Kemlo and the Masters of Space

Book 0: Kemlo

by E.C. Eliott

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

Synopsis

As Kartin says, 'You can't have houses in space.' What then are those mysterious objects that have suddenly appeared far out on the planet routes? What connection do they have with 'the Shy Six Hundred', as Kemlo calls them, those strange, Earth-born visitors to Satellite K who are so chary of having their photographs taken? Kemlo and his Space Scouts decide that the time has come for a little detective work and the boys are soon hot on the trail - a trail which is to lead them from the comfort and security of the satellite to a battle to the death twenty million miles out into the void.

Release date: August 25, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 116

Sample

MY name is Krillie. I was born on Satellite K—a space satellite in permanent orbit around Earth. Satellite K was the first of a ring of satellites put into orbit many years ago. I am one of the first space-born generation. Space is our home. If we visit Earth we have to wear special suits.

I keep a diary. I’ve kept it for a long time, and often broadcast to Earth children about our life in Space. I’m the official diarist and record keeper for the Space Scouts, although I’m still only a Space Cadet.

Kemlo is our captain of Space Scouts. Kerowski and Kartin are his deputies. All children born on a satellite have names beginning with the satellite’s code letter.

Our parents and other grown-ups live in the air-conditioned sections of the satellite. We live in the open sections. A long time ago, people on Earth said this couldn’t happen, but it has.

We are all very happy on our new satellite. The senior boys have their own space scooters, and go on regular training flights and exercises with the big fleet of space ships from Earth Base Seven X. The satellite we live on now is rectangular in shape and much bigger than any of the old ones. All the sections were sent up from Earth, and we helped to put them together. Some sections weighed fifteen tons, but as everything is weightless up here, we handled them very easily. Inside the satellite we have everything we need, even artificial sunlight.

Our schools are more advanced than those on Earth. We have to learn about technical and scientific things when we’re quite young, because we’re surrounded by all sorts of devices to keep us safe. A lot of people call them gadgets, but we space-born children couldn’t live without them.

We wear tiny two-way radios, and each of us has his own wave-length so that we can talk to anyone in any part of the satellite. We carry very small light-weight ray generators, no bigger than a man’s cigarette case. These rays are called holding rays. They also act as gravity rays when we are outside the satellite and enable us to walk about in Space as naturally as you do on Earth. By feeding the rays more strongly one way or another, we can change direction very quickly.

There are so many scientific inventions that make our life in Space possible. It isn’t easy to say which are the most important, but I think the rays are more vital than any. These holding rays are beamed all around the satellites and space craft. They are like an armour which protects everything from meteorites, or even from a terrific bombardment of space particles. And our own small personal rays protect us from solar penetration and other cosmic dangers.

Sometimes the rays are coloured. They can also be used as invisible barriers, or as lifting forks when two space ships have to carry a broken-down craft back to base. Four ‘prongs’ of holding rays are then ejected, and these scoot the broken-down craft through the sky.

Another reason why I think the rays are so important is that without them there couldn’t have been any Space Development by Earth. And since they were invented, there hasn’t been any war on Earth—because every country had complete immunity from attack by putting up a wall of holding rays. I’ve read about wars in history books. They all seemed pretty silly and cruel, and I’m glad we don’t have them any more.

We space-born children need only the rays for protection, but Earth-born people living in Space have to wear space suits. These suits aren’t like the ones used years and years ago. Most of them are made of self-sealing silk plastic, with a hood and a vizor. Each person wearing one carries a small electronic sealing and unsealing tool, so it takes just about four seconds to get in or out of a suit.

A special space-suit jacket is worn under the suit. This jacket is fitted with containers of oxygen and diathene, radio, various space-navigation instruments, water container and tube of pills to take if one feels sick.

Not many people get space sickness now because, by mixing diathene with oxygen, the doctors found a cure for it. Like people on Earth taking sea-sick pills. I’ve never had space sickness, but I’ve seen grown-ups with it. They go a funny colour and start gabbling a lot and throwing themselves about. But this only happens if they forget to switch on the diathene supply inside their space-suit jacket.

Kemlo told me to write about us just as if I’d never written anything before, and try to imagine that nobody had ever heard of us or our satellite. Kemlo says there’s a very special reason for this, and I’ll know all about it soon. He says it’s important that everyone knows exactly how we live up here, because of what is going to happen, and he wants all the latest information included.

Although he’s quite brilliant, Kemlo isn’t stuffy like many of the brainy types. He’s a champion boxer, an athlete and captain of our football team.

Kemlo’s father, who was Chief Technician on Satellite K, is now Chief Executive Officer and Elder of the new satellite, and Kemlo is simply wizzo at passing technological and science exams. He holds the highest space-craft-control certificate and has done several Moon and planet trips.

