hari seldon was fighting off melancholy. he was lectured in turn by dors, by raych, by yugo, and by manella. all united to tell him that sixty was not old.

they simply did not understand. he had been thirty when the first hint of psychohistory had come to him, thirty-two when he delivered his famous lecture at the decennial convention, following which everything seemed to happen to him at once. after his brief interview with cleon, he had fled across trantor and met demerzel, dors, yugo, and raych, to say nothing of the people of mycogen, of dahl, and of wye.

he was forty when he became first minister and fifty when he had relinquished the post. now he was sixty.

he had spent thirty years on psychohistory. how many more years would he require? how many more years would he live? would he die with the psychohistory project unfinished after all?

it was not the dying that bothered him, he told himself. it was the matter of leaving the psychohistory project unfinished.

he went to see yugo amaryl. in recent years they had somehow drifted apart, as the psychohistory project had steadily increased in size. in the first years at streeling, it had merely been seldon and amaryl working together-no one else. now-

amaryl was nearly fifty-not exactly a young man-and he had somehow lost his spark. in all these years, he had developed no interest in anything but psychohistory: no woman, no companion, no hobby, no subsidiary activity.

amaryl blinked at seldon who couldn't help but note the changes in the man's appearance. part of it may have been because yugo had had to have his eyes reconstructed. he saw perfectly well, but there was an unnatural look about them and he tended to blink slowly. it made him appear sleepy.

"what do you think, yugo?" said seldon. "is there any light at the end of the tunnel?"

"light? yes, as a matter of fact," said amaryl. "there's this new fellow, tamwile elar. you know him, of course."

"oh yes. i'm the one who hired him. very vigorous and aggressive. how's he doing?"

"i can't say i'm really comfortable with him, hari. his loud laughter gets on my nerves. but he's brilliant. the new system of equations fits right into the prime radiant and they seem to make it possible to get around the problem of chaos."

"seem? or will?"

"too early to say, but i'm very hopeful. i have tried a number of things that would have broken them down if they were worthless and the new equations survived them all. i'm beginning to think of them as `the achaotic equations.' "

"i don't imagine," said seldon "we have anything like a rigorous demonstration concerning these equations?"

"no, we don't, though i've put half a dozen people on it, including elar, of course." amaryl turned on his prime radiant-which was every bit as advanced as seldon's was-and he watched as the curving lines of luminous equations curled in midair-too small, too fine to be read without amplification. "add the new equations and we may be able to begin to predict."

"each time i study the prime radiant now," said seldon thoughtfully, "i wonder at the electro-clarifier and how tightly it squeezes material into the lines and curves of the future. wasn't that elar's idea, too?"

"yes. with the help of cinda monay, who designed it."

"it's good to have new and brilliant men and women in the project. somehow it reconciles me to the future."

"you think someone like elar may be heading the project someday?" asked amaryl, still studying the prime radiant.

"maybe. after you and i have retired-or died."

amaryl seemed to relax and turned off the device. "i would like to complete the task before we retire or die."

"so would i, yugo. so would i."

"psychohistory has guided us pretty well in the last ten years."

that was true enough, but seldon knew that one couldn't attach too much triumph to that. things had gone smoothly and without major surprises.

psychohistory had predicted that the center would hold after cleon's death-predicted it in a very dim and uncertain way-and it did hold. trantor was reasonably quiet. even with an assassination and the end of a dynasty, the center had held.

it did so under the stress of military rule-dors was quite right in speaking of the junta as "those military rascals." she might have even gone farther in her accusations without being wrong. nevertheless, they were holding the empire together and would continue to do so for a time. long enough, perhaps, to allow psychohistory to play an active role in the events that were to transpire.

lately yugo had been speaking about the possible establishment of foundations-separate, isolated, independent of the empire itself serving as seeds for developments through the forthcoming dark ages and into a new and better empire. seldon himself had been working on the consequences of such an arrangement.

but he lacked the time and, he felt (with a certain misery), he lacked the youth as well. his mind, however firm and steady, did not have the resiliency and creativity that it had had when he was thirty and with each passing year, he knew he would have less.

perhaps he ought to put the young and brilliant elar on the task, taking him off everything else. seldon had to admit to himself, shamefacedly, that the possibility did not excite him. he did not want to have invented psychohistory so that some stripling could come in and reap the final fruits of fame. in fact, to put it at its most disgraceful, seldon felt jealous of elar and realized it just sufficiently to feel ashamed of the emotion.

yet, regardless of his less rational feelings, he would have to depend on other younger men-whatever his discomfort over it. psychohistory was no longer the private preserve of himself and amaryl. the decade of his being first minister had converted it into a large government-sanctioned and -budgeted undertaking and, quite to his surprise, after resigning from his post as first minister and returning to streeling university, it had grown still larger. hari grimaced at its ponderous-and pompous-official name: the seldon psychohistory project at streeling university. but most people simply referred to it as the project.

the military junta apparently saw the project as a possible political weapon and while that was so, funding was no problem. credits poured in. in return, it was necessary to prepare annual reports, which, however, were quite opaque. only fringe matters were reported on and even then the mathematics was not likely to be within the purview of any of the members of the junta.

it was clear as he left his old assistant that amaryl, at least, was more than satisfied with the way psychohistory was going and yet seldon felt the blanket of depression settle over him once more.

he decided it was the forthcoming birthday celebration that was bothering him. it was meant as a celebration of joy, but to hari it was not even a gesture of consolation-it merely emphasized his age.

besides, it was upsetting his routine and hari was a creature of habit. his office and a number of those adjoining had been cleared out and it had been days since he had been able to work normally. his proper offices would be converted into halls of glory, he supposed, and it would be many days before he could get back to work. only amaryl absolutely refused to budge and was able to maintain his office.

seldon had wondered, peevishly, who had thought of doing all this. it wasn't dors, of course. she knew him entirely too well. not amaryl or raych, who never even remembered their own birthdays. he had suspected manella and had even confronted her on the matter.

she admitted that she was all for it and had given orders for the arrangements to take place, but she said that the idea for the birthday party had been suggested to her by tamwile elar.

the brilliant one, thought seldon. brilliant in everything.

he sighed. if only the birthday were all over.