Night Ride and Sunrise — Stanley Schmidt

The Last Thing They Expected Was First Contact It's long ago been settled that humanity is all alone in the universe. All the centuries of searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence have turned up exactly nothing at all. And when humanity's first and only colony in another star system was invaded some years back, it was by unwanted human interlopers from Earth -- interlopers calling themselves The Fruitful, who are sure that God himself is guiding them. The new arrivals cause the colony trouble enough that many of the original settlers have packed up and moved elsewhere on the planet -- only to discover some very alarming signs that the first settlers aren't quite so alone as they thought. Phil Bertrand and Hazel Castagna had striven for years to reach and settle their new world, but they found themselves on different sides when the Fruitful arrived and forced hard choices on everyone. Now, without quite intending it, they have become allies again, as well as the half-unwilling co-leaders of a group that must find a way to protect humans from aliens -- and, perhaps, aliens from humans. But exactly who -- and what -- are the aliens? First serialized in Analog Magazine, this thrilling story overturns all the conventional ideas of First Contact. Night Ride and Sunrise forces a choice between the triumph of a philosophy and the survival of a species. There are, after all, times when an idea has the power to get everyone killed….