Mr. Kingham was beginning to perspire rather heavily. Lucy paused because here she had to think a bit. She screwed up her eyes and did the sums, which were not the easiest sums in the world.
“For us,” said Lucy, “almost two years would have passed.”
“Two years? That’s weird,” said Owen.
The rest of the students were sitting with their mouths open. They had never heard anything so strange and unlikely in all their lives.
“It’s to do with the speed of light,” Lucy said. “However fast you are going, the speed of light has to be the same. It’s the law. So although Owen is going really fast relative to us, the speed of light has to be the same for all of us. Which means, when you work it all out, that everything else—time and space and things like that—gets super squished. Don’t you see?”
The rest of the students continued to sit with their mouths open, which suggested that they didn’t see at all. Then Mr. Kingham interjected. “Did you do the sums in your head, Lucy?” he asked, his eyes wide in awe and wonder.
“Yes. It’s easy to work out. Let me write the equation on the board….” And she started to write out the equation, which looked something like this:
“Isn’t that right, Mr. Kingham?” asked Lucy.
Mr. Kingham frowned, as if he was thinking very, very hard.
“The equation is indeed correct, Lucy,” he sighed, after a long pause. “But I suppose we should check the sum.” He got out his pocket calculator and tapped away for quite a long time. Eventually he looked up. “Two years,” he said, “minus five or six weeks.” His voice was slightly weak and wobbly.
Lucy shrugged. “Yeah,” she said nonchalantly. “I didn’t bother mentioning the five or six weeks….”
Mr. Kingham stared at her. Lucy had done the sum in her head. He found this terrifying.
Then Mr. Kingham coughed. “OK, Lucy,” he said. “Your sum is perfectly correct. But I think that you will find this is my classroom. Could you please sit down?”
“OK,” said Lucy, perfectly pleasantly, because she really hadn’t meant to be any trouble. And she went to sit down.
Mr. Kingham wiped the sweat from his forehead. He sat for a few seconds with his head in his hands, wondering what to do with his clever pupil. He liked to think of time and space as nice tidy things. Time was a thing that could be split into little boxes, like a school timetable. And space was much the same. You only had to look at Mr. Kingham’s desk, the way he kept everything in what he thought was exactly the right place—the pencils lined up with the pens, the tidy stack of notebooks, everything at right angles, everything just so—to know what Mr. Kingham thought about space. And although he had learned about relativity when he was younger, he tried not to think about it too much, because it seemed a terribly untidy kind of idea, even if it was right. And when it came to ideas, Mr. Kingham was more interested in them being tidy than he was interested in them being right. But when he looked up, he saw a whole classroom full of hands in the air. Everybody except Lucy, who was smiling happily, and Owen, who was frowning and was clearly still thinking about what would happen if he were put in a rocket and sent far away from the classroom.
“Yes, Laura,” Mr. Kingham said, pointing to a small, unhappy-looking girl with her hand up.
Laura, her eyes huge, said, “So if Lucy is correct, and if that sum is correct, then if Owen went even faster in his rocket, by the time he came back home, we’d all be very, very old?”
Lucy grinned. “Yes,” she said. “If Owen went really, really fast, by the time he came back, we’d be super-old, like we were his grandparents.”
“That’s weird,” said Owen for a second time.
But then the bell rang for the end of the class, and everybody—Owen and Lucy and Laura—left the classroom, leaving only Mr. Kingham behind, who sat at his desk and stared out of the window, as if he had been hit by a comet, or an asteroid, or a meteorite.
Laika gazed out of the porthole. The bone came closer and closer, and got bigger and bigger.
BIG, BIG BONE, thought Laika.
This was as big a thought as she could muster. If she had been a much cleverer dog—if she had been more clever than any dog has ever been—she might have wondered how it could be that a bone could be that big; because if it was really a big bone, then the animal it came from must have been even bigger. Bigger than any animal that had ever lived. Bigger than an elephant, or the biggest dinosaur you could ever imagine, or a blue whale.
