Astrosaurs 20

by Steve Cole

  But suddenly, they heard a cry for help from further down the hill. “Somebody . . . come quick!”

  Dutch frowned. “That sounds like Damona!”

  Teggs pointed. “There!”

  Damona was lying under a fallen tree. Netta was struggling to lift it so her friend could get free.

  “Looks like she’s in trouble,” yelled Teggs. “Come on!”

  Chapter Five

  A DEADLY DISCOVERY

  Teggs ran down the hill to help, with Blink and Dutch close behind. “Damona, are you all right?”

  “Yes, thanks!” She sucked in her tummy and wriggled out from under the tree. “Fancy that! I seem to have got out all by myself . . .”

  “And I’ve found a brilliant place to camp!” called Splatt from the top of the hill. He put down his self-inflating tent right outside the cave Teggs had just spotted!

  “Unfair, dude,” said Dutch crossly. “We were there first!”

  “You should have stayed there then, shouldn’t you?” Damona and Netta waved and laughed. “So long, see you, wouldn’t want to be you!”

  Blink blinked furiously. “The cheats!”

  Dutch scowled. “That was our camp.”

  “Oh, let them have it,” said Teggs. He turned and walked off in the opposite direction. “I bet we’ll find a much better place to camp over here.”

  “Maybe.” Blink didn’t seem sure. “The guidebook says there are lots of steep cliffs and deep valleys this way.”

  “Well, we’re bound to find some brilliant things for show-and-tell as we go,” said Dutch. “Keep your eyes peeled, Blink!”

  Blink flew on ahead, circling above the trees and peeping behind big rocks. But it seemed all the best places had been taken.

  “Look! There’s a giant pine cone!” Dutch picked it up. “Pretty unusual, huh?”

  “I’ve seen two teams with giant pine cones already,” said Blink.

  Dutch tried again. “What about this funny-shaped twig?”

  “I’ve seen three teams with funny-shaped twigs.”

  They rambled onwards, for hours and hours, until they were far away from everyone else. They scrambled up steep slopes and splashed through muddy mountain streams.

  Teggs paused by a tree full of hazelnuts. “What about these?”

  Blink frowned. “Nuts? For show-and-tell?”

  “No, for a snack!” said Teggs, shaking the tree and catching the nuts in his mouth. “I’m starving!”

  They plodded along beside a cliff edge then took a winding woodland path. A cold wind started to blow up. It whistled eerily through the branches of the twisted trees. The howls of strange creatures echoed in the distance.

  Dutch gulped, a little bit spooked. “I don’t like this.”

  “Maybe we should make a camp right here,” Teggs suggested.

  Blink quickly agreed. “I have a feeling there’s something really unusual around here just waiting to be discovered.”

  “Yeah!” said Dutch. He pulled an orange inflatable bundle from his rucksack and laid it on the ground. “Luckily it won’t take long to set up camp. These tents are self-inflating – all you do is pull the string and up they go!” He bent over the bundle and yanked on a long black cord. The tent puffed up in moments to the size of a garage. But then a strong gust of wind caught it and the tent blew away!

  “Oh, no!” yelled Dutch. “My tent! I can’t sleep without it, my toes will freeze off!”

  “Come on, Dutch,” said Blink, flapping his leathery wings. “I’ll help you catch it!”

  “I’ll stay here and get the campfire going,” Teggs told them. “Good luck!”

  The squashy orange tent was blown tumbling through the sky like an oversized kite. Dutch charged after it, crashing through bracken and leaping over rocks. Blink flapped his wings and tried to overtake it.

  “Quickly!” the pterosaur cried. “It looks like the edge of the cliff up ahead. If the tent blows over there we’ll never get it back!”

  Dutch broke into a gallop. Stretching his neck as far as it would go, he grabbed hold of the runaway tent with his teeth. At the same time, Blink dive-bombed it, pinning it to the ground with his claws – just before it reached the cliff edge.

  “Thanks, dude!” said Dutch, spitting out his rubbery mouthful. “That was close!”

  “Shh!” said Blink, sniffing the air. “What’s that horrible smell?”

  “It’s not me!” Dutch grinned. “Whoever smelt it, dealt it!”

  “I’m serious.” Blink’s beak was twitching.

  “Yuck! It smells like maggots and muck and mouldy barbecues . . .”

