Astrosaurs 12 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: The Disappearing Sun

  Chapter Two: Attack of the Space Monster

  Chapter Three: Desperate Mission

  Chapter Four: The Solawurm Strikes

  Chapter Five: Showdown in Space

  Chapter Six: A Meeting of Minds

  Chapter Seven: Hypnotic Horror

  Chapter Eight: The Flames of Fate

  Chapter Nine: Carnage, Collisions and Chaos

  Chapter Ten: Great Balls of Fire!

  Chapter Eleven: A New Dawn

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  HOT STUFF!

  Teggs is no ordinary dinosaur – he’s an Astrosaur! Captain of the amazing spaceship DSS Sauropod, he goes on dangerous missions and fights evil – along with his faithful crew, Gipsy, Arx and Iggy!

  A world of woolly rhinos is in desperate peril – one of their three suns has gone missing! Racing to the rescue, Teggs and his team must fight a gigantic star-swallowing menace before the other two suns get snatched away. And all the time, other dangers are drawing closer . . .

  For Matthew and Stevie Howe,

  who helped me come up with the

  dino-villains in this book.

  I would also like to thank James Barnes,

  who suggested woolly rhinos, and

  Laura Waterman for improving the title!

  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

  TRICERATOPS – try-SERRA-tops

  HADROSAUR – HAD-roh-sore

  IGUANODON – ig-WA-noh-don

  ALLOSAURUS– AL-uh-SORE-us

  DIMORPHODON – die-MORF-oh-don

  SPINOSAURUS – SPY-nuh-SORE-us

  AMMONITE – AM-oh-NITE

  PTEROSAUR – TEH-roh-sore

  MUSSAURUS – moose-SORE-us

  CARNOTAUR – kar-noh-TOR

  SAUROPELTA – SORE-oh-PEL-tah

  KENTROSAURUS – KEN-troh-SORE-us

  RAPTOR – RAP-tor

  * * *

  THE CREW OF THE DSS SAUROPOD

  Chapter One

  THE DISAPPEARING SUN

  The spaceship soared through the purple skies like a silver egg hurled by a giant. Over yellow fields and deep green mountains it raced, glinting in the light of two huge suns.

  It was the DSS Sauropod, finest in the fleet of the Dinosaur Space Service. And it was going faster than it had ever gone before . . .

  “Get ready for landing!” The warning screech of the alarm pterosaur echoed through the Sauropod. “Landing on Planet Hawn in sixty seconds. SQUAWWWK!”

  “About time too!” cried Captain Teggs Stegosaur, ready to charge from his ship the moment they landed. He peered out through a porthole. Far below, the native woolly rhinos were tending their buttercup fields, and Teggs’s tummy rumbled loud enough to shake the corridor. Buttercups were the tastiest treats in the entire Jurassic Quadrant, and Teggs was always as hungry for food as he was for adventure!

  “Doesn’t look like there’s a terrible emergency here,” Teggs said in surprise. “I wonder why Admiral Rosso called us so urgently.”

  Rosso was the crusty old barosaurus in charge of the DSS. Only hours earlier, he had summoned the Sauropod to Hawn on a double-triple-mega-red-crimson-super-scarlet alert. And Teggs knew that alerts didn’t come much redder than that . . . As the ship’s landing jets kicked in, he felt a tingle travel through his long spiky tail at the thought of the adventure that must surely lie ahead.

  “Captain Teggs!” Gipsy, his stripy hadrosaur communications officer, was hurrying towards him. “I’ve just had a message from Admiral Rosso. He will meet us here at the launch pad in exactly two minutes.”

  A green, sharp-eyed triceratops appeared just behind her – this was Arx, Teggs’s first officer. “Admiral Rosso wants to tell us about the emergency at once, Captain,” he explained. “He doesn’t want to waste a single second.”

  “Neither do I!” Teggs declared. “Let’s eat our dinner during the meeting to save time.”

  “Dinner?” Gipsy frowned. “But, Captain, it’s not even lunchtime yet.”

  “You’re right,” said Teggs, smiling dreamily at the thought of fresh buttercups. “We should eat lunch, dinner and a midnight supper during the meeting to save even more time!”

  The Sauropod trembled as it touched down on the launch pad. Teggs whacked his tail against a control in the wall and the main doors slid open. He jumped outside through the swirling exhaust smoke and started charging down the ramp.

  “Hey, wait for me!” came a gruff voice from inside the Sauropod. Seconds later, a brown-and-white iguanodon burst through the smoke – it was Iggy Tooth, the Sauropod’s chief engineer. “I’ve been pushing the engines as fast as they’ll go,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow. “We’ve crossed four solar systems in two hours – and I’m dying to know why!”

  “We all are,” Arx agreed, as he and Gipsy came down the ramp to join Teggs and Iggy.

  “Well, stand by for answers,” said Teggs, pointing. “Here comes Admiral Rosso now!”

  The smoke was fading to reveal the extraordinary sight of a 23-ton barosaurus flying towards them on a space-scooter. A woolly rhino in a billowing blue cape rode beside him, with a smaller rhino trailing just behind.

