Earl left Camollard atop the Elmirha Dust halfway across the galaxy from where he thought Earth to be and arrived on Tradum.
There, he worked in a huge tunnelling project, moonlighting as a security guard for construction contractor Zur Sekulich. For this latter job he obtained the aid of the shy native inhabitants of the planet – the Hyead – man-like creatures with seemingly low intelligence and apparent telepathic abilities. Earl befriended Leon Harvey, a good natured but innocent young man claiming to have come from the planet Nerth – which sounded suspiciously like “Earth” beneath skies holding a large silver moon but few stars. Earl worried the story might have been planted and Leon, consciously or unconsciously, an agent of the Cyclan.
One night, Earl, aided by the Hyead, captured some thieves. Receiving a substantial bonus, he decided to cash in and move on. He returned to the bunkhouse to find Leon had been fired and savagely beaten by the foreman. Earl quit, took Leon to low-town, and took obscure lodgings. In low-town he learned that a Cyber had arrived on Tradum. Ayantel, an attractive brunette roast-meat stall owner of a certain age, befriended Earl, directed him to a reliable pharmacist, set him up with someone who could arrange a starship berth and briefly, if gratefully, joined the list of women who had succumbed to his charms. Earl obtained medicines for Leon, treated him and used a hypnotic drug to verify Leon was not working for the Cyclan. When Leon awoke, Earl bid him adieu, not expecting to see him again, but perhaps hoping to visit his planet. The fixer Ayantel had introduced turned out to be a minion of the gang leader whose thieves Earl had fingered and who was now bent on revenge. Earl was ambushed, battled the gang, killed the leader, and returned to Ayantel’s house.
Earl had stolen the gang’s anti-grav raft and he had Ayantel, apparently drunken, fly over the spaceport, Earl hidden inside, passed the spaceport guards charged by the cyber to capture him. He dropped unseen into the spaceport and, joined the Goloquin as ship’s steward. He rode to Mailarette and, disembarking, found Leon had ridden low (suspended animation) on the Goloquin, but had died. Earl took a small statute from Leon’s belongings. The navigator, Dinok, said they had carried Leon before from Shajok. With that information Earl quit the Goloquin, rode another ship to Vonstate and from there to Shajok.
On Shajok, Hausi trader Bhol Kinabalu had promised to provide neurotic Jalch Moore and his sister Iduna a guide and a guard for a journey into the mountains. He had managed to arrange an impetuous but experienced guide named Chaque. When Earl arrived on Shajok, Bhol offered him the guard’s position, and Earl, ever trusting the Hausi, accepted. Jalch Moore was searching for invisible creatures called the Kheld that lived in the air. The mountains where he thought to find the Kheld were very dangerous, filled with poisonous thorn thickets and unpredictable winds. Earl went along partly because he thought Leon’s people were in the mountains and he wanted to find them, thinking they might know of Earth. He soon discovered Iduna hated being female, feeling it made her fit only to be a man’s plaything. The party met the Carandish tribe and tried communicate, but a Carandish tribesman tried to kidnap Iduna and she killed him. Earl and Chaque were able to secure the party’s escape. Another night, camped on a high peak, they heard eerie chittering noises, the Kheld?. The next day, Jalch and Chaque quarrelled causing their anti-grav raft to crash, spilling and killing the hapless Jalch.
Iduna, Earl and Chaque began to walk their way out of the mountains. They encountered a large hungry violent predatory reptilian beast. Earl dispatched it but Chaque was killed. Earl and Iduna forged on until discovered by villagers initiating their young men into adulthood by ensconcing them overnight atop stone pillars on the ridge top. These were
Original People and they were going to killed Earl and Iduna, but Earl told them he had a message for Leon’s parents- that Leon had died bravely defending him.
The tribe debated Earl’s and Iduna’s disposition. Earl broke into the tribal sanctuary looking for clues of Earth and was discovered. He assumed a posture of worship implying he knew secrets of the Original People. He insisted the
rite of passage they used was cruel and that the mysterious Kheld were probably killing some of the boys. Earl and some of the men spent the night on the pillars and this was proven. The village was grateful to Earl and things were going well when Cyber Hsi arrived. Iduna and the Goloquin’s captain had been complicit with Hsi. Iduna wanted the Cyclan to give her a man’s body. Earl attacked and Hsi’s acolyte and Iduna were killed. Using the symbiote, Earl trapped the cyber’s body using the mind of a boy rendered an idiot by the Kheld during initiation. Earl returned the precious artifact Leon had taken from the village, a holographic record of ancient Earth concealed within the statue, and the villagers adopted him as one of the Original People disclosing the distances of nearby but unfortunately equally unknown stars to Earth. Earl took the raft and the helpless cyber to be abandoned alive on a remote world and continued his search for Earth.