You'll have all the details at the Admiralty."
"Right!"
The trader rose, shook hands roughly, and strode out.
Sutt waited, spreading his fingers gingerly and rubbing out the pressure; then shrugged his shoulders and stepped into the mayor's office.
The mayor deadened the visiplate and leaned back.
"What do you make of it, Sutt?"
"He could be a good actor," said Sutt, and stared thoughtfully ahead. 2.
It was evening of the same day, and in Jorane Sutt's bachelor apartment on the twenty-first floor of the Hardin Building, Publis Manlio was sipping wine slowly.
It was Publis Manlio in whose slight, aging body were fulfilled two great offices of the Foundation.
He was Foreign Secretary in the mayor's cabinet, and to all the outer suns, barring only the Foundation itself, he was, in addition, Primate of the Church, Purveyor of the Holy Food, Master of the Temples, and so forth almost indefinitely in confusing but sonorous syllables.
He was saying,
"But he agreed to let you send out that trader.
It is a point."
"But such a small one," said Sutt.
"It gets us nothing immediately.
The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end.
It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose."
"True.
And this Mallow is a capable man.
What if he is not an easy prey to dupery?"
"That is a chance that must be run.
If there is treachery, it is the capable men that are implicated.
If not, we need a capable man to detect the truth.
And Mallow will be guarded.
Your glass is empty."
"No, thanks. I've had enough."
Sutt filled his own glass and patiently endured the other's uneasy reverie. Of whatever the reverie consisted, it ended indecisively, for the primate said suddenly, almost explosively, "Sutt, what's on your mind?"
"I'll tell you, Manlio."
His thin lips parted,
"We're in the middle of a Seldon crisis."
Manlio stared, then said softly,
"How do you know?
Has Seldon appeared in the Time Vault again?"
"That much, my friend, is not necessary.
Look, reason it out.
Since the Galactic Empire abandoned the Periphery, and threw us on our own, we have never had an opponent who possessed nuclear power.
Now, for the first time, we have one. That seems significant even if it stood by itself.
And it doesn't.
For the first time in over seventy years, we are facing a major domestic political crisis.
I should think the synchronization of the two crises, inner and outer, puts it beyond all doubt."
Manlio's eyes narrowed,
"If that's all, it's not enough.
There have been two Seldon crises so far, and both times the Foundation was in danger of extermination.
Nothing can be a third crisis till that danger returns."
Sutt never showed impatience,
"That danger is coming.
Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives.
The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.
Look, Manlio, we're proceeding along a planned history.
We know that Hari Seldon worked out the historical probabilities of the future.