Astrosaurs 20 Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Warning! Think you know about dinosaurs?

  Talking Dinosaur!

  The Crew of the DSS Sauropod

  Jurassic Quadrant Map

  Chapter One: Time for Danger

  Chapter Two: The Time Test

  Chapter Three: Plots and Plans

  Chapter Four: The Dinosaurs of Mars

  Chapter Five: Down to Earth

  Chapter Six: Craft of the Future

  Chapter Seven: Camp of Fear

  Chapter Eight: Chaos at the Camp

  Chapter Nine: Walking on Air

  Chapter Ten: An Unexpected Gift

  Chapter Eleven: A Trick in Time

  Chapter Twelve: Disaster in Space

  Chapter Thirteen: Getting Back

  Chapter Fourteen: Present in the Present!

  Interval

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The Cadets

  Map of Astro Prime

  Talking Dinosaur!

  Chapter One: A Dinosaur’s Dream

  Chapter Two: In Trouble Already!

  Chapter Three: The Daring Dinos

  Chapter Four: Journey to Peril

  Chapter Five: A Deadly Discovery

  Chapter Six: The Trick and the T. Rex

  Chapter Seven: Race Against Time

  Chapter Eight: The Big, Fat Battle

  Chapter Nine: A Snappy Souvenir

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Dinosaurs . . . in space!

  EARTH ATTACK! is a special super-long ASTROSAURS thriller.

  Plus, read Teggs’s first adventure at ASTROSAURS ACADEMY!

  Teggs’s arch-enemy, General Loki, has stolen a time machine. The astrosaurs trail him to Earth in the distant past, before the dinosaurs took of into space. Soon they uncover a terrifying plot to murder millions and destroy history . . . but can they stop it?

  For Beau, Ashton and Alfie Clifford

  WARNING!

  THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT DINOSAURS?

  THINK AGAIN!

  The dinosaurs . . .

  Big, stupid, lumbering reptiles. Right?

  All they did was eat, sleep and roar a bit. Right?

  Died out millions of years ago when a big meteor struck the Earth. Right?

  Wrong!

  The dinosaurs weren’t stupid. They may have had small brains, but they used them well. They had big thoughts and big dreams.

  By the time the meteor hit, the last dinosaurs had already left Earth for ever. Some breeds had discovered how to travel through space as early as the Triassic period, and were already enjoying a new life among the stars. No one has found evidence of dinosaur technology yet. But the first fossil bones were only unearthed in 1822, and new finds are being made all the time.

  The proof is out there, buried in the ground.

  And the dinosaurs live on, way out in space, even now. They’ve settled down in a place they call the Jurassic Quadrant and over the last sixty-five million years they’ve gone on evolving.

  The dinosaurs we’ll be meeting are part of a special group called the Dinosaur Space Service.

  Their job is to explore space, to go on exciting missions and to fight evil and protect the innocent!

  These heroic herbivores are not just dinosaurs.

  They are astrosaurs!

  NOTE: The following story has been translated from secret Dinosaur Space Service records. Earthling dinosaur names are used throughout, although some changes have been made for easy reading. There’s even a guide to help you pronounce the dinosaur names on the next page.

  Talking Dinosaur!

  How to say the prehistoric names in this book . . .

  STEGOSAURUS –

  STEG-oh-SORE-us

  IGUANODON –

  ig-WA-noh-don

  HADROSAUR –

  HAD-roh-sore

  TRICERATOPS –

  try-SERRA-tops

  BAROSAURUS –

  bar-oh-SORE-us

  CRYPTOCLIDUS –

  crip-toh-CLYD-us

  VELOCIRAPTOR –

  vel-ossi-RAP-tor

  DIMORPHODON –

  die-MORF-oh-don

  PTEROSAUR –

  TEH-roh-sore

  CARNOTAUR –

  kar-noh-TOR

  DIPLODOCUS –

  di-PLOH-de-kus

  OVIRAPTOR –

  OH-vee-RAP-tor

  MEGALOSAURUS –

  MEG-ah-loh-SORE-us

  SPINOSAURUS –

  SPY-nuh-SORE-us

  ALLOSAURUS –

  AL-uh-SORE-us

  BARYONYX –

  bare-ee-ON-iks

  PLATEOSAURUS –

  PLAY-tee-a-SORE-us

  PTERODACTYL –

  teh-roh-DACT-il

  THE CREW OF THE DSS SAUROPOD

  Jurassic Quadrant

  Chapter One

  TIME FOR DANGER

  “The waiting’s over!” cried Teggs Stegosaur, bursting into the metal meeting room. “I’ve just seen Admiral Rosso in the corridor. He’s on his way here right now!”

