jenarr leggen had a dark look about him. it was not so much his complexion, which was fair enough. it was not even his eyebrows, which were thick and dark enough. it was, rather, that those eyebrows were hunched over deep-set eyes and a long and rather prominent nose. he had, as a result, a most unmerry look. his eyes did not smile and when he spoke, which wasnt often, he had a deep, strong voice, surprisingly resonant for his rather thin body. he said, "youll need warmer clothing than that, seldon."

seldon said, "oh?" and looked about.

there were two men and two women who were making ready to go up with leggen and seldon and, as in leggens own case, their rather satiny trantorian clothing was covered by thick sweaters that, not surprisingly, were brightly colored in bold designs. no two were even faintly alike, of course. seldon looked down at himself and said, "sorry, i didnt know but i dont have any suitable outer garment."

"i can give you one. i think theres a spare here somewhere.--yes, here it is. a little threadbare, but its better than nothing."

"wearing sweaters like these tan make you unpleasantly warm," said seldon.

"here they would," said leggen. "other conditions exist upperside. cold and windy. too bad i dont have spare leggings and boots for you too. youll want them later."

they were taking with them a cart of instruments, which they were testing one by one with what seldon thought was unnecessary slowness. "your home planet cold?" asked leggen.

seldon said, "parts of it, of course. the part of helicon i come from is mild and often rainy."

"too bad. you wont like the weather upperside."

"i think i can manage to endure it for the time well be up there."

when they were ready, the group filed into an elevator that was marked: official use only.

"thats because it goes upperside," said one of the young women, "and people arent supposed to be up there without good reason." seldon had not met the young woman before, but he had heard her addressed as clowzia. he didnt know if that was a first name, a last name, or a nickname. the elevator seemed no different from others that seldon had been on, either here on trantor or at home in helicon (barring, of course, the gravitic lift he and hummin had used), but there was something about knowing that it was going to take him out of the confines of the planet and into emptiness above that made it feel like a spaceship.

seldon smiled internally. a foolish fantasy.

the elevator quivered slightly, which remind seldon of hummins forebodings of galactic decay. leggen, along with the other men and one of the women, seemed frozen and waiting, as though they had suspended thought as well as activity until they could get out, but clowzia kept glancing at him as though she found him terribly impressive.

seldon leaned close and whispered to her (he hesitated to disturb the others), "are we going up very high?"

"high?" she repeated. she spoke in a normal voice, apparently not feeling that the others required silence. she seemed very young and it occurred to seldon that she was probably an undergraduate. an apprentice, perhaps.

"were taking a long time. upperside must be many stories high in the air."

for a moment, she looked puzzled. then, "oh no. not high at all. we started very deep. the university is at a low level. we use a great deal of energy and if were quite deep, the energy costs are lower."

leggen said, "all right. were here. lets get the equipment out."

the elevator stopped with a small shudder and the wide door slid open rapidly. the temperature dropped at once and seldon thrust his hands into his pockets and was very glad he had a sweater on. a cold wind stirred his hair and it occurred to him that he would have found a hat useful and, even as he thought that, leggen pulled something out of a fold in his sweater, snapped it open, and put it on his head. the others did the same.

only clowzia hesitated. she paused just before she put hers on, then offered it to seldon.

seldon shook his head. "i cant take your hat, clowzia."

"go ahead. i have long hair and its pretty thick. yours is short and a little ... thin."

seldon would have liked to deny that firmly and at another time he would have. now, however, he took the hat and mumbled, "thank you. if your head gets cold, ill give it back."

maybe she wasnt so young. it was her round face, almost a baby face. and now that she had called attention to her hair, he could see that it was a charming russet shade. he had never seen hair quite like that on helicon.

outside it was cloudy, as it had been the time he was taken across open country to the palace. it was considerably colder than it had been then, but he assumed that was because they were six weeks farther into winter. the clouds were thicker than they had been on the earlier occasion and the day was distinctly darker and threatening--or was it just closer to night? surely, they wouldnt come up to do important work without leaving themselves an ample period of daylight to do it in. or did they expect to take very little time? he would have liked to have asked, but it occurred to him that they might not like questions at this time. all of them seemed to be in states varying from excitement to anger.

seldon inspected his surroundings.

he was standing on something that he thought might be dull metal from the sound it made when he surreptitiously thumped his foot down on it. it was not bare metal, however. when he walked, he left footprints. the surface was clearly covered by dust or fine sand or clay. well, why not? there could scarcely be anyone coming up here to dust the place. he bent down to pinch up some of the matter out of curiosity.

clowzia had come up to him. she noticed what he was doing and said, with the air of a housewife caught at an embarrassing negligence, "we do sweep hereabouts for the sake of the instruments. its much worse most places upperside, but it really doesnt matter. it makes for insulation, you know."

seldon grunted and continued to look about. there was no chance of understanding the instruments that looked as though they were growing out of the thin soil (if one could call it that). he hadnt the faintest idea of what they were or what they measured.

leggen was walking toward him. he was picking up his feet and putting them down gingerly and it occurred to seldon that he was doing so to avoid jarring the instruments. he made a mental note to walk that way himself.

