Editing Foundation and Empire (section)

==="The Mule"===
Approximately one hundred years later, The Empire, after its final phase of decline and civil war, has ceased to exist, Trantor has suffered "The Great Sack" by a "barbarian fleet," and only a small rump state of 20 agricultural planets remain. Most of galactic civilization has disintegrated into barbaric kingdoms.

The Foundation has become the dominant power in the galaxy, controlling its territory through its trading network. The outline of the Seldon Plan has become widely known, and Foundationists and many others believe that as it has accurately predicted previous events, the Foundation's formation of a Second Empire is inevitable. However, the leadership of the Foundation has become dictatorial and complacent, and many outer planets belonging to the Traders plan to revolt.

An external threat arises in the form of a mysterious man known only as [[The Mule (Foundation)|the Mule]]. He is a mutant and can sense and manipulate the emotions of others, usually creating fear and/or total devotion within his victims. With this ability, he takes over the independent systems bordering the Foundation, and has them wage a war against it. In face of this new threat, the provincial Traders join with the central Foundation leaders against the Mule, believing him to be the new Seldon crisis.

As the Mule advances, the Foundation's leaders assume that Seldon predicted this attack, and that the scheduled hologram crisis message appearance of Seldon will again tell them how to win. To their surprise, they learn that Seldon predicted a civil war with the Traders, not the rise of the Mule. The tape stops when Terminus loses all power in a Mule attack, and the Foundation falls.

Foundation citizens Toran and Bayta Darell, along with the psychologist [[Ebling Mis]] and "Magnifico Giganticus," a clown fleeing the Mule's service, travel to different worlds of the Foundation, and to the Great Library of [[Trantor]]. The Darells and Mis seek to contact the [[Second Foundation]], which they believe can defeat the Mule. They also suspect the Mule wishes to know where the Second Foundation is as well, so that he can use the First Foundation's technology to destroy it.

At the Great Library, Ebling Mis works until his health fatally deteriorates. As Mis lies dying, he tells Toran, Bayta, and Magnifico that he knows where the Second Foundation is. Before he can reveal its location, however, Bayta kills him. Bayta had realized, shortly before, that Magnifico was actually the Mule, who had used his powers in every planet they had previously visited. In the same way, he had forced Mis to continue working and find what the Mule was looking for. Bayta had killed Mis to prevent him from revealing the Second Foundation's whereabouts to the Mule.

The Darells are left on Trantor. The Mule leaves to reign over the Foundation and the rest of his new empire. The existence of the Second Foundation, as an organization centered on the science of psychology and mentalics, in contrast to the Foundation's focus on physical sciences, is now known to the Darells and the Mule. Now that the Mule has conquered the Foundation, he is the most powerful force in the galaxy, and the Second Foundation is the only threat to his eventual reign over the entire galaxy. The Mule promises that he will find the Second Foundation, while Bayta asserts that it has already prepared for him and thus that he will not have enough time before the Second Foundation reacts.