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Earth’s Exosphere: November 3rd, 1957
“Well, hello there. What are you doing out here?” The Doctor hung out of the TARDIS’ ajar doors, Rose Tyler clinging to the ends of his trench coat to keep him from tumbling into space.
“What is it, then?” Rose asked, craning her neck in an effort to see over the Doctor’s shoulder and catch a glimpse of what he was looking at. The two had just returned from a visit to a proper 1950s American diner, which the Doctor had dubbed “the best diner in the Milky Way” (Rose thought it was good, but not that good, before realizing that his rating was entirely based on the fact that this particular diner served banana milkshakes.) Just as they were about to enter the vortex, the TARDIS received a distress call– From right outside her doors. And that brought them to their current situation: The Doctor leaning into space, peering at something that only he could see, with Rose Tyler as his anchor.
Glancing over the Time Lord’s shoulder, Rose could just make out the shape of a small shuttle, drifting alone through the stars. A small brown face appeared in the porthole, its dark eyes wide with pleading. It was then that Rose realized what the creature was.
“Doctor, there’s a dog in there!”
The Doctor let out a sigh. He was at war with himself, and his hearts were currently reigning over his brain. Realization had hit him. He knew who this dog was. And he knew that this was a fixed point in time. But he also knew that he couldn’t just leave her here.
“It’s November 3rd, 1957.” He suddenly spoke, straightening to his full height and nearly causing Rose to stumble backward and onto her bum.
“Yeah?”
“That’s Laika. The first living thing to orbit the Earth. Well, the first Terran, anyway.” He sniffed, drawing out the ‘well.’
Rose grinned, that wide smile that graced her face every time she learned something new. “That’s amazing!”
The Doctor turned to his companion, his face stony. “Rose, this is a one-way trip. She’s not going home. She’ll be dead in a matter of hours.”
Rose’s eyes dulled, a candle being blown out and shrinking into darkness. “Are we just going to leave her here?” She glanced back out to the shuttle, the little dog now panting in the heat of her metal coffin.
The Time Lord was deep in thought for a moment, raking a hand through his hair, weighing his options. And then, with a swift turn on his heel, he yanked his spacesuit from the spot on the wall where it hung and began to step into it.
“Not today, Rose Tyler.”
****
The Doctor and Rose stood in the console room, Laika at their feet, gazing at them expectantly. Rose was mildly amused by the fact that the Doctor and the little dog were almost matching, him still in his space suit and Laika in a tiny Soviet flight suit.
Laika let out a sharp bark, which echoed off of the time column and the round things on the wall. The Doctor nodded in understanding. “Nice to meet you too, Laika. I’m the Doctor.” He knelt down and ruffled the fur on her head.
“Can you understand her?” Rose asked, blinking.
“Of course I can, Rose. I speak dog.”
Rose threw her hands up in mock defense. Of course he could speak dog.
Laika barked again. I want to go home. Her voice was small, like that of a child’s (Because she is just a child, the Doctor reminded himself), and possessed a fierce Russian accent.
“I know you want to go home, Laika. I’m sorry, but I just can’t do that.”
Something in the Doctor’s chest squeezed. He knew that feeling– Wanting to go back to a home that you could never return to. Laika was sent to space to die. To advance modern science forever, yes, but also to die. Her maiden voyage was always supposed to be her first and her last. He simply couldn’t bring her back to Russia– It would raise too many questions and possibly put the little dog at risk, doomed to a life of further experimentation and unforgiving space flights. Not to mention the fact that an event like that would hack the spacetime continuum even more severely than he already had by saving her.
Laika whimpered. Why did they do this to me?
The Doctor was silent. For once in his life, he didn’t have an answer. For 900 years he had been trying to figure out how humans, this race whom he loved so much, could be so cruel. He never could come up with a decent answer.
“What’s she saying?”
And there was Rose’s voice, yanking him from the dim corners of his mind like it always seemed to.
He debated telling her the truth out of fear of it hurting her, as she tended to take things to heart. But that’s what made Rose Tyler so brilliant, a shining beacon of hope and tenderness and humanity in the Doctor’s dark conscience. So he told her.
