EXTENDED PROLOGUE

This is the longer version of Laika's story. It was a bit too long and introduced a few characters that we were never going to follow through on so we decided to cut it back. The ending is kind of sweet.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a small silver ball into orbit around the Earth. Sputnik was the world’s first artificial satellite and it amazed everyone with its ability to travel at 29,000 kph and go “beep”. With this great success under their belts, the Russian scientists at Star City decided they would send up something that would fly even faster and go “woof”.

It is doubtful that humans will ever know what dogs think about, which is a pity, because we could probably learn quite a lot from them. Dogs appear to have a nice take on life. Eat well, get lots of sleep, chase a ball whenever possible and, if someone’s nice to you, be nice to them. They don’t understand much more than that. So when a little stray dog called Laika was plucked from the streets of Moscow, she would have had no idea that she was about to become a national hero. As she was checked, tested, weighed and measured she wouldn’t have understood anything about gravity and escape velocity. All she’d have known was that dog biscuits taste good and that it was much warmer inside than outside on the street. She also wouldn’t have had a clue as to why, on one cold, dark morning, she was taken out to a tall mysterious tower and placed inside a small metal container at the top. Nor would she have had any idea at all why the big chunky human - who had given her all the biscuits and who now closed the hatch shutting her in - had a small, shiny tear in one eye.

Now, before you get any bright ideas about what to do next time you find yourself at a loose end on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it should be noted that launching a rocket into space isn’t something you do on the spur of the moment. A very long list of things to do has to be made first. At the top of the list is usually something like “calculate density of metal alloy” and the last thing is “push red button”. The process takes a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of clever people. Each person busily works down his or her own bit of the list until everybody gets to the end. Then somebody pushes that button.

The time it took for the electrical signal to reach the rocket’s engine seemed like a lifetime to the young scientist Dr Macheski sitting at his panel in System Control. He cast a look at the Deputy Chief Mission Controller for only a moment but by the time he looked back, the rocket had cleared the launch pad tower. The engine screamed, smoke billowed and a proud Russian voice blared from every loudspeaker on the base. A hundred heartbeats later the craft had punched through the outer limits of the atmosphere and was sailing a silent orbit around the planet Earth.

‘Orbital tracking?’ the Deputy Chief Mission Controller asked.

‘Normal,’ replied one of his scientists, not taking his eyes off a panel of dials.

‘Pressurisation?’ the Deputy Chief Mission Controller asked another.

‘Normal,’ came the answer.

‘Electrical responses?’

‘Normal, sir,’ yet another spoke up.

The Deputy Chief Mission Controller abruptly left his nicely padded high-backed chair and strode the ten steps to where the Chief Mission Controller sat. His chair had a bit more padding, a slightly higher back and was situated on a raised platform so he could look out over the whole Mission Operations Room. A broad grin broke out across the Deputy Chief Mission Controller’s face.

‘Zero ten minutes and everything is normal.’

The corners of the Chief Mission Controller’s mouth turned slightly upwards and his head slowly nodded once. He was jubilant. A buzz of elation quickly sped throughout the control room. Soon everyone was shaking hands and slapping each other’s back. Only one rather chunky technician with biscuit crumbs in his lab coat pocket stood motionless. His eyes were still fixed on the spot in the morning sky where the rocket disappeared from view.

From an orbit of seventeen hundred kilometres, the view is quite magnificent. It is a view of the Earth that is enjoyed by very few humans and even fewer dogs. So it really was a pity that Laika’s craft had no windows. If it did, she could have seen the continents and brilliant blue oceans as they slowly passed below her. She could have stretched out her paw and covered half of Africa. Her tail could have flicked from California to New York in a fraction of a second. But she could see none of it: the clouds or the forests or the deserts beneath her, the rich field of stars above her, or the huge fiery gold-rimmed circle that lay directly in her path.

