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Masklin (along with Angalo and Gurder) are searching for Grandson Richard, as the Thing has told him that it could call their spaceship if it could get aboard the communications satellite Richard is going to launch. The nomes first go to the airport where they quietly board Concorde and fly to Florida. After causing some trouble on the plane, they hide in Richard's luggage and end up in his hotel room. They however have to flee and end up outside where they meet a tribe of Nomes who speak a language close to ancient Nomish. They manage to communicate thanks to the Thing and the local Nomes fly them to the space shuttle's launch site on geese (thanks to which they migrate yearly between Alaska and Florida). Near the shuttle, the Thing uploads itself into the satellite and exhausts in doing so all the power it had stored. After the takeoff, Masklin decides to take it to a human building to let it recharge itself near electrical wires. He is caught (on purpose) by humans but manages to escape with the recharged Thing as the Nomes' spaceship arrives and Angalo and Gurder board it. Masklin then by chance meets Richard, with whom he discusses briefly as the Nome's spaceship, piloted by Angalo, lands again and let him board. They then fly away back to Britain after making a detour through South America where they pick up a Bromeliad flower that Masklin gives to Grimma before taking the Nomes. Gurder decides to stay on Earth to search for other Nome tribes, tell them of their origins and give them the possibility to migrate to a Nome planet the next time the spaceship would visit Earth.

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The nomes have resettled in a closed quarry. When they discover that the quarry will soon reopen, they wonder what to do, and consider moving to a barn on the other side of the field. Reading a newspaper article about Arnold Bros' grandson who who is traveling to Florida on business about a communication satellite, Masklin decides to leave with a few nomes and find more about the grandson. In the meanwhile winter comes and covers the ground with snow, making it impossible for the younger and elder nomes to travel to the barn. As humans come to reopen the quarry, Grimma has to oppose a rising religious nome who promises that faith in Arnold Bros will solve all their problems; that nome is accidentally killed by humans. The nomes sabotage a truck in an attempt to prevent the humans to enter the quarry, lead by Dorcas who make them steal the battery and diesel fuel, but the truck accidentally rolls onto the railways tracks and causes an accident. More humans come to the quarry, put poisoned bait to eliminate what they believe to be rats. Dorcas and his nomes, who had been lost outside after the accident, is finally found and presents his plan: he has found and repaired a JCB digger in shed, and proposes to use it to take all the nomes to the barn. The drive out among amazed humans, but are chased by the police. The eventually get stuck on the top of a hill, when a spaceship appears above them.

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A handful of nomes live in a burrow at a rest area along the motorway. Life being very hard, they decide to hop on a lorry and leave, in the hope for a better life. The lorry stops in the garage of the Arnold Bros department store where they meet a community of two thousand nomes who has been living there for generations and mostly refuses to believe there exists an Outside. The newcomers have a black box, transmitted from generation to generation, that starts to speak to them as it comes near electrical wiring; it explains that the nomes have crashed on Earth in a spaceship fifteen thousand years ago and that it is a flight recorder. The nomes had attempted to teach technology to the humans in order to get them to build a space shuttle that could fly them to their mothership, but it failed. When the nomes discover that the store is about to be closed, they plan to escape by stealing a lorry. As the closure happens faster than expected, they have to steal a lorry (thankfully loaded with plenty of useful items) in a hurry and learn to drive (with the help of numerous levers and pulleys) as they escape. They eventually find shelter in a quarry near the airport and contemplate stealing an airplane.