Foundation

It takes Ponyets a week to travel to Askone and another week to work his way through a phalanx of bureaucrats until he gets an appointment with the planet’s ruler. The Grand Master, a small, wrinkled, irritable man, receives Ponyets impatiently. The trader insists that his guild wouldn’t deliberately violate Askone space, where their activities are considered sacrilegious, and that Gorov’s presence there is a “deplorable mistake.” The Grand Master doubts it is an error, and he accuses Ponyets’s associates of planning the whole thing. Gorov is soon to be executed.

Ponyets asserts that he trained as a priest of the Galactic Spirit, the religion of the Foundation. The Grand Master, a pious member of the Askonian religion, relents and allows Ponyets to visit Gorov’s prison cell.

In his cell, Gorov assures Ponyets that the Grand Master will free him for a ransom of gold. Gorov also admits that, because his assignment from the Foundation is to get nuclear power onto Askone and establish a priest-controlled trading system there, he’ll have to try again. Ponyets says Gorov will simply be arrested and face execution again.

Gorov shrugs and explains that Askonians associate nucleics and all science with the old, hated Empire. Their local religion prohibits such technology. Gorov wants to sell useful mechanics to members of the nobility, who will then form a political faction that supports legalizing advanced technology. Ponyets points out that Gorov is a diplomat, not a trader, and that Ponyets is better suited to the task. Like most frontier traders, Ponyets is not particularly patriotic, but for a chance at some Askonian payment—which he desperately needs—Ponyets will take on Gorov’s assignment. If it helps the Foundation, so much the better. Gorov accepts.

Ponyets presents the Grand Master with a nuclear machine—its uncleanliness supposedly expunged by Ponyets’s priestly interdiction—that can turn iron into gold. A courtier hands over a pair of buckles that Ponyets places into the device, and they are transmuted into gold as proof.

The Grand Master and his court stare longingly at the gold. A nobleman, Pherl, points out that the gold comes from a poisoned device; Ponyets replies that “A rose can grow from the mud” (157), and that Askonians don’t usually quibble over the source of products they purchase from other planets. Gold produced by the machine can be used to decorate the shrines of the ancestors and thus completely cleanse itself of any possible sin.

As a guarantee, Ponyets offers himself as a hostage for 30 days while the Grand Master makes an offering of the gold on the altars of the ancestors. If nothing bad happens to the gold, it will be a sign of their approval. The Grand Master agrees to the deal.

Ponyets spends the month under house arrest at Pherl’s villa. Pherl tells Ponyets that he noticed the trader’s deliberate clumsiness during the iron-to-gold demonstration; Ponyets admits it was part of the show. Pherl begins to respect the heathen trader.

Ponyets points out that although Pherl is young and from a powerful family, his lineage does not descend from the vaunted local Five Tribes, and his chances are slim of becoming ruler after the aging Grand Master dies. A machine that produces gold would augment his resources in his campaign for leadership.

Pherl admits that his concerns about the device are not so much religious as practical, since the citizenry might riot and kill him, or he might be executed for using a banned device. Ponyets suggests that Pherl convince others at court of the value of nucleic machines. Ponyets shows Pherl how to run the transmuter. The trader wants payment equal to a cubic foot of gold, which Pherl can replenish from the transmuter in two hours. They reach an agreement that seems to favor Pherl, whom Ponyets must trust to honor his end of the deal.

When the month is up, 500 pounds of gold delivers Gorov from jail. Gorov and Ponyets board their ships and depart; on the way out of the system, they chat by ether-beam. Ponyets confides that the transmuter is a cheap trick, and its gold will last only long enough for Pherl to buy the next election and become Grand Master. Ponyets secretly recorded Pherl using the transmuter and blackmailed Pherl into a signed agreement to purchase a shipload of nucleics at twice retail value. Pherl’s fleet will escort them to the nobleman’s tin mines, where Ponyets and Gorov will fill their ships with the metal while Gorov’s guards oversee the process.

Pherl will have to sell the nucleics to recoup his costs, which will put the devices into the hands of Askonians, spreading technology just as the Foundation wants. Committed as he is to the technology, and mindful of Ponyets’s blackmail threat, the future Grand Master will remain firmly under Foundation control. Meanwhile, Ponyets comes away with a nice profit, which saves his trading year. By violating a few moral strictures, he ends up doing the right thing for everyone.