How the Across answers appear in the top half of this puzzle vis-à-vis the bottom

Usage examples of backward.

Clem gaffed it, pulled it close, grabbed ahold of the pot-warp with both hands, gave a good yank, and fell over backward.

I hit the carpeted aisleway, I grabbed him, and jumped to the pit, appearing in midair, but tumbling backward, unsettling for me, terrifying for Green-bag, who found himself facedown fifty feet in the air.

I spared but a single glance backward toward the place Nefar had been before I once again felt something crumbling with the breeze beneath my feet and I ran, I leapt, I threw myself with Akan toward the cliff we had abandoned.

The other warrior kept running headlong, fleeing without a backward glance, and Nom Anor soon discovered what the warrior fled from: a limping, snarling, shouting mob, bearing a variety of improvised weapons, from spade rays to malledillos to writhing wild amphistaffs as much a danger to their wielder as to an enemy, which descended upon the hamstrung warrior to beat and chop him to death with savage triumph.

This could easily be the Nung Yahtsu, but things were backward, the bulkheads were too dark, and the deck plate covering was a tile, not rubber with antiskid bumps.

Entering his room after vain knocking, he found him stretched asprawl on the stone floor, as if he had been hurled backward by a heavy blow.

Ronald said, as he looked at the prince as he was pacing up and down the deck with the Duke of Athole, talking rapidly, his face flushed with enthusiasm, his clustering hair blown backward by the wind.

The axman tried to get out of her way, stumbled backward and fell, and she surged forward to trample him.

The dance ended in a vigorous whirling during which the partners only touched with their hands and the tips of their feet and then, leaning far over backwards, turned in a bacchantic circle.

Just as they thought she was going to do a backbend, she simply rolled her torso backward and then up again.

The dinosaur-hide armor protected Balt from the blade, but not the push backward.

He was also conscious that rank gave him the freedom to leave the battle line, except that the responsibility of command perversely decreed that he could not take that voluntary backward step.

With her hands batting at the creatures, Betta fell backward out of the tent, coated with the scrabbling bodies of the poisonous beasts.

I winced when he hit the sterile field, and the resulting bioelectrical charge sent him staggering backward.

I wish the Bluenoses would find as good an excuse in their rumps for running backwards as he has.