Luna Knows Where to Look

Luna's favorite arguments were with the night sky. Not real arguments. Just the kind you have in your head when you're lying on your back in the New Mexico desert at two in the morning, staring up at Orion and thinking about how the ancient Greeks saw a hunter up there when really it was a dog sitting on its hind legs. She knew what they really were - just a handful of stars that happened to line up a certain way because of where they were standing on Earth.

She knew all of them. Not just the names - the stories. Orion the Hunter. Scorpius the Scorpion. Cassiopeia the Queen. She'd read every book about them she could find, all the different cultures and what they'd seen in the same stars. The Greeks saw a hunter. The Aboriginal Australians saw an eagle. The ancient Egyptians connected them to Osiris. Same stars. Completely different pictures depending on what you were looking for.

That was the part that got her every time. The stars didn't change. The story did. She'd lie there in the desert and wonder what Orion would look like from somewhere else entirely. Another planet. Another galaxy. Whether anyone out there was looking at the same stars and seeing something completely different - something humans had never imagined because they'd only ever seen it from one small spot in the universe.

She never got tired of that question.

The sky above Santa Fe turned yellow-green just after lunch. Luna noticed it right away. The sky was a weird color. The wind had shifted. The birds had gone silent. The air smelled different. A big storm was coming, and it was coming soon. She heard a loud boom in the distance. Very soon.

She was sitting on her front steps when she heard Mrs. Padilla calling from down the street. "Pico! Pico!" Luna looked up. Mrs. Padilla was turning in circles in her front yard, calling her little dog's name over and over. The neighbors could hear her calls and within minutes, the whole block was outside. Everyone loved Pico.

It got loud fast. Not only the thunder, but the people. They were checking under cars, calling Pico's name, pointing in different directions. Someone said they thought they saw him heading toward the dry creek bed and three people ran that way, shouting. A rumble of thunder rolled in from the west. The sky got darker. Everyone got louder.

Luna stood in the middle of it and didn't move. She wasn't being lazy. She was thinking. Where would a scared dog go? Not toward noise. Not toward open space. Away from all of it - somewhere dark, somewhere small, somewhere that felt safe.

Luna thought about Pico. Small dog. Easily scared. Hated loud noises even on a calm day. She looked around the neighborhood carefully. Her eyes landed on the old storage shed at the edge of Mrs. Padilla's yard. The door was open just a crack. Just enough for a small dog. She walked toward it. No running. No calling out.

Luna knelt at the gap in the door. It was dark inside. She waited a moment and let her eyes adjust. Pico was in the back corner. Shaking. Pressed against the wall like he was trying to disappear into it. Luna didn't reach in. Didn't call his name. She just sat down and started talking - low and soft, not really caring if he understood, just giving him something calm to listen to.

She told him about Canis Major. How the ancient Greeks looked up at the sky one night and saw a dog up there - a big one, running behind Orion the Hunter. His faithful companion. They gave it a whole constellation, and then looked a little to the left and saw a smaller dog - Canis Minor. Two whole constellations. Just for dogs. She thought that showed real commitment on someone's part.

And the brightest star in the whole sky - brighter than every other star anyone could see from Earth - that one sat right on the dog's nose. The Dog Star, people called it. Sirius. The Greeks believed that when Sirius rose with the sun in summer it made the days hotter. They called them the dog days. Had for thousands of years.

Thunder rumbled again outside, but Pico's ears were pointed straight at her now, not flattened in fear. She looked at him in the dark. "So you're kind of a big deal up there," she said pointing to the sky. "Just so you know."

Pico took one small step toward her. Then another. Then he walked right into her arms and pressed his nose against her shoulder.

"Good boy," she said as she scratched his ears.

The crowd was still calling his name in the wrong direction when Luna came around the corner of the yard carrying Pico. Mrs. Padilla saw them first. She stopped mid-call and went very still. Then everyone else did too - one by one, like candles going out. Luna handed Pico over without saying anything about how she found him. Mrs. Padilla held him tight and looked at Luna over the top of his head.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Luna nodded. The first drops of rain started to fall and everyone scattered inside.

Luna stayed outside awhile longer. She liked the first few minutes of rain - the way it smelled, the way it made everything clean. The storm had pushed the clouds through faster than expected and patches of sky were already opening up above the desert. Stars appearing one by one as the clouds pulled back.

She walked to the end of the street where the neighborhood stopped and the desert began. She stood on the sidewalk with her face tilted up, picking out the constellations as they reappeared. There was Cassiopeia. There was the edge of Scorpius low on the horizon. She was thinking about what Scorpius might look like from somewhere else in the universe when the air in front of her did something air isn't supposed to do.

It folded.

There was a loud POP - sharp and sudden like a firecracker - and then a rush of wind that blew her hair straight back and made her stumble a step. And then a spaceship was simply there. Right in front of her. Where nothing had been a half second before.

Luna stood very still.

The ship was enormous and silent, close enough that she could have reached out and touched it. Light leaked from the cockpit windows. On the side, a name: The Aurora.

She walked around it slowly, one hand trailing along the hull. The surface was smooth in some places and full of panels and seams in others - things that opened, things that locked, things she didn't have any clue what they did. She went all the way around until she found it on the far side - a small handle set flush with the hull. She pulled it.

A ramp lowered from the belly of the ship and touched down on the wet desert ground. Light spilled out from inside - bright and clean. Luna looked back at Mrs. Padilla's house. Pico was standing in the window, tail wagging. Happy.

She looked at the ramp. Then at the open desert around her. Then at the stars overhead - Cassiopeia, Scorpius, all of them back now, bright and clear after the storm.

She walked up the ramp.

Inside was bigger than she expected. Quiet. Everything humming very softly. She moved through the space slowly, taking it in - panels and lights, levers and switches. It was overwhelming.

Then she found the screen. It was set into the wall at eye level, glowing softly. On the screen was a menu: navigation systems, star charts, communication systems. Then she saw one at the bottom: FLIGHT MANUAL

Luna looked at it for a moment. She pressed it.