105. Leonid meteor shower

The Republic of Kenya in the east is bordered by Somalia to the east, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, Ethiopia and South Sudan to the north, and the Middle Equator in the middle.

It has 536 kilometers of coastline adjacent to the Indian Ocean, and only 18% of the country's total land area is used for agriculture. Of course, what makes this country world-famous is not only its importance on the African continent, but also the Great Rift Valley, which runs from north to south.

Archaeologists have unearthed fossilized human skulls in Kenya about 2.5 million years ago, one of the birthplaces of human beings on Earth, and in the 7th century A.D., Arabs began to trade and settle in the country.

Kenya joined the United Nations as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council only a few years ago in October, but their space force military base on the Continent of Light, located at a depth of 450 kilometers at the bottom of the Great Rift Valley in East Africa, has been established in parallel with the space forces of other countries around the world.

In October, Kenya began to enter the short rainy season, and the sky of the capital Nairobi was full of fine rain. Nairobi is one of Africa's largest cities and has an international flair, with friendly "karib" (welcome) greetings everywhere.

The city also has offices at the United Nations Africa Headquarters, which was once the only United Nations office-level body in a third world country, consisting of the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme and UN-Habitat, as well as the offices of other United Nations agencies in Kenya.

About 90 kilometres northwest of Nairobi is Lake Naivasha, near the Great Rift Valley. This freshwater lake is so crowded with tourists that even dignitaries from some countries come to visit Kenya when they visit it.

Sasim, a black man born and raised in Kenya, moved to Nairobi with his parents when he was four years old, and more than a decade has passed since then.

He didn't like to read much since he was a child, and his biggest dream was to be a patrol officer on the shores of the beautiful Lake Naivasha to fight against those pesky poachers for the country. When he grew up, he joined the Nairobi Police Academy as he wished, and after graduating, he wore a police uniform and held a baton and walked into the Naivasha Nature Reserve Police Station.

On the evening of October 13, it was Sassim's turn to be on duty. He and his colleague Daru drove a patrol car around the plateau at an altitude of nearly 1,900 meters.

"Hey, I said, let's go for a walk around the swamps to the north, shall we? The papyrus at night is certainly beautiful. Sassim suggested to Daru.

Daru is also passionate about his job as a Lake Ranger, as he especially enjoys watching the lake at night.

Lake Naivasha is like a giant sapphire, lying in the crook of the earth, covering the world with a velvety blue light. The blue light embraces the seemingly unreachable starry sky, and when people look at the lake, they can't tell whether they are in the world or the vast universe, so that the feeling of staying by the lake is as if they are sitting in the sky and reaching out to pick up a handful of stars from the lake.

Fascinated by the Nairobi nights, Daru wished he would never sleep, so he sat on the shores of Lake Naivasha all night long, admiring the sky beneath the lake, assuming that he was in heaven.

So as soon as Sasim proposed, he immediately agreed, and the two black boys slowly drove the police car to the swamp at a speed of 30 kilometers per hour.

They didn't turn on the roof lights, and even the lights were off. Anyway, the area was so familiar to them that they could count how many stones there were when they closed their eyes, and the artificial light only destroyed their sense of intoxication with the natural beauty.

When the police car came to the edge of the swamp, Sasim turned off the engine and sat in the dark with Daru without saying a word, filling the night of the rainy season with imaginary starlight, and the regret that there were no stars and no moon in the sky.

But within five minutes, Daru said to Sasim in a very low voice: "I have seen the constellation Leo in the northwest corner, which is denser than the constellation that appeared in April. ”

"You kid, don't be tired from playing football during the day, and now you're talking in your dreams, right?" Sasim didn't believe the strange thing Daru was saying at all, and sneered and looked to the southeast.

Daru stopped talking, and for a moment it was quieter than the dark swamp. But after another five minutes, he whispered again in amazement, as if he was afraid that the loud voice would scare away something: "There are more and more stars, but it's so beautiful!" ”

"I said you kid......"

"Ah~!!"

This was Sasim's exclamation as he turned his gaze to the northwest to confirm that Daru was indeed dreaming outrageously on patrol.

That sky, where Leo should appear every April, is a romantic sign, because the Leonid meteor shower usually brings mysterious and romantic fantasies to young people of their age.

However, it is autumn in October, or a drizzly night, how is it possible to find a sickle of six bright stars in the night? The strange phenomenon is much more than that, in that constellation, each star has reached the α, which is the brightest star, with an apparent magnitude of 1.35, blue-white star.

α star is 84 light-years away from Earth, could it be that all the stars in the constellation Leo are suddenly crammed into the same plane?

Sassim could no longer laugh at Daru, in fact he was so shocked that he couldn't keep his mouth shut. At the moment when he cast a glimpse into the northwest sky, a meteor shower began to erupt in the constellation Leo on a large scale, and countless dazzling stars dragged their light tails through the sky and whizzed towards the city, looking like they had been set up by some kind of large missile system to launch a targeted attack on Nairobi with star cannonballs!

"This ...... What's going on? ”

Sasim is not as introverted as Daru, and his first reaction when he notices the unusual celestial phenomenon is to scream, and at the same time, he uselessly grabs the police rifle from the back seat, pushes the car door and jumps out.

He came out just in time, and poor Daru was not so lucky, and several of the seemingly distant meteors actually changed their course and flew towards the swamp where the papyrus grew, although only one hit the police car, but the part that was hit was the fuel tank.

"Boom~~!"

A loud sound that shook the heavens and the earth sounded in Sassim's ears, and before he could come back to his senses, a powerful air current lifted him off the ground and slammed him into a rock pile far away from the swamp bank.

The gun in his hand flew out of his hand, and he didn't know where he landed, and Sasim's body fell into the pile of stones along the smooth parabola, and his forehead hit a stone with sharp corners, and he quickly lost consciousness.

The last images that remained in his mind were police cars burning in flames, and papyrus that were also in the flames of hell.

Before Daru ...... fell unconscious, he called out the names of his companions in grief.