse grass were all that was visible.
“It doesn’t look like anything to me,” said Pelorat.
“There’s a straight-line arrangement to that junk. Parallel lines, and you can make out some faint lines at right angles, too. See? See? You can’t get that in any natural formation. That’s human architecture, marking out foundations and walls, just as clearly as though they were still standing there to be looked at.”
“Suppose it is,” said Pelorat. “That’s just a ruin. If we’re going to do archeological research, we’re going to have to dig and dig. Professionals would take years to do it properly—”
“Yes, but we can’t take the time to do it properly. That may be the faint outline of an ancient city and something of it may still be standing. Let’s follow those lines and see where they take us.”
It was toward one end of the area, at a place where the trees were somewhat more thickly clumped, that they came to standing walls—or partially standing ones.
Trevize said, “Good enough for a beginning. We’re landing.”
9
Facing the Pack
35.
THE FAR STAR CAME TO REST AT THE BOTTOM OF A small rise, a hill in the generally flat countryside. Almost without thought, Trevize had taken it for granted that it would be best for the ship not to be visible for miles in every direction.
He said, “The temperature outside is 24 C., the wind is about eleven kilometers per hour from the west, and it is partly cloudy. The computer does not know enough about the general air circulation to be able to predict the weather. However, since the humidity is some forty percent, it seems scarcely about to rain. On the whole, we seem to have chosen a comfortable latitude or season of the year, and after Comporellon that’s a pleasure.”
“I suppose,” said Pelorat, “that as the planet continues to unterraform, the weather will become more extreme.”
“I’m sure of that,” said Bliss.
“Be as sure as you like,” said Trevize. “We have thousands of years of leeway. Right now, it’s still a pleasant planet and will continue to be so for our lifetimes and far beyond.”
He was clasping a broad belt about his waist as he spoke, and Bliss said sharply, “What’s that, Trevize?”
“Just my old navy training,” said Trevize. “I’m not going into an unknown world unarmed.”
“Are you seriously intending to carry weapons?”
“Absolutely. Here