Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov [99]
Compor said earnestly, "Forget the dramatics, man. Trevize, you're a lightning rod! You've been sent out to draw Second Foundation response--if there is such a thing as the Second Foundation. I have an intuitive sense for things other than hyperspatial pursuit and I'm sure that's what she's planning. If you try to find the Second Foundation, they'll become aware of it and they'll act against you. If they do, they are very likely to tip their hand. And when they do, Mayor Branno will go for them."
"A pity your famous intuition wasn't working when Branno was planning my arrest."
Compor flushed and muttered, "You know it doesn't always work."
"And now it tells you she's planning to attack the Second Foundation. She wouldn't dare."
"I think she would. But that's not the point. The point is that right now she is throwing you out as bait."
"So?"
"So by all the black holes in space, don't search for the Second Foundation. She won't care if you're killed in the search, but I care. I feel responsible for this and I care."
"I'm touched," said Trevize coldly, "but as it happens I have another task on hand at the moment."
"You have?"
"Pelorat and I are on the track of Earth, the planet that some think was the original home of the human race. Aren't we, Janov?"
Pelorat nodded his head. "Yes, it's a purely scientific matter and a long-standing interest of mine."
Compor looked blank for a moment. Then, "Looking for Earth? But why?"
"To study it," said Pelorat. "As the one world on which human beings developed--presumably from lower forms of life, instead of, as on all others, merely arriving ready-made--it should be a fascinating study in uniqueness."
"And," said Trevize, "as a world where, just possibly, I may learn more of the Second Foundation. --Just possibly."
Compor said, "But there isn't any Earth. Didn't you know that?"
"No Earth?" Pelorat looked utterly blank, as he always did when he was preparing to be stubborn. "Are you saying there was no planet on which the human species originated?"
"Oh no. Of course, there was an Earth. There's no question of that! But there isn't any Earth now. No inhabited Earth. It's gone!"
Pelorat said, unmoved, "There are tales--"
"Hold on, Janov," said Trevize. "Tell me, Compor, how do you know this?"
"What do you mean, how? It's my heritage. I trace my ancestry from the Sirius Sector, if I may repeat that fact without boring you. We know all about Earth out there. It exists in that sector, which means it's not part of the Foundation Federation, so apparently no one on Terminus bothers with it. But that's where Earth is, just the same."
"That is one suggestion, yes," said Pelorat. "There was considerable enthusiasm for that 'Sirius Alternative,' as they called it, in the days of the Empire."
Compor said vehemently, "It's not an alternative. It's a fact."
Pelorat said, "What would you say if I told you I know of many different places in the Galaxy that are called Earth--or were called Earth--by the people who lived in its stellar neighborhood?"
"But this is the real thing," said Compor. "The Sirius Sector is the longest-inhabited portion of the Galaxy. Everyone knows that."
"The Sirians claim it, certainly," said Pelorat, unmoved.
Compor looked frustrated. "I tell you--"
But Trevize said, "Tell us what happened to Earth. You say it's not inhabited any longer. Why not?"
"Radioactivity. The whole planetary surface is radioactive because of nuclear reactions that went out of control, or nuclear explosions--I'm not sure--and now no life is possible there."
The three stared at each other for a while and then Compor felt it necessary to repeat. He said, "I tell you, there's no Earth. There's no use looking for it."
2.
JANOV PELORAT'S FACE WAS, FOR ONCE, NOT EXPRESSIONLESS. It was not that there was passion in it--or any of the more unstable emotions. It was that his eyes had narrowed--and that a kind of fierce intensity had filled every