Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction,
January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE RETURN
BY H. BEAM PIPER
AND
JOHN J. McGUIRE
The isolated little group they found were doing fine—
but their religion was most strange—and yet quite logical!
Illustrated by Kelly Freas
Altamont cast a quick, routine,glance at the instrument panels andthen looked down through the transparentnose of the helicopter at theyellow-brown river five hundred feetbelow. Next he scraped the last morselfrom his plate and ate it.
"What did you make this out of,Jim?" he asked. "I hope you keptnotes, while you were concocting it.It's good."
"The two smoked pork chops leftover from yesterday evening," Loudonssaid, "and that bowl of rice that'sbeen taking up space in the refrigeratorthe last couple of days together witha little egg powder, and some milk. Iground the chops up and mixed themwith the rice and the other stuff. Thenadded some bacon, to make grease tofry it in."
Altamont chuckled. That was Loudons,all right; he could take a fewleft-overs, mess them together, popthem in the skillet, and have a mealthat would turn the chef back at theFort green with envy. He filled his cupand offered the pot.
"Caffchoc?" he asked.
Loudons held his cup out to befilled, blew on it, sipped, and thenhunted on the ledge under the deskfor the butt of the cigar he had half-smokedthe evening before.
"Did you ever drink coffee, Monty?"the socio-psychologist asked, gettingthe cigar drawing to his taste.
"Coffee? No. I've read about it, ofcourse. We'll have to organize an expeditionto Brazil, some time, to getseeds, and try raising some."
Loudons blew a smoke ring towardthe rear of the cabin.
"A much overrated beverage," hereplied. "We found some, once, whenI was on that expedition into Idaho,in what must have been the stockroomof a hotel. Vacuum-packed in moisture-proofcontainers, and free from radioactivity.It wasn't nearly as good ascaffchoc. But then, I suppose, a pre-bustupcoffee drinker couldn't stomachthis stuff we're drinking." He lookedforward, up the river they were following."Get anything on the radio?"he asked. "I noticed you took us upto about ten thousand, while I wasshaving."
Altamont got out his pipe and tobaccopouch, filling the former slowlyand carefully.
"Not a whisper. I tried ColonyThree, in the Ozarks, and I tried tocall in that tribe of workers in Louisiana;I couldn't get either."
"Maybe if we tried to get a littlemore power on the set—"
That was Loudons, too, Altamontthought. There wasn't a better manat the Fort, when it came to dealingwith people, but confront him with aproblem about things, and he was lost.That was one of the reasons why heand the stocky, phlegmatic social scientistmade such a good team, hethought. As far as he, himself, was concerned,people were just a mysterious,exasperatingly unpredictable, orderof things which were subject to noknown natural laws. That was aboutthe way Loudons thought of things;he couldn't psychoanalyze them.
He gestured with his pipe towardthe nuclear-electric conversion unit,between the control-cabin and theliving quarters in the rear of the box-car-sizedhelicopter.<