Cows in Action 2 Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The C.I.A. Files

  Prof McMoo’s Timeline of Notable Events

  Chapter One: A Moo Mission

  Chapter Two: Terror in the Tomb

  Chapter Three: The Mummy, the Moon and the Medjay

  Chapter Four: Enter … The Moo-my!

  Chapter Five: A Shop Full of Secrets

  Chapter Six: Big Trouble

  Chapter Seven: In De Nile

  Chapter Eight: Escape into Danger

  Chapter Nine: A Chilly Welcome

  Chapter Ten: Udderly Horrible!

  Chapter Eleven: Moo-hem and Madness

  Chapter Twelve: The Final Squirts

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  COW-ER WITH FEAR!

  Genius cow Professor McMoo and his trusty sidekicks, Pat and Bo, are star agents of the C.I.A. – short for COWS IN ACTION! They travel through time, fighting evil bulls from the future and keeping history on the right track …

  In ANCIENT EGYPT, a monstrous moo-my has come to life and kicked the PHARAOH off his throne. Sent to investigate, the C.I.A agents face PERIL in the pyramids and nightmares on the Nile. Can they foil a TERRIFYING time-crime before the whole WORLD falls to the moo-my’s curse?

  It’s time for action. Cows In Action.

  For Nathan and Cassie Dallaire

  THE C.I.A. FILES

  Cows from the present –

  Fighting in the past to protect the future …

  In the year 2550, after thousands of years of being eaten and milked, cows finally live as equals with humans in their own country of Luckyburger. But a group of evil war-loving bulls – the Fed-up Bull Institute – is not satisfied.

  Using time machines and deadly ter-moo-nator agents, the F.B.I. is trying to change Earth’s history. These bulls plan to enslave all humans and put savage cows in charge of the planet. Their actions threaten to plunge all cowkind into cruel and cowardly chaos …

  The C.I.A. was set up to stop them.

  However, the best agents come not from 2550 – but from the past. From a time in the early 21st century, when the first clever cows began to appear. A time when a brainy bull named Angus McMoo invented the first time machine, little realizing he would soon become the F.B.I.’s number one enemy …

  COWS OF COURAGE – TOP SECRET FILES

  PROFESSOR ANGUS MCMOO

  Security rating: Bravo Moo Zero

  Stand-out features: Large white squares on coat, outstanding horns

  Character: Scatterbrained, inventive, plucky and keen

  Likes: Hot tea, history books, gadgets

  Hates: Injustice, suffering, poor-quality tea bags

  Ambition: To invent the electric sundial

  LITTLE BO VINE

  Security rating: For your cow pies only

  Stand-out features: Luminous udder (colour varies)

  Character: Tough, cheeky, ready-for-anything rebel

  Likes: Fashion, chewing gum, self-defence classes

  Hates: Bessie Barmer, the farmer’s wife

  Ambition: To run her own martial arts club for farmyard animals

  PAT VINE

  Security rating: Licence to fill (stomach with grass)

  Stand-out features: Zigzags on coat

  Character: Brave, loyal and practical

  Likes: Solving problems, anything Professor McMoo does

  Hates: Flies not easily swished by his tail

  Ambition: To find a five-leaf clover – and to survive his dangerous missions!

  Chapter One

  A MOO MISSION

  Pat Vine was talking to a rubbish skip. “Hurry up, Professor!” the young bullock hissed, checking the field was still deserted. “We could be spotted at any moment!”

  “Yeah, get moo-ving, Prof!” added his older sister, a cow called Little Bo Vine.

  A pair of hooves emerged from the skip. “Hang on!” came a muffled voice. “I’m sure that cable I need is in here somewhere …”

  Both the voice and the hooves belonged to Professor Angus McMoo – a brilliantly brainy bull. Like Pat and Bo, he belonged to a rare breed of clever cattle called the Emmsy Squares. The skip, on the other hand, belonged to a brilliant scientist who lived in the house next door. He chucked away all sorts of hi-tech stuff that came in very handy for the amazing project Professor McMoo was working on …

  Pat looked about nervously. “If Bessie Barmer finds we’ve got out of our field again, she’ll blow her top at us!”

