Kemlo and the Sky Horse

Book 0: Kemlo

by E.C. Eliott

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

Synopsis

Kemlo, captain of Space scouts, and his young friend Krillie receive a visit from two Earth children, Dane and Lesa, Krillie's cousins. Lesa is quite prepared to be thrilled by all that she sees on Satellite Belt K, but Dane sneers at everything - especially at the mechanical horse in the games-room. he boasts of his own prowess, and is heard by their science engineering master from Earth, who determines to teach him a lesson and at the same time to evolve, with the help of Kemlo and the other troop leaders, a new mechanical wonder, a New World Pegasus, a horse that can gallop in Space...

Release date: June 29, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 189

Sample

‘WELL, aren’t you excited about them coming?’ Krinsetta asked crossly.

Krillie shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Why should I?’

‘Dane and Lesa are our cousins. You ought to care what happens to our relatives.’

‘What are relatives?’

‘Cousins are relatives. Really, Krillie, I think you’re being deliberately stupid.’

‘They’ve got silly names,’ her brother retorted.

‘Perhaps they will think we’ve got silly names too. Children who live on Earth don’t all have to be given names beginning with the same letter like we have. If our cousins had been born in space up here on the Satellite Belt they would have been called Kane and Kesa.’

Krillie laughed. ‘Serve them right.’

Krinsetta surveyed her young brother with puzzled eyes.

‘Don’t you want to please Mum?’ she asked.

‘’Course I do.’

‘Well, then?’

‘Well what?’

‘You won’t please her by making fun of Dane and Lesa before you’ve even met them.’

‘I’ll be polite when they come,’ said Krillie grumpily.

‘I should hope so. But you’ll have to be more than just polite. Think of all the wonderful things you’ll be able to show them, and the different games you’ll be able to play.’

‘That’s just it!’ Krillie exploded. ‘We’re space-children and they’re Earth-children. How can we play our games with them while they have to wear space suits all the time?’

Krinsetta was about to reply when the audovisor screen glowed with light and a woman’s head and shoulders appeared in the screen. She was smiling broadly.

‘Is Krillie arguing again?’ she chuckled. ‘What’s the matter, son?’

‘Nothing, Mum.’

‘He says it won’t be fun when Dane and Lesa come,’ said Krinsetta.

‘Tattle-tale!’ said Krillie scornfully.

‘Of course it will be lots of fun,’ said his mother. ‘I’ve been looking for you to tell you that the passenger ship will be taking off from Earth base in less than an hour, and that Kemlo is waiting for you in the games-room. Now you just stop arguing and trot along there. The ship should be here in about two hours.’

Krillie jumped off the plastic couch.

‘I’ll go now,’ he cried eagerly. ‘See you later, Mum!’ He galloped from the play-lounge, scattering several other children in his rush.

‘Oh, dear!’ his mother sighed. ‘Will he never do anything slowly?’

Krinsetta laughed. ‘Not Krillie. Are you and Father meeting the ship, Mum?’

‘No, dear. Your father’s on duty, and I’ve got to get your cousins’ quarters ready. Will you go to the control hub and meet them for us?’

‘M-m, I’d love to,’ said Krinsetta. ‘I think I’ll go and see if Kemlo will come too.’

‘Yes, you do that. See you later, Krin. ’Bye, now.’ The audovisor screen went dark.

Krinsetta made her way through the open section of the Satellite Belt to the games-room. She was disappointed when she learned that Kemlo and Krillie had just left and no-one knew exactly where they had gone.

It was Kemlo’s idea that he and Krillie should go down to the scooter section and check over Kemlo’s space craft. He suggested they should go out and circle around the Belt to watch the passenger ship arrive.

Kemlo was Krillie’s special friend—although he was much older—and recently, since Kemlo had been made a Captain of Space Scouts, Krillie had missed the frequent trips they used to have together. Krillie wasn’t old enough to have his own scooter craft. He belonged to the Space Cubs and had lots of fun with them, but nowhere near as much as when he went out with Kemlo.

‘You are lucky, Kemlo,’ said Krillie as they waited for the scooter’s power unit to warm up.

Kemlo turned and smiled at his friend’s worried expression.

‘Why lucky?’

‘You haven’t got a sister.’

‘That’s not a very nice thing to say. Krinsetta is great fun.’

‘Perhaps she is sometimes,’ Krillie admitted, ‘but she’s so bossy.’

‘What have you been arguing about now?’

‘Our cousins. Krin says we’re going to have a wonderful time playing games and showing them everything, but how can we, Kemlo? They’ll have to wear space suits all the time, and you never know what’s going to happen to people when they first come up here from Earth. They might get space sickness, or all sorts of things.’

‘What is the matter with you?’ Kemlo asked. ‘You talk as if you almost wanted them to get sick.’

‘Oh, no, I don’t want them to!’ Krillie protested. ‘When I first knew they were coming I thought it was exciting, because although one or two other families have had relations to stay, we haven’t had any before. Then I got to thinking that we’d have to waste an awful lot of time waiting for them to pass through the air-locks and making sure they’d got enough oxygen.’ Krillie drew a deep breath and sighed heavily. ‘Oh, dear, relations certainly are a problem,’ he said.

Kemlo grinned and cuffed him gently on the ear.

