Voyage of the Dogs Read online

  Dedication

  Dedicated to Amelia and Dozer.

  They’re good dogs.

  * * *

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  LOPSIDE HOPED TO FIND A RAT.

  He sniffed the passageways, and he sniffed the bulkheads, and he sniffed inside the elevators and beneath the food heaters in the galley. He sniffed the waste vents, and he sniffed inside the agricultural dome, aching to catch that familiar rodent scent.

  Ratting was one of the most important jobs on the Laika, and Lopside was the ship’s ratter.

  He was named Lopside because one of his ears stood straight up like an antenna, while the other flopped over his eye. He had fierce teeth and a keen sense of smell to go along with a body that weighed no more than a small sack of kibble. His coat of black and cinnamon-brown fur was always unruly, even after a fresh brushing.

  “Wherever there’s people, there’s rats,” Roro liked to say. Roro was the ship’s agricultural engineer and senior dog wrangler, and she was Lopside’s very best friend. “In the days of wooden sailing ships the rats would scramble up gangplanks and skitter across mooring ropes. They’d settle in dark holds, eating away at stores of biscuits. So wherever a ship docked—whether it was a busy port or desert island—the rats would come with it. From dock to ship, from ship to dock, always rats. Rats and people. They even say a rat stowed away on the first voyage to Mars.”

  But Lopside wasn’t just looking for rats. His official job on the Laika was to sniff out trouble of any kind. He knew what the ship was supposed to sound like, what noises were normal and what noises could mean a problem. He knew what the decks were supposed to feel like under his paw pads. And he knew how the ship was supposed to smell. He was trained to detect burning odors, the bitter stink of melting wires and overheated power transfer junctions. A fire on a starship could be deadly. So he spent hours every day combing the ship with his nose fully engaged. His body was small enough to squeeze into tight spaces that the human crew had a hard time reaching, and his nose was even more sensitive than a lot of their sensors.

  “Hey, Lopside, do you have a spectrum calibrator on you?”

  Lopside lifted his nose from the deck plates and stared up into the eyes of Crew Specialist Dimka. He wagged his tail at him and barked, “Sure do.”

  Lopside wore a backpack with pockets that held an assortment of tools—spanners, radiation probes, calibrators, and anything else the crew members might need. He liked how the backpack made him useful, and the sensation of the straps wrapped snugly around his belly comforted him.

  He bit a plastic tab dangling from one of the straps to open the pocket where he kept his spectrum calibrator. Specialist Dimka reached down to grab it and gave him a scritch behind the ears. His hands smelled like lemons and coolant.

  “Good boy, Lopside. I’ll come by the kennel after my shift to give this back.”

  Lopside wagged his tail and continued on his way.

  The corridors echoed with greetings as Lopside continued his patrol.

  “Hey, Lopside!”

  “Hi, Lopside!”

  “Who’s a good boy? Lopside’s a good boy!”

  He made his way to the agricultural dome, delayed by encounters with more crew members, many of whom insisted on petting him, scritching him, or even giving him treats.

  The dome rose higher than a maple tree, a web of support struts with transparent panes of plasteel in between. Solar lamps shone from the ceiling, bathing the dome in a delicious warmth that felt like being wrapped in a blanket. On the ground, new crops sprouted in a field of neat rows, some of them in beds of soil and others in white hydroponic containers of chemical nutrients. Outside, all was stars, like glowing silver fleas against a vast, black void.

  Lopside found Roro on her knees beside a mound of fertilizer, planting garlic. Of all his jobs on the ship, his favorite was helping Roro tend the crops that would feed the crew once they landed on Stepping Stone.

  He ran to Roro, dropped his pack, and flipped over to expose his belly for a rub. Roro gave the best belly rubs.

  “How was ratting today?”

  Lopside barked and wriggled happily in the dirt. “It went pretty great. I sniffed the engineering module, command-and-control, and the communications array. I detected no problems.”

  “Good!” Roro said.

  Lopside thumped his tail. He liked praise.

  “I didn’t find any rats, though,” he said, his tail slowing just a little. “But I did get scritches from Crew Specialist Dimka, Med Tech Murph, and a biscuit from Commander Lin.”

  When Lopside spoke to the human crew, he didn’t do so in words, but with barks and gestures and postures. He communicated with the angle of his ears, with the way he cocked his head, with the speed and direction of his tail wags. And the crew members of the Laika, from the commander to the most junior assistant engineer, were equipped with translation chips that turned dog communication into human language.

  “Sounds like a busy shift,” Roro said with a smile. “But try not to overeat. Remember, you’re going into hibernation in the morning, and you can’t digest treats in deep sleep.”

  “We still get dinner, right?” Lopside never went hungry on the Laika, but he was still always very concerned about feedings.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get your kibble. Now, do you want to help me work or not? Hand me a thermal probe, please.”

  “Of course,” Lopside barked, rolling over to his feet.

