Freshly minted doctor of mathematics Gaal Dornick books passage on a spaceship from his home planet to Trantor, the imperial capital. The ship makes a series of hyperspace jumps past many of the 25 million inhabited planets of the Galactic Empire on its way to the center of the 12,000-year-old civilization. There, Dornick will work on the Seldon Project under the guidance of its founder, mathematician Hari Seldon.

Onboard, Dornick haunts the View-room, where he sees distant star clusters and nebulae as the ship makes its journey. He asks to be allowed to remain on the deck for the descent toward Trantor, but the approach path will be close to Trantor’s sun, which would burn and blind him. Extremely disappointed, Dornick walks back to his berth for the landing.

The ship lands at Trantor. Dornick disembarks into a gigantic terminal and the thicker air and heavier gravity of the capital planet. He clears customs and searches for a taxi; behind him, a person follows quietly. The young mathematician hires a taxi to a nearby hotel; the spy makes a note of it.

The driver flies the craft up to a high wall pockmarked by a large set of tunnels; they soar through one and arrive at the hotel.