  “If she does, I’ll blow my bottom at her!” Little Bo declared. She was a feisty cow, who liked fights and dyeing her udder outrageous colours. Today she had dyed it bright blue, and she was thinking about adding pink polka dots.

  Like McMoo, Pat and Bo lived on a quiet organic farm. Old Farmer Barmer was nice enough, but his wife, Bessie, was horrid. She hated all the animals and couldn’t wait to send them off to the butcher’s. Which was why Professor McMoo had started raiding the scientist’s rubbish for bits of techno-junk in the first place. Using only his incredible mind, a billion bits and pieces and a lifelong love of history, he had designed and built a super-special, super-secret invention that could take them away from the farm for ever …

  He had turned his cow shed into a time machine!

  “Got it!” cried McMoo. His big brown head popped up from the skip, eyes agleam and with a thick red wire tangled around his horns. “This special cable should allow us to travel faster than ever.”

  Pat gulped. “Better start travelling right now – here comes Bessie Barmer!”

  “Oi! You cows!” The farmer’s wife came charging towards them. Bessie was as big as a barn door, with a face like a bulldog licking cold porridge off a thistle. “I’ve warned you before about going through the bins!”

  Little Bo raised her hooves. “Shall I sort her out with a kung-moo chop, Professor?”

  “If you try that, she’ll turn you into a chop!” said Pat, rolling his eyes. “Fighting isn’t the answer to everything, you know.”

  “It is,” said Bo.

  Pat scowled. “Oh yeah? What’s two plus two, then?”

  “Fighting,” said Bo, and cuffed him round the horn. “Wanna ask me what’s three plus three?”

  “That’s enough, you two,” said Professor McMoo. “And, Bo, you will not chop Bessie. She thinks we are ordinary, stupid cows. We must never let her find out our incredible secret.”

  Pat looked at the professor. “Which secret?” he asked. “That we are special time agents sworn to stop evil bulls from the future messing up Earth’s history? Or that we are the only cows in the world able to peel a banana with our hooves?”

  McMoo gave him a look. “The first one, Pat. Come on, let’s clear off back to the Time Shed!” With that, he charged off towards the rickety shed in the next-field-but-one, Little Bo and Pat close behind him.

  “That’s right, hoof it, you beefy beggars!” raged Barmer, shaking her huge fist. “If I catch you in those bins again, I’ll have you stuffed! My famous ancestor Sheba Um-Barmer was a champion stuffer! She ran the top mummy-making shop in Ancient Egypt!”

  “Herd it all before,” said McMoo, slowing down to a trot.

  “Bessie’s always going on about her world-famous ancestors, isn’t she?” Pat said.

  “I reckon they were all big fat losers,” Little Bo put in. “I bet I could take on any of them, blindfolded in a sack with three hooves tied behind my back and a peg on my udder.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” said Pat. Then he thought again, and shuddered. “Actually, no I wouldn’t!”

  Soon they r
eached the shed. As ever it seemed empty aside from a few piles of hay. But then Professor McMoo kicked away a small haystack to reveal a large bronze lever and yanked on it hard.

  Pat braced himself and sure enough the usual loud, rattling, clanking sound started up. The wooden walls swung round to reveal curious controls and cables and flashing lights on the other side. A large computer screen swung down from the rafters, and a huge bank of controls in the shape of a horseshoe slid up from the ground to fill the middle of the shed. Hidden panels creaked into view on every wall, covered in dials and switches and levers. There was even a large wardrobe that popped up from the ground, stuffed full of clothes from all times and places. In a matter of moments, the ordinary cow shed had become an extraordinary control room (with a fitting room on the side), throbbing with incredible energy.

  While the professor dashed about from panel to panel checking his precious controls, Pat pulled out a kettle from a pile of straw. Any moment now, Professor McMoo would ask for a nice cup of tea – “A hot milky drink helps a bull to think” was his motto. But as Pat went to open a box of tea bags, an alarm went off and all the lights started flashing red. Pat jumped about a mile in the air.

  “What’s going on, Professor?” he cried. “I wasn’t trying to steal them!”

