Astrosaurs 6 Page 4

  Teggs and Spink jumped up in the air. The flames whooshed underneath them and singed their soles.

  “What are we going to do?” cried Spink.

  “I’ll think of something,” Teggs gasped, dodging a blow from the kraggle-scruncher’s mighty arm. “You mustn’t give up hope!”

  The raptors around them jeered and cheered. They were so excited that none of them noticed when some rubble and a pile of dung balls fell down from the roof . . .

  Iggy was angry, upset and up to his ears in dung. To take his mind off his misery he had taken up the floor in the toilets and opened up the dung tanks, determined to find and stop the nuisance noise. But now he could hear something else. Something far stranger.

  It sounded like a massive monster was hopping about on one big foot right beneath him, breathing fire in all directions.

  So Iggy kept digging down through the dung. It was stale and hard, like tunnelling through smelly rock, but he kept on going. Finally, in his anger, he put his pick through the bottom of the dung tank – and right through the rock.

  Iggy realized he had made himself a spyhole. He bent over to look and gasped. He didn’t believe what he was seeing!

  There was a massive monster hopping about on one big foot right beneath him and breathing fire in all directions! And ringed around it in spooky silence were a hundred ravenous raptors, glowing like ghosts in the darkness. And there, looking equally ghostly as they tried to escape the monster, were Teggs and a kentrosaurus!

  Iggy knew he had to get Arx and Gipsy. But then, to his horror, he realized he was stuck in the bottom of the hole he had dug. The sides were too steep to climb back out!

  And through the spyhole he could see that Teggs and his friend were in deadly danger. The monster’s blows and its fire were coming closer and closer . . .

  Spink wasn’t as quick as Teggs, and the kraggle-scruncher finally got him. Its monstrous knuckles bashed him right in the beak, and he rolled over and over. He came to rest beside a big pile of the blue marbles waiting to be loaded onto the ship, and lay still. The raptors jeered and laughed.

  “Spink, are you OK?” Teggs tugged on his shoulder spike. “Get up!”

  The kraggle-scruncher hopped towards them, bellowing in triumph.

  “I wonder what you’ll taste like toasted, Teggs,” gloated General Loki. “I think I’m about to find out!”

  The monster’s huge mouth was opening. A fireball was forming there.

  “Now, Spink!” Teggs thundered. “You have to get up!”

  But the kentrosaurus was too groggy to react.

  WHOOOSH! The fireball launched from the kraggle-scruncher’s throat.

  At the last moment, with all his strength, Teggs hurled his friend aside. The fireball struck the mound of blue marbles with a fiery blast. They burst into bright blue flames. Smoke swamped Teggs and Spink, making them sneeze.

  “No!” shouted Loki. “You blundering monster!”

  “What’s rattled the raptor?” asked Spink weakly.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” said Teggs. He felt suddenly strange – dizzy and dazed and definitely different . . . “Wait a minute!” He nudged one smoking marble with his beak and it rolled away. “Spink, did you see that?” he gasped. “I can touch things! I’m not a ghost any more! Spink, you try it!”

  Spink whacked his tail into the marble pile, bombarding the kraggle-scruncher with blazing stones. It howled with pain and the smoke gave it a nasty coughing fit. “Me too!” cried Spink. “I’m my old self again!”

  “It must be that smoke! It’s turned us back to normal!” Teggs swung round to face General Loki. “So that’s why you’ve been mining the blue stones! When they burn, they give off a special smoke that reverses the effects of the dispium!”

  For a moment, Loki and the raptors seemed to fade away like ghosts. Only their green outlines were left behind, glowing in the gloom. But then they turned solid again.

  “You are quite correct, Captain,” hissed Loki. “With a good supply of blue marbles and dispium, we can turn see-through or solid as we choose. But the knowledge will do you no good. My pet can hunt anyone, ghostly or not. And it is high time you were scrunched to a kraggle!”

  The kraggle-scruncher coughed up a ferocious fireball that knocked the plant-eaters right off their feet. The raptors cheered.

  “Enjoy yourself while you can, Loki,” said Teggs fearlessly. “Pride has been known to come before a fall.”

  And what a fall it was!

  Two seconds later, a large and smelly iguanodon fell with a yell through the roof above them. He landed with a stinky splat, right on top of the kraggle-scruncher – squashing it flat!

  “Whew,” said the steaming, dung-covered dinosaur. “Thank goodness for a soft landing!”

  “Iggy!” beamed Teggs. “You saved us.”

  Iggy grinned back. “Sorry I couldn’t have a bath first.”

  “You astrosaur beasts!” General Loki was red with rage. “You squished my pet monster!”

  Teggs nodded happily. “I do believe he’s been scrunched to a kraggle himself!”

  Loki’s eye narrowed. “That will seem like paradise next to what we’re going to do to you . . .”

  He and his raptors closed in on them, their talons raised.

  Chapter Ten

  FRIGHTS AND FIGHTS AND FINAL FLIGHTS

  “NEVER MIND, CAPTAIN,” said Iggy bravely. “We can’t beat all these raptors, but at least we’ll go down fighting!”

  “We can’t beat them,” said Teggs, pulling a small device from his belt, “but maybe the roof will! Because now we’re back in the solid world again, I can use this.”

  Iggy grinned. “The shockwave maker!”

  “Cover your heads!” cried Teggs as he fired the shockwave maker at the roof. The rock trembled like a trifle in a typhoon, and then broke apart.

  “Er, Captain?” said Iggy. “The dung tanks are up there!”

  But they weren’t for long.

  With a loud squelch, tons of dung fell down from the shattered ceiling. The raptors yelped and gurgled as the stinky brown muck knocked them to the ground. But it covered Teggs, Spink and Iggy too, and knocked the shockwave maker from the captain’s beak.

  “Where’s General Loki?” asked Teggs, pushing his head out from the dung heap. “Did we get him?”

  “No, you did not, Captain!” shouted Loki. He and his best troops had reached the safety of their spaceship just in time. “And since you seem to be stuck, there’s nothing to stop us biting your boring heads right off!”

  “Nothing, you say?” Teggs smiled. “What about them?”

  The shockwave maker had left a huge hole in the cavern roof – or in other words, a huge hole in the floor of the Camp Kentro toilets. Now a pair of kentrosaurus came into view, sturdy and solid. At once, they jumped down and started to battle Loki’s best raptors. Another kentrosaurus swiftly followed to join in the fight. And then another, and another . . .

  “My boys!” gasped Spink. “They . . . they’re not ghosts any more. They are normal again! But they weren’t near the smoke, so how . . .?”

  “Ask him,” said Teggs, nodding at the delighted triceratops peering at them through the hole.

  “Captain, you seem quite your old self!” beamed Arx. “It’s remarkable. I burned some of the marbles you found in the rockfall and they gave off this blue smoke. It’s turned all the kentrosaurus ghosts back to normal!”

  “You see, Loki?” Teggs hollered. “Now Arx has learned your secret too – worst luck for you!”

  “This isn’t fair!” cried Loki. “Curse you, astrosaurs!”

  Teggs shook his head. “The curse of the dispium is ended, Loki,” he said triumphantly. “Along with your plans to conquer the universe.”

  The old miners fought furiously, using their shoulder spikes and tails to wipe the floor with the raptors.

  “Your boys are good fighters,” said Iggy admiringly.

  “They’ve been watching the raptors helples
sly for years,” said Spink. “Now at last they can fight back!”

  “We sssurrender,” hissed a battered raptor as it flopped face-first in the dung. The kentrosaurus cheered.

  “It’s not over yet,” said Teggs, finally freeing himself from the muck heap. “We’ve got to stop Loki for good. Let’s get aboard that death ship, fast.”

  “Too late!” The evil raptor was leaning out of the window of his death ship. “You may have beaten my troops, but I’ve still got all the dispium and the blue marbles I need to build another invisible army. You’ll never know where we’ll strike next!”

  The kentrosaurus retreated as Loki fired up the engines. Then the death ship used its lasers to blast a hole in the cavern wall, revealing a large shaft sloping upwards towards the surface.

