Voyage of the Dogs

by Greg Van Eekhout

  He navigated to the Laika chapter, but the screen was blank. When he nosed Play, the book remained silent. It always did this. In a cruel twist of fate, the chapter about the dog the pack most wanted to know about, and the chapter that for some reason Roro had never gotten around to reading to them, was missing.

  So Lopside listened to the story of Balto and Togo again. It was a good story, even though it wasn’t the one he wanted to hear.

  When the chapter was over, he lay awake and thought of all the things he’d do with Roro when they were reunited. They would play fetch on Stepping Stone. Roro would scratch his belly and she’d tell him stories. And one day, Roro would tell him the complete story of the brave space dog named Laika. And everything would be all right.

  Nine

  “THAT’S THE LAST REPAIR,” BUG said, tearing off the end of a strip of tape with his teeth. “Either the pulse engines fire or—”

  “Or they explode and we all get blown to bits?” Daisy asked.

  “Exactly,” Bug said.

  After days of crawling through the engine compartment, sniffing for every tiny broken component, Lopside and Bug had managed to patch, bypass, or reconnect every conduit and cable and wire.

  At least they hoped they had.

  Today would decide if the Barkonauts would complete their mission and arrive on Stepping Stone, or if they would fail and die slowly in space.

  Lopside transferred the chicken eggs from their nest between the thermal junctions to his backpack. If something went wrong, he wanted the eggs near so he could do his best to protect them.

  He joined the rest of the pack in the command-and-control module.

  “Let’s review the procedure,” Champion said from her position in Commander Lin’s chair. The other three dogs sat on the deck, looking up at her. “We fire the engines for a fifty-three-second burn. That should get us to orbit around Stepping Stone in a little over forty-six days. From orbit, we switch the agricultural dome into Landing Habitat mode. We detach the LandHab and use its thrusters to make a controlled descent to the surface of the planet. And then, that’s it. We’ll be on our new home.”

  Champion said it with so much confidence that Lopside almost forgot what a daunting journey lay ahead. Forty-six days to survive while using almost no energy for environmental systems, while nibbling on meager rations, without any margin for error. And even if everything went as well as it could and they made a successful landing, they’d still be without the human crew.

  It wasn’t how the mission was supposed to go.

  But that couldn’t be helped, Lopside told himself. This was the situation they were facing. And for Lopside’s part, he would face it like a Barkonaut. Champion looked at each dog in turn. “You’ve all done very well. Bug and Lopside, I know how much work you’ve done getting the engines back online. And Daisy, you’ve . . . you’ve moved a lot of heavy things. All while under stress, without enough sleep, while hungry. You’ve all made sacrifices for the pack, and for the mission. I’m proud of you. The crew would be proud of you. Roro would be proud of you.”

  Lopside didn’t understand how Champion could manage to say all that without betraying the slightest hint of a whimper. And when he barely managed to choke out, “They’d be proud of you, too, Champion,” he understood it even less.

  “Take your stations,” Champion commanded.

  Lopside and Bug leaped into the side-by-side seats before the engine controls systems panel. Champion remained in Commander Lin’s seat. Daisy galumphed up to the front of the module and stood with her paws on the main viewer. Her official job was to look out for obstacles, even though the scanners had already shown a clear path ahead for more than 100,000 miles. Champion knew she liked to look out the window.

  “Let’s run a check,” Champion said. “Propulsion activation.”

  “Go,” Bug said.

  “Burn clock.”

  “Go,” Lopside said.

  “Looking out the window.”

  “Go, go, go,” Daisy said.

  The air was thick with smells. Worry. Concentration. Excitement. Hope.

  Champion watched the mapping readout, which showed the little red outline of the Laika and, still far across the great void, the green circle of Stepping Stone, following its circular path around the star. The Laika was like a stick that needed to be flung over 4.7 billion miles so the planet could catch it. Everything had to go perfectly.

  “On my mark,” said Champion. Lopside and Bug moved their paws over their control panels. “In five. Four. Three. Two . . .” Lopside was panting, but his paw was steady. “Light it!”