  “And it’s coming from over the cliff edge,” Dutch realized.

  Cautiously, the two friends crept over to the ledge to see. And what they saw chilled their blood.

  A small crimson spaceship had crashed in the valley below. Six huge, evil-looking monsters in dark tatty clothes were stamping through the wreckage. Their legs were huge but their arms were tiny. The cold sunlight caught on their claws and their rows of knife-sharp teeth.

  Both Dutch and Blink recognized the monsters at once.

  T. rexes!

  Chapter Six

  THE TRICK AND THE T. REX

  “This can’t be happening!” Dutch stared at Blink. “What are T. rexes doing on Astro Prime?”

  “Maybe Commander Gruff is testing us again,” Blink whispered hopefully. “Maybe they’re robots like before!”

  But suddenly, they heard the tallest T. rex speak in an angry roar. “Will ship fly again, pilot?”

  “No, Lord Slyme,” growled a T. rex in flying goggles. “Ship completely stuffed.”

  “But me on way to space-car races!” Lord Slyme hissed. “Now me have to miss them. Me go back to spaceship shop and EAT owner for selling me pile of scrap!”

  “First us must call rescue ship from Teerex Major,” said another T. rex. Dutch gulped. “Dude, I don’t think those things are Gruff’s robots. They’re meat, not metal.”

  Blink nodded nervously. “I read that a T. rex noble-saur always travels with five servants. Their spaceship must have gone off course and crashed here!”

  “Me STARVING,” roared Slyme suddenly.

  Another T. rex held up an arm. “Please be eating my unworthy elbow, Lord.”

  But Slyme swatted his servant’s arm away. “No!” He sniffed the air, looking up towards where Blink and Dutch were hiding. “Me smell fresh, soft meat . . . Nice smell, coming from south . . . Us find.”

  Shaking with fear, Blink and Dutch slithered away out of sight.

  “What can we do?” hissed Dutch. “If those things go south, they will sniff out the cadets’ campsites for sure.”

  “We must tell Teggs,” said Blink, blinking so fast his eyelids were a blur through his glasses. “Together we can work out a plan . . . I hope!”

  Teggs was just collecting firewood when Dutch and Blink came hurtling towards him, dragging the torn tent between them. They were red-faced, wild-eyed and gasping for breath. Dutch panted so hard he blew away Teggs’s pile of sticks!

  “What’s up?” Teggs asked.

  “What’s down, you mean,” puffed Blink, fanning his hot face with his wing. “A T. rex ship, to be precise!”

  Dutch nodded. “There are six real live T. rexes on our doorstep!”

  “What . . . ?” Struck dumb with amazement, Teggs listened as his friends revealed all they had seen and heard.

  “That shooting star I saw last night,” he remembered. “It must have been the T. rex ship crash-landing here.” Teggs jumped to his feet. “Everyone in Quarrik is in terrible danger!”

  “We can’t even get help,” Blink twittered. “The astro-jet isn’t picking us up until tomorrow morning.”

  “Then we will just have to help ourselves,” Teggs declared. He thought hard. “We must try to scare those monsters away – or at least slow them down.”

  Dutch gulped. “I guess all we can do is try, right?”

  “Right.” Teggs
looked at the ripped, rubbery orange tent and began to smile. “Tell me, guys, have you ever met the Dreaded Eight-Legged Rock-Spitting Blob Monster?”

  “Er, no,” Blink admitted, and Dutch shook his head.

  “Neither have I,” said Teggs. “But I think it’s time those T. rexes did!” Teggs grinned at his puzzled friends. “Blink, you’re the fastest. Fly back to the camp and warn everyone. They must clear out double-quick.”

  “OK, Teggs,” said Blink, blinking like crazy.

  “While you’re gone, Dutch and I will turn this tent into a creepy costume,” Teggs explained. “We will dress up as a Rock-Spitting Blob Monster!”

  “Wow,” Dutch gasped. “That plan rocks!”

  Blink shook his head. “You mean, that plan spits rocks – at the T. rexes!”

  “Right!” Teggs looked at his two friends. “We’ve got a deadly dangerous job to do, dinos . . . Do we dare?”

  Blink and Dutch put their own hands on top of Teggs’s. “WE DARE!” they all cried.

