“Yes, dear,” her mom said. “The NO. BEL.”
There was another pause. Then she heard her dad say, “Gosh! Tell her ‘Gosh!’ ”
“Your dad says, ‘Gosh!’ ” Lucy’s mom said.
“Yes, Mom. I heard him. I’m going to Sweden to collect it,” Lucy said. “I want you both to come with me.”
She heard her mom let out a little sob. “We’d love to,” said Lucy’s mom. “We’d love to.”
Eventually Lucy put down the phone. She felt both happy and sad at the same time, something that people sometimes say is impossible, but something that is much more common than you might think.
Oh, wow, thought Lucy. Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Then she left the observatory and locked the door behind her. Above she could see the stars of the Milky Way. All around her was the hum of night insects. Overhead she saw a shooting star streak past.
Oh, wow, Lucy thought again.
There is no way of writing down the sound that you hear if you are in a bone-shaped spaceship and you pop out on the other side of a wormhole. You could write it like this—proop-plung-plung-plop—but that wouldn’t be quite right. Or you could write it like this—bjoop-bhung-mwung-mwob—but that wouldn’t be right either. You could try writing it in some other language, perhaps in Arabic or Chinese. And you’d still not be able to write it properly because it is one of those sounds that is so very strange, and that comes and goes so very quickly, that it is only a few seconds later that you say to yourself, “That was a most peculiar kind of sound. I wonder how I could write it down.” And by this time it is already too late.
And besides, this is a sound that nobody on Earth has ever heard, so there really is no way of checking which way of writing it is correct. Let us just say, then, that the spaceship made the most peculiar noise, one that made Laika go, “Woof! Woof! Woof!” And then the ship popped out of the other side of the wormhole.
Out of the window of the spaceship Laika saw a funny thing. Ahead of the ship was a distant star and what looked like another big ball hanging in space.
BALL! Laika thought, and started to woof very excitedly.
But it wasn’t a ball at all. It was a planet that was orbiting around a star called Alpha Centauri A, a star that is, as Lucy knew, roughly 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 from Earth; and for the dogs piloting the spaceship, the dogs who were busy pressing buttons with their paws, the planet was home.
The bone spaceship started to move toward the planet, and the planet got bigger and bigger and bigger. Laika stopped woofing and gazed out of the window, not knowing what to think.
The spaceship turned on its axis, and it started to come in to land. There was a soft hum. The dogs pressed their buttons with looks of doggy concentration. Even their propeller tails were still. And Laika, who had the funny feeling that something important was happening, but who didn’t know what, pressed her nose to the window and stared.
Landing on the planet was a much less scary business than the takeoff had been. The bone spaceship came to land so very gently that it was almost as if nothing at all had taken place. The space dogs turned off their machines and let out a big, collective “Woof!”
Then the door of the spaceship swung open.
The days leading up to the Nobel Prize ceremony were busy. You’d think that getting a prize was the easiest thing in the world, that you just had to turn up and smile a bit and shake people’s hands and so on. But things are never that simple. It was hard enough, Lucy thought, winning a Nobel Prize. But it seemed almost as hard organizing everything you had to do to pick it up.
So Lucy had to make all kinds of plans, sign all kinds of documents, make lots of phone calls to Sweden, and generally do a lot of organizing. She also had to get in touch with all the friends who had sent her congratulations cards. Owen sent one that he had made himself—a beautiful drawing of a planet with rings around it. Professor Cassiopeia sent one marked, “To my best-ever student.” Even Mr. Kingham sent a letter—a proper, old-fashioned letter, written by hand. In his letter Mr. Kingham said that he had now retired, and that he had lots of time on his hands. He said that he had, on a whim, subscribed to New Scientist, and that he had read an article about Lucy, so he thought he’d send her a letter. “You always were much more clever than me,” he wrote in his letter. “Let me tell you a secret: I never really understood relativity until you explained it in my class….”
