by Isaac Asimov
“How do you mean?”
“Well, we’ve heard of Earth’s radioactivity in several places, and that sort of thing would be designed to make anyone break off any attempt to locate it. If it were truly radioactive, it would be totally unapproachable. In all likelihood, we would not even be able to set foot on it. Even robot explorers, if we had any, might not survive the radiation. So why look? And if it is not radioactive, it remains inviolate, except for accidental approach, and even then it might have other means of masking itself.”
Trevize managed a smile. “Oddly enough, Janov, that thought has occurred to me. It has even occurred to me that that improbable giant satellite has been invented and planted in the world’s legends. As for the gas giant with the monstrous ring system, that is equally improbable and may be equally planted. It is all designed, perhaps, to have us look for something that doesn’t exist, so that we go right through the correct planetary system, staring at Earth and dismissing it because, in actual fact, it lacks a large satellite or a triple-ringed cousin or a radioactive crust. We don’t recognize it, therefore, and don’t dream we are looking at it. —I imagine worse, too.”
Pelorat looked downcast. “How can there be worse?”
“Easily—when your mind gets sick in the middle of the night and begins searching the vast realm of fantasy for anything that can deepen despair. What if Earth’s ability to hide is ultimate? What if our minds can be clouded? What if we can move right past Earth, with its giant satellite and with its distant ringed gas giant, and never see any of it? What if we have already done so?”
“But if you believe that, why are we—?”
“I don’t say I believe that. I’m talking about mad fancies. We’ll keep on looking.”
Pelorat hesitated, then said, “For how long, Trevize? At some point, surely, we’ll have to give up.”
“Never,” said Trevize fiercely. “If I have to spend the rest of my life going from planet to planet and peering about and saying, ‘Please, sir, where’s Earth?’ then that’s what I’ll do. At any time, I can take you and Bliss and even Fallom, if you wish, back to Gaia and then take off on my own.”
“Oh no. You know I won’t leave you, Golan, and neither will Bliss. We’ll go planet-hopping with you, if we must. But why?”
“Because I must find Earth, and because I will. I don’t know how, but I will. —Now, look, I’m trying to reach a position where I can study the sunlit side of the planet without its sun being too close, so just let me be for a while.”
Pelorat fell silent, but did not leave. He continued to watch while Trevize studied the planetary image, more than half in daylight, on the screen. To Pelorat, it seemed featureless, but he knew that Trevize, bound to the computer, saw it under enhanced circumstances.
Trevize whispered, “There’s a haze.”
“Then there must be an atmosphere,” blurted out Pelorat.
“Not necessarily much of one. Not enough to support life, but enough to support a thin wind that will raise dust. It’s a well-known characteristic of planets with thin atmospheres. There may even be small polar ice caps. A little water-ice condensed at the poles, you know. This world is too warm for solid carbon dioxide. —I’ll have to switch to radar-mapping. And if I do that I can work more easily on the nightside.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I should have tried it first, but with a virtually airless and, therefore, cloudless planet, the attempt with visible light seems so natural.”
Trevize was silent for a long time, while the view-screen grew fuzzy with radar-reflections that produced almost the abstraction of a planet, something that an artist of the Cleonian period might have produced. Then he said, “Well—” emphatically, holding the sound for a while, and was silent again.
Pelorat said, at last, “What’s the ‘well’ about?”
Trevize looked at him briefly. “No craters that I can see.”
“No craters? Is that good?”
“Totally unexpected,” said Trevize. His face broke into a grin, “And very good. In fact, possibly magnificent.”
63.
Fallom remained with her nose pressed against the ship’s porthole, where a small segment of the Universe was visible in the precise form in which the eye saw it, without computer enlargement or enhancement.
Bliss, who had been trying to explain it all, sighed and said in a low voice to Pelorat, “I don’t know how much she understands, Pel dear. To her, her father’s mansion and a small section of the estate it stood upon was all the Universe. I don’t think she was ever out at night, or ever saw the stars.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I really do. I didn’t dare show her any part of it until she had enough vocabulary to understand me just a little—and how fortunate it was that you could speak with her in her own language.”
“The trouble is I’m not very good at it,” said Pelorat apologetically. “And the Universe is rather hard to grasp if you come at it suddenly. She said to me that if those little lights are giant worlds, each one just like Solaria—they’re much larger than Solaria, of course—that they couldn’t hang in nothing. They ought to fall, she says.”
“And she’s right, judging by what she knows. She asks sensible questions, and little by little, she’ll understand. At least she’s curious and she’s not frightened.”
“The thing is, Bliss, I’m curious, too. Look how Golan changed as soon as he found out there were no craters on the world we’re heading for. I haven’t the slightest idea what difference that makes. Do you?”
“Not a bit. Still he knows much more planetology than we do. We can only assume he knows what he’s doing.”
“I wish I knew.”
“Well, ask him.”
Pelorat grimaced. “I’m always afraid I’ll annoy him. I’m sure he thinks I ought to know these things without being told.”