  Teggs was captain of the DSS Sauropod – the fastest ship in the Dinosaur Space Service. He had flown, fought and hungrily munched his way through countless galactic adventures, helped always by his brilliant crewmates Arx, Iggy and Gipsy. They were sitting inside the Sauropod’s meeting room, and looked as excited as he was.

  “Rosso’s in charge of the whole DSS,” remarked Iggy, the gruff iguanodon engineer. “Whatever he wants, it must be something big.”

  “I bet he’s going to give us a super-top-secret mission,” said Gipsy, the stripy hadrosaur in charge of the ship’s communications. “Something only we can handle.”

  Arx, Teggs’s brainy triceratops deputy, smiled. “Let’s hope we can handle it – whatever it is.”

  The sound of heavy footsteps carried from outside. “We’ll soon find out,” said Teggs, quickly taking his seat at the head of the meeting table. “Here he comes!”

  Admiral Rosso, a long-necked brown barosaurus, pushed inside and peered down at Teggs and his crew through his glasses. “Ah, hello, astrosaurs.” He beamed. “Guess what? You’re all going to space prison!”

  Teggs gulped. “Er . . . have we done something wrong, sir?”

  “Yeah, normally we put bad guys behind bars,” said Iggy. “We don’t go there ourselves!”

  But Arx just smiled. “I think Admiral Rosso means he wants us to visit a space prison.”

  “Your clever first officer is quite correct, Teggs,” said Rosso. “Have you ever heard of a sea-reptile called Zindi Bent?”

  “I remember her from the space news,” said Gipsy. “She was an inventor, wasn’t she?”

  Arx nodded. “She invented automatic robbing machines for that bunch of sea-reptile criminals, the Doom-Flipper Squad.”

  “That’s what we believed,” Rosso agreed. “The DSS arrested her five years ago. But she has always insisted the Doom-Flipper Squad stole her designs for automatic mining robots and changed them to make machines that suited their own evil ends.”

  “But she couldn’t prove it,” Gipsy recalled.

  “Which is why she wound up in space prison,” said Rosso. “But Prison Governor Bunwinkle has always believed Zindi was innocent. And since her capture, under his watchful eye, she has spent most of her time in the secure workshop, stretching her inventive powers to the limit, trying to create the only thing that can prove her innocence . . . a time machine!”

  The astrosaurs stared at Rosso in amazement.

  “It sounds incredible, I know. But Bunwink
le assures me she has succeeded.” Rosso pressed a button on the meeting table and a TV screen slid up from the smooth surface. He slid a video-disk into its side. “Take a look at this.”

  Teggs watched as a smart but waterlogged study appeared on the screen. Moments later two nasty-looking yellow cryptoclidus slithered in through the study window and set about a safe with their flippers.

  Arx jumped up in his seat. “But . . . they’re the ringleaders of the Doom-Flipper Gang!”

  “And that is Zindi’s study,” Rosso informed him, as the robbers on the screen broke open the safe and stole the papers inside. “Sure enough, they are stealing her designs.”

  “Then this is the proof that she was telling the truth,” said Gipsy. “Why didn’t she show anyone sooner?”

  “Because this video was taken only a few days ago – by Governor Bunwinkle himself !” Rosso turned off the TV with an excited flourish. “Bunwinkle test-drove her machine. He travelled back five years into the past and recorded those slippery villains in the act.”

  Arx’s horns waggled in astonishment. “Then . . . her time machine really works?”

  “Come off it!” Iggy spluttered. “I bet that scene was staged somehow. It’s all a trick!”

  “Perhaps,” said Rosso. “That is why I am going to examine Zindi’s work for myself.”

  “It could be the most amazing invention in history,” said Arx.

  Teggs nodded. “Or the most dangerous.”

