"Mule…"

Summary: My AU version of the Asimov tale from his collection of Foundation and Second Foundation tales. The Foundation has fallen to the mysterious Galactic conqueror, the Mule but the small band lead by the brilliant Ebling Mis seek to find Seldon's mythical Second Foundation and ally with them to destroy the Mule.

Book II: "The Search…"

Part IV…

The stars begin to cluster closely when the core of the Galaxy is penetrated. Gravitational fields begin to overlap at intensities sufficient to introduce perturbations in an interstellar jump that cannot be overlooked. Toran became aware of that when a jump landed their ship in the full glare of a red giant which clutched viciously, and whose grip was loosed, then wrenched apart, only after twelve sleepless, soul-battering hours. With charts limited in scope, and an experience not at all fully developed, either operationally or mathematically, Toran resigned himself to days of careful plotting between jumps. It became a community project of a sort. Ebling Mis checked Toran's mathematics and Bayta tested possible routes, by the various generalized methods, for the presence of real solutions. Even Magnifica, at first reluctantly to leave her post as unofficial nurse to Torie, was put to work on the calculating machine for routine computations, a type of work, which, once explained, was a source of great amusement to her and at which she was surprisingly proficient. So at the end of a month, or nearly, Bayta was able to survey the red line that wormed its way through the ship's trimensional model of the Galaxy halfway to its center, and say with satiric relish, "You know what it looks like. It looks like a ten-foot earthworm with a terrific case of indigestion. Eventually, you'll land us back in Haven."

"I will," growled Toran, with a fierce rustle of his chart, "if you don't shut up."

"And at that," continued Bayta, "there is probably a route right through, straight as a meridian of longitude."

"Yeah? Well, in the first place, dimwit, it probably took five hundred ships five hundred years to work out that route by hit-and-miss, and my lousy half-credit charts don't give it. Besides, maybe those straight routes are a good thing to avoid. They're probably choked up with ships. And besides…"

"Oh, for Galaxy's sake, stop driveling and slavering so much righteous indignation." Her hands went in his hair. He yowled, "Ouch! Let go!", seized her wrists, and whipped downward, whereupon Toran, Bayta, and chair formed a tangled threesome on the floor. It degenerated into a panting wrestling match, composed mostly of choking laughter and various foul blows. Toran broke loose at Magnifica's breathless entrance, baring Torie.

"Oh, forgive the one, milord, milady! Only the gravest of matter causes her to interrupt…"

"What is it?" The lines of anxiety puckered the girl's face and tightened the skin over the enormous bridge of his nose. "The instruments are behaving queerly, sir. I have not, in the knowledge of my ignorance, touched anything…" pleading wave. "I urge you to come."

In two seconds, Toran was in the pilot room. He said quietly to Magnifica, "Wake up Ebling Mis. Have him come down here."

He said to Bayta, who was trying to get a basic order back to her hair by use of her fingers, "We've been detected, Bay." "Detected?" And Bayta's arms dropped. "By whom?"

"Galaxy knows," muttered Toran, "but I imagine by someone with blasters already ranged and trained." He sat down and in a low voice was already sending into the subspacial ether, the ship's identification code. And when Ebling Mis entered, bathrobed and blear-eyed, Toran said with a desperate calm, "It seems we're inside the borders of a local Inner Kingdom which is called the Autarchy of Filia."

"Never heard of it," said Mis, abruptly. "Well, neither did I," replied Toran, "but we're being stopped by a Filian ship just the same, and I don't know what it will involve."

…

The captain-inspector of the Filian ship crowded aboard with six armed men following him. He was short, thin-haired, thin-lipped, and dry-skinned. He coughed a sharp cough as he sat down and threw open the folio under his arm to a blank page. "You the commander?" He eyed Toran who nodded.

"Your passports and ship's clearance, please."

"We have none," said Toran.

"None, hey?" he snatched up a microphone suspended from his belt and spoke into it quickly, "Two men, two women, one infant. Papers not in order."

He made an accompanying notation in the folio. He said, "Where are you from?"

"Siwenna," said Toran warily.

