swathi

"It so happens that you are not the only ones that wish to visit the Kaa. Swathi here has decided to try her luck there also!"

He introduces you to dark skinned girl about Clarisse's age.

"Sometimes the Kaa take humans on as servants." she tells you I am hoping to get such a job at the station and thereby travel with them and see the Galaxy!"

"Great! When can we go?" you aunt asks.

"The Kaa space station is presently orbiting around the Earth. It will not be in an optimal position for us to attempt a visit for several weeks."

She also assures you that the trip will be rather dangerous. A few weeks later, standing outside the dome in your space suits, staring up into the sky, you see what she means.

"It is called a Space Elevator" she tells you, but to you it looks like nothing more than a metal cable reaching so far up into the sky that you can not see the end of it! 

"What on Earth keeping it up there?!"

"I think you mean 'on the moon' " Anil is the fourth member of your party- your pilot for this journey. He explains: "The tether is suspended from a small satellite maintaining a Lagrange point orbit. It is just over 57 thousand kilometers above us."

"Sometimes we call it the space kite." chips in Swathi

They both steps int the elevator car resting on the ground at the end of the cable of the cable. Nervously you follow. In a few minutes the ascent crew has cleared you to go, you have double checked each others space suits, and the elevator slowly begins to rise into infinity. It. Is. Terrifying.

"How in the world did you build this?" You ask

"Easy" says Anil" We did not. Our ancestors constructed the space elevator before the Kaa wars, during the time of high technology. Back when our people still had supplies from earth."

"When we get to the top though, you'll see something that we made all in our own" Swathi adds.

It takes you nearly three hours to reach the top. Below you the moon curves away into space, above the Earth looms taking up more than its fair share of sky.

Anil consults a battered telescope trying to locate the Kaa space ship, while you study the space bike. If the space elevator made you jittery, the bike is horrifying.

Its just a metal pole about 12 feet long, with a 3 foot diameter mesh platform welded on one end for you to stand on. A plexi glass umbrella is attached to the other end with a few ordinary bolts and for safety features it has half a dozen steel rings also welded on for clipping your space suits tethers tether's to.


Oh and one other thing: it has a sort of swiveling cannon bolted to its axis. About 6 inches across, powered by a hefty spring that you can cock with a racheting lever. Theres a hole in the loading end of the cannon for moonrocks. You all have a backpack full of moonrocks.

"This is it?!" You say in near panic " this is the spaceship that we are flying back to Earth in?!"

"Well its not like we have access to any inexpensive propellants here. We have to use most of our solar power for managing life support. The space bike is genius because it is powered by the one thing we have plenty of: Rocks"

Oh my gosh. You are about to go into interplanetary space in a spaceship that caveman could have built. A rocket powered by ROCKS. Heh heh... ROCK rocket. Oh man.

" We're all gonna die" you mention as you step on board the mesh platform and clip in your tether.

The bike also has one extra large spring the size of its entire base, and a second lever for compressing it. Anil ratchets this by hand several times, does one more check of everyone's suits and then releases the spring. The bike leaps away from the small orbiter, launching the four of you even further into the empty night, aiming for earth.

"How long will this take?" you ask

"About 4 days!" barks Anil loading a rock into the cannon and launching it. You feel another slight push as the bike accelerates in an equal and opposite reaction.

"We were actually 1/6th of the way there at the top of the elevator!" he adds and laughs. You realize that there must be something wrong with him. He's not scared at all. He's really enjoying himself!

You realize that you may be in deep space the hands of a maniac.


Do you demand to turn around, before its too late?


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