Earl was on
Aspargus, beautiful with Mediterranean climates and soft breezes a few months after the nuclear incineration
of Temple Cerevox on Raniang. Having obtained Earth’s coordinates he needed only a ship to take him there. He gambled with and won against Polletin who was raising funds to sell agricultural solar moisture condensers (bound for Tatooine maybe?). Polletin convinced Earl to invest for a 50% stake. While Earl was inspecting one of the units at the warehouse, a raider ship attacked and took the cargo from the warehouse. Earl knifed a raider as their ship sent out the call to leave. He also knocked out the raider lookout, a bronze skinned russet haired Zehava. Polletin was wounded in the raider attach and dying, but gave Earl a satchel of components without which the equipment was worthless. Earl noticed Zehava in the hospital, and made clear to her that if she didn’t help him, he would turn her in.
Cyber Prime Ryon, believing Earl dead on Raniang, heard of the raid at
Aspargus, and that a raider had died by a thrown knife. The cybers he sent to investigate confirmed that Earl had been on Aspargus.
Zehava agreed and, fortuitiously, they left before the Cyclan’s agents arrived. Zehava admitted to being a raider from the planet Kaldar where raiding was the bulwark of the economy. She and Earl went first to Pangritz, a smoky, miserable mining world. There Zehava contacted some traders, likely erstwhile fences for raiders, and arranged passage to Kaldar. They then went to Kaldar where Earl had a trader buy his stolen goods at auction and then sold the rather disgruntled trader the essential components Earl had brought. Earl was baited by and quarrelled with Toibin, the leader of the Aspargus raid. A bout with knives ended in Toibin’s death. Earl now with a ship, the Geniat, and a stake proposed to raid Earth to which Kaldar was close enough for the Kaldari to have heard of as a legendary world of unimaginable riches. Aided by mildly telepathic and very un-Kaldari-like Nadine Cavallo, niece and ward of a powerful Kaldari councilman, Earl received Kaldari approval for the raid. Before departure Monk Weyer told Earl to avoid Earth as it held a great evil.
The Geniat embarked with Earl, Zehava, Captain Chapman, Navigator Niall, and Nadine – chancing an escape from arrogant, vendetta ridden Kaldar- and Kaldari desperate for a successful raid. Half-way to Earth the Geniat was forced to leave hyperspace near a black hole to repair a broken engine part. Avoiding the singularity, Earl made his crew repair the engine on quick-time and limp to
Fionnula, the planet of a dim red dwarf star, to obtain repairs.
The Fionnulans helped repair the Geniat but tried to get Earl’s band to remain. Fionnula was a drab, ugly world in a lonely region of space. Headman Cazele knew of Earth; Fionnula was closer than Earl had been since leaving. Cazele said Earth was a vile, evil place with death and horrors beyond imagination that they should avoid. Almost too late, Earl realized the Fionnulans were in a parasitic relationship with a large carnivorous social insect life form, the pylas, that used some Fionnulans as hosts for queen eggs. Cazele also wanted fresh genes from the Kaldari to strengthen Fionnulans’ own inbred DNA. The Geniat took off just as a vast swarm of Pylas approached the space field. Had the ship remained longer, the pylas would have rendered it inoperable. Many Kaldari, late to respond to the call, were abandoned to the Pylas.
Some Kaldari were ready to mutiny. Earl confronted them and killed several in hand-to-hand combat. Shortly thereafter, near the galactic edge, the Geniat heard a distress signal. The Evoy, with only two inhabitants riding low, one identical with the long lost Kalin, and another emaciated man. Awakened, the man said the woman was a noblewoman Lucia del Vigoda, bound for her wedding, and he, her caretaker. The man, Yemm, wanted to awaken the woman, but Earl hesitated. Then, when only Earl, Yemm and Zehava were on the ship, Zehava turned her gun on Earl and confessed she contacted the Cyclan on Pangritz. She had hated Earl for extorting her and later, perhaps, for his increasing interest in Nadine. Yemm was a cyber.
Zehava pressed the button to awaken Lucia and alert the Cyclan, but Earl killed the cyber who inadvertently killed Zehava. Earl fled the Evoy before it went into hyperspace and, floating in the wrong direction, had to remove his helmet using the air to gain necessary propulsion to change course to attain the Geniat airlock. Once aboard, he began his relationship with Nadine in earnest.
After a false start caused by galactic drift, they arrived at Earth. A Cyclan ship appeared from behind the moon. They were radioed by Cyber Tryne, an android with a sponge-metal brain imprinted with the intelligence of a disembodied cyber brain. Thus Ryon sought to solve the worsening problem of insanity discovered when Earl was on Paiyar with Zenya. Tryne demanded Earl’s surrender. Earl sent instead a space suit loaded with a bomb, a recording of his heartbeat and a darkened visor. The Cyclan ship tried to hit the Geniat with hails of missiles, but Earl's unanticipated ruse destroyed the Cylan ship. So, after so many years searching, from space, Earl looked again, at last, upon his native Earth.