Eventually all the organizing was done, and Lucy packed her bags. She took down the photograph from above her desk in the observatory—the one that had been taken by the passerby on her family’s summer holiday—and put it between the pages of a book. Then she slipped her book into her bag. Finally, she went home to pick up her mom and dad, and together they all got on a plane to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.
On the plane Lucy’s mom and dad talked excitedly, but Lucy was quiet and thoughtful. She was thinking about the Nobel Prize, which seemed to be really quite a lot of fuss. The prize was going to be presented by the king of Sweden. She had never met a king before, whether of Sweden or of anywhere else, and she wasn’t sure that kings were the kinds of people she wanted to spend time with. Lucy was sure that the king was a perfectly nice man, but as she looked out of the airplane window, she found herself thinking that being a king can’t be lots of fun. You have to wear funny outfits, and sit through long, boring ceremonies, and look all kingly.
So what Lucy was thinking about most was not meeting the king of Sweden, but instead the speech that she was going to give two days before the award ceremony. All the prizewinners had to give a speech, and Lucy wasn’t really used to giving big speeches, so she was both excited and a little worried. What should I say? she thought as she looked out of the window at the ground far below.
When they arrived in Sweden, they were met at the airport by some important-looking people who drove them in a big black car to their hotel. The hotel was so very posh, and everybody was so very polite, that it made Lucy want to pull silly faces. But Lucy reminded herself that it was the Nobel Prize, and that there were kings and people like that involved, and that pulling faces in front of the king might seem strange, or odd, or treasonous. So she decided instead to behave herself.
Lucy, her mom, and her dad had three days in Stockholm before the ceremony. She let her mom and dad go and explore the city—her dad found some parks to perambulate in, and her mom spent most of her time in museums—while she stayed in her hotel, writing her speech. She tried to make it as impressive as possible, filling it with startling thoughts about the here, there, and everywhereness of space. By the time it came to the night of the speech, she had worked so hard that she was not at all sure if it was a good speech or a bad speech. Either way, it was too late. A big black car picked up her, her mom, and her dad and drove them to the hall where she was going to make the speech. There were lots of introductions and lots of people to meet. But then, at last, Lucy stepped out onto the stage and she walked over to the podium. The audience clapped and cheered. Lucy took her place at the podium and cleared her throat.
The door of the spaceship swung open, and Laika peeped out. She was standing at the top of a slanting gray metal ramp that led down to the ground. There was a sun glinting up in the sky. In fact, there were two suns, which was puzzling. One was really quite big, and the other was much smaller, but both were shining cheerfully. There was grass at the bottom of the ramp, or something like it, but it wasn’t the kind of grass that Laika recognized. Even from where she stood on the ramp, she could tell that the grass smelled funny, almost like grass on Earth, but not quite.
What Laika didn’t know, what she couldn’t know—because she was only a dog, and this kind of thing would be too difficult even for the most clever dog that had ever lived—was that she was around twenty-five trillion six hundred and thirteen billion two hundred and sixty-three million two hundred and ninety-six thousan
d and fifty-five miles away from home, on a planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri A, which was the bigger of the two suns in the sky. The second, smaller sun was Alpha Centauri B. In reality, Alpha Centauri B is only a little bit smaller than Alpha Centauri A, but to Laika it looked much smaller, as it was much farther away.
Laika didn’t think, THERE ARE TWO SUNS, because even this kind of thought is quite a difficult thought to have if you are a dog. Perhaps if you are a clever dog, you might manage to have a thought that complicated. But Laika was not a clever dog. She was a friendly dog, but not a clever one. So Laika’s thoughts were really much, much simpler. As she stood at the top of the ramp, she found herself thinking, THIS IS STRANGE. Not frightening-strange—Laika wasn’t frightened—but strange nonetheless.
There were trees, too. Tall, bobble-shaped trees that rustled a little in the cool breeze that was blowing from the distant mountains. They had trunks that were very thin and went straight upward as high as a house before breaking out into clusters of branches and leaves.
THIS IS STRANGE, thought Laika again. The trees did not look like the trees at home; and on the breeze there were tree smells that were not like the tree smells of home; and the light, now that she thought about it, was not like the light of home.
