Free Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

be so bad everywhere, I assure you. These wayside places have a reputation for low quality. If you can stomach that sandwich, you’ll be able to eat anywhere on Trantor. And it won’t hurt you. It’s not decayed or bad or anything like that. It just has a harsh, strong taste and, honestly, you may grow accustomed to it. I’ve met Trantorians who spit out honest food and say it lacks that homegrown tang.”
    “Do they grow much food on Trantor?” asked Seldon. A quick side glance showed him there was no one seated in the immediate vicinity and he spoke quietly. “I’ve always heard it takes twenty surrounding worlds to supply the hundreds of freight ships required to feed Trantor every day.”
    “I know. And hundreds to carry off the load of wastes. And if you want to make the story really good, you say that the same freight ships carry food one way and waste the other. It’s true that we import considerable quantities of food, but that’s mostly luxury items. And we export considerable waste, carefully treated into inoffensiveness, as important organic fertilizer—every bit as important to other worlds as the food is to us. But that’s only a small fraction of the whole.”
    “It is?”
    “Yes. In addition to fish in the sea, there are gardens and truck farms everywhere. And fruit trees and poultry and rabbits and vast microorganism farms—usually called yeast farms, though the yeast makes up a minority of the growths. And our wastes are mostly used right here at home to maintain all that growth. In fact, in many ways Trantor is very much like an enormous and overgrown space settlement. Have you ever visited one of those?”
    “Indeed I have.”
    “Space settlements are essentially enclosed cities, with everything artificially cycled, with artificial ventilation, artificial day and night, and so on. Trantor is different only in that even the largest space settlement has a population of only ten million and Trantor has four thousand times that. Of course, we have real gravity.
And
no space settlement can match us in our microfoods. We have yeast vats, fungal mats, and algae ponds vast beyond the imagination. And we are strong on artificial flavoring, added with no light hand. That’s what gives the taste to what you’re eating.”
    Seldon had gotten through most of his sandwich and found it not as offensive as the first bite had been. “And it won’t affect me?”
    “It does hit the intestinal flora and every once in a while it afflicts some poor Outworlder with diarrhea, but that’s rare, and you harden even to that quickly. Still, drink your milkshake, which you probably won’t like. It contains an antidiarrhetic that should keep you safe, even if you tend to be sensitive to such things.”
    Seldon said querulously, “Don’t talk about it, Hummin. A person can be suggestible to such things.”
    “Finish the milkshake and forget the suggestibility.”
    They finished the rest of their meal in silence and soon were on their way again.

13
    They were now racing rapidly through the tunnel once more. Seldon decided to give voice to the question that had been nagging at him for the last hour or so.
    “Why do you say the Galactic Empire is dying?”
    Hummin turned to look at Seldon again. “As a journalist, I have statistics poured into me from all sides till they’re squeezing out of my ears. And I’m allowed to publish very little of it. Trantor’s population is decreasing. Twenty-five years ago, it stood at almost forty-five billion.
    “Partly, this decrease is because of a decline in the birthrate. To be sure, Trantor never has had a high birthrate. If you’ll look about you when you’re traveling on Trantor, you won’t encounter very many children, considering the enormous population. But just the same it’s declining. Then too there is emigration. People are leaving Trantor in greater numbers than are arriving.”
    “Considering its large population,” said Seldon, “that’s not