Lucy and the Rocket Dog

by Will Buckingham

  Then Lucy came to the end and realized that she had no more to say. “That is all I have to tell you,” she said. “And so I want to thank you all for your patience in listening to my talk. I want to thank my mom and dad, who are so happy to see me standing here today. I want to thank my old teachers, all my friends at the observatory, all of you in the audience—and of course the Nobel Committee for Physics, who have awarded me this honor.”

  She hesitated again, and her voice became very small and quiet. She looked up to the roof of the auditorium, as if she could see straight through it to the skies beyond, and she said, “But most of all, I want to thank you, my lovely Laika. This prize is dedicated to you.” Then she smiled softly and lowered her head.

  There was silence for a moment. A loud sob came from the second row. The woman in pearls pulled out a huge handkerchief, dabbed her eyes, and blew her nose. She rose to her feet. “Bravo!” she cried in a deep, rumbling voice. “Bravo!”

  Then somebody else at the back stood up and shouted, “Laika! Bravo for Laika!” And all of a sudden, everybody in the auditorium was on their feet and cheering, and shouting, and sobbing and hugging each other and calling out Laika’s name, and saying, “Bravo!” And Lucy, standing in front of them all, smiled through her tears and held up the photo of Laika, and the photo was projected on the screen behind her.

  Oh, Laika! she thought. My brave, beautiful Laika!

  Once the evening was over, when they were back in the hotel, Lucy sat quietly with her mom and dad, sharing a cup of cocoa before bed. It had been fun being with all the important, glamorous people at the award ceremony, but they were glad that it was over. “We’re proud of you, Lucy,” her dad said. “We’re really proud.”

  Her mom smiled and reached out to hold her hand. “We’re proud of you both,” she said. “Both you and Laika.”

  “Me too, Mom,” said Lucy. “Me too.”

  They finished their cocoa and said good night. Then Lucy went to her room and she closed the door. She put on her moon-and-stars pajamas. Then she stood by the big window of her hotel room and looked out over the city. The night was clear, and she could see the moon hanging over the rooftops. She gazed at the sky for a long time.

  There is no way Lucy could have known, no way she would ever know, that while she was looking up at the sky from her hotel in Stockholm, Laika was spending her days with the space dogs, chasing three-eared rabbits, having fun on a distant planet with its bobble trees, and then curling up to snooze contentedly at night in the grass. There are a lot of things in the world that there is no way of knowing, however good your telescope or however hard you look and think about them.

  Sometimes, when Lucy looked at the sky, she thought that it was as if she didn’t know very much at all.

  As for Laika, this was the best holiday she had ever had. Not only were there bobble trees and funny-smelling grass and dogs to play with and rabbits to chase, but there were rivers to leap into, and places to roll around and have fun, and sandy bits of ground where you could spend hours digging holes, and bushes that you could hide under and then leap out from to surprise your friends, and it was as close to paradise as it could be—all except for one thing. And it was this one thing that made her feel just a little bit sad.

  Lucy.

  The days went past, and every day Laika missed Lucy just a little bit more.

  LUCY, Laika thought as she chased the space rabbits.

  LUCY, she thought as she played with the space dogs.

  LUCY, she thought as she lay down to sleep in the odd-smelling grass.

  LUCY, she thought as she looked up at the bobble-shaped trees.

  LUCY, she thought as she muttered and twitched and whimpered in her dreams.

  LUCY, she thought as she dug holes in the sand, as she swam in the river, as she played with the space dogs, as she chomped on tasty space dog biscuits.

  LUCY.

  LUCY.

  LUCY…

  The final few days in Sweden were busy. Lucy went to the award ceremony two days after her speech and met the king of Sweden. She thought he seemed nice but a little tired. But then, being a king must be hard work, she thought. “I watched the recording of your speech,” the king said when he met her. “You must have loved Laika very much.” Lucy wasn’t sure, but she thought the king looked a little teary.

  Lucy thought that it was nice of the king to mention Laika. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  Lucy’s mom and dad had fun exploring the city. Lucy had lots of official things to do and had to appear on television and radio and in the newspapers. Everybody was very kind and friendly. But by the last night she had had enough of the limelight and was ready to go back to the observatory.

  They flew home at night. Lucy looked out of the plane window, high above the clouds. The frosty stars winked at her. She winked back just once. Then she smiled to herself. And somewhere a long way off—to be precise, twenty-five trillion six hundred and thirteen billion two hundred and sixty-three million two hundred and ninety-six thousand and fifty-five miles away, more or less, which is more miles than you could ever count—Laika looked up at the sky and thought of Lucy.

  So there they were, twenty-five trillion six hundred and thirteen billion two hundred and sixty-three million two hundred and ninety-six thousand and fifty-five miles apart, both of them looking at the sky and wondering.

  Then Lucy sighed and closed her eyes. The plane engine throbbed and hummed in the background. Lucy slipped into sleep. And as she slept, she had such vivid dreams that she could even hear Laika’s voice, as clear as it was when she had last heard it.

  Woof! Woof! WOOF!

