Kemlo and the Zones of Silence

Book 0: Kemlo

by E.C. Eliott

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

Synopsis

Kemlo and Krillie, together with Krillie's sister Krinsetta, set out for a visit to S Belt in Kemlo's space scooter. They are attacked by three boys from S Belt, who kidnap Krinsetta. Kemlo gives chase, and both his and the other craft are forced down, off course, on to the Zones of Silence, part of a large area known as the Dead World where the slightest whisper is magnified into a roar... The inhabitants of the Zones have no audible form of speech, but use instead a highly developed system of thought transference. These creatures are friendly, but too friendly: they attempt to drug the minds of visitors with thought impulses compelling them to stay on the Zones. Kemlo is able to resist this powerful impulse, but...

Release date: June 29, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 201

Sample

KRILLIE ran up to him as Kemlo stepped off the escalator leading from the technical-grade classroom.

‘My diary is leading all of them so far!’ he cried excitedly.

Kemlo grinned at his small eager-eyed friend and cuffed him playfully on the ear.

‘You and your diary!’ he said. ‘I wonder everyone in your class isn’t tired of hearing about it.’

‘Why should they be?’ said Krillie. ‘Everyone’s entered the competition for the best diary, only some of them don’t seem to be taking so much interest now.’

‘It often happens like that. All the boys get enthusiastic over some new idea, but when it means they’ve got to work at it they start losing interest.’

‘It isn’t work,’ Krillie protested. ‘How can you call it work when all you do is write down the things that are happening to you and describing how you live and all the things you see—like the astral rays and how we ride out in space scooters and bump about on the spume-waves from rocket ships? There’s so much to talk about,’ he sighed gustily. ‘My teacher says I talk too much. Do you think I talk too much, Kemlo?’

‘You chatter a lot,’ said Kemlo, smiling, ‘but a diary is only like talking on paper.’

‘We don’t use paper,’ said Krillie scornfully. ‘We use plastic silk. That’s something else the Earth-boys don’t know about.’

‘I know, but we still call it paper, so that we know we’re talking about writing material. Anyway, how much longer is this diary going to last before the competition ends?’

‘Oh, a long time yet,’ Krillie replied in a rather mournful tone. ‘You see, our teacher says it’s government-sponsed.’

‘Sponsed?’ Kemlo queried.

‘Yes—sponsed by the government.’

‘You mean, “sponsored”.’

‘I might, but I don’t know what it means,’ Krillie admitted frankly.

‘It means that the Earth-government, which is also the government for this and all the other Satellite Belts, wants to help Earth-boys to understand more about how we live up here in the sky,’ Kemlo explained. ‘When they sponsor anything, it means they are very interested in everything we do and want to make sure that the Earth-boys understand it all.’ They began to walk along the ramp leading to the space scooter workshops. Krillie trotted beside Kemlo, who, being much taller, took longer strides, still puzzled a little by this sponsoring of something he imagined to be a purely personal idea.

‘You see, Krillie,’ Kemlo continued, ‘we were born up here on the Satellite Belt, but if we went down to Earth in one of the space ships we should have to wear special clothing, else we might die, and we should look funny to the Earth-boys.’

‘You mean, as our parents have to wear space clothing to visit us on the Belt from their own section?’

‘That’s so. The Earth-boys are quite used to seeing rocket ships come and go, and some even travel in them, but they never stay up here for long. At least, not long enough to understand exactly how we live. Even if they did, they couldn’t live as you and I do, because we just live naturally without space helmets or anything. So the government thinks if they get all the boys on the Satellite Belt to write a diary explaining everything they do, day by day, the Earth-boys will understand how different our life is.’

‘Do they have Scouts?’ Krillie asked.

‘Scouts?’ Kemlo repeated, for a moment unable to follow Krillie’s change of subject. ‘Oh, yes, of course they have Scouts.’

‘But not Space Scouts like us?’

‘Well, we’re much the same, only we live in the sky and we have different ways of training and learning things. I don’t suppose any Scouts on Earth have space scooters.’

‘I don’t expect any of them are such a good captain of Space Scouts as you are,’ said Krillie. ‘I’m glad I’m in your troop, Kemlo. Now that school’s over, are we going to take the scooters out and do formation flying and have lots of fun?’

‘Yes, we’ll do some,’ Kemlo promised. ‘I’m just going down to see Sam in the workshops. He promised to have all our scooters properly tuned for when we needed them.’

‘Oh, look who’s coming!’ said Krillie suddenly.

They had reached a cross-way where three connecting passages joined, and coming toward them was a girl. She was taller than Krillie and very like him in facial appearance, but not as tall as Kemlo. She was smiling and her voice was happy as she greeted them.

‘It’s Krinsetta,’ said Krillie glumly. ‘What do you want?’

‘These brothers!’ said Krinsetta. ‘They’re very rude, aren’t they, Kemlo?’

‘Krillie didn’t mean to be rude,’ said Kemlo.

‘Not much!’ said Krillie defiantly. ‘I don’t like girls and I didn’t ask to have a sister.’

‘Have you finished school too?’ Kemlo asked.

‘We finished yesterday,’ Krinsetta replied. ‘I called you over the audovisor a few moments ago and your teacher said you were on your way to the scooter shops, so I took the mono-rail and got off to try and catch you before you reached there.’

