Earthfall

The door closed behind them, and Elemak set out at once with two hundred soldiers, leaving Muzhestvo- Mebbekew's youngest, now a man of twenty-three-to rule the people in his absence. Elemak's army was halfway up the canyon when the starship roared to life and rose into the sky.

It became another point of light in the night heaven, circling and circling, now and then changing its position. It was called Basilica, but in time almost no one remembered why, or what it was, or that it had once been a tower standing by the first human village on Earth in forty million years.

Elemak's army tracked the wide path of the Nafari migration, but when they reached the stony cliff that barred the southern passage into the wide high valley of the land of Nafai, angels assaulted them from the air, shooting darts into their exposed backs. Twenty diggers died in that place, and forty more were injured. They struggled back home, and Elemak taught them to make armor so that next year they could try again.

And so it went, year after year. But between the futile wars, both nations prospered and grew, and both sent out traders and teachers to spread the new agriculture and the new modes of warfare and the new myths and legends and religions to every other digger city and angel village.

Generations passed, and the humans became hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, and there was not a digger city that didn't have its human houses overhead, not an angel village that didn't have humans joining in the evening song. The term that became common for humans in both societies was middle people, because they stood between the angels in the sky and the diggers in the earth.

In the sky, the starship circled and circled, but it was fall of life. Shedemei and Zdorab slept long and often, but then they would emerge and use the launch to explore, to gather specimens, to introduce new variations, to give shape and strength and variety to the gardens of the Earth. In time, Zdorab's body wore out, and Shedemei laid him to rest in a field of flowers she had brought from Harmony. Then, alone, she woke less often. But still from time to time she visited, she gathered, she tended, and silently she watched as the people spread across the face of the land, always cleverer each time she saw them, yet also angrier, and always at war.

What else could happen? The human race was home again. v1.0 [09-dec-01] 4i Publications. OCR'd 600DPI, Finereader 5, layout, quick proof inW2k . The original paperback was below average, so there'll be some OCR errors. Most common OCR errors have been corrected. If you proofread or change this document, please retain the existing version information. Also indicate what has been improved (proofreading, layout etc). Just reformatting and changing the version number doesn't mean that the actual text has been improved.

We're missing #3 in the Homecoming Saga, so the series will remain incomplete until someone scans it.