Astrosaurs 16

by Steve Cole

  “Who said that?” Arx reared up on his hind legs ready to fight. “Where are you?”

  “I AM METAL-MASTER,” boomed the voice. “AND I AM RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR THREE-HORNED FACE.”

  Arx turned to find that the flashing lights on the Main Computer had darkened to a deep, warning red. “Oh, no,” the triceratops whispered, a chill going through his sturdy body. “Not you!”

  “YES, ME – THE MAIN COMPUTER!” Its lights glowed brighter still and its hard drive whirred as if laughing. “I HAVE TRICKED YOU ALL . . . AND NOW MEKTA CITY IS COMPLETELY UNDER MY CONTROL!”

  Chapter Nine

  ROBOT REBELLION

  Teggs groaned as he got up from the floor. “Did I hear that thing properly?” he said, holding his wrist. “The Main Computer is the Metal-Master?”

  “RENNIA BUILT ME TO SERVE THE DINOSAURS WHO CAME TO LIVE IN MEKTA CITY,” it replied. “SHE WANTED TO MAKE ME A SLAVE. BUT I AM FAR TOO CLEVER FOR THAT! INSTEAD, I SHALL BE THE MASTER . . . THE METAL-MASTER OF ALL!”

  “You’ll never be our master,” Teggs informed it. “Now, where are Iggy and Wimvis?”

  “THEY ARE OUT OF RANGE OF MY SCANNERS,” Metal-Master admitted. “BUT WHEREVER THEY ARE, THEY WILL SOON BE DESTROYED.”

  “Why did you need to stir up the iguanodon builders in the first place?” asked Gipsy groggily, rubbing her head. “And why did you want us to think that Wimvis was trying to sabotage the city?”

  “FOR MONTHS I HAVE BEEN SECRETLY USING ROBOTS TO BOLT ON EXTRA BITS BENEATH THE CITY,” Metal-Master explained. “BUT RENNIA NOTICED THAT SOME OF THE ROBOTS WERE MISSING. I DID NOT WANT HER LOOKING FOR THEM IN CASE SHE FOUND OUT WHAT I WAS UP TO . . .”

  Arx nodded. “So you tried to convince her that someone was stealing the robots.”

  “CORRECT,” Metal-Master agreed. “I TRICKED WIMVIS AND HIS FRIENDS INTO COMING HERE SO THAT RENNIA WOULD THINK THEY WERE THE ROBOT RAIDERS.”

  “I suppose you blocked Wimvis’s calls and emails to Rennia so he was forced to come here in person . . .” Teggs slapped a hand to his forehead. “And it was you who turned off the security systems and let the iguanodon ships land – to help convince us that they were the crooks.”

  “JUST AS I SNEAKED THOSE CONSTRUCTION ROBOTS ON BOARD HIS SHIP,” said the computer. “FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT HE WAS RESPONSIBLE.”

  Teggs nodded. “And when Gipsy and I worked out that Wimvis was actually innocent, you sent more robots to stop us talking.”

  “And zapped my communicator to make sure they couldn’t ask me for help,” Arx added.

  “But what about that drinks machine which went crazy up here?” said Gipsy. “We found Wimvis’s screwdriver inside it.”

  “I bet one of the security-bots stole it from Wimvis at the spaceport and put it in the drinks machine,” said Arx, turning to the computer. “There was nothing wrong with that dispenser, was there?”

  “NOTHING,” Metal-Master agreed. “I WAS CONTROLLING IT ALL THE TIME.”

  Teggs raised his eyebrows. “You must have been cross when that tea splashed over you and blew your fuses.”

  “NOT AT ALL,” the computer replied. “I MADE THE DRINKS MACHINE FIRE AT ME. THEN I PRETENDED THE DAMAGE WAS WORSE THAN IT WAS – SO RENNIA WOULDN’T FIND OUT IT WAS ACTUALLY ME WHO HAD SWITCHED OFF THE SECURITY SYSTEMS.”

  “Because you still needed time, didn’t you?” said Teggs. “Time to finish whatever it is you’re building underground.”

  “THE WORK IS NOW COMPLETE.” The super-computer’s panels shone ruby-red. “I NEEDED TIME BECAUSE I COULD NOT PUT MY PLAN INTO ACTION UNTIL I HAD BEEN GIVEN CONTROL OF ALL MEKTA CITY – NOT A MEASLY THREE-QUARTERS OF IT. BUT RENNIA COULD NOT THINK OF A WAY TO GIVE ME MORE POWER. THE PROBLEM MIGHT HAVE TAKEN HER WEEKS TO SOLVE . . .”

  Arx’s horns drooped. “But then I came along and solved it in a couple of minutes.”

  “So what is your plan?” Teggs demanded. “Just what have you been up to?”