So if Kemlo says it’s important to tell everybody all about us, that’s good enough for me, even if I have written a lot of it before. There does seem an awful lot to tell, but as Kemlo says—new inventions and developments are happening all the time, and so a great deal of my earlier diary descriptions are out of date.

Let’s see now—what else is there? Well—I’m me and Kemlo is Kemlo. And Kerowski—oh yes, Kerowski! He’s fun. Tall and a bit awkward. Not very good at what we call the ‘technics’, but not as silly as he sometimes pretends to be. Kemlo and the other boys call him Krow. Other names too, when Kerowski upsets them!

Kerowski loves reading books. He’s a student of Shakespeare, whom he calls Willy Shake, and wants to be an actor, or a writer, or both. I’m never sure which. Kerowski makes mistakes in flight calculations and other technics, but he was born lucky and never comes to any harm. He has ‘dreamy’ times when he can’t seem to concentrate, and then Kemlo or some of his friends have to keep an eye on him if they’re flying in space-scooter formation.

Kartin is a quiet type, very efficient and reliable. He takes a little longer than some of the boys to work out a problem or complete a calculation, but he seldom makes a mistake.

These are the three senior Space Scouts, but of course there are many more. In fact there are twenty sections in Kemlo’s troop alone—three Scouts and a leader to each section.

Lots of the space-born boys have sisters. Mine is older than me. Her name is Krinsetta, and she is a leading cadess. A cadess is a girl Space Scout. The word is taken from the first letters of three words—courier and ambulance duties.

All space-born boys are trained to become technicians, Outer Space pilots and inter-planetary astronauts, apart from the ordinary professions like doctors, dentists, teachers and scientists. Every boy has to reach a certain stage in technics education before he begins training for a career.

Space-born girls have to reach the same stage in technics education because, as I’ve explained earlier, we all have to rely on a great many technical devices in our daily lives, so everyone must know all about them.

Sections of Space Scouts carry out patrols and join space-ship fleets. Some Scouts learn to become flight engineers. Cadess sections carry out patrols too, but their training is different because all girls have to learn first-aid and the care of young children in Space. Girls can become doctors, scientists and technicians, as well as pilots in ambulance ships and canteen ships attached to inter-planetary fleets.

The senior boys and girls have their own separate living and working quarters on the satellite. The juniors are trained together until they are nine years old, or until they have passed the ‘T’ level exams. I’ve failed mine twice already. Some of us fail four or five times, but nobody gets cross with us because it would be dangerous if the ‘T’ level exams were made easier. Some boys and girls are quicker to learn, and pass the ‘T’ level exams at eight years old, which is the earliest you can sit for them. Kemlo and Krinsetta both passed their ‘T’ level exams when they were eight. Kerowski passed just before his ninth birthday. So did Kartin.

If Earth-born children scrape through their early exams by only knowing just enough, it doesn’t matter very much. But space-born children must know everything perfectly—their lives may depend on their knowledge. That is one big difference between us. Earth-born people say we study a lot harder. We have to.

Do you think I write fairly well? Most space-born children of my age can read and write well. Much better than Earth-born children of the same age. We don’t learn written words when we start school. We learn mathematics.

Then we learn arithmetic by the Trachtenberg System, so we can only write figures and do sums at first.

When we’ve learned mathematics in what they call the ‘ground-work’, we concentrate on learning to read and write. This is much easier than having to learn both things together. You see, in our daily lives we’re always having to look at figures on dials of instruments, so numbers are more important than words at first.

Although we use recorders and two-way natural colour television for our lessons, and to speak to our parents or to one another in different parts of the satellite, we do a lot of writing. We use a diatectigraph for sending private letters or messages. We call it a Deegee for short.

The Deegee is like a writing pad set in a metal frame. The paper isn’t actually paper but a photon-charged pulse-wave plastic sheet. We all have a code number, and this is dialled in a tiny meter set in the frame. First we call up the person we want to write to by the normal intercom or televisor systems. We tell him we have a Deegee message for him, and write it down. Then we dial his Deegee code number, and press the transmitting switch. The person receiving the message presses the receiving switch and can at once read our writing on his Deegee.

The Deegee transmission cannot be intercepted by anyone else. Intercom and televisor systems, even on closed circuits, can be tapped so that conversations can be overheard. The Deegee can transmit for any distance in Space, but for not more than four hundred miles on Earth.

The roll of pulse-wave plastic sheet inside the frame of the Deegee moves up each time we finish writing a line, so we don’t have to move our hand down the page. When the message is finished, we just release a catch and the sheet rewinds itself and the writing disappears.

I’m writing this diary on my Deegee because I don’t want to make a permanent record of it until Kemlo says whether it’s all right. I do this by dialling my own code number, then setting the wave-trap switch to the ‘TR’ mark. ‘TR’ stands for tape. . .