Astrosaurs 22
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: Robbery in Space
Chapter Two: The Asteroid
Chapter Three: The Wreck and the Castle
Chapter Four: What’s the Matta?
Chapter Five: Headless Horror
Chapter Six: Heads and Tales
Chapter Seven: The Monsters’ Power
Chapter Eight: Monster Madness!
Chapter Nine: Tears and Trickery
Chapter Ten: Castle Carnage!
Extract of Cows in Action Book 1
About the Author
Also by Steve Cole
Copyright
About the Book
Dinosaurs . . . in space!
Meet Captain Teggs Stegosaur and the crew of the amazing spaceship DSS Sauropod as the astrosaurs fight evil across the galaxy!
On the trail of carnivore space-robber, the astrosaurs find a creepy castle on a distant asteroid – the secret hideout of super-scientist Dr Frankensaur. Plunged into a sinister mystery, Teggs must fight deadly robots, headless horrors, mutant monsters and a threat to the entire cosmos . . .
For Candi Scarlett Featherquill (and Poppy Bristow, her inventive owner)
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
HADROSAUR -
HAD-roh-sore
DIMORPHODON -
die-MORF-oh-don
KRITOSAURUS -
CRY-tuh-SORE-us
DASPLETOSAURUS -
Dass-PLEE-tu-SORE-us
TRICERATOPS -
try-SERRA-tops
SAUROPELTA -
SORE-uh-PELT-ah
* * *
THE CREW OF THE DSS SAUROPOD
CAPTAIN TEGGS STEGOSAUR
ARX ORANO, FIRST OFFICER
GIPSY SAURINE, COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER
IGGY TOOTH, CHIEF ENGINEER
Chapter One
ROBBERY IN SPACE
“HELP! THIS IS Pilot Marsh in star-vault Zeta Three – I am under attack!”
Captain Teggs Stegosaur almost jumped out of his orange-brown skin as the urgent voice echoed around his spaceship, the DSS Sauropod.
“A distress call!” he cried. “Luckily I’ve got the best ship in space and the finest crew in the universe. Astrosaurs to the rescue!”
Teggs galloped over to Gipsy Saurine, the stripy hadrosaur in charge of communications. “Gipsy, can you trace where Pilot Marsh’s message came from?”
“On the case, Captain.” Gipsy peered at her computer screen. “It came from two star-systems away. And it was sent on a ‘priority red’ channel.”
“Emergency,” came the pilot’s voice again. “Star-vault Zeta Three is under attack from an unidentified spacecraft. My location is Sector Three-point-seven-nine . . .”
“What is a star-vault, anyway?” asked Teggs.
“It’s like a giant safe that’s been turned into a spaceship, Captain,” called a green triceratops from across the flight deck. This was Arx, Teggs’s brainy first officer. “They are used by galactic banks to transport gold and jewels between planets in the Vegetarian Sector. No ship in space is tougher to get into.”
“Even so, it sounds like a tasty target for robbers.” At the word “tasty” Teggs’s tum rumbled – no matter what the emergency, Teggs never lost his enormous appetite! “Set a course to intercept that star-vault. Maximum speed!”
At the captain’s command, his flight crew of miniature flying reptiles – fifty formidable dimorphodon – flapped into action, working the ship’s controls with beaks and claws. With a mighty rush of engines, the Sauropod zoomed away.
“I need help!” Yet again, Pilot Marsh’s voice boomed from the speakers. “Hostile creatures have destroyed the ship’s weapons and broken in.”
Arx looked flabbergasted. “I can’t believe that anything could get inside a star-vault so quickly!”
Gipsy switched on her communicator. “Pilot Marsh, this is the DSS Sauropod. We’re on our way.”
“Can you identify your attackers?” Teggs asked the pilot.
“Two meat-eating dinosaurs in spacesuits . . . they’re coming towards me now . . .” Pilot Marsh sounded terrified. “No . . . it’s not two dinosaurs . . . By all the moons of Mobbalop, it’s a monster! A horrible, terrible MONSTER! Keep back! Don’t—!”
Suddenly the voice was cut off.
Arx looked grave. Gipsy’s head-crest flushed blue with alarm. The dimorphodon shivered and shook their beaks.
“That poor pilot,” Teggs muttered. “How long till we reach him?”
“Ten minutes,” said Arx.
“Too slow.” Teggs reared up. “Gipsy, get Iggy on the scanner. Quickly!”
Gipsy tapped some controls, and a few seconds later the image of a tough iguanodon in a cap appeared on the big screen before them. Iggy was the Sauropod’s chief engineer, so it was hardly surprising that he was reporting from the engine room.
“Iggy, we have a star-vault in big trouble,” said Teggs, “and maximum speed just isn’t fast enough.”
“Then it’s a good job the canteen served an extra-hot fig curry last night.” Iggy turned to the engineers behind him. “Lads, we need a five-star fuel injection. Fetch this morning’s whiffiest dung buckets, on the double!”
Teggs smiled grimly. Dinosaur spaceships were powered by burning dung – the nastier the poo, the faster you flew!
