Astrosaurs 4

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: Space Wreck

  Chapter Two: The Mind-Swapper

  Chapter Three: Stranded in Space

  Chapter Four: No Escape

  Chapter Five: The Enemy Within

  Chapter Six: Chase through Space

  Chapter Seven: The Treasure of Geldos

  Chapter Eight: Double-Crossed!

  Chapter Nine: A Deadly Gamble

  Chapter Ten: Who’s Who?!

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  DINOSAURS . . . IN SPACE!

  Meet Captain Teggs Stegosaur and the crew of the amazing spaceship DSS Sauropod as the ASTROSAURS fight evil across the galaxy!

  Some cunning carnivore crooks have the power to swap places with other dinosaurs – and Teggs and Iggy become their first victims! Trapped in the wrong bodies and lost in space, can the two astrosaurs survive to put things right?

  To Alicia

  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 of this book.

  * * *

  Talking Dinosaur!

  How to say the prehistoric names in this book . . .

  STEGOSAURUS – STEG-oh-SORE-us

  HADROSAUR – HAD-roh-SORE

  TRICERATOPS – try-SERRA-tops

  DIMORPHODON – die-MORF-oh-don

  IGUANODON – ig-WHA-noh-don

  DIPLODOCUS – di-POLH-do-kus

  COMPSOGNATHUS – komp-soh-NAY-thus

  COELOPHYSIS – SEEL-oh-FIE-sis

  * * *

  THE CREW OF THE DSS SAUROPOD

  Chapter One

  SPACE WRECK

  THE SPACESHIP WAS in a hurry. Shaped like an enormous metal egg, it shot past stars and planets at top speed.

  Its name was the DSS Sauropod. It was the fastest ship in the Dinosaur Space Service.

  It was on a vital mission.

  And it was about to crash at ten million miles per hour into something that shouldn’t be there at all . . .

  “Red alert!” squawked the alarm pterosaur, the moment she noticed. Her screeching voice echoed throughout the Sauropod. “Unknown object ahead!

  We’re going to crash! Squaaaaawk!”

  “Hit the brakes!” yelled Captain Teggs Stegosaur from his control pit. “Fast!”

  His flying reptile flight crew – fifty dynamic dimorphodon – flapped into action. Their claws closed on the brake levers. Their beaks bashed at the reverse rockets.

  The Sauropod spun and skidded as it screeched to a halt. Teggs – an orange-brown stegosaurus – clamped his teeth round a huge clump of ferns and held on for dear life.

  “Object straight ahead!” reported Gipsy, clinging to her chair. She was a stripy hadrosaur and was in charge of the ship’s communications. “Can we steer around it?”

  “Not while we’re spinning like this,” Teggs cried. “Arx, will we stop in time?”

  “It’s going to be close,” Arx said. He was a wise and sturdy triceratops and Teggs’s second-in-command. A dozen dimorphodon grabbed hold of his horns to stop him sliding away from his controls. “Oh, no! The brakes are burning out!”

  “Don’t worry, they won’t let us down,” cried Iggy, hanging onto a safety rail. This tough iguanodon was the Sauropod’s chief engineer. He knew the ship like the back of his claw. “I built those brakes myself! They can handle worse than this.”

  “You mean it can get worse than this?” cried Gipsy. Her head-crest flushed bright blue with alarm.

  At last, with a final flip, the Sauropod came to a stop.

  “I told you we’d make it,” grinned Iggy.

  “It was close, though,” said Arx, as a dimorphodon wiped sweat from his frilly forehead.

  “Switch on the scanner!” cried Teggs. “Let’s see what’s out there!”

  More dimorphodon flocked to obey. On the screen, Teggs and his crew could see something that looked like a big, silver wheel, slowly spinning.

  “Looks like a space station of some kind,” said Arx.

  “It’s not on any of the space maps,” said Gipsy. “I’ve sent a greetings message but there’s no reply.”

  Teggs pointed at the screen with his spiky tail. “Maybe that would explain why!”

  A huge, black, jagged hole had been torn in the outside of the space station.

  “This is a wheel with a puncture,” said Iggy. “Must be a space wreck!”

  “It doesn’t look very old,” said Gipsy. “I wonder where it came from?”

  “I don’t recognize the design,” said Arx. But as the wheel kept turning, he suddenly saw a blood-red sign on the silver surface. It was a dinosaur skull with rows of jagged teeth.

  A shiver crept up the long, bony spines of the astrosaurs. They all knew that this design was the mark of meat-eaters.

  “It’s a carnivore space station!” cried Iggy. “What’s it doing here in the Vegetarian Sector?”

  “It could be a trick,” Gipsy suggested. “Maybe some meat-eaters are sneakily trying to invade us.”

  “There are no other ships nearby,” said Arx. “It’s more likely that this wreck has just drifted across from their side of space into ours.”

  “Well, we can’t just leave it here,” said Teggs. “It’s a danger to passing ships. Let’s zip across and set up a beacon there, like a lighthouse in space, warning other travellers away.”

