Earth is faced with annihilation by the Purple Dawn - effect of the cosmic fall-out from the swirling planet-in-the-making Polarthanus. Kemlo and his Space Scouts are out in the void, towing a crippled space ship with their scooters, when suddenly the crisis is upon them. The space-born boys have to make a decision: if they take drastic action will it avert the danger - or will they blow up Earth, the Satellite Belts and themselves?
Release date:
August 25, 2016
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
200
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
THE gymnasium of Satellite Belt K was a bedlam of clamorous noise. The exuberance of the space-born boys was being expressed in voluble as well as muscular effort.
Kemlo and Kerowski, after a fast game of hand-ball, eased into a couple of self-moulding chairs on the viewing platform and relaxed behind the soundproof vynex canopy. Kerowski groaned as an eager voice piped close to his ear.
‘Oh, no!’ Kerowski pressed his hands to his ears. ‘Not you again—you pestiferous portion of humanity!’
‘That’s not nice,’ Krillie shouted. ‘At least it doesn’t sound nice.’
‘Why are you shouting, anyway?’ Kemlo grinned at Krillie.
‘Was I shouting?’
‘Don’t you know when you’re shouting?’ Kerowski asked pityingly.
‘’Course I do.’ Krillie looked at both the older boys in turn and grinned cheekily. ‘I was forgetting where I was at.’
Kerowski winced. ‘“You were forgetting where you was at!”’ He shuddered. ‘And you are supposed to be the scribe for this term. You are the boy chosen because you have shown so much promise in your composition—and you dare to speak in that disgusting way in front of me?’ Kerowski pounded his chest. ‘Me, the great Kerowski! Student of the classics, orator, distinguished dramatist.’ He shuddered again. ‘It is quite enough not only to make me ill but to denounce you as a fraud and incompetent …’ He shrugged. ‘Words fail me.’
‘What is he babbling about, Kemlo?’ Krillie asked gently. ‘You know I think Krow sometimes gets a bit beyond himself. I mean, he’s so tall and thin he’s probably outgrown his strength.’
‘A little more respect from you, young Krillie,’ said Kemlo severely. ‘Kerowski, being older than you, can address you just as he sees fit.’
‘Don’t you start talking like him,’ Krillie complained. ‘We’re used to Kerowski, but you generally talk sense.’
‘If ever a human being had to suffer the outrageous slings and arrows of pestiferous brats—I, Kerowski, am most doomed!’
‘Oh …!’ Krillie snorted.
‘You’ve no right to be on this section of the viewing platform anyway,’ said Kemlo. ‘This is for the older boys.’
‘I have if I’m invited,’ Krillie insisted quickly.
‘We didn’t invite you.’ Kerowski pulled his face into a triumphant expression. ‘So now you can float away, li’l fella.’
‘Kemlo invited me, see?’ Krillie was unmoved by this order.
‘When did I invite you?’ said Kemlo.
‘Down there on the gym floor.’ Krillie pointed through the vynex canopy. ‘When you were changing sides in your last game.’
‘I remember you yelling something at me and asking a couple of questions. Was that when you asked me to meet you up here?’
‘You asked me,’ Krillie corrected him.
‘Probably to get rid of you down in the gym,’ said Kerowski, reverting to a more natural manner. Kerowski was in the habit of posing and strutting and declaiming, which in many ways was in keeping with his character, but sometimes he overdid it and succeeded only in boring people. Krillie in particular was very critical of what he called ‘Kerowski’s ham acting’.
‘I wanted some information from you, Kemlo, and I started to ask you down on the gym floor, but it was so noisy, and you said: “Wait until I finish and I’ll see you up there”, and pointed to this viewing platform.’
‘I’m thirsty,’ Kerowski announced. ‘If you want to stay here, you’d better go and fetch us some fruit drinks.’
‘Fetch ’em yourself,’ Krillie retorted.
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ said Kemlo sharply. ‘You’re still a junior, Krillie, even though you’re a friend. And if juniors visit this section of the viewing platform they have to obey orders, just as we have to when we visit the grown-ups’ section.’
