Once again Kemlo and his friends find themselves in the thick of a plot - a plot to overthrow the complete organisation of the Satellite. And they are not up against anything they can understand. These mysterious black-suited men who are not men, but who can do with the utmost efficiency anything they are told, cause considerable, and not unwarranted, alarm on Satellite K.
Release date:
August 25, 2016
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
186
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KIPPIN did not see the ‘thing’ coming. It flashed across the bows of his space scooter and caromed upward in a dizzy spiral.
It was unlike any other space craft Kippin had ever seen; smaller too, with sharp-flared fins and its hull brilliant in myriad colours.
Some space craft carried a combination of three identifying colours, but none more than that number, unless you included the coloured symbols and numbers used in the case of large space fleets.
Kippin was not very experienced in craft identification. He should have been, but he had one of those brains which could remember lessons just long enough to repeat them parrot-fashion, although not much of the knowledge actually sank in and remained. In this way he had passed most of his exams. He wouldn’t now be alone in this space scooter otherwise, and certainly he wouldn’t have been allowed so far away from his home on Satellite K.
Kippin wished he could recall what he had been taught about all the many details of the different space craft. He did remember that yellow was the identifying colour of the rescue ships. Red was for special research ships; blue for postal rockets and other international postal craft—but there his memory stopped.
Kippin knew there were many more colours which, when used in various combinations, declared immediately the function of any ship. Ah—yes! He remembered another one. White was for hospital and ambulance ships. White with a red cross painted amidships on the hull.
‘That’s pretty good,’ Kippin murmured smugly to himself. ‘I’ve remembered most of them.’ Which, considering there were at least nine more, was something of an over-statement.
Kippin giggled. ‘Must be a new mixed-up sort of craft, painted all colours so that no-one can identify it. The pilot’s a dope anyway. Nearly frightened the life out of me! Another four or five feet and—pouff! Me and the scooter would have …’ He paused and shivered a little as the narrowness of his escape was brought to clarity by this thought.
Kippin re-set the controls of the scooter but, with typical Kippin brilliance, forgot to re-set also the readings which linked his audovisor with the direct beam from Satellite K Control.
Consequently, when he manoeuvred the scooter to keep the spiralling multi-coloured craft in his vision, he automatically cut himself off from any contact with the Control Duty Officer.
The strange craft was still spiralling above him and, it seemed, returning to his orbit.
‘Don’t like the look of this,’ Kippin observed to himself. ‘If that dope of a pilot comes back this way he might hit me next time.’ He gazed through the canopy of the scooter at the vast blue void around him. ‘You’d think there’d be enough space for two craft to miss each other. The teachers talk about me being slow, but I reckon the pilot of that craft must be really dizzy.’ Kippin paused and pulled his ear in thoughtful concentration. ‘Wonder what sort of ship it is?’
He reached into a side compartment of the scooter, took out the infra-red binoculars and focused them on the spiralling craft.
The binoculars brought it into sharp, three-dimensional relief. As he watched, a spurt of blue flame appeared from its tail.
The sight startled him, for even Kippin, with his bad memory and lazy thinking, knew that no modern space craft emitted flame from its exhausts. He knew from his history lessons and conversations with other boys who, like himself, had been born and lived on a Satellite, that it was many, many years since such fuels had been used to power space craft of any size.
Kippin’s scooter—perhaps the smallest craft of all which flew over the Space Lanes of the void—was powered by the tiny pellets of urania. These were contained in a small, box-like power unit and, being self-energising, never needed replacing once their energy-activation had been started.
The pellets of urania operated on the quite simple principle of releasing energy, which was then fed into the mechanism of the power drive in any craft. The larger the craft, the larger the box-like power unit which contained the pellets of urania. But this was an energy fuel, not an explosive substance.
So what had caused the flame from the strange craft?
As Kippin continued to peer through the binoculars he became aware that its spiralling movement had ceased. The small, lozenge-shaped, multi-coloured craft was now gliding in a long, curving arc ahead of him. He had the impression that it was drifting, but had he remembered his lessons Kippin would have known that in Space no craft could drift in that manner.
A craft could float and, aided by the gravity field set up around its hull by the projection of holding rays, could impel itself by using different degrees of power thrust. But no craft could glide without propellant power, for there was no gravity pull in Space to allow it to do so.
Kippin returned the binoculars to their compartment and again pulled his ear: a habit of his when puzzled or trying to think harder than usual.
‘Seems funny to me,’ he muttered. ‘Perhaps I ought to contact Control?’ He turned in the seat and reached for the switch which would open the circuit. It was then that he realised he had cut the connection with Satellite K Control.
‘Oh dear, I’m in trouble again!’ he exclaimed.
