Astrosaurs 13

by Steve Cole

  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: A Party Surprise

  Chapter Two: Enemies Reunited

  Chapter Three: Lies and Secrets

  Chapter Four: The Secret Snatcher

  Chapter Five: Wanted! – Teggs Stegosaur

  Chapter Six: Carnage in Space

  Chapter Seven: The Deadly Intruder

  Chapter Eight: Pains, Plans and Peril

  Chapter Nine: The Secret of the Fang

  Chapter Ten: Spray it Again!

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  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!

  Teggs can’t wait to see his old schoolmates, Blink and Dutch, at the Astrosaurs Academy reunion. But when they are kidnapped by an evil group known as the FANG, he soon discovers some old enemies out for revenge! With his friends’ lives at stake, Teggs must betray his loyal crew and become a space outlaw – at the mercy of the FANG’S cruel forces

  To Oliver Meek,

  lucky winner of the PBC competition

  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

  DIPLODOCUS – di-PLOH-de-kus

  PTEROSAUR – teh-roh-SORE

  TRICERATOPS – try-SERRA-tops

  IGUANODON – ig-WA-noh-don

  OVIRAPTOR – OHV-ih-RAP-tor

  DIMORPHODON – die-MORF-oh-don

  BAROSAURUS – bar-oh-SORE-us

  DICERATOPS – dye-SERRA-tops

  Chapter One

  A PARTY SURPRISE

  “Great galaxies, I’m going to be late!” cried Captain Teggs Stegosaur, struggling to do up a big black bow tie. “Late for a very important date!”

  Teggs was an eight-ton, orange-brown stegosaurus. Normally he wore the red uniform of an astrosaur in the Dinosaur Space Service, and whizzed about having far-flung adventures in his amazing spaceship the Sauropod. But today, Teggs was squeezed into a smart black dinner suit and bright white shirt, and was looking in his bedroom mirror. For one day only, he was not fighting evil or protecting the innocent . . .

  He was going to his space-school reunion!

  “Let me help you there,” said Gipsy Saurine, her skilled hooves expertly fastening Teggs’s bow tie. She was a hadrosaur with green and yellow stripes, in charge of the Sauropod’s communications. “It’s only midday. What time does the party start?”

  “Not till seven-thirty tonight,” Teggs told her. “But I’m meeting some old friends first – Blink and Dutch. We went through Astrosaurs Academy together.”

  Gipsy glanced at a photo on Teggs’s bedside table. It showed a much younger Teggs standing between a small, cheeky-looking diplodocus and a yellow pterosaur with a big, beaky grin.

  Teggs smiled happilly. “Blink is the dino-bird – he’s a top navigator these days. And Dutch is the long-necked one! He patrols the borders of Sea Reptile Space. We’re all meeting up at Blink’s holiday home on Asteroid Beta and then going on to the big reunion.”

  Gipsy noticed a pretty red dinosaur with two horns in the background of the picture, making bunny ears over Teggs’s head. “Who’s that?” she wondered.

  “Oh, that’s just Damona,” said Teggs, rolling his eyes. “She was very bright and very brave – but also very annoying! I think she became a spaceship captain like me . . .” He grinned. “It will be fun to catch up with my old gang!”

  Suddenly, there was a knock at the door – and a green triceratops stepped into Teggs’s bedroom, carrying a large potted plant. It was Arx Orano, Teggs’s super-smart second-in-command. “We are approaching Asteroid Beta, Captain,” he said. “Oh, and here’s that plant you wanted.” Gipsy frowned. “Is it a present for Blink and Dutch?”

  “Nope,” said Teggs, “it’s my pre-party snack!” He bounded over to Arx and devoured the plant in a single, enormous gulp. “Mmm, tasty!” he licked his lips. Teggs wasn’t just the bravest astrosaur alive – he was the hungriest too! “Thanks for that, Arx, and thank you for helping me get ready, Gipsy. Now I’d better be off.”

  Arx put down the pot and saluted. “We shall stay on patrol and pick you up when you call. Iggy will be your taxi driver – he is waiting for you in the shuttle bay.”

  Teggs smiled. Iggy Tooth was the Sauropod’s chief engineer. A cheery iguanodon, he was always tinkering with the ship and its shuttles. “Well, I shan’t keep him waiting!” He strode off towards the shuttle bay. “See you later, guys – call me if you have any problems.”

  “Just relax and have a lovely time,” Gipsy called after him. “It’s your first day off in a year!”

  With a spring in his step, Teggs reached the bay in no time. Iggy was waiting in Shuttle Alpha. The air was already full of thick smoke from the ship’s powerful dung-burners.

  Iggy saluted. “Ready to go, Captain.”

  “Then let’s fly!” cried Teggs, jumping on board.

  The shuttle bay doors cranked open and they shot off into star-speckled space. “We should reach Asteroid Beta in three minutes,” Iggy predicted.

  Sure enough, a tiny potato-shaped planetoid soon showed on the scanner. A sleek spacecraft stood on the visitors’ launch pad beside an ultra-modern holiday home.

