Second Foundation

Ten months earlier, the First Speaker had viewed those same crowding stars – nowhere as crowded as at the centre of that huge cluster of matter Man calls the Galaxy – with misgivings; but now there was a sombre satisfaction on the round and ruddy face o

he whispered, ‘and why not that bit of poetic imagery. All the universe was once guided from this rock; all the apron strings of the stars led here. “All roads lead to Trantor,” says the old proverb, “and that is where all stars end.”’

Hari Seldon called Trantor, “Star’s End,”

had long since stopped speaking to the

The First Speaker

‘And all those flaws in our secrecy; those gaping holes; remained unnoticed because Seldon had spoken of “the other end” in his way, and they had interpreted it in their way.’

It was here at Trantor that Ebling Mis discovered us; and here we saw to it that he did not survive the discovery. To do so, it was necessary to arrange to have a normal Foundation girl defeat the tremendous mutant powers of the Mule. Surely, such a phenomenon might have attracted suspicion to the planet on which it happened— It was here that we first studied the Mule and planned his ultimate defeat. It was here that Arcadia was born and the train of events begun that led to the great return to the Seldon Plan.

nd where was the source of great danger to Terminus and the Plan?

‘Here! Here at Trantor, where the Empire dying though it was, could, for three centuries, still destroy the Foundation, if it could only have decided to do so.

decades had been accumulated. And it was the purpose of the Second Foundation to protect the Plan against enemies. That, too, was known!

‘And it is so inevitable. Hari Seldon left the Second Foundation behind him to maintain, improve, and extend his work. That has been known, or guessed at, for fifty years. But where could that best be done? At Trantor, where Seldon’s group had worked, and where the data of