  Lopside pushed a toggle forward, starting the fifty-three-second clock. At the exact same time, Bug brought his paw down on the ignition control.

  “We have ignition,” Bug woofed.

  Controlled explosions of energetic nuclear particles burst from the engines at the rear of ship, pushing it into motion.

  A great, low vibration shook the deck plates, made its way into Lopside’s belly, and jingled his tags. He remembered the sensation from the first time the Laika’s engines were fired, when the ship left Earth’s orbit and began the journey spaceward. He remembered the tense, eager smells of the crew, and the panting breaths of his pack (except for Champion, who had remained calm and serious). He remembered Roro clapping her hands and smiling as the ship got under way.

  The vibration and the instrument readouts were the only ways to tell the ship was moving. It wasn’t like riding in a car and watching trees outside go by in a blur. Daisy smooshed her nose against the viewer, her tail whipping back and forth. Lopside envied her. If it had been possible to do without dying, he’d have stuck his head out the window and barked with glee as the ship thundered through space.

  Eyes on the clock, Lopside called out the remaining burn time: “Forty-three seconds.”

  Bug checked his readouts. “Pulse interval holding steady.”

  “Gravity generators compensating for acceleration,” Champion said.

  “I like space,” Daisy reported.

  This was working, Lopside realized. He and Bug had fixed the engines, and the Laika was no longer floating like a piece of driftwood at sea, and they were going to reach Stepping Stone’s orbit and then land on the planet and fulfill the mission, because they were good dogs.

  He was about to call out the thirty-three second mark when a massive jolt seized the ship. A heavy silence hung in the air. Nobody made a sound. Not a bark, not a whine, not a whimper. Lopside was still watching the clock, so he knew the silence lasted only two seconds, but it seemed to stretch for much longer than that.

  And then the silence was broken. A great big WHOOM shuddered through the ship. There was a deep moan, like some great and vast animal in pain. The floor began tipping to the left. The ship was listing.

  “Steady,” Champion ordered. “Reports, now.”

  “I have no engine readings,” Bug said. “I think the engines are gone.”

  Lopside checked his clock again. “Incident happened at thirty-three seconds left to go in the burn. We only had acceleration for twenty seconds.” That wasn’t enough to get them to Stepping Stone.

  “We’re losing air pressure,” Champion said. There was no hint of panic in her tone, or even any alarm, but Lopside could smell it in all of them like a sick fog.

  “I have something to report,” Daisy said, still standing with her paws on the front viewer. She spoke without puppy energy, but with a tone of dread, and all eyes turned on her. “I can see debris.”

  Even from his seat, Lopside could could see jagged pieces of waffle-patterned metal flying past.

  “That’s exterior cladding from the pulse engine cowling,” Bug said with gruff barks.

  Debris combined with the loss of engine power and falling air pressure all added up to one thing: an explosion. One that had probably reopened the hull breach, or blown a new hole in the ship.

  Champion leaped down from the commander’s chair. “You three get to the a
gricultural dome. It has its own air supply. Take shelter there.”

  “Where are you going?” Lopside asked.

  “We’ll need to eat. There’s one more bag of ERPs in the cargo hold. I’m going to grab it.”

  “I’m the cargo dog,” Daisy protested. “Let me get it.”

  Champion gave her a hard, dominant stare. “You’re the strongest Barkonaut, and I’m counting on you to make sure Bug and Lopside make it to the dome. That is an order, Daisy.”

  Daisy licked her lips with stress, and Lopside wondered if she was going to disobey Champion’s order. And if she did, what could Champion do about it? Daisy still didn’t realize how much more powerful she was than the other dogs, but one day, she would. Today, however, was not that day. She tucked her tail between her legs, bowed her head, and said, “Yes, Champion.”

  Champion turned tail and raced to the command-and-control module door. Before exiting, she stopped to glance back at Lopside and Daisy and Bug. “We’re still a pack,” she barked. “And we’ll survive as a pack.”

  With that, she ran off alone.

  The overhead lights flickered as Lopside, Bug, and Daisy raced down the passageway. The lights were among the ship’s most basic systems, and if they were malfunctioning, it meant the Laika was in worse trouble than ever.