A second time Laika had the same thought. BIG, BIG BONE. A bit of drool came out of the corner of her mouth and started to drift—a floating ribbon of drool—across the inside of Prototype I.
Outside the window the bone started to turn around in the middle of endless, dark space, so that after a few moments it was facing Prototype I.
The bone hung there for a little while, in the middle of space. And Laika hung there for a little while, looking out of the window, in the middle of Prototype I, thinking the thought BIG, BIG BONE and drooling. Laika’s nose kept trying to tell her mouth that it clearly wasn’t a bone, because it didn’t smell like one. But Laika’s mouth had made up its mind, and eventually Laika’s nose gave up and went into a sulk.
Then something happened that, as far as we know, has never happened before in the history of the world.
The bone swallowed the dog.
Relativity was a strange business, Lucy thought. From one point of view, if you could do the sums, it was relatively easy. But from another point of view, it made your head spin until you were dizzy. It tangled you up in all kinds of odd speculations. It made the world a little bit puzzling. And this wasn’t a bad thing, because puzzling over the world was something that could be quite a lot of fun. Because Lucy was exactly the kind of person who liked puzzling over things, she decided that when she eventually finished high school, she would go to university to study astrophysics.
Although a long time had passed since they were both in Mr. Kingham’s science class, Lucy was still friends with Owen. Owen still wasn’t very good at science. But Owen was perfectly happy with this state of affairs. And although he didn’t like sums and things like that, and he wasn’t very practical and couldn’t mend sinks and things, he was very good at drawing, so he decided to become an artist.
One day Lucy called Owen on the telephone. “Owen,” she said. “I’m going to study astrophysics! I want to be an astronomer.”
Owen was really excited by the news. “Astronomy? Oh, brilliant!” he said. “I’m a Pisces!”
“You’re a what?” asked Lucy.
“My star sign,” Owen said. “I’m a Pisces. Aren’t you a Capricorn?”
Lucy sighed. “Not astrology, Owen. Astronomy.”
“Same difference,” said Owen, because it was all the same to him.
“No it’s not,” said Lucy sternly (Lucy could sometimes be stern if she needed). “Astronomy is a proper science. It’s about planets and stars and the here, there, and everywhereness of space.”
“What’s astrology, then?” Owen asked her.
“Astrology is about star signs, and telling the future, and working out whether you are going to be lucky in love. It’s not real science. It’s just stuff that people make up.”
Owen paused for a few moments. “Oh,” he said thoughtfully. “Well…you would say that. You’re just a typical Capricorn.”
Lucy sighed. Sometimes it was so hard to get people to understand what you were talking about.
—
The following year Lucy started her studies. She moved into a small, cozy room at the university, and the first thing she did was to put up a big poster of Einstein pulling a funny face. She then unpacked her telescope and stood it by the window so that in the evenings she could look at the sky.
Lucy started her classes. Her professor was called Professor Cassiopeia. She was tall and serious-looking, and she always wore smart jackets. Some people were a little bit scared of Professor Cassiopeia because she looked as if
she was terribly, terribly clever, but in fact she was one of the nicest people around, the kind of person you could ask to look after your cat while you were on holiday.
At the end of Lucy’s first year at university, Professor Cassiopeia took Lucy’s class on a trip to the Observatory on the Hill. The observatory was a place that you went to observe things—not ordinary things, but big and exciting things like stars and galaxies and nebulae and planets and moons. The observatory was in the middle of the desert, a long way from any large towns or cities, and through the roof of the observatory poked a giant telescope that pointed up to the heavens. If you want to look at the stars and to see them properly, it helps to be somewhere very, very dark. You can’t see many stars in the city because there is too much other light; but if you go to a place where there are no streetlights, you can see thousands upon thousands of them.
They were a small group: Lucy, seven or eight of her friends, and Professor Cassiopeia. They left early in the morning. They had to catch a bus, then a plane, and then another bus to get out to the observatory. They arrived in the late afternoon, tired out. But when they got to the Observatory on the Hill, they forgot all about their tiredness. The sun was setting, and they could see the satellite dishes and telescopes and domes of the observatory, and they all felt a thrill of excitement.
