Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov [168]
Kodell said, "In that case, let us not look too quickly in the direction in which they may simply be wanting us to look. How is it, do you suppose, that Trevize was able to decide the Second Foundation existed? Why didn't the Second Foundation stop him?"
Branno held up her gnarled fingers and counted on them. "First, Trevize is a very unusual man who, for all his obstreperous inability to use caution, has something about him that I have not been able to penetrate. He may be a special case. Second, the Second Foundation was not entirely ignorant. Compor was on Trevize's tail at once and reported him to me. I was relied on to stop Trevize without the Second Foundation having to risk open involvement. Third, when I didn't quite react as expected--no execution, no imprisonment, no memory erasure, no Psychic Probe of his brain--when I merely sent him out into space, the Second Foundation went further. They made the direct move of sending one of their own ships after him."
And she added with tight-lipped pleasure, "Oh, excellent lightning rod."
Kodell said, "And our next move?"
"We are going to challenge that Second Foundationer we now face. In fact, we're moving toward him rather sedately right now."
4.
GENDIBAL AND NOVI SAT TOGETHER, SIDE BY SIDE, watching the screen.
Novi was frightened. To Gendibal, that was quite apparent, as was the fact that she was desperately trying to fight off that fright. Nor could Gendibal do anything to help her in her struggle, for he did not think it wise to touch her mind at this moment, lest he obscure the response she displayed to the feeble mentalic field that surrounded them.
The Foundation warship was approaching slowly--but deliberately. It was a large warship, with a crew of perhaps as many as six, judging from past experience with Foundation ships. Her weapons, Gendibal was certain, would be sufficient in themselves to hold off and, if necessary, wipe out a fleet made up of every ship available to the Second Foundation--if those ships had to rely on physical force alone.
As it was, the advance of the warship, even against a single ship manned by a Second Foundationer, allowed certain conclusions to be drawn. Even if the ship possessed mentalic ability, it would not be likely to advance into the teeth of the Second Foundation in this manner. More likely, it was advancing out of ignorance--and this might exist in any of several degrees.
It could mean that the captain of the warship was not aware that Compor had been replaced or--if aware--did not know the replacement was a Second Foundationer, or perhaps was not even aware what a Second Foundationer might be.
Or (and Gendibal intended to consider everything) what if the ship did possess mentalic force and, nevertheless, advanced in this self-confident manner? That could only mean it was under the control of a megalomaniac or that it possessed powers far beyond any that Gendibal could bring himself to consider possible.
But what he considered possible was not the final judgment--
Carefully he sensed Novi's mind. Novi could not sense mentalic fields consciously, whereas Gendibal, of course, could--yet Gendibal's mind could not do so as delicately or detect as feeble a mental field as could Novi's. This was a paradox that would have to be studied in future and might produce fruit that would in the long run prove of far greater importance than the immediate problem of an approaching spaceship.
Gendibal had grasped the possibility of this, intuitively, when he first became aware of the unusual smoothness and symmetry of Novi's mind--and he felt a somber pride in this intuitive ability he possessed. Speakers had always been proud of their intuitive powers, but how much was this the product of their inability to measure fields by straightforward physical methods and their failure, therefore, to understand what it was that they really did? It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition." And how much of this ignorance of theirs might arise from their underestimation