  “That’s a cool ship,” noted Iggy as he gently landed the shuttle. “A custom-built Dungmaster with mark-four engines!”

  “Dutch got it years ago, I helped him choose it!” said Teggs, smiling as he jumped outside. “Thanks for the ride, Ig. Bye!”

  The shuttle took off again with lots of noise and smoke. As the door to the house was already open, Teggs expected his friends to
come out and greet him. But they didn’t.

  Maybe they didn’t hear me arrive, Teggs thought. He crossed to the front door. “Hello?” he boomed. “Blink? Dutch? Are you there?”

  But the whole house was completely quiet.

  Teggs went inside to the living room – and gasped. The whole place had been smashed up! Tables lay in splinters, armchairs were overturned, there were dents in the ceiling and scratch marks on the wall. A heap of delicious-looking ferns lay scattered on the floor in a puddle of leaf dressing. But for once, Teggs wasn’t hungry.

  “Dutch would never leave good food uneaten,” he muttered. “His appetite is almost as big as mine. And Blink is the tidiest person I know – he would never leave his house looking like this.” Teggs straightened up with a worried frown. “I think something seriously bad has happened here . . .”

  Then, as he crossed into the kitchen, Teggs saw a message on the wall, scrawled in blood-red ink. A chill travelled from the tips of his toes to the tops of his tail-spikes as he read what it said:

  Chapter Two

  ENEMIES REUNITED

  Teggs stared at the note, and the bony plates along his back flushed deep red with anger. “If this ‘Fang’ has hurt my friends,” he growled, “he’ll need a good dentist by the time I’m through with him!”

  The steaming-mad stegosaurus charged out of the house and prepared to call the Sauropod for a lift. But then he hesitated.

  “Arx, Gipsy and Iggy will want to know why I’m going to Tartara,” Teggs realized, thinking out loud. “They would do anything to help. But if the Fang finds out I told them, then Blink and Dutch’s lives will be at risk.” He sighed and put the communicator back in his pocket, feeling very lonely. “There’s no one I can turn to. I’m stuck in this mess alone.” Teggs crossed to Dutch’s spaceship, full of determination. “But alone or not, I’ll teach this finky Fang never to mess with an astrosaur!”

  Once he had found his way to the control room, Teggs checked Tartara’s location on the star charts. Then he fired up the ship’s engines and went roaring off into space.

  It took four anxious hours to reach Tartara. It was a million miles away and not much to look at – dull grey and covered in big round craters.

  Then, just as Teggs curled his long tail around the brake rockets, a cold voice hissed over the spaceship’s speakers: “Welcome, Captain Teggs. Your friends are quite safe – so long as you obey. Enter at once through the secret tunnel.”

  “What secret tunnel?” Teggs demanded. But then he saw a large crater slide open to reveal a black hole in the grey rock. Taking a deep breath, Teggs took tight hold of the control stick and steered inside . . .

  The secret tunnel was narrow and winding. At last it opened out into a massive parking bay, lit by orange floodlights. Teggs quickly parked the spaceship and jumped out. The bay was freezing cold, and the smell of raw meat hung in the air. Teggs had braved many evil lairs in his time, but some sixth sense told him now that he had never been in greater danger.

  “Well, here I am,” he called. “Alone, just as you asked. Show yourself, Fang!”

  “Very well . . .” The voice seemed to echo all around him. “We will.”

  “We?” said Teggs, puzzled.

  “Fool!” rasped another sinister voice that sounded strangely familiar. “FANG stands for Fearsome Army of Nasty Geniuses!”

  Then a gruffer voice joined in: “Let’s show the stego-scumbag who he’s up against . . .”

  A hidden door in the wall slid open. Teggs stared in amazement as a woolly mammoth with no tusks and a yellow hard hat barged into the bay. His trunk was wrapped around a small cement shooter, and his eyes glinted with menace.

  Teggs gulped. “Uh-oh.”

  “Remember me, Captain?” the mammoth snarled.

  Teggs thrust his chin out and stepped forward bravely. “Unfortunately, yes! You’re Tonka – mammoth builder and sinister schemer. You once tried to smash up an entire planet just to make a bit of cash!”

  “A brilliant plan,” agreed Tonka. “But you spoiled it.”

  “He spoiled my plans too!” A mean little dinosaur with the eyes of a goblin and the teeth of a killer shark scuttled out from under Tonka’s hairy tummy.

  “It – it can’t be!” Teggs’s jaw dropped. “Crool Dasta, the evil inventor!”

  “The same! My inventions would have made me mega-rich if you hadn’t got in the way.” Dasta snapped his teeth together. “And now we have plans for you, Teggs . . .”

  “Let’s forget our plans and squash him now!” rumbled Tonka. He aimed his cement shooter straight at Teggs. He couldn’t miss!

  But suddenly, a rasping voice rang out: “Don’t be a fool, Tonka!” A chunky green dinosaur wearing shades and tight silver shorts burst into the room, and knocked the weapon aside.

  Teggs knew his life had been saved, but his heart still sank faster than a stone in fern soup. “Oh, no,” he whispered as the dinosaur stomped closer. “Not you!”