The observatory, Lucy thought, looked a bit like a medieval castle. But it was better than a castle, because castles are built by people who think that the world is big and terrifying and has to be kept away, while observatories are built by people who think that the world is amazing and exciting, and who want to find out as much about it as they possibly can.
The director of the observatory gave them a guided tour. They saw the computers and all the complicated equipment and the telescopes and even the observatory kitchen, where the astronomers went to chat and to make coffee, and where they often had their best ideas.
The director, a severe-looking man with a fine mustache, was an enthusiastic guide. The tour took two hours and ended at ten o’clock at night (astronomers are a bit like owls, and they prefer the night). But when the director waved goodbye, and the little group headed back down the steps to the parking lot to return to the bus, Professor Cassiopeia noticed that one seat was empty.
“Hmmm,” said Professor Cassiopeia. “Has anyone seen Lucy?”
“No,” everybody chorused.
Professor Cassiopeia sighed. She got off the bus and strode back up the steps of the observatory. She knocked on the door. The director popped his head out. “I think we’ve lost one,” she said.
—
It took a little while to track Lucy down, but at last Professor Cassiopeia and the director found her in the room with the biggest telescope of all. She was sitting peering into the eyepiece of the telescope, and when they came into the room, she did not look around.
Professor Cassiopeia thought that there was something about the way Lucy’s shoulders were hunched that made her seem a little sad. “Lucy,” she said softly, “we need to go.”
Lucy did not move. Professor Cassiopeia glanced sideways at the director. Then she went to stand beside Lucy. She cleared her throat. “Lucy,” she said again, “come on.”
Then Lucy took her eye away from the telescope and looked at Professor Cassiopeia and the director, and they saw that she was crying. “Lucy, what’s wrong?” they asked.
Lucy shook her head. “Laika,” she said. “I’m looking for Laika.”
The director and Professor Cassiopeia didn’t really know what she was talking about, but they smiled the kind of smile that means, Oh, well, I’m sure things will get better. Then Lucy wiped her eyes and smiled bravely back.
“Come on, Lucy,” Professor Cassiopeia said, “the bus is waiting.”
“OK,” said Lucy.
The director watched them both as they headed down the steps together. What a strange evening, he thought. I wonder what was wrong with that poor girl. And I wonder who Laika is….
The bone swallowed the dog. There is no other way of saying it. The big bone, gleaming whitely, bigger than any bone that had ever existed on Earth, turned in space, and one end opened up like a giant door, and it zoomed toward Prototype I, with Laika still inside, and swallowed the spaceship whole.
Bump. Bump. Thud. Crunch.
Laika yelped as Prototype I thudded to a halt inside the bone. Then Laika, who after a few days of floating in space was getting used to the sensation of her ears flapping lazily by her sides, found herself coming down to ground with a bump.
Now, if you were somebody like Owen, and didn’t really understand these things, you might ask, “A few days? How is this possible? Haven’t years and years passed since Laika’s liftoff?” But fortunately you are not somebody like Owen, and so you already know that relativity makes the passage of time a bit bendy and strange, and you already know that because Laika was going so very fast, and Lucy wasn’t, then what was several years for Lucy was only a few days for Laika. And if you were somebody like Lucy—and not many of us are—you would be able to do the sums, and by thinking about how much time had passed on Earth, and how much time had passed in Prototype I, you would be able to work out exactly how fast the spacecraft was going. And you would be even more amazed at Lucy’s skill, because Prototype I would be faster than any spacecraft had ever gone before.
As Prototype I bumped and crunched to a halt, a small shower of dog biscuits, and other bits and pieces that we needn’t think too hard about, came raining down around Laika. She put her paws over her eyes. Outside there was the sound of a hiss. Then the door of Prototype I—which had traveled so very far and so very fast, but which was after all only Prototype I, not II, or III, or IV, and so was in need of some refinement—fell off with a clang.