  “My fault, my fault, my fault,” Bug kept repeating with panting breaths. “I’m the engineer. I was in charge of fixing the engines. I must have done something wrong. I must have left a connection unfused, or missed a coolant leak, or . . . or—”

  By now he was no longer running forward but in circles.

  Lopside stopped to turn around. “Bug, I sniffed out leaks and helped you fuse connections. Maybe it’s my fault.”

  Daisy, already many yards ahead of them, galloped back.

  “NOBODY CARES WHOSE FAULT IT IS. CHAMPION TOLD ME TO MAKE SURE WE GET TO THE DOME, SO STOP TALKING AND GET RUNNING!” she roared.

  Her barks were massive and ferocious and so startling that Lopside almost peed. Bug began sprinting forward again with Lopside right behind him. But when they got to a fork in the corridors, Lopside skidded to a stop.

  Daisy looked like she was going to roar again, but Lopside cut her off before she could begin.

  “Keep going,” he said. “I have to get something.”

  “But Champion told us—”

  “She told us to shelter in the dome, and that’s just what I’m going to do. Just as soon as I fetch what I need.”

  He could tell Daisy was going to stand there and argue with him, maybe even pick him up by the scruff of the neck, and then he’d be helpless, dangling from her mouth and getting slobbered on while she trotted along.

  “Here,” he said, releasing his backpack. “Take the eggs to the dome. The little chickens are depending on you.”

  “But Lopside . . . ,” Daisy whined.

  “You can take me to the dome, or you can take the chickens. You can’t take both.”

  Daisy reluctantly bit the strap to pick up the backpack. With her mouth now occupied, she wouldn’t be able to physically stop Lopside from continuing on.

  Her eyes pleaded, while Bug looked at Lopside, confused.

  “I’ll get to the dome,” Lopside promised.

  He didn’t wait for a response from his packmates. Instead, he sped down the left branch of the passageway as though his life depended on it. And it did. In fact, all the dogs’ lives depended on him getting to the kennel to retrieve one of the most important items on the ship. But he wasn’t sure his packmates would understand why it was worth risking so much for.

  His ears picked up a whistling sound that got higher and louder the farther he got, and by the time he reached the kennel, airflow rustled his fur. That could only mean one thing: The ship was leaking air. Had the old breach reopened, the one he’d seen from the Rover, patched with repair foam? Or had the exploding engines opened a new breach? Champion had said she was heading for the cargo hold. That was in D-Module, way back near the ship’s stern, far too close to the engineering module and the engines. He could see it in his mind: an entire bulkhead missing, a bag of ERPs spinning in space and spilling pieces of kibble, winking points of frozen water vapor, and Champion tumbling like a tiny bird in a cyclone, coated in frost, dying.

  Lopside rushed into the kennel to grab what he’d come for: Roro’s tablet. It contained useful information. The ship’s technical manual. A celestial map charting the route from Earth to Stepping Stone. But to Lopside, the most important thing it contained was The Great Book of Dogs.

  The pack needed those stories. Lopside needed those stories. He needed stories of dogs who were heroes. Not all the stories had happy endings, but they still somehow made Lopside feel better. Sad stories could do that, he supposed. They helped him know that he and the other dogs of the Laika weren’t the only dogs to ever be in danger and afraid. A sad story could be like a gentle scritch behind the ears. It told him that he was not alone.

  And somewhere in the book’s memory was the story of Laika, the Russian space dog. Her story had to be in there. Lopside was convinced that knowing how Laika had accomplished her mission would help him and the other Barkonauts complete theirs.

  Ten

  LOPSIDE CHARGED DOWN THE LAST passageway to the dome, blinking against bits of dust blowing in his eyes. What had started as a breeze was now a brisk wind. The Laika was losing atmosphere, and it was getting worse. Lopside tried not to think about his packmates getting blown out into the vacuum of open space, twirling like leaves amid a constellation of frozen water droplets.