‘You could have called us over the speaker-system,’ said Krillie. ‘You don’t have to follow us around.’

Krillie was always behaving in this way with his sister, and to an onlooker his manner would appear very churlish. But the reason was that Krillie had had some experience of Krinsetta and knew how she liked to join with him and Kemlo and their other friends whenever possible. Grudgingly he would admit that she played their games almost as well as some of the boys, but she was still his sister, and he resented what he termed her interference.

‘What did you want us for, Krinsetta?’ Kemlo asked.

‘We have to meet our parents very soon,’ she said, and ruffled Krillie’s hair. Her brother drew away angrily and straightened his thick mop of hair. ‘You’re not going to like it, Krillie,’ she warned him jocularly.

‘What am I not going to like?’

‘You’ll see!’ she replied smugly.

‘Girls!’ Krillie exclaimed disgustedly. ‘Always thinking they’ve got secrets. Well, we’ve got secrets too, haven’t we, Kemlo? Secrets too big for girls to share.’

‘If our parents want to see us, we’d better be getting along,’ said Kemlo, ignoring this last plea for co-operation from his friend. He knew how Krillie felt about girls, and realised that his friend was slightly jealous. Not jealous in a bad sense, but enough to change him from the happy excitable Krillie into a rather snappy individual. Kemlo could understand Krillie’s point of view, because a few years ago he too had felt like that. Even now, he did not particularly like the company of girls, but in the higher grades of school, such as the technical grade, boys often worked alongside girls on the various problems which they mutually shared.

Life on the Satellite Belt was very different from life on Earth. Although the space outside the Belt was limitless, the living environment could be cramped unless all people living there, including the children, made an effort to get on together. Their parents, having been born on Earth and brought to the Satellite Belt at an early age, still had to wear space clothing which, although not separating them for long from their children, did draw a fine barrier at some times. But more important than this was the parents’ attitude toward the children, because they wanted to teach them the ways of Earth-boys but, at the same time, have them live happily in this ‘Earth’ moored in the sky twelve hundred miles from the real Earth.

After the early years, children born on the Satellite Belt seldom thought of Earth-terms, and having never known the feel of solid ground, the gravity pull or the rush of winds and rain, were perfectly happy in the surroundings in which they had been reared.

Perhaps the children of Kemlo’s generation were more self-sufficient than Earth-children. In their living quarters they had a smaller world, yet outside in the sky there lay the infinite distances of space. They were children of the space worlds and, knowing no other, had found their own interests and excitements which to their Earth-born parents sometimes seemed strange. The children who were born and lived on Satellite Belt K had names beginning with the letter K, and so it was with all the other Satellite Belts. Perhaps to Earth-boys these names would sound peculiar, but to Kemlo and his friends they were quite ordinary.

There were other Satellite Belts moored in the sky close to the charted space lanes along which roared the flame-spouting monsters on their way to the greater planets. Each Belt had its own task, its own purpose, which mainly was to control the high air within a certain radius from itself. It sent out the controlling waves to keep the giant space and rocket ships on their true courses. It charted the skies around itself and sent back reports to Earth. Fundamentally it was self-supporting, for the power generated within the hub was self-consuming and self-generating; thus once the hub of the great wheel which formed the Satellite Belt had begun to spin it could never be stopped.

Except for the section where those children born on the Belt lived, all other sections were air-conditioned, so that parents who wished to visit their children, or to venture outside the Belt, had to wear space clothing. The great water tanks, first filled upon the construction of the Belt, were kept full of pure water by rays which drew moisture from the upper air, passed it through condensers and purifiers as steam, then filtered it into the tanks, making the purest of water available to everyone. All waste and rubbish was chemically destroyed and the residue fed into the urania furnaces which supplied heating, light and refrigeration, also rays of various kinds. All these wonders were accepted as everyday things by Kemlo and his friends.

They now had reached the parents’ meeting-room and soon were joined by their respective mothers and fathers. The parents wore a very light, transparent, seamless plastic overall, so finely made that it was difficult to see whether they wore a space suit or not. It moulded easily to their heads and shoulders and, being of such fine material, allowed their features and skin the same appearance as if they wore no covering. Only the small flat oxygen flasks suspended from their shoulders gave evidence that they needed and were using space protection.

Kemlo’s father was one of the senior engineers on the Belt, and Krillie’s father was a technician. They were calm easy-moving men, typical of their kind, who had been chosen and trained for this highly intricate work where there was no room for the excitable or temperamental man. They supplied the brains and skill which kept these Satellite Worlds existing in space with all the ease of an Earth-dwelling. They had great pride in their work and a more than ordinary pride in their children, and it was a never-ceasing wonder to them that here, in the vastness of space, their children could move as freely as they themselves had moved back on their own Mother-earth.

Kemlo, being older than either Krillie or his sister, showed more the difference from Earth-children of the children of the new worlds. His shoulders were very wide, his chest deep, and he moved slowly and gracefully. He had never known the true effect of gravity pull, although, as did all the children of the Belt, he went through exercises in the gravity room in order that his muscles and balance could be well maintained.

They talked for a while, laughing and joking and discussing their lessons and some of their plans for the holiday period just beginning. It was Kemlo’s father who first voiced the real reason for the parents’ visit.

‘This is so important that we had to discuss it with the Elders,’ he said. Immediately Kemlo, Krillie and Krinsetta were quiet, because there was something momentou. . .