Laika lifted a paw from her eyes. She struggled to her feet. Her tail quivering, she trotted out of Prototype I and down the steps.
Laika emerged into a huge, open room with walls made of gleaming metal and enormous pipes and lots of things that flashed and beeped and hummed. It must have been six times as long as Lucy’s garden, and three times as wide, and as tall as a five-story house. Prototype I, from the outside, looked very small, and very battered. It looked like a spaceship that would never fly again.
WHERE AM I? thought Laika.
She put her tail between her legs and whimpered.
LUCY? she thought.
Then she heard something.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
Laika looked about her. She was sure that somebody had woofed. She knew a woof when she heard one, and she was more or less sure that the dog who had woofed was not her. She was pretty certain that when her ears had heard the sounds “Woof! Woof! Woof!” her mouth had been firmly shut. So it couldn’t have been her.
In which case, it must have been another dog.
She padded a little way from Prototype I.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
Laika stood completely still, her nose trembling. She was certain that it was not her doing the woofing. Somebody or other was woofing, and it was not her.
“Woof! Woof! WOOF!”
With the final woof, a door slid open at the far end of the big, gleaming metal room, and through the door bounded a very big, very friendly dog. The dog was shaggy and enthusiastic and a bit bigger than Laika, and its face was very approachable, and it hurtled across the big metal room toward Laika, woofing madly; and Laika, who was so happy to see another dog, started woofing back.
But then she stopped woofing, because she had a thought. THERE IS SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT THIS DOG.
“Woof! Woof!” barked the dog as it came closer.
Laika hesitated. The dog was more or less like a normal Earth dog, but it was different in a way that Laika could not put her paw on. Of course, there are all kinds of dogs on Earth: big dogs and little dogs, shaggy dogs and dogs without any fur at all, grumpy dogs and friendly dogs, dogs that smell nice and dogs that don’t smell so nice. But this dog didn’t seem quite lik
e any of them, and it took a few seconds for Laika to realize what it was that made it different.
The dog wagged its tail in a circle.
Most dogs wag their tail from left to right or from right to left; but this dog’s tail was going around and around, in a very friendly fashion, a bit like a propeller. It was a strange and puzzling sight. But before Laika had a chance to think it over, the propeller-tailed dog took another couple of bounds, then Laika and the dog were standing nose to nose.
They sniffed each other.
THIS DOG SMELLS VERY ODD, thought Laika.
Friendly, but odd.
Then the big, bone-shaped spaceship started to wobble, just so much that you could call it a wobble, and it started to shake, just so much that you could call it a shake, and if Laika had been able to see it from the outside, which she couldn’t because she was inside and you can’t really see the outside of something when you are on the inside of it, she would have seen the bone turn around and then zoom off, faster than a meteor or a comet, into the great blackness, into the here, there, and everywhereness of space.
But Laika was much more interested in the propeller-tailed dog, which seemed friendly and twirled its tail, and sniffed at Laika, and woofed just once and started to run to the far end of the gleaming metal room. Laika, who had always liked chasing other friendly dogs, and hadn’t done it for a long time now, four or five days at least, chased after, her tail wagging. And she was so filled with the joy of chasing things, which is one of the biggest joys that you can have if you are a dog, that she woofed her own woofs in response, and in this way the two dogs ran to the other end of the gleaming room, away from Prototype I, and out through the doors that opened and closed with an almost inaudible swoosh, and up a ramp into a big room where it was possible to look out into space, and see the stars scattered across the heavens, and see where several other dogs were looking very busy indeed. Some of them were doing very doggy things, like eating and chasing each other; but others were behaving in a fashion that was really very undoggy indeed. For example, some of them were pushing buttons with their noses and with their paws, and some of them were looking very closely at computer screens and making the kinds of sounds that dogs sometimes make when they are thinking very hard, or else when they are dreaming. The dogs that were not concentrating hard and staring at computer screens looked around at Laika and woofed in welcome and propellered their tails, which Laika assumed meant that they were pleased to see her. Laika woofed back.
Lucy and the Rocket Dog Page 5
