"It means," responded Hardin, "that we're cut off from the inner regions of the Empire. We've been expecting it but that doesn't make it any more comfortable. Anacreon stands square across what was our last remaining trade route to Santanni and to Trantor and to Vega itself. Where is our metal to come from? We haven't managed to get a steel or aluminum shipment through in six months and now we won't be able to get any at all, except by grace of the King of Anacreon."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[Hardin] said, grimly: "in connection with your status as Emperor's representative, then, I have a final piece of news to give you."
Read more
TERMINUS–... Its location (see map) was an odd one for the role it was called upon to play in Galactic history, and yet as many writers have never tired of pointing out, an inevitable one. Located on the very fringe of the Galactic spiral, an only planet of an isolated sun, poor in resources and negligible in economic value, it was never settled in the five centuries after its discovery, until the landing of the Encyclopedists... It was inevitable that as a new generation grew, Terminus would become something more than an appendage of the psychohistorians of Trantor. With the Anacreonian revolt and the rise to power of Salvor Hardin, first of the great line of...
Read more
Haut Rodric's eyebrows lifted. "And your leader – the man I am to meet?" "You mean Dr. Pirenne? Yes! He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees – and a personal representative of the Emperor." "Doctor? No other title? A scholar? And he rates above the civil authority?" "Why, certainly," replied Hardin, amiably. "We're all scholars more or less. After all, we're not so much a world as a scientific foundation – under the direct control of the Emperor."There was a faint emphasis upon the last phrase that seemed to disconcert the sub-prefect.
Read more