Wings # (US)

In the final installment in the nome trilogy Masklin must hatch a plan (albeit a ridiculous one) to contact the ship that is waiting to take the nomes back home. Three four-inch-high nomes, led by Masklin and aided by the tiny computer called Thing, set out on a dangerous journey, determined to contact the ship that brought them to Earth and to find a way home for all the nomes. In a world whose seasons are defined by Christmas sales and Spring Fashions, hundreds of tiny nomes live in the corners and crannies of a human-run department store. They have made their homes beneath the floorboards for generations and no longer remember#8212;or even believe in#8212;life beyond the Store walls. Until the day a small band of nomes arrives at the Store from the Outside. Led by a young nome named Masklin, the Outsiders carry a mysterious black box (called the Thing), and they deliver devastating news: In twenty-one days, the Store will be destroyed. Now all the nomes must learn to work together, and they must learn to think#8212;and to think BIG. Part satire, part parable, and part adventure story par excellence, master storyteller Terry Pratchett's conclusion of the engaging Bromeliad trilogy traces the nomes' flight and search for safety, a search that leads them to discover their own astonishing origins and takes them beyond their wildest dreams Somewhere out there, the ship is waiting to take them home . . . Here's what Masklin has to do: Find Grandson Richard Arnold (a human!). Get from England to Florida (possibly steal jet plane for this purpose, as that can't be harder than stealing the truck). Find a way to the "launch" of a "communications satellite" (whatever those are). Then get the Thing into the sky so that it can call the Ship to take the nomes back to where they came from. It's an impossible plan. But he doesn't know that, so he tries to do it anyway. Because everyone back at the quarry is depending on him -- and because the future of nomekind may be at stake...