A Piece of Earth on Mars

The hatch opened green.

Not silver. Not red. Green — the last of Earth's light leaking out into the clean, quiet lab of Mars, Year 3066. Doby hopped down onto the soft silver floor, and for the first time ever, that floor got something on it. Mud. Little brown flakes of mud, falling off his belly with every step.

He had the tree bone in his mouth. He had the seed pressed warm in his paw. He had mud drying in his ears, and he did not care one bit.

Professor Paws was standing by the round platform with his paws crossed and one ear twitching.

"Four hundred and twenty-five complaints, young pup," said Professor Paws. His voice was stern. His tail was not. It went thump, thump against the star charts behind him. "Four hundred and twenty-five. I counted."

Doby dropped the tree bone so he could talk. "Only four hundred and twenty-four! Robo-Cat withdrew the last one!"

Robo-Cat rolled down the ramp, his acorn cap still sitting on his head, crooked as ever. "Correct. Complaint four hundred twenty-five was withdrawn. Therefore the log is now closed." He sat down. "I am on vacation."

Professor Paws walked around Doby slowly, the way he walked around a tricky equation. He sniffed. He stopped. He sniffed again, right at Doby's muddy shoulder.

"You rolled in it," he said. "Actually rolled in it." His voice went quiet. "Earth mud. Hm. I filed that smell in a drawer forty years ago."

Doby's ears went down, but his eyes stayed hopeful. "Are you mad?"

"Furious." Professor Paws let the word sit there. Then one eye closed in a slow wink. "Furious that you didn't bring a second paw-full for an old dog's shelf."

Doby gasped. Then he grinned. Then he held up his paw, and the green glow shone right through the dried brown, like a lantern inside a mitten.

Professor Paws looked at it for a long time. When he spoke again, there was no game in his voice at all.

"So the dial blinked for you after all. Just like it blinked for another curious pup, a long, long time ago." He tapped his own nose. "And? Did you bring something back with you?"

"Bella says hi. Well — she says moon-brain says hi." Doby opened his paw all the way. The seed glowed leaf-green between his toes. "And Pip gave me this."

Professor Paws did not touch it. He just looked, the way you look at something small and important.

"Then don't stand here showing it to old dogs," he said. "Go plant it before your bath washes the Earth off you."

"I heard 'bath,'" said Robo-Cat to no one. "Logging it. Vacation cancelled."

The sonic tub hummed, and the mud lifted off Doby in little brown clouds. It swirled and swirled and vanished down the drain — all of it except one thing. The green on Doby's paw pad stayed. The seed stayed, too, safe and dry in the paw Doby had held out of the tub the whole time. Professor Paws pretended not to notice. Doby pretended not to notice him noticing.

Doby's face was half soap. "Paws? Is it okay if I still miss them?"

"Missing something, pup, is just love with its boots on." Professor Paws scrubbed behind one of Doby's ears. "Now rinse."

Later, in Doby's room, the red metal walls glowed soft and quiet. The hovering doghouse bobbed in its corner. The laser toys blinked, waiting. Everything was smooth and clean and exactly the same as always.

Except for one corner.

Doby propped the tree bone against the window, right where the lasers used to bounce. It was brown and bumpy and crooked, and it did not match the room at all. It looked like a bone from a giant. It looked exactly right.

Robo-Cat watched from the doorway. "That stick does not match the room."

"That's the point," said Doby. "Its name is tree bone. Bella named it."

"…Hm." Robo-Cat tilted his head. "My sensors detect a smell. Faint. Old rain and oak." A pause. He heard himself. "According to my sensors. Obviously."

Outside the door, Doby found something that had not been there that morning: a small red-soil planter pot and a little grow-light, already plugged in and humming like a purr. A note was taped to the pot. It said: FOR THE CURIOUS ONES.

Doby dragged the pot to the middle of his room. He dug one small hole with one paw — the paw that still smelled, faintly, wonderfully, of mud. He held the seed over the hole.

"It's red here," he told it. "But it's warm. Pip says you like sun, and this light is almost sun. Almost is close enough. Right?"

He dropped the seed in. He patted the red soil down, gentle, gentle. Then he sat. And waited.

Nothing happened.

He waited more. His ears dropped half a centimeter.

Robo-Cat came over and settled himself beside the pot. He curled his tail all the way around it, like a little silver fence. "Seeds take a night, moon-brain." He said it quietly, and he did not take it back. "Bella's fence was not built in one day either."

That night, Doby did not sleep in his hovering doghouse. He slept curled around the pot, his nose almost touching the red soil, his glowing paw tucked under his chin.

In the dark, there was one soft sound. Not a beep. A tiny pop.

In the morning, Doby's nose was in the dirt before his eyes were open.

"Robo-Cat. ROBO-CAT. Smell it! Quick! Before it's a memory!"

Robo-Cat leaned down over the pot. He went very still. He was quiet the way he had been quiet before, about smelling.

"…Wood. Rain. And something green," said his sensors, very quietly. A long pause. Then Robo-Cat cleared his speaker. "Filing this under: not a complaint. File number two."

There, in the red soil, under the warm hum of the grow-light, stood one green sprout — the very first green thing ever to grow on Mars. It was no bigger than a whisker. It leaned a tiny bit toward the light, the way Bella leaned toward the sun.

Doby's paw pad glowed beside it. Two greens in the red room.

Doby threw his head back and howled — one long, happy note, Bella's fence howl, carried all the way home across a thousand years. Far above, through the dome glass, one small blue-green star shone in the pink morning sky.

Doby put his nose down close to the sprout.

"Grow," he whispered. "Grow grow."