Hal Sarkoff proved it. He says his
people sent out exploring expeditions long ago, just like we are doing,
only the groups they sent out were more colonists than explorers. He
says one of these groups landed on earth and that we are the descendants
of that group, sons of colonists come back to the mother world after
uncounted centuries of absence--"

Ron Val was 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.

End of Project Gutenberg's Planet of the Gods, by Robert Moore Williams

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLANET OF THE GODS ***

***** This file should be named 32696.txt or 32696.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/6/9/32696/

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation