Kemlo and the Crazy Planet

Book 0: Kemlo

by E.C. Eliott

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

Kemlo and his friend Krillie, who have set out from Satellite Belt K on a Space trip, find themselves off course and eventually land upon a planet about which very little is known except that odd things happen there, so that it has become known as the Crazy Planet. The people upon it, whose language is laughter, are friendly; but others, from Earth, are also marooned upon it, and they are very far from friendly, not only to the laughing People but to Kemlo and Krillie too. Their wicked plans, however, are foiled by Kemlo, who is later responsible for helping his new friends against a mass attack of the murderous wood beasts...

Release date: June 29, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 200

Sample

‘YOU’RE going to be sorry you started it,’ said Kemlo with a grin at his friend Krillie.

‘Lots of people start keeping diaries, and they do it well for the first few weeks; then it gets to be too much trouble.’

‘It won’t be too much trouble for me,’ said Krillie stoutly. ‘Besides, I might win the competition.’

‘What competition?’

‘Oh, I forgot—you wouldn’t know about it because you’re not in our class. We’ve got to keep a diary and put down all that we do and write a description of what it’s like here, then at the end of term there’s a big prize for the best one and a lot of smaller prizes for those that are not so good.’ Krillie pulled the plastic silk pad from locker and ruffled the slim pages. ‘Look, Kemlo,’ he said proudly; ‘I’ve done a lot already.’

‘We never had to do anything like that when I was in your class, but it seems a good idea,’ said Kemlo. ‘What have you written so far?’

‘Shall I read it, Kemlo? Shall I?’ Krillie’s bright eyes held an eager expression.

Kemlo gazed at him kindly. Krillie was younger than he but they were firm friends, and even if Krillie became more excited than Kemlo over some things, it was fun to be with him. Like everyone else, Krillie had enthusiasms, but in his case often these rose to fever-pitch and then subsided more rapidly than did other people’s. But you never knew when Krillie would come up with a quite brilliant idea for a game or even something more serious. He had a bubbling, irrepressible mind, and because Kemlo knew that his friend was easily hurt by slighting remarks or lack of interest in what he was doing, he nodded as he said:

‘Yes, you read it to me.’

Krillie took the pad and curled up on the air couch by the side of the locker while Kemlo sat on the floor at the foot of the couch.

‘This is how I’ve started,’ Krillie began:

I am writing this description of how I live because I want to win a prize and I want all the boys down on Earth to know about us the same as we know about them through the things we read.

My home is on Satellite Belt K. The Belt looks like a big wheel and it keeps spinning all the time. In the centre of the wheel is a great hub with four spokes running out to support the rim, which is three-hundred-and-sixty feet wide and three miles in circumference. The hub and spokes are full of machinery, including self-generating power motors which drive the Belt. Most of the engineers work in the hub and the spokes, and they have lots of radar-scopes and radio screens and cameras so that they can see you down on Earth and observe other planets. They also chart the courses over the space lanes for your rockets and space ships.

At the top of the hub are special intake and rejection chambers where space taxis, sent with supplies and stores from space ships, arrive and depart. These are guided by radar and electronic waves. All the people who come in these space taxis have to wear special space clothing or else they would die. Most of the Satellite Belt is air-conditioned, but there is an open section, and this is where I live with lots of other boys and girls.

Although the Satellite Belt is spinning around at a speed of about fifteen thousand Earth miles an hour, we don’t notice it because to us it seems to be standing still. I don’t know a lot about how this is done, but it is something to do with having to maintain its speed because of a balance with the Earth’s gravitational pull—something like how the moon is fixed in its orbit.

My name is Krillie. We do not have more than one name. On this Satellite Belt everybody’s name who was born here begins with a ‘K’ because this Belt’s call-signal is the letter ‘K.’ There are a number of other Satellite Belts at various levels, although we can’t see them from here without the aid of special telescopes. All Belts have a different letter and all the boys and girls on those Belts have names that begin with the same letter. Sometimes you get some awfully funny names.

I was born on the Satellite Belt and I do not need any sort of helmet or space suit like people do who come from Earth. That is why I and others born here live in the open section, but we cannot stand the air-conditioning of the other parts of the Belt, so our parents have to wear space suits when they come to visit us, or we have to go into a special machine on a trolley, which we don’t like, when we visit them.

My mother and father were brought here when they were small children. My grandparents helped to build the Satellite Belt. It was carried up in portions by space ships from Earth. First they brought the hub, which everyone says was a marvellous thing to do, although now everyone is used to it. The hub was set spinning and left in space. It couldn’t fall down and once it had started spinning it was impossible to stop it. We are about twelve hundred miles from Earth, and even Earth-men can walk about in space suits, although they have to have life-lines attached to them because if they are doing repair work they get very tired. They can’t fall over, but they can sometimes float away and it takes a long time to fetch them back.

After the people from Earth had brought the hub they sent the remaining spokes and the rim here in sections. By that time my grandparents were able to work quite comfortably, and they and about two hundred and fifty other people built the whole of the Satellite Belt.

Well, that is how I came to be here, and I like it very much. I will try to tell you more in my diary.

Krillie glanced down at Kemlo with a shy and rather embarrassed expression on his face.

‘Well, Kemlo, do you think it sounds silly?’ he asked.

‘I think it sounds fine,’ said Kemlo, climbing to his feet. ‘That’s really good, Krillie.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Of course I mean it.’