“She wants to know why they did this to her.”
Rose’s face fell, briefly, before her secondary school history class came to mind. “To get a leg up in the Space Race, yeah?”
The corner of the Doctor’s mouth twitched up slightly until he remembered the circumstances of their current situation.
“Well, yes. But why? Why is the human answer to the thirst for knowledge always at the expense of another being? What makes her any lesser than you lot?” Anger crept into the Doctor’s voice as he gestured broadly to Laika, who was still standing at their feet, staring at them with an almost all-knowing intensity.
In his sudden temper, Rose saw her first Doctor. The Doctor with the steely eyes and the grungy leather jacket. The Doctor who thought humans were stupid apes (she could practically hear the northern accent now) but never truly meant it.
And suddenly, as quickly as it had come on, his temper died. The ancient rage in his dark eyes perished with it, softening as he stepped down from his soapbox and gazed at Rose. His eyes always seemed to do that when Rose was around. That was the difference between her first Doctor and this one– At heart(s), this new Doctor was soft. Rose liked that.
“Rose Tyler, did I ever tell you that the TARDIS has an animal sanctuary?” The Doctor rapidly changed the subject and cocked an eyebrow.
Rose wasn’t exactly surprised (she was always discovering strange new rooms on the TARDIS, having stumbled upon a disco-themed Chinese buffet while walking to her bedroom just last week), but the thought of a room on the time ship being chock-full of animals, likely from all different planets, universes, times, and dimensions made her heart soar.
“She does?”
“‘Course she does. The TARDIS has everything. Including a disco-themed Chinese buffet.” The Doctor mused, holding his hand out to her. He wiggled his fingers slightly, and she took it.
“Come on, I’ll show you.” He beamed and then got down to Laika’s level. “You too, girl. Allons-y!”
The little dog seemed to understand instantly, wagging her tail and bounding down the corridor.
****
After what seemed to be an impossibly long trek, the trio came upon a remarkably ordinary-looking door, and the Doctor stepped aside. He looked at Rose and motioned to the doorknob, beckoning her to do the honors. She grinned, took the doorknob in her hand, and swung the door open.
Beyond the door lay miles and miles of rolling verdant hills, bathed by the warm rays of a lemon-yellow sun. Wildflowers dotted the lush grass and the leafy limbs of trees stretched into the blue skies. A babbling river wound through the landscape as creatures of every clade and walk of life roamed the land.
Rose was breathless as she stepped past the threshold, gasping in surprised delight as a pleasant breeze tossed her hair.
“Why did you never tell me about this?!” She asked, whirling around to face the Doctor, who was leaning in the doorway, smiling softly.
“You never asked.” He cleared his throat and threw his arms out, spreading them at his sides in a theatrical presentation. “What you are looking at, Rose Tyler, is 900 years of stowaways. Some of these animals don’t even exist on earth anymore.” He nodded in the direction of a peculiar-looking creature lounging by the river, shaped a bit like a skinny little dog with a long tail and a striped back. “That there is the last surviving thylacine. Nabbed him from the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania in 1936 when I knew that he didn’t have much time left.” The Time Lord turned and pointed to a plump bird resting on a tree branch. “That’s a passenger pigeon. I call him Stan. Stole him out of a cage and hid him in my coat at a shooting competition in Michigan in 1878. They were declared extinct in 1914.” He once again faced Rose. “Point is, Rose, everyone deserves a second chance. I’m a big believer in that, me. And now, Laika has one. The sole pilot of Sputnik 2, and, in this very moment, the most important being in the Universe.”
He knelt down and ruffled the fur on Laika’s head, and carefully removed her flight suit.
“You won’t be needing this anymore, Laika.” His voice was gentle.
Rose joined the two in the grass, squatting to the dog’s level and planting a delicate kiss on the top of her head. “Good dog, Laika.”
****
Outside the TARDIS, Sputnik 2 drifted alone. Empty. A hunk of metal burning among the stars. And not a dog in sight.