  “Those sneaky raptors built a secret launch chute,” gasped Iggy. “Loki’s going to smash his way out.”

  “If he does, the shockwaves could flatten Camp Kentro!” Spink yelled.

  The engines roared like a million kraggle-scrunchers with cramp in their toes – and the death ship took off up the launch chute at incredible speed.

  “Arx,” yelled Teggs. “Get everyone out of Camp Kentro, quick!”

  “Nobody’s in the camp, Captain,” Arx called down. “Shanta and his miners have left the planet.”

  “Not quite, Arx,” said Gipsy, appearing just behind him with a huge smile on her face. “I’ve just called them on my communicator . . .”

  There was an ear-splitting crash as the death ship burst through the ground. Gipsy and Arx clung to each other as the tremors rocked Camp Kentro. The walls wobbled. Windows broke. The ceiling cracked open like an enormous eggshell to reveal the purple sky . . .

  Where the biggest spaceship Teggs had ever seen was hovering right above the camp!

  “That’s a diplodocus ship,” cried Iggy.

  Gipsy nodded. “It’s Shanta’s. I called him once the kentrosaurus turned back to normal and told us what was going on. He said he’d stick around in his ship in case he could help.”

  “I only hope he can!” Teggs murmured.

  They watched tensely as Loki’s craft zoomed into view.

  A split-second later, Shanta’s ship opened fire on Loki with laser drills, mine missiles and dung torpedoes. Loki was so surprised that he forgot to put up his shields! The death ship burst into flames and dive-bombed down to the planet’s surface.

  “Quick,” Teggs cried, turning to Iggy and the kentrosaurus miners. “Let’s climb out of here and find out what’s happened. Loki’s a slippery customer. He might have got away.”

  Together they all crawled and climbed and slipped and slithered over the whiffy rock until they reached the big hole. Arx and Gipsy helped them out. Then, panting for breath, they ran through the remains of Camp Kentro. Finally, they stumbled outside.

  Shanta had parked his craft beside the burning death ship, and now he was smiling down at them. “Looking for someone?”

  There, pinned to the ground by one of Plod’s enormous feet, was General Loki.

  “Well, well.” Teggs grinned. “The boot’s on the other foot now, isn’t it, Loki? And what a foot!”

  “You can’t treat me like this, you hopeless herbivores!” screeched the raptor. “I’m General Loki! Commander of the Seven Fleets of Death! Ruler of the meat mines of—”

  “Oh, put a sock in it,” said Teggs.

  “I liked him better when he was a ghost,” added Iggy. “Couldn’t hear a thing he was saying!”

  “Well, I’m sure Admiral Rosso and the DSS will want to listen to every word of his confession,” said Arx sternly. “Loki, you are going to be locked up for a very long time.”

  “While we are free again!” beamed Spink. “After all these years, I can finally go home and see Shirley.”

  “You certainly can,” said Gipsy. “Your spaceship is as good as new – Iggy’s fixed it up a treat.”

  The kentrosaurus cheered and raised Iggy up onto their shoulders. “It was a pleasure, boys!” he told them. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind going for a spin in it myself!” He laughed as Spink and the others carried him off, cheering and whooping for joy.

  Shanta smiled. “And now that you have learned the secret of dispium, Teggs, we can mine it properly!”

  But Teggs shook his head. “No, Shanta. I don’t think that’s wise. If another villain like Loki ever got their hands on it, it really would be a cursed treasure. A weapon like that is just too dangerous.”

  “I think the DSS should put a force field around the whole planet, like an enormous protective bubble,” said Gipsy. “Then no one can ever land here again.”

  “Good idea,” Teggs agreed. “We should let Creepus keep its secrets.”

  Shanta sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Why not take some of the blue marbles away with you instead?” Arx suggested. “After all, they make beautiful gemstones.”

  “That’s true,” said Plod. “We could sell them and make a fortune!”

  “So everyone’s a winner,” grinned Teggs. Then he looked down at Loki. “Well – almost everyone.”

