Robert Silverberg - Prime Commandment

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 shipa 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.

Eleven miles from the Hill of the Ship, the strange light finally touched groundnot a light at all, but a starship, golden-hulled, a thousand feet long and bearing within itself the eight hundred men and women of the Church of the New Resurrection, who had crossed the gulf of light-years in search of a world where they might practice their religion free from interference and without the distraction of the presence of countless billions of the unholy.

The Blessed Myron Brown was the leader of this flock and the captain of their ship, the New Galilee. Fifth in direct line from the Blessed Leroy Brown himself, Blessed Myron Brown was majestic of bearing and thunderous of voice, and when his words rang out over the ship phones saying, Here we may rest, here we may live, the eight hundred members of the Church of the New Resurrection rejoiced in their solemn way, and made ready for the landing.

They were not tractable people. The tenets of their Church were two: that the Messiah had come again on Earth, died again, been reborn, and in his resurrection prophesied that the Millennium was at handand, secondly, that He had chosen certain people to lead the way in the forthcoming building of New Jerusalem.

And it was through the mouth of Blessed Leroy Brown that He spoke, in the two thousand nine hundred and seventieth year since His first birth, and the Blessed Leroy Brown did name those of Earth who had been chosen for holiness and salvation. Many of the elect declined the designation, some with kindly thanks, some with scorn. The Blessed Leroy Brown died early, the protomartyr of his Church, but his work went on.

And a hundred years passed and the members of his Church were eight hundred in number, proud God-touched men and women who denounced the sinful ways of the world and revealed that judgment was near. There were martyrs, and the way was a painful one for the Blessed. But they persevered, and they raised money (some of their members had been quite wealthy in their days of sin) and when it became clear that Earth was too steeped in infamy for them to abide existence on it any further, they build their ark, the New Galilee, and crossed the gulf of night to a new world where they might live in peace and happiness and never know the persecution of the mocking ones.

They were a proud and stubborn people, and they kept the ways of God as they knew them. They dressed in gray, for bright colors were sinful, and they covered their bodies but for face and hands, and when a man knew his wife it was for the production of children alone. They made no graven images and they honored the Sabbath, and it was their very great hope that on Beta Andromedae XII they could at last be at peace.

But fifteen minutes after their landing they saw that this was not to be. For, while the women labored to erect camp and the men hunted provisions, the Blessed Enoch Brown, son of the leader Myron, went forth in a helicopter to survey the new planet.

And when he returned from his mission his dour face was deeper than usual with woe, and when he spoke it was in a sepulchral tone.

The Lord has visited another tribulation upon us, even here in the wilderness.

What have you seen? the Blessed Myron asked.

The world is peopled!

Impossible! We were given every assurance that; this was a virgin world, without colonists, without native life.

Nevertheless, the Blessed Enoch said bitterly, There are people here. I have seen them. Naked savages who look like Earthpeopledancing and prancing by the light of a huge bonfire round the rotting hulk of an abandoned spaceship that lies implanted in a hillside. He scowled. I flew low over them. Their bodies were virtually bare, and their flesh was oiled, and they leaped wildly and coupled like animals in the open.

For a moment the Blessed Myron Brown stared bleakly at this son, unable to speak. The blood drained from his lean face. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with anger.

Even here the Devil pursues us.

Who can these people be?

The Blessed Myron shrugged. It makes little difference. Perhaps they are descendants of a Terran colonial missiona ship bound for a more distant world, that crashed here and sent no word to Earth. He stared heavenward for a moment, at the dark and moonless sky, and muttered a brief prayer. Tomorrow, he said, we will visit these people and speak with them. Now let us build our camp.