  The next morning, the dogs of the Laika gathered in the hibernation chamber. They arrived even before Roro, because Champion had ordered them to. Champion was a golden retriever with a coat like polished brass and dark eyes that gleamed with intelligence. On Stepping Stone her job would be search and rescue. On the ship, she served as Commander Lin’s assistant and leader of the dog pack.

  She strode up to Lopside, alert and confident, and sniffed his muzzle. “You smell nervous. Worried about hibernation?”

  “Of course not.”

  “There’s really nothing to be afraid of. It’ll be just like taking a nap.”

  “A six-month-long nap,” Bug grumbled. Bug was a black, white, and tan corgi shaped like a squat log with big bat ears. He worked in the engineering module and tried to act like the engineers, who were a cranky bunch, probably because they were tasked with maintaining the ship’s important systems and knew what could happen if any of them broke down.

  “It won’t be like that at all,” Champion said, giving Bug a withering glare. “We’ll go to sleep and then wake up and it won’t feel like any time has passed. Nothing to fret over, Lopside.”

  “I’m not fretting,” Lopside barked. He was the smallest dog of the pack and the only non-purebred, and just because he was, in fact, worried about hibernation didn’t mean they needed to have a conversation about it.

  “I’m terrified,” Daisy said. “I think we’re all
going to die.” Daisy, the Great Dane, was still a puppy, with a head the size of Lopside’s entire body and legs like a giraffe’s. She worked in cargo, helping move bulky crates. And on the planet, she’d assist with construction.

  Bug offered the most reassurance he was capable of. “Hibernation isn’t always fatal. We might not die.”

  “But we’re not going to eat for six months,” Daisy wailed. “I’m going to starve.”

  Daisy took a gallop around the hibernation chamber. She liked to gallop when she was worried. She also liked to gallop when she was happy. Or hungry. Or full. Or awake. The other dogs tried to make themselves smaller to avoid a collision.

  Lopside told himself he’d be okay. Yes, hibernation carried some risks, but that was true about every part of space travel. And even though they’d be asleep, the pack would be together. Pack was closer than friendship. Closer than family. And Lopside knew Roro would never put him or his packmates in danger. She was just as much pack as the dogs. Thinking about that helped him feel better.

  Besides, hibernation was a necessary part of the mission.

  The journey to Stepping Stone was the first Earth expedition outside the solar system, a trip so long that the crew would have to spend part of it in hibernation to save on resources like food and water. In hibernation, they didn’t have to eat, they didn’t have to drink, and they used less precious energy. The Laika had launched from Earth months ago, heading out past the Moon, beyond Mars, dodging the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, moving past the grand gas giants, out farther than Pluto, farther than the Oort cloud where comets were born, out and out until even the mighty Sun was just a pinprick of light. The dogs were awake for all that time, but they would be in hibernation in the deep-space gulf between Earth’s solar system and the system of the star HD 24040, 152 light-years away. Eventually, they would land on the star’s fourth planet, which Space Operations had named Stepping Stone. There, the crew would erect shelters. They’d farm their own food, and they would explore an entirely new world. If they were successful, more ships would come, and the outpost would grow, and from there, they would launch new missions to even farther stars. The Laika was just one small step into a giant leap of limitless possibility.

  Of course, the humans couldn’t go alone. There had to be dogs. Because wherever humans went, dogs came along. Like rats, only more helpful. Dogs would herd livestock. Dogs would keep watch against the unknown. And, most importantly, dogs would keep the human crew company during the long spaceflight, and on their new home, far away from Earth.

  But first they had to get there.

  Roro and Medical Officer Ortega entered the hibernation chamber, all smiles and calm smells.

  The dogs came over to sniff Ortega, and when Roro sat down on the deck, they piled atop her and rolled around while she scruffled their ears and patted their bellies and gave them her very best scritches. Even dignified Champion grinned with joy.

  But when Roro finally stood, Champion sat on her haunches, giving Roro her full attention. Lopside and the others followed Champion’s lead.

  Ortega helped Roro get the dogs into their hibernation chambers. The chambers were plastic beds with thin foam pads, but Roro packed them with blankets to keep the dogs warm and comfortable. One by one, she patted their heads, scritched their bellies, rubbed their backs, and told them what good dogs they were. She said there was nothing to worry about.

  “When you wake up, we’ll be so much closer to Stepping Stone,” she said. “And you won’t even feel that time has passed. It’ll be just like you had a good night’s sleep.”

  Roro scratched Lopside behind his floppy ear, his favorite place.

  “Will I dream?” he asked her.

  “I imagine you will.”

  “What will I dream of?”

  “The same thing you always do: chasing rats.”

  Lopside thumped his tail.

  “Just try not to run too hard in your sleep,” she said. “You’ll detach a sensor pad or something.”

  She gave him another good ear scritch, stroked his back, and shut the lid to his chamber. He heard a soft hiss, and the last thing he saw through the clear plastic was Roro’s smiling face.

  Two

  LOPSIDE OPENED HIS CRUSTY EYES and stretched his jaws in a wide, creaky yawn. His tongue felt like burned toast, and he had to pee.