‘Now I’ve got to find out how to re-set all the instruments to get back on the beam. I can’t remember all of it,’ he added. ‘I know I’ve got to line up three instruments until the radar beam steadies on the screen, then I do something else.’ He continued to pull his ear. ‘Now what was it?’
Kippin remained for a few moments pondering this problem, and did in fact re-set three controls and successfully obtained the radar reading on the screen. But there he stopped. He just could not remember what else he had to do in order to re-establish contact with Control.
Then he was startled when the speaker blared.
‘This is Satellite K Control calling Kippin in scooter craft. What are you doing out there? Re-set your beam controls. Over.’
‘It’s all right for you to say re-set the controls,’ Kippin muttered crossly. ‘I can’t re-set them if I don’t remember how to do it, can I? It’s no good asking you because I can’t ask you unless I re-set the readings.’
But of course Satellite K Control could not hear these comments, even though they could reach him over the master beam. So they kept repeating the message over and over again until Kippin was thoroughly fed up with it.
He reached over and flicked off the switch.
‘Oh, shut up!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m sick of hearing you. How do I know what to do?’
Kippin glanced up through the canopy again and saw that the strange craft was coming closer to his orbit.
‘Well—seeing you’re that close, I might as well fly up toward you,’ he said. ‘I wonder whether you’ll start up suddenly if I do that? You don’t look as if you’ve got any power boost on. It’s worth a try, anyway.’
Kippin busied himself with the controls of the scooter and carried out the mechanical details quite easily. For all his other dimness, such as faulty memory, dislike of schooling, and general muddle-headedness, Kippin had a flare for the mechanics of a space scooter. He had no difficulty in remembering the technical details necessary to control and fly a craft.
It was all the figures that tended to baffle him. Keeping accurate readings in order to maintain contact with the Satellite Control and communication with other craft called for a thorough understanding of figures. He had passed his exams, but the knowledge contained in them had by-passed him. Only Kippin actually knew this, but it didn’t bother him unduly.
When the flying controls in the scooter were re-set, Kippin aimed its nose at the multi-coloured shape. With considerable skill he piloted the small scooter into a tight orbit circling the other craft.
Now that he was close to it, Kippin saw no sign of its power drive. The whitish-coloured holding rays, which surrounded the hull of every space craft to protect it against flying meteors and cosmic radiation, were showing a gap along one side of the hull.
‘They’ve got a ray breakdown, or else some dope has turned the wrong switch,’ Kippin muttered to himself. ‘And there should be a flashing light if the holding rays have broken down, to warn other craft, and the people inside.’ He remembered this detail clearly because it had to do with the mechanical functioning of every ship.
Kippin manoeuvred his scooter closer to the hull of the other craft until he was but a few yards distant. Then lowering the power but leaving on the induction in the scooter, he set the stabilisers to hovering.
After some moments of thought Kippin slid back the canopy and, climbing from the scooter, hitched the safety rope to his waist and walked to inspect the hull.
He searched for the special external release mechanism which all space craft of the sealed-hull variety possessed. This enabled anybody to open the hull from outside and so enter an air-lock through which they could reach the interior of the craft, should the crew be ill or in any danger and prevented from unsealing it themselves.
Kippin reached up to the control lever and pulled it sharply downward.
‘If they’re not ready to be unsealed, that will sound a buzzer and set a red light flashing,’ he said to himself, speaking slowly as if recalling some lesson or instruction.
But no red light flashed and no buzzer sounded.
Only the small emergency entrance in the hull slid slowly back to disclose the dimly lighted air-lock.
Kippin was about to step into the air-lock when the blood almost froze in his veins as he heard an eerie, high-pitched yowling coming from within the craft.
‘WELL, I’m fed up. Might as well be honest about it.’ Kerowski stretched his lanky form, causing the self-moulding chair to creak in protest. ‘Life has a grim and cheerless prospect.’
Kemlo eased up on his elbow and flung an empty fruit container at his friend. It hit Kerowski on the nose.
‘You always did have a habit of using too many words—and at the wrong time,’ Kemlo observed, then ducked Kerowski’s return shot. The container hit the plastic wall above Kemlo’s bunk and, bouncing at a tangent, struck Kerowski on the ear.
Kemlo laughed. ‘Glad I increased the gravity pull in here. That was a good object lesson of what it would be like to live on Earth. Fancy having full gravity around you all the time!’
‘Better than having all those new members around you,’ Kerowski retorted gloomily. ‘Why can’t they remain infants all their lives?’
‘You’re a fraud,’ said Kemlo. ‘You moan and groan about them, but no-one puts in more effort to train them than you and your section.’
‘Pride, that’s all it is.’ Kerowski sighed. ‘And next year we’ll have Krillie moving up to join the sections. Imagine that!’
‘Krillie’s all right. I know he can be a pest sometimes, especially with that diary of his and his never-ending questions, but he. . .
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