  “It’s not you,” said McMoo, hurrying over to the big screen hanging over the horseshoe. “It means we’ve got a moo’s-flash.”

  Bo looked at him blankly. “A what?”

  “Like a newsflash, but with added cows,” explained the professor, flicking some switches to stop the alarm. Then he perched some glasses on his nose. “It’s the C.I.A. hotline!”

  “Cool!” cried Little Bo, joining him eagerly in front of the screen. “They must have a new mission for us!”

  C.I.A. was short for Cows in Action, a crack team of time-travelling cow commandos who had recruited Professor the twenty-sixth century, an age where McMoo and his friends. They came from clever cows were commonplace, and they were always on their guard against the F.B.I. – the Fed-up Bull Institute.

  McMoo turned on the screen and a hefty black bull with large curly horns appeared on the screen. He was wearing a dark suit and a blue sash around his chest. “Hey, Professor,” said the tough-looking bull. “This is Director Yak of the C.I.A. How’s it going?”

  “All right.” McMoo waved his red cable around. “I’m just rewiring the time-drift controls to maximize the Time Shed’s lateral thrust, resulting in a four-point-three-seven per cent increase in year acceleration.”

  Yak’s eyes glazed over. “Right.”

  “We’re all fine, Director,” called Pat as he made the tea. “What’s the news?”

  “Yeah, come on, Yak,” said Bo, blowing a gum bubble. “Spill!”

  “The F.B.I. is up to something again,” said Yak grimly. “According to top-secret reports, they have been sending time machines to Ancient Egypt in the year 1250 BC.”

  “1250 BC?” echoed McMoo in horror. “But that’s a rubbish year! Boring, boring, boring. Now, if they’d only gone to 2800 BC they would have seen the first ever pyramid being built and—”

  “Er, Professor,” hissed Pat. “Shouldn’t we hear what Yak has to say?”

  “Goody-goody,” said Bo.

  “I am not!” Pat protested.

  “Quiet, you two,” said McMoo sternly. “I’m trying to hear what Yak has to say!”

  Yak sighed. “1250 BC must be a weak point in time – a place where history is extra-easy to change. We believe there are other F.B.I. agents already at work in Egypt at that time – and a ter-moo-nator was sent there very recently …”

  Pat gulped. The thought of a ter-moo-nator gave him butterflies in all four parts of his stomach. Half robot, half bull and all nasty, ter-moo-nators were the F.B.I.’s meanest, toughest agents with super-sneaky computer brains.

  Yak went on. “This is your mission – to stop those barking bulls’ plans, whatever they are, and keep history on the right track.”

  Pat felt a shiver of nervous excitement as he poured the professor’s tea into a big bucket. It looked like another mind-boggling adventure was coming their way!

  “Do you know where the F.B.I. time machine has landed?” asked Professor McMoo.

  The burly bull nodded. “In the Valley of the Kings, in the tomb of Tutankhamen.”

  “Tooting Car Horn?” echoed Bo blankly.

  “Toot-an-car-moon,” the professor corrected her, saying the word how it sounded. “He was a famous king of Egypt, the twelfth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty who ruled during the—”

  “Yes, well,” Yak interrupted. “I’m beaming over the time-place data now.” Lights flickered on the horseshoe of controls. “Be careful, team – and good luck.”

  The big bull’s picture faded from the screen.

  Pat passed McMoo his bucket of tea. “Wow, Professor! Ancient Egypt!” he said excitedly. A thought struck him. “Maybe we’ll run into Bessie Barmer’s old relative after all!”

  “Ugh!” groaned Bo. “Surely we can’t be that unlucky.”

  “Unlucky?” McMoo gulped down the entire bucket of tea and smacked his lips. “We’re the luckiest cows in the world!” He rushed around the Time Shed flicking switches and fussing over read outs. “Just think, humans only discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922. But we’re going back in time to when it was nearly new!” He mooed loudly, coiled his tail around the red take-off lever and smiled at Pat and Bo. “Next stop, Ancient Egypt. It’s time for action!”

  Chapter Two

  TERROR IN THE TOMB

  In a blaze of purple light, the Time Shed rattled back into reality. It landed inside a large cold room made of huge stone blocks.