  “Yes, Teggs.” The dinosaur showed his pointed flesh-tearing teeth in a scary smile. “Attila the Atrocious is on the team too!”

  “Then I don’t give much for your team’s chances of promotion,” declared Teggs, with a cockiness he didn’t feel. “You blew it when you tried to take over the universe, Attila – your dumb robotic dino-droids were all destroyed.”

  “You are the dumb one, Teggs,” Attila hissed. “You only beat the three of us before by pure luck. But now that we have joined together we are invincible!”

  “Makes a change from being in prison,” said Teggs. “I thought you were all locked up. How did you get out?”

  “I helped them,” said a fourth voice, fierce and gurgling. The three villains parted to reveal an ugly, hunched-up raptor with a yellow crown and a royal red cape standing in the doorway. His beady eyes were fixed on Teggs.

  “I’m having a nightmare!” Teggs cried. “This is impossible. It can’t be you!”

  “But it is, Teggs,” hissed the horrible figure. “I, King Albu – egg-mad ruler of all oviraptors – have returned to make you pay as well!”

  Teggs could only stare. “But I saw you eaten up by a hatching star-dragon ages ago!”

  “Eaten?” For a moment King Albu looked baffled. “Pah! I am very much alive, as you can see.”

  “But how?” Teggs demanded.

  “That’s my secret,” rasped the oviraptor. “I had to survive . . . so I could have my revenge on you!”

  “We all want revenge,” said Tonka, swinging his trunk menacingly.

  “You must suffer as we have suffered!” hissed Crool Dasta.

  “Yes,” Attila cackled. “Suffer at the claws of the FANG!”

  Teggs raised his eyebrows. “A fang with claws?”

  Attila blushed as his fellow villains looked at him crossly. “You know what I mean!”

  “I know you are mean. Extremely mean.” Teggs marched boldly up to his four old enemies. “So, show me that my friends are safe!”

  “Very well.” Albu snapped his claw-like fingers, and Tonka the mammoth lumbered away through the door in the wall. He returned a few moments later herding Dutch the diplodocus and Blink the pterosaur ahead of him. Both were held helpless in heavy chains.

  “Guys!” Teggs rushed up to them. “It’s so cool to see you. Are you all right?”

  “Just about, dude!” Dutch smiled bravely and knocked knuckles with Teggs. “Good to see you again . . . though it’s not quite the party I was hoping for!”

  “Teggs!” Blink attempted a small, fluttery somersault but the chains held him down. “I’m sorry you were forced to come here.” He wrapped the tip of his wing around Teggs’s other hand and shook it firmly. “These villains burst into my holiday home and caught Dutch and me by surprise.”

  Dutch nodded. “We tried to fight but they used knockout gas. We woke up here their prisoners.”

  “Wait.” A nasty thought struck Teggs. “How do I know you’re really you and not two of Attila’s dino-droids?”
Attila had fooled Teggs before with robot doubles of his closest friends. They had been perfect in every detail – and perfectly deadly.

  “Your friends are flesh and blood, Captain,” hissed Dasta. “Observe!” He flicked Dutch with a razor-sharp claw. Dutch gasped – and Teggs saw a red scratch appear.

  “Would you like us to prove it again, Teggs?” Attila licked his lips. “I fancy a dino-snack!”

  “Don’t you dare try and hurt them!” Teggs shouted. “Just tell me what this is all about.”

  “We have a job for you, Captain Teggs,” gurgled King Albu. “We want you to steal a brand-new, top-secret invention – the only one of its kind in existence.”

  “It is being held in SSSS-One,” Attila added, “the Super-Secure Space Station in sector seven.”

  “That’s an astrosaur space station,” Teggs realized. “The DSS own it.”

  “Indeed – which is why none of us can get anywhere near it,” Dasta admitted. “But you, Teggs, can simply stroll in and help yourself!”

  “Me, steal from the DSS?” Teggs went pale. “Give away vital secrets to the enemy?”

  “That’s right, Teggs,” snarled Tonka. “Cos if you don’t, your ‘old friends’ here won’t be getting any older!”

  “So I can only save Blink and Dutch by becoming a traitor . . .?” Teggs stared at him in horror. “Even if I win – I lose!”

  “Precisely!” King Albu snarled as his evil friends shook with laughter. “And we shall have our revenge at last . . . The revenge of the FANG!”

  Chapter Three

  LIES AND SECRETS

  Teggs racked his brain as his old enemies hooted with laughter. He had to find a way out of this miserable mess. But how?

  “Don’t do what they want, dude,” Dutch urged him.

  “We don’t matter,” Blink added, blinking furiously. “But top DSS secrets do!”

  “Pah!” spat Crool Dasta. “You astrosaurs are so sickeningly brave!”

  “And disgustingly loyal,” Attila added, doing a little shimmy in his silver shorts. “You would do anything to save your friends, Teggs – wouldn’t you?”

  “You know I would.” Teggs’s head drooped. “What is this invention you want me to steal?”

  “It is called Mega-Spray Y,” hissed King Albu.

  “Y?” Teggs repeated.