Wanda frowned deeply. “I am very uncomfortable leaving him here alone,” she told Stettin as they left Hari’s Streeling apartment.

“He won’t have it any other way,” Stettin said.

“Chen wants him alone-to assassinate him!”

“I don’t think so, somehow,” Stettin said. “Chen could have had him killed a hundred, a thousand times. Now, he’s on record as condoning the Encyclopedia, and Hari is the patriarch.”

“I don’t think politics on Trantor is ever that simple.”

“You have to believe what your grandfather’s predictions say.”

“Why?” Wanda asked sharply. “He doesn’t believe in them anymore!”

The lift door opened and they stepped into the empty space, to drop less than five floors. The landing was heavier than they expected-some maladjustment in the building’s grav-fields. Wanda stepped from the exit on aching ankles.

“I need to get away from here!” she lamented. “We’ve been waiting so long-a world of our own-”

But Stettin shook his head, and Wanda gazed at him in both irritation and anxiety that his doubts were justified. “What are the chances, do you think,” he asked, “that even if the Project does go on, and the Plan continues, we’ll ever really leave Trantor?”

Wanda’s face flushed. “Grandfather wouldn’t deceive me…us. Would he?”

“To keep a very important secret, and to push the Project forward?” Stettin pursed his lips together tightly. “I’m not so sure.”