Astrosaurs 22

by Steve Cole

  WHUMP! It kicked Gipsy into IGOR. She fell against the robot with such force that he toppled over the banisters and fell – smashing to pieces in the hallway far below!

  “Now look what you did,” Gipsy told the headless monster, ducking as it swiped at her head.

  “By the berries of Bingle!” Marsh tried to clobber the body with his hefty tail, but it blocked the blow with its arm and booted him clear across the landing. “Whoaaaa!” Cartwheeling out of control, he smashed straight through a large plate-glass window!

  “No!” Gipsy yelled helplessly, as the pilot’s screams ended swiftly with a very loud SPLAT. “Hang on, Marsh, I’m coming!” She dodged past the headless horror and sprinted over to the broken window. But the garden outside was dark and rain-lashed, and she could see only shifting shadows. “Where are you?”

  The thump of heavy footsteps told her exactly where the monster was – it was closing on her fast. Gipsy leaned out of the window, grabbed hold of a drainpipe and hoped it would support her weight. As the monster reached out for her with its single hand, she swung herself out of reach and – “Wheeee!” – quickly slid down the pipe, tearing ivy from the wall as she went.

  While the monster stamped its feet on the landing in helpless fury, Gipsy looked around for Marsh. In a flash of lightning, she suddenly saw him lying sprawled inside the largest pumpkin she had ever seen. Luckily he was still breathing – he was only knocked out. Half of the squash had been well and truly squashed by his bulky armoured body; it had broken his fall and saved his life.

  But as more lightning lit up the night sky, Gipsy realized that the other half of the pumpkin was metal – a huge sheet of solid steel with words written in big green letters: ZETA THREE.

  “That’s been taken from the side of the star-vault,” she breathed. “So there really is a machine that can mix metal and plants together.”

  Suddenly Gipsy heard movement behind her. She whirled round, hooves raised and ready, heart pounding. “Who’s there?” she hissed into the night as the sound of dragging footsteps on the grass drew closer. “Who’s there . . .?”

  Chapter Six

  HEADS AND TALES

  GIPSY GULPED, SPOOKED out to the max as the footsteps came closer still . . .

  Finally, by the light of a passing meteor, she recognized Dr Frankensaur stumbling towards her – and breathed a sigh of relief. He was clutching his injured arm and waving his bandaged tail, and looked quite unwell. “Gipsy,” he whispered. “I . . . I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  “Where’ve you been, Frankensaur?” she demanded. “Did you know there’s a mad monster running around your landing – and half-metal veggies growing in your garden? Just what is going on around here?”

  “It’s IGOR. He’s gone haywire.” Frankensaur’s voice sounded strangely lifeless. “When I went downstairs, he attacked me and tied me up – I’ve only just got free.”

  “Haywire is right,” said Gipsy. “Well, don’t worry about IGOR – he’s broken to bits now.”

  Frankensaur did not react. “IGOR carried the plans of my MATTA machine in his memory banks – he must’ve shared them with the meat-eaters!” He turned back to the castle. “Come inside. I have found some old weapons that might hold off the headless intruder, but I am not sure how to use them.”

  “OK. Let’s go.” Deciding that Marsh was probably safer in the pumpkin, Gipsy followed Frankensaur through a side door into the castle . . .

  Soaked and cold, unaware of the danger their friends were facing, Teggs led Arx and Iggy along the treacherous trail to the old village. The path snaked in and out of gulleys and up and down crags and cliffs. Iggy sighed. “Whatever I saw, it’s probably miles away by now.”

  “Well, we should have a good view of the village from the top of this hill,” said Teggs. “We can spy out the land.” He spotted some pointy purple weeds growing through the rocks and smiled. “But first, a quick snack—”

  “Captain, don’t!” said Arx urgently. “Those look like narg-nettles – super-rare and not at all nice.”

  “I read about those things,” said Iggy. “The more they prickle, the faster they grow. Somehow they detect anyone trying to eat them and give them a sting.”