  She woke up just as they were coming in to land.

  Woof! Woof! WOOF!

  Laika woke up and barked at the two suns rising in the sky. LUCY! she thought.

  A space rabbit popped up over the hill, waving its three ears.

  LUCY! she thought.

  Two of her new friends came and nuzzled with her and barked in a way that meant “Let’s play!”

  LUCY! she thought.

  And then Laika felt like she didn’t want to play anymore. She lay down on the grass and put her snout on the ground, and her ears flopped to either side, and she started to whimper.

  LUCY! she thought.

  LUCY!

  LUCY!

  The space dogs, seeing that Laika seemed out of sorts, clustered around to see what was wrong, their propeller tails spinning in consternation.

  “Aruff! Gnuffl! Rhaaoww! Grunff!” said one dog.

  “Wowff! Aruff! Aruff!” said another.

  “Hnuff! Rhaoow! Rhaaow!” said a third.

  And if anybody had been around to translate, anybody who had known the language of the space dogs, they might have understood the conversation like this:

  “This poor dog is missing home.”

  “Poor thing! She’s come so far!”

  “Let’s help her get back.”

  So the dogs nuzzled Laika’s ears to comfort her, and made friendly woofing noises, and led her back to the bone-shaped spaceship and up the ramp. Laika didn’t really know what was going on, but she knew that they were friendly and she trusted them. So she padded after them, back up the ramp, where she took a last look at the planet with its two suns and three-eared rabbits and the funny-smelling grass. Then she went to lie down in the comfy basket. The space dogs pulled up the ramp and there was a gentle humming sound.

  The bone-shaped spaceship took off, very gently, exactly the way that it had landed, and very soon the planet was just like a ball hanging in space. Then they popped through a wormhole with a noise that really can’t be described, and popped out the other side. When the ship was floating in the middle of space, just like a gleaming white bone, the space dogs led Laika back to the huge room where she had first arrived in the spaceship. There, where once Prototype I had been, was a large, ball-shaped space pod. It was very smart-looking, with lots of flashing lights on the outside and with an open door throu
gh which Laika could see comfortable cushions and places to sleep. In fact, it had everything that a dog might need for a journey.

  The space dogs said goodbye to Laika in the way that dogs do, nuzzling and sniffing, and Laika went up the steps into the space pod. The door closed behind her, very gently. The last thing she saw of the space dogs was the blur of their tails, spinning around and around to wish her good luck.

  After a few moments the space pod began to hum. It was much quieter than Prototype I. Then a hatch opened in the big, bone-shaped spaceship, and the little space pod blasted out of the hatch and into the blackness beyond.

  It began to get faster…and faster…and faster….

  Vrrroooooommmm! said the spacecraft, although the noise it made was much more quiet and polite than the noise made by Prototype I.

  Laika felt her body becoming heavier, just like it had before. “Owwwwwowow!” she said, but this time it was more out of excitement than out of fear, because Laika had already traveled through space once before, and when you do things for a second time, they are never as frightening.

  The spacecraft hurtled through the blackness. In Laika’s head there was one single thought.

  LUCY!

  When she was sixty-five years old, Lucy left the Observatory on the Hill, and she went back to the house in which she was born. She would miss being in the observatory, but she was tired and wanted some time to herself. Her hair was now white, and when she looked in the mirror, she thought that she looked old, and she didn’t really recognize herself. But then she would pull a funny face and the person in the mirror would pull a funny face back, and she would think, Phew, it’s still me!

  When Lucy moved back, she put all kinds of photographs on her walls. There were photographs of the observatory, of her giving the Nobel Prize speech, of her meeting the king of Sweden, of her mom and dad—who were no longer around, but whom she thought of a lot. Everything seemed like it was a long, long time ago. And right in the center, just above the fireplace, there was the picture of that summer holiday, when she was on the beach with her mom, her dad, and her brave little dog, Laika. The photograph was now really old and faded. But it was nice to sit drinking tea and eating biscuits, and look at Laika leaping into the air, and think about how happy they all had been.

  Lucy adjusted to her new life quickly. She gardened, she watched TV, she read books, and she spent time with old friends. She sometimes had tea and crumpets with Owen, who had spent most of his life painting pictures and had been quite successful.

  As well as keeping up with old friends, Lucy made new friends. In the rest of the time, she grew vegetables (she was particularly proud of her green beans) and she walked in the park and thought about things just as her dad had once walked in the park and thought about things. And life was good.

  Lucy was still an agreeable kind of person, a person who talked with enthusiasm about stars and planets and galaxies and nebulae. But she slept lightly during the night, as older people sometimes do, waking up often; and when this happened, she went and looked out of the window at the night sky, standing in her pajamas decorated with stars and moons, and thought about her past. And sometimes she would put on her dressing gown and go outside and set up her telescope, and look into the here, there, and everywhereness of space. And she would remember Laika.