  “Ahoy there, astrosaurs!” Rosso called.

  Teggs and his crew saluted and ran down the ramp as the admiral came into land with his companions.

  Rosso’s little head bobbed about on the end of his neck, which was as long as a firefighter’s hose and three times as thick. “Captain Teggs, Arx, Gipsy and Iggy . . . Allow me to introduce the ruler of Hawn – Prime Rhino Serras.”

  “Thank you for coming,” said Serras polit
ely, shivering a little in her cape. She was a regal-looking woolly rhino with a chocolate-brown coat and big, sad eyes. She turned to the skinny grey rhino in the roll-neck sweater standing behind her. “This is my personal assistant, Noss.”

  Noss blinked at them through a pair of thick glasses. “I’ve been working for Serras for five months, two days and three-and-a-half hours precisely!” he told them proudly.

  “I’m pleased to meet you both,” said Teggs. He bowed, grabbing a couple of mouthfuls of the lush yellow grass growing round the launch pad as he did so. “But, Admiral, what’s the terrible emergency?”

  “Yes, everything seems wonderful here,” Arx agreed. “The air is so cool and fresh . . .”

  Gipsy nodded. “And the buttercup fields look so lovely, lit by the two suns . . .”

  “That’s just the problem!” snapped Serras.

  “Eh?” Iggy frowned. “Lovely buttercups, a problem?”

  Rosso shook his head. “Two suns, you say, Gipsy? Last week, there were three of them!”

  For a few moments, the astrosaurs stood in staggered silence.

  Teggs found his voice first. “You mean . . . three suns set one night and only two rose up the next morning?”

  “That’s exactly what he means,” said Noss sadly, tapping at a large calculator. “It happened three-point-four-seven-nine days ago and—”

  “Our sun has gone,” said Serras, interrupting him. “There is not a trace remaining.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Arx spluttered. “How can a sun simply disappear? It’s a star – a super-massive ball of fiery gasses, millions of miles across!”

  “Nevertheless,” said Rosso, “Hawn’s smallest sun has vanished – snatched in the night, while the woolly rhinos slept. When they woke up, they panicked.”

  Serras nodded. “You see, before this, our world was a tropical paradise. We were happy and hot here. Now we must wrap up to keep out the cold.”

  “And don’t forget, Your Primeness,” said Noss quickly, “our buttercups need plenty of light and warmth. If any more of our sunlight disappears, our farms will fail.”

  “I had not forgotten, Noss.” Serras blinked away a tear. “My people might starve to death – if they don’t freeze to death first!”

  “Naturally, Serras called for me at once,” said Rosso. “I came here in my private starship and was very glad to learn my finest astrosaurs were only a few solar systems away.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Teggs. “We’ll get to the bottom of this mystery. Whole suns can’t just vanish without a trace!”

  But even as he spoke, the sky got suddenly darker. In the same split-second, the air became as cold as a ghostly breath. Noss and Serras clomped about in a woolly panic. Even Rosso squealed in disbelief.

  “Captain, LOOK!” gasped Iggy.

  Teggs knew it wasn’t safe to stare into a dazzling bright sun. But the biggest of Hawn’s suns was not dazzling bright any longer. It hung in the sky like a chewed orange – almost half of it had been ripped clean away!

  “Oh, no!” howled Noss. “At least forty-three-point-five per cent of Hawn Sun Two has been removed!”

  “Come on, crew,” Teggs commanded. “Into the Sauropod. Whatever’s snatching the suns, it must still be up there in local space.”

  Iggy nodded grimly. “And if it’s strong enough to shred a star, think what it could do to us!”

  “I’m trying not to,” Teggs admitted, his heart pounding with excitement as he led the charge back up the ramp and into the ship. “Stand by for blast off – we’ve got a planet to save!”

  Chapter Two

  ATTACK OF THE SPACE MONSTER

  With his crew right behind him, Captain Teggs burst into the Sauropod’s flight deck so quickly he smashed through the doors!

  “Instant take off!” he yelled.

  Teggs’s flight crew of flying reptiles – fifty dynamic dimorphodon – flapped into action. They tweaked levers with their claws, and bashed buttons with their beaks. Smoke and flames poured from the Sauropod’s jet rockets and the mighty ship shot upwards into space.

  “Set a course for Hawn Sun Two,” snapped Teggs, leaping into his control pit. “Iggy – give us maximum speed!”

  Iggy nodded, his claws clicking quickly over the controls. The ship was soon pulsing with extra power as it sped on its way.

  Gipsy scrambled into her seat. “But, Captain, suns are super-hot – won’t we melt?”

  “We have extra-strong safety-tinted solar shields,” Arx reminded her.

  Even so, as the Sauropod zoomed onwards through space it began to grow very warm.

  Sweat was soon dripping down the astrosaurs’ scaly backs.

  Despite the heat, Arx kept cool. “We are now one million miles from Hawn Sun Two,” he reported.

  “Slow down the engines,” said Teggs. “And switch on the scanner!”

