A short short story.

1958

Laika was dying. She was doomed to die, slowly, of asphyxiation and heat exhaustion, and the visitors had seen it all. Their ship had scanned earth for lifeforms, and found the surface teeming with life, almost everywhere, but only one life form was detected in orbit, and her life force was rapidly weakening. Her craft seemed to have little purpose, other than the slow death of the inhabitant, and the hearts of the watchers went out to her, and cursed the beings who had done this to her. Occasionally, the capsule would send out a radio signal of her fading life signs, mockingly. There was nothing to be done. Well, almost nothing. While the watchers were forbidden to interfere, no one was watching them, so they thought they’d have a little fun. Universal laws were made to be broken, or so they said. Once Laika was most certainly dead, they brought her craft onboard theirs. Reviving her was no great task, but, of course she would never be who she had been again, which was probably a good thing. They proceeded to improve her, and her craft, making it capable of safe re-entry, and making her, shall we say, formidable. They would trace her back to where she had been sent to her doom from, and return her there safely. When she was sent up she weighed around 13 pounds, and was a quadruped canine. When they sent her back she weighed 85 pounds, and could choose between quadrupedal and bipedal locomotion, and she was strong, fast, and smart. Very, very smart. Although she was not really who she had been, they implanted one thought in her new consciousness. Revenge. Her now glowing white eyes shone with joy for her task. Laika would be avenged by her own reanimated body.