Within thirty seconds, Iggy and his workforce had emptied their toxic buckets into the dung-burners – and the Sauropod shot forward so fast that Teggs was thrown to the floor.
“That’s better!” Gipsy yelled over the roar of the engines, clinging to her controls. “Now we should reach Zeta Three in under two minutes.”
“But something else will reach us first!” Arx called
in warning. “Space radar shows a small object on a collision course . . .”
“Put it on the scanner,” said Teggs. “Magnify the image.”
“Eep!” Sprite, the dimorphodon leader, rushed to obey.
Iggy’s image faded, to be replaced by the dark infinity of space. A small point of light was hurtling towards the astrosaurs.
“It’s a missile!” squealed Gipsy, and the dimorphodon began to cheep and chitter.
“No . . . wait.” Teggs was studying the screen intently. “I think . . . it’s an escape pod.”
“A lifeboat in space?” Arx checked his controls and nodded.
“You’re right, Captain. It must have ejected from the Zeta Three.”
“Sauropod, this is Pilot Marsh.” The voice was fainter this time, so Gipsy quickly pumped up the volume. “I’ve been kicked off my star-vault. I tried to tell them I wasn’t carrying any money, but they didn’t care. They said they’d zap me with lasers if I didn’t leave in this escape pod . . .”
“You’re safe now, Marsh,” said Teggs. “We will use space-magnets to pull you to us. Don’t worry, we’ll catch these crooks.”
“Eeep!” said Sprite, flapping over to the magnet controls.
“One minute till we reach Zeta Three, Captain,” warned Gipsy.
“Wait . . . it’s changing course.” Arx flicked some switches on the space radar. “Now it’s heading towards Sector Four.”
Gipsy looked puzzled. “But there’s nothing out there apart from a few asteroids.”
“Nothing that we know of,” Teggs corrected her. “Arx, the moment we’re in range, fire dung-torpedoes and lasers. That should slow down those robbers.”
“They seem to be slowing down already,” Arx reported. “What are they up to?”
Teggs watched as the star-vault came into view on the scanner screen. It was a huge steel cylinder, covered in gigantic chains and padlocks. Suddenly it turned sharply towards a large asteroid.
“They must be trying to take cover behind that space rock,” said Teggs. “Sprite, steer us between them and the asteroid. Arx – OPEN FIRE!”
Arx jabbed a button with his nose-horn and sent twin torpedoes trailing away into space. Fa-TOOM! Ba-TOOOM! Smelly brown explosions shook the star-vault. At the same time, the triceratops tugged on a lever that fired blisteringly bright laser beams. Zeta Three smoked and shook.
“We’ve burst its fuel tanks!” Arx beamed. “It can’t get far now!”
Teggs crossed quickly to the communicator. “Attention,” he said sternly. “This is the DSS Sauropod. You have attacked and stolen a plant-eater star-vault. Surrender at once.”
“Captain, look!” Gipsy pointed past him. “They’re transmitting to our scanner.”
Teggs turned to find a smoking control room coming into focus on the big screen – and gasped as a monstrous figure was revealed.
At first he took it to be a meat-eating dinosaur in a spacesuit, with a fierce green head and jaws crammed with teeth. There was another carnivore behind it, with blood-red skin and fangs that were just as forbidding. Then, with a shock, he saw that the red neck was attached to the green body . . .
“I don’t believe it,” he breathed. “That dinosaur has got two heads!”
“You ask us to surrender?” hissed the green head. “Never! Soon we shall destroy your kind for ever!”
Chapter Two
THE ASTEROID
FOR A FEW moments Teggs was lost for words. He saw that as well as two heads, the creature had two different-sized tails, one with an arm growing out of it. Three more arms sprouted from its chest, and while it stood on two green legs, a red pair poked out of the creature’s butt. It looked as if two different dinosaurs had been squashed together.
“Your threats don’t scare us,” Teggs told the double-headed monster. “It’s you who should be afraid. You’ve committed a very serious crime – hijack!”
“Oh, hello,” the monster’s red head replied. “How did you know my name was Jack?”
“Shut up!” the green head growled at the red one. “He wasn’t saying Hi, Jack, he was saying hijack.”
“Hello,” said Jack’s red head again.
“I said, SHUT UP!” the green head roared.
Gipsy looked baffled. “I’ve heard of the saying, Two heads are better than one, but . . .”
“Not in this case,” said Arx.
“It seems our hijacker has a split personality,” Teggs murmured. “All right, Hijacker Jack whoever-you-are. You destroyed that star-vault’s weapons as you came aboard, and we’ve just blown open your fuel tanks. You have to surrender – it’s your only choice.”
“Wrong,” the green head hissed through his greasy lips. “We have one weapon left.”
Suddenly the scanner screen went dark.
“He’s cut the signal,” Gipsy reported, “and started up the engines.”
Teggs frowned. “He can’t escape without fuel.”
“He’s not running away.” Arx jumped back from his instruments. “Zeta Three’s heading straight for the Sauropod – at a thousand miles per hour!”
