It had been a long time since Hari Seldon had smiled. He had conducted the Project in the same fashion that he always did: pushing always forward in the development of psychohistory, making plans for the Foundation, studying the Prime Radiant¹.
    But he did not smile. All he did was to force himself through his work without any feeling of impending² success. Rather, there was a feeling of impending failure about everything.
    And now, as he sat in his office at Streeling University, Wanda entered. He looked up at her and his heart lifted. Wanda had always been special. Seldon couldn't put his finger on just when he and the others had started accepting her pronouncements with more than the usual enthusiasm; it just seemed always to have been that way. As a little girl, she had saved his life with her uncanny knowledge of "lemonade death" and all through her childhood she had somehow just known things.
    Although Dr. Endelecki had asserted³ that Wanda's genome was perfectly⁴ normal in every way, Seldon was still positive that his granddaughter possessed⁵ mental abilities far beyond those of average humans. And he was just as sure that there were others like her in the Galaxy-on Trantor, even. If only he could find them, these mentalics, what a great contribution they could make to the Foundation. The potential for such greatness all centered in his beautiful granddaughter. Seldon gazed at her, framed in his office doorway⁶, and he felt as if his heart would break. In a few days, she would be gone.
    How could he bear it? She was such a beautiful girl-eighteen. Long blond⁷ hair, face a little broad but with a tendency to smile. She was even smiling now and Seldon thought, Why not? She's heading for Santanni and for a new life.
    He said, "Well, Wanda, just a few more days."
    "No. I don't think so, Grandpa."

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