"you! seldon!"

seldon didnt quite like the tone of voice. he replied coolly, "yes, dr. leggen?"

"well, dr. seldon, then." he said it impatiently. "that little fellow randa told me you are a mathematician."

"thats right."

"a good one?"

"id like to think so, but its a hard thing to guarantee."

"and youre interested in intractable problems?"

seldon said feelingly, "im stuck with one."

"im stuck with another. youre free to look about. if you have any questions, our intern, clowzia, will help out. you might be able to help us."

"i would be delighted to, but i know nothing about meteorology."

"thats all right, seldon. i just want you to get a feel for this thing and then id like to discuss my mathematics, such as it is."

"im at your service."

leggen turned away, his long scowling face looking grim. then he turned back. "if you get cold--too cold--the elevator door is open. you just step in and touch the spot marked; university base. it will take you down and the elevator will then return to us automatically. clowzia will show you--if you forget."

"i wont forget."

this time he did leave and seldon looked after him, feeling the cold wind knife through his sweater. clowzia came back over to him, her face slightly reddened by that wind.

seldon said, "dr. leggen seems annoyed. or is that just his ordinary outlook on life?"

she giggled. "he does look annoyed most of the time, but right now he really is."

seldon said very naturally, "why?"

clowzia looked over her shoulder, her long hair swirling. then she said, "im not supposed to know, but i do just the same. dr. leggen had it all figured out that today, just at this time, there was going to be a break in the clouds and hed been planning to make special measurements in sunlight. only ... well, look at the weather."

seldon nodded.

"we have holovision receivers up here, so he knew it was cloudy worse than usual--and i guess he was hoping there would be something wrong with the instruments so that it would be their fault and not that of his theory. so far, though, they havent found anything out of the way."

"and thats why he looks so unhappy."

"well, he never looks happy."

seldon looked about, squinting. despite the clouds, the light was harsh. he became aware that the surface under his feet was not quite horizontal. he was standing on a shallow dome and as he looked outward there were other domes in all directions, with different widths and heights. "upperside seems to be irregular," he said.

"mostly, i think. thats the way it worked out."

"any reason for it?"

"not really. the way ive heard it explained--i looked around and asked, just as you did, you know--was that originally the people on trantor domed in places, shopping malls, sports arenas, things like that, then whole towns, so that (here were lots of domes here and there, with different heights and different widths. when they all came together, it was all uneven, but by that time, people decided thats the way it ought to be."

"you mean that something quite accidental came to be viewed as a tradition?"

"i suppose so--if you want to put it that way."

(if something quite accidental can easily become viewed as a tradition and be made unbreakable or nearly so, thought seldon, would that be a law of psychohistory? it sounded trivial, but how many other laws, equally trivial, might there be? a million? a billion? were there a relatively few general laws from which these trivial ones could be derived as corollaries? how could he say? for a while, lost in thought, he almost forgot the biting wind.)

clowzia was aware of that wind, however, for she shuddered and said, "its very nasty. its much better under the dome."

"are you a trantorian?" asked seldon.

"thats right."

seldon remembered ranchs dismissal of trantorians as agoraphobic and said, "do you mind being up here?"

"i hate it," said clowzia, "but i want my degree and my specialty and status and dr. leggen says i cant get it without some field work. so here i am, hating it, especially when its so cold. when its this cold, by the way, you wouldnt dream that vegetation actually grows on these domes, would you?"

"it does?" he looked at clowzia sharply, suspecting some sort of practical joke designed to make him look foolish. she looked totally innocent, but how much of that was real and how much was just her baby face?

"oh sure. even here, when its warmer. you notice the soil here? we keep it swept away because of our work, as i said, but in other places it accumulates here and there and is especially deep in the low places where the domes meet. plants grow in it."

"but where does the soil come from?"

"when the dome covered just part of the planet, the wind deposited soil on them, little by little. then, when trantor was all covered and the living levels were dug deeper and deeper, some of the material dug up, if suitable, would be spread over the top."

"surely, it would break down the domes."