  Arx cleared his scaly throat. “Excuse me, sir, but can we spare the time? We are in the middle of a mercy mission.”

  Teggs had not forgotten. On the planet Diplos, whole herds of starving diplodocus needed help fast. A freak hailstorm had wiped out their harvest. The Sauropod had been loaded up with plants and seeds so the dinosaurs could feed again.

  “I think this is important, Arx,” said Teggs. “What if another ship on another important mission crashes into this thing? That could lead to total disaster!”

  Arx bowed his hea
d. “You’re quite right, Captain,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” smiled Teggs. “Now, I’d better go and get the beacon.”

  “I’ll get the shuttle ready!” said Iggy, bounding off to the lift.

  Teggs reared up out of the control pit. “We won’t be long. Warm up the engines and be ready to zoom off to Diplos the moment we’re back on board.”

  “We’ll be ready, sir,” Gipsy promised.

  Arx said nothing, his eyes glued to the scanner screen. He wished Teggs and Iggy didn’t have to go. He had a niggling feeling in his bones that this sinister space wreck spelled danger.

  It took less than a minute for the shuttle to reach the space station. Teggs and Iggy climbed in through the air lock. They found themselves in a gloomy corridor.

  “Let’s have a quick look around,” said Teggs. “Just in case anyone has been hurt.”

  “If there are any meat-eaters still on this station, we could get hurt!” said Iggy. Even so, he followed his captain along the dark passage without hesitation.

  The station was a grim, forbidding place. It was made of metal and thick with shadows. To their right, stars shone a ghostly light through small, barred windows in the outer wall. To their left was a line of heavy doors, covered in bolts and locks.

  Teggs tried one of them. The door creaked open onto a cramped room with just a bed and a bucket inside. It looked like some kind of jail cell.

  “Iggy? I think this place was a prison,” said Teggs. “A lockup for carnivore criminals!”

  Iggy agreed. “Pretty dangerous criminals, too, from the size of those locks!”

  “We won’t hang about,” said Teggs. “Let’s get the beacon working and go back to the Sauropod.”

  Iggy took the bulky beacon from his captain’s back and set it up in the cell. It looked like a large red triangle with a transmitter on the top.

  “There,” said Iggy. “That will send out a recorded message telling any passing ships to keep out of the way.”

  Teggs grinned at him. “Next stop, Diplos! Come on.”

  But the cell door wouldn’t open.

  “Funny,” said Teggs. “Must be stuck.”

  “But we left it open so we could move about!” Iggy remembered. “There’s hardly room in here to swing a compsognathus!”

  Teggs nodded grimly. “So either it swung shut behind us and jammed – or someone has locked us in!”

  A nasty snigger came from the other side of the door. Then a white, wispy gas started pumping through the keyhole.

  “Hold your breath, Iggy!” Teggs gasped. “We’ve walked into a trap!”

  Chapter Two

  THE MIND-SWAPPER

  “IT’S TOO LATE, Captain,” choked Iggy, clutching at his throat as the gas engulfed him. “I’m getting dizzy . . .” He fell face-first onto the ground, his short, stiff tail pointing up in the air.

  Teggs bashed his body against the door with all his strength. But it was no good. The door was too strong, and the gas was making him weak.

  As he slipped to the floor beside Iggy, he rolled over and squashed the beacon flat.

  Gipsy had been listening to the beacon’s signal. “The warning’s coming out loud and clear,” she told Arx, happily.

  But then the signal stopped dead.

  “What happened?” asked Arx.

  “I don’t know,” said Gipsy. “Maybe the beacon is faulty.” She tried to get Teggs on the communicator. “Captain Teggs, this is Gipsy. Is everything OK?”

  There was no reply.

  “Come on, Gipsy,” said Arx. “Let’s get over there. I’ve got a bad feeling about that place.”

  Gipsy told the dimorphodon to look after the control room until they returned, then followed Arx over to the lift. “You think Teggs and Iggy could be in trouble, don’t you?”

  “I only hope I’m wrong,” sighed Arx.

  But Gipsy knew that Arx was rarely wrong about anything.

  Slowly, Teggs woke up. He ached from the tip of his tail to the bottom of his beak. His head felt like it was full of extra-smelly dung, and his mouth was as dry as a desert.

  He opened his eyes to find himself lying on his side in a large, well-lit room. A big TV buzzed in the corner, its screen full of static. How did he get there?

  Suddenly he remembered the gas, and the evil snigger from behind the cell door.

  “Iggy!” he cried. “Iggy, are you all right?”

  “I think so,” gasped Iggy weakly from somewhere behind him. “But I can’t move!”

  Teggs tried to kick his legs. “I can’t move either. I’ve been tied up!”

  “You have indeed, you pair of plant-eating potatoes,” said a sinister voice nearby. “My home-made sleep gas made it easy-peasy. You are now in my power! Aren’t they, Ardul?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr Boss.” This second voice sounded altogether more stupid. “They is in your clutches, and that is the truth.”

  “What do you want with us?” Teggs demanded, struggling to free his legs. “Who are you? Where are we?”

