Voyage of the Dogs

by Greg Van Eekhout

Champion’s smell didn’t quite match what she was saying. She smelled . . . uncertain.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No,” Lopside said. “Just . . . I’m sure we’ll be okay. We’ll hear back from Earth, and then all we have to do is hang on long enough for a rescue mission to find us.”

  “Of course. But right now I need you to go to the agricultural dome. And I need you to shut off the solar lamps.”

  She said it so plainly, as if she’d ordered him to turn off a light in a storage closet, or clean up a spill. But her terse command was so much more than that. It was big and awful.

  “I’ve been monitoring the dome’s energy use,” Champion went on. “The lamps are a massive drain on the batteries, and they’re less critical than oxygen production and heat. We can’t afford to keep them running.”

  Turning off the solar lamps would kill the vegetable crops. They would wilt and wither and turn brown and dead. Arriving on Stepping Stone with a supply of healthy, mature vegetables was part of the mission. Good dogs completed their missions.

  Lopside was speechless. A growl formed in his throat, and his tail wagged, but not with happy energy.

  Champion had been like this from the very first day of training on Earth. She liked to give orders. She liked to be in charge. She was good at it, Lopside had to admit, but he was a terrier. His ancestors were bred to be independent so they could search for vermin on their own, without needing anyone to tell them what to do.

  Shivering with pent-up tension, Lopside turned tail and left Champion alone to glow in the blinking lights.

  The first tomato lay cradled like a tiny green marble within the fuzzy leaves of a tomato plant. If given water and allowed to bathe in the warmth of the solar lamps, it would grow plump and red and juicy. Given time, all the crops would burst with vegetables.

  Lopside moved to the control panel. He drew a deep breath through his nose and held it. The agricultural dome no longer contained even a ghost of Roro’s smell. All that was left was her work, the results of all those long hours she and Lopside had spent together, digging in the dirt to raise crops. There were still seeds in storage, but it would take weeks for them to mature into food-bearing plants after landing on the planet. And who would eat them? Dogs couldn’t thrive on a mostly vegetable diet.

  That’s why Champion’s order to shut off the lamps made sense. Without the human crew, the crops weren’t necessary. They were a waste of energy.

  With a whimper, Lopside pressed his paw to a big, rectangular button and pushed. Overhead, with a soft buzz, one of the solar lamps faded to black like a dying star. Within seconds it already felt colder in the dome.

  There were four more lamps, and Lopside killed them all. When he was finished, he sat in the dark between crop rows until the cooling soil chilled his belly.

  There was still work to do in the dome. Stasis chambers held the embryos of sheep and goats and pigs and cows. When the crew reached Stepping Stone, the embryos would be grown into livestock for the outpost’s farm. All the chamber’s status indicators were still glowing green, a little bit of light to comfort Lopside’s darkened heart.

  He moved on to inspect the EggHab. Glass-doored boxes each held half a dozen eggs, some from chickens, some from ducks, some from geese. The eggs were held in stasis so that they wouldn’t hatch until the Laika reached her destination. But afterward? The outpost would have whole flocks of clucking, quacking, honking birds. Unless Champion ordered him to shut the EggHab down, too.

  And if she did?

  Lopside wasn’t sure how much longer he could remain a good dog.

  He went down the row of chambers, checking the readouts to make sure everything was in order. Things looked fine until he got to the last chamber. The lights were off, the readouts blank. He pressed his nose right up to the glass door and sniffed. Bitter odors of burning plastic and the chemical stink of melted wire insulation snaked into his sinuses.

  The now-familiar sensation of dread filled his stomach like a cold rock. The chamber was dead, that much was clear. But what about the eggs?

  Two possibilities.

  One, the eggs and the tiny, developing chicks inside were done for.

  Or two, the eggs were okay, but they were no longer in stasis. Now, it was the same as if they’d been freshly laid. How long before the chickens hatched? He thought back to his training.

  Three or four weeks. If kept warm, if protected, if looked after like precious, delicate treasures.

