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.
"In the beginning there was the ship "
"Kwitni was the Captain, McCaig the astrogator," came the droning antiphonal response of the congregation, all five hundred of the people of World, crouching in the praying-pit surrounding the Ship.
"And Kwitni and McCaig brought the people through the sky to World "
"And they looked upon World and found it good," was the response.
"And down through the sky did the people come "
"Down across the light-years to World."
"Out of the Ship!"
"Out of the Ship!"
On it went, a long and ornate retelling of the early days of World, when Kwitni and McCaig, with the guidance of the Ship, had brought the original eight-and-thirty safely to ground. During the three hundred years the story had grown; six nights a year there was no moon, and the ceremonial retelling took place. And five hundred and thirteen were the numbers of the people on this Night of No Moon when the strangers came.
Jeen of the McCaig was the first to see them, as she stood before the Ship waiting for the ecstasy to sweep over her and for her feet to begin the worship dance. She was young, and this was only her fourth worship; she waited with some impatience for the frenzy to seize her.
Suddenly a blaze of light appeared in the dark moonless sky. Jeen stared. In her twenty years she had never seen fire in the heavens on The Night of No Moon.
And her sharp eyes saw that the fire was coming closer, that something was dropping through the skies toward them. And a shiver ran down her back, and she felt the coolness of the night winds against her lightly clad body. She heard the people stirring uneasily behind her.
Perhaps it was a miracle, she thought. Perhaps the Ship had sent some divine manifestation. Her heart pounded; her flanks glistened with sweat. The worshipping drew near its climax, and Jeen felt the dance-fever come over her, growing more intense as the strange light approached the ground.
She wriggled belly and buttocks sensuously and began the dance, the dance of worship that concluded the ceremony, while from behind her came the pleasure-sounds of the people as they, too, worshipped the Ship in their own ways. For the commandment of the old lawgiver Lorresson had been, Be happy, my children, and the people of World expressed their joy while the miracle-light plunged rapidly Worldward.
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