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murder.”
    “Quietly. Quietly. Let us reach my office.”
             
    It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so. Spy-beams trained upon it received neither a suspicious silence nor an even more suspicious static. They received, rather, a conversation constructed at random out of a vast stock of innocuous phrases in various tones and voices.
    “Now,” said Seldon, at his ease, “six months will be enough.”
    “I don’t see how.”
    “Because, my boy, in a plan such as ours, the actions of others are bent to our needs. Have I not said to you already that Chen’s temperamental makeup has been subjected to greater scrutiny than that of any other single man in history? The trial was not allowed to begin until the time and circumstances were right for the ending of our own choosing.”
    “But could you have arranged—”
    “—to be exiled to Terminus? Why not?” He put his fingers on a certain spot on his desk and a small section of the wall behind him slid aside. Only his own fingers could have done so, since only his particular print-pattern could have activated the scanner beneath.
    “You will find several microfilms inside,” said Seldon. “Take the one marked with the letter T.”
    Gaal did so and waited while Seldon fixed it within the projector and handed the young man a pair of eyepieces. Gaal adjusted them, and watched the film unroll before his eyes.
    He said, “But then—”
    Seldon said, “What surprises you?”
    “Have you been preparing to leave for two years?”
    “Two and a half. Of course, we could not be certain that it would be Terminus he would choose, but we hoped it might be and we acted upon that assumption—”
    “But why, Dr. Seldon? If you arranged the exile, why? Could not events be far better controlled here on Trantor?”
    “Why, there are some reasons. Working on Terminus, we will have Imperial support without ever rousing fears that we would endanger Imperial safety.”
    Gaal said, “But you aroused those fears only to force exile. I still do not understand.”
    “Twenty thousand families would not travel to the end of the Galaxy of their own will perhaps.”
    “But why should they be forced there?” Gaal paused. “May I not know?”
    Seldon said, “Not yet. It is enough for the moment that you know that a scientific refuge will be established on Terminus. And another will be established at the other end of the Galaxy, let us say,” and he smiled, “at Star’s End. And as for the rest, I will die soon, and you will see more than I. —No, no. Spare me your shock and good wishes. My doctors tell me that I cannot live longer than a year or two. But then, I have accomplished in life what I have intended and under what circumstances may one better die.”
    “And after you die, sir?”
    “Why, there will be successors—perhaps even yourself. And these successors will be able to apply the final touch in the scheme and instigate the revolt on Anacreon at the right time and in the right manner. Thereafter, events may roll unheeded.”
    “I do not understand.”
    “You will.” Seldon’s lined face grew peaceful and tired, both at once. “Most will leave for Terminus, but some will stay. It will be easy to arrange. —But as for me,” and he concluded in a whisper, so that Gaal could scarcely hear him, “I am finished.”

PART II

    THE
ENCYCLOPEDISTS

TERMINUS —         . . . Its location (see map) was an odd one for the role it was called upon to play in Galactic history, and yet as many writers have never tired of pointing out, an inevitable one. Located on the very fringe of the Galactic spiral, an only planet of an isolated sun, poor in resources and negligible in economic value, it was never settled in the five centuries after its discovery, until the landing of the Encyclopedists. . . .
    It was inevitable that as a new generation grew, Terminus would become something more than an appendage of the