|
|
|
|
|
|
analyst has become psychotic, the details of his job will return to his mind first. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
More than eleven months later no sign of the missing field man has been found. Junz is almost ready to quit when he receives word that someone has requested two standard Spatio-analysis texts at the Florinian branch of the Public Library of Sark. In discussion with the clerk who reveals this information, Junz learns that the fugitives have been traced to the Khorov bakery and have been allowed to remain there because Khorov is a well-known agent of Trantor. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Terens, during his escape from the bakery shop, reflects on his experience of being taken to Sark as a boy and being so disillusioned by discrimination against Florinians that he learned to hate the Sarkites. He also learned to shun Sarkite agents provocateurs and the conspiracies of Trantor, the gigantic Empire that has expanded to encompass half the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy. Then Rik, the Spatio-analyst, fell into his hands as the ultimate weapon against Sark. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As Junz goes to see Abel again, Abel reflects on the progress of the Trantorian Empire, which has grown from a republic of five worlds five hundred years earlier to a Trantorian Confederation and now a Trantorian Empire trembling on the verge of becoming a Galactic Empire. Abel is uncertain what to do about Junz and the I.S.B. and the missing Spatio-analyst. Even if Sark could be proven to be guilty of killing or imprisoning the Spatio-analyst, Abel does not want to provide an occasion for the remaining non-Trantorian half of the Galaxy to unite against the Empire. He is upset about Junz's obsession with exposing and destroying the relationship between Sark and Florina rather than the larger Galactic issues of unification or war. Junz feels so strongly about Sark's tyranny over Florina because he is dark-skinned and Florinians are unusually pale. When faced with Junz's anger, Abel reveals that Khorov is dead, and the fugitives are apparently in the hands of the Sarkites. But in an Asimov novel not everything is what it seems: Khorov had helped Rik and Valona on their way to the spaceport by giving them identification documents. Khorov is killed by a patroller, and Rik and Valona get away in the crowd. Rik persuades Valona to sneak aboard a spaceship with him, but not the one to which Khorov had directed them because he does not trust Khorov and patrollers might be waiting there. Rik's returning memory about spaceship construction and procedures allows them to stow away. After takeoff Rik explains to Valona that his job used to be analyzing "the currents of space," the small differences in trace elements that pervade space. He gathered information that is important to ships in calculating their |
|
|
|
|
|