  There was a quiet thud and a scampering sound. Suddenly, a mean little dinosaur with goblin eyes and rows of sharp teeth was standing over Teggs’s head. “Good afternoon,” he hissed. “You are in the prison officers’ lounge.”

  “Are you prison officers, then?” Teggs asked.

  “We used to be prisoners – but soon we shall be free dinosaurs again!” The mean little meat-eater chuckled and his thick friend quickly joined in. “My name is Dasta – Crool Dasta, the sneakiest coelophysis ever!”

  “Crool Dasta?!” gasped Teggs.

  Dasta flashed an evil smile. “You’ve heard of me, then?”

  “No,” Teggs admitted. “I just can’t believe you’ve got such a stupid name.”

  “I happen to be an evil inventor and a criminal genius,” said Dasta snootily.

  “You can’t be that clever,” said Teggs. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have been caught! Or did your stupid sidekick mess things up for you?”

  At that, Ardul came running up to him. Ardul was another coelophysis – shorter, fatter and twice as ugly as his boss.

  “Don’t speak to us that way,” said Ardul. “You is dating on thin ice.”

  “You mean skating on thin ice, Ardul,” sighed Dasta.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Iggy asked.

  “This prison was almost destroyed when a meteor crashed into it,” hissed Dasta. “Everyone else got away. The prison officers thought that Ardul and I were killed in the explosion – but we were only hiding!”

  “Neat trick,” said Teggs. “How long have you been hanging out on this space wreck?”

  “Three months,” the carnivore confessed. “But I knew that one day we would drift into the path of another ship – and we would be free once more! Free to collect our secret treasure from the Geldos Cluster and live like kings!”

  “Free?” Teggs scoffed. “Come off it. You may have caught us, but you’re still stuck here.”

  “I don’t think so,” sniggered Dasta. “Your crew will be getting worried. They will come to get you. But what they’ll get is us, Ardul and me – and they won’t even know it!”

  Teggs felt worried all of a sudden. “What are you talking about?”

  “Take a look at your ugly friend and find out,” Dasta snorted.

  Teggs rolled over backwards to see. “Iggy!” he cried. “You’re wearing some weird contraption on your head!”

  “So are you, Captain,” said Iggy nervously.

  Dasta gave a gurgling laugh. Then he placed a similar helmet on his own head. Ardul did the same.

  “The helmets are connected to my latest brilliant invention,” Dasta explained, pointing to a menacing machine full of buttons and coloured lights. “It’s a mind-swapper! It will put my brain in your body, Captain Teggs, and Ardul’s brain into Iggy’s!”

  Teggs gulped. “What happens to our brains?”

  “They is gonna be sucked into our bodies,” said Ardul, w
ith a cruel grin.

  “We shall become you,” hissed Dasta.

  ‘And you shall become us! Your foolish friends will take us back to your ship – and we’ll take over!”

  “No!” cried Teggs.

  “Yes,” laughed Dasta. “Ardul, start the machine!”

  The mind-swapper began to throb and hiss and steam. Blue electric light crackled all around it. Then it made a nasty sucking noise, like a slug trying to swallow a boiled sweet.

  Teggs cried out. His brain felt on fire. Dasta laughed and clapped as the machine sucked harder and harder . . .

  Chapter Three

  STRANDED IN SPACE

  WITH A LOUD POP! it was all over.

  Teggs found he could move. Confused, he got to his feet. But he was no longer a massive, powerful, seven-ton stegosaur. Now he was a zippy, nippy little monster, as light as a feather. His mind had been plopped into Dasta’s body!

  And Dasta, meanwhile had taken Teggs’s form. “My invention works perfectly!” he cried. “Everyone will think I’m Captain Teggs of the DSS!”

  “Iggy?” the real Teggs asked. His voice came out as a nasty little hiss. “Iggy, tell me you’re still you!”

  But his old friend only sniggered. “I is not Iggy!” he said. “I is Ardul!”

  “His mind’s taken over my body, Captain,” said the real Iggy. “While I’m stuck as the ugliest coelophysis in the galaxy! What are we going to do?”

  “We have to reverse the mind-swap!” cried Teggs. “They’re still tied up, they can’t stop us!”

  “Only I can swap our minds back again,” jeered Dasta. “You’ll never work out how it’s done!”

  Teggs stared at the controls and tried to think. But being in someone else’s body was very distracting. He clicked his long, pointed claws together. He ran his tongue over his sharp teeth – and nearly sliced it off. There was a horrible taste in his mouth – raw meat! He was almost sick at the thought of it.

  Suddenly the door burst open, and Gipsy and Arx rushed in.

  “Arx! Gipsy!” cried the real Teggs in delight. “You’re here!”

  Gipsy frowned. “Who in space are you?”

  “You wicked little meat-eaters,” snarled Arx. “How dare you tie up our friends!”

  “We’re your friends!” wailed the real Iggy, jumping up and down in his bogus body. “Not them!”

  But Arx and Gipsy ignored him. Straight away, they started untying the fake Teggs and Iggy!