So, there was a children's book I read back in the very early '80s (don't know when the book was written, but that's when I read it), and I remember it in quite a bit of detail but unfortunately don't remember the title or author. I really liked it at the time and would love the chance to read it again if I could track it down. Does anyone recognise any of this story?
At the start of the story, humans are living on a distant planet, having left Earth generations back when some kind of catastrophe was threatening to wipe out human life there. They live in a high-tech but emotionally lacking society. Children are being raised in boarding schools. I think the planet was called Tuan – at any rate, the language they spoke was called Tuanian.
Rick, a child in one of these schools, is called to the headmaster's office and informed that he has been chosen for a space mission back to Earth, to see whether the planet is now in a fit state to be recolonised. (I think the space crew want to see how a child will stand up to space flight, or some such.) He's warned to say nothing about it to the other children as yet. When a stunned Rick is asked by one of the other children why he was called to the office, the only thing he can think of to blurt out is 'I think perhaps I may be going to see a cat!' as he remembers a film of a cat he saw when younger (the Tuanians have no pets, so this is a huge deal for him).
Rick hits the news as the youngest member of the new space flight. When he actually travels to join the flight, his nose is put out of joint by finding out there is actually an even younger child there – Penny, two years younger than him. His jealousy means the two dislike each other at first, but eventually they become friends.
On Earth, the Tuanian crew are very surprised to discover that humans still live there. They find a rural village and the children make friends with twins called Tam and Tamsin. However, Rick catches a cold from one of them. Because the group of humans who got away from Earth to found the Tuanian colony originally were fairly germ-free, their descendants – including Rick and Penny – have grown up with little need to build resistance to disease, so Rick becomes very ill with this cold. A couple of the senior staff in the space mission are concerned that this may be a serious illness that will spread to the rest of the space crew and threaten their lives, so, when night falls and the others are asleep, they drive Rick out of the ship by threatening him with a weapon called a jexer (it shoots poisoned capsules that break open when they hit you and kill you within seconds), thus forcing him to leave the ship. When he's a safe distance away, they callously abandon him to die and return to the ship.
Fortunately, he manages to make his way to where he can be found by Tam and Tamsin's family. Their mother recognises what's wrong and nurses Rick back to health. He learns their language, which I recall as being called Karlish. (I think this was the Tuanian's name for the language, not the village's name; they had some sort of unreliable record saying the country in which they landed was originally called Karland, or some such.)
More stuff happens, the details of which I forget. At one point Penny is being drugged by the space crew to make her obedient to them in some kind of showdown between space crew and villagers, but Rick and his friends from the village successfully get her away until the drug can wear off. She learns Karlish as well and becomes part of village life.
The captain of the ship, who is called The One by the other space crew, and his sidekick Sharpey still distrust the villagers and want to go ahead with the planned programme of bringing Tuanians back to Earth, regardless of the effect it'll have on the people already there. There is some kind of split in the space team regarding this. In the denouement, The One shows up in the village after a long and exhausting trip back from somewhere-or-other that he's been, in the course of which Sharpey died in an accident falling down a crevasse – this happened just before The One got back and has driven him to breaking point. He takes Penny hostage so that the others can't stop him from getting on the space ship and going ahead with his plan to go back to their planet and get more Tuanians to come back and take over Earth. Luckily, another member of the space crew who has been much more sympathetic to the children and to the villagers manages to shoot him and thus save Penny.
This other member of the space crew, whose name I am forgetting, jumps onto the space ship and calls the children over to him. He tells them quickly that he is going to fly back to their planet and tell the Tuanians that Earth is not fit to live on, so that none of the Tuanians will ever come and bother the planet again. If Rick and Penny want to see their home planet again, this is their only chance to do so – they must either get on the space ship with him now or live on Earth with the villagers for the rest of their lives. Rick and Penny both opt to stay on Earth. Good guy from space crew flies off with the space ship back to Tuan or whatever it's called, thus saving the villagers on Earth.
Rick and Penny remain with the village. At the end of the book, there's a scene where they're standing somewhere together looking at the view – on a bridge, I think – and Penny asks Rick whether he misses anything about their planet and they talk about it. She's talking in Tuanian so that they can talk in privacy in case anyone overhears them. Both children are happy with the choice they made.