Then there was a woofing and a barking from behind her, and the pack of space dogs, obviously happy to be home, came hurtling out of the bone-shaped spaceship and into the grass, and there they turned around and bowed down the way dogs do, putting their chins on the ground between their paws, spinning their tails in big, excited circles, and barking in a friendly Come on kind of way, the way Laika would sometimes bark when she wanted to go for a walk with Lucy.
Something about the barking made Laika think of Lucy: it seemed an age since she had last seen her. And it had been an age. In Laika time it had been a whole week: five days of traveling in Prototype I, one day of traveling with the space dogs toward the wormhole, not very long at all inside the wormhole, and a day on the other side of the wormhole. And if you are a dog, a week feels like a long time. It feels almost like forever.
THIS IS STRANGE.
Fleeting thoughts of Lucy crowded Laika’s head. But then she let out a bark at the dogs who were trying to encourage her to come and join them on the grass, and she galloped down the ramp and rolled around in the grass, and it smelled good, and the dogs rolled around with her, barking at her and wagging their tails and nudging her, there under a strange and distant star, and Laika had a thought that, if it were possible to translate it into human language, would look something like this:
THIS IS PARADISE.
If you are a dog, the things you want out of life are relatively simple. Human beings want all kinds of complicated things: they want to be king or queen or prime minister; they want to be famous; they want to own a big car; they want a new computer; they want to know what would happen if you traveled close to the speed of light; and they want to know if it’s really possible that, one day, a dog could fly off into space in a spaceship built by a girl who was still in school. But dogs want much more simple things: they want friends, and they want food, and they want to play, and they want people to be nice to them, and they want…rabbits.
RABBITS! Laika thought.
“Gavagai!” said one of the space dogs in a gruff and doggy voice, a word that might, if we’d been able to translate it, mean “Rabbits!”
And Laika looked through the grass to see—only a few feet away, just on the other side of a small hillock—a rabbit, crouching and nibbling. It was, in almost every respect, exactly like a rabbit: it had a twitching rabbity nose; it had rabbity feet, the front ones neat and tidy, the back ones powerful and good for jumping; it had a rabbity tail, and a very fluffy one at that; but it also had three rabbity ears.
EARS, Laika thought.
She didn’t think, THREE EARS, because she couldn’t quite count. But there was something about the ears that wasn’t as she expected it should be. The rabbit had one ear to either side of its head, and one in the middle that stood bolt upright. It was definitely a rabbit. A rabbit with three ears, no doubt, but in all other respects a rabbit. And Laika, being a dog, liked nothing more than chasing rabbits. She was not fussy. She had chased a lot of two-eared rabbits in her time. Once she had chased a one-eared rabbit. This was her first three-eared rabbit, but it was clearly a rabbit. It even smelled like a rabbit, almost.
The space dogs turned to watch Laika, who was watching the rabbit. Then the rabbit held up its head, waggled it from side to side, sniffed the air, and started to hop away.
RABBIT! Laika thought, and she bounded after it.
The rabbit was fast. It ran through the grass under the alien sun, faster than any Earth rabbit, and Laika gave chase. It was then that she noticed that the other dogs had all scattered, because on this particular planet, rabbits were everywhere. And if you are a dog, finding yourself surrounded by rabbits is one of the best things that could ever happen to you. If you are a dog, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing on the whole Earth, nothing in the whole universe, more fun than a planet full of dogs to make friends with and rabbits to chase.
“WOOF! WOOF!” barked Laika.
“Gavagai! Gavagai!” barked the space dogs.
Hop! Hop! went the rabbits. They seemed to be enjoying the game as well.
And this is what they did all day, as the sun set over that strange and distant world, with its bobble trees and odd-smelling grass. Not once did any of the dogs manage to catch a rabbit because the rabbits were fast and cunning, but the chase was the most important thing. They chased and chased as the sun set, and then when it started to get dark, the rabbits got bored of the game and hopped back into their burrows to curl up for the night, happy and content, and Laika and the space dogs all lay down in the grass, exhausted and panting, as two strange moons came up over the planet. They lay there for a while, snuggled together, then they fell asleep underneath the winking stars.
