babbling, the words were tumbling over each other on his lips.

"Oh, hell, Ron Val, it doesn't fit," Jed Hargraves said. "We can trace our evolutionary chain back to the fish in the seas—"

"Sure," Ron Val interrupted. "But we don't know that those fish came from the seas of earth!"

"Huh?" Hargraves gasped. "Well, I'll be damned! I never thought of that possibility." He looked at the lakes dancing in the Vegan sunshine. From these lakes, from these seas, had come the original fish-like creature that eventually became human in form! The thought was startling.

"The colonists landed on earth thousands of years ago," Ron Val said. "Maybe they smashed their ship in landing, had to learn to live off the country. Maybe they forgot who they were, in time. Jed, we have legends that we are the children of God. Maybe—Oh, Jed, Thulon says it's true."

Hargraves hesitated, torn between doubt and longing. He looked down. On the ground in front of him the ants were still swarming. Hundreds of them were coming from the ant hill and were flying off. There were thousands of them. Eventually, in the recesses of this vast grove, there would be new colonies, which would swarm in their turn. He watched them flying away. The air was bright with the glint of their wings.

He looked up. Thulon was coming toward them. Thulon was smiling. "Welcome home," his voice whispered in their minds. "Welcome home."

Hargraves began to smile.

[1] Originally devised as a protection against meteors, it was a field of force that would disintegrate any solid particle that struck it, always presuming it did not tangle with an asteroid or a meteor too big for it to handle. A blood brother of the negatron, it made space flight, if not a first-class insurance risk, at least fairly safe.—Ed.

[1]

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