Prime Commandment

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If the strangers had come to World on any night but The Night of No Moon, perhaps the tragedy could have been avoided. Even had the strangers come that night, if they had left their ship in a parking orbit and landed on World by dropshaft it might not have happened.

But the strangers arrived on World on The Night of No Moon, and they came by ship—a fine bright vessel a thousand feet long, with burnished gold walls. And because they were a proud and stiffnecked people, and because the people of World were what they were, and because the god of the strangers was not the God of the World, The Night of No Moon was the prelude to a season of blood.

Down at the Ship, the worshipping was under way when the strangers arrived. The ship sat embedded in the side of the hill, exactly where it had first fallen upon World; open in its side was the hatch through which the people of World had come forth.

The bonfire blazed, casting bright shadows on the corroded, time-stained walls of the Ship. The worshipping was under way. Lyle of the Kwitni knelt in a deep genuflection, forehead inches from the warm rich loam of World, muttering in a hoarse monotone the Book of the Ship. At his side stood the priestess Jeen of McCaig, arms flung wide, head thrown back, as she recited the Litany of the Ship in savage bursts of half-chanted song.

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