Krillie frowned suddenly as he returned the plastic silk pad to his locker.

‘Something worrying you?’ Kemlo asked.

‘It’s awfully hard,’ Krillie replied. I never thought there was so much to describe. And things like how we do our schooling.’ Krillie sighed heavily. ‘I suppose there are some things I just won’t be able to explain.’

‘Why not?’ said Kemlo. ‘You can say that the teachers can’t come into the open section where we live, without space suits, nor can our parents, but they can see and talk to us whenever they want to, because we have large screens all round our rooms which are always glowing with light. The teachers or our parents or the Elders just stand in front of a lens in their section and talk to us through a loudspeaker. We can see them life-size and they can see us. It’s very simple.’

‘You make it sound simple.’

‘You’re growing too worried over this, Krillie,’ said Kemlo with a laugh. ‘Let’s get my scooter out and have some fun on the lanes.’

‘I guess you’re right, Kemlo,’ Krillie admitted. ‘I thought it would be so easy to write things down. I want to put this in my diary, but how am I going to explain your scooter?’

‘Say that it’s a long tube with seats inside,’ Kemlo suggested as he led the way from their playroom. ‘It gets its power from pellets of urania and is worked by little levers that send it forward, backward, or turn it around.’ He slapped Krillie’s shoulder. ‘You’re making it sound too serious. A good bumping on the spume-wake will make you feel happy.’

They went into the parents’ contact room, where Kemlo pressed a buzzer, then he stood in front of a large screen. In a few moments a tall man appeared on the screen. He was an older edition of Kemlo, with the same strong yet handsome features and keen eyes, but his hair was thinning and greying slightly. His smile was cordial and his voice kindly and resonant.

‘You want me, Kemlo?’ he asked. ‘Or do you want to speak to your mother?’

‘Hello, Dad,’ said Kemlo. ‘I thought I’d let you know that Krillie and I are going out on the lanes for a while.’

‘That’s all right, son,’ said his father. ‘I’ll tell Krillie’s parents. Be careful in that scooter of yours. I know what fun it is to bounce around on the spume-wake, but don’t get too far in.’

‘We’ll watch it,’ Kemlo said, and turned as Krillie came closer to the screen.

Kemlo’s father smiled at the younger boy. ‘Hello, Krillie,’ he said. ‘I hear you are taking a great interest in this diary competition.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Krillie replied, ‘but there’s such a lot to tell. I never thought there’d be so many things to explain.’

‘Well, just do your best and try and think of all you can. You’re growing up fast now and if you win that competition you would be in the same class as Kemlo, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’d like to get into the technical grade too,’ said Krillie. ‘They have lots more fun.’

Kemlo’s father chuckled. ‘And they are allowed a space scooter. That makes up for all sorts of hard work.’

‘We’ll see you later, Dad,’ said Kemlo. ‘Come on, Krillie.’

‘Goodbye, son.’ The screen went dark as Kemlo turned away from it.

Leaving the parents’ contact room the two boys turned right and entered the nearest air funnel, where they took the small mono-rail car down to the parking section.

Sam, the attendant, was a gruff bewhiskered man who seemed always to resent his job, which was to tend the space scooters and smaller space taxis housed in this section of the Belt. Sam had come to the Belt when he was young and therefore had to wear space clothing whenever he left the air-conditioned section. The transparent conical headgear and lightweight puffy space suit gave him an awesome appearance which, coupled with his abrupt manner, caused many of the boys to be afraid of him.

But Kemlo had many long chats with Sam and knew that beneath the grousy and grumbling manner there lay a genuine affection for boys and a real happiness in his job.

‘It’s you two again, is it?’ Sam growled. ‘You want your scooter, Kemlo?’

‘Yes, please, Sam.’

‘Go out a sight too much in that scooter of yours. Going to play bumping on the spume-wake, eh? You’ll bump once too often, then it won’t seem so funny.’

‘You know you’d like to come yourself,’ Kemlo chuckled. ‘You’re an old fraud, Sam.’

‘Maybe I am,’ Sam admitted, his eyes twinkling behind the transparent hood. His voice was not so gruff now, although there was a certain harshness as it came through the speaker fitted at the side of his hood. Kemlo suspected that Sam adjusted the speaker to make his voice sound harsh, because on various occasions when they had been talking alone Sam had trimmed the speaker control so that he spoke in his more natural voice, which was deep and surprisingly gentle.

‘I’ve put in new pellets, Kemlo,’ said Sam as he unshipped the small space scooter from its moorings and began manoeuvring it on to the slide-chute. ‘You might find she’ll turn a bit quicker than she has been doing, so just be prepared for it.’

‘Thanks, Sam, we will,’ said Kemlo as he climbed into the drive-seat.

Krillie clambered in beside him and they pulled the transpex hood shut over them.

The scooter was torpedo-like in shape, with two comfortable seats, one of which faced some foot and hand controls. Kemlo sat in this seat and waited until Sam had opened the slide-chute exit. Immediately blue light flared along the channel chute, giving a gleam of silver-blue to objects which previously had been a dull metallic colour.

With a wave to Sam, Kemlo moved the forward speed lever. There was a second or two of humming vibration, then the noise stopped and with hiss of power the scooter slid smoothly down the chute and sped like a scarlet fish into the deep blue around the Satellite Belt.

The Belt was small in the distance when the instruments told Kemlo that they were just about. . .