  Sprite, the leader of the dimorphodon, cheeped and flicked a switch. The scanner screen showed them the view outside through the solar shields – a bright, broiling half-chewed ball of blinding fire.

  Then, as they watched, a squiggling blaze of light curled away from the savaged sun. It started twisting and twirling towards them.

  “What’s that?” said Iggy, frowning. “It looks like a gigantic twitching tadpole!”

  Gipsy screwed up her nose as the sinister shape came wriggling closer. “Or some sort of revolting wormy thing . . .”

  “But nothing can survive that close to a sun without being frazzled to a frizzle,” said Arx. “Er . . . can it?”

  “Apparently it can!” Teggs’s eyes were shining with wonder. “I think I know what that thing might be . . .”

  The others all looked at him – but then Gipsy jumped about a mile in the air and her headphones flew across the room. “Oww!” she yelled. “I heard a terrible screech – it must have come from somewhere close by.”

  Iggy pointed at the scanner screen. “I think it came from that!”

  The wriggling shape had sped suddenly closer. It was not a titanic tadpole or a weird worm. It was an enormous menacing monster. Its segmented body coiled and uncoiled, shining like fiery gold. Stubby spikes stuck out all over it like fins. Its face was long and pointy, with red burning eyes and jaws that stretched on for hundreds of miles.

  Jaws that were opening wide . . .

  “Look at that gruesome gob,” cried Iggy. “You could fit a moon in there!”

  “Wait,” said Gipsy, pointing at the screen. “What’s that?”

  A ball of dazzling white light was forming in the monster’s mouth, growing larger and larger.

  Arx checked his controls. “Sensors say it’s a planet-sized ball of intense solar energy – with a temperature of one million degrees centigrade!”

  Suddenly the monster jerked its head – and sent the ball of scorching energy searing through space towards the Sauropod!

  “That star-fire is too hot to handle,” Teggs bellowed. “Get us out of here – NOW!”

  The dimorphodon fell screeching on the controls and the Sauropod throbbed with power. But already, the ball of star-fire was about to engulf them.

  “No good!” gasped Arx. “We can’t escape in time.”

  Gipsy stared in horror at the screen. “We’re going to get roasted!”

  Chapter Three

  DESPERATE MISSION

  “Hang on!” yelled Iggy, flipping back a special cover to reveal a red lever. “I’ll hit the emergency power boost.”

  “Quick, Iggy!” Teggs cried. The sizzling fireball was about to hit.

  Iggy tugged on the lever – and with a spluttering roar, the Sauropod whizzed away, wildly out of control! Teggs was hurled against Arx, who was sent staggering into Gipsy. Iggy almost squashed a dozen dimorphodon as he fell forward onto his nose. A wave of dreadful heat swept through the flight deck. Then the growl of the engines died down, and the Sauropod stopped.

  Teggs cheered. “You did it, Iggy!”

  “But half the ship’s engines have
overloaded!” Iggy sighed. “We’ll have to chug back to Hawn on minimum power and make repairs.”

  Arx checked his space radar. “Luckily that fireball is flying harmlessly out into deep space,” he reported. “But our giant friend seems to have vanished completely.”

  “I think it was a solawurm,” said Teggs slowly.

  “A who-what?” said Gipsy.

  “I’ll explain later,” said Teggs, chomping on some ferns from his control pit. “Right now we must get back to Admiral Rosso, tell him what’s happened and work out a plan . . . before it’s too late!”

  An hour later, the Sauropod was back on Hawn. It was only lunchtime, but with so much of the sun ripped away it seemed more like late evening. Rosso took the astrosaurs to Shaggy Palace, the Prime Rhino’s grand headquarters, for a top-secret super-important meeting and some food.

  Serras sat at the end of a large yellow table with a woolly bobble-hat on her head. Noss sat beside her in an extra sweater, hugging his calculator for warmth. Both of them were shivering.

  And as Teggs described the Sauropod’s close call in space, they started to shiver even harder.

  “A solawurm you say?” asked Serras. “What are they? Where do they come from?”

  “No one knows for sure,” said Teggs through a mouthful of moss. “But they were first discovered by the Jurassic Explorers, hundreds of years ago. Show them, Arx.”

  He waited as Arx loaded up the Jurassic Explorers’ Space Index on a computer. The Explorers were Teggs’s heroes. They had mapped out most of the Jurassic Quadrant, discovering all kinds of curious creatures as they did so. As a dino-tot, Teggs had been thrilled to hear the tales of their adventures – and one of his favourites concerned a certain giant, wriggly, fire-breathing space-monster . . .

  The computer soon showed a picture of a solawurm, taken by one of the Jurassic Explorers. It looked exactly like the monster that had menaced the Sauropod. Noss was so shocked at the sight that he threw his calculator in the air.

  “According to the Explorers, solawurms are ultra-rare, mysterious monsters that feed on solar energy,” Teggs explained. “Although large, fearsome and highly dangerous, they are actually quite peaceful creatures who eat only dying suns with no planets.”

  “Peaceful?” said Serras crossly. “So how come this one is eating our suns?”