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20 July 1969. Danny had rewatched the broadcast so many times. He could remember every sentence, every uncertain pause, every single breath taken during this fateful mission. It was probably inscribed in his DNA by now. He was a third-human, a third-ghost, and a third-Apollo 11 quotes. If someone ever managed to cut him open—shut up, Jazz, it’s not unhealthy coping, or whatever—, they might find the words floating inside his guts like alphabet soup.
Perhaps it was also his phantom core, subconsciously reaching out to scattered fragments left there by the astronauts. Collins had said—and, call Danny a nerd, but it always pissed him off, how people could forget Collins! The pilot!—that he had feared for Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s safety, that he might have to abandon them and return alone; no doubt that fear had clung onto the two walkers’ souls as well. Danny did not know if that was the reason, and, well, he did not care to know.
He cupped his hands against his mouth, muffling his voice like he was Interceptor Charlie Duke. “Tranquility to Eagle. What’s the status, Fenton?”
It was exactly as Aldrin had described it thirty-five years ago; and yet, not at all. For one, the colors: the astronaut had said there was not much of a general color at all. A disappointment to the many Americans who had bought a new TV just for the broadcast, to be sure. But that was because they could not perceive the nuances of whites: the blinding white of the bleached rocks, the soft white of the dust moving like tumbleweeds—tumblenots?—and… The white that kept lingering around Danny’s very own fingers, like a bad photo aftereffect.
“It’s beautiful,” he still found his own voice answering. Daniel Jack Fenton, first ghost kid on the Moon!
Not here in any official capacity, of course. In fact, his mere presence there probably violated several international laws.
“Be advised,” said Duke’s make-believe voice through Danny’s fingers, “there’s lots of smiling faces all over the world.”
Well, answered the memory of Armstrong in his head, there are two of them up here.
Right, he was supposed to enjoy the moment. No super-powered techno ghost trying to take over the world this time. Just himself, Danny, and the universe above his head.
Watching it swirl around itself… From here the constellations were a bit misaligned, compared to his bedroom—all ninety-six glow-in-the-dark stars, accounting those that had fallen off after so many years. But even up here they seemed so distant still. When he was seven or eight, he had read in an encyclopedia they were ghosts themselves—just lights from long-dead asters that were only now reaching their galaxy…
Danny slapped himself, shaking off the thought.
“Alright! Let’s do it! This is a small step for the ghost kid…”
He stretched one leg, over the shadow of where the capsule would have stood.
“One giant leap for—”
He tripped.
It was stupid, since there was absolutely nothing Danny could have tripped on, but he tripped regardless; surprised to have no resistance—no resistance at all. His ghost body behaved as it would on Earth. So instead of simply bouncing under the Moon’s gravity, his legs swam in the empty air, just in time to not fall head first into Armstrong’s first footstep.
“... Splendid job, Fenton,” said Duke’s voice off-script.
Of course, there was a major difference between Armstrong and Danny: Danny was a ghost. And as he let himself float adrift, his fingers scraping among the sea of dusty tumblenots, another pervasive thought came into his mind:
It’s not supposed to be this easy.
It felt a bit selfish, too. For as long as he could remember, he had always wanted to be an astronaut. Wanted to see the Moon, and other planets. Perhaps the only reason his dad had started nagging him about the whole family business, was because he had felt in him this adventurous spirit—ah ah. Or, perhaps, it was because Jack had come to terms with the fact that Jazz would never follow his footsteps, so defaulted to the other kid—
Woof!
… “Uh?”
No, Jazz would not have barked. That would have been dumb. But then…
Woof!
Danny stopped his drift and stood up.
On the horizon, he saw a shadow move. It was coming towards him. And it was still coming towards him, even as he tried to blink the vision away once, twice; because there was no way he was really seeing a dog on the Moon. But as the silhouette came closer, and he started to see its details, he felt a familiar burst of cold air creep into his throat.
“... Hey, I know you!” Woof! “I’ve got your face on a stamp!”
Danny instinctively braced himself for impact, but she stopped running just a few meters away from him, walking, before stopping; politely sniffing the tip of his boots.
Now, he had definitely seen her before. And she was exactly like the picture, the face of a white mongrel with two big black spots like goggles, down to the little drop of her right ear. She had only traded the sepia tones of a stamp for this burning white aura not unlike his own that screamed: hey, not an alien. Not alive at all, actually!
“You’re… Laika, right?” Laika barked in recognition. “Eh, I guess you made it… Somehow,” Danny added with a sheepish smile.
It was like meeting a celebrity he never knew he had wanted to meet. Not because she was unimportant, but because… She never reached her destination. He had read the stories: whether she had been poisoned, or suffocated to death, she had never been meant to succeed. That was her story, the ending blissfully forgotten.
Laika did not seem too offended. Her tail started to swing like a pendulum over the ground, evidently not caring as much as Danny did about the phantom footsteps of the astronauts. Well, guess she could clean them up. They were her successors, after all.
“Have you been waiting here all this time?”
Danny crossed his legs, floating down to the ground.
“You know what happened to you, right? Maybe you didn’t even want to be here.”
Laika put her head against his thigh, Danny felt how warm she was. Maybe it was just his own phantom core reacting, but it was almost like this warmth was wrapping around his body. Like a mini-sun. Or… A weird ghost version of a cat’s purr. That was how it felt, anyway.