  He gasped in the thinning air and made a last push down the corridor. When he arrived at the agricultural dome he found Bug and Daisy huddled in the dark. The dome was supposed to be their last refuge, but it didn’t seem very welcoming or safe. The only illumination came from the dull red glow of an emergency light over the doors. He dropped Roro’s tablet on the deck and came over to smell his crewmates. They smelled like dread.

  Equipment and provisions lay scattered on the deck: some tools, a tank of emergency repair foam, medical supplies, and random pieces of survival equipment. But where was Champion?

  “She said she was going for a last supply run,” Bug said, anticipating his question. “But it’s been more than ten minutes.”

  He didn’t say anything about the wind rustling their fur. The dogs knew what it meant: Even in the dome, air was escaping, drawn into the vacuum of space through a hole somewhere in the ship. The dome had its own environmental systems, but unless they sealed it off from the rest of the Laika, it would eventually lose all its atmosphere.

  “How much time do we have?” Lopside asked Bug.

  Bug gave the air a calculating sniff. “Thirty minutes maximum. Maybe only twenty.”

  “We don’t seal the dome until Champion’s back,” Lopside said.

  Bug and Daisy barked affirmative.

  A minute passed in the dark, and another, and then another.

  What would Champion do if Daisy or Bug was missing? What would she do if Lopside hadn’t made it back from his trip to the kennel?

  He didn’t have to think about it for long.

  “I’m going to look for her,” he announced.

  “You can’t go back out there,” Bug protested. “There’s four hundred yards of passageways and five decks between here and the cargo hold. Even if you find Champion, you’ll never make it back.”

  “We can’t just leave her to die,” Lopside growled, his hackles rising.

  “I didn’t say we were going to. I’m going to take the waste chutes to the cargo hold.”

  Lopside turned to a black rubber flap on the wall. Every part of the ship had a waste chute for garbage, and to keep smells the humans found unpleasant from permeating the whole ship, they were tightly sealed. It was possible the chutes would retain their air supply longer than the rest of the Laika.

  “Good idea,” Lopside said. “But I’m going.”

  “No. It’s my fault the engines
blew up. It’s my fault Champion had to go on supply runs. This is my responsibility.”

  Before Lopside could argue, Bug broke into a sprint for the flap. He looked ridiculous, running with his short legs and muffin paws, but he managed to pick up a lot of speed. And so, when he leaped at the flap but couldn’t jump quite high enough, he crashed headfirst into the bulkhead with great force.

  “Ow,” he croaked, slumped on the deck.

  Daisy galloped over. “Are you okay?”

  “Do I smell okay?”

  Daisy subjected him to a thorough nosing. “You smell fine.”

  “Good,” Bug said. “But, ow.”

  Daisy gave Lopside a very serious look. “You take care of Bug, Lopside. I’m going after Champion, and nobody’s going to stop me.”

  The giant Great Dane held her head high. With powerful, dignified steps, she moved to the flap and stood with her front paws against it. Her massive hip muscles flexed as she leaped through it . . . and got stuck halfway. Her rear legs kicked air. Her tail whipped madly for a few seconds before drooping.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, her voice muffled.

  “I kind of figured that would happen,” Lopside said to Bug.

  Bug wagged in agreement.

  Daisy managed to extract herself with a great deal of thrashing and whimpering and was about to make a second attempt when Lopside spread his legs and puffed out his chest. He lifted his tail straight out and stiff. “We’re wasting time and we’re wasting air. I’m going for Champion. Bug, you work on getting some heat and light in here. Daisy, you lick Bug’s head until it stops hurting.”

  Daisy’s tongue left a sodden trail from the tip of Bug’s nose to between his ears.

  “Bug. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, you know what to do.”

  Bug knew. He would have to seal the dome. It was the correct procedure. But Bug refused to say “affirmative.” It frustrated Lopside and even made him angry, but he loved Bug for it.

  Ordinarily the chutes were odorless. Swarms of insect-sized cleaner bots were supposed to take care of any spills and traces of bacteria and sticky bits that didn’t make it all the way to the secondary airlock to get blown out into space. But the stink of rotten food and poo clogged the tight space. It was a wonderful smell—Lopside liked the smell of garbage as much as the next dog—but it was yet another reminder that the Laika was dying.