Arkady is staring at the ticket machine, and eventually decides to return to her birth planet of Trantor since she feels that returning to Terminus might not be safe.
While making her way to the ship she runs into another couple from Trantor, referred to Papa and Mama, who are happy to see another Trantorian and when they find she is in danger do what they can to protect Arkady including bribing Lieutenant Dirige when the police search the spaceport for Arkady. The bribe apparently works and Arkday is off to Trantor.
On Terminus, Dr. Darell is working with his colleague Semic to try to obtain a large quantity of hyper-wave relays for something that Dr. Darell is trying to build. Meanwhile Pallas Anthor tries to convince Dr. Darell to return to Trantor to get Arkady and introduces him to his agent on Kalgan, Lieutenant Dirige who was the last person to see Arkady there. Dr. Darell refuses to leave, saying that is just what the Second Foundation would expect him to do.
Back on Trantor, Arkady tries to maneuver Papa, aka Preem Palver to return to Terminus under the guise of making a trade deal for the farming goods that Palver can supply, but her actual intention is for him to deliver a 5 word message to her father.
Palver ultimately agrees, but is apprehended by Foundation ships that are in the middle of a battle with Kalgan. Lord Stettin and Kalgan are lured into a trap that ultimately wins the war for the Foundation. After the war is over Palver makes his way to Terminus to deliver the message and Homir Munn is finally released from captivity to deliver the peace offering from Kalgan, all the while believing he knew the true location of the Second Foundation.
A few months later, the original group of conspirators return to Dr. Darell’s house. Terminus might have beaten Kalgan, but the Second Foundation is still the same problem. Homir Munn tells them that he has found the truth on Kalgan, that there is no Second Foundation.
Anthor refuses to accept this and asks them all to undergo brain wave analysis to find that Homir has been tampered with. Anthor then gives his theory of where the Second Foundation is located, on Kalgan. The Kalganian war was just a ruse to throw people off the trail.
Dr. Darell has another theory, one developed from the message that Arkady sent, “A circle has no end.” From that, Darell deduced that the mystery of “Star’s End” was actually a full revolution of a circle and right back on Terminus. What’s more, he has developed a “Mental Static” device specifically designed to resonate with the part of the brain that Second Foundationers use for emotional control and it has been installed in his house. Anthor asks to inspect it, but when he realizes that he’s been given a dummy control, Darell uses it to incapacitate Anthor, and verifies his long held suspicion that Anthor himself is a Second Foundationer.
Once Arkady arrives back from Trantor, Darell begins to suspect that she might have been tampered with, but after brain wave analysis, it is found that her brain waves are exactly the same. Darell is now satisfied that they have rooted out the entirety of the Second Foundation.
Meanwhile, in a room, the First Speaker again speaks with the Student. The plan has worked, the Foundation believes that they have eliminated the Second Foundation, and it took 50 martyrs to accomplish it. The plan has been in motion for 15 years now, from the time that Arkady was born and they started to control her so there could be no change detected in her brain wave patterns. Seldon’s Plan could again continue, all the while controlled by the First Speaker, Preem Palver, from the Second Foundation’s actual homeworld, the center of the galaxy, where all the stars end, Trantor.