"oh no. the domes are very strong and theyre supported almost everywhere. the idea was, according to a book-film i viewed, that they were going to grow crops upperside, but it turned out to be much more practical to do it inside the dome. yeast and algae could be cultivated within the domes too, taking the pressure off the usual crops, so it was decided to let upperside go wild. there are animals on upperside too--butterflies, bees, mice, rabbits. lots of them."

"wont the plant roots damage the domes?"

"in thousands of years they havent. the domes are treated so that they repel the roots. most of the growth is grass, but there are trees too. youd be able to see for yourself if this were the warm season or if we were farther south or if you were up in a spaceship." she looked at him with a sidewise flick of her eyes, "did you see trantor when you were coming down from space?"

"no, clowzia, i must confess i didnt. the hypership was never well placed for viewing. have you ever seen trantor from space?"

she smiled weakly. "ive never been in spare."

seldon looked about. gray everywhere.

"i cant make myself believe it," he said. "about vegetation upperside, i mean."

"its true, though. ive heard people say--otherworlders, like yourself, who did see trantor from space--that the planet looks green, like a lawn, because its mostly grass and underbrush. there are trees too, actually. theres a copse not very far from here. ive seen it. theyre evergreens and theyre up to six meters high."

"where?"

"you cant see it from here. its on the other side of a dome. its--"

the call came out thinly. (seldon realized they had been walking while they had been talking and had moved away from the immediate vicinity of the others.)

"clowzia. get back here. we need you."

clowzia said, "uh-oh. coming.--sorry, dr. seldon, i have to go."

she ran off, managing to step lightly despite her lined boots. had she been playing with him? had she been filling the gullible foreigner with a mess of lies for amusements sake? such things had been known to happen on every world and in every time. an air of transparent honesty was no guide either; in fact, successful taletellers would deliberately cultivate just such an air.

so could there really be six-meter trees upperside? without thinking much about it, he moved in the direction of the highest dome on the horizon. he swung his arms in an attempt to warm himself. and his feet were getting cold. clowzia hadnt pointed. she might have, to give him a hint of the direction of the trees, but she didnt. why didnt she? to be sure, she had been called away.

the domes were broad rather than high, which was a good thing, since otherwise the going would have been considerably more difficult. on the other hand, the gentle grade meant trudging a distance before he could top a dome and look down the other side.

eventually, he could see the other side of the dome he had climbed. he looked back to make sure he could still see the meteorologists and their instruments. they were a good way off, in a distant valley, but he could see them clearly enough. good.

he saw no copse, no trees, but there was a depression that snaked about between two domes. along each side of that crease, the soil was thicker and there were occasional green smears of what might be moss. if he followed the crease and if it got low enough and the soil was thick enough, there might be trees. he looked back, trying to fix landmarks in his mind, but there were just the rise and fall of domes. it made him hesitate and dorss warning against his being lost, which had seemed a rather unnecessary piece of advice then, made more sense now. still, it seemed clear to him that the crease was a kind of road. if he followed it for some distance, he only had to turn about and follow it back to return to this spot.

he strode off purposefully, following the rounded crease downward. there was a soft rumbling noise above, but he didnt give it any thought. he had made up his mind that he wanted to see trees and that was all that occupied him at the moment.

the moss grew thicker and spread out like a carpet and here and there grassy tufts had sprung up. despite the desolation upperside, the moss was bright green and it occurred to seldon that on a cloudy, overcast planet there was likely to be considerable rain.

the crease continued to curve and there, just above another dome, was a dark smudge against the gray sky and he knew he had found the trees. then, as though his mind, having been liberated by the sight of those trees, could turn to other things, seldon took note of the rumble he had heard before and had, without thinking, dismissed as the sound of machinery. now he considered that possibility: was it, indeed, the sound of machinery? why not? he was standing on one of the myriad domes that covered hundreds of millions of square kilometers of the world-city. there must be machinery of all kinds hidden under those domes--ventilation motors, for one thing. maybe it could be heard, where and when all the other sounds of the world-city were absent. except that it did not seem to come from the ground. he looked up at the dreary featureless sky. nothing.

he continued to scan the sky, vertical creases appearing between his eyes and then, far off it was a small dark spot, showing up against the gray. and whatever it was it seemed to be moving about as though getting its bearings before it was obscured by the clouds again.

then, without knowing why, he thought, theyre after me. and almost before he could work out a line of action, he had taken one. he ran desperately along the crease toward the trees and then, to reach them more quickly, he turned left and hurtled up and over a low dome, treading through brown and dying fernlike overgrowth, including thorny sprigs with bright red berries.