  “A time machine would indeed be a terrible weapon in the wrong hands,” Rosso agreed. “That’s why I want my finest astrosaurs to guard it – and why I came here to see you instead of telling you over a communicator. I couldn’t risk the message being overheard by carnivore spies.”

  “I’ll give the order to increase the ship’s speed.” Teggs jumped from his seat and ran out of the meeting room. “The sooner we arrive, the better!”

  Within the hour, the space prison was looming large through the Sauropod’s portholes. It was a massive castle of rusting metal, crammed full of carnivore crooks. As the egg-shaped ship touched down in the landing bay, Teggs felt an uneasy prickle travel along his spiky tail.

  “I don’t see why a time machine is so dangerous,” said Gipsy, joining Teggs, Iggy and Arx as they walked with Rosso to the exit.

  “If you mess about in the past, you could end up affecting the future,” said Arx. “Just imagine if Iggy travelled back to the year his brother hatched and then accidentally stepped on that egg . . .”

  Iggy gulped. “Wimvis would never have been born!”

  “And his life would never have happened,” Teggs agreed. “You’d have changed history – and not in a good way.”

  He opened the Sauropod’s doors and Rosso led the way outside.

  “Aha! There you are.” A large and somewhat lumpy grey diplodocus in a white suit waved from the inner door. “I’m Bunwinkle, the governor here.”

  “Yes, of course.” Rosso smiled. “We spoke over the communicator. Funny, you sound different in the flesh.”

  “I’ve got a cold,” said Bunwinkle, and he sniffed noisily to prove it.

  “Did you really travel back through time?” Gipsy asked eagerly.

  Bunwinkle looked surprised. “Eh?”

  “You took a video camera and recorded the Doom-Flipper Squad,” Arx reminded him.

  “That bunch of amateurs!” Bunwinkle snarled. “Well, the thing is, I think Zindi Bent was tricking me. I want you astrosaurs to test her machine for yourselves. I’ve got her chained up in the crew room, ready to begin her demonstration.”

  “Chained up?” Teggs frowned. “I thought you just proved she was innocent?”

  “Look, do you want to test this time machine or don’t you?” said Bunwinkle, wobbling off along the bare metal corridor. “Follow me.”

  “Are you OK?” asked Gipsy. “You look a bit unsteady on your feet.”

  “I’m fine.” Bunwinkle glowered at them. “I just banged my head this morning . . . on an inmate’s nose. Now, keep up!”

  “He seems very mean,” muttered Gipsy.

  “I suppose in a place full of crooks, you have to be,” Iggy whispered back.

  Suddenly a stegosaurus in a strange helmet and a shirt covered with gold discs burst out through a doorway in front of them. The astrosaurs stared in stunned amazement.

  And none stared closer than Captain Teggs . . .

  Incredibly – impossibly – the stegosaurus was an identical version of himself!

  Chapter Two

  THE TIME TEST

  “It works!” cried the second Teggs, grinning at his astounded audience. “It actually works!”

  “Who are you?” the real Teggs demanded.

  But the newcomer ducked back through the door and slammed it behind him.

  “Wait!” The real Teggs pushed past Bunwinkle and threw open the door to reveal a long corridor – which was empty. The single door at its far end was shut. “That stegosaurus was a perfect double of me! Where’d he go?”

  “Whoever he was, he must be wearing a costume to make himself look like you,” Iggy declared.

  “Eh? A costume to make him look like someone else?” Bunwinkle rounded on Iggy. “Don’t be ridiculous! That could never happen!”

  “Then how do you explain Teggs being in two places at once, Bunwinkle?” asked Rosso sternly. “Could your inmates be playing a trick?”

  “Your double even sounded like you, Captain,” said Gipsy.

  “I think we should ask Zindi Bent about it.” Bunwinkle stomped off on his wobbly legs into the corridor. “Now!” Teggs and his friends followed the limping governor to the door at the end. A strange whirring, rustling sound came from within. Bunwinkle threw open the door onto a large, well-lit room filled with games and chairs and TVs. Usually the prison warders relaxed here, but right now there was just one small sea-reptile inside, her back turned to them, her body weighed down with chains. She was sitting fuming beside a small pyramid-shaped machine that was covered in switches, screens and levers.

