The Night of no Moon by H.B. Fyfe
On the storm-plagued planet Boyd III, its excessive number of moons drives brutal tides, hurricanes, and a superstitious native culture of "survival of the worst tempered." Terran surveyor Pete Guthrie, stranded after failing to properly secure his rocket against the planet's violent tides, has been held captive for weeks by the Skirkhi, a stocky, thick-skulled humanoid tribe led by elders Thyggar and Kilki. Guthrie has learned that the natives, believing their harsh world is ruled by malevolent sky spirits, spend the weeks before the annual storm season proving their own wickedness to those spirits — and that on the "night of no moon," just before they abandon the village for the hills, they offer a human sacrifice to buy the spirits' favor. Guthrie, prickly and combative by nature, has inadvertently made himself the leading candidate for that role. His fragile position shifts when a flare in the sky turns out to be an emergency rocket from the passenger liner Mount Pico, carrying survivors George Trent and Karen Norsund, whose ship exploded en route to Altair. Trent is broad-shouldered, blond, and outwardly confident but thin-skinned and self-important; Karen is a resourceful, initially bedraggled young woman who softens toward Guthrie once cleaned up. Guthrie explains their predicament: no other Terrans are on the planet, rescue is uncertain, and the coming storm season makes escape urgent. He proposes using the newcomers' rocket to reach Jhux, the largest and nearest moon, pressurize the craft with pumped-in air, and wait there to signal any approaching rescue ship. Trent, condescending and eager to distance himself from Guthrie's abrasive reputation among the Skirkhi, resists the plan and instead courts the natives' favor, learning their language and cultivating a reputation for kindness and generosity — behavior calculated, in Trent's mind, to make him safe. Guthrie recognizes the fatal irony: among the Skirkhi, being "good" marks a person as the ideal, most pleasing sacrifice to appease evil sky spirits, while being disliked and quarrelsome, as Guthrie has cultivated himself to be, offers protection. When Guthrie tries to warn Karen of this, Trent dismisses his concerns as evidence of Guthrie's poor character, even floating the callous suggestion that if the Skirkhi take Guthrie first, he and Karen would be safe — a remark that provokes a public scuffle in which Guthrie decks him. That night — the very "night of no moon" — Guthrie, guilt-stricken despite Trent's insults, enlists his native companion and reluctant friend Polf (along with Polf's associates Retho and Kror) to steal Karen away from the ceremony already underway for Trent, on the pretext that abducting another man's "woman" is itself a suitably wicked act to please the spirits. The group treks by darkness to the stranded emergency rocket. Rather than simply fleeing to Jhux as originally planned, Guthrie devises a more ingenious solution: he calculates a burn to launch the unmanned rocket into a low planetary orbit, timed and shaped so its trajectory and blinking distress beacon mimic the movement of a moon across the Boyd III sky, broadcasting a continuous automated distress signal that any passing rescue ship should detect. The plan succeeds spectacularly. As the rocket thunders skyward and settles into its artificial orbit, Guthrie, Karen, and the Skirkhi watch a new "moon" — actually the beacon-lit rocket — crawl visibly across the heavens, restoring, in effect, a light to the "night of no moon." Karen, delighted and relieved, embraces the moment (and Guthrie) as they realize rescue is now far more likely, and that the ceremonial danger has, for now, been forestalled by the presence of a "moon" in the sky. Polf and his companions are jubilant, boasting to their skeptical kinsman Kror that Guthrie has literally created a new moon and that they are now confidants of "the evilest spirit of them all" — a status that elevates their own standing in the tribe. The story closes on this note of wry triumph: Guthrie's mastery of Boyd III's harsh logic — surviving not by winning native approval like the well-meaning but naive Trent, but by embracing a reputation for cunning and even malevolence — has saved them all, at least for the moment, while underscoring the perverse practicality of Skirkhi theology and the cultural blindness of "civilized" Terran assumptions about winning goodwill among alien peoples.
By H.B. Fyfe · First published 1957 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Survival Fiction · 9,357 words
First lines
A rough planet, Boyd III -- where survival of the / fittest gave way to survival of the worst tempered!
The main trouble with the planet Boyd III was one satellite too many.
What this Textopian page supports
The Night of no Moon is listed on Textopian as a novella by H.B. Fyfe, dated 1957 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Novella
- Author: H.B. Fyfe
- Date: 1957 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Science Fiction, Adventure, Survival Fiction, Action/Thriller, Anthropological Fiction
- Length: 9,357 words
- Structure: 1 section, 259 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Night of no Moon by H.B. Fyfe
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
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Genres
- Science Fiction — The narrative is fundamentally rooted in space exploration, featuring interstellar travel, alien planets, multiple moons, rocket technology, and a Galactic Survey mission within a futuristic setting.
- Adventure — The story is driven by survival challenges, dangerous expeditions, physical confrontations, escape attempts, and exploration of a hostile alien landscape with escalating stakes throughout.
- Survival Fiction — Central to the plot are characters stranded on a hostile planet with extreme environmental threats, limited resources, adaptation to dangerous conditions, and the constant pressure of impending catastrophic storms.
- Action/Thriller — The narrative maintains tension through physical conflicts, time-limited stakes involving human sacrifice, high-stakes escapes, and urgent decision-making under duress.
Tags
science fiction · space exploration · alien planet · interstellar travel · future society · human colonists · mystery · suspense · adventure · extraterrestrial life · planetary survival · scientific investigation