"I Know ..."

The last two months of the Stettinian war did not lag for Homir. In his unusual office as Mediator¹ Extraordinary, he found himself the center of interstellar affairs, a role he could not help but find pleasing.

There were no further major battles ?a few accidental skirmishes that could scarcely count ?and the terms of the treaty were hammered out with little necessity for concessions³ on the part of the Foundation. Stettin retained his office, but scarcely anything else. His navy was dismantled⁴; his possessions outside the home system itself made autonomous⁵ and allowed to vote for return to previous status, full independence or confederation within the Foundation, as they chose.

The war was formally ended on an asteroid⁶ in Terminus' own stellar system; site of the Foundation's oldest naval⁷ base. Lev Meirus signed for Kalgan, and Homir was an interested spectator.

Throughout all that period he did not see Dr. Darell, nor any of the others. But it scarcely mattered. His news would keep ?and, as always, he smiled at the thought.

Dr. Darell returned to Terminus some weeks after VK day, and that same evening, his house served as the meeting place for the five men who, ten months earlier, had laid their first plans.

They lingered over dinner and then over wine as though hesitating to return again to the old subject.

It was Jole Turbor, who, peering steadily⁸ into the purple depths of the wineglass with one eye, muttered, rather than said, "Well, Homir, you are a man of affairs now, I see. You handled matters well."

"I?" Munn laughed loudly and joyously⁹. For some reason, he had not stuttered in months. "I hadn't a thing to do with it. It was Arcadia. By the by, Darell, how is she? She's coming back from Trantor, I heard?"

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