Title: Karolita
Author: kbk
Claimer: Mine. You can't have them. Well... ask.
Rating: G - it's for six-year-olds, people!
Summary: Written in response to this advert: "Can you tell a simple science fiction story for 6-year olds? It must be underpinned by some real scientific principle, involve friendly creatures, be visual, be funny. The humour must be the source of the tension." I don't know what the hell that last line means, and I've never been intentionally funny in my life. So this was fun.
They didn't want it.

Karolita had brown hair, and green eyes, and she wasn’t very tall. There was nothing particularly special about her. But she lived on a spaceship.

It was a very big ship, shaped like a wheel, and it spun round very slowly as it travelled through space. Because it spun, all the things and people on the inside tried to move out to the edge. In the middle, at the hub of the wheel, people could float; walking around the wheel felt just like walking on a planet. But Karolita didn’t know that, because she had never been on a planet. Neither had her parents, or even their parents. They were all born on the spaceship.

There were lots of people on the ship – enough to make a city – and they did all sorts of things. Karolita’s mother was a gardener, and Karolita liked to go into the gardens with her and look at all the plants. They grew vegetables and fruit and flowers and all sorts of things, and sent lots of them to the kitchen so everybody could eat fresh food. Karolita’s father was a pilot, and sometimes he let Karolita come with him to work and showed her how to fly the ship. She didn’t have as much time for that now, because every morning she went to school. She learned to read and write, and about Earth and space, and she wasn’t very good at sums. Her favourite thing was drawing.

One day, Karolita was working in class with the other children, when the Captain’s voice came over the announcement system. He was a big man with a bushy red beard and a deep jolly voice, and he visited the school every second Friday to talk to all the children. He didn’t normally make the announcements, so everybody knew it was special. But he only said one word: “Planetfall”.

None of the children knew what he meant, though some of them thought they could guess. The teacher sat them all down and explained that they were finally close enough to their destination to be able to see the planet properly. It would take them a while to get there, but everyone was very excited that the end of their journey was in sight. That night, there was a big party, with lots of streamers and party hats and cake for everybody.

Months later, while Karolita was lying in bed, she felt a strange shuddering all through the ship, and wondered what it was. She was a little scared, but she didn’t let it show because she wasn’t a baby. Then her father came in, and told her it had been the main engines firing to slow them down enough that they could stop at the planet the next day. Everyone was very excited, and quite nervous.

They went into orbit around the planet, circling around it once every day. Soon, they discovered that there were already people living there, who called the planet Siba. The were all quite surprised to meet each other, but life on board the ship didn’t change very much for the first week or so. Karolita found a new favourite place on the ship, sitting at one of the windows and watching the sun shining down on the planet, seeing how the light swept across the surface. She thought it was very pretty, and made a picture of it.

When the Captain came to the school for his visit – because it was very important to him that the children knew him – he brought a visitor, called Na’an. All the children went very quiet when Na’an came in, because he looked so odd. He was very tall – taller than all the men on the ship – and very thin, like a skeleton. And he was covered all over with pale blue fur.

He seemed very interested in everything they were doing, and he walked around the room with the Captain and looked at the work they had on their desks and the decorations they had on the walls. He was especially impressed by the pictures, and he told them that only a few people on their planet could make pictures like that.

Karolita decided it would be nice if the Sibans had more pictures. She found the picture she had drawn of the planet. It was one of her best ones, and she quite wanted to keep it, but she knew she could always make another. So she took out the picture and gave it to Na’an. He was very happy, and he gave her a big hug in return.

The next day, at breakfast, Karolita’s father told her she had the day off school. She was quite excited, because she didn’t always like it there, but she was confused as well. Usually she had to go to school no matter what was happening. Her parents wouldn’t tell her – they just dressed her up in her nicest clothes and sent her to sit in the main room and watch a vid.

Then, a little while later, there was a knock at the door. When Karolita’s mother, who had stayed home from work specially, opened the door, it was Na’an. He greeted her with a bow, then held out his hand to Karolita. She was a little nervous about taking it, because his fingernails looked extremely sharp, like claws. But he was very gentle, and she soon felt completely safe.

They walked around the spaceship until they reached one of the places where the smaller ships docked with it. Na’an opened the door, and she walked through to find herself in a little room with other people like him. She was very confused now, because she had been pretty sure there was no room there. One of the other people, a scientist whose name was Ci’en, explained that the people from Siba had built it as an end point for the elevator down to the planet’s surface. She had to tell Karolita twice, because the first time Karolita got distracted by the way Ci’en’s fur was made up of slightly different shades of delicate green.

Na’an took her all round the room, introducing her to his friends and showing her how things worked. More and more people from the ship came in, and eventually the room was totally full. Then Na’an gave the order to go back down to the planet, and Karolita realised that her special friend was the most important of the Sibans on the ship. She felt quite proud.

Down on the planet, Karolita realised that she felt quite light, and when she jumped she went a lot higher than she would on the ship. She kept on jumping until Na’an laughed at her, amused with her antics, and explained that it was because they had less gravity pulling them down than she was used to. All the other humans were walking with big steps, and none of them could stop their smiles at how silly they looked.

Na’an had to go do some work, so he left Karolita with Ci’en, and they went to see the gardens in the centre of the capital city. Karolita was overawed at the number of people walking past – there were a lot more than lived on the ship. She noticed that their fur was mostly pale, with cold colours like blue, green and purple. Some of them were white, and she asked Ci’en if they were old – but Ci’en said that they were just another group of people. The few rich colours belonged to the children, who were supposed to be in school.

Eventually, they got to the gardens and Karolita drew a picture to give to Ci’en, and another one for her mother who would have loved to see them, being a gardener herself. They were lush and green and had lots of pretty flowers and tall, tall trees, bigger than any Karolita had ever seen.

After wandering round the gardens, it was time to go back to the ship, and Karolita was very sad. But Ci’en and Na’an told her that she could come back down and see them no matter what, and maybe her people would decide to come and live on the planet. Then they could see each other all the time. They gave her a lovely flower from the gardens to make sure she would remember them.

Karolita was very happy. She went home, and to bed, and set the flower on her bedside table. That night, she dreamed of picking the flowers of Siba for the rest of her life.