‘Oh—all right! I’ll get them. Got any money?’
‘Here.’ Kerowski spun a coin toward Krillie, who caught it and, with a cheeky grin, turned and ran off.
‘Well, that’s one way of quietening him.’ Kemlo mopped his forehead free of perspiration. ‘That last game was pretty fast. I think we’re getting better under the increased gravity pull, don’t you?’
‘It’s harder work though.’ Kerowski stretched in his chair and flexed his long arms. ‘I know the object is to toughen our muscles even more than they are now, and one successful way to do it is to increase the gravity pull. That makes us work harder no matter what game we’re playing, but I think it can be overdone.’
‘I wonder if there’s any reason behind it,’ said Kemlo thoughtfully.
‘There’s always a reason behind these new orders, or new ideas,’ said Kerowski. ‘They don’t always tell us the reason, but you bet there is one. And anyway, the reason the instructors gave us was that the gravity pull had been increased so that we could have a more strenuous form of exercise. That’s reason enough, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so. After all, we’ve operated our sports and exercise generally with the same amount of gravity pull for a long time. Why should it suddenly be changed?’
Kerowski shrugged. ‘You never know with grown-ups. Especially brainy bods like the Elders. They’re always cooking up some scheme or other.’
‘Here’s Krillie with the drinks,’ said Kemlo, then added quickly before the younger boy reached them: ‘Don’t pick on him too much, Krow. He really does try hard to be a good scribe. I know his questions are a bit of a nuisance sometimes, but he’s rather sensitive, you know.’
‘I know,’ Kerowski agreed. ‘But I think he likes having his leg pulled just the same. Anyway, I’ll be careful.’
‘I had to fight hard to get these for you two,’ Krillie announced as he placed the fruit drinks on the ledge running alongside the chairs.
‘Took you long enough,’ said Kerowski.
‘Well, I had to have one as well, didn’t I?’ Krillie replied with admirable logic. ‘And I couldn’t carry three so I had to stay and drink mine there, didn’t I?’
‘Don’t make a statement of fact into a question,’ said Kerowski. ‘Does that mean I don’t get any change?’
‘That’s a question too.’
‘A very necessary one, I think.’
‘It’s also a fact.’
‘Meaning that you have spent the change?’
‘That’s another fact. Y’see? You can’t avoid putting a fact into a question, can you?’
‘Oh—go read a book,’ said Kerowski, giving up the argument and reaching for his fruit drink.
‘Well—let’s have it.’ Kemlo took a long pull at his drink and Krillie curled himself up on a chair opposite them. ‘What’s your question?’
‘It’s about Polarthanus.’
Kerowski groaned. ‘I knew it would be!’
‘Why shouldn’t it be? It’s getting near the time for Polarthanus, so Krillie’s bound to ask a few questions about it.’
‘Oh, I have more than a few,’ said Krillie. ‘You see, I’ve started a new section in the diary and I’ve headed it “The March of Polarthanus”. But that’s as far as I’ve gone.’
‘That’s a good start!’ Kerowski exclaimed sarcastically. ‘You should go a long way. You’ve a heading but you don’t know what you’re going to write underneath it. That’s fine—just fine!’
‘Cut it out, Krow,’ said Kemlo, then asked: ‘Why haven’t you written anything more than the heading, Krillie? You’ve been taught about the March of Polarthanus.’
‘Yes, I’ve been taught about it,’ Krillie admitted, ‘but not very much. We’ve only been told about the March of Polarthanus along with the other Space phenomena. We aren’t told the details until next term, when I’m to be graded up to another class. And until I’m graded up I can’t get any records or books from the library—’cos I’m not allowed to.’
‘Yes, I can understand how that makes it rather difficult for you,’ Kemlo agreed. ‘But you don’t have to make your diary too detailed. Just a mention of the March of Polarthanus would do.’
‘But I need more than just a mention, Kemlo,’ Krillie protested.
‘All right,’ Kemlo replied after a pause, during which he drained the beaker of fruit juice and tossed the beaker into a destruction chute. ‘Have you a notepad or book with you?’