Scientists today know very little about space wormholes and the scientists at Star City who tracked Laika’s progress knew nothing at all. The Deputy Chief Mission Controller stood before the Chief Mission Controller with absolutely no explanation as to why Laika’s spacecraft had just simply disappeared from their radar screens.

‘No reason at all, sir. All systems were completely normal, then it was gone. Just gone,’ he said nervously.

The corners of the Chief Mission Controller’s mouth dropped. He said nothing as he stared with growing intensity at his Deputy.

‘I suppose the craft just exploded into a million pieces,’ the Deputy speculated.

Everyone in the Mission Operations Room sat at their stations in silence. Only a soft sobbing sound could be heard coming from the far corner.

Travelling through the wormhole was a bit like being sucked down the plughole of a sink, so while Laika could see nothing, she certainly felt something. She bounced about inside her craft finding herself upside down, backward, forward and sideways all at the same time. She didn’t like this at all, so she did what dogs do in an emergency. She barked. And she kept on barking all the way down the whirling tunnel. The buffeting grew and grew over the next few Earth minutes until for no logical doggy reason, it stopped. There was a weird floating silence for a moment followed by a low whistling noise. In the darkness of the capsule a familiar feeling descended on Laika’s body. It was gravity, and it was pulling the craft and its canine passenger down. The whistling continued steadily until it was abruptly replaced by a ferocious symphony of snapping, breaking and scraping. Laika was thrown violently from side to side and top to bottom. The whacks and smacks exploded all around her until there was one very large thud and Laika’s journey was over.

Laika lay upside down in the darkness of her still and quiet craft. A human in such a situation would have spent the next few moments regaining their composure, or even their dignity, but dogs have no sense of such things. She immediately started scratching madly at the hatch above her. As anyone knows, who has listened to their neighbour’s dog asking to be let into the house at one o’clock in the morning, dogs are persistent. Laika scratched and barked and whimpered. After more than an hour of this had brought no response, she threw into action “Dog Emergency Plan Number Two”. She closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.

A shiny red car burst from the forest and hovered smoothly into the clearing. It was given a clear path through the cordon of Government trucks, troops and armoured cars to the base of the alien craft. Two men stepped out, both wearing sleek silver overcoats and hats of obvious importance. They stood and looked up at the huge dark object that towered above them. They had never seen anything like it before - except in the Space Museum. It resembled the type of craft that the first Galactanauts had used in their pioneering flights. The main difference, however, was that it was the size of a ten storey building.

‘What do you make of it?’ the slightly taller of the officials asked the slightly shorter one, in a remarkably flat voice.

‘It’s big,’ came the reply in a similarly subdued tone.

There was a long pause as the two men quietly examined the massive craft. Eventually the taller one spoke again. ‘And it came out of the…err…’

‘The Golden Hole,’ the shorter one said finishing the other’s sentence and then, after a moment, added: ‘Apparently.’

‘Yes. Apparently.’ The taller one seemed to ponder the significance of this word for quite an unnecessarily long time before he spoke again. ‘Do you think there’s something inside it?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ the shorter one said after an even longer pause.

‘No. I wouldn’t be surprised either.’

The men were the two highest-ranking officials in Guardian Services and they weren’t surprised by much. If fact they earned their extremely large pay packets by being not surprised. So when they received a report that an object had flown out of the “Golden Hole” - as the wormhole that had just reappeared in the sky was known - and crashed in the Big Green Isolated Forest, neither of the two men were at all surprised. And now, as they watched the workmen atop the object cut the huge bolt that secured the hatch, they found it no surprise when a tremendous howling began to sound from within. Well, no big surprise.