  Triggered by his motions, the lid to his chamber opened with a puff of air.

  He expected to see Roro’s face looking down on him, but she wasn’t there. And neither was her scent.

  Swallowing an uneasy growl, he leaped down to the deck.

  “Report,” Champion ordered with a clipped bark.

  The dogs gathered and sniffed each other’s butts.

  The dogs could communicate with barks and growls and whimpers and other vocalizations, but nothing told them as much as scent, so sniffing was part of standard mission protocol. The smell of their butts said that they’d all emerged from hibernation in good health. But something wasn’t right. The chamber was dark. A single emergency light in the ceiling cast a dim orange glow. Why weren’t any of the crew members there to make sure they awoke from hibernation safely? Why was nobody there to greet them hello? To pet them? To give them treats? And where was Roro?

  “They must be dealing with a higher priority,” Champion barked with confidence. On her orders, the dogs spread out to search the ship for the crew.

  Lopside expected to run into a human right away, but after checking the agricultural dome and the crew quarters level, he hadn’t run into anyone. That was when a knot started forming in his stomach.

  He sprinted to the lifepod docking station, where he found Champion, panting. Lopside didn’t have to smell her to know she was upset. Where the lifepod should have been was just a gaping, empty docking ring.

  “Did you find anyone?” he asked.

  Her tail drooped. The answer was no.

  The lifepod was gone.

  The crew was missing.

  And the Barkonauts were alone.

  “I want a full inspection,” Champion ordered once all the pack had returned to the hibernation chamber. “Our top priority is determining the condition of the ship. What’s working? What’s not working? Report back here in one hour. Go,” she concluded with a commanding bark.

  Lopside broke off in a trot for the environmental systems control module. It didn’t take him long to realize the Laika was in trouble. Some of the doors weren’t closing all the way, as if the door frames had been knocked out of shape. Entire sections of the ship were dark and freezing cold. In some places, the air smelled like rotting garbage. The water tasted weird.

  Little blinking lights on the environmental control panel meant the systems that pumped breathable air through the ship weren’t working right. Some blinked red, the signs of systems that weren’t working at all. Lopside lifted his nose and drew in a deep breath. The air held a lonesome stillness.

  Before things had gone wrong, Lopside could nose his way through the ship and catch the scents of dozens of humans. Smells clung to the shoes of crew members who tracked them from different parts of the ship. He used to smell traces of sweat and soap, of coffee and garlic and onions from the galley. He could smell traces of laughter. He could smell homesickness.

  Now, the ship smelled empty, and flat, and stale. It smelled lost.

  He was nosing beneath the environmental control console when he caught a familiar scent. Before he even knew what was happening, his heart was thudding in his fuzzy chest and his tail started wagging fast enough to generate a breeze.

  He’d caught a whiff of Roro.

  He could almost see her scent, like a faint red line floating in midair. Nose twitching, he pursued it along a snaking path, concentrating so hard that it occupied almost every cell of his brain. He would not lose the scent.

  He followed the trail through the deep whir of the gyroscope tunnel and into the space-suit locker. Twenty-four survival suits hung empty on hooks. No hands
filled the gloves. No faces looked out from behind the visored helmets. And next to the twenty-four empty suits was a hook where the twenty-fifth should have been. But it was missing.

  He exited the locker and made a right turn, coming upon Passageway Six. And there, he paused.

  There was nothing particularly remarkable about Passageway Six. Like dozens of other passageways through the ship, it was a tube-shaped corridor lined in off-white paneling. Just a route from one part of the ship to another. Yet it made Lopside’s tail droop. It made his ears lie flat against his head.

  This was where Roro’s scent was strongest. And it was also where it ended.

  Three

  AFTER INSPECTING THE SHIP, THE dogs gathered in the kennel to report their findings.

  The kennel was where they ate and slept. Each dog had their own sleeping mat. Dispensers in the walls spit kibble and spouted water, and the dogs could relieve themselves into floor vents that collected their waste, purified it, and recycled it into fresh food and water. There were ropes for tug-of-war, a ball gun that fired rubber balls to chase, bubbles that burst from a nozzle, and plenty of toys to chew and destroy. Most of these things weren’t standard gear, but Roro had built them out of spare parts.

  Bug gave his report first, standing at attention on his squat little legs, his feet like round muffins.

  “We are in a lot of trouble,” he barked.

  With that, he sat down to show that his report was complete.

  Champion did not think it was complete. She didn’t growl, and she didn’t show her teeth, but Lopside could tell she was seconds from doing both. Apparently Bug noticed, too, because he stood back up.

  “More detail?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Champion said, her lip curling back just the tiniest bit.

  “We have no engines at all. No pulse engines, no Tesseract motor. The Laika is dead in space.”

  “We’re dead?” Daisy yipped. “We’re dead! Dead, dead, dead!”

  The other dogs waited while Daisy galloped around the kennel in a panic.

  Once she lay panting in an exhausted heap, the meeting could continue.