There was a queer and incongruous silence.
Munn smiled bitterly. "Well, suppose Kalgan is the Second Foundation. Who on Kalgan are they? How are you going to find them? How are you going to tackle them if you find them, eh?"
"Ah," said Darell, "I can answer that, strangely enough. Shall I tell you what Semic and I have been doing this past half-year? It may give you another reason, Anthor, why I was anxious to remain on Terminus all this time."
"In the first place," he went on, "I've been working on encephalographic analysis with more purpose than any of you may suspect. Detecting Second Foundation minds is a little more subtle than simply finding a Tamper Plateau - and I did not actually succeed. But I came close enough.
"Do you know, any of you, how emotional control works? It's been a popular subject with fiction writers since the time of the Mule and much nonsense has been written, spoken, and recorded about it. For the most part, it has been treated as something mysterious and occult. Of course, it isn't. That the brain is the source of a myriad, tiny electromagnetic fields, everyone knows. Every fleeting emotion varies those fields in more or less intricate fashion, and everyone should know that, too.
"Now it is possible to conceive a mind which can sense these changing fields and even resonate with them. That is, a special organ of the cerebrum can exist which can take on whatever field-pattern it may detect. Exactly how it would do this, I have no idea, but that doesn't matter. if I were blind, for instance, I could still learn the significance of photons and energy quanta and it could be reasonable to me that the absorption of a photon of such energy could create chemical changes in some organ of the body such that its presence would be detectable. But, of course, I would not be able, thereby, to understand color.
"Do all of you follow?"
There was a firm nod from Anthor; a doubtful nod from the others.
"Such a hypothetical Mind Resonating Organ, by adjusting itself to the Fields emitted by other minds could perform what is popularly known as 'reading emotion' or even 'reading minds,' which is actually something even more subtle. It is but an easy step from that to imagining a similar organ which could actually force an adjustment on another mind. It could orient with its stronger Field the weaker one of another mind - much as a strong magnet will orient the atomic dipoles in a bar of steel and leave it magnetized thereafter.
"I solved the mathematics of Second Foundationism in the sense that I evolved a function that would predict the necessary combination of neuronic paths that would allow for the formation of an organ such as I have just described - but, unfortunately, the function is too complicated to solve by any of the mathematical tools at present known. That is too bad, because it means that I can never detect a Mind-worker by his encephalographic pattern alone.
"But I could do something else. I could, with Semic's help, construct what I shall describe as a Mental Static device. It is not beyond the ability of modem science to create an energy source that will duplicate an encephalograph-type pattern of electromagnetic field. Moreover, it can be made to shift at complete random, creating, as far as this particular mind-sense is concerned, a sort of 'noise' or 'static' which masks other minds with which it may be in contact.
"Do you still follow?"
Semic chuckled. He had helped create blindly, but he had guessed, and guessed correctly. The old man had a trick or two left-
Anthor said, "I think I do."
"The device," continued Darell, "is a fairly easy one to produce, and I had all the resources of the Foundation under my control as it came under the heading of war research. And now the mayor's offices and the Legislative assemblies are surrounded with Mental Static. So are most of our key factories. So is this building. Eventually, any place we wish can be made absolutely safe from the Second Foundation or from any future Mule. And that's it."
He ended quite simply with a flat-palmed gesture of the hand.
Turbor seemed stunned. "Then it's all over. Great Seldon, it's all over."
"Well," said Darell, "not exactly."
"How, not exactly? Is there something more?"
"Yes, we haven't located the Second Foundation yet!"
"What," roared Anthor, "are you trying to say-"
"Yes, I am. Kalgan is not the Second Foundation."
"How do you know?"
"It's easy," grunted Darell. "You see I happen to know where the Second Foundation really is."
21. The Answer That Satisfied
Turbor laughed suddenly - laughed in huge, windy gusts that bounced ringingly off the walls and died in gasps. He shook his head, weakly, and said, "Great Galaxy, this goes on all night. One after another, we put up our straw men to be knocked down. We have fun, but we don't get anywhere. Space! Maybe all planets are the Second Foundation. Maybe they have no planet, just key men spread on all the planets. And what does it matter, since Darell says we have the perfect defense?"
Darell smiled without humor. "The perfect defense is not enough, Turbor. Even my Mental Static device is only something that keeps us in the same place. We cannot remain forever with our fists doubled, frantically staring in all directions for the unknown enemy. We must know not only how to win, but whom to defeat. And there is a specific world on which the enemy exists."
"Get to the point," said Anthor, wearily. "What's your information?"
"Arcadia," said Darell, "sent me a message, and until I got it, I never saw the obvious. I probably would never have seen the obvious. Yet it was a simple message that went: 'A circle has no end.' Do you see?"