Lucy paused and looked out at the audience, waiting for the clapping to subside. Because all the lights were on the stage, shining into her eyes, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Then she saw her mom and dad in the front row, and she smiled at them.
Wow, Lucy thought. Here I am in Stockholm, giving a speech for winning the Nobel Prize. Wow!
Then Lucy looked down at the speech she had written. She had been told that this was the biggest and most important speech of her life, but when her eyes scanned over the words, the speech didn’t seem quite right.
The clapping came to an end, and Lucy cleared her throat. She had no idea what she was going to say. She looked at the people in the front two rows of seats. They all seemed very well-dressed and important. Lucy thought they looked hard to impress. They didn’t look like the kind of people who liked lying on the grass and looking up at the stars. They looked like the kind of people who would say, “You expect me to lie on the grass and look at the stars? Are you mad? Do you know how much this dress cost?” But then she reminded herself that this was, after all, a Nobel Prize speech. They probably didn’t always dress up like that. And she, too, wasn’t dressed for lying on her back and looking up at the stars. So she told herself not to be too intimidated, and reminded herself that, given a chance, everyone liked looking up at the stars and wondering.
The audience members were leaning forward in their chairs, expectant, as if Lucy were about to explain all the secrets of the here, there, and everywhereness of space.
What shall I say? Lucy thought. She caught her mom’s and dad’s eyes, smiling up at her from the front row. Then she thought of Laika, and at that moment Lucy made a decision.
She carefully folded up the paper on which she had written her big, impressive speech, and she put the paper in her pocket. She smiled at the audience. “Good evening,” she said. “I am sure you are all here because you want to hear me say some big, clever things about space and time and the universe. And I’ll say a bit about some of these things, even if I cannot guara
ntee that what I say is particularly big or clever.”
At this point there was a murmur of anxiety in the audience, because they had hoped very much to hear Lucy say big, clever things.
Lucy went on. “Before coming here, I wrote out a very important-sounding speech for you. But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to read my important speech. Instead I want to tell you a story.”
Here Lucy paused. A woman all decked out in pearls, who was sitting in the second row, frowned.
“It is a story about a brave and rather untidy dog,” Lucy said. “And I want to tell you this story because, had it not been for this brave and rather untidy dog, I do not think I would be standing here today….”
The woman in the second row looked a bit annoyed, as if she hadn’t come to hear a talk about a dog. She pursed her lips in displeasure. Lucy’s glance flickered along the line. She saw her mom and dad again, and grinned at them. Then she looked a little more fiercely at the audience, the way people look when they know that what they are saying is important, even if nobody else realizes it yet. “Her name was Laika,” she said.
Then Lucy started to talk. She talked about one day when Laika had broken into the cupboard and eaten all the dog biscuits. She talked about the walks that they used to go on. She talked about Prototype I. She talked about the terrible, terrible night when Laika blasted off into space. She talked about how she had looked and looked and looked for Laika, but her dog had never returned. Then she took out the photograph of her, her mom and dad, and Laika, and held it up for the audience to see. Luckily, her speech was being projected on big TV screens, so the cameras homed in on the photograph, and everybody saw the picture—how long ago it seemed, like something from ancient times!—of Lucy and her mom and dad, the wind blowing all of their hair, and Laika in midair. She talked about Mr. Kingham and Owen and relativity and Einstein, and how Einstein liked pulling faces. She even pulled some faces of her own (which made most of the people in the audience laugh, even though it made the woman with the pearls frown as if she had been personally insulted). She talked and talked about the here, there, and everywhereness of space, with lots of jokes and stories. And as she talked, the people in the audience felt themselves fill with wonder and excitement, and leaned even farther forward so that they wouldn’t miss a single word.
Lucy and the Rocket Dog Page 7