It wasn’t long before the two largest hunks touched together again, silently shattering into hundreds of smaller pieces, the water that had covered them both scattering everywhere, freezing into droplets in space like a trillion new stars, twinkling as they tumbled in the blue-white light of the distant sun.

In successive orbits, the large chunks, tugged this way and that by gravitational interactions with each other and with the remaining thirteen moons, brushed and bounced together, grinding into smaller and smaller fragments. Already the pieces of debris were spreading into a thin band covering a few percent of the circumference of their orbits around the Face of God.

As the process continued, the shattered remnants of the home world would grind into hundreds of thousands of chunks, ranging from flying boulders to gravel-sized pieces, slowly distributing themselves into a vast, flat ring around the orange-and-yellow-banded planet.

The ship’s central computer was an artificial intelligence whose mind simulated that of the greatest Quintaglio thinker of all time. Its neural nets had been configured and reconfigured until they had been trained to give the same responses to the question that the original had, three hundred and thirty kilodays ago, when his words had been recorded by Mokleb, the founder of modern psychological research, who had probed his every thought, every emotion.

The observation deck was crowded, but Liss was close to one of the pairs of glossy black hemispheres that were the computer’s stereoscopic cameras. "Afsan," she said, "how long until the rubble actually forms a continuous ring around the Face of God?"

The computer’s voice was deep and smooth, reassuring with its quiet confidence and the hints of serenity and wisdom that legend said were the hallmarks of the original Afsan. "I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay for it," said the voice. "It’ll take at least a hundred kilodays." And then a little sound effect issued from the speaker, a clicking like teeth gently touching together. "But when it’s done, it will be a glorious sight — a beautiful reminder that, once upon a time, our home world did indeed exist."

The ship tarried a few days more, taking measurements. Then, at last, with everyone strapped onto his or her cushioned dayslab, the engines were brought on-line. Liss felt something she hadn’t felt for a long time — the first faint sensation of her own weight — as the ship gently nudged out of orbit.

They had tried establishing colonies in this solar system, tried living under pressure domes on the third moon of Kevpel and on the rocky surface of Gefpel, tried living in orbital habitats. But none of those was a proper existence; they wouldn’t do forever.

And so now they were leaving, all of them, green and yellow, Quintaglios and what had once been called Others, looking for a suitable home, a world on which they could run and play and hunt in the open air.

It would be a long voyage, and Liss would be dead well before it was over. But someday the children of the children of the eggs she now carried within her would arrive at their new home.

Their new home.

And their old home.

The monitoring room at the top of the space elevator had shown them pictures of the thirty-one worlds that the ark-makers had seeded, as well as pictures of the original home world, the crucible on which life had originally arisen. An antenna running along the tower’s 13,000-kilopace height had picked up images continually broadcast by self-repairing probes left on those worlds by the ark-makers millennia ago.

Most of the Quintaglio generation ships had gone to new worlds discovered by orbital far-seers; a few had been dispatched to some of the worlds that had life already seeded on them; but this one ship, the last, had a very special mission.

It was going home.

Liss wondered whether the strange tailless bipeds, those long-lost cousins of the Quintaglios, would be glad to see them when they arrived back at their original world.

Time would tell.

The full-acceleration alarm sounded.

And the starship Dasheter surged ahead.

Appendix:

Dates given use the old pre-Larskian calendar, and are in kilodays after the hatching of the Eggs of Creation as told in the first sacred scroll. Individuals are alphabetized under their common names (without praenomen syllables); full names, when known, are given in parentheses. After each reference, the book in which the item was first presented is indicated: [1] for Far-Seer, [2] for Fossil Hunter, [3] for Foreigner.

adabaja: type of tree; since it is easy to waterproof, its wood is used in sailing ships and exterior scaffolding. [1]

Adkab: (7093– ) a male Quintaglio, the fifth of seven apprentices to Tak-Saleed. [1]

Afdool: a Quintaglio name meaning "meaty legbone." [1]

Afsan (Sal-Afsan): (7096– ) a male Quintaglio, the seventh and final apprentice to Tak-Saleed; he became known as "The One." He was hatched in Pack Carno, Arj’toolar province, the son of Pahs-Drawo. The name Afsan means "meaty thighbone." Blinded by Det-Yenalb in 7110, he later became an advisor to Emperor Dy-Dybo. [1]

Afsanian revolution: the intellectual, political, and religious upheaval following the discovery by Sal-Afsan in 7110 that the Face of God is a planet. [1]

Afsan’s rock: a particular granite boulder (technical designation: Sun/Swift-Runner/4) at Rockscape favored by Sal-Afsan. [2]

Anakod: a male Quintaglio psychologist; once a promising student of Nav-Mokleb, now a professional rival. [3]

anchor: armless wingfinger-derived reptile indigenous to the south pole. [2]

Apripel: the eighth and outermost planet of the Quintaglio sun, a small, rocky world whose presence was first suggested to the Quintaglios by a system map seen in the observing room atop the Jijaki space elevator. [3]

Arbiter of the Sequence: the individual responsible for overseeing "the Sequence" — the official ordering of all information. Var-Osfik held this post during Sal-Afsan’s time in Capital City. [2]

Arj’toolar: a province in northwest Land, home of Sal-Afsan, known for orange-and-blue-striped shovelmouths and the contemplatives of its holy land. Provincial color: white. [1]

ark-makers: Quintaglio term for the Jijaki. [3]

arks: hydrogen ramjet starships used by the Jijaki to transport plants and animals from Earth to the thirty-one destination worlds; the final ark, the Ditikali-ot, crashed into the Quintaglio moon. [2]

armorback: ankylosaur; herbivorous armored dinosaur. [1]

artifact, alien: a Jijaki handheld computer found by Kee-Toroca at the Bookmark layer in 7126. [2]

aug-ta-rot: Quintaglio term for "demon," literally meaning one who can tell lies in the light of day. This term was applied to the followers of the original five hunters who refused to accept Larsk’s view of the world; the borders of the Tapestries of the Prophet show aug-ta-rot beings. [1]

Avenue of Traders: one of Capital City’s widest thoroughfares. [2]

Baban (Ho-Baban): a Lubalite songwriter, best known for "The Ballad of the Ten," which tells the story of Lubal’s original Pack. [1]

Babnol (Wab-Babnol): (7110– ) a female Quintaglio from Pack Vando in Arj’toolar province who joined the Geological Survey of Land in 7126. She retained her birthing horn into adulthood. [2]

banded swift: a species of wingfinger with white fur and pale orange stripes. [3]

Bay of Three Forests: a small bay in Jam’toolar at the westernmost tip of Land; the Dasheter landed here after its first circumnavigation of the world. [1]