Voyage of the Dogs

by Greg Van Eekhout

  He had no light to see by, but he knew the chute well—he’d gone ratting and troubleshooting through the entire system before.

  The rush of air outside grew louder, telling him he was close to an area of the ship near the breach. Sharp hammer blows startled him enough to propel his heart into his throat. Debris outside the chute must be striking the bulkheads like missiles. He imagined Champion facing a shooting gallery of escaping air and projectiles, and he hurried.

  It was when he stopped hearing anything at all outside that he began to lose hope. No air movement. No impact strikes. Not even the usual mechanical hums and whirrs that he hadn’t noticed until they fell silent. What did it mean? Had all the systems in this part of the ship failed? Had all the air outside the chute already escaped? Had everything been blown into space? Including Champion?

  He’d followed the chute far enough to have made it to the D-Module. A few more feet and then a left turn, and he’d reach the opening into the cargo hold. He didn’t know what he’d do then. If he opened the hatch, he might expose the chute to vacuum. All the remaining air in the chute would escape. Yet not opening the chute could mean leaving Champion to die.

  Maybe the human crew had faced a hard decision like this. Maybe they’d had to choose between saving themselves or saving the dogs. Maybe they’d had to run, even though it meant abandoning the pack.

  What a choice, with no right answer. It made Lopside feel a little sorry for them.

  He nudged his head against the flap, pushed through the chute opening, and dropped to the deck of a passageway. Bits of dust skittered across the ground. He squinted against flying grit and raced toward the cargo hold. His lungs couldn’t get enough oxygen from the thin air, and a headache brought dark spots to his vision, but he ignored them and pressed on.

  When he turned a corner, he spotted a form in the distance. The hatches in this section were heavy steel doors that closed vertically from ceiling to the floor. The cargo hold hatch was down, but something was jammed at the bottom, preventing it from closing completely. It was hard to make out in the dim light, but in his heart he knew what was caught by the door.

  He approached and sniffed. It was Champion. And she wasn’t moving. Before her lay a sack of ERPs.

  “Champion!” he barked. “Champion, wake up!”

  Champion didn’t respond.

  He nudged her with a paw. Then scratched her. Then drummed on her head with both paws, barking her name over and over.

  Lopside thought he’d already imagined the worst things that could happen. He’d even lived through one of them—being left behind in deep space by Roro. And everything he and the other dogs had done since then had been about preventing the next worst thing, which was failing to complete their mission. Stepping Stone was still out there, waiting for them. And now they might not even survive.

  But if they were going to die, Lopside had thought they’d do it as a pack. They’d die together. He thought of Champion struggling to get back to the dome. He thought of her crying for her packmates, unheard. He thought of her all alone in the dark. It was too much to bear, and not knowing what else to do, he opened his jaws wide and sank his teeth into the scruff of Champion’s neck.

  “RAAAARRR! What are you doing?”

  “Champion! You’re alive!” Lopside buried his nose in her fur.

  She showed her big, angry eyes and her fierce, white teeth. “I thought I told you to shelter in the dome with Bug and Daisy.”

  “We did. But when you didn’t come back—”

  “When I didn’t come back you should have obeyed my orders and sealed off the dome.”

  Lopside contemplated biting Champion again.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “I thought I was, too.” Champion sounded weak. “Report on Bug and Daisy.”

  “They’re fine. Now get out from under that hatch and let’s go. We’re losing air.”

  “Can’t,” Champion said. “I’m stuck.”

  Lopside took a closer look. Her left rear leg was squeezed between the deck and the hatch.

  “Can you crawl your way out?”

  “No, I tried that.”

  “What about pulling with your front legs and pushing with your rear legs?”

  “That’s what crawling is. Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful. Take the ERPs to the dome.”

  “I’m going to lift the hatch.”

  “I gave you an order, Lopside.”

  “I know. I am disobeying your order. Hmm, now let’s see, if I can just wedge myself under the hatch and lift . . .”

  He lay on his belly and shimmied his nose through the gap between the bottom of the hatch and the deck. Sick, green scents of pain wormed their way into his nostrils.

  “Champion, your leg’s really hurt.”

  “I noticed, thank you.”

  “Okay,” Lopside said. “Okay, my mission objective is to get you free and back to the dome. Okay.” He pushed up with all his might, willing his neck and back and legs to be strong enough to lift the hatch, but after several seconds of effort, the hatch didn’t budge, and he realized he’d need ten times Daisy’s strength to lift it.

  He wiggled back out, panting. “That didn’t work,” he reported.

  “Affirmative,” Champion said. She sounded dismal.

  “Why are you stuck, anyway? The obstruction detector should have triggered the release mechanism when the hatch closed on your leg. The hatch should have opened right up. I guess after the accident that punched a hole in the hull and prompted the crew to abandon ship, and us blowing up the engines, some things on the Laika stopped working as perfectly as we’d like them to. Don’t you think, Champion?”

  There was no answer.

  “Champion?”

  Nothing.

  So Lopside bit her again.

  “OWWWWW!” Champion barked. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Sorry. I thought you were dead again.”

  “Well, stop trying to bite dead dogs.”