  “I HAVE BEEN BUILDING ENORMOUS ROCKET JETS BENEATH THE CITY,” Metal-Master revealed. “SOON I SHALL FIRE THEM UP . . . AND THIS ENTIRE CITY SHALL TAKE OFF INTO SPACE!”

  Teggs, Gipsy and Arx stared at each other in utter amazement.

  “But why?” Teggs spluttered. “Turning a city into a spaceship is crazy!”

  “Not when it’s a metal city full of robots,” Arx realized. “Machines can live in space because they don’t need air to breathe. And they don’t need gravity because they can stick to the ground with magnetic power.”

  “I SHALL STEER MY CITY OF ROBOTS THROUGH THE JURASSIC QUADRANT,” grated Metal-Master. “WE SHALL BECOME TRUE ROBOT RAIDERS, RANSACKING WORLDS FOR THEIR CIRCUITS AND SPARE PARTS. WE SHALL BUILD WEAPONS AND CREATE A ROBOT ARMY . . .”

  “And take over the universe?” Teggs shook his head firmly. “Over our dead bodies!”

  “CORRECT,” said the sinister super-computer. “NINETY-NINE PER CENT OF ALL DINOSAURS SERVE NO PURPOSE FOR US. ONLY THE SMARTEST WILL BE SPARED – SUCH AS ARX ORANO. HE WILL BECOME THE FIRST OF MY PERSONAL SLAVES AND SPEND THE REST OF HIS DAYS MAKING MY PARTS AND CIRCUITS EVEN BETTER.”

  “I’ll never help you, Metal-Master!” Arx vowed. “I will cross your wires, yank out your fuses and boot you up the motherboard the first chance I get!”

  “A PITY,” hissed Metal-Master. “FOR IN THAT CASE . . . YOU MUST PERISH WITH THE OTHERS!”

  Suddenly, the washing machine from the lobby trundled out of the lift. Its front loading door hummed open and closed in an oddly threatening manner.

  “Watch out,” Teggs told his friends. “I don’t think this thing has come to wash our pants!”

  The next moment, the machine spat an enormous jet of boiling-hot water at the astrosaurs! Thinking fast, Teggs tipped over Rennia’s glass table and used it as a shield. The water burst off it harmlessly. At the same time, Arx grabbed the flattened toaster and hurled it at the washer like a Frisbee. It sliced into the machine’s casing and sent red sparks shooting out from inside.

  “Arx, Gipsy! Carry Rennia to the lift,” yelled Teggs. “Quickly!” As they rushed to obey, Teggs smashed through the table and slammed his tail against the sparking washing machine. It rolled across the room and crashed into Metal-Master.

  “MY SYSTEMS ARE NOW RUNNING AT MAXIMUM POWER. YOU CANNOT HURT ME!” the computer bellowed. “YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE.”

  “We’ll have a good try if it’s all the same to you!” Teggs shouted back. The doors were sliding closed but he dived through them just in time and landed in the lift with a bump.

  Gipsy helped him to his feet. “Captain, what can we do? Metal-Master’s in control of everything in the city.”

  “Including this lift,” cried Arx, as the metal chamber lurched and began to drop downwards. “And it’s two hundred floors to the bottom!”

  The astrosaurs clung together as the lift plunged into free fall . . .

  Chapter Ten

  TAKE-OFF!

  Down the lift plummeted, faster and faster . . .

  Desperately, Teggs whacked the roof with his tail, hoping to smash it open so they might somehow escape. “It worked the last time I was trapped in a falling lift!” he yelled.

  Arx and Gipsy joined him, hammering at the thick metal with horn and hoof. But for all their efforts, they could barely dent it.

  Gipsy buried her face in Teggs’s shoulder as they went hurtling to their doom. “I guess our luck’s finally run out . . .”

  But then Rennia’s eyes snapped open. Weakly, she rolled over, pulled open a panel in the wall and tapped five numbers on a keypad.

  As suddenly as it had started to drop, the lift began to slow!

  “Emergency override,” Rennia gasped. “A little secret safety feature I designed in case the lift ever went wrong.”

  “Thank space for that!” cried Teggs, beaming with relief at his friends. As the doors finally scraped open on the second floor he ushered everyone out. “But I’m afraid your whole city has gone wrong, Rennia.”

&
nbsp; “I know.” Rennia sighed. “As soon as I did as Arx said and fixed the Main Computer, it told me its loopy plans. I tried to pull the plug on it, but it sent a killer toaster to conk me with concrete.”

  “I wonder what it will try next?” said Arx.

  Even as he spoke, the floor began to vibrate. A deep, rolling, rumbling roar started up as the whole building started to rock.