It was obvious to him that, regardless of her untimely fate, someone had cared for her. Perhaps that was the reason why a lingering fragment of her spirit manifested on the Moon: to finish the job she had been trained his whole life to do, and now waiting for someone to bring her home. Come to think of it, Cujo behaved the same way. That might just be a dog thing.
“I think… I can relate.”
Laika whined quizzically, ears perked.
“I mean, I’ve always wanted to become an astronaut… I’m not even sure why now.”
Sure, he remembered helping his parents stick the stars on his bedroom’s ceiling, and his eight-year-old’s ego, thinking how stupid adults must be that they could not reproduce the Ursa Major. He remembered repeatedly borrowing all of the astronomy books at Casper’s library. He remembered trading his hard-earned virtual points with some guy in Europe for a collector stamp with a dog’s face on it. But he could not remember when this fascination had started. Or why.
Perhaps it was just a childish desire that he had never quite outgrown? The same way some kids wanted to be doctors, or firefighters, or football superstars. Heck, Tucker wanted to be President in primary school! But even Tucker had reassessed his own dream downward—he would be satisfied with just being mayor of Amity Park, someday. And Tuck was supposed to be the ambitious one.
Danny had kept believing.
“Maybe… I was just trying to escape.”
Laika nudged her own head inside his palm, as if she was trying to have him press on.
“... Okay, see, my parents. They’re ghost hunters. But ghosts… No one believed ghosts were real.”
It was hard to tell if Laika understood. Or if she even understood she had been changed at all. Her tail wagged back and forth, comforted by this petting hand, and that might have been real enough for a ghost dog. Nevertheless, Danny rambled on:
“At school, you’re either a cool kid, or you’re a geek. But me… I was a freak.”
This he had learned relatively fast. It did not matter how much he had tried to fit in over the years. It was somewhat a miracle that his best friends had not yet left the burning bridges, because he knew he had been insufferable. Danny would have always been labeled the freak kid, with the freak ghost hunting parents.
“So I guess, I just wanted to find some way to leave Amity Park—it’s where I live.” He looked at Laika, but the dog just stared back.
A stupid thought crossed his mind. “Wait, you don’t even understand English, do you?” It probably did not matter at all, at this point, but she did not seem too offended. “I should’ve figured.”
Laika whimpered shortly, and at the same time her warmth crawled back around Danny’s phantom core.
“That’s the thing. I have a sister. And she’s smart. Like, super-smart. A student. She always wanted to study psychology.”
If Jazz had been here, she would probably have started to pick at his brain. She would already have barged into his room—uninvited—with her stupid notebook and forced him to sit down. Even though he could have easily flown away, you know, ghost powers and all, he would have been powerless against her Big Sis eyes. He would be stuck contemplating the ninety-six stars on the ceiling, and she would have asked…
Well, why can’t it be easy?
“But I got the bright idea of shoving myself into a death machine.
“My parents, they made this portal,” he explained. “They wanted to get access to the Ghost Zone. Said that would help them fight ghosts. My friends wanted to see, and…” His eyes turned back to Laika, ears now dropped against her skull. “Guess I did discover something too.”
It would have been a blessing she did not process her final moment, but Danny remembered. Every single heartbeat of the four-legged pioneer had been monitored and immortalized for the astronauts to come. Even knowing her own body would eventually have killed her inside her tiny shuttle. In the name of scientific discovery!
“I know that, without these powers…” He held his hands forward. In front of them, Earth looked small and big at once—a giant among the phantom lights. Yet he could have caught them and the planet together if he stretched his arms further. Let them slip away from his fingers just like white sand. “I wouldn’t have made it.”
One hundred people out of thousands. Eight people to complete the space program. He was not as smart as Jazz, certainly not as athletic as Dash or the guys from the football team, and he was not even sure how NASA would have reacted to meeting him. The stray lines that marred his skin and the inhumanly slow heartbeat that betrayed the Accident—capital A—were probably disqualifiers in themselves.
Besides, he could never leave Amity Park permanently now. If he did, who else would take care of the ghosts plaguing the town? The Guys in White? His parents?
“But at the same time… It feels like cheating.”
One of Laika’s ears perked like a tiny flag.
“No?”
She turned her head, and her muzzle pressed against his palm, bringing it closer to his chest. It might just have been a behavior she had been taught, but nevertheless, Danny could not refrain from smiling. His folks had always been against having a dog. He could understand why, now—how he grieved for her, the good girl she could have been, when she was not, and could never have been his own pet.
“Thank you.” Laika did not make a noise, studiously returning to her previous position on Danny’s lap.
“It’s just… A mess in my head. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”
Well, he had still seen the Moon. And his newfound responsibility as a ghostly ghost hunter brought another kind of recognition. Perhaps not the one he had childishly dreamed of, but… Maybe one day, Danny Phantom would also get his face on a stamp? Or perhaps a statue!
… His hand ran along Laika’s back, chuckling at the mental image, as he marveled the Earth. No, probably not a statue. That would be a little too Vlad-ish. But a stamp would be nice. Just a little token to remember him. He could feel the warmth of the dog’s ghostly self start to dissipate, letting go of his own core.
“... I hope you know you’re loved.”
Laika barked.