‘No, but I’ve a recorder.’ Krillie tapped his top pocket. ‘I can take it down on this and play it back. Then when I play it back, I need only write down the most important bits and save a lot of time that way.’
‘How do you want me to begin? I’m not so sure that I understand it all myself yet.’
‘Well—to begin with, why is it called the March of Polarthanus?’
‘Because it moves or marches across Space—at periods of about every three years.’
‘Why isn’t it called a flight?’
‘I don’t really know,’ Kemlo admitted. ‘The scientists call it the March of Polarthanus because it seems to be just that. I suppose it is a flight, really, or a passing, but the word “march” gives the impression that it’s something organised—something regular.’
‘And is it?’
‘Well, it’s been happening at approximately three-year intervals for as long as the Satellite Belts have been in the sky,’ Kemlo explained. ‘But of course it was quite a long time before the scientists realised that it was a regular phenomenon and not just some sort of freak.’
‘All right.’ Krillie adjusted the speaker button which controlled his tiny recording set. ‘So it’s called the march because it happens regularly and isn’t a freak. What does Polarthanus mean?’
‘Polarthanus is a migrating cloud of cosmic dust in which is sealed, by force of the cosmic dust’s magnetic attraction, millions of particles of matter—known as Thanus Particles,’ Kerowski replied in a grand and sonorous manner.
‘What’s that mean?’ Krillie asked, unimpressed.
Kemlo chuckled. ‘It means just what it says, although I doubt if Kerowski can explain it.’
‘I bet he doesn’t know it. Kerowski’s very good at remembering things parrot-fashion, then babbling them out and making people think he knows all about them—but he doesn’t really.’
‘Oh, no?’ Kerowski leaned forward and fixed Krillie with a stern eye. ‘I will now proceed to destroy that libellous accusation.’ He took a deep breath and began: ‘It is well known that cosmic dust exists in many different forms and in many different parts of the vast Universe of Space. All cosmic dust does not necessarily move. Nor is it always visible to the human eye. In fact, one of its peculiar illusions is that when a human eye thinks it is observing cosmic dust, the dust sometimes isn’t there at all. Which is, alas, more than we can say for you.’
‘That’s silly! If the human eye is observing cosmic dust then it must be there.’
‘Kerowski’s right,’ said Kemlo. ‘Cosmic dust varies from such a fineness that it’s invisible to the human eye, to much larger formations of true cosmic particles. Swirling clouds of cosmic dust take—at least it is believed they take—hundreds of years to form, and in their early stages these are visible only as a reflected glow. You can see the glow but you can’t see the actual cosmic dust. Then as the cloud grows in strength it becomes coarser—as if each of the billions of tiny cosmic-dust particles has grown up.’
‘There’s no “as if” about it,’ Kerowski added. ‘They do grow up.’
‘Then they’re alive?’ Krillie looked alarmed. Kemlo smiled. ‘Well, everything has life of some sort, Krillie. But not always life as we know it.’
‘You mean they don’t grow like I grow? Then what sort of life is it?’
‘A cosmic life—you space-born ignoramus!’ Kerowski snorted. ‘Even at your age you should know there are different kinds of life in Space. Not necessarily animal life or plant life, such as you find on Earth or Mars, but it’s still life in one form or another.’
‘Can you see it grow? Can you watch it grow until it becomes what they call Polarthanus?’
Kerowski frowned thoughtfully and glanced at Kemlo, who tried to answer Krillie’s question.
‘I suppose you could watch it grow from a tiny cloud of cosmic light; but first you’d have to find the exact spot in Space where it came into being, and with something like a trillion billion miles to search—that’s a pretty tall order.’
‘Krillie doesn’t mind tall orders,’ said Kerowski. ‘He believes that the whole Universe exists for the sole purpose of filling his diary with tall stories.’
‘I don’t, Krow! Honest, I don’t.’ Krillie suddenly took Kerowski’s joking too seriously. ‘But—but there’s so much to learn. Sometimes it seem. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
