Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  We all went and sat by the fire at Stramoddie to get dried out.

  When we were dry I sneaked up to Jessie’s room and got that scrapbook Dogs of the Future. I showed it to the dad.

  He flicked through it and said, ‘You two really did want a dog, didn’t you? There’s even a prayer in here to St Roch, patron saint of dogs, asking him to send you one.’

  ‘What a rubbish saint he turned out to be.’

  ‘We’ll have to give it some thought.’

  Jessie rang the Temporary two days later and told me that a spaniel had just turned up in the farmyard. A bit later a fat bloke with a walking stick had come over from the caravan site looking for him. The dad had asked him in for a cup of tea. The man had started saying how his dog had been acting strangely all summer.

  After a while the dad had said, ‘Well, beasts like to have their own say in things . . .’

  ‘Figaro used to be such a happy dog, but now he seems discontented. He seems to be making himself at home here though.’

  ‘Well, if you wanted to leave him here with us,’ the dad had said, ‘he’d be more than welcome. We miss having a dog about the place.’

  Grandad went back to Shangri-La. I went back to the Temporary. But I visited him a lot. And he visited us a lot. He even cooked sometimes. And sometimes at weekends we both went down to Stramoddie.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jessie, ‘you have to tell me. It’s not fair going quiet again now.’

  She was right, but it was a long story. So that’s what this is. It’s my rememberings.

  Sputnik had said that people didn’t have manuals and you couldn’t really fix them. But I remembered his reverse dynamite and how the bits of an ancient wall flew back together and made everything seem new. So whenever Grandad got confused I acted like reverse dynamite. I’d pick up some of the Post-it notes and remind him what they were all about. Sometimes he remembered. Sometimes he didn’t.

  He liked to look at the map of the World-in-Dumfries.

  ‘Remember you’ve never been to any of these places. You have to promise me you’ll get to them all one day,’ he’d say. Then he’d forget where he was and who I was and he’d chat about them like we’d been there together.

  ‘Remember the time we were just leaving Murmansk and we saw that iceberg?’ he’d say. ‘As the ship turned away I threw my torch at it and it caught in a crevice in the ice. Lit up the whole iceberg from inside. Like a Christmas decoration. Made it easier for other ships as long as the battery lasted. And crivens it was beautiful. We all stood on the deck and watched until it was out of sight. It looked like a floating sunset. Remember?’

  ‘No,’ I’d say, ‘I’ve got all that to come.’

  The list Grandad liked the best though wasn’t one of mine at all. It was that first page of Sputnik’s red notebook. Every single thing on the list made him remember some story . . .

  1. TV Remote – That’s the only control I’ve got in Shangri-La. He who has the remote rules the day room. I always make sure it’s me.

  2. High-Vis jackets – We all wore them on board ship. When you were on your own up on deck, there was no nicer sight than another high-vis jacket coming towards you out of the dark and the wet. It meant your watch was over.

  3. The Atmosphere – Sometimes clouds were all you’d have for company up on deck. You’d sit there and they’d seem to talk to you.

  4. The Tide – I used to measure my life in tides, Prez. High tide was always time to go off on an adventure.

  5. Eggs and Chickens – When I was in Russia they gave me a beautiful egg all painted with red enamel. That’s what they do at Easter there. True. Look it up.

  6. The Harmonica – Oh yes. Pass it to me. I’ll play us a tune.

  7. Concealer – Isn’t that to do with women’s make-up? Your grandma had drawers full of the stuff. They were all a mystery to me. The biggest mystery was why she thought she needed them at all. Lovely-looking woman. You’re the double of her.

  8. Mooring Hitch Knot – Now that is a knot, isn’t it? A knot that stops you drifting out to sea. A knot that helps you drift off to sleep.

  9. Fish and Chips Outside – Remember after our big walks we’d get a bag of chips and eat them in Station Park with the sun coming down across the trees? And you could hear the weir roaring. You had to eat the chips before the seagulls got wind of the vinegar and came bothering us.

  ‘But that’s only nine things,’ I said. ‘He was supposed to find ten to save the planet.’

  Sputnik had said ‘home’ was going on the list. I wondered why he’d changed his mind. Maybe he couldn’t figure out what home was after all – it wasn’t Traquair Gardens or Stramoddie because we didn’t live there any more. It wasn’t the Temporary because that was, well, temporary. But then, the whole planet was temporary. Maybe the whole planet was home.

  ‘Home is wherever we’re together,’ said Grandad. Which surprised me because I hadn’t said any of this out loud. He’d just read my thoughts like Sputnik. ‘What’s written on the Post-it note?’

  There was a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of the page, with the number ten written on it. Nothing else.

  ‘It’s blank,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing written on it. That’s weird. He definitely said to look out for number ten. Maybe it’s blank because some things don’t fit into words.’

