The Earth Friends

Doby's mind went as blank as a Mars sky.

Prove it. Prove it HOW? He looked at his paws, at the oak, at the silver rocket sitting in the grass behind him.

"The rocket!" He pointed with his whole body. "That's mine! The silver one! It's shaped like a dog bowl!"

The dog trotted over and sniffed the hull. She sniffed it twice, the way dogs do when they want to be sure. Then she sneezed.

"It's a weird bowl," she said. "But weird bowls can be Earth weird. Where's your red dust, Mars pup? I've heard Mars is red all the way through."

Doby's ears went down. He didn't have red dust. He had left it a thousand years away.

Then he remembered the one thing he had that no Earth dog could possibly have.

He lifted his right paw and held it out, pad up.

She leaned in. And she went very, very still.

The paw pad was glowing. Leaf-green, soft green, green like sunlight through a leaf held up to your nose. It lit the brown and white fur of her chin and made her whiskers shine.

"It's warm," she whispered. "I can feel it on my whiskers. Mars pup — dogs don't glow."

"I do. A little." Doby wiggled his toes, and the green wiggled too. "I got it from your Earth. I stepped on the grass, and the green hopped right onto me. It's been getting brighter ever since."

She sat down hard on her tail. Then a grin spread across her face, slow and wide, one ear flopping.

"A pup with a green paw from Mars. That's the silliest true thing I ever heard." She thumped her tail on the ground. "I'm Bella. What's your name, moon-brain?"

"Doby! And that's Robo-Cat."

From on top of a dry rock a little way off, Robo-Cat's scanner eye clicked. "Complaint number four hundred and eighteen. Being introduced as that before a formal hello."

"Does he always sit on rocks and complain?" Bella asked.

"Yes," said Robo-Cat. "It is my function. Ask anyone."

She laughed — a big, happy, rolling laugh that came right up from her belly. Doby decided on the spot that it was the best sound on Earth so far, except for rain, which he hadn't heard yet.

Then she jumped up, shook the leaves off her back, and got a look in her eye. A look that meant trouble. The good kind.

"All right, Mars pup. If you're going to be an Earth dog for a day, you need lessons. Lesson one: the puddle."

She led him back to the low spot in the grass, where the puddle sat shining and the mud around it was dark and wet and smelled like rain and roots.

"You don't walk around the puddle," said Bella. She stepped in. SQUISH. Mud squeezed up over her paws. "You walk in it."

Doby's paw hovered. It trembled a little.

"Back home, if I got dirty, a cleaning bot would be on me in three seconds," he said. "He has a little brush. He hums."

"Complaint number four hundred and nineteen," Robo-Cat called from his rock. "Preemptive. I already know what is coming."

"No bots here," said Bella. "Just mud. It doesn't hum. It squishes." And with that she plopped down and rolled — a full, glorious, whole-body roll — and came up with a brown stripe down her middle. "Your turn. Trust me. It's Earth's way of hugging you."

"Okay," Doby whispered. "Okay-okay-okay."

He stepped in.

Squishy! The mud squeezed up between his toes, warm underneath and cool on top, and it made a sound like a giant kiss. Doby froze. Then a giggle climbed out of him. Then he flopped, and rolled, and rolled again, and the mud got on his ears and his nose and his tail and even on his glowing paw — and the green shone right through the brown, like a little lantern under a blanket.

"BELLA! It's WARM and it's SOFT and it's — what's the word —"

"Squishy!"

"SQUISHY!" Doby rolled again, just to be sure. "Robo-Cat! Come squish!"

"I will remain on my rock. My rock is dry. My rock is my friend." A pause. His tail-twitch servos gave a tiny whir, the way they did when he was watching something very hard. "Complaint number four hundred and twenty. The mud is… loud."

Bella looked Doby up and down and nodded like a proud teacher. "There. Now you look like a proper Earth pup. Brown ears, green paw, one hundred percent mud."

When they were too tired to roll anymore, they flopped down in the shade under the big oak, belly-down, chins on paws, close enough that their shoulders touched. Doby's stick lay between them. Bella had sniffed it, approved it, and declared it "a real tree bone," which Doby decided was the stick's proper Earth name.

"Tell me the flying doghouse part again," said Bella. "Slowly."

"It floats!" Doby said. "You press your nose on the button, and it hums up off the floor, and there's a window in the bottom and you can watch your kibble bowl get smaller and smaller—"

"You can fly," Bella whispered. "To the ceiling."

"To the top of the dome! But Bella — everything at home is silver and red. Nothing is green. My grass is a picture you can walk on. It smells like nothing."

"Nothing?" Bella's ears went straight up. "Grass that smells like nothing?"

"Everything smells like nothing. My whole whole life." Doby scratched his muddy ear. "What do you do all day, here? For real?"

Bella rolled lazily onto her side. "I chase the sun. It moves, I move. When it goes behind the hill, I sleep. That's my whole day. Every day." Then, quieter, with her eyes on the sky: "Though sometimes I look up at the stars and wonder what's up there. Now I know. There's a pup."

Doby's tail thumped the grass all by itself.

From the rock, Robo-Cat spoke up. His voice was not orange and bossy this time. It was quiet and small, like a light turned down low.

"Smells are not in my database." A pause. "But I have recorded Doby describing mud for eleven minutes. I am told this is not the same."

Nobody laughed at him. Bella reached out with her nose, found a little acorn cap in the grass, and nudged it gently until it rested at the bottom of Robo-Cat's rock, like a small brown hat left there on purpose.

"So what's a squirrel?" Doby asked.

Bella fell over sideways, laughing. "Tomorrow! We find you a squirrel!"

"I don't have a tomorrow—" Doby started, and then stopped. He did have a tomorrow. Just not here. The rest of the sentence stayed in his mouth and sat there like a stone.

The oak leaves went shhh above them.

And then, soft as a single raindrop, Doby's collar beeped.

Doo.

Just once. Doby's ears went up. His tail stopped mid-thump.

Bella lifted her head. "What was that?"

"Nothing." Doby's voice came out small. "It's just my collar. Saying hello."

But Bella was already nosing at his neck, at the smooth silver band with the blinking light. "Collars don't say hello. Mine jingles. Yours counts something." She looked at him, one ear up, one ear down. "What does it count, Doby?"

Doby put his muddy paw over the collar. The green glow was dim under the dried brown, but it was still there.

"Time," he said. "It's counting time."

Bella lay back down beside him, shoulder to shoulder, warm in the way only another dog is warm. She was quiet for a moment.

"Then it's a good thing we're using it well," she said. "Right?"

Doby didn't answer.

Up in the oak, a small red-breasted bird landed on a low branch. He cocked his head and looked down at the glowing paw with bright black eyes, and sang, very softly, twice.

"Green. Green green."