  As Blink flapped away at top speed, Teggs picked up the orange tent. “I’ll get to work on this,” he said. “Dutch, go and collect some rocks, as big as you can carry.”

  “Will do,” said Dutch. “Let’s hope those scaly suckers get such a fright, they run far away from the camp and never come back!”

  Soon, Dutch and Teggs were struggling into the home-made monster suit. Teggs had dug up some chalk and mud and used it to draw a frightening face on one end of the deflated rubber. Then he had cut out some eyeholes to see through and also a flap so they could throw rocks at their unwelcome visitors. The rocks were balanced between the spikes on Teggs’s back so Dutch could reach them easily.

  “Do you think we look scary enough?” said Dutch.

  “Don’t forget, we will also be roaring, spitting rocks and running about on eight legs,” said Teggs. “What could be scarier? Let’s get going!”

  Reaching the right place wasn’t easy. It was hot and squashed inside the costume. Teggs and Dutch couldn’t see very well, so they kept tripping up and walking into trees. The wind almost knocked them over several times. The rocks on Teggs’s back made his spikes ache.

  “T. rex valley coming up,” Dutch whispered at last. “They were right at the bottom when we left them . . .”

  But suddenly, Teggs saw movement in the undergrowth ahead. The butterflies in his tummy turned into bats as six savage T. rexes burst from the bushes! They stared in surprise at the orange blobby monster in front of them.

  “They must have climbed out!” Dutch whispered.

  “Quick, make like a monster,” said Teggs. “ROOAAAAAAR!” he bellowed. Dutch snatched some rocks from Teggs’s back and threw them out of the mouth-flap. “GRROO AAARRR!” The two of them stamped about in their costume, growling till their throats hurt.

  The T. rexes just stood there.

  “Lord Slyme!” growled the T. rex in flying goggles. “Me thinks us find eight-legged rock-spitting blob monster!”

  Lord Slyme snapped his jaws. “Good. Now us eat it!”

  With a hungry hiss, the terrifying giants stomped towards Teggs and Dutch . . .

  Chapter Seven

  RACE AGAINST TIME

  Terribly tired and scared out of his scales, Blink flew on towards the main camp through the driving wind. “Can’t give up,” he told himself. “Mustn’t give up . . .”

  Finally, he flapped out of the sky and flopped down in front of Damona’s cave, gasping for breath. “Clear out!” he squawked.

  “Beak-face?” Damona poked her two-horned head out of the cave and frowned. “What are you doing back? Did you get lost?”

  “Get everyone out of the camp,” the dino-bird panted. “T. rexes close by!”

  “T. rexes?” Damona looked shocked. Netta and Splatt peeped out from behind her.

  “Teggs and Dutch are risking their lives right now, trying to scare them away,” Blink explained. “But that might not work. Everyone must pack up and head north, quickly!”

  “Oh, I get it . . .” Damona started to smirk. “Nice try, Blink.”

  Netta nodded. “You can stop pretending now.”

  “Pretending?” Blink blinked at her furiously. “I’m telling the truth! There are T. rexes here!”

  “As if,” said Splatt. “You’re just trying to scare us out so you can get this cool cave back.”

  “Who cares about a dumb cave?” Blink squawked.

  “You do,” said Damona. “Now push off!”

  “You have to believe me, you two-horned twit!” Blink shouted. Then he flapped down the hillside to where a trio of triceratops sat beneath a tree. “Please, guys, listen. We have to clear the camp, quickly. There are T. rexes—”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Netta yelled. “He’s trying to pinch your camp for himself.”

  “I’m not!” Blink protested.

  But the three triceratops gave him a dirty look and stalked away.

  Desperately, Blink hopped over to a lime-coloured lambeosaur. “Will you help me clear the camp before the T. rexes sniff it out?”

  “T. rexes indeed,” the lambeosaur said stuffily.

  Blink flapped up and down helplessly. “No one will believe me!” he cried. “Oh, help. What am I going to do?”

  “CATCH ORANGE MONSTER THING! EAT IT!”

  Lord Slyme’s screech echoed through the air as Teggs and Dutch hurtled through the wilderness in their tattered tent costume. Teggs’s heart was pounding. His mouth was dry. A stitch burned in his side. But he wouldn’t stop running, and neither would Dutch.

