First published in Astounding Science Fiction (October 1944 issue), by Isaac Asimov. This Science Fiction Short Story is the fourth work published in The Foundation Trilogy, but takes place before "The Merchant Princes".
Limmar Ponyets (originally Lanthan Devers), a member of the Foundation's Trader subculture, is ordered to go to the Askone system, a system where the Foundation is unable to find someone willing to buy their nucleic technology for raw materials, due to the local religion being opposed to technology. Ponyets has a task: he is to find and save Eskel Gorov, a secret agent of the Foundation.
Narrowly navigating the politics of Askone's court, Ponyets manages to meet the Grand Master, the executive ruler of the planet, and uses his old training as a priest to convince the Grand Master to allow him to meet Gorov (who has been sentenced to death). When the two men meet, Gorov explains his mission: he has been tasked to find the means to sell anyone in power some of the Foundation's technology, since that would allow the Foundation to use that person as a way to convince Askone to relax their laws concerning technology. Ponyets points out how silly it is to send a secret agent to do a trader's job and a trader to do a secret agent's job, and promises Gorov he will fulfill both of their missions.
A few days later, Ponyets presents a device he has built out of supplies in his ship: a transmuter capable of transforming iron into gold. A test proves successful, and Ponyets convinces the Grand Master to accept that gold - and any other he can get out of the transmuter - as payment for Gorov's life. During the encounter, he also catches the attention of Pherl, the Grand Master's closest advisor and potential successor.
Pherl brings Ponyets to his estate, where he manages to blackmail the trader into selling him the transmuter, threatening to have him and Gorov killed, but Ponyets turns the tables on him by attaching a microfilm recorder to the device and then using the record as proof of Pherl using nuclear technology, something that would get him killed if people learned of it. In the end, Ponyets manages to sell him his entire inventory at an obscene markup (two shipfuls of tin), while Pherl is set to become the future Grand Master with both the gold from the transmuter and the money he may earn from trading with the Foundation.
"The Traders" was reprinted in Foundation (1951), the compilation of the first four stories, as well as The 1,000 Year Plan, the compilation of the first three stories.
"The Traders" provides examples of:
- Ancestor Veneration: The people of the planet Askone worship their ancestors, whom they believe to have been virtuous heroes who freed them from evil (i.e. the Galactic Empire), and put up richly-decorated shrines to their spirits, complete with altars ornamented with gold. They also shun advanced technology, which they came to associate with the Empire, and consider it to lie "under the ancestral interdict".
- Anti-Hero: The Foundation subculture of Traders defines much of itself on antiheroic principles. Their self-worth is tied to their ability to make profits, they travel beyond the Foundation border, looking for new markets and big profits. Ponyets manages to achieve Gorov's goal of selling nucleics to Askone by Blackmailing a government official to purchase his entire inventory at an obscene markup, offending Gorov's sense of ethical business.Tales without end are told of these massive, lonely figures who bore half-seriously, half-mockingly a motto adopted from one of Salvor Hardin's epigrams, "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!"— Encyclopedia Galactica's entry on traders
- Blackmail:
- Ponyets, a trader from the Foundation, talks privately with Pherl, the Grand Master's closest advisor. Pherl is able to blackmail the trader into selling a nucleic device that can transmute iron into gold. Ponyets tries to convince the Askoneian advisor to put his promise of payment in writing, but Pherl threatens him with the death penalty because the entire planet hates atomic power.
- When Pherl, a government official on Askone, pays Ponyets, a trader from the Foundation, for the nucleic transmuter, the trader reveals a secret. Ponyets had installed a microfilm recorder in the transmutation machine, which recorded the Askonian official celebrating their ability to turn iron into gold. Because the people of Askone hate atomic power, Ponyets is able to extort Pherl by threatening to show the recording in the public square. The trader is able to exchange his whole stock of tech (mostly kitchen appliances and jewelry) at a hideous mark-up (two shipfuls of tin) that he can now bring back to Terminus.
- Crew of One: The three characters from the Foundation; Ponyets, Gorm, and Gorov, all have personal ships. If Ponyets's estimations of his ship is accurate (and assuming he doesn't have an exceptional ship), then they can also outfly and outfight more than one crewed ship at a time, so long as that ship isn't of Foundation design.
- Distant Sequel: Created as an Interquel between "The Mayors" and "The Merchant Princes", occurring two decades before the latter (making it take place around 130 F.E.).
- Encyclopedia Exposita: When published in Foundation (1951), this story is prefaced by the Encyclopedia Galactica entry for the Traders.
- Epigraph: The original Astounding Science Fiction publication had only Salvor Hardin's quote. Later republications would cite an Encyclopedia Galactica entry instead, but said entry would also include Hardin's epigram.
- Evil Luddite: Planet Askone associates all high tech with the First Empire (except for the few starships and such they managed to take when the Empire withdrew from their planet). To avoid the vices of the Empire, they shun science and the trade of sacrilegious technology.
- Fictional Document: Blood of the Spirit is one of the religious texts used in the Foundation's Religion of Science.
