Richard Sutton

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A thought-provoking story in a scifi setting. Forty-two teachers, scientists, engineers and their children, have just completed a twelve year deep-space journey to escape the war and drought ravaged Earth. A carefully selected band of hardened survivors, they are to be colonists on the planet Nakis. Lying at the edge of the galaxy, it's a new world that they hope will let them build a safe life together. Unfortunately, within two days their ship, all their supplies, tools and technology are destroyed in an unforeseen melt-down of the crystalline core of their laser-driven vehicle.

As they scramble up to take shelter in a rough cave above the valley floor, those watching the melt-down find that survival will mean resurrecting the ancient technology and forgotten skills of their Paleolithic ancestors. If dodging ever-lurking predators isn't hard enough, soon they discover the uninhabited planet they are marooned on, isn't exactly uninhabited. Nakis has not provided the home they had willingly traded their old lives for. They have been reduced to foraging for subsistence. No strength, no defenses and now: powerful, potential enemies waiting in the darkness.

If lasting peace with the native humanoid species eventually comes, it will not be without incidents that try their empathic hosts' patience. Rigid, bunker-mentality and religious stubbornness prevails among many of the original mission founders and a growing anger emerges that may doom the human colony. But a breakthrough cooperative experience binds them all together in a completely unexpected way from a source no one considered. Will this illuminate their path to finally finding the home they had hoped for, or will it drive a deeper and darker wedge between them and the Naku?