Bliss said, “That’s silly, Pel. He has no hesitation in asking you about any aspect of the Galaxy’s legends and myths which he thinks might be useful. You’re always willing to answer and explain, so why shouldn’t he be? You go ask him. If it annoys him, then he’ll have a chance to practice sociability, and that will be good for him.”
“Will you come with me?”
“No, of course not. I want to stay with Fallom and continue to try to get the concept of the Universe into her head. You can always explain it to me afterward—once he explains it to you.”
64.
Pelorat entered the pilot-room diffidently. He was delighted to note that Trevize was whistling to himself and was clearly in a good mood.
“Golan,” he said, as brightly as he could.
Trevize looked up. “Janov! You’re always tiptoeing in as though you think it’s against the law to disturb me. Close the door and sit down. Sit down! Look at that thing.”
He pointed to the planet on the viewscreen, and said, “I haven’t found more than two or three craters, each quite small.”
“Does that make a difference, Golan? Really?”
“A difference? Certainly. How can you ask?”
Pelorat gestured helplessly. “It’s all a mystery to me. I was a history major at college. I took sociology and psychology in addition to history, also languages and literature, mostly ancient, and specialized in mythology in graduate school. I never came near planetology, or any of the physical sciences.”
“That’s no crime, Janov. I’d rather you know what you know. Your facility in ancient languages and in mythology has been of enormous use to us. You know that. —And when it comes to a matter of planetology, I’ll take care of that.”
He went on, “You see, Janov, planets form through the smashing together of smaller objects. The last few objects to collide leave crater marks. Potentially, that is. If the planet is large enough to be a gas giant, it is essentially liquid under a gaseous atmosphere and the final collisions are just splashes and leave no marks.
“Smaller planets which are solid, whether icy or rocky, do show
crater marks, and these remain indefinitely unless an agency for removal exists. There are three types of removals.
“First, a world may have an icy surface overlying a liquid ocean. In that case, any colliding object breaks through the ice and splashes water. Behind it the ice refreezes and heals the puncture, so to speak. Such a planet, or satellite, would have to be cold, and would not be what we would consider a habitable world.
“Second, if a planet is intensely active, volcanically, then a perpetual lava flow or ash fallout is forever filling in and obscuring any craters that form. However, such a planet or satellite is not likely to be habitable either.
“That brings us to habitable worlds as a third case. Such worlds may have polar ice caps, but most of the ocean must be freely liquid. They may have active volcanoes, but these must be sparsely distributed. Such worlds can neither heal craters, nor fill them in. There are, however, erosion effects. Wind and flowing water will erode craters, and if there is life, the actions of living things are strongly erosive as well. See?”
Pelorat considered that, then said, “But, Golan, I don’t understand you at all. This planet we’re approaching—”
“We’ll be landing tomorrow,” said Trevize cheerfully.
“This planet we’re approaching doesn’t have an ocean.”
“Only some thin polar ice caps.”
“Or much of an atmosphere.”
“Only a hundredth the density of the atmosphere on Terminus.”
“Or life.”
“Nothing I can detect.”
“Then what could have eroded away the craters?”
“An ocean, an atmosphere, and life,” said Trevize. “Look, if this planet had been airless and waterless from the start, any craters that had been formed would still exist and the whole surface would be cratered. The absence of craters proves it can’t have been airless and waterless from the start, and may even have had a sizable atmosphere and ocean in the near past. Besides, there are huge basins, visible on this world, that must have held seas and oceans once, to say nothing of the marks of rivers that are now dry. So you see there was erosion and that erosion has ceased so short a time ago, that new cratering has not yet had time to accumulate.”
Pelorat looked doubtful. “I may not be a planetologist, but it seems to me that if a planet is large enough to hang on to a dense atmosphere for perhaps billions of years, it isn’t going to suddenly lose it, is it?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Trevize. “But this world undoubtedly held life before its atmosphere vanished, probably human life. My guess is that it was a terraformed world as almost all the human-inhabited worlds of the Galaxy are. The trouble is that we don’t really know what its condition was before human life arrived, or what was done to it in order to make it comfortable for human beings, or under what conditions, actually, life vanished. There may have been a catastrophe that sucked off the atmosphere and that brought about the end of human life. Or there may have been some strange imbalance on this planet that human beings controlled as long as they were here and that went into a vicious cycle of atmospheric reduction once they were gone. Maybe we’ll find the answer when we land, or maybe we won’t. It doesn’t matter.”
“But surely neither does it matter if there was life here once, if there isn’t now. What’s the difference if a planet has always been uninhabitable, or is only uninhabitable now?”
“If it is only uninhabitable now, there will be ruins of the one-time inhabitants.”
“There were ruins on Aurora—”
“Exactly, but on Aurora there had been twenty thousand years of rain and snow, freezing and thawing, wind and temperature change. And there was also life—don’t forget life. There may not have been human beings there, but there was plenty of life. Ruins can be eroded just as craters can. Faster. And in twenty thousand years, not enough was left to do us any good. —Here on this planet, however, there has been a passage of time, perhaps twenty thousand years, perhaps less, without wind, or storm, or life. There has been temperature change, I admit, but that’s all. The ruins will be in good shape.”