Now, you'd think that with remembering that much detail I'd actually be able to remember something like what the book is called. Or at least find it on Google. But no joy. So, if anyone can help me out here, I'd be very obliged!
At the start of the story, humans are living on a distant planet, having left Earth generations back when some kind of catastrophe was threatening to wipe out human life there. They live in a high-tech but emotionally lacking society. Children are being raised in boarding schools. I think the planet was called Tuan – at any rate, the language they spoke was called Tuanian.
Rick, a child in one of these schools, is called to the headmaster's office and informed that he has been chosen for a space mission back to Earth, to see whether the planet is now in a fit state to be recolonised. (I think the space crew want to see how a child will stand up to space flight, or some such.) He's warned to say nothing about it to the other children as yet. When a stunned Rick is asked by one of the other children why he was called to the office, the only thing he can think of to blurt out is 'I think perhaps I may be going to see a cat!' as he remembers a film of a cat he saw when younger (the Tuanians have no pets, so this is a huge deal for him).
Rick hits the news as the youngest member of the new space flight. When he actually travels to join the flight, his nose is put out of joint by finding out there is actually an even younger child there – Penny, two years younger than him. His jealousy means the two dislike each other at first, but eventually they become friends.
On Earth, the Tuanian crew are very surprised to discover that humans still live there. They find a rural village and the children make friends with twins called Tam and Tamsin. However, Rick catches a cold from one of them. Because the group of humans who got away from Earth to found the Tuanian colony originally were fairly germ-free, their descendants – including Rick and Penny – have grown up with little need to build resistance to disease, so Rick becomes very ill with this cold. A couple of the senior staff in the space mission are concerned that this may be a serious illness that will spread to the rest of the space crew and threaten their lives, so, when night falls and the others are asleep, they drive Rick out of the ship by threatening him with a weapon called a jexer (it shoots poisoned capsules that break open when they hit you and kill you within seconds), thus forcing him to leave the ship. When he's a safe distance away, they callously abandon him to die and return to the ship.
Fortunately, he manages to make his way to where he can be found by Tam and Tamsin's family. Their mother recognises what's wrong and nurses Rick back to health. He learns their language, which I recall as being called Karlish. (I think this was the Tuanian's name for the language, not the village's name; they had some sort of unreliable record saying the country in which they landed was originally called Karland, or some such.)
More stuff happens, the details of which I forget. At one point Penny is being drugged by the space crew to make her obedient to them in some kind of showdown between space crew and villagers, but Rick and his friends from the village successfully get her away until the drug can wear off. She learns Karlish as well and becomes part of village life.
The captain of the ship, who is called The One by the other space crew, and his sidekick Sharpey still distrust the villagers and want to go ahead with the planned programme of bringing Tuanians back to Earth, regardless of the effect it'll have on the people already there. There is some kind of split in the space team regarding this. In the denouement, The One shows up in the village after a long and exhausting trip back from somewhere-or-other that he's been, in the course of which Sharpey died in an accident falling down a crevasse – this happened just before The One got back and has driven him to breaking point. He takes Penny hostage so that the others can't stop him from getting on the space ship and going ahead with his plan to go back to their planet and get more Tuanians to come back and take over Earth. Luckily, another member of the space crew who has been much more sympathetic to the children and to the villagers manages to shoot him and thus save Penny.
This other member of the space crew, whose name I am forgetting, jumps onto the space ship and calls the children over to him. He tells them quickly that he is going to fly back to their planet and tell the Tuanians that Earth is not fit to live on, so that none of the Tuanians will ever come and bother the planet again. If Rick and Penny want to see their home planet again, this is their only chance to do so – they must either get on the space ship with him now or live on Earth with the villagers for the rest of their lives. Rick and Penny both opt to stay on Earth. Good guy from space crew flies off with the space ship back to Tuan or whatever it's called, thus saving the villagers on Earth.
Rick and Penny remain with the village. At the end of the book, there's a scene where they're standing somewhere together looking at the view – on a bridge, I think – and Penny asks Rick whether he misses anything about their planet and they talk about it. She's talking in Tuanian so that they can talk in privacy in case anyone overhears them. Both children are happy with the choice they made.
Now, you'd think that with remembering that much detail I'd actually be able to remember something like what the book is called. Or at least find it on Google. But no joy. So, if anyone can help me out here, I'd be very obliged!