"Where is that?"

"Thirty thousand parsecs, eighty degrees west Trantor, forty degrees…"

"Never mind, never mind!" Toran could see that his inquisitor had written down: "Point of origin—Periphery." The Filian continued, "Where are you going?"

Toran said, "Trantor sector."

"Purpose?"

"Pleasure trip. The ladies and my friend want to see the old capital."

"Like ruins, eh?"

"The old fellow and his assistant…" Toran eyed Mis and Magnifica…Who stared at the word. "Are historians."

"Really? They ought to have a look about our system. We were an old Imperial provincial capital."

"We probably will, on our way back." Toran nodded.

"Carrying any cargo?"

"No."

"Hmmm. We'll need to check on that. Lots of smuggling from the Periphery, no offence intended, just routine."

"Of course."

The officer nodded and two men jumped to activity. Toran made no move to interfere.

"What brings you into Filian territory?" The Filian's eyes gleamed unamiably.

"We didn't know we were. I lack a proper chart."

"You will be required to pay a hundred credits for that lack…And, of course, the usual fees required for tariff duties, et cetera." He spoke again into the microphone, but listened more than he spoke. Then, to Toran, "Know anything about nuclear technology?"

"A little," replied Toran, guardedly.

"Yes?" The Filian closed his folio, and added, "The men of the Periphery have a knowledgeable reputation that way. Put on a suit and come with me."

Magnifica cried out…

Bayta stepped forward. "What are you going to do with him?" Toran put her aside gently, and asked coldly, "Where do you want me to come?"

"Our power plant needs minor adjustments. She'll come with you." His pointing finger aimed directly at Magnifica, whose brown eyes opened wide in a blubbery dismay.

"What's she got to do with it?" demanded Toran fiercely. The official looked up coldly. "I am informed of pirate activities in this vicinity. A description of one of the known thugs tallies roughly. It is a purely routine matter of identification."

"I be no pirate, sir." Magnifica pleaded. "Lord Vargos' fleet never passed here."

"Vargos the Pirate?" the officer eyed her.

"She was a captive, a decade ago, Officer." Bayta spoke up as Magnifica looked to her, pleading.

"Huh-uh. Well, we'll check on that. If she's clear, it's just routine, girl." The officer eyed her. "Suit up, Ms. Assistant. And you, Commander." Glance to Toran.

Toran hesitated, but six men and six blasters are eloquent arguments. He reached into the cupboard for the suits. An hour later, he rose upright in the bowels of the Filian ship and raged, "There's not a thing wrong with the motors that I can see. The busbars are true, the L-tubes are feeding properly, and the reaction analysis checks. Who's in charge here?" The head engineer said quietly, "I am."

"Well, get me out of here…" He was led to the officers' level and the small anteroom held only an indifferent ensign. "Where's the woman who came with me?"

"Please wait," said the ensign. It was fifteen minutes later that Magnifica was brought in. "What did they do to you?" asked Toran quickly.

"Nothing, milord. Nothing at all." Magnifica's head shook a slow negative. "Tis most strange. They did not even ask of Lord Vargos and his doings. They simply had me sit and wait. Can we return now?"

It took two hundred and fifty credits to fulfill the demands of Filia….Fifty credits of it for instant release…And they were in free space again.

Bayta said with a forced laugh, "Don't we rate an escort? Don't we get the usual figurative boot over the border?"

And Toran replied, grimly, "That was no Filian ship…And we're not leaving for a while. Come in here." They gathered about him.

He said, whitely, "That was a Foundation ship, and those were the Mule's men aboard." Ebling bent to pick up the cigar he had dropped.

He said, "Here? We're fifteen thousand parsecs from the Foundation."

"And we're here. What's to prevent them from making the same trip? Galaxy, Ebling, don't you think I can tell ships apart? I saw their engines, and that's enough for me. I tell you it was a Foundation engine in a Foundation ship."

"And how did they get here?" asked Bayta, logically. "What are the chances of a random meeting of two given ships in space?"

"What's that to do with it?" demanded Toran, hotly. "It would only show we've been followed."