“Unless,” murmured Pelorat doubtfully, “there are no ruins. Is it possible that there was never any life on the planet, or never any human life at any rate, and that the loss of the atmosphere was due to some event that human beings had nothing to do with?”
“No, no,” said Trevize. “You can’t turn pessimist on me, because it won’t work. Even from here, I’ve spotted the remains of what I’m sure was a city. —So we land tomorrow.”
65.
Bliss said, in a worried tone, “Fallom is convinced we’re going to take her back to Jemby, her robot.”
“Umm,” said Trevize, studying the surface of the world as it slid back under the drifting ship. Then he looked up as though he had heard the remark only after a delay. “Well, it was the only parent she knew, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, of course, but she thinks we’ve come back to Solaria.”
“Does it look like Solaria?”
“How would she know?”
“Tell her it’s not Solaria. Look, I’ll give you one or two reference book-films with graphic illustrations. Show her close-ups of a number of different inhabited worlds and explain that there are millions of them. You’ll have time for it. I don’t know how long Janov and I will have to wander around, once we pick a likely target and land.”
“You and Janov?”
“Yes. Fallom can’t come with us, even if I wanted her to, which I would only want if I were a madman. This world requires space suits, Bliss. There’s no breathable air. And we don’t have a space suit that would fit Fallom. So she and you stay on the ship.”
“Why I?”
Trevize’s lips stretched into a humorless smile. “I admit,” he said, “I would feel safer if you were along, but we can’t leave Fallom on this ship alone. She can do damage even if she doesn’t mean to. I must have Janov with me because he might be able to make out whatever archaic writing they have here. That means you will have to stay with Fallom. I should think you would want to.”
Bliss looked uncertain.
Trevize said, “Look. You wanted Fallom along, when I didn’t. I’m convinced she’ll be nothing but trouble. So—her presence introduces constraints, and you’ll have to adjust yourself to that. She’s here, so you’ll have to be here, too. That’s the way it is.”
Bliss sighed. “I suppose so.”
“Good. Where’s Janov?”
“He’s with Fallom.”
“Very well. Go and take over. I want to talk to him.”
Trevize was still studying the planetary surface when Pelorat walked in, clearing his throat to announce his presence. He said, “Is anything wrong, Golan?”
“Not exactly wrong, Janov. I’m just uncertain. This is a peculiar world and I don’t know what happened to it. The seas must have been extensive, judging from the basins left behind, but they were shallow. As nearly as I can tell from the traces left behind, this was a world of desalinization and canals—or perhaps the seas weren’t very salty. If they weren’t very salty, that would account for the absence of extensive salt flats in the basins. Or else, when the ocean was lost, the salt content was lost with it—which certainly makes it look like a human deed.”
Pelorat said hesitantly, “Excuse my ignorance about such things, Golan, but does any of this matter as far as what we are looking for is concerned?”
“I suppose not, but I can’t help being curious. If I knew just how this planet was terraformed into human habitability and what it was like before terraforming, then perhaps I would understand what has happened to it after it was abandoned—or just before, perhaps. And if we did know what happened to it, we might be forewarned against unpleasant surprises.”
“What kind of surprises? It’s a dead world, isn’t it?”
“Dead enough. Very little water; thin, unbreathable atmosphere; and Bliss detects no signs of mental activity.”
“That should settle it, I
should think.”
“Absence of mental activity doesn’t necessarily imply lack of life.”
“It must surely imply lack of dangerous life.”
“I don’t know. —But that’s not what I want to consult you about. There are two cities that might do for our first inspection. They seem to be in excellent shape; all the cities do. Whatever destroyed the air and oceans did not seem to touch the cities. Anyway, those two cities are particularly large. The larger, however, seems to be short on empty space. There are spaceports far in the outskirts but nothing in the city itself. The one not so large does have empty space, so it will be easier to come down in its midst, though not in formal spaceports—but then, who would care about that?”
Pelorat grimaced. “Do you want me to make the decision, Golan?”
“No, I’ll make the decision. I just want your thoughts.”
“For what they’re worth, a large sprawling city is likely to be a commercial or manufacturing center. A smaller city with open space is likely to be an administrative center. It’s the administrative center we’d want. Does it have monumental buildings?”
“What do you mean by a monumental building?”
Pelorat smiled his tight little stretching of the lips. “I scarcely know. Fashions change from world to world and from time to time. I suspect, though, that they always look large, useless, and expensive. —Like the place where we were on Comporellon.”
Trevize smiled in his turn. “It’s hard to tell looking straight down, and when I get a sideways glance as we approach or leave, it’s too confusing. Why do you prefer the administrative center?”
“That’s where we’re likely to find the planetary museum, library, archives, university, and so on.”