Diego Metaxos hadn't been all that thrilled about being dragged down to Petaybee to watch his old man in action as a geological surveyor. In all of his sixteen years, he had never been planet side, and he expected life on Petaybee to be as dreary and routine as life on board ship. But when he saw the place, he was glad he had come, and when he met the dogs, he was even gladder. By the time the lady let him drive her dog team, he had been convinced that this trip was the most brilliant thing that had ever happened to him.
At first he had been freaked out by the whole idea of the expedition, and with good reason. Even the shrink on his dad's ship had told him that he had had a lot to be freaked out about recently. First of all, his mom had fallen for a company exec who liked Mom fine but didn't want any other attachments. Mom, a senior astrophysicist, had never exactly been the warm type, and Diego had spent most of his life moving with her from ship to ship, or watching her come and go from various assignments while he sat in front of a teaching computer. Lots of the places Mom was assigned, there had been no one his own age, and very seldom did he find an adult who wanted to be bothered with someone else's kid. At the last couple of stations, he had begun to pal around with a few of the younger corps troops, listening to their casual conversation and admiring the hard-core way they handled themselves, but he was always conscious that he wasn't really one of them, and in case he forgot it, his mother made no bones about her displeasure in his choice of company. Then, too, about the time he started to gain a little acceptance and make one or two friends, they moved to a new station. He then had to fall back on the resources he had developed since he was a little kid, a good imagination and a quick brain. He didn't really need any friends. Both his mom and his dad were brilliant, self-sufficient people, and he was, too. All he had ever needed was computer access, and he could entertain as well as educate himself. He was good at languages, having started out speaking both Spanish and English from when he was a little kid, and he enjoyed reading actual old hard-copy stories in both languages when there was nobody he wanted to hang around with, so he got by.
He had gone to visit his dad and Steve about once every calendar year, and that was okay. He really loved his dad, even though he was a little on the perfectionistic and ultra serious side, except with Steve. Steve got him to knock it off, to relax and laugh a little. Steve was always finding neat things to share with them. He had given Diego his first hard-copy book-a Spanish-language text of Don Quixote-for Diego's ninth birthday.
"Pay close attention to Sancho Panza and Dulcinea," he had kidded Diego. "I'm a little of both." He struck a flamenco pose.
No wonder Dad and Mom hadn't gotten along. Even if Dad hadn't discovered he was gay, he and Mom were too much alike, both studious and serious and very literal-minded. So Diego didn't mind Dad and Steve's arrangement all that much; it just had never occurred to him that he might end up living with them.
He had just begun to get used to that-and he had even come to find out that Dad had wanted him all along but had been second best when it came to custody because in the eyes of company management theirs was a less-preferred sexual orientation to Mom's. Diego didn't see what difference that made. Nobody tried to tell him which way to swing, even if he had been ready to do any swinging of any kind. So far, he hadn't met anyone who instilled in him a desire to implement the procedures his manuals and texts described.
So he had just been getting used to his new situation and settling in when Steve had come down with some kind of virus just before Dad was due to take off for this mission to investigate something or other on Petaybee. That was when Dad had gotten the bright idea that Diego should come along, too, as his assistant instead of Steve, and "broaden his horizons."
In fact, he hadn't actually seen a horizon before, since he was in it, by dirtside reckoning. Pointing this out had caused Steve to rasp at him not to be a smartass and to give new experiences a chance. So he had come along, and to his surprise, the landscape of Petaybee looked more open and spacious than, well, than space.
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.