‘A different sort of problem, Krillie. Well, we’ve had problems before, haven’t we? Think of all the things you’ve been able to put in your diary,’ he reminded his friend, because Krillie’s diary was becoming quite a massive piece of work. The children in Krillie’s class at school had to write in the form of a diary what they did every day on the Satellite Belt. Because they were born in space and had never been to Earth they couldn’t live in Earth atmosphere any more than Earth-children could live in space, so the idea of both sets compiling diaries was not only a good one but had developed into a competition between them. Krillie had had several adventures with Kemlo, and at present his diary was one of the best. By mentioning it Kemlo had touched upon his friend’s most interesting occupation.

‘Oh, yes!’ Krillie was suddenly eager. ‘I could write about how different they are and what they thought of the Belt and what we thought of them.’ He glanced sideways at Kemlo as he added: Perhaps it won’t be such a problem after all?’

‘Of course it won’t,’ Kemlo agreed confidently. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes, I’m ready.’

Kemlo pulled the canopy shut and locked it, set the controls of the scooter, and with a wave to the attendant he sent the little craft swishing from the runway and out through the exit chute into the deep blue void beyond.

He turned the scooter in a wide banking sweep so that they could see down through the canopy at the wheel-shaped Satellite Belt below them—poised in the sky over a thousand miles above Earth. A white spinning satellite planet having the distinction of being the first to be built by Man.

There were now several Satellite Belts positioned along the spaceways, and on them lived families like Kemlo’s and Krillie’s. Their parents had been brought up there when they were children but, being Earth-people, they always had to remain in the air-conditioned sections of the Belts. They could join their children and move about freely outside these air-conditioned sections only after passing through air-locks in which they donned a transparent lightweight space suit.

But the children who had been born in space were able to move about without these aids. The strange thing was that neither Kemlo nor Krillie, nor any of the children on the Belts, entered the air-conditioned sections. If they did, they became ill because from the time when they were a few days’ old their lungs had become used to functioning in space.

They were healthy and active children, the only difference between them and children born on Earth being that those children born in space had much deeper and wider chests and shoulders. Also their food was mainly fruit and fruit drinks, with very little meat or starchy foods like bread and potatoes. But they ate plenty of ice-cream and fruit sweets and had, in their own quarters, a refreshment bay.

There were so many things in their lives which differed from those of Earth-children that Krillie and his friends who were keeping diaries had become absorbed in recording these differences. And now, as they soared high above the Satellite Belt, Krillie began to feel happier about the arrival of his cousins.

‘Mum said they’d be here in about two hours,’ he said. ‘How far are you going, Kemlo?’

‘I thought we’d go to a point below the main space lanes,’ Kemlo replied, glancing at the instruments on the scooter’s panel. ‘If we get below them in time we shall see the ship coming up.’

‘Oh, let’s do that!’ said Krillie excitedly. ‘I love to see those big ships.’

‘The sight of them never loses its thrill,’ Kemlo agreed. ‘Sit tight, here we go!’

He moved the induction lever fully forward and the scooter zoomed over the blue void while the needles on glowing dials flickered. He watched them carefully, occasionally making an adjustment. After a time he leaned back in the seat, cut off the induction and allowed the craft to float in space.

‘That should be it now,’ he said. ‘Keep a sharp eye open, Krillie, because she’ll be travelling fast and you might miss part of the flight.’

‘I will,’ said Krillie as he peered through the scooter’s transparent canopy.

They had to wait quite a while, but at last Krillie jumped to his feet and shouted:

‘There she is, Kemlo!’

And below them, tiny in the distance, was the glinting silvery hull of the great space ship cleaving its path from Earth.

It was climbing at between fifteen and seventeen thousand miles an hour, but when it reached the orbit of the Satellite Belt it would adjust its speed to that of the Belt, which was spinning at a speed of about fifteen thousand miles an hour and so keeping within Earth’s orbit. In fact, the Belt circled the Earth once every two hours. But because this was space, where there was no gravity, no horizon, nothing at all to show whether an object was moving or not, it appeared that the Belt was standing still.

Suddenly the tiny ship was a hissing monster, streaking above them, curving in an arc toward Satellite Belt K.

‘There she goes!’ said Kemlo. ‘What a wonderful sight, Krillie!’

Krillie nodded. ‘They’ll be switching into our orbit soon. Let’s go and watch.’

‘They’ll be a little while before they close in,’ Kemlo assured his eager friend, ‘but we’ll go and watch.’

‘He adjusted the controls and sent the scooter skimming through space at over three thousand miles an hour.

The space scooters were not very fast; not as fast as the patrol ships which were attached to the Satellite Belts and travelled at a speed of up to eight thousand miles an hour. Each Belt also had a research ship, and these monsters could notch up to twelve thousand miles an hour. The term ‘miles an hour’ was an Earth one, and although Kemlo and Krillie had been taught to accept these as normal, such speeds were quite fantastic when judged by Earth comparisons.

One thing that Kemlo and Krillie never thought much about was gravity. Without gravity pull even the smallest-powered craft could fly at speeds which seemed colossal below the ozonic layer surrounding Earth. But providing the craft was pressurised and air-conditioned and the crew wore space suits, a small airplane capable of travelling six or seven hundred miles an hour above Earth’s surface could, if it reached space, fly comfortably at three or four thousand.

As the scoote. . .