Seldon had tried to persuade Hummin to take him to his hotel room, but Hummin would have none of that.

“Are you mad?” he half-whispered. “They’ll be waiting for you there.”

“But all my belongings are waiting for me there too.”

“They’ll just have to wait.”

And now they were in a small room in a pleasant apartment structure that might be anywhere for all that Seldon could tell. He looked about the one-room unit. Most of it was taken up by a desk and chair, a bed, and a computer outlet. There were no dining facilities or washstand of any kind, though Hummin had directed him to a communal washroom down the hall. Someone had entered before Seldon was quite through. He had cast one brief and curious look at Seldon’s clothes, rather than at Seldon himself, and had then looked away.

Seldon mentioned this to Hummin, who shook his head and said, “We’ll have to get rid of your clothes. Too bad Helicon is so far out of fashion—”

Seldon said impatiently, “How much of this might just be your imagination, Hummin? You’ve got me half-convinced and yet it may be merely a kind of … of—”

“Are you groping for the word ‘paranoia’?”

“All right, I am. This may be some strange paranoid notion of yours.”

Hummin said, “Think about it, will you? I can’t argue it out mathematically, but you’ve seen the Emperor. Don’t deny it. He wanted something from you and you didn’t give it to him. Don’t deny that either. I suspect that details of the future are what he wants and you refused. Perhaps Demerzel thinks you’re only pretending not to have the details—that you’re holding out for a higher price or that someone else is bidding for it too. Who knows? I told you that if Demerzel wants you, he’ll get you wherever you are. I told you that before those two splitheads ever appeared on the scene. I’m a journalist and a Trantorian. I know how these things go. At one point, Alem said, ‘He’s the one we want.’ Do you remember that?”

“As it happens,” said Seldon, “I do.”

“To him I was only the ‘other motherlackey’ to be kept off, while he went about the real job of assaulting you.”

Hummin sat down in the chair and pointed to the bed. “Stretch out, Seldon. Make yourself comfortable. Whoever sent those two—it must have been Demerzel, in my opinion—can send others, so we’ll have to get rid of those clothes of yours. I think any other Heliconian in this sector caught in his own world’s garb is going to have trouble until he can prove he isn’t you.”

“Oh come on.”

“I mean it. You’ll have to take off the clothes and we’ll have to atomize them—if we can get close enough to a disposal unit without being seen. And before we can do that I’ll have to get you a Trantorian outfit. You’re smaller than I am and I’ll