John Brunner - To Conquer Chaos

It wasn’t for a long time that he realised his companions had begun to make noises. They were laughing-or weeping? Which? Or both together! Yes!

He snapped his eyes open and stared at them. They were embracing each other, making meaningless, hysterical sounds, waving, dancing up and down, trying to sing. Uncomprehending, Conrad turned from them to the slanting hole cut by the last flicker of the heatbeam into the heart of what he had taken to be the arrival area.

And there he saw the thing for which the alarm had sounded.

A man.

A man in strange shiny garments, his head covered with a crystal helmet, his gauntleted hands stretched out as though in acclamation of a miracle-reaching up towards him, Conrad, standing on the platform beside the looming shell of the cortex.

And shouting.

“Earth! Earth! We’ve got through! We reached Earth again!”

And not one man only, but another, and another, and another pouring from the concealment of the alien plants, to stand in a shouting group and laugh and cry and wave at the laughing, crying, waving Conrad and his companions on the platform above.

After four and a half centuries, he, Conrad, had unwittingly opened the way, and the isolated children of Earth had found it possible to return.