  “I just hope this particular space ghost never haunts us again!” said Gipsy.

  “You will pay for spoiling my plans,” moaned Loki, wriggling in the grip of Plod’s toes. Then he accidentally swallowed a mouthful of sand, which finally shut him up.

  Gipsy smiled at Teggs. “I’m so glad you’re back to normal, Captain.”

  “So am I,” said Teggs. “But you know, there was one good thing about being a ghost.”

  “There was?” asked Arx. “What?” “I couldn’t feel my stomach – so I didn’t realize how hungry I was.” He licked his lips. “Right now, I could eat a medium-sized forest!”

  Gipsy laughed. “Then let’s round up the rest of the raptors stuck down in the dung-heap and get back to the Sauropod for some breakfast. The dimorphodon will be wondering what’s happened to us.”

  “They will never believe it,” said Arx.

  “I can hardly believe it myself,” Gipsy admitted.

  “But that’s the brilliant thing about adventures, isn’t it?” Teggs grinned. “Anything can happen. And I can’t wait for it to happen to us again, very soon!”

  THE END

  About the Author

  Born in 1971, Steve Cole spent a happy childhood in rural Bedfordshire being loud and aspiring to amuse. He liked books, and so went to the University of East Anglia to read more of them. Later on he started writing them too, with titles ranging from pre-school poetry to Young Adult thrillers (with more TV and film tie-ins than he cares to admit to along the way). In other careers he has been the editor of Noddy magazine, and an editor of fiction and nonfiction book titles for various publishers. He is the author of the hugely successful Astrosaurs, Cows in Action and Astrosaurs Academy series.

  ALSO BY STEVE COLE:

  Read all the adventures of Teggs, Gipsy, Arx and Iggy!

  1 Riddle of the Raptors

  2 The Hatching Horror

  3 The Seas of Doom

  4 The Mind-Swap Menace

  5 The Skies of Fear

  6 The Space Ghosts

  7 Day of the Dino-Droids

  8 The Terror-Bird Trap

  9 The Planet of Peril

  10 The Star Pirates

  11 The Claws of Christmas

  12 The Sun-Snatchers

  13 Revenge of the Fang

  14 The Carnivore Curse

  15 The Dreams of Dread

  16 The Robot Raiders

  17 The Twist of Time

  18 The Sabre-Tooth Secret

  19 The Forest of Evil

  20 Earth Attack!

  21 The T. Rex Invasion

  22 The Castle of Frankensaur

  Read all the adventures of Teggs, Blink and Dutch at the Astrosaurs Academy!

  1 Destination: Danger!

  2 Contest Carnage!

  3 Terror Underground!

  4 Jungle Horror!

  5 Dea
dly Drama!

  6 Christmas Crisis!

  7 Volcano Invaders!

  8 Space Kidnap!

  Meet the time-travelling cows!

  1 The Ter-moo-nators

  2 The Moo-my’s Curse

  3 The Roman Moo-stery

  4 The Wild West Moo-nster

  5 World War Moo

  6 The Battle for Christmoos

  7 The Pirate Moo-tiny

  8 The Moo-gic of Merlin

  9 The Victorian Moo-ders

  10 The Moo-lympic Games

  11 First Cows on the Moon

  12 The Viking Emoo-gency

  If you can’t take the slime, don’t do the crime!

  1 The Fearsome Fists

  2 The Toxic Teeth

  3 The Cyber-Poos

  4 The Supernatural Squid

  5 The Killer Socks

  6 The Last-Chance Chicken

  7 The Alligator Army

  8 The Conquering Conks

  Visit www.stevecolebooks.co.uk for fun, games, jokes, to meet the characters and much, much more!

  THE SPACE GHOSTS

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17351 8

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2013

  Text copyright © Steve Cole, 2006

  Cover illustration by Dynamo Design © Random House Children’s Books, 2010

  Map copyright © Charlie Fowkes, 2005

  Interior illustrations by Woody Fox © Random House Children’s Books, 2006

  First Published in Great Britain

  Red Fox 9780099487760 2006

  The right of Steve Cole to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.