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The Return

by H. Beam Piper & John J. McGuire (1904–1964)

  • Free to read
  • 45 min read
  • Reading level: 6th grade

"The Return" by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire is a science fiction short story published in 1954. More than 250 years after nuclear war, explorers from Fort Ridgeway discover a fortified community descended from an old army platoon. These survivors have developed a mysterious religion centered on a god who died in battle and will one day return. As the explorers seek their help retrieving precious microfilmed books, they realize the community may believe one of them is their prophesied deity—a case of mistaken identity with potentially fatal consequences.

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  • Science fiction

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Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

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 isolated little group they found were doing fine—
but their religion was most strange—and yet quite logical!_

Altamont cast a quick, routine, glance at the instrument panels and then looked down through the transparent nose of the helicopter at the yellow-brown river five hundred feet below. Next he scraped the last morsel from his plate and ate it.

"What did you make this out of, Jim?" he asked. "I hope you kept notes, while you were concocting it. It's good."

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About this edition

This free edition of The Return by H. Beam Piper & John J. McGuire comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #18855, released 2006-07-17. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Science-Fiction & Fantasy, Adventure.

Other editions: eBook #19158.

Summary provided by Project Gutenberg (automatically generated).

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