1. Eat Your Rations

Spotnik knows the humans haven’t forgotten him, because kibble still clatters into Spotnik’s bowl at six a.m. sharp. They’ve been gone long enough for all the vegetables in Hydroponics to shrivel up, limp and dead. Spotnik eats his kibble and licks up the crumbs, because he is a Good Boy, and Good Boys eat their rations. Even when the kibble goes soft and develops a white coat of mold and begins to stink so bad that he has to struggle to choke it down and fight to keep it from coming back up.

Spotnik doesn’t mind, though. He is a Good Boy. They’ll be back for him any day now.

2. Clean the Bunks

At noon, Spotnik chases the ship’s eleven cleaning bots around the crews’ quarters as they dust the desks, vacuum the floor, and sanitize the steel walls. While the bots tug off sheets worn thin as ghosts, Spotnik bounds up onto Captain’s bed and thumps his tail against the dead plant in Jaime’s room.

Spotnik skids to a stop at Ensign Morris’s door. Good Boys mustn’t shed their fur in Morris’s room. Morris is allergic to Spotnik. When Morris gets home, his room will be dander-free, just the way he likes it, and he’ll say, Good Boy, Spotnik! and scratch him between the ears, even though Ensign Morris isn’t a Dog Person and rarely pets Spotnik.

There used to be twelve cleaning bots, but once Spotnik wasn’t a Good Boy and chewed the arms off of a sweeper, and now it lies limp and dead in the Engine Room. Spotnik had been bored and lonely that day, and it seemed like fun at the time, but he felt bad afterward.

Maybe the cleaning bots tattled. Maybe that’s why the humans aren’t back yet.

3. Maintain Hygiene

Good Boys always go on the poop pad. Good Boys never eat their poop before the nozzle sucks it up for recycling.

Spotnik is a Good Boy. Mostly.

4. Listen For Instructions

The day the crew left to explore the planet, Captain scratched Spotnik between the ears and threw his squeaky duck toy all the way across the airlock so it thumped into the Ready Room. By the time Spotnik fetched it, the airlock had closed tight, closed him off from his humans.

Later, when the humans had been gone just long enough for Spotnik to chew the squeaker out of his duck, Captain’s voice began to boom out from the Bridge comm.

Her message repeats over and over like when she’s trying to teach Spotnik a new trick, except she sounds very serious. Spotnik has been listening to Captain’s message for a long time, head tilted, but he still doesn’t understand what she wants from him. But Spotnik doesn’t mind, because as the weeks slip by, her voice almost feels like company.

5. Chase Away Intruders

Each afternoon, Spotnik plants his paws on the window overlooking the planet—Spotnik knows about planets, they’re places you can see but not visit, like Ensign Morris’s room—and barks steadily for two hours. Spotnik can sound very scary if he wants to. He once startled Navigator Patel so badly she dropped her dinner all over the floor, and then Spotnik got to eat real human food.

He knows the barking must be working, because nobody’s broken into the ship since his humans left. But that doesn’t stop Spotnik from hoping. Intruders would be humans too, of a sort.

6. Keep the Faith

Spotnik believes one thing unshakably: Your humans will always come back if you guard your ship well. They always come back for Good Boys. If you eat your rancid kibble without complaint, if you go on the poop pad, if you leave the cleaning bots unmangled, decipher the Captain’s words, bark yourself hoarse at the big window, and stay out of Ensign Morris’s room, the humans will come back and scratch your ears and rub your belly and give you treats and human food and curl up with you when you sleep and you’ll all be a family again.

Spotnik sleeps on Captain’s bed when the ship’s lights enter their dimming cycle. His chin is going gray, and his hips ache with the weight of balls not chased. He presses his nose deep into the pillow. Every time the cleaning bots wash it, Captain’s scent fades a little more. Spotnik closes his rheumy eyes.

They’ll be back for him soon. Spotnik knows it.

If he is a Good Boy.