  “Yuk!” Teggs stuck out his tongue – and the narg-nettle stretched up and stung it! “OW! Forget the snack – and watch where you step.”

  They continued to the summit. On the other side of the hill was a steep path leading to the ruins of the old village they’d spied from the shuttle. There was no movement, no sign of life.

  “Hey, look.” Arx pointed into the valley. “There’s something gleaming down there.”

  Teggs set off along the path. “Let’s check it out.”

  The gleaming thing turned out to be a large metal cube. “It’s a portable cooker,” said Arx. “And it looks new.”

  “Someone has been camping out here.” Teggs nudged aside a slab of stone to reveal a dirty plastic crate. “Look at this empty tub of diplodocus burgers. Urgh! The ‘best before’ date was only a few weeks ago.”

  “There’s more camping stuff in here,” Iggy called from inside the nearest hut. “And some papers . . .” He came out looking grim. “Photos of Frankensaur’s castle – and a plan of the different floors, with possible ways in . . .”

  “And while you’re busy making discoveries,” came a gruff snarl from behind them, “guess what? You’ve been lured here from the castle – right where we want you.”

  Teggs spun round to find a familiar two-headed, two-tailed monster striding out from behind a ruined building – with a large white gun cradled in three of his four arms.

  “So it was you I spotted,” said Iggy. “Our hijacker friends – Jack Spallack and Rojan Barb!”

  Rojan’s green face smiled nastily. “So. You know who we are.”

  “Or who you were, anyway,” said Arx. “Before you were turned into a monster.”

  Jack frowned. “But Professor Hydra will make us normal again once he’s finished his experiments. He promised.”

  “Shut up!” said Rojan crossly.

  “Hydra,” breathed Teggs. “The carnivore genius that Frankensaur told us about.”

  “Where is Hydra now?” Iggy looked around.

  “He was camping out in these old ruins with the rest of us,” said Jack. “But for the last few weeks he’s been working hard – inside the castle!”

  Iggy gasped. “INSIDE?”

  “You’re such a blabbermouth,” groaned Rojan.

  “Guys, we’ve left Gipsy, Marsh and Frankensaur in terrible danger.” Teggs raised his communicator to his mouth. “We must warn them.”

  “Forget it!” snarled Rojan, as he and Jack jabbed the gun in the astrosaurs’ direction. “Professor Hydra’s got plans for you!”

  *

  Back on the ground floor of the castle, Gipsy was following Frankensaur along a dark corridor. “Is that monster still upstairs?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” said Frankensaur slowly. “IGOR left me tied up in the living room. I heard that headless body crashing about on the landing. Maybe it knew you were going to search the castle and find its hidden lair . . .”

  “So it attacked first,” Gipsy reasoned. “Makes sense.” “Anyway . . . I heard the window break. As soon as I untied my ropes, I ran outside to find you.” He headed towards a large door at the end of the passage. “Come on – the weapons are in this storeroom . . .”

  “Hang on a moment.” Gipsy held back, nodding to the doctor’s broken arm in its plaster cast. “You undid the knots with just one hand?”

  “Er . . .” Frankensaur looked shifty. “I mean I chewed through the ropes. Now, quickly, before the headless thing finds us.”

  “Hang on another moment.” Gipsy narrowed her eyes. “If you haven’t seen this monster, Frankensaur . . . how did you know it has no head?”

  SLAM! The door was kicked open from the other side to reveal the headless stripy thing standing there, clawed hand clutching blindl
y, tail sweeping from side to side.

  Horrified, Gipsy turned to run – but Frankensaur lashed out with his tail and tripped her up. She twisted round and landed on her back – but before she could rise, the creepy creature had stomped out of the storeroom and planted one big foot on her tummy, pinning her in place.

  “Frankensaur,” she gasped. “You tricked me!”

  “Don’t blame the poor doctor,” came a muffled voice from somewhere close by. “He is not responsible for his actions . . .”

  As Gipsy watched, incredulous, Frankensaur stiffly pulled off his plaster cast to reveal an unharmed arm that was striped black and white – a perfect replacement for the monster’s mis-matched limb.

