The Return

"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. (This is an automatically generated summary.)