  Trouble was, the drooling T. rexes wouldn’t stop either. Which meant that Teggs and Dutch would end up leading them straight to the cadet camp! Every time they tried to change direction, another of the ravenous ’rexes mashed through the spindly undergrowth and blocked their way, forcing them back onto the main path.

  “What do we do?” Dutch panted, as they ran along the edge of a cliff. “If we get too tired, we get eaten!”

  Teggs grinned weakly. “Let’s not get too tired!”

  Ahead of them, the cliff path curved sharply past a huge boulder. But as they took the turn, Dutch stumbled and slipped out of the costume – and over the cliff edge!

  “Dutch!” Teggs yelled, skidding to a stop.

  “It’s OK!” Dutch’s head popped back into view. “There’s a ledge down here. We can hide till they go past!”

  Teggs jumped down to join Dutch, who hid inside the costume again – just as the hunting T. rexes raced round the corner and pounded past. They did not realize their prey had given them the slip.

  “Phew!” said Dutch.

  “But those meatheads are still heading for the camp,” Teggs reminded him. “I only hope Blink has got the cadets clear by now—Whoops!”

  Suddenly, a big gust of wind blew under the tent and knocked them both off the ledge!

  “Looks like we’re going for an unexpected trip,” cried Dutch. “Whoooaaaa!”

  Helpless, the two friends tumbled down the steep slope of the cliff. Luckily, the tent-costume’s rubbery material protected them from the worst bumps. With a roll, a bump, two triple somersaults and a thump, they finally reached the bottom. “What a ride,” groaned Dutch, shaking off bits of tent. “Even my bruises have bruises.”

  “But look,” said Teggs shakily, pointing past a clump of trees. “I think we found a shortcut . . .”

  On the other side of the trees were a dozen more bright orange tents. It was the cadet camp!

  “Come on!” Dutch pulled Teggs back to his feet and they limped towards it.

  But when they arrived, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Everyone was still here! Some dinosaurs were exploring, some were reading, some were toasting marshmallows without a care in the world.

  And there was Blink, flapping about like crazy. “The T. rexes are coming!” he kept squawking. “It’s true!”

  “Yes, it is!” Teggs yelled.

  Suddenly, everyone stopped what they were doing and star
ed.

  “Teggs, I’m so sorry!” said Blink, flapping over to his side. “No one will listen. Damona told everyone I was playing a trick to get our cave back!”

  Even as he spoke, Damona strolled out of the cave and noticed Teggs and Dutch. “Hey, what happened to you two?” she called. “You look awful! You look like you went ten rounds with a . . .” Her face went pale. “With a T. rex?”

  “Six of them, to be precise,” said Teggs gravely. “They are very big and very fast – and they will be here any minute!”

  Chapter Eight

  THE BIG, FAT BATTLE

  “You heard Teggs,” Dutch shouted at the astrosaur cadets. “We need to get out of here, dudes. Scram!”

  The cadets stared at Teggs and Dutch in alarm and amazement. Then they burst into action, deflating their tents and packing up their camps.

  Damona came running up to Teggs with Netta and Splatt. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were playing a joke on us. Blink would have got everyone safely away long ago if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Never mind that now,” said Teggs. “You were super-fast at clearing everyone out of the hall yesterday. Do you think you can do the same here?”

  “I’ll do it even faster with my team to help me,” Damona promised.

  Netta and Splatt were already on the case. “Come on, you lot!” boomed Netta, while Splatt whizzed about like a sheepdog herding sheep. “You can all hide in our cave. It’s very deep.”

  “I’m not sure that will work!” said Blink, blinking. “I’ve read all about T. rexes. Once those meat-scoffing monsters smell a meal, they won’t rest till they’ve eaten it. Our only chance is to run away and stay far enough ahead of them!”

  “Maybe not our only chance,” breathed Teggs. He was watching one of the plump orange tents deflate. It went from a bungalow-sized balloon to a fat lump of rubber in seconds. “I’ve got an idea – but it’s very, very dangerous. Who will help me stand up to those monsters?”

  “I will,” said Dutch.

  “And me!” trilled Blink.

  Damona stepped forward. “My uncle sorted out the T. rexes, and so will I!” Teggs called out to the camp. “OK, I need two more volunteers.”

  A large, grey triceratops called Trebor and a gum-chewing girl sauropelta called Akk broke away from the line of dinosaurs queuing at the cave. “We will help too,” Trebor said.