  “And now, I shall reveal to you the real genius around here!” came the muffled voice again. “Observe . . .”

  Frankensaur began to peel the bandages off the lump at the end of his tail. With a shiver of terror, Gipsy realized that this was where the voice had come from.

  That was no simple injury at the tip of Frankensaur’s tail – it was a HEAD! The head of a fierce carnivore, bandaged up purely to hide it from sight. And from its shape and size, it looked like the very same head that the monster holding Gipsy was missing.

  “You are right to be afraid, my dear.” The head at the end of the tail smiled nastily. “My name is Professor Hydra. I am in complete control of Doctor Frankensaur. And thanks to our combined genius, meat-eating dinosaurs will soon control the galaxy!”

  Chapter Seven

  THE MONSTERS’ POWER

  MARCHED AT GUNPOINT through the crumbling servants’ village, Teggs searched around helplessly for some way of escape. He knew that both Arx and Iggy beside him were thinking the same thing – they had to get back to the castle and help Gipsy.

  If only I could call her on the communicator, Teggs thought. But Rojan-Jack was following close behind them and looked ready to fire his gun at any moment.

  “Does Frankensaur know this Hydra character is hiding in his castle?” he demanded.

  “Better than that,” Jack chortled. “Hydra’s hiding in Frankensaur’s body!”

  The news stopped Teggs, Arx and Iggy in their tracks. “What?”

  “Frankensaur’s ‘injuries’ are a bit more serious than you thought.” Rojan grinned. “He’s got Hydra’s head hidden on the end of his tail – controlling his whole body.”

  “Another mutant misfit,” sighed Arx. “Just like you.”

  “Keep moving!” Jack snarled.

  Moving off again with Teggs and Arx, Iggy glowered at their two-headed captor. “If Hydra is back at the castle, why does he want us over here?”

  “You’ll see,” said Rojan. “Once he’s linked Frankensaur’s MATTA machine to his own MAMMMA machine.”

  “MAMMMA?” Arx echoed.

  “Yeah, you might well call for your mama,” jeered Jack.

  “He wasn’t calling for his mama,” said Rojan wearily. “He was asking what MAMMMA stands for.”

  Jack thought hard. “She stands to reach something from the top shelf—”

  “Will you SHUT UP!” Rojan snapped. “MAMMMA stands for Mix And Mangle Metal/Meaty Areas.”

  Iggy gasped. “So that’s how you two got mixed up together – and how you mangled Zeta Three’s metal walls and weapons.”

  “Right,” Rojan agreed, “with a little help from Frankensaur’s planty version. The boss is running them both as one mega-MATTA-MAMMMA machine.”

  “But that would require massive amounts of power,” said Arx, puzzled. “The old castle generator can’t be strong enough.”

  “It isn’t.” Rojan smiled craftily. “See that ruin in front of you? It’s a parking spot for our spaceship, which has all the extra power Hydra needs . . .”

  Teggs peered at the remains of a long roofless building, apparently filled with timber and straw – and saw steel glinting beneath. “Disguised,” he breathed. “So we couldn’t spot it from above.”

  “Correct.” Rojan pulled a remote control from the rags of his outfit and pressed a button. The hidden ship began to hum with energy.

  Iggy glared as the straw fell away to reveal more of the vessel beneath. “I suppose your friends travelled straight back here after dropping you off beside Marsh’s spaceship.”

  “Right,” Rojan agreed. “A star-vault passing by in local space was too good a test for the MATTA-MAMMMA machine. One of the toughest ships ever – and I just space-walked across and kicked my way inside. Shame it wasn’t loaded with goodies, but next time—”

  “Uh-oh!” Jack sniffed and blinked, his nostrils twitching. “I’m going to sneeze.”

  “Don’t you dare,” growled Rojan. “Cover your nose, Jack! Look the other way—”

  “AAACHOOOOOOO!” The sneeze exploded out of Jack’s red nose and sprayed over Rojan’s face!

