First Cows on the Mooon

by Steve Cole

  Still feeling groggy, McMoo marched into the Launch Control Centre, where Blinkenshrink was shouting orders at his busy engineers. The professor made a beeline for Smoky Joe and Barmer.

  “How’s my poisoner?” he enquired.

  “Everything’s A-OK,” Joe said happily.

  “He won’t stop saying that,” the burly woman grumbled. “Come to think of it, all the folk out there on patrol have been saying the same thing.” She turned up her big nose. “And he still stinks of cow doo-doo.”

  McMoo plucked a small dollop of brown from Joe’s hair. “Hmm, iron filings …”

  “Your lieutenants found a bunch of those outside near the launch pad,” said Gertie. “How’d they wind up in that cow’s muck?”

  “Perhaps to stick them in place? I wonder …” The professor picked up a plastic cup of water from a nearby desk and dropped the muck inside. With a sizzly bang, it went up in smoke.

  Gertie coughed. “What the heck—?”

  “Just as I thought. No ordinary iron filings.” McMoo peered down at the frazzled remains in the water. “Those Fed-up Bulls are masters of mind control. They’ve brainwashed humans in the past with special swords and dodgy dung beetles – but I’ve never seen anything like this! The technology must be tiny …”

  “Are you ever gonna start talking sense?” Gertie grumbled.

  “I think these tiny bits of metal are little transmitters sending a special signal,” McMoo explained. “That’s why none of your guards or the other workers have seen any intruders come or go. The signal makes them believe everything’s all right … Even when they see someone who shouldn’t be there, they don’t raise the alarm. But because they wanted Joe to do something really bad, they had to give him a more powerful dose of brainwashing – so they glued the transmitters to his head with dung.”

  “Hogwash!” Gertie grunted. “I dunno what’s really going on, but I’m betting it’s down to those dang Russians!”

  “I almost wish you were right,” said McMoo. “But the brains behind these tiny transmitters are far more dangerous …”

  Suddenly, the door was thrown open – and a bedraggled Little Bo staggered in, supported by two straining guards.

  “Bo!” McMoo gasped. As he helped her to sit down, he saw that she was clutching Pat’s uniform and ringblender. “What happened? Where’s Pat?”

  “The ter-moo-nators have got a whole bunch of evil nippers working for them,” Bo whispered in his ear. “They’re hiding out in some tunnels underneath the launch pad. Pat went after them to find out more.”

  “Brave, but stupidly dangerous,” McMoo cried. “We’ve got to get after him … Er, Bo? What is it?”

  Bo was looking past him, her eyes almost out on stalks. She pointed with a wavering hoof to the huge windows with their perfect view of Apollo 10. “Look …”

  The professor whirled round. “Goodness moo,” he breathed. “I don’t believe it …!”

  Slowly, silently, a cloud of black smoke was engulfing the spaceship. Then the haze faded to reveal a giant metal canister balanced on top of it! Even from this distance, McMoo could see the silver circles gleaming on the sides of the canister – F.B.I. time machines, linked together to transport the enormous contraption from its hiding place under the ground to its new position up on high …

  “So that’s what the ter-moo-nators didn’t want me to see,” McMoo realized. “The F.B.I. have built a portable HQ – and Apollo 10’s going to carry it into space. They’re hitching a ride to the moon!”

  * * *

  How do I get out of this one? thought Pat, trapped inside the ter-moo-nators’ giant tin can. He’d been tied up, squashed into a strange spacesuit and stuck to the wall with Velcro. The other moon-calves were bunched up beside him in their own stick-on suits, while most of the available space was given over to sacks and crates and boxes bulging with unknown contents.

  “Flight successful,” droned T-312.

  “We have landed safely,” T-207 agreed. Both ter-moo-nators stood on the steel floor of the capsule. The ZEN-generator’s yellow lever protruded from a small console at T-207’s side.

  As a cloud of dark smoke faded from the thick glass windows, Pat saw that the view was the same as that from the Saturn V’s service tower. “We’re on top of the rocket,” he realized with a thrill of fear. “We could fall off at any moment!”

  “Negative,” droned T-312. “Our capsule is magnetized to the human spaceship.”

  “Well, that explains those chalk markings we found on Apollo 10,” said Pat. “You were measuring the spaceship to be sure you could land on it!”

  “Clever, isn’t he,” sneered Dexter the calf.

  “Not clever enough to work out why you’re doing all this,” Pat admitted.

  “Because we must reach the Foaming Sea,” rasped T-312. “Our plans depend on it.”

  “I don’t know where that is, but all this stuff you’re bringing must weigh hundreds of tons,” Pat said. “The rocket will never be able to lift this and Apollo 10.”

  “Negative,” said T-207. “Professor McMoo’s ZEN-generator is powering an anti-gravity device. This capsule weighs nothing.”

  “And everything inside it has been placed in a zone of extra nothingness,” T-312 added. “Completely weight-free.”

  “Very clever,” said Pat. “But don’t you think that Launch Control and all the TV cameras watching will spot this enormous great tin on top of their rocket?”

  T-312 shook his gleaming head. “We have placed power-boosted ringblenders all around the capsule. Just as they disguise cattle, so they will disguise our technology.”

  “Time to blastoff – nine minutes,” said T-207. “Our plans have worked perfectly. This time we cannot fail!”

  Chapter Eight

  BLASTOFF BEDLAM

  Over at Launch Control, while dozens of engineers stared at their screens checking system after system, McMoo and Bo were still transfixed by the sight of the F.B.I. space capsule.

  “Blinkenshrink!” McMoo yelled. “Call off the countdown. You can’t send that rocket into space.”

  The director looked at him like he was crazy. “What’s wrong?”

  McMoo pointed through the window. “Can’t any of you see that dirty great thing sitting on top of your spaceship?”

  “That poison’s turned your head funny,” said Blinkenshrink. “There’s nothing there. Now, stop distracting me – every second is crucial.”

  “I don’t think any human will be able to see that thing, Prof.” Bo had borrowed some binoculars and was staring through them intently. “There are ringblenders all around it, and—” She gasped. “Oh, no. Look through the window!”

  McMoo grabbed the binoculars. “Bless my parsnips, Pat’s on board that thing!”

  “And so are all those cruel cattle kids who duffed me up,” cried Bo. “We’ve got to get Pat out of there!”

  “We’re three miles away and there’s less than eight minutes to go till blastoff,” McMoo reminded her. “We’d never reach it in time.”

  Blinkenshrink had overheard. “I forbid you to even try,” he said sternly. “I don’t care if the President did send you, I am running this show. Barmer, make sure they stay here.”

  Gertie grinned. “It’ll be a pleasure, sir.”

  “Out of my way!” Bo shouted, raising a hoof, “or I’ll whop you into orbit myself.”

  But as she lunged forward, Gertie moved with surprising speed and sat down on her! The big woman’s wobbling bottom crushed the startled milk-cow against the tiled floor. “M-oooooof!” she gasped. “Professor, help!”

  “Our only chance is to make these people see what’s sitting on top of Apollo 10,” cried McMoo, grabbing assorted tools from an engineer’s desk. “Then they’ll have to call off the launch.” He produced Pat’s ringblender and set about it with a scalpel. “If I can only rewire this thing, we can use it to reverse the illusion created by the F.B.I.’s ringblenders.”

  “Well, go on then!” sa
id Bo helplessly.

  She watched as McMoo cut open the silver ring, exposing wires and circuits. He worked frantically. The flight team performed their final checks. The clock went on ticking towards the spaceship’s launch at 16.49.

  “T-minus sixty seconds and counting,” announced Blinkenshrink.

  “No more tea, thanks.” McMoo froze. “Oh. You meant T for take-off, didn’t you?”

  “T-minus fifty seconds,” the director continued. “Full internal power transferred to launch vehicle. Looking good.”

  “Looking really, really bad, you mean!” Bo wriggled helplessly beneath the weight of Gertie’s bottom. “Come on, Professor!”

  “T-minus thirty seconds …”

  McMoo worked like a demon. Bo could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. “There!” He hopped up. “That’s the rewiring done. Now, if I can just project the anti-illusion beam over to the launch pad …”

  “T-minus fifteen seconds, guidance is now internal …”

  The professor held the ringblender to the window.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Bo mooed in despair.

  “The power’s still building!” McMoo shook the silver ring as the countdown reached nine and the rocket jets blasted into life. “Everybody look at the launch pad!” he bellowed. “LOOK!”

  Suddenly, the top of the rocket seemed to blur – and dozens of shocked gasps went up from the watching engineers as the F.B.I. capsule became visible. McMoo and Bo’s true appearance became apparent too – but nobody noticed. The spectacle on the launch pad held the whole room transfixed as a crazy chorus of cries almost drowned out the roar of the thrusters:

  “What’s that?”

  “Impossible!”

  “Something’s stuck on the rocket!”

  “Told you so!” Bo wailed.

  “But it’s too late to abort the countdown,” cried Blinkenshrink. “We have liftoff!”

  “Noooooooooooooooo!” wailed McMoo.

  Everyone stared in wonder as the rocket slowly pulled away from the launch pad in a staggering storm of fire and smoke. The giant capsule stayed glued to its top as it tore through the blue afternoon sky and vanished into the clouds.

  Then – PHIZZZ! Pat’s power-boosted ringblender burned out, and the illusion conjured by McMoo and Bo’s own ringblenders began to work again.

  “Hey!” Gertie was looking down at Bo, shaken. “For a moment there, girlie, I could’ve sworn you were a cow.”

  “I could’ve sworn you were an elephant,” Bo retorted. “You both weigh the same. Get off me!”

  “Yes, Barmer, stop sitting on the lieutenant,” said Blinkenshrink quickly. “It seems you two were right about that thing.”

  “My poor brother’s on board!” wailed Bo.

  The professor patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll get him back somehow. The ter-moo-nators must want him alive, or they wouldn’t have taken him with them.”

  “I don’t understand any of this!” Blinkenshrink said miserably. “What was that thing?”

  “I think it was a kind of space capsule,” said McMoo.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a boat?” asked Bo. “The miserable lumps who clobbered me said it was going to the Foaming Sea—”

  “What?” The director turned pink. “But … the Foaming Sea is on the moon.”

  “Of course,” breathed McMoo. “There are lots of ‘seas’ there – not real seas, of course, just sort of plains on the moon’s surface.”

  Blinkenshrink nodded. “When we launch Apollo 11 in July, she’s due to land quite close to the Foaming Sea, in the Sea of Tranquillity …”

  “Professor,” hissed Bo, tugging on his sleeve. “Back in our own time, those same ter-moo-nators attacked us from outer space – remember? This must be how it happens. We haven’t been able to stop them at all.”

  “I’m not ready to give up yet,” McMoo told her. “We must find out more about the ter-moo-nators’ plans. And I know just who to ask.” He dashed over to the snoring firefighter. “Smoky Joe!”

  “But he’s in that stupid trance,” said Gertie.

  “True. And to wake someone from a hypnotic state can be dangerous – it should always be done slowly and very, very gently.” McMoo frowned. “Still, time is short – so I’ll just try conking him on the head with a saucer.”

  CRASH! The saucer broke on Joe’s mucky bonce and he jumped up at once. “Urgh … I had a bad dream where this evil calf was telling me that if a guy called McMoo turned up with a couple of friends, I needed to put special poison in their tea …” He gasped as he saw the professor. “Hey, it’s you! You were in my dream!”

  “That wasn’t a dream, it really happened,” McMoo told him. “You were hypnotized. Now, did that evil calf say anything else?”

  “Uh-huh. He was quite a show-off.” Joe shivered. “He said that fed-up bulls would take over the moon – and start a terrible war that would destroy the human race!”

  “Space bulls?” Gertie snorted. “Hogwash!”

  “This threat is real,” McMoo insisted. “They have incredible technology. You saw the way they hid their capsule in plain sight on top of your spacecraft!”

  Blinkenshrink buried his head in his hands. “How can we stop this madness? If the press find out we’ve accidentally sent evil bulls into space – that our moon missions may have doomed the world …”

  “No one must know,” said McMoo. “You must send a top-secret mission to the moon to defeat these mad bulls, using extra-specially secret astronauts.”

  Blinkenshrink blinked. “Like who?”