  “Well, you stop losing consciousness. Okay, let’s think through the problem. The release mechanism isn’t working, so we need to fix it.”

  “Or you could follow my orders, grab the sack of ERPs, and go back to the dome.”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you even know what an order is?”

  “I’m a Barkonaut. Of course I do. Now, how do I access the release mechanism? I wish Bug was here.”

  “Bug is back in the dome. With Daisy. Where you should be.”

  “The dome, right! I remember helping Roro troubleshoot a sticky hatch in the agricultural dome. The release mechanisms use grade-four lubricant, which smells like”—Lopside’s nose twitched as he sniffed the air—“olives!”

  He followed the scent to a wall panel beside the hatch. “Yep, definitely smells like olives.”

  “The mechanism is behind the wall, Lopside. You’ll never get to it.”

  Lopside ignored her and began scratching at the wall. Terriers were known for digging. They were bred to follow rodents into their dens and claw the earth until they found their prey. Right now, the release mechanism in the wall was his prey, and Lopside would not quit until it was exposed. Champion would not die in an airless corridor. Especially not since it was Lopside’s fault she was even here. The engines had blown up because of some burned-out switch or disconnected junction. Lopside was the Laika’s troubleshooter. He should have found the malfunction.

  “Lopside, please. Go back to the dome. This is not your responsibility. This is my fault.”

  All of a sudden, Lopside liked the way this conversation was going.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said with great generosity.

  “I’m the one who gave the order to fire the engines. I’m the lead dog. Being in charge means you’re responsible for everything that happens on the ship, good or bad. Especially the bad. Commander Lin taught me that.”

  “Well, it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen when th
ere’s a big hole in your ship.”

  “Yeah,” Champion said. She sounded really down.

  “And, look, it’s not like you make a lot of mistakes. Your record is pretty good.”

  Actually, that was an understatement. Lopside couldn’t think of a time Champion had made a mistake. Sometimes she gave orders that he didn’t like, but they were never the wrong orders. In training she must have gotten nine times the number of treat rewards that Lopside got. He didn’t mind that she was better than he was at everything. He just minded that she was so much better.

  His claws had barely made a scratch on the wall, and he found himself getting resentful again.

  “Champion,” he muttered. “Perfect Champion.”

  “What do you mean ‘perfect’?”

  He was a little startled to realize he’d said it aloud.

  “Perfect . . . like . . . the way you are. Perfect.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a good thing, the way you’re saying it.”

  Now Lopside felt bad. For a dog who should be focused on rescuing a packmate, he was pretty busy being resentful of her.

  “Of course perfect is good. Perfect is . . . well, perfect.”

  Champion didn’t say anything.

  Lopside could smell her getting weaker. She needed to hold on, and Lopside needed to keep her alive until he got through the wall and fixed the hatch release mechanism.

  But how?

  What would Champion do if Lopside were injured?

  She would keep him awake.

  “Did I ever tell you how when I was a puppy I was abandoned by my family and I got tied to a tree and it rained and I saw the Moon and then Roro found me and that’s how I became a Barkonaut? Did I ever tell you that, Champion?”

  “Yes.”

  Lopside had no recollection of ever telling Champion so much about his past. “Really? When did I do that?”

  “Just now.”

  “Oh.”

  There followed an awkward silence.

  “Do you want to hear it again?”

  “No, thank you, I still remember it from the first telling.”

  “I’m trying to keep you awake. So you won’t die.”

  Champion said nothing in response.

  “Champion?”

  “I’m still here,” she said, in a hoarse bark.

  “You need to stay awake, Champion. Tell me your life story.”

  “I don’t feel like telling you my life story.”

  “Would you rather die instead?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then stay conscious and tell me.” Lopside kept digging.

  “I was a search-and-rescue dog,” Champion said.

  Lopside already knew this. “And?” he prompted.

  Another pause. Clearly, this was a tale Champion didn’t want to tell.

  “And?” Lopside said again.

  “And I was being trained to find lost campers and hikers in the woods. I loved the woods.” Her voice grew distant. “There were foaming white waterfalls, and pools so clear you could stand on the shore and count the rocks on the bottom. And so many trees . . . You should have smelled them, Lopside.”

  Lopside tried to imagine it, here in this tight space flooded with stale air and scents of fear and injury.

  “I was just a puppy then. Nearly my full size, but still a puppy. Clumsy on my feet, but I could run for days on end. I wouldn’t quit until I found my scent, and you could put a moose carcass with the gorgeous stink of death in my way, and I still wouldn’t be distracted. I was the best dog in my class.”

  “Of course you were,” Lopside said.

  Champion went on, ignoring him. Or maybe she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she was just talking to herself now.

  “One afternoon my handler took me out of the kennel and made me smell a blue jacket. They told me it belonged to a boy who’d wandered off from his family’s campsite. He’d already been lost for hours, and it would be nightfall soon, and it was cold, and he didn’t even have his jacket. The woods were dangerous. Maybe not as dangerous as space, but dangerous enough to kill a human boy in one night. So, my handler and I joined the search. We had a big area to cover, and there were a lot of scents. Deer, badgers, skunks–you name it. But I did it, Lopside. I found the boy’s scent. Just a thread of it, but enough.”

