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Page 214
Although Seldon is an expert in a variety of martial art called ''twisting," he also is aided by a nearby stranger who introduces himself as journalist Chetter Hummin and warns him about Demerzel, who he thinks is behind the attack. He also urges Seldon to conceal himself on Trantor from Demerzel and the Emperor's efforts to get control of psychohistory, while Seldon himself gathers information on whether it can indeed be developed into a predictive science, which Hummin says is desperately needed to prevent the Galaxy from plunging into millennia of anarchy after the fall of the Empire, whose decay can be seen everywhere.
Seldon begins a flight through Trantor that takes him through a representative sample of its diverse 800 sectors as he searches for a way to simplify the psychohistorical picture. The first stop is in Streeling, where Seldon is placed in its famous university and assigned to the care of a historian, Dors Vanabili. In a trip to the outside of Trantor's metal skin to compare the problems of weather prediction to the complexities of psychohistory, Seldon feels he is being pursued by an airship and almost freezes to death before he is rescued by the redoubtable Dors.
Pursuing the notion that the sector called Mycogen was settled by the descendants of an ancient planet (Aurora) who may have useful legends and records of a single planet of origin, Seldon and Dors are sent to Mycogen by Hummin. The sector is known for its delicious fungi and other food, and also for its conservative customs, which include religious rites centered around the people's Lost World and the permanent depilation of hair. Seldon and Dors make their way into a central temple called the Sacratorium to find out whether the Mycogenians have a working robot there. They discover a robot, but one long inactive, and are in turn discovered by the religious leader, Sunmaster Fourteen, who had met them originally and welcomed them, as friends of Hummin, to Mycogen. Sunmaster plans to execute them or hand them over to the Emperor, but Hummin arrives and talks the religious leader into releasing them to him, by suggesting the possibility that psychohistory might restore their Lost World.
The next stop is at Dahl, noted for its heat sinks (which tap the planet's magma), and there Seldon pursues other legends about the single planet from which humanity may have expanded. He is helped by a heatsinker named Yugo Amaryl, who hopes to become a mathematician (and later becomes Seldon's chief assistant in the development of psychohistory), and a street urchin named Raych (who later becomes Seldon's adopted son and protector). Seldon learns more of the legends of Earth from ancient Mother Rittah, who tells them of the great hero

 
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