But where space was black, Petaybee was blue and white, even when it turned dark, as it quickly did on their way from SpaceBase to the dinky little town where their guides met them. The sky was sort of dark ivory, and he could still see Petaybee’s sun, like a small snowball hanging in the sky, as well as its two moons, one organic and one company-manufactured, in the sky.
Being here was sort of like being inside the moon, all pale and shining. SpaceBase was a hole and the town was ugly, but the countryside was really pretty fascinating, and the snocle ride into Kilcoole seemed all too short. The place was so much like something from his books, and yet so different that he knew he would never forget it even if he didn’t decide, as his father obviously hoped, that he would become a great geologist like his old man.
Then, when they started unloading the equipment from the snocle, and a whole fleet of dogs, about fourteen to a sled, pulled up in front of the station, he started getting hooked.
The dogs were the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen. They were red as a Mars moonscape but delicately featured with foxy, intelligent faces. At first their barking scared him a little bit, but then the lady-when she spoke he could tell she was a lady-driving his sled said they were friendly and he could pet them if he liked. They were soft! The tops of their coats were a little icy, but when he took his mitten off and dug into their fur with his hand, it was as soft as anything he had ever felt, and warm enough to keep his hand from freezing before he stuck it back into the glove. As he was bending over to pull the mitten back on, the dog licked his face. “Hey, boy!” Diego said, and hugged him.
“Girl,” Lavelle, the driver, said. “That’s Dinah, my leader. She likes you, and she’s a good judge of character.”
“Leader?”
“The dog I talk to, and the one who tells me and the other dogs what’s going on up ahead, what to do. As you can see from this arrangement, mostly all the other dogs see is the rear end of the dog in front of them.” The dogs wagged their curled feathery tails and grinned as if that was a great joke they all shared.
He rode with Lavelle while his dad rode in the sled in front of them. The other members of the expedition, two women, one a seismographer and one a mining engineer, and the man his dad said was a soil mechanics specialist, all of them Doctor Somebody-or-other, rode in the other sleds.
It was a great ride, bundled along with the supplies into the furs on the sled, bumping and whisking over snow and ice while the dogs ran ahead, tails bouncing. But the best part was when, once they were well out of town with nothing much in the way, Lavelle let him drive.
“When you want them to go, yell to Dinah, ‘Hike!’ and ‘Gee!’ if you want them to go right, ‘Haw!’ to the left, ‘Whoa!’ when you want them to stop. Dinah will do it and see that the others do it. She’s a smart pup. You stand here.” She showed him the rough hair-hide strips along the runners where he could put his feet without slipping. “The brake is here. Step on it if you want to stop, but you won’t stop very quick on ice.”
The other sleds all passed them, but Lavelle didn’t care. As soon as he had his hands on the handlebars and his feet on the treads and Lavelle had strapped on the nets made of wood and babiche-rawhide strips-he shouted “Hike!” to Dinah and off she went, the others pulling with her, whining a little at the sound of a new voice.
Dinah was, as Lavelle said, a smart dog. She wasn’t about to let the other sleds stay ahead of them and passed them easily, falling in behind the first sled, the one his father was riding in.
The run to catch up was the best part, with the wind biting into his face and blowing his breath back, the whole white-and-blue world framed in the icicles clinging to his lashes and the ruff of his hood. As soon as they slowed down to fall in behind the other sled, he got cold, then bored at having to stay so far behind. Lavelle, loping beside him with a funny knee-high gait to let each cumbersome snowshoe clear the snow before she set it down again, began telling him about the great races her grandfather had told her about, the ones they used to have in the old days in Alaska, which was part of a country back on Earth.