  “We’ve arrived!” cried Professor McMoo. “September 3rd, 1250 BC. Just coming up to three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Cool,” said Bo. “I love staying up late!”

  “And if I’m right, there should be quite a sight outside …” Professor McMoo quickly struggled into some white Egyptian robes he’d found in the Time Shed’s costume cupboard. Outfits for every single century had been carefully chosen by C.I.A. experts to help the special agents to fit in to any time in history – although McMoo hoped they wouldn’t wind up in the Stone Age any time soon. The tiger-skin pants did not look comfy at all. “Come on, you two, get dressed!” he called. “I can’t wait to get exploring!”

  “Me neither,” said Pat. “I just hope we don’t run straight into a ter-moo-nator.”

  “Not unless we’re driving a tank, anyway,” said Little Bo, squeezing into a white linen dress. “Do they have tanks in this time, Professor?”

  He shook his head. “Not for another three thousand years or so, I’m afraid.”

  “I expect the tank would come off worse, in any case,” said Pat, putting on a sort of white kilt that young Egyptians used to wear.

  “Don’t forget your ringblenders, you two,” McMoo reminded them, pushing a large silver ring through his nose. Ringblenders were very useful C.I.A. inventions. They projected an optical illusion, so that any cow wearing one could blend in perfectly with human beings. They also translated cow-speak into any language in any time. But only human beings could be fooled by ringblenders. Another cow would recognize their true “moo” nature at once – including the ter-moo-nator …

  Pat pushed his own ringblender into place and looked at himself in a special mirror that showed his reflection the way humans would see it. He looked like a skinny young boy, his head shaved except for a thick black plait hanging from the side.

  Bo smirked. “Nice hair, Pat. If I pull on it, will your head fall off?”

  “Don’t worry, Pat, it’s the fashion for boys,” said the professor, joining them. His reflection showed a noble-looking man with short dark hair. He wore his blue C.I.A. sash around his neck like a fancy collar.

  “Anyway, Bo, you can’t talk,” said Pat, pointing to her reflection. It showed a girl with braids and curls in her long black hair and loads of bl
ack make-up around her eyes. “You look like a panda in a wig!”

  “I do not, I look cool!” Bo retorted. “Don’t I, Professor?”

  McMoo shrugged. “Very probably – now come on!”

  “Shouldn’t we call up the Tutankhamen file on the computer before we go outside?” asked Pat.

  McMoo sighed loudly, itching to be off. But he knew Pat was right, and typed in the name, and words streamed onto the big screen.

  *

  ++Tutankhamen. ++Ruled over Egypt 1334–1323 BC, from the age of nine. ++His mother-in-law was Nefertiti, famous and beautiful Queen of Egypt. ++Wore make-up and solid gold sandals. Nice! ++Died aged twenty, most likely from a manky leg, which went mouldy after he broke it. ++Replaced by his chief advisor, Ay.

  *

  “Ay-aye,” Bo joked. “Well, that was really interesting, Professor. I almost feel like I knew him.”

  “You wouldn’t want to know him now,” McMoo assured her. “He’s been pickled and preserved for years and years, all wrapped up in special bandages. In other words – made into a mummy.”

  “Gross!” said Bo.

  The professor shrugged. “It’s just the way Egyptians did things. To them it was dead important!” He threw open the Time Shed’s door. “Now come on – if I don’t start exploring soon I’m going to explode!”

  Pat and Bo followed him out into the cold, dark tomb of Tutankhamen. Professor McMoo lit a lamp. The golden flicker of flame showed the room was full of jewels and statues, comfy sofas and finely made pots and vases.

  “Wow,” said Pat, his voice echoing eerily. “Why did he need so much stuff down here if he was dead?”

  “The Egyptians didn’t think life stopped when you died,” Professor McMoo explained. “To them it was more like moving house. You see, Pat, important dead people were buried with riches and servants in case they needed them in the afterlife and—”

  “Look!” Bo interrupted, pointing into the shadows.

  Pat looked round. In the corner of the room there stood a very large case. It was covered in gold and gemstones, and shaped to look a bit like a human body.