The workmen froze with fear, dropped their tools and ran in a blind panic to the edge of the clearing. Another terrible howl shook the craft so violently that several were thrown off and left dangling and screaming in their safety harnesses.
Observing this, the shorter of the two officials turned calmly to one of his uniformed assistants. ‘Ask those workmen to take a break for a moment, would you?’ he said and turned back to his colleague.
Another, even more ear-splitting howl rocked the ship and shook the soil beneath them. This time the taller official spoke to the uniformed assistant. ‘And perhaps everyone could stand behind the vehicles,’ he requested politely.
The rescue teams swept in and removed the workmen in a flash. One flash later everyone was standing behind the hoped-for safety of the armoured trucks. The two officials were the last to join the uneasy throng. The emergency troops looked on with growing anxiety as the mysterious metal mountain rocked and thundered before them. They each grasped their weapons, hoses, stretchers and batons just that little bit tighter.

Soon the thumping began to concentrate on the hatch at the top. It lifted once, then again, and with a deafening crash the weakened bolt snapped and the hatch flew open. Everyone fell to the ground and covered their heads. Some even ran back into the forest. Only the two officials remained standing and watched calmly as a long, furry serpent-like creature raised itself up through the opening. It started to wave frantically from side to side. The two men exchanged slow glances and looked back. The creature was gone. The brief calm encouraged one trooper to raise his head from behind the bonnet of a personnel carrier. He let out a long, deep breath that whistled as it passed through the gap in his front teeth. Then canine chaos descended on the scene.
As if summoned from the deep, a monstrous fur-covered head burst up through the hatch. It darted from side to side – bright, sparkling eyes taking in the scene before it. Its ears twitched in strange positions. Its mouth dropped wide open, allowing a long slobbering tongue to unfurl across a row of sharp menacing teeth. Then with one powerful bound, the whole of the creature cast itself into the air and landed with a ground shattering crash before the terrified trooper. Fear glued the young man’s legs to the spot as he stared directly up into the eyes of the beast towering above him. The creature’s great snout suddenly lunged forward and its enormous tongue lapped the man from toe to head. The monster just as suddenly jumped back, leaving the man unharmed but dripping in drool.

The great animal leapt amongst the panicking troops, leaving some soaked and others trying to wrestle giant hairs off their clothing. Amazingly no one was hurt. The officials’ red car was badly damaged, however, when the creature picked it up in its mouth and dumped it in front of them. The animal jumped back expectantly, picked the car up again, shook it, dumped it back down, waited - then ran off. This time it kept running. It bounced off across the forest, its massive tail swinging enthusiastically; and disappeared over the jagged green horizon.

After most of the dust and fur had settled, the shaken elite troops of Guardian Services slowly regrouped. Most of them gathered around the gigantic metal disc that had fallen from the intruder’s neck at the height of the ruckus. The officials strolled up to it and the taller of the two read the single word etched upon it.

‘Laika,’ he said, uncertainly. The word was in a most curious language.

‘Apparently,’ the other replied.

* * *

After the initial shock of Laika’s unexpected arrival had eased, the people of the planet Gersbach found that they were actually pretty excited about having a giant Galactanaut visit them from the world beyond the Golden Hole. Their leading thinkers were very keen to exchange scientific ideas with her. They showed her their prototype for the latest thermodynamic astral-telescope. She buried it then chased her tail for half an hour. Despite being disappointed that she had decided not to share her knowledge, the Gersbacians treated her with the same respect due to any ambassador from another land. They let her have the run of the place, letting her pursue her own practices and customs. These may have seemed a little unusual but she never did any real harm. Occasionally a hoverbus or a small Government building would go missing but she always hid them in the same place. The officials just went and took them back and said nothing more about it.

Laika lived an unusual life for a common Earth dog but a happy one, probably much happier than if she had stayed on the streets of Moscow. The Gersbach people became very fond of her and when she passed away at the incredible age of forty-four, a special holiday was declared. The city put on a large ceremony where important citizens spoke about how nice a creature Laika was and about the enormous holes she had dug in their yards. They then buried her on the outskirts of the city with a giant ball made from socks that all the children had donated. An incredibly short time later, a field of beautiful wildflowers grew over her. People would come and have picnics and wonder about their mysterious visitor because, although the speech experts used the most powerful computers to try and translate her strange language, she always kept the story of her trip and the world from which she came, her little secret.