Trevize shook his head. That way lay paranoia. Was he going to blame Earth for everything? Was every quirk of behavior, every bend in the road, every twist of circumstance, to be the result of the secret machinations of Earth? As soon as he began to think in that fashion, he was defeated.
At that point, he felt the vehicle decelerating and was brought back to reality at a stroke.
It occurred to him that he had never, even for one moment, looked at the city through which they had been passing. He looked about now, a touch wildly. The buildings were low, but it was a cold planet-most of the structures were probably underground.
He saw no trace of color and that seemed against human nature.
Occasionally, he could see a person pass, well bundled. But, then, the people, like the buildings themselves, were probably mostly underground.
The taxi had stopped before a low, broad building, set in a depression, the bottom of which Trevize could not see. Some moments passed and it continued to remain there, the driver himself motionless as well. His tall, white hat nearly touched the roof of the vehicle.
Trevize wondered fleetingly how the driver managed to step in and out of the vehicle without knocking his hat off, then said, with the controlled anger one would expect of a haughty and mistreated official, "Well, driver, what now?"
The Comporellian version of the glittering field-partition that separated the driver from the passengers was not at all primitive. Sound waves could pass through-though Trevize was quite certain that material objects, at reasonable energies, could not.
The driver said, "Someone will be up to get you. Just sit back and take it easy."
Even as he said this, three heads appeared in a slow, smooth ascent from the depression in which the building rested. After that, there came the rest of the bodies. Clearly, the newcomers were moving up the equivalent of an escalator, but Trevize could not see the details of the device from where he sat.
As the three approached, the passenger door of the taxi opened and a flood of cold air swept inward.
Trevize stepped out, seaming his coat to the neck. The other two followed him-Bliss with considerable reluctance.
The three Comporellians were shapeless, wearing garments that ballooned outward and were probably electrically heated. Trevize felt scorn at that. There was little use for such things on Terminus, and the one time he had borrowed a heat-coat during winter on the nearby planet of Anacreon, he discovered it had a tendency to grow warmer at a slow rate so that by the time he realized he was too warm he was perspiring uncomfortably.
As the Comporellians approached, Trevize noted with a distinct sense of indignation that they were armed. Nor did they try to conceal the fact. Quite the contrary. Each had a blaster in a holster attached to the outer garment
One of the Comporellians, having stepped up to confront Trevize, said gruffly, "Your pardon, Councilman," and then pulled his coat open with rough movement. He had inserted questing hands which moved quickly up and down Trevize's sides, back, chest, and thighs. The coat was shaken and felt. Trevize was too overcome by confused astonishment to realize he had been rapidly and efficiently searched till it was over.
Pelorat, his chin drawn down and his mouth in a twisted grimace, was undergoing a similar indignity at the hands of a second Comporellian.
The third was approaching Bliss, who did not wait to be touched. She, at least, knew what to expect, somehow, for she whipped off her coat and, for a moment, stood there in her light clothing, exposed to the whistle of the wind.
She said, freezingly enough to match the temperature, "You can see I'm not armed."
And indeed anyone could. The Comporellian shook the coat, as though by its weight he could tell if it contained a weapon-perhaps he could-and retreated.
Bliss put on her coat again, huddling into it, and for a moment Trevize admired her gesture. He knew how she felt about the cold, but she had not allowed a tremor or shiver to escape her as she had stood there in thin blouse and slacks. (Then he wondered if, in the emergency, she might not have drawn warmth from the rest of Gaia.)
One of the Comporellians gestured, and the three Outworlders followed him. The other two Comporellians fell behind. The one or two pedestrians who were on the street did not bother to watch what was happening. Either they were too accustomed to the sight or, more likely, had their minds occupied with getting to some indoor destination as soon as possible.
Trevize saw now that it was a moving ramp up which the Comporellians had ascended. They were descending now, all six of them, and passed through a lock arrangement almost as complicated as that on a spaceship-to keep heat inside, no doubt, rather than air.
And then, at once, they were inside a huge building.
Chapter 5 Struggle for the Ship
17.
TREVIZE'S first impression was that he was on the set of a hyperdrama-specifically, that of a historical romance of Imperial days. There was a particular set, with few variations (perhaps only one existed and was used by every hyperdrama producer, for all he knew), that represented the great worldgirdling planet-city of Trantor in its prime.
There were the large spaces, the busy scurry of pedestrians, the small vehicles speeding along the lanes reserved for them.
Trevize looked up, almost expecting to see air-taxis climbing into dim vaulted recesses, but that at least was absent. In fact, as his initial astonishment subsided, it was clear that the building was far smaller than one would expect on Trantor. It was only a building and not part of a complex that stretched unbroken for thousands of miles in every direction.
The colors were different, too. On the hyperdramas, Trantor was always depicted as impossibly garish in coloring and the clothing was, if taken literally, thoroughly impractical and unserviceable. However, all those colors and frills were meant to serve a symbolic purpose for they indicated the decadence (a view that was obligatory, these days) of the Empire, and of Trantor particularly.