  Champion’s orders were to notify her at once of any systems failures. And Lopside would do just that.

  Right after he finished stuffing the eggs in the pockets of his backpack.

  Of course, he couldn’t keep the eggs there. They needed more protection than his backpack could provide. So he’d tell Champion after he found a good, toasty place to store them.

  Of course, Champion might decide they should eat the eggs, since food was running so low.

  So, he’d tell her just as soon as the eggs hatched.

  On the other paw, Champion might decide they should eat the chickens for the same reason she might decide they should eat the eggs.

  What if Lopside waited to tell Champion until the chicks grew up and started laying eggs of their own? That was the whole point of chickens. They were little food factories.

  The only problem with waiting for the eggs to hatch and the chicks to grow up to be chickens and the chickens to get old enough to lay more eggs was that the Emergency Rations Pellets would run out long before then.

  So maybe the best thing to do was to keep the chickens secret forever.

  It was such a stupid plan that Lopside bit his own tail out of irritation.

  Well, he’d tell Champion at some point. But not now.

  He found a perfect place in the engineering module to hide them, a dark and cozy corner warmed by heat between two thermal junctions. A pair of crew coveralls made a decent nest.

  “I’m going to get you safely to Stepping Stone, little eggs. You’re going to grow up to be plump chickens, scratching in the dirt of your new home planet. I promise you this.”

  A smell wafted into Lopside’s nostrils, a mix of slobber and exuberance, and it came with the clumsy slap of paws on the deck.

  Lopside hurried to conceal the eggs in the folds of the coveralls.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  Lopside turned to face towering Daisy.

  “Hunting for rats. The usual. It’s my usual thing. The usual thing I do. Why? What are you doing?”

  “Running around.” She pawed at the rubber ball she’d dropped at her feet. “It’s my usual thing. You should run with me sometime.” She dropped into a play bow, her butt in the air and her tail wagging with hope.

  Running sounded like the best idea Lopside had ever heard. It would get him and Daisy out of the engineering module and away from the eggs.

  “I would like that, Daisy. I would like that very much. Let’s go running right now.”

  “Okay!” Daisy’s tail wagged hard enough to fly off and punch another hole in the hull. She really, really, really liked to run. Her legs started to vibrate, and slobber ran over her tongue like a waterfall. In an open space, or even in the ship’s passageways, this was acceptable and even normal. She was just a colossal puppy. But in the confines of the engineering module, so close to the fragile eggs?

  “Daisy, this isn’t a good place to play.”

  But Daisy wasn’t listening to anything but the irrepressible buzzing in her head. She threw herself on the ground and wriggled around, smashing into machinery.

  “Come on out in the passageways. I’ll race you,” Lopside barked. His current mission was getting Daisy out of the engineering module and away from the eggs.

  Daisy did go running, but not in the passageway. Instead, she careened around the engineering module, colliding into conduits and hurtling over control consoles in a gray blur.

  Her paw landed on her rubber ball and sent it rolling right for the eggs. She
launched herself to retrieve it, and Lopside leaped to block her, but it was like trying to stop a rocket by throwing a lima bean at it. He bounced off her and landed hard on the deck.

  Daisy was too wound up with puppy mania to even notice. And she was still heading for the thermal junction where the eggs were hidden.

  Lopside drew in a painful breath and screamed, “Don’t crush the eggs!”

  Daisy skidded to a halt, her giant paws a fraction of an inch away from a collision with the wadded-up coveralls.

  She poked her nose in the nest, then cocked her head at Lopside.

  “Eggs?”

  “Move,” Lopside said, nudging Daisy away. He peeled back the coveralls and nosed the eggs. There weren’t any cracks.

  “Eggs!” Daisy exclaimed.

  “Yes. But it’s a secret. Don’t tell any—”

  “You laid eggs!”

  “Shhh, Daisy! I just told you, it’s a secret.”

  But the harm had already been done. Bug’s scent entered the engineering module, and then he was next to the thermal junctions, scratching himself with his hind leg.