  “Me and Bo, of course!” McMoo grinned. “The sooner we leave the planet, the sooner we can save it. Let’s go!”

  Chapter Nine

  LUNAR-SEA!

  Strapped into her seat in the cramped moonship, Bo surveyed the squillions of switches and dials all around her. She was a brave cow, but right now the butterflies in her stomach felt more like blackbirds.

  Here she was, about to be launched into space!

  “Professor,” she said. “How did you ever persuade Blinky and his team to let a couple of untrained chancers like us fly a thirty-billion-dollar spaceship?”

  “I had some electronic help.” McMoo, in the seat beside her, smiled ruefully. “I found some of those iron filings in one of the pockets in Pat’s uniform and fiddled around a bit.”

  Bo gave him a sharp look. “You hypnotized everyone?”

  “Only a bit!” McMoo protested. “They don’t mind. Listen.” He flicked a switch. “Blinkenshrink, this is Apollo 10½. Are we OK to launch?”

  “Everything’s fine,” the director said happily.

  “See?” McMoo’s smile faded. “We’re still trying to keep history on the right track, remember? The world at large didn’t see the F.B.I. riding Apollo 10 – and anyone watching our rocket launch will think it’s just a test.”

  “I just hope we can stop the ter-moo-nators,” said Bo.

  “That’s what we’re aiming for,” agreed McMoo. “Well, that and the moon!”

  “Starting countdown,” said Blinkenshrink. “T-minus ninety seconds …”

  Bo gulped. Sweating in her spacesuit, she ticked off the seconds while McMoo flicked switches and checked instruments.

  “One thing you should know, Bo,” said the professor. “I’ve had a fiddle with the fuel mix of this rocket so it’ll go a lot faster. It’s our only chance of catching up with Apollo 10 … but it does mean we’re going to be accelerating at over 35,000 miles per hour.”

  “Bring it on,” Bo growled. “I’ll grin and bear it. Or grin and cow it, anyway!” She looked across at the empty seat beside McMoo. “Hang in there, Pat. We’re coming to get you!”

  McMoo winked at her as the spaceship rumbled and the rocket’s engines fired. “Three … two … one … we have liftoff!”

  The rocket blasted away, shooting into the sky like some phenomenal firework. Bo found herself crushed back into her seat with the force. Her eyes felt like they were bein
g squashed into her brain and she could barely breathe.

  “Here we go!” cried McMoo, working the vital controls. Then the launch rocket fell away in stages, leaving the little craft to travel on alone through the cold, endless darkness of space …

  The journey to the moon had begun!

  Long empty hours turned to longer, emptier days as the three spaceships travelled on through the infinite blackness – Apollo 10, Apollo 10½ and the F.B.I. capsule.

  The astronauts on board Apollo 10 performed their duties with no idea that they were carrying evil bull-creatures on their roof. There was nothing they could do about it in any case, so Blinkenshrink had kept the news quiet.

  Slowly, the disc of the earth dwindled, and the grey, pockmarked bulk of the moon grew larger.

  On the F.B.I. ship, Pat tossed and turned but could not sleep. He had never felt more afraid – trapped in a tin can hurtling through the deadly vacuum of space, with only his worst enemies for company. He was grateful for the special spacesuit he was wearing that sucked away his poo and wee without him needing to move.

  But on Apollo 10½, McMoo and Bo had no such luxury.

  “Space travel stinks,” said Bo, watching miserably as one of her cowpats floated in the zero gravity.

  “I hear the toilets on the space shuttle in the 1980s are much better,” the professor said cheerily.

  “Earth to Apollo 10½ …” Blinkenshrink’s voice crackled through the ship’s speakers. “You have made incredible time. You have overtaken Apollo 10 and should reach the Foaming Sea in one hour.”

  “So, tell me, Prof,” said Bo. “What’s your plan for dealing with the F.B.I. when we haven’t got any weapons?”

  “Er … let’s worry about that after we’ve reached the moon, shall we?” McMoo looked shifty. “Now, Apollo space missions usually have a three-man crew – one astronaut stays in the mother ship while two take the ‘lunar taxi’ to the surface of the moon.” He wiped a bit of muck off a small metal box. “Still, hopefully my homemade remote control will do the business.”