Bayta's voice choked off sharply when the opening door framed the large, hard-faced-
"Pritcher," cried Toran.
Bayta gasped, "Captain! How did you find us?"
Han Pritcher stepped inside. His voice was clear and level, and utterly dead of feeling, "My rank is colonel now - under the Mule."
"Under the... Mule!" Toran's voice trailed off. They formed a tableau there, the three.
Magnifico stared wildly and shrank behind Toran. Nobody stopped to notice him.
Bayta said, her hands trembling in each other's tight grasp, "You are arresting us? You have really gone over to them?"
The colonel replied quickly, "I have not come to arrest you. My instructions make no mention of you. With regard to you, I am free, and I choose to exercise our old friendship, if you will let me."
Toran's face was a twisted suppression of fury, "How did you find us? You were in the Filian ship, then? You followed us?"
The wooden lack of expression on Pritcher's face might have flickered in embarrassment. "I was on the Filian ship! I met you in the first place... well... by chance."
"It is a chance that is mathematically impossible."
"No. Simply rather improbable, so my statement will have to stand. In any case, you admitted to the. Filians - there is, of course, no such nation as Filia actually - that you were heading for the Trantor sector, and since the Mule already had his contacts upon Neotrantor, it was easy to have you detained there. Unfortunately, you got away before I arrived, but not long before. I had time to have the farms on Trantor ordered to report your arrival. It was done and I am here. May I sit down? I come in friendliness, believe me.
He sat. Toran bent his head and thought futilely. With a numbed lack of emotion, Bayta prepared tea.
Toran looked up harshly. "Well, what are you waiting for - colonel? What's your friendship? If it's not arrest, what is it then? Protective custody? Call in your men and give your orders."
Patiently, Pritcher shook his head. "No, Toran. I come of my own will to speak to you, to persuade you of the uselessness of what you are doing. If I fail I shall leave. That is all."
"That is all? Well, then peddle your propaganda, give us your speech, and leave. I don't want any tea, Bayta."
Pritcher accepted a cup, with a grave word of thanks. He looked at Toran with a clear strength as he sipped lightly. Then he said, "The Mule is a mutant. He can not be beaten in the very nature of the mutation-"
"Why? What is the mutation?" asked Toran, with sour humor. "I suppose you'll tell us now, eh?"
"Yes, I will. Your knowledge won't hurt him. You see - he is capable of adjusting the emotional balance of human beings. It sounds like a little trick, but it's quite unbeatable."
Bayta broke in, "The emotional balance?" She frowned, "Won't you explain that? I don't quite understand."
"I mean that it is an easy matter for him to instill into a capable general, say, the emotion of utter loyalty to the Mule and complete belief in the Mule's victory. His generals are emotionally controlled. They can not betray him; they can not weaken - and the control is permanent. His most capable enemies become his most faithful subordinates, The warlord of Kalgan surrenders his planet and becomes his viceroy for the Foundation."
"And you," added Bayta, bitterly, "betray your cause and become Mule's envoy to Trantor. I see!"
"I haven't finished. The Mule's gift works in reverse even more effectively. Despair is an emotion! At the crucial moment, keymen on the Foundation - keymen on Haven - despaired. Their worlds fell without too much struggle."
"Do you mean to say," demanded Bayta, tensely, "that the feeling I had in the Time Vault was the Mule juggling my emotional control."
"Mine, too. Everyone's. How was it on Haven towards the end?"
Bayta turned away.
Colonel Pritcher continued earnestly, "As it works for worlds, so it works for individuals. Can you fight a force which can make you surrender willingly when it so desires; can make you a faithful servant when it so desires?"
Toran said slowly, "How do I know this is the truth?"
"Can you explain the fall of the Foundation and of Haven otherwise? Can you explain my conversion otherwise? Think, man! What have you - or I - or the whole Galaxy accomplished against the Mule in all this time? What one little thing?"
Toran felt the challenge, "By the Galaxy, I can!" With a sudden touch of fierce satisfaction, he shouted, "Your wonderful Mule had contacts with Neotrantor you say that were to have detained us, eh? Those contacts are dead or worse. We killed the crown prince and left the other a whimpering idiot. The Mule did not stop us there, and that much has been undone."
"Why, no, not at all. Those weren't our men. The crown prince was a wine-soaked mediocrity. The other man, Commason, is phenomenally stupid. He was a power on his world but that didn't prevent him from being vicious, evil, and completely incompetent. We had nothing really to do with them. They were, in a sense, merely feints-"
"It was they who detained us, or tried."
"Again, no. Commason had a personal slave - a man called Inchney. Detention was his policy. He is old, but will serve our temporary purpose. You would not have killed him, you see."
Bayta whirled on him. She had not touched her own tea. "But, by your very statement, your own emotions have been tampered with. You've got faith and belief in the Mule, an unnatural, a diseased faith in the Mule. Of what value are your opinions? You've lost all power of objective thought."
"You are wrong." Slowly, the colonel shook his head. "Only my emotions are fixed. My reason is as it always was. It may be influenced in a certain direction by my conditioned emotions, but it is not forced. And there are some things I can see more clearly now that I am freed of my earlier emotional trend.