  “What’s a secret?”

  “Lopside laid eggs!” barked Daisy. “Lopside’s not a dog! Lopside is a chicken!”

  “I’m not a chicken, you big sofa.”

  Daisy screwed her forehead into a befuddled frown. “If you’re not a chicken, then how did you lay eggs?”

  “He didn’t lay eggs,” Bug said. “Those are from the EggHab, aren’t they, Lopside?”

  With reluctance, Lopside explained the EggHab malfunction.

  Daisy still didn’t quite understand why they needed to be kept secret, but Bug got it right away.

  “Champion might consider them food,” he said.

  Lopside’s jaw felt twitchy. “I know.”

  “She wouldn’t be wrong.”

  “Will you help me keep them secret anyway?”

  “Sure,” Daisy said.

  Bug fidgeted. He vibrated with a low growl. Lopside knew he was asking a lot. It wasn’t just that Champion was lead dog. It was that she was part of their pack. Even when the dogs disagreed, even when they argued, even when they fought, they were still a pack. Packs didn’t keep secrets from each other.

  “Okay,” Bug said at last.

  Lopside let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

  “Thank you.”

  Bug grunted and walked away.

  Watching him go, Lopside sensed that something had been broken. Something more crucial than any system on the Laika.

  Seven

  “CHAMPION WANTS US IN command-and-control.”

  Lopside was deep into a garbage chute, clearing up a waste blockage, and Bug’s voice sounded distant in the dark. Champion had picked Lopside for the job since he was small enough to get through the tight space and was the pack’s best digger. His paws were sticky with goop, and for the first time in his life, he craved a bath.

  “Is it about the—?”

  He should have told Champion about the chickens. A good dog would have done so. Who was a good dog? Not Lopside.

  Bug cut Lopside off before he could finish the question.

  “We got a message back from Earth.”

  Lopside’s heart thudded with hope. There was only one more day before the communications window closed, and with each passing hour, it seemed more and more unlikely they’d hear anything. Lopside had begun to worry that he’d done something wrong when he’d rotated the communications dish and barked the message. He’d begun to worry he’d failed his mission.

  He flew from the chute and raced Bug to the command-and-control module.

  “We have a message?” he panted as soon as he reached the module. Daisy and Champion were already there.

  “Affirmative,” Champion said. She rose up on her hind legs to reach the comm systems control panel and pawed a button.

  The dogs fell silent as a hiss filled the air.

  “Dogs of the Laika,” came a man’s voice, a little crackly, a little twangy. “We have received and decoded your message. We share your sorrow at the loss of the Laika’s crew. We have received no distress signal from the lifepod. The lifepod is very small, and space is very big.”

  “We know that,” Lopside said with a growl. “Do they think we’re stupid?”

  Champion struck a hushing posture. Lopside shut up.

  “Sadly,” the twangy man went on, “this means there is almost zero chance a rescue mission would succeed in locating the lifepod. We must accept that the human crew is lost and beyond recovery. We honor their bravery and sacrifice.” The voice paused. It cleared its throat. “Who’s a good dog? You are. You are all good dogs.”

  And that was it.

  Nothing about a rescue mission for the dogs. No instructions on how to repair the failing ship.

  Nothing but a useless message, and then a return to the silence of space.

  “We’re abandoned,” Lopside said.

  Eight

  BEFORE DOGS, THERE WERE WOLVES. Wild creatures who hunted at night, who bloodied their muzzles in the carcasses of their prey. Lopside’s favorite story was the one about how wolves became dogs, and how dogs and humans became friends. The story was contained in The Great Book of Dogs, just one of the many books Roro kept on her tablet.

  Before hibernation, Roro would put the dogs to bed every night. She would give Daisy a ball to chew, because Daisy couldn’t sleep without one, and she’d scratch Bug behind his ears, and she’d brush Champion’s golden coat. Lopside would roll over on his back so Roro could scratch his belly. Then Roro would tell the pack a bedtime story.

