venabili woke up and could tell by her timeband that the night period was only half over. not hearing haris snore, she could tell that his cot was empty. if he had not left the apartment, then he was in the bathroom. she tapped lightly on the door and said softly, "hari?"

he said, "come in," in an abstracted way and she did. the toilet lid was down and seldon, seated upon it, held the book open on his lap. he said, quite unnecessarily, "im reading."

"yes, i see that. but why?"

"i couldnt sleep. im sorry."

"but why read in here?"

"if i had turned on the room light, i would have woken you up."

"are you sure the book cant be illuminated?"

"pretty sure. when raindrop forty-three described its workings, she never mentioned illumination. besides, i suppose that would use up so much energy that the battery wouldnt last the life of the book." he sounded dissatisfied.

dors said, "you can step out, then. i want to use this place, as long as im here."

when she emerged, she found him sitting cross-legged on his cot, still reading, with the room well lighted.

she said, "you dont look happy. does the book disappoint you?"

he looked up at her, blinking. "yes, it does. ive sampled it here and there. its all ive had time to do. the thing is a virtual encyclopedia and the index is almost entirely a listing of people and places that are of little use for my purposes. it has nothing to do with the galactic empire or the pre-imperial kingdoms either. it deals almost entirely with a single world and, as nearly as i can make out from what i have read, it is an endless dissertation on internal politics."

"perhaps you underestimate its age. it may deal with a period when there was indeed only one world ... one inhabited world."

"yes, i know," said seldon a little impatiently. "thats actually what i want--provided i can be sure its history, not legend. i wonder. i dont want to believe it just because i want to believe it."

dors said, "well, this matter of a single-world origin is much in the air these days. human beings are a single species spread all over the galaxy, so they must have originated somewhere. at least thats the popular view at present. you cant have independent origins producing the same species on different worlds."

"but ive never seen the inevitability of that argument," said seldon. "if human beings arose on a number of worlds as a number of different species, why couldnt they have interbred into some single intermediate species?"

"because species cant interbreed. thats what makes them species."

seldon thought about it a moment, then dismissed it with a shrug. "well, ill leave it to the biologists."

"theyre precisely the ones who are keenest on the earth hypothesis."

"earth? is that what they call the supposed world of origin?"

"thats a popular name for it, though theres no way of telling what it was called, assuming there was one. and no one has any clue to what its location might be."

"earth!" said seldon, curling his lips. "it sounds like a belch to me. in any case, if the book deals with the original world, i didnt come across it. how do you spell the word?"

she told him and he checked the book quickly. "there you are. the name is not listed in the index, either by that spelling or any reasonable alternative."

"really?"

"and they do mention other worlds in passing. names arent given and there seems no interest in those other worlds except insofar as they directly impinge on the local world they speak of ... at least as far as i can see from what ive read. in one place, they talked about the fifty. i dont know what they meant. fifty leaders? fifty cities? it seemed to me to be fifty worlds."

"did they give a name to their own world, this world that seems to preoccupy them entirely?" asked dors. "if they dont call it earth, what do they call it?"

"as youd expect, they call it the world or the planet. sometimes they call it the oldest or the world of the dawn, which has a poetic significance, i presume, that isnt clear to me. i suppose one ought to read the book entirely through and some matters will then grow to make more sense." he looked down at the book in his hand with some distaste. "it would take a very long time, though, and im not sure that id end up any the wiser."

dors sighed. "im sorry, hari. you sound so disappointed."

"thats because i am disappointed. its my fault, though. i should not have allowed myself to expect too much.--at one point, come to think of it, they referred to their world as aurora. "

"aurora?" said dors, lifting her eyebrows.

"it sounds like a proper name. it doesnt make any sense otherwise, as far as i can see. does it mean anything to you, dors?"

"aurora." dors thought about it with a slight frown on her face. "i cant say ive ever heard of a planet with that name in the course of the history of the galactic empire or during the period of its growth, for that matter, but i wont pretend to know the name of every one of the twenty-five million worlds. we could look it up in the university library--if we ever get back to streeling. theres no use trying to find a library here in mycogen. somehow i have a feeling that all their knowledge is in the book. if anything isnt there, they arent interested."

seldon yawned and said, "i think youre right. in any case, theres no use reading any more and i doubt that i can keep my eyes open any longer. is it all right if i put out the light?"

"i would welcome it, hari. and lets sleep a little later in the morning."

then, in the dark, seldon said softly, "of course, some of what they say is ridiculous. for instance, they refer to a life expectancy on their world of between three and four centuries."

"centuries?"

"yes, they count their ages by decades rather than by years. it gives you a queer feeling, because so much of what they say is perfectly matter-of-fact that when they come out with something that odd, you almost find yourself trapped into believing it."

"if you feel yourself beginning to believe that, then you should realize that many legends of primitive origins assume extended life spans for early leaders. if theyre pictured as unbelievably heroic, you see, it seems natural that they have life spans to suit."

"is that so?" said seldon, yawning again.

"it is. and the cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day."

and seldon, pausing only long enough to think that an extended life span might well be a simple necessity for anyone trying to understand a galaxy of people, slept.