Homecoming Saga

For millennia, the planet Harmony has been protected by the Oversoul, an artificial intelligence programmed to prevent thoughts of war and conquest from threatening the fragile remnant of Earth's peoples. But as the Oversoul's systems have begun to fail, a great warrior has arisen to challenge its bans. Using forbidden technology, the ambitious and ruthless General Moozh has won control of an army and is aiming it at the city of Basilica. Basilica remains in turmoil. Wetchik and his sons are not strong enough to stop an army. As Lady Rasa, through whom the Oversoul speaks, attempts to defeat Moozh through intrigue, Naifeh and his family prepare to voyage to the stars in search of the planet called Earth.

With the continuing failure of the Oversoul, the artificially intelligent guardian computer of the planet Harmony, the human colonists have begun to repeat the devastations of war and conquest wrought on Earth. To repair itself and avert disaster, the Oversoul has called a group of sixteen refugees from the fallen city of Basilica to a hidden, abandoned spaceport where the ancient starships lie. Now Wetchik, Nafai, and all their family must brave the desert wastes and cross the wide continents, guided by the voice of the Oversoul, to await the command to prepare the great interstellar ships for flight again. But among this group, not all have chosen their exile, and the angry resentment of those who were forced to join will make the difficult journey harder.

When war broke out on the planet Harmony, the Oversoul of that colonized world selected the family of Wetchik to carry it back to long-lost Earth. Now the tribe is ready at last to take a ship to the stars. But from the beginning there has been bitter dispute between Wetchik's sons, Nafai and Elemak. On board the starship Basilica, the children of the tribe will become pawns in the struggle for control of reclaimed Earth. Each faction is making secret plans to awaken the children early from the cold-sleep capsules in which they will pass the decades-long journey, hoping to gain years of influence on their minds and win their loyalty. But the Oversoul is truly in control of this journey, and only the son who wears the cloak of the Starmaster really understands what this will mean to all their plans for the future.

High above Earth orbits the starship Basilica. On board the huge vessel is a sleeping woman. Of those who made the journey, Shedemai alone has survived the hundreds of years since the Children of Wetchik returned to Earth. She now wears the Cloak of the Starmaster, and the Oversoul wakes her sometimes to watch over her descendants on the planet below. The population has grown rapidly—there are cities and nations now, whole peoples descended from those who followed Nafai or Elemak. But in all the long years of watching and searching, the Oversoul has not found the thing it sought. It has not found the Keeper of Earth, the central intelligence that also can repair the Oversoul's damaged programming.