Dors Venabili had lived on the Imperial Palace grounds for ten years. As wife of the First Minister, she had entry to the grounds and could pass freely from the dome¹ to the open, with her fingerprints² as the pass.
    In the confusion that followed Cleon's assassination³, her pass had never been removed and now when, for the first time since that dreadful clay, she wanted to move from the dome into the open spaces of the grounds, she could do so.
    She had always known that she could do so easily only once, for, upon discovery, the pass would be canceled-but this was the one time to do it.
    There was a sudden darkening of the sky as she moved into the open ;rod she felt a distinct lowering of the temperature. The world under the dome was always kept a little lighter⁴ during the night period than natural night would require and was kept a little dimmer during the day period. And, of course, the temperature beneath the dome was always a bit milder than the outdoors.
    Most Trantorians were unaware⁵ of this, for they spent their entire lives under the dome. To Dors it was expected, but it didn't really matter.
    She took the central roadway, into which the dome opened at the site of the Dome's Edge Hotel. It was, of course, brightly lit, so that the darkness of the sky didn't matter at all.
    Dors knew that she would not advance a hundred meters along the roadway without being stopped, less perhaps in the present paranoid lays of the junta⁶. Her alien presence would be detected at once.
    Nor was she disappointed. A small ground-car skittered up and the guardsman shouted out the window, "What are you doing here? Where are you going?"
    Dors ignored the question and continued to walk.
    The guardsman called out, "Halt!" Then he slammed on the brakes and stepped out of the car, which was exactly what Dors had wanted him to do.
    The guardsman was holding a blaster loosely in his hand-not threatening to use it, merely demonstrating its existence. He said, "Your reference number."

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