Foundation and Empire (Page 59)

They gathered about him.

He said, whitely, "That was a Foundation ship, and those were the Mule’s men aboard."

Ebling bent to pick up the cigar he had dropped. He said, "Here? We’re fifteen thousand parsecs from the Foundation. "

"And we’re here. What’s to prevent them from making the same trip. Galaxy, Ebling, don’t you think I can tell ships apart? I saw their engines, and that’s enough for me. I tell you it was a Foundation engine in a Foundation ship."

"And how did they get here?" asked Bayta, logically. "What are the chances of a random meeting of two given ships in space?"

"What’s that to do with it?" demanded Toran, hotly. "It would only show we’ve been followed."

"Followed?" hooted Bayta. "Through hyperspace?"

Ebling Mis interposed wearily, "That can be done – given a good ship and a great pilot. But the possibility doesn’t impress me."

"I haven’t been masking my trail," insisted Toran. "I’ve been building up take-off speed on the straight. A blind man could have calculated our route."

"The blazes he could," cried Bayta. "With the cockeyed jumps you are making, observing our initial direction didn’t mean a thing. We came out of the jump wrong-end forwards more than once."

"We’re wasting time," blazed Toran, with gritted teeth. "It’s a Foundation ship under the Mule. It’s stopped us. It’s searched us. It’s had Magnifico – alone – with me as hostage to keep the rest of you quiet, in case you suspected. And we’re going to bum it out of space right now."

"Hold on now," and Ebling Mis clutched at him. "Are you going to destroy us for one ship you think is an enemy? Think, man, would those scuppers chase us over an impossible route half through the bestinkered Galaxy, look us over, and then let us go?"

"They’re still interested in where we’re going."

"Then why stop us and put us on our guard? You can’t have it both ways, you know."

"I’ll have it my way. Let go of me, Ebling, or I’ll knock you down."

Magnifico leaned forward from his balanced perch on his favorite chair back. His long nostrils flared with excitement. "I crave your pardon for my interruption, but my poor mind is of a sudden plagued with a queer thought."

Bayta anticipated Toran’s gesture of annoyance, and added her grip to Ebling’s. "Go ahead and speak, Magnifico. We will all listen faithfully."

Magnifico said, "In my stay in their ship what addled wits I have were bemazed and bemused by a chattering fear that befell men. Of a truth I have a lack of memory of most that happened. Many men staring at me, and talk I did not understand. But towards the last – as though a beam of sunlight had dashed through a cloud rift – there was a face I knew. A glimpse, the merest glimmer – and yet it glows in my memory ever stronger and brighter."

Toran said, "Who was it?"

"That captain who was with us so long a time ago, when first you saved me from slavery."

It had obviously been Magnifico’s intention to create a sensation, and the delighted smile that curled broadly in the shadow of his proboscis, attested to his realization of the intention’s success.

"Captain… Han… Pritcher?" demanded Mis, sternly. "You’re sure of that? Certain sure now?"

"Sir, I swear," and he laid a bone-thin hand upon his narrow chest. "I would uphold the truth of it before the Mule and swear it in his teeth, though all his power were behind him to deny it."

Bayta said in pure wonder, "Then what’s it all about?" The clown faced her eagerly, "My lady, I have a theory. It came upon me, ready made, as though the Galactic Spirit had gently laid it in my mind." He actually raised his voice above Toran’s interrupting objection.

"My lady," he addressed himself exclusively to Bayta, "if this captain had, like us, escaped with a ship; if he, like us, were on a trip for a purpose of his own devising; if he blundered upon us – he would suspect us of following and waylaying him, as we suspect him of the like. What wonder he played this comedy to enter our ship?"

"Why would he want us in his ship, then?" demanded Toran. "That doesn’t fit."

"Why, yes, it does," clamored the clown, with a flowing inspiration. "He sent an underling who knew us not, but who described us into his microphone. The listening captain would be struck at my own poor likeness – for, of a truth there are not many in this great Galaxy who bear a resemblance to my scantiness. I was the proof of the identity of the rest of you."

"And so he leaves us?"

"What do we know of his mission, and the secrecy thereof? lie has spied us out for not an enemy and having it done so, must he needs think it wise to risk his plan by widening the knowledge thereof?"

Bayta said slowly, "Don’t be stubborn, Torie. It does explain things."

"It could be," agreed Mis.

Toran seemed helpless in the face of united resistance. Something in the clown’s fluent explanations bothered him. Something was wrong. Yet he was bewildered and, in spite of himself, his anger ebbed.

"For a while," he whispered, "I thought we might have had one of the Mule’s ships."

And his eyes were dark with the pain of Haven’s loss.

The others understood.

22. Death On Neotrantor

NEOTRANTOR The small planet of Delicass, renamed after the Great Sack, was for nearly a century, the seat of the last dynasty of the First Empire. It was a shadow world and a shadow Empire and its existence is only of legalistic importance. Under the first of the Neotrantorian dynasty…

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