The next morning, Pnecasto, a chauffeur at the palace, had ready at 3 Ungi in the underground garage a white V30 limousine when the queen and I descended from her office in her private elevator. The limousine was necessary as I had lots of baggage for my trip to Mli. Pongdoir Expressway proved emptier than usual and Pnecasto had us out at Pongdoir Field, 90 miles northeast of Eldor Palace, in half an earthly hour.

There was a painted red ramada in a little park just across the way from the entrance to the field, and Udi had suggested we come early so we could eat a picnic breakfast before I climbed aboard the spacecraft, especially as it would take Pnecasto time to oversee the stowing of my baggage. Queen Udi was always grateful to escape the palatine routine on any pretext whatsoever and this brief interlude was perfect. She had brought plum cakes and sour cream, with pieces of cold chicken on poppyseed buns, and hot tuco in a stainless Ungi thermos jug. We had a leisurely repast before the mandarin-colored discus of the dawning sun, and after stretching sleepily we rose and crossed into the gates, presenting passes to the guards who sentried there.

On the field stood seven towering spaceships, Ungi Stars, about 200 feet in height, on launching pads here and there and yonder. I cringed just a bit but tried to hide my nervousness from Udi. I was escorted in a military car to the nearest spaceship, 500 feet away, and I began to climb the ladder to the module near the nose. I could see Queen Udi down below becoming smaller and smaller as I ascended. Then I disappeared into the hatch of the ship called Ungi Star III.

Soon five rockets were unsheathed from the fuselage and thrust smartly in a centrifugal direction till they stood well clear of the body of the ship. A minute later, the titanic silver bullet rose on lengthening shafts of fire in a sea of flame that billowed on the pad. Ripping through the clouds, the spaceship stabbed the sky, went screaming through the stratosphere and tore the cosmic ether all asunder. Then the rockets were withdrawn into receptacles inside the fuselage and sealed with sliding plates, but nothing was detached or jettisoned. The ship remained entire. The extra-light metallic alloy atlantite-10 had revolutionized our aerospace technology.

A while later, I could see the curvature of Nya, now a great white luminescent globe against the jet-black satin stole of night. Faintly I descried the outline of the continent of Eb and in the center of it a minuscule blotch, the city of Mecnita, wherein were Eldor Palace and Queen Udi. Was she the only Udi in creation? Or were there a million Udis in a million far-flung galaxies? Were there countless other worlds just like my own, where ladies smiled and children played, where cattle lowed and crickets chirped? Was there a better world somewhere? A world without night and winter, poverty and death? Was there an eden or a heaven?

Such vagrant musings occupied my mind for the 12 earth-hours we flew to get to Mli. Our speed was 40,000 miles an hour. Mli is larger than the Moon and farther out from Nya than the Moon is from the Earth, with a mass density exceeding that of Nya but a comparable atmosphere, somewhat more rarefied and of a deeper blue, with great changes in the relative duration of light and darkness. In equatorial Mecnita, sunup, noon and sundown portion out the day in equal quarters, but cities in the upper latitudes, like Kara Darya and Kholodsk, enjoy white nights in summer and undergo black days in winter, but that is Nya. Mli, however, rotates on its proper axis but revolves on Nya-fixed axes, with Nya atwirl in its own right, and it's hard to guess what's what.

My mission upon Mli would be investigation of the Vrikshayas and the legend of their lunar provenance. We did not expect that they'd originated in the Shwean kingdom at any rate, but maybe there were other, more sophisticated countries on that single populated satellite of ours. Eventually we had Mli before us and our trajectory came to a point of tangency with the orbit we would trace around the moon. Ojojonia and Olofarxt-a woman and a man-who would be my two companions in descent, entered the module with me. Minutes after that, the module separated, advancing in a spiral of contracting radius, and we could see the attitude-controlling rockets firing as we rolled or yawed or pitched-mostly pitching in a nose-down course-till finally we landed, with a manual assist at the navigational devices, in Qabjang Stadium in Qabjang, Shwea.

A ladder was let down, and Olofarxt and Ojojonia and I, first letting down our baggage, climbed down ourselves. Nya, the mother planet, with a mean diameter of 18,607 miles and a light specific mass of 2.5, has gravitational acceleration of 10.41 meters per square second, so that an earthling of 300 pounds would weigh 318 pounds on Nya, and naturally I have corrected for this everywhere in this account of mine. In any case, this is a nugatory difference, whereas the difference from Nya to Mli was indeed considerable. Suddenly, I felt as weightless as meringue or papier-maché and raised my feet a yard at every step, though I'd been coached and trained for this before the trip. The more experienced astronauts, Olofarxt and Ojojonia, fared much better.

(From A Tale of Ung, Chapter 10)

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About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far.

I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents.

Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com

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