Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov [40]
"What's the subject?" Seldon felt a small curiosity stirring within him.
"Meteorology."
"Meteorology!" Seldon felt revolted at the anticlimax.
"Don't make faces. Look. Every inhabited world has an atmosphere. Every world has its own atmospheric composition, its own temperature range, its own rotation and revolution rate, its own axial tipping, it's own land-water distribution. We've got twenty five million different problems and no one has succeeded in finding a generalization."
...that's because atmospheric behavior easily enters a chaotic phase. Everyone knows that."
"So my friend Jenarr Leggen says. You've met him."
Seldon considered. "Tall fellow? Long nose? Doesn't speak much?"
"That's the one. -And Trantor itself is a bigger puzzle than almost any world. According to the records, it had a fairly normal weather pattern when it was first settled. Then, as the population grew and urbanization spread, more energy was used and more heat was discharged into the atmosphere. The ice cover contracted, the cloud layer thickened, and the weather got lousier. That encouraged the movement underground and set off a vicious cycle. The worse the weather got, the more eagerly the land was dug into and the domes built and the weather got still worse. Now the planet has become a world of almost incessant cloudiness and frequent rains--or snows when it's cold enough. The only thing is that no one can work it out properly. No one has worked out an analysis that can explain why the weather has deteriorated quire as it has or how one can reasonably predict the details of its day-today changes."
Seldon shrugged. "Is that sort of thing important?"
"To a meteorologist it is. Why can't they be as frustrated over their problems as you are over yours? Don't be a project chauvinist.'.
Seldon remembered the cloudiness and the dank chill on the way to the Emperor's Palace.
He said, "So what's being done about it?"
"Well, there's a big project on the matter here at the University end Jenarr Leggen is part of it. They feel that if they can understand the weather change on Trantor, they will learn a great deal about the basic laws of general meteorology. Leggen wants that as much as you want your laws of psychohistory. So he has set up an incredible array of instruments of all kinds Upperside . . . you know, above the domes. It hasn't helped them so far. And if there's so much work being done for many generations on the atmosphere, without results, how can you complain that you haven't gotten anything out of human history in a few weeks?"
Randa was right, Seldon thought, and he himself was being unreasonable and wrong. And yet . . . and yet . . . Hummin would say that this failure in the scientific attack on problems was another sign of the degeneration of the times. Perhaps he was right, also, except that he was speaking of a general degeneration and average effect. Seldon felt no degeneration of ability and mentality in himself.
He said with some interest then, "You mean that people climb up out of the domes and into the open air above?"
"Yes. Upperside. It's a funny thing, though. Most native Trantorians won't do it. They don't like to go Upperside. The idea gives them vertigo or something. Most of those working on the meteorology project are Outworlders."
Seldon looked out of the window and the lawns and small garden of the University campus, brilliantly lit without shadows or oppressive heat, and said thoughtfully, "I don't know that I can blame Tramorians for liking the comfort of being within, but I should think curiosity would drive come Upperside. It would drive me."
"Do you mean that you would like to see meteorology in action?"
"I think I would. How does one get Upperside?"
"Nothing