  Occasionally, on those nights when she sat in the garden in her pajamas and looked at the stars while thinking about Laika, she thought, If only! If only I had locked the door of Prototype I! If only I had called Laika in for dinner when I went in for dinner! If only I’d been a normal little girl interested in normal little-girl things, and not in building space rockets! If only Laika had been a bit less silly and inquisitive! If only things had been different! But then she just said to herself, “Lucy, you are just being a silly old lady. There is no way of changing the past.”

  The years passed quietly. Lucy’s life was not really very exciting anymore. But she enjoyed the routine, and liked planting her bean sprouts in spring and seeing them grow and flower and produce long green beans in late summer and early autumn.

  Then one evening, several years after her return home, when Lucy was sitting in the garden in her pajamas, a head popped over the fence.

  “Hello,” said the head.

  Lucy was startled. She took her eye from the telescope. “Hello!” she said.

  The head grinned. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking at the sky,” Lucy said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking at you,” said the head. Then there was a scuffling as the owner of the head clambered up to sit on the fence and get a better look. “I’m Astrid,” said the owner of the head.

  “Astrid?” Lucy said. “That’s a good name. It means ‘star.’ ”

  “Does it?” asked Astrid. “I didn’t know that.”

  Lucy looked at Astrid. She was about the same age that Lucy had been when Laika disappeared into space.

  “We’ve just moved in next door,” said Astrid.

  Lucy smiled. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said.

  “Can I look through your telescope?” Astrid asked.

  “I suppose so,” said Lucy. “If you are careful.”

  “Brilliant!” said Astrid. Then she hopped over the fence and went over to where Lucy was sitting. “Nice pajamas,” she said.

  “Thanks,” said Lucy. She showed Astrid how to look through the telescope. They looked at Venus and Mars and the moon. Astrid asked all kinds of questions. They were there for a long time, until Astrid’s parents came and leaned on the fence and waved at her to come to bed.

  “Errerrrrrng…errerrrrrng…errerrrrrng…”

  Vrrroooooommmm!

  “Owwwwwowow! Woof! Woof!”

  The little space pod tumbled through space. As it did so, all those strange things that happen when you go very, very fast through space happened again, so that time went a bit bendy and funny, but in a way that—if you could do the sums like Lucy could do the sums—made perfect sense.

  Laika didn’t know anything about sums. She just lay on the comfy cushions in the spacecraft, and woofed occasionally, and pressed her nose to the glass of the window to look out at the sky, and thought of Lucy, and when the bell rang inside the spacecraft and food appeared in the bowl, almost by magic, she ate the food, and in this way she traveled across the vast black expanses of space, toward home.

  The journey back in the space dogs’ space pod was a little different from the journey she had taken in Prototype I. The vrooming was quieter. It was more a background kind of vroom, more than a hum, just loud enough so that you could call it a vroom. And for some reason, on the way home she was not floating all over the place, which made things much nicer.

  The space pod hurtled on. When Laika felt tired, she closed her eyes and slept. When she felt hungry, she ate. Most of the time she just dozed, neither completely asleep nor completely awake. When she slept, she dreamed of Lucy.

  Over the days that followed, while Lucy sat looking at the sky through her telescope in the evenings, Astrid came over more often. When the sun set, and the evening star appeared (which was in fact the same as the morning star, although it appeared at a different time of day), and when Astrid had finished her dinner, she said goodbye to her mom and dad, headed out into the garden, and hopped over the fence. Then she gave Lucy a hand setting up the telescope, and they drank hot chocolate together, and they looked at the stars and planets, and they talked.

  Lucy was pleased to have Astrid’s company; and Astrid was full of questions. She asked questions like, “How can the morning star be the same as the evening star?” and “Why does Saturn have rings?” and “What’s a nebula?” and “How many planets are there in the universe?” and “How big is space?”

  Lucy enjoyed answering Astrid’s questions and pointing out things through the telescope. But the thing about questions is that every time you answer one, another two or three pop up in its place, so there was really no shortage of
questions. Astrid seemed to be bursting with them. “What’s the speed of light?” “Why can’t anything go faster than light?” “What’s the difference between an asteroid, a comet, and a meteoroid?”

  Every evening, when it got late, Astrid’s mom and dad came outside and leaned on the fence, and waved at Lucy and said, “Come on, Astrid, it’s time for bed.” And Lucy waved back and said, “Oh, is that the time?” and Astrid clambered back over the fence and left Lucy sitting in the garden, staring up at the stars.

  Then one evening Astrid stopped in the middle of her questions and said, “Lucy, I’ve got one really big, really important question I want to ask you.”

  “What’s that?” Lucy asked, taking a sip of hot chocolate.

  Astrid looked thoughtful. “Why do you spend so much time looking at the sky?”

  “Well,” Lucy said, “because it’s interesting.”

  “And why else?”

  “I like stars and planets,” Lucy said.

  “But is that the only reason?” Astrid asked.

  Lucy thought for a moment. Astrid was clever. She was insightful. Lucy put her mug of hot chocolate down on the grass. She didn’t talk much about Laika these days. She preferred to keep things to herself. But she thought she might as well tell Astrid everything. “Well,” she said, “there are lots of reasons. But perhaps the real reason is that I do it for Laika.”