  Curled up in the kennel, listening to the snores and rumbling stomachs of his packmates, Lopside wished Roro were here to tell him a bedtime story now. He would give almost anything to hear her voice. Or any human voice. Except for the one over the radio telling the dogs they were alone.

  Dogs needed human voices, and it was a need that went back thousands and thousands of years, before there were starships or computers, when humans were bound to the planet and lived in caves or shelters of animal hide. But even before dogs, wolves had learned to approach humans, because although the two-legged animals were dangerous, with their spears and arrows, they had something wolves wanted: garbage.

  Garbage was food. On the rims of their camps, the humans would toss away scraps of meat, morsels of fat, bones that the wolves could break with their jaws to suck down the rich, nutritious marrow. The wolves took from the humans, but they also gave back in return. They frightened away other predators. When danger approached, they howled and snarled and woke the humans from their sleep. It took thousands of years, but eventually the humans and wolves formed a bond. It was an uncertain bond, and it was a bond that was often broken, but it was a bond.

  A few of the wolves became the humans’ companions. And over a great, long time, the wolves that lived with the humans changed.

  The wolves evolved into dogs.

  “Dogs and people,” Roro used to say. “It’s hard to imagine one without the other.”

  Back in training, she’d told the pack that as long as people and dogs had lived together, they’d been changing each other. Dogs changed the way people hunted. Dogs changed how people traveled and how they lived. But humans changed dogs even more. They bred dogs with traits they found useful—like the ability to run fast, or to crawl into holes after rodents. Humans came to depend on dogs for all kinds of jobs. There were dogs that could help guide people who couldn’t see through busy city streets. There were dogs that could sniff out bombs. Even dogs that could smell a person to detect certain diseases. Dogs were bred for their skills, and for size and coat length and temperament, and for dozens of other traits. As a result, dogs became the most varied species on Earth, from the four-pound Chihuahua to the 250-pound English mastiff.

  By the twenty-second century, breeding and training and genetic engineering had turned dogs into the most intelligent animals on Earth, with the possible e
xception of humans. Technology had given dogs longer lifespans. It had given them the ability to see the same colors humans saw. They were still dogs, but dogs with even more ability to work alongside humans.

  Humans used technology to change themselves, too, so they could communicate with dogs better. They invented brain implants that translated dog barks and body postures and even dog odors into human language.

  Humans and dogs belonged together. It was a belonging that began with campfires in the dark night and advanced in the light of science. Humans wouldn’t be the humans they were without dogs, and without humans, there might have never been dogs at all.

  Many of the stories in The Great Book of Dogs showed what dogs were willing to do for their humans. Roro read to them about Guinefort, a greyhound who belonged to a knight in medieval France. One day the knight left his infant son alone in the castle (very irresponsible of him, Lopside thought), and when he came home, his son’s bedroom was spattered with blood. Thinking Guinefort had murdered the boy, the knight killed his dog with an arrow. Only later did he notice the dead snakes near his son’s bed. And his son, alive, in a different part of the castle. Guinefort had fought the snakes off and saved the infant’s life. For hundreds of years, people honored Guinefort as a saint and prayed to him as a protector of babies.

  Roro read to them of Balto and Togo, just two of the 150 sled dogs who fought through 674 miles of blizzards and temperatures less than fifty degrees below zero to deliver medicine to Nome, Alaska. They prevented the death of thousands of people during an outbreak of the lethal disease diphtheria.

  Then there was Barry, a Saint Bernard who rescued more than forty people lost atop the icy peaks of the Swiss Alps.

  Lopside sniffed Roro’s sock and curled into a tight ball in his bed, trying to get warm. He wished he were like Balto and Togo and Barry, who must have been accustomed to cold and snow and ice. Looking for more inspiration, he nosed through the table of contents of The Great Book of Dogs.

  His eyes landed on the chapter titled “Laika.”

  Laika was the first living creature to circle the entire Earth from space. She was a hero, and that was why the ship was named after her.