- Fur and Loathing: Despite being written in the 1940s, the Grand Master's fur collar is clearly being used to show how he's a greedy corrupt ruler for Askone.
- Guile Hero: Limmar Ponyets is a trader for the Foundation, so he has to have a good eye for potential customers and salesmanship to persuade them to buy his stuff. In this story, he has to use these traits to Blackmail a government official and rescue a Foundation spy from a foreign government. Decades later, Askone has been effectively absorbed into the Foundation, their head of state is as bound by the Religion of Science as the Four Kingdoms are.
- Interquel: Despite being published in Pulp Magazines as the fourth story in his growing Foundation trilogy, Dr Asimov counted it as the third story in his publication of Foundation (1951), taking place before "The Merchant Princes".
- Interrupted Bath: Limmar Ponyets is interrupted in his shower by a call from a fellow Trader bringing him an urgent assignment. The narration lampshades this event.
- Laser Blade: Gorov's mission on Askone is to be a black market salesman, selling Foundation-designed nucleics, such as knives with edges made from Deflector Shields. This is one of the oldest examples of the trope, as it first appeared in 1944."...To put it simply, if I could sell a penknife with a force-field blade to a nobleman, it would be to his interest to force laws that would allow him to use it. Put that baldly, it sounds silly, but it is sound, psychologically. To make strategic sales, at strategic points, would be to create a pro-nucleics faction at court."
- Legendary in the Sequel: Mayor Salvor Hardin, from the events of "The Encyclopedists" and "The Mayors", is well-known enough, fifty years later, that a new epigram has been attributed to him, "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!"
- The Namesake:
- The original title, "The Wedge", refers to trade being the wedge that needs inserting into foreign cultures so that the Foundation can introduce their Scam Religion and slowly subvert control from the other interplanetary nations.
- The revised title, "The Traders", refers to a subculture of Foundation agents. Limmar Ponyets is a member of said culture, and this story demonstrates how they use guile and salesmanship to convince the foreign markets to buy Foundation technology.
- Naming Your Colony World: Glyptal IV is briefly mentioned as a planet within the Foundation's sphere of trading/mail, where Les Gorm was given the job of delivering a message to Ponyets. The Greek word glyptos means carving or engraving, as in writing.
- Numbered Homeworld: Glyptal IV is briefly mentioned as a planet within the Foundation's sphere of trading/mail, where Les Gorm was given the job of delivering a message to Ponyets. It overlaps with Symbolically Named Planets because the Greek word glyptos means carving or engraving, as in writing.
- Off the Table: Ponyets' original price for the transmuter is a large amount of iron. Whether it's his original intent or not, once Pherl tries to back out, he blackmails the nobleman into paying with much more expensive tin, as much of it as his and Gorov's ships can carry.
- Orwellian Retcon: When editing for publication in Foundation (1951), Dr Asimov changed the title and added an Encyclopedia Galactica entry on Foundation traders. He also changed the name of the main character from Lanthan Devers (who would show up again in "The General (Foundation)") to Limmar Ponyets, clarifying that these weren't the same characters. It was also placed chronologically before The Merchant Princes instead of after.
- Proud Merchant Race: The Foundation develops a subculture that calls themselves "the traders", who travel to the edges of the Foundation and beyond in personal shuttles, looking to trade technology for raw materials. Most of the time, when a new planetary nation is discovered, the technology is sold with the Scam Religion created in "The Mayors".
- Raygun Gothic: This story starts going into detail about the sort of atom-powered devices that the Foundation has been building since Mayor Hardin proved that Terminus ruled the Four Kingdoms, rather than the other way around. They've made knives that generate a force-field blade, mechanical garbage disposers, and even transmutation machines (actually a modified food irradiation chamber, like a microwave oven).
- Second-Hand Storytelling: Ponyets tells Gorov about his Blackmailing of an Askonian government official after-the-fact in order to explain why a private navy is escorting them to an Askonian official's mining estates. Both of their ships are going to be filled with tin!
- Space Cossacks: Limmar Ponyets, our protagonist, is part of Foundation's Trader subculture. He owns a personal shuttle, packed with Atom Punk tech. He's expected to trade his technology for raw materials from interstellar nations beyond the edge of the Foundation.
- This Page Will Self-Destruct: The story starts with Ponyats receiving such a message. By the time he finishes reading it, the page already starts falling apart into ashes.
- Transmutation: A Foundation merchant bribes a government official on an anti-nucleonic planet to release a Foundation spy with a device that transmutes iron into gold. He then blackmails the official into buying the rest of his cargo at an insane markup with recordings of him using the nucleonic device.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: Trader Ponyets, from the Foundation, is surprised that some planet wants gold as ransom for a captured person - for him it is "old fashioned". He quickly capitalizes on their desire, and arranges for a demonstration of transmuting iron into gold. He manages to sell all of his nucleic tech in exchange for raw materials and the captured Foundation agent. Afterwards, Ponyets talks with the agent, explaining how the ability to make a transmutation device is possible, but hideously power-consumptive, which is why Terminus needs traders to go out and collect raw materials instead of simply transmuting them back home.