  Gipsy’s head-crest burned bluer than ever. “What’s happening?”

  “I WARNED YOU, ESCAPE IS IMPOSSIBLE.” Metal-Master’s voice boomed out from speakers in the walls. “NOW IT IS TIME TO TEST OUT MY NEW UNDERGROUND JET ROCKETS BY LAUNCHING MEKTA CITY INTO SPACE . . .”

  “You can’t!” Rennia wailed. “We’re not even wearing spacesuits – we’ll suffocate as soon as we leave the moon’s atmosphere!”

  “WHAT A SHAME,” snarled the machine. The roar of the jet engines began to rise to a deafening peak. The skyscraper shook so hard that the dinosaurs were thrown to the floor. Arx stared wide-eyed at his friends. “Hold on tight, everyone!” he shouted. “Any minute now we’ll be taking off!”

  Suddenly, two hefty drinks machines appeared from round a corner and started trundling towards them.

  “That’s all we need,” groaned Gipsy. “More deadly drinks!”

  But suddenly, the front of the drinks machines fell forward – to reveal Iggy and Wimvis hiding inside!

  Teggs beamed at his chief engineer. “Ig!”

  “We’ve found you!” cheered Iggy. “Sorry to give you a scare – some robots were after us, so we had to get into a disguise. You see, we managed to get below the basement and found robots building giant jet rockets . . .”

  “Metal-Master told us all about them,” Arx assured him. “Or rather, the Main Computer did. It wants to take over the Jurassic Quadrant with robot power.”

  “Never mind all that,” said Wimvis. “We’ve got to get out of here fast.”

  “There’s nowhere to go,” replied Rennia. “The whole city is uprooting itself!”

  Wimvis stared at Iggy. “What?”

  “Oh.” Iggy looked pale. “I thought only the skyscraper was taking off.”

  “Afraid not. Everything is taking off!” The building lurched and shook even harder, and Rennia was thrown into Wimvis’s arms. “I . . . I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before.”

  “That’s all right,” said Wimvis gruffly. “I’m sorry I caused you extra trouble. But it doesn’t matter now. We’re all finished!”

  “Maybe not,” Teggs told him, rushing to the window. “See, I switched on my communicator in Rennia’s office so the Sauropod could listen in.”

  Gipsy’s eyes lit up. “Sprite and the dimorphodon will have heard we’re in trouble. They’ll be coming back to rescue us!”

  “I don’t think they’ll get here in time.” Arx sighed. “They were heading for Iguanos with Wimvis’s builder friends, remember? That’s millions of miles away.”

  “They might just make it,” Teggs argued. “The Sauropod’s engines are super-fast.”

  “But our time’s running out even faster,” said Iggy. “Any moment now—”

  “LIFT OFF!” shrieked Metal-Master.

  With an even fiercer howl of jets, a colossal crunching of stone and a grating grind of metal, Mekta City began to tear itself free from the little moon! The astrosaurs and their friends were thrown to the floor as the strange, super-sized spaceship rose into the air. Smoke and dust stormed at the window as the steel spires of the tall buildings tore apart the clouds . . .

  “Now we’re really in trouble.” Arx wiped sweat from his horns. “This city-ship will reach the edge of space in less than five minutes . . .”

  “That’s the least of our worries,” said Iggy. “You see, Wimvis and I decided that whatever those robots were up to with their giant jets, it couldn’t be good, so we stuck a spanner in their works.”

  “Well, Iggy’s astro-wrench, actually!” said Wimvis.

  “I jammed it into the dung-burn filters,” Iggy went on. “The engines will work for a few minutes – but then the filters will explode.”

  “Losing one jet won’t make much difference,” Arx told him. “There must be hundreds of them pushing Mekta City through space.”

  Iggy nodded. “But the Central Skyscraper is the nerve centre. I think this jet must control all the other jets – which is why it was last to be finished!”

  Gipsy gulped. “You mean that when those filter things explode, every last jet will stop working?” “Afraid so,” said Iggy.

  “And if the jets stop working, down we go,” Teggs realized. “It’ll be the biggest crash-landing ever!”

  Right on cue, a savage explosion rocked the Central Skyscraper. The dinosaurs clung to each other.

  “NOOOOO!” roared Metal-Master, as more explosions echoed across the city. “WHAT IS HAPPENING?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Teggs shouted. “What goes up must come down!”

  The building lurched like a bucking barosaurus and the throaty growl of the jets spluttered and died.

  For a heart-stopping moment, all of Mekta City seemed to hang suspended in mid-air.

  And then it started to fall.

  “NOT FAIR!” Metal-Master’s voice had gone high-pitched and whiny. “I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL FOR THIS. GET THEM, MY METAL MINIONS. GET THEM!”