  “And so you found the boy?”

  “It was dark by then, no moonlight, and nothing but treacherous paths. I was pulling at my harness, trying to follow the scent, but my handler kept me back. He told me we’d done all we could that night, and that we had to go back to our base till sunrise.”

  Champion’s barks trailed off, and Lopside barked her name to keep her awake and going.

  “So you went back to your base till morning. And then you found the boy? Champion? What happened next? Champion!”

  “No,” she said with a start. She’d fallen unconscious. “No, I didn’t go back to base. I broke away from my handler. I knew the boy was close by. I knew I could find him. And if we waited hours for the sun to rise, who knows what might have happened to him? Like I said, it was a cold night, and he didn’t even have a jacket.”

  “You disobeyed your handler’s order,” Lopside said, astonished.

  “I disobeyed an order,” Champion admitted. Lopside could hear the shame in her voice.

  “But at least you found the boy, right? You saved his life, so you were still the hero?”

  Lopside’s nails were worn ragged from digging, but the labor was finally starting to pay off. He’d dug runnels in the wall panel deep enough to sink his teeth into. He bit into the runnels and closed his jaws as tightly as he could.

  “The boy was never in danger,” Champion said with a trace of a growl. “He was a volunteer. The whole thing was a training exercise. If I’d gone back with my handler like I was ordered to, I would have been petted and scritched. They would have given me treats, and I would have earned my search-and-rescue certificate. But they don’t want dogs who can’t follow orders. They don’t want dogs who think they know better.”

  The panel was coming loose, but the labor was draining. There wasn’t enough air. Icy spikes pounded into Lopside’s skull, and his lungs ached. If it was this bad for him, he knew it was worse for Champion.

  He released the panel from his jaws to take a quick breath and asked, “So what happened to you?” He resumed his effort, worrying the panel like a caught rat, moving his neck back and forth as if he was trying to break its neck.

  “Roro happened. She was looking for dogs to recruit. Dogs who could solve problems without always needing a human handler. Dogs who didn’t always follow orders. And dogs who think they know better. Dogs like you.”

  The panel broke free. Lopside let out an excited yip and examined the release mechanism, a black box the size of the card decks the crew sometimes played with. A white hose dangled nearby, dripping fluid that smelled like olives. The hose was about as big around as the metal-ringed socket on the side of the box.

  “I see the problem,” he reported. “I can fix it. I think.”

  He bit gently on the hose and tried not to swallow the fluid dripping into his mouth. Grade-four lubricant might smell like olives, but it tasted much more foul.

  “There’s not enough time,” Champion said, her voice reduced to a rasp. “You listen to me. I am your commander, and I am ordering you to get back to the dome.”

  Lopside didn’t bother saying anything. Champion didn’t need a dog who could follow orders. She needed a dog who could act on his own. She’d practically said it herself.

  Lopside inserted the hose into the socket. There was a gloop-gloop sound, and then a humming noise, and then a startling KERLUNK, and finally, a joyous SHRRRUFF when the hatch lifted up.

  Lopside let out a celebratory yelp.

  Champion only stared at him through drooping eyelids.

  “There’s still a long way back to the dome,” she said. “And we’re still losing air. And I’m pretty sure my leg is broken. G
o, Lopside. Go now.”

  “I am disobeying your order.”

  Champion sighed. “How like you.”

  “Yes,” Lopside agreed, licking her wounded leg. “And how like you.”

  Eleven

  THE FIRST FEW HOURS IN the agricultural dome were a time of healing but not resting. Daisy licked Champion’s wounds clean and tore pieces of cracked wall panel to shape a splint. It turned out she had a talent for first aid. Meanwhile, Lopside and Bug tried to figure out how long they could hold out in the dome.

  For water, the dogs could drink from the hoses that irrigated the crops. For food, they had only a scant supply of Emergency Rations Pellets left. Lopside had made the choice to drag and push and cajole Champion through the garbage chute instead of hauling the last bag of ERPs Champion had risked her life for. He spared a guilty glance toward the crop rows, where he’d dug out a shallow nest for the chicken eggs and covered them with heating packs he’d pilfered from the medical supplies.

  But before they ran out of food and water, they would run out of power. They’d turned one of the solar lamps back on, but just enough to provide a little bit of light and a stingy amount of heat.

  Using Lopside’s back as a stepping stool, Bug scrambled up on the dome’s main control panel. He spent a few minutes examining the readouts, and Lopside could tell he didn’t like what he saw.

  “I’ll give you the good news first,” Bug said. “Most of the dome’s systems run independently from the rest of the ship’s systems. The dome is designed that way so that when it detaches to land on Stepping Stone, it can still function. We have gravity, and the dome’s air recyclers are working. As long as we don’t venture out, we have air.”

  “What’s the bad news?” Champion cut in, limping over.

  “The usual thing,” Bug said. “We’re still running the batteries dry. The mission plan was that when we reached Stepping Stone and the dome separated from the Laika, the batteries would keep it going until its solar cells started soaking up energy from Stepping Stone’s sun.”