Let there be Night
()
About this ebook
Robert F. Young was a Hugo nominated author known for his lyrical and sentimental prose. His work appeared in Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories, Startling Stories, Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Galaxy Magazine, and Analog Science Fact & Fiction.
Read more from Robert F. Young
The House That Time Forgot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Magic Window Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPilgrims' Project Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRedemption Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Knyght Ther Was Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPassage to Gomorrah Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Servant Problem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRobot Son Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Star Fisherman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoy Meets Dyevitza Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Girl in His Mind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe 40th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: Robert F. Young (vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStar Mother Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDoll-Friend Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSweet Tooth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollector's Item Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAudience Reaction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wistful Witch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStructural Defect Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Let there be Night
Related ebooks
The Prince of Mars Returns Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWild and Wise: Hollow Earth Stories, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsH. P. Lovecraft: The Best Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moon Magazine Volume 8: The Moon Magazine, #8 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Crystal Spheres Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/533 Tales of Horror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Crystal Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHalo: Point of Light Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Night of the Dying Moon Second Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Crystal Age (Dystopian Classic) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Martian Wave: 2013 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Metal Monster Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Return Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Trail Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Life, As a God Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwisted Robots: Stories from Pulphouse Fiction Magazine: Pulphouse Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Man On The Meteor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Crystal Age: A Dystopia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBecalm This Mighty Sea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStar Crossed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer on the Lakes, in 1843 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHer Rock Hard Viking: A Paranormal Romance: Her Viking's Desire, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemon's Redemption: Sons of Sariel, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings'R' is for Revenge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuazar: Sliver of Space Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hooman Saga: Book II, Part 2: The Hooman Saga Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStarkit: A Science Fiction Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind a Pale Mask Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moldavite Message Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
Short Stories For You
A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Tuesdays in Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Short Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night Side of the River Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and Erotic: Hard, hot and sexy Short-Stories for Adults Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sour Candy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Let there be Night
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Let there be Night - Robert F. Young
Let there be Night
by Robert F. Young
©2020 Positronic Publishing
Let There Be Night is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.
ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4596-8
Table of Contents
Let there be Night
Let there be Night
Which answers mankind’s problems better: a stern god or a tolerant one? And what do you do if you have the power to decide it either way?
Deep-space undertows are rare, but when you get caught in one you may as well say farewell to your family and your friends, because you’re never going to see any of them again. The deep-space undertow that grabbed my one-man projectile-torpedo boat during the 2324 space maneuvers off Procyon 16 must have dragged the craft halfway across the galaxy. At any rate, when I re-emerged in normal space I couldn’t spot so much as a single familiar constellation. For the record, my N.E.S.N. serial number is 44B-6507323, my rank is PT-boat pilot, second class, and my name is Benjamin Hill. Once upon a time I was a schoolteacher.
My undertow must have had a conscience of sorts, for it had permitted the PT-boat to surface near a star with a family of six planets. For lack of a better designation I dubbed the system System X,
and homed in on it in hopes of finding an amenable world on which I could live out the remainder of my years. X-4 looked pretty good. It had an inclination of 2.3 degrees, which meant seasons, and a spectroanalysis revealed an earth-type atmosphere. There was a moon, too—a great big one that moved in an orbit similar to the one maintained by Old Earth’s moon. However, I wasn’t interested in moons, and after a cursory glance at this one I dropped the PT-boat down closer to the planet in order to get a better look at my potential home-to-be.
Seas covered about four-fifths of the surface, and there was only one habitable continent a small land-mass with four long promontories stretching out from its main body somewhat in the manner of arms and legs. The other continents if you want to call them that—were distributed in the arctic and the anarctic regions, and except for their northern and southern littorals were about as hospitable to warm-blooded life as a bunch of icebergs.
Well, one continent was better than none. I began orbiting in. Almost as though it had been waiting for me to come to my decision, the ion drive burned out.
Apparently my undertow had not had a conscience after all.
All that saved me were my retros and my drag chute. The retros enabled me to bring the PT-boat down on the habitable planet, albeit on a rugged mountainside, and the chute enabled me to bring the boat down gently enough to avert an accidental detonation of my payload of projectiles. Planetfall took place in the twilight belt, and when I stepped through the locks, the moon was just beginning to rise.
DID I say moon
? I shouldn’t have, because even though the term is technically correct it wasn’t the word that came into my mind when the satellite rose above the horizon. Man
was the word. Or maybe god.
Thinking back now, it’s hard to tell.
The man in the moon!’ is a familiar enough phenomenon to anyone who has ever visited Old Earth, and satellites with
faces" in them are