gave him a hug. He licked my hand and his tail stirred with a half-hearted wag.
We passed two security checkpoints. And then I saw the rocket.
It was standing in a large clearing, propped up by metal scaffolding. It was so much larger than I could ever have imagined. It was sleek and fierce, and its tip pointed straight at the open skies.
My skin tingled with excitement. Only a day and a half before, I was just an ordinary kid stressing about a spelling olympiad. Now I found myself in a country that I have never even heard of before, looking at a real space rocket that appeared to be ready to lift off at any moment.
Then I asked the question I should have asked a long time before: “What exactly are we doing here, Chief Superintendent Spears?”
He gave me a measured glance, and I could see he was wondering how much I needed to know. “Well, son, you know that the ISS suffered a breakdown and that Boris, a dog, has been left behind. There are billions of dollars invested in that space station and we cannot afford to lose it. The breakdown affects the oxygen supply, and a valve needs to be replaced. A small thing, but critical. Dogs do not use a lot of oxygen – they are much smaller than humans. But Boris cannot make the repair without communication with the engineers on Earth.”
“And that is why you need William!” I said as the penny dropped.
As far as I knew, William was the only talking dog around. He would be able to convey messages between Boris and the engineers. But only if he were on the Space Station himself …
“Are you planning to shoot my dog into space in that rocket?” I asked.
The chief superintendent frowned, nodding his head. “I am sorry, but that is the only way, Alex.”
No. It was out of the question! I would never allow them to send my William on such a dangerous mission, all on his own. I looked at him. The two of us understood each other instantly. Over the past few years we had been inseparable. On our adventures up to now, he had always been the one to stow away in my luggage.
This time, it was my turn!
Getting Ready
It is no small thing to become an astronaut, but William wasn’t starting from scratch. His training at the IDA’s academy was comprehensive. Nevertheless, there were some gaps in his education that had to be covered to prepare him to survive in space.
I stuck to his tail and kept my eyes and ears open.
The first thing was to find him a space suit. There was a large room full of them fit for all shapes and sizes of humans and dogs.
A group of space suit tailors were clustering around the great dogtective, discussing his shape and size in their thick Russian accents. “Hi’zz very fat!” one of them complained. She was rather heavy herself. William growled.
“Look at ziez eerz. Where do vee put zem?” another one said. His own ears were cauliflower-shaped and nothing to brag about.
Some urgent adjustments had to be made. While they were rapt with the challenges that my dog’s podgy body posed to the art of space suit design, I inspected the suits made for humans that were hanging on a rail at the back of the room. Fortunately I have grown quite a bit in the past few months, and I found one that looked just right. I listened carefully to the discussions around William, and made sure that my suit was equipped with all the items discussed: a radio set, regulators for oxygen and a heating device.
The suit was perfect. I carefully stowed it aside.
Then they tried to teach William to drink through a straw. In space, eating off a plate or drinking from a glass becomes impossible because of the lack of gravity. Everything simply drifts away.
But a straw did not work for William’s floppy lips, no matter how he was urged to try.
“Stop fussing,” he said. “I’ll make a plan. Just see to it that there’s lots of good food to eat. I’ll have none of this tasteless goo in toothpaste tubes!” William was much too picky for the porridge-like mix space dogs were usually fed.
“Pack the food you serve the astronauts,” Superintendent Spears ordered.
“And remember, he has a good appetite!” I added. My dog and I needed a lot of fuel. According to my mom, we had appetites big enough to wipe out the entire budget of a small country. And if I were to sneak onto that rocket, the two of us would need all the food it could carry.
That evening the chief superintendent made me write a postcard to my parents. “We shall arrange for it to be posted from Johannesburg, just to keep them at ease.” We exchanged a wink. But really, he should have been ashamed of himself, swindling my poor parents like that!
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