"Followed?" hooted Bayta. "Through hyper-space?"

Ebling Mis interposed wearily, "That can be done…Given a good ship and a great pilot. But the possibility doesn't impress me."

"I haven't been masking my trail," insisted Toran. "I've been building up take-off speed on the straight. A blind man could have calculated our route."

"The blazes he could," cried Bayta. "With the cockeyed jumps you are making, observing our initial direction didn't mean a thing. We came out of the jump wrong-end forwards more than once."

"We're wasting time," blazed Toran, with gritted teeth. "It's a Foundation ship under the Mule. It's stopped us. It's searched us. It's had Magnifica…Alone…With me as hostage to keep the rest of you quiet, in case you suspected. And we're going to burn it out of space right now."

"Hold on now," and Ebling Mis clutched at him. "Are you going to destroy us for one ship you think is an enemy? Think, man, would those scuppers chase us over an impossible route half through the bestinkered Galaxy, look us over, and then let us go?"

"They're still interested in where we're going."

"Then why stop us and put us on our guard? You can't have it both ways, you know."

"I'll have it my way. Let go of me, Ebling, or I'll knock you down."

Magnifica leaned forward from her balanced perch on her favorite chair back. Her long nostrils flared with excitement. "I crave your pardon for my interruption, but my poor mind is of a sudden plagued with a queer thought."

Bayta anticipated Toran's gesture of annoyance, and added her grip to Ebling's. "Go ahead and speak, Magnifica. We will all listen faithfully."

Magnifica said, "In my stay in their ship what addled wits I have were bemazed and bemused by a chattering fear of what befells us among strangers….What befells women, even such as the one, among rough men in space…"

Bayta patting her…Toran frowning but silent.

"Of a truth I have a lack of memory of most that happened. Many men staring at me, and talk I did not understand. But towards the last…As though a beam of sunlight had dashed through a cloud rift…There was a face I knew. A glimpse, the merest glimmer…And yet it glows in my memory ever stronger and brighter."

Toran said, "Who was it?"

"That captain who was with us so long a time ago, when first you saved me from slavery."

It had obviously been Magnifica's intention to create a sensation, and the delighted smile that curled broadly in the shadow of her proboscis, attested to her realization of the intention's success.

"Captain…Han…Pritcher?" demanded Mis, sternly. "You're sure of that? Certain sure now?"

"Sir, I swear," and she laid a bone-thin hand upon her narrow chest. "I would uphold the truth of it before the Mule and swear it in his teeth, though all his power were behind him to deny it."

Bayta said in pure wonder, "Then what's it all about?"

The girl faced her eagerly, "My lady, I have a theory. It came upon me, ready made, as though the Galactic Spirit had gently laid it in my mind."

She actually raised her voice gently above Toran's interrupting objection. "My lady," she addressed herself exclusively to Bayta, "if this captain had, like us, escaped with a ship; if he, like us, were on a trip for a purpose of his own devising; if he blundered upon us…He would suspect us of following and waylaying him, as we suspect him of the like. What wonder he played this comedy to enter our ship?"

"Why would he want us in his ship, then?" demanded Toran. "That doesn't fit."

"Why, yes, it does," clamored the girl, with a flowing inspiration. "He sent an underling who knew us not, but who described us into his microphone. The listening captain would be struck at my own poor likeness…For, of a truth, there are not many in this great Galaxy who bear a resemblance to my scantiness. I was the proof of the identity of the rest of you." She triumphantly concluded.

"And so he leaves us?"

"What do we know of his mission, and the secrecy thereof? He has spied us out for not an enemy and having it done so, must he needs think it wise to risk his plan by widening the knowledge thereof?"

Bayta said slowly, "Don't be stubborn, Torie. It does explain things."

"It could be," agreed Mis. Toran seemed helpless in the face of united resistance. Something in the clown's fluent explanations bothered him. Something was wrong. Yet he was bewildered and, in spite of himself, his anger ebbed.

"For a while," he whispered, "I thought we might have had one of the Mule's ships." And his eyes were dark with the pain of Haven's loss.

The others understood.

…