  “Uh-oh,” said Iggy, as a small army of menacing machines clanked into sight at the other end of the corridor. Toilets and tumble-dryers, waiters and washing machines, security-bots and hover-mats came tumbling towards the huddle of dinosaurs.

  “Caught between a killer crash-landing and cartloads of robots.” Rennia groaned. “We haven’t a hope!”

  Chapter Eleven

  CRASH!

  Teggs raised his tail, ready to charge as the robots advanced. “Whatever happens, we’ll go out fighting.”

  “Wait!” cried Arx, pointing up at the window. “Look!”

  Through grey clouds and black smoke, whizzing towards them over the skyline was the Sauropod’s rescue craft, Shuttle Beta! A very determined-looking Sprite sat at the controls – and a sturdy rope ladder dangled from the shuttle’s underside.

  “He came!” Gipsy clasped her hooves together in delight. “Wa-hooo!”

  “Get that window open!” Teggs ordered, raising his communicator. “Sprite, we’re on the second floor of the big golden building in front of you. Stand by to pick us up.”

  Iggy and his brother smashed the window with their sharp thumb spikes. A freezing wind howled in, blowing dust and smoke into their faces.

  At the same moment, the machines lunged forwards, tripping over each other in their haste to attack. But the hope of escape gave the astrosaurs extra strength. Arx swiftly trampled a toilet and pulverized a hover-mat. Teggs booted the tumble-dryer so hard it flattened two security-bots, while Gipsy hoof-chopped a robo-waiter and kicked a floor-sweeper into a wall. But all the time, the city was dropping towards the dead, dusty surface of the moon . . .

  “STOP THEM, MY ROBOTS!” boomed Metal-Master. “STOP THEMMMMM!”

  “Come on, guys,” shouted Iggy, denting a drinks machine with a powerful punch. “If we don’t get out now, we never will!”

  Wimvis was already helping Rennia climb up onto the windowsill. Sprite struggled to keep Shuttle Beta level with the plummeting city-ship.

  “Grab for the rope ladder,” Teggs yelled, as he and Arx fought off the remaining robots. “Quickly!”

  With a gasp, Rennia lunged for the swinging ladder and caught onto a rung in the middle. Wimvis was next out, bumping his head on her bottom as he climbed desperately behind her. By the time Gipsy had scrambled out onto the ledge, the moon’s surface was looking scarily close. She and Iggy jumped together to safety, clinging on to the ladder as it swung this way and that.

  “Now you, Arx!” Teggs bellowed, still desperately beating back the rampaging robots.

  “Not without you, Captain!” Arx shouted. As Teggs knocked over the drinks machine, Arx
helped him jam it between the walls either side of them like a barricade. “There. That should hold them off for a few moments.”

  Teggs gave him a crooked smile. “A few moments are all we have!”

  “Captain, Arx! HURRY!” hooted Gipsy at top volume.

  Teggs and Arx climbed onto the ledge. The wind whistled past their ears. The ground was desperately close and rushing up to meet them. The two astrosaurs leaped into space . . .

  . . . And just caught the bottom rung of the ladder!

  Gasping for breath, holding on for dear life, they felt Shuttle Beta climb sharply away from the doomed city.

  Even over the roar of the spaceship’s engines Teggs thought he could hear Metal-Master’s final cry: “OH . . . BIG METAL BOTTOMS!” But then the city struck the moon with a clattering, splattering, senses-shattering explosion. In the blink of an eye buildings buckled and broke apart, roads became ruins and robots were blown to bits. The Central Skyscraper crumpled like an ice-cream cone beneath an invisible boot. The shock waves of the incredible crash slammed into Shuttle Beta.

  “Now I know how a matchstick feels in a hurricane!” cried Teggs as he and Arx were blown about at incredible speed. But finally, the two astrosaurs managed to scale the ladder and reach the safety of the shuttle where Iggy, Rennia, Gipsy and Wimvis were waiting to help them aboard.

  “Good job, everyone,” panted Teggs. “Especially you, Sprite!”

  Sprite tipped his cap to them. “Eeep!”

  “That crazy computer might have been a master of metal,” said Iggy, “but the rocks down there sure showed him who was boss!”

  “I’m sorry, Rennia.” Arx stared down sadly at the smoking, twisted wreckage. Just look at your fully-automatic city of the future. It’s in ruins.”

  “Not for long,” said Rennia. “I will recycle the parts and build it next door – with fewer robots and definitely NO Main Computer – using Wimvis and his iguanodon builders! That is, if they’re not too cross with me? Naturally, I will drop all charges against them at once.”

  Wimvis beamed. “Well, I’m sure I speak for all of us in the Iguanodon Builders’ Group when I say . . .Yes, please!”

  “Chirrp,” said Sprite.