  “So that’s Zindi Bent,” Arx murmured, “and that must be her time machine.”

  “Governor Bunwinkle,” said the sea-reptile crossly. “I don’t understand why you’ve chained me up like this. You know I’m innocent – thanks to my time machine, you saw the truth with your own eyes, just three days ago!”

  “I think you were tricking me somehow,” said Bunwinkle. “Now, tell me – did you see an orange-brown stegosaurus come this way?”

  Zindi nodded at Teggs. “Only him.”

  “I’m Captain Teggs Stegosaur,” Teggs told her. “This dinosaur looked just like me. He must’ve ducked in here – there’s nowhere else he could’ve gone.”

  Zindi looked thoughtful. “There is one place he could’ve gone . . . the future!”

  Iggy frowned. “Huh?”

  “I knew other dinosaurs would want to test my machine,” Zindi explained, “so to demonstrate its power, I’ve just added a ‘send-you-back-five-minutes-in-time’ button . . .”

  Bunwinkle’s eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting that the second Teggs we saw was the same Teggs – visiting from the future?”

  “Was he wearing this?” Zindi held up a ridged helmet and a large silver tunic with golden discs stitched onto both arms and up and down the chest.

  “Yes!” Teggs stepped forward in amazement. “That’s the outfit my double was wearing outside.”

  “What is it?” Bunwinkle demanded.

  Zindi frowned. “What do you mean, what is it? You wore this yourself when you tried out my machine.”

  “I know that,” said Bunwinkle quickly. “I’m only asking so you can explain to our visitors here!”

  “Oh. Well, I call it an exo-suit. It protects living things from the powers of the pyramid so they can travel through time safely.” Zindi smiled at Teggs. “Looks like the test is going to work – you are going to go back in time!”

  “Because we’ve already seen it happen,” Arx realized, his horns
quivering with excitement.

  “Wow, thinking about time travel makes you dizzy! Quick, Zindi, let me put on that exo-suit.” Teggs ran over and slipped inside the baggy, tingling material – part costume, part machine. “There!”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” Gipsy fretted.

  “Don’t worry.” Zindi pointed to a prominent blue button near the top of the pyramid. “To perform a five-minute time jump, all I have to do is press this. I’ll pop your captain into the past for sixty seconds – then bring him back again.”

  Teggs checked the time on the clock: 18.30. “I’m ready,” he said.

  Bunwinkle and the astrosaurs watched closely as the machine hummed into life and Zindi hit the blue button. Teggs felt the metal discs on his skin prickle and itch as the world seemed to blur around him . . .

  And suddenly only Zindi was in the room – and she had her back to him, absorbed in the workings of her humming, rustling machine. He checked the clock – it now said 18.25.

  I really have gone back into the past! Teggs boggled. Quietly he crept out of the room. Then he galloped down the corridor, opened the door and burst outside. With a mind-spinning thrill, he saw himself, Bunwinkle and his friends right there in front of him – just as it had happened five minutes ago.

  “It works!” Teggs cried. “It actually works!” Then he dodged back into the corridor and slammed the door. He felt dizzy – Zindi had to be pulling him out of the past. “So that’s how I seemed to vanish from the corridor . . .”

  As he staggered back into the officers’ room, he saw the clock was again showing 18.30. He had returned to the present, surrounded by his startled friends – and the grinning Bunwinkle.

  “Amazing!” cried Rosso.

  “It certainly was,” Teggs agreed, taking off the exo-suit. “What an incredible trip.”

  “Could I see your machine, Zindi?” asked Arx.

  “Stuff off, greenie. I’m having it!” Bunwinkle snatched the suit from Teggs. “I’ve been waiting to be sure this time machine works – and now I know it does, I’ll take it!”

  “What?” Teggs turned to the burly governor and saw him shrugging off his uniform – to reveal a big zip running down his middle, and another about his neck.

  “That’s not Bunwinkle’s real skin!” Gipsy’s head crest had flushed blue in alarm, and Zindi’s eyes were on stalks. “It’s only a costume!”

  “This is a fake Bunwinkle,” cried Rosso. “An impostor in a diplodocus suit!”

  Arx frowned. “But then . . . who’s inside?”