Teggsgroaned. “Of course, his last weapon – the star-vault itself, tough enough to smash us out of space!” He leaped into his control pit. “Gipsy – shields on! Sprite, get us out of here – full throttle – GO!”
The dimorphodon squealed and pecked at the controls, and with a sudden surge of supercharged engines, the Sauropod veered aside. Teggs clung on, teeth clenched, eyes shut. Until . . .
“It missed us by millimetres!” Arx whooped.
Gipsy clutched her tummy as the dimorphodon flapped down beside her, panting for breath. “Phew! That was way too close.”
“The asteroid behind us will be too close for Zeta Three to avoid,” said Teggs, eating a small branch while he got his breath back. “The ship will crash-land for sure. Put it on the scanner, Gipsy.”
Gipsy obeyed, and the astrosaurs watched as the chunky star-vault whooshed towards the giant rock. Within seconds it was lost from sight – and soon after, a cloud of white smoke rose from the asteroid’s barren surface.
“It’s landed hard,” Arx said, scanning his instruments. “Hijacker Jack may not have survived.”
“I hope he has,” said Gipsy. “We need to find out more about him, and where he came from. Shall I send a recording of Jack to DSS HQ? They can check their criminal data-files for two-headed dino-monsters.”
“Good idea.” Teggs sighed worriedly. “Soon we shall destroy your kind for ever, he said.”
“I’d like to find his friends in the spaceship that attacked Zeta Three,” said Arx. “How did they beat its defences so fast?”
“There’s a major mystery brewing here, I’m sure of it,” said Teggs. “Once Pilot Marsh is aboard, we’ll all go down with Iggy to check the wreck – and get some answers . . .”
It didn’t take long for the Sauropod to drag the little space lifeboat on board. Teggs welcomed Pilot Marsh with a big mug of swamp tea.
“Thanks for saving me, Captain.” Marsh was a gruff sauropelta with tattoos of plants on his arms and legs, and a red spotted hankie tied round his head. “By the five moons of Queebly, I’m glad you didn’t let that two-headed piece of space-trash get away.”
Teggs steered him along a corridor towards the shuttle bay. “We’re going to see what’s left of Zeta Three right now. Was there really nothing of value on board?”
“Not a bean. I’d just delivered some gold to Steggos, and was on my way to pick up some jewels from Olympus.” Marsh shook his head. “A small spaceship came out of nowhere. First my weapons stopped working . . . then, somehow, that thing punched a big hole in the star-vault’s side – through six metres of solid steel!”
As Teggs and Marsh reached the bay, thick smoke was pouring from the exhaust of the speediest craft, Shuttle Alpha – Iggy had already started up the engines.
Arx and Gipsy saluted through the open door. “We’re ready to go, Captain!”
Teggs introd
uced Pilot Marsh to his crew. Within seconds, the astrosaurs and their guest were sealed inside, and Shuttle Alpha rocketed away into the blackness of space.
The asteroid was soon filling their view through the windscreen – a barren, bumpy rock.
“It’s only sixty miles across,” said Iggy. “We’ll fly low overhead till we spot the wreck. Shouldn’t take us long . . .”
Gipsy pointed out a huddle of strange lumpy markings on the rocky surface. “Hey, what are they?”
“Bless my horns, there are old buildings down there.” Arx peered intently as the shapes grew clearer the closer they came. “It must have been a village, long ago.”
“And look, Marsh!” said Teggs, spying the gleam of starlight on steel down below. “There’s Zeta Three.”
“Strike me green and call me Horace.” Marsh scratched his hankie-covered head. “You’re right!”
“Well spotted, Captain.” Iggy hit the jet-brakes as the shuttle passed over the buckled, broken star-vault on the ground below. “It’s crashed a few miles away from that village.”
Gipsy pointed through the windscreen again. “And about half a mile from that old castle!”
Teggs felt a prickle of foreboding at the sight of the spooky stronghold. The castle could’ve come straight out of a horror film. Big and dark, overgrown with ivy, it stood in the middle of a wild garden, leaning drunkenly to one side. Its tall towers were topped with crooked spires, like a giant clawed hand.
And at two of the upstairs windows, lights were blazing . . .
“So,” Teggs murmured. “Someone lives on this old asteroid.”
“Why ever would they want to?” wondered Gipsy.
“It’s a good place to get up to stuff in secret,” Arx suggested.
“Exactly,” said Teggs. “Put us down by Zeta Three, Ig. We’ll explore the wreck, then call on the castle. But we’d better change into our space armour first.” A spark of excitement tickled his tail at the thought of the adventure ahead. “I don’t know what we’ll find out there – but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be dangerous!”
Chapter Three
THE WRECK AND THE CASTLE
THREE MINUTES AFTER touching down on the asteroid, the astrosaurs were good to go in battle mode.
Teggs wore his helmet and electro-tail armour that could zap any enemies. Gipsy, the queen of unarmed combat, had changed into her tough blue dino-judo suit. Iggy was armed with a tail-guard and heavy-duty stun claws while Arx wore a special steel headdress with built-in horn blasters.