  That’s what I said. I was thinking, though, Maybe it’s not just rememberings, maybe it’s blank to leave a space for all the things I’ve yet to see and do, the places I’ve yet to go, before the reverse dynamite goes off and all the stars start to run backwards and Sputnik – my companion – comes flying home to me.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Grandad. ‘I think Post-it notes are the tenth thing. The thing you need to pay particular careful attention to. Think about it. All my days are there on those Post-it notes. All my rememberings. All the days I spent with you.’

  Author Note

  The Russian word ‘Sputnik’ means ‘companion’ in English. It was the name the great space engineer Sergei Korolev gave to the first ever satellite, which he sent into orbit in October 1957. Sputnik 1 was a shiny metal football that went round and round the Earth, keeping it company with a little beeping noise, like a squeaky wee moon.

  Sputnik 2 had a passenger.

  It was a little dog called Kudryavka (Curly). Scientists had found her wandering the cold winter streets of Moscow. They’d taken her in, fed her, looked after her, filmed her and trained her to do a few little jobs. She was gentle and quick to learn. On 3 November 1957 they changed her name to Laika, put her inside the shiny metal football and shot her into space. She’s the most famous dog in history, the first living creature ever to orbit the Earth. Everyone had heard of her (everyone called her Muttnik). Everyone hoped and prayed that she would come back alive.

  But she never did.

  But all the best stories start with ‘Wouldn’t it be great if . . .’ and for years I always wondered, ‘What if someone up there found Laika?’

  I usually think about and plan my books for ages. But the idea for this one just popped into my head one day when I was driving along the Formby bypass with my daughter. It just jumped into the car while we were at the traffic lights, like a little lost dog looking for a home.

  I took the idea back to my house, played with it, fed it and it rocketed me off to all kinds of unexpected places. I had no idea where Sputnik was going to take me and sometimes I’d wake up, crying, ‘Where am I?!’ Then the same trusty people as ever made up a search party to bring me back to Earth . . . namely my courageous and amazing editor, Sarah Dudman, and my three brightly blazing critics – my children Heloise and Xavier, and my wife, Denise. I’d also like to thank Venetia Gosling for letting us set out without a map. And, of course, the mighty Steve Lenton for bringing it all to life.

  By the way, it’s really true about gravity travelling in waves. Einstein told us this a hundred years ago, but no one was really sure until they were actually detected for the firs
t time by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) while I was writing this book. We live in a surfing universe!

  About the Author

  Frank Cottrell Boyce is an award-winning author and screenwriter. Millions, his debut children’s novel, won the CILIP Carnegie Medal. His books have been shortlisted for a multitude of prizes, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Whitbread Children’s Fiction Award (now the Costa Book Award), the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award.

  Frank is a judge for the BBC Radio 2 500 Words competition and, along with Danny Boyle, devised the Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. He lives on Merseyside with his family.

  About the Illustrator

  Steven Lenton loves to illustrate books, filling them with charming, fun characters that really capture children’s imaginations. As well as illustrating Frank Cottrell Boyce’s multi-award-winning books, he is the illustrator of the bestselling and award-winning Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam series. Steven has also written and illustrated two picture books, Let’s Find Fred and Princess Daisy and the Dragon and the Nincompoop Knights, and is the illustrator for the forthcoming Hundred and One Dalmatians picture book.

  He splits his time between Bath and London, where he works from his studios with his little dog, Holly.

  www.2dscrumptious.com

  ‘Wholly original and exceptionally funny’ Bookseller, Children’s Book of the Week

  ‘Light-hearted and profound’ Sunday Times, Children’s Book of the Week

  ‘A wonderful and exciting story about friendship and appreciating what you have’ Independent

  ‘A discussion of what is really important in life, delivered with humanity and belly laughs’ Observer

  ‘A spiky, effervescent treat, like Spielberg’s ET put in a blender with a bottle of Irn-Bru’ Financial Times

  ‘A touching tale [told] with wild humour and panache’ Telegraph

  ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for children’ ReadingZone

  ‘Fabulous . . . one of his best’ Guardian

  ‘Comedy gold for seven-plus readers’ Amanda Craig, New Statesman

  ‘A wacky, out-of-this-world adventure . . . [with] truly wonderful laugh-out-loud moments . . . I loved it’ The Bookbag

  ‘Brilliantly funny and extraordinarily moving’ LoveReading4Kids, Children’s Book of the Month

  ‘Whimsical, heart-wrenching and hilarious’ Scotsman

  Books by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  Millions

  Framed

  Cosmic

  The Astounding Broccoli Boy

  Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon

  First published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This edition published 2017 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2017 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5098-0446-7

  Text copyright © Frank Cottrell Boyce 2016

  Illustrations copyright © Steven Lenton 2016

  The right of Frank Cottrell Boyce and Steven Lenton to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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