Beside him, his bent and withered chauffeur guided the ship gently through the upper winds and smiled.
Jord Commason spoke to the wind, the air, and the sky, "You remember what I told you, Inchney?"
Inchney's thin gray hair wisped lightly in the wind. His gap-toothed smile widened in its thin-lipped fashion and the vertical wrinkles of his cheeks deepened as though he were keeping an eternal secret from himself. The whisper of his voice whistled between his teeth.
"I remember, sire, and I have thought."
"And what have you thought, Inchney?" There was an impatience about the question.
Inchney remembered that he had been young and handsome, and a lord on Old Trantor. Inchney remembered that he was a disfigured ancient on Neotrantor, who lived by grace of Squire Jord Commason, and paid for the grace by lending his subtlety on request. He sighed very softly.
He whispered again, "Visitors from the Foundation, sire, are a convenient thing to have. Especially, sire, when they come with but a single ship, and but a single fighting man. How welcome they might be."
"Welcome?" said Commason, gloomily. "Perhaps so. But those men are magicians and may be powerful."
"Pugh," muttered Inchney, "the mistiness of distance hides the truth. The Foundation is but a world. Its citizens are but men. If you blast them, they die."
Inchney held the ship on its course - A river was a winding sparkle below. He whispered, "And is there not a man they speak of now who stirs the worlds of the Periphery?"
Commason was suddenly suspicious. "What do you know of this?"
There was no smile on his chauffeur's face. "Nothing, sire. It was but an idle question."
The squire's hesitation was short. He said, with brutal directness, "Nothing you ask is idle, and your method of acquiring knowledge will have your scrawny neck in a vise yet. But - I have it! This man is called the Mule, and a subject of his had been here some months ago on a... matter of business. I await another... now... for its conclusion."
"And these newcomers? They are not the ones you want, perhaps?"
"They lack the identification they should have."
"It has been reported that the Foundation has been captured-"
"I did not tell you that."
"It has been so reported," continued Inchney, coolly, "and if that is correct, then these may be refugees from the destruction, and may be held for the Mule's man out of honest friendship."
"Yes?" Commason was uncertain.
"And, sire, since it is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim, it would be but a measure of honest self-defense. For there are such things as psychic probes, and here we have four Foundation brains. There is much about the Foundation it would be useful to know, much even about the Mule. And then the Mule's friendship would be a trifle the less overpowering."
Commason, in the quiet of the upper air, returned with a shiver to his first thought. "But if the Foundation has not fallen. If the reports are lies. It is said that it has been foretold it can not fall."
"We are past the age of soothsayers, sire."
"And yet if it did not fall, Inchney. Think! If it did not fall. The Mule made me promises, indeed-" He had gone too far, and backtracked. "That is, he made boasts. But boasts are wind and deeds are hard."
Inchney laughed noiselessly. "Deeds are hard indeed, until begun. One could scarcely find a further fear than a Galaxy-end Foundation."
"There is still the prince," murmured Commason, almost to himself.
"He deals with the Mule also, then, sire?"
Commason could not quite choke down the complacent shift of features. "Not entirely. Not as I do. But he grows wilder, more uncontrollable. A demon is upon him. If I seize these people and he takes them away for his own use - for he does not lack a certain shrewdness - I am not yet ready to quarrel with him." He frowned and his heavy cheeks bent downwards with dislike.
"I saw those strangers for a few moments yesterday," said the gray chauffeur, irrelevantly, "and it is a strange woman, that dark one. she walks with the freedom of a man and she is of a startling paleness against the dark luster of hair." There was almost a warmth in the husky whisper of the withered voice, so that Commason turned toward him in sudden surprise.
Inchney continued, "The prince, I think, would not find his shrewdness proof against a reasonable compromise. You could have the rest, if you left him the