Leareth takes the Gate down (properly!) with relief as soon as it’s back. 

And?

It seems to have gone to vacuum. It's hard to be confident it was the same place as before but the star charts line up.

Leareth is so pleased with himself! 

...Hmm, is there a test planet that they have coordinates for, not Earth and not in Andalite possession, maybe one that doesn't have any life on it? Leareth would prefer to do some playing around with how the Gates behave from one gravity well to another before he tries for Earth, since his first blind-Gate attempts are going to be pretty wildly aimed. 

The ship knows the coordinates of some uninhabitable planets in star systems where they're pretty confident there are no Yeerks.

Leareth spends the rest of that day staring at math visualizations - he says, absently, to Cayaldwin that he bets if Andalites can get mage-gift into Andalite bodies they'll be amazing with Gates, given their innate intelligence and their brain computers. 

Once he thinks he has a target, he asks for the robot again, so they can get a peek and some sensor readings and confirm if it seems to be the right planet. 

The robot can whir around waiting to be nudged through the Gate.

Leareth suggests that Cayaldwin can stay in rapport with him if he wants, to get a better sense of how the Gate-targeting works, though some of it will be semi-opaquely running off human spatial intuitions rather than formalized math. 

Cayaldwin has noticed that about Leareth's targeting process and it makes it really hard to model! Maybe less so if he's following along in Leareth's head. He knows the right mental motion to do that, now. 

( -  aching grief for someone who Leareth would have gotten along with wonderfully, but who no longer exists and never will again...)

(And Leareth can't even promise that someday, somehow, he will fix it and be powerful enough to get him back, because he doesn't know if that would even work for Andalites who died a long way away from Velgarth. In rapport, that thread of thought is probably visible to Cayaldwin, but Leareth folds it away quickly, along with the ((flicker of a tower, starry sky)) with the pain and resolve that, someday, somehow, he will fix as many things as he can.) 

Leareth takes his time, focuses on directing the search-spell so it's only looking in the right 'direction' and 'distance' and thus pulls less total power from him before it finds the destination. With normal Gates, the kind done from one physical doorway to another in a location the mage has visited themselves, the search can be very dumb, and there's a clear sort of 'click' of recognition when a match is found. With a blind Gate aimed via coordinates to a planet Leareth has never even seen, there's much less certainty to it; he narrows it down, feels fairly but not utterly confident it's the right planet, and then starts building his unscaffolded other-end terminus approximately where the 'planar distance' matches the current level. Depending on the planet's size and density, that may end up not quite level with the surface. 

(He's not sure what happens if it opens underground, actually; presumably the robot will fail to cross and he'll have to move it or try again.) 

And then there's a small milky-opaque Gate, just the right size for a robot to pop through. 

Off the robot goes! Well, tries. Scrabbles ineffectually at the Gate.

Oops. :I think it is probably underground: 

Leareth, concentrating hard - this is a technique that nobody else in Velgarth could pull off, probably - unweaves just the terminus itself, but without letting go of the destination in mind, and then shifts it; not 'upward', that's not the kind of sense he has for the planet yet, but following the gradient toward where the planes are a little 'closer together'. Probably further than he needs to, but the robot ought to be fine if it lands high up above the surface, even if there's no atmosphere. 

:Try again?: 

Off the robot goes! For real this time! And it comes back a little while later with readings for them to evaluate.

<...I think you did it.> Swish swish swish swish.

Leareth is so delighted! ...Also tired. He thinks he can get the spell less draining than that with more refinement but it’s not there yet. 

:I will try for Earth tomorrow: he decides. :How strongly is the tiny Gate version showing up to your sensors?: 

He checks this. <Quite strongly but the sensors are right here in the room with the Gate. If the ship were in orbit I'd be surprised if they could detect it at all. We can check that tomorrow.>

Nod. :Do you think the Yeerks are likely to only have sensors on the orbiting ship, and not distributed at ground level?: 

<It depends how long they've been there, I expect. When we learned of it, they were early in their infiltration, and would not yet have had major above-ground military installations. Now...> Tail shrug.

:I suspect our best option here is still to attempt a Gate to underwater, or perhaps we can do reconnaissance with a robot or small morph form, through a tiny Gate, and find some underground cave or - hmm, do humans on Earth do mining? Presumably, if they are more advanced than Velgarth: 

<They do, yes. I think underwater ought to be reasonably safe.>

:Hmm. Then before we depart, I think I want to jump to that place in interstellar space with the ship again, and test if I can Gate from there to a point in Velgarth's ocean, just based on a map and the Void-distance sense. Unless you happen to have underwater images from Earth, which I could use to supplement the targeting, but I am not sure why you would: 

<We do not.> They can start making arrangements for the ship test, though.

Leareth sleeps better that night, his dreams are still more vivid and weirder than usual but less so. In the morning he's rested and cheerful, and suggests they do the jump test first and then attempt a tiny underwater reconnaissance Gate to Earth's ocean. 

Matirin is handling his ship in human form this morning, for practice. He takes them back up into the air, and this time pauses so that Leareth can get a good view of Velgarth from space.

Leareth goes still. It's - stunning, incredibly moving, seeing the planet from space. Everything he's ever known and cared about and fought for is right there, encompassed by a single blue-and-green sphere hovering against the stars. (Well, and the other planes associated with it, the complex magical structure of reality, invisible to his ordinary eyes.) 

Almost holding his breath, Leareth stares at it for a long time. The image blurs a little, and he blinks away moisture from his eyes.

He wonders if gods see the world like this, from a distance, able to take it in at a glance. ...Perhaps, but it's still not the same, because if They did see it through his eyes, the way he does, then They - wouldn't have let the horrors of the last two thousand years happen at all...

There are (as he's suspected for a long time) other worlds, but this one is his.

Finally he turns back to Matirin, still blinking. :Thank you: he breathes. :We can go now: 

He nods. They jump. He wobbles, slightly; the jump is a bit disorienting and humans only have the two feet.