Voyage of the Dogs
Page 12
“Sorry, Bug,” Champion said. “We don’t have time for more tests. But we all have confidence in your work.”
“I don’t have confidence in my work,” Bug barked back. “One press of the button could kill us. We could be blasted apart. We could implode. We could be crushed, or splatted into kibble and jam.”
Daisy rolled around on the ground. “I don’t want to be kibble and jam.”
“I don’t think we have much choice,” Roro said. Her voice remained calm, but Lopside could hear how hard her heart was beating. “We fire the anti-gravitons now and risk death, or we never reach Stepping Stone.”
“We don’t know that,” Bug said. “We might figure out how to get the thrusters back online. We might find a way to get more power from the batteries. There’s still time.”
Lopside felt for Bug. Bug didn’t want to be responsible for killing his pack. Nobody did. Lopside could even smell Champion’s hesitation. He was so happy not to be pack leader right now.
“Champion,” he said, wanting to lift some of the weight off her shoulders. “Call for a vote.”
“Do it fast,” Roro said. “The clock’s ticking.”
Back in the old times, before the hull breach, before the crew abandoned the Laika, any human would be considered higher ranking than any dog. But Roro didn’t presume she should make all the decisions. They were all part of the same pack, and Roro recognized that she wasn’t pack leader.
Champion cleared her throat. She shook off nervous energy and then adopted her best Champion pose.
“All in favor of pushing the button—”
She didn’t get all the words out before Lopside and Daisy raised their right paws. Champion raised her own paw.
“That’s three out of the five of us,” Roro said. “A majority. And I’m with you.” She raised her right hand.
Bug growled. “We’re probably going to die, but we might as well make it unanimous. Barkonauts, together.” His paw went up.
At the control panel, Roro rolled up her sleeve, her finger hovering over the button that would either get them to Stepping Stone or kill them in a very unpleasant way.
“Wait,” said Champion. “Lopside is the member of this crew most responsible for reminding us that our job is to complete our mission. There were times I felt like quitting, but Lopside wouldn’t let me, even when I was trapped under a hatch with a broken leg. I think he should have the honor of pushing the button.”
Bug and Daisy wagged their tails in agreement.
Lopside didn’t know what to say, but he managed to bark out, “Thanks.”
Roro reached down and lifted him to the top of the control panel. She patted his back and scritched behind his ears, and Lopside lifted his fateful paw over the button.
“Together,” he said, bringing his paw down.
Epilogue
LOPSIDE LAY IN THE SUN, warming his belly in the purple grass. A gentle breeze rustled long-stemmed flowers that didn’t yet have a name. The air smelled of spicy tree bark and rich, fungal earth. It smelled damp and green and strange and wonderful.
A few yards off, chickens clucked and scratched in the dirt. And off on a hill not too far in the distance, calves and lambs and goat kids grazed with the flash of Bug’s black-and-white-and-tan fur weaving among their legs. The occasional bleat or moo of complaint rang out when Bug took a nip at an ankle.
Bug was having the time of his life, but he was still doing his job, and Lopside felt a bit guilty for lazing about. Besides, it was almost time for the pack to gather. He got up and stretched, put his nose to the ground, and sniffed for rats.
He had not yet found a rat, or anything like a rat, in the five years since the Laika’s dome had set down on the planet. But he hadn’t given up. Stepping Stone was a big, rich, wild world. There had to be rats somewhere.
It had been a rough landing. A landing that cracked the dome glass and smashed the gravity generators. But, as Roro had said, any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.
They didn’t need the gravity generators anyway. Stepping Stone had gravity of its own.
Lopside crossed the meadow to the shore of the fish pond. He called out to Champion, who was paddling across the water. Her smile of mad joy was infectious, and Lopside wagged his tail at her.
Most of the plants and bugs and hills and other land features on the planet didn’t have names yet, but the pond did. It was the very first thing they named, and they called it Lake Laika. And on its shore was a high stack of stones: a memorial to the Laika’s fallen crew. The stones were stained with pee, left by the pack as a sign of respect and remembrance.
“Is it time?” Champion barked.
“Just about.”
Champion swam to shore and shook water off her coat, soaking Lopside in the process. Lopside tried to bite her tail in retaliation, but Champion was too fast for him. She barked a laugh and sprinted off toward the dome. Lopside followed, and Bug left the livestock behind to join them.
They smelled and heard Daisy before they saw her, a great galloping commotion sending up clouds of butterfly-like insects with silver wings the size of dinner plates. She ran for miles every day. She wasn’t a puppy anymore, but no amount of exercise could ever curb her energy. She rolled in dirt the color of boysenberries until Roro came out of the dome.
The dogs swarmed her and demanded pets and scritches as if they hadn’t seen her in forever. They greeted her the same way every time, even if the last time they’d seen her had been five minutes ago.
Roro was filthy, dirt smearing her knees and cheeks. She’d been in the dome, tending the season’s crops. With the wild vegetables and grains she cultivated, and the fish that lived in Lake Laika, the pack was well fed.
Roro checked her watch and pointed to the sky. “Right on schedule,” she said.
Lopside followed the direction of her finger and spotted what she was pointing at.
There was a light in the daytime sky, brighter than any star. It was getting brighter, and it was falling: the second mission to Stepping Stone.
Twenty human crew members. Two more cows, six more sheep, six more goats, twelve more chickens. And eight more dogs.
No rats, as far as Lopside knew, but he would never stop hoping.
Acknowledgments
LIKE THE BARKONAUTS OF THE Laika, I depended on a whole pack of friends and colleagues to get this book all the way to its destination. Always first and foremost, thanks to my loving ground control, Lisa Will. In addition to constant support, Lisa provided her expertise as an astrophysicist to point out scientific errors and impossibilities in my story, and if any remain, they are entirely my fault.
Heartfelt thanks to my agent, Holly Root, who signed me as a client when I was a bit of a lost stray and who believed in my book, perhaps more than I did.
And my deepest respect and gratitude to my editor, Erica Sussman, who made this book so much better by asking the right questions and navigating me to the best answers; to Deanna Hoak, copy editor extraordinaire, for making me look good; Mark Frederickson for his cover and interior illustration that so well captures the essence of dog; Aurora Parlagreco for her beautiful book design; and Oliver Burston for the fantastic logo design. And to all the editorial, production, sales, marketing, publicity, and administrative crew at HarperCollins, thank you for everything you did to get this book into shape and launch it on its voyage.
Members of my own personal pack read the manuscript in early form, gave me encouragement and advice and cheered me on. To Tobias Buckell, Rae Carson, Deb Coates, C.C Finlay, Alan Gratz, Karen Meisner, Sandra McDonald, Sarah Prineas, thank you all. And a special thanks to Jenn Reese for naming my crew the Barkonauts.
Finally, to the pooches everywhere, without whom humans would be a very different and poorer species: You’re all good dogs.
About the Author
Courtesy Greg van Eekhout
GREG VAN EEKHOUT lives in San Diego, California, with his astronomy/physics professor wife and two dog
s. He’s worked as an educational software developer, ice-cream scooper, part-time college instructor, and telemarketer. Being a writer is the only job he’s ever actually liked. You can find more about Greg at his website: www.writingandsnacks.com.
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Copyright
VOYAGE OF THE DOGS. Copyright © 2018 by Greg van Eekhout. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art by Mark Frederickson
Cover design by Aurora Parlagreco
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933350
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-268602-2
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-268600-8 (trade bdg.)
1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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