  “URRRGH!” Rojan groaned.

  While the carnivores were distracted, Teggs thwacked a lump of rubble with his tail like a cricketer hitting a ball. SMACK! It hit Rojan on the forehead and he dropped the gun.

  “Come on!” Teggs ran off, reaching for his communicator. “We’ve got to warn Gipsy . . .”

  But then a giant creature loomed out of the dark ahead of them. It was a huge scaly blob with five snarling faces in its middle. It walked on ten little arms, and as many meaty tails and legs waved from its top like tentacles.

  Iggy gasped. “What a monster!”

  “How dare you!” the creature rasped, bobbing as it advanced. “We’re Bim-Wim-Lim-Dim-Ponko – five friends combined into one.”

  “And five times as revolting,” muttered Teggs. “Back the way we came!” But too late he saw that Rojan-Jack had recovered, and was pointing the gun straight at them.

  ZUMMM! A red ray transfixed the astrosaurs. Teggs tried to move, but found that he was helpless, as stiff as a statue.

  “Nice shot, Rojan-Jack,” said the blob-monster. “The freeze-ray will hold them till the boss is through with them.”

  Rojan-Jack nodded both heads.

  “About time you showed your faces. Have you finished setting up the lightning converter?”

  “Yep.” Bim-Wim-Lim-Dim-Ponko smiled. “It’s right on top of that hill, like Hydra wanted.”

  Teggs strained to see to the top of the nearest hill. A metal spike was pointing up at the clouds; lightning seemed drawn to it, striking it again and again.

  “Must be a three-stage process,” Arx said through stiff lips. “First, the converter gathers electrical energy. Second, it feeds it through to a booster in the spaceship—”

  “And third, it zaps the energy over to the castle,” said Bim-Wim-Lim-Dim-Ponko, plugging a fat cable into a satellite dish sticking out of their craft. “With the extra power, the boss’s operation can go ahead at last . . .”

  Operation? Teggs could only watch helplessly as the gloating carnivores grinned with delight at the thought of what was to come . . .

  Over in Frankensaur’s castle, Gipsy was being dragged up the stairs by the headless-body beast. Frankensaur plodded ahead of them. But it was the head on his tail – Professor Hydra’s head – that was clearly in control.

  “Let me get this straight,” growled Gipsy. “When Frankensaur spoke to us all before – that was really you, making his head talk?”

  Frankensaur’s head suddenly swung round to face her. “That’s right,” he said slowly. “Professor Hydra is the cleverest daspletosaurus there ever was. Brighter than Attila the Atrocious! Brainier than Omarg the Mean!”

  “Why, thank you,” said Hydra’s head with a horrible smile.

  “Losing your head doesn’t seem very bright.” Gipsy struggled in the monster’s grip. “How does your real body even know where to go?”

  “I am steering it by remote control,” Hydra revealed. “A small circuit on the back of my neck picks up my thoughts.”

  “So you’re controlling that thing and poor Doctor Frankensaur,” Gipsy realized. “But Rojan and Jack have two heads in one body too – and both
of them can talk. Why didn’t Frankensaur try to warn us?”

  “Rojan and Jack are both rather dim, so neither can control the other.” Hydra smiled smugly. “Frankensaur and I are both geniuses – but my will is stronger than his. And because we are linked, all the knowledge in his head is now in my head too!” As they reached the top landing, he signalled his body to stop moving, and bobbed closer to Gipsy. “For many years I have been working on my Mix And Mangle Metal/Meaty Areas machine. I plan to create the ultimate living weapon – a creature made from the nastiest parts of a dozen carnivore breeds and their space armour.”

  “You mean, like the head of a T. rex on the armoured body of a megalosaurus with the claws of a raptor?” Gipsy shivered in the grip of her captor. “That’s horrible.”

  “Thank you,” growled Hydra. “Unfortunately, I could not control how the different dinosaurs were mixed together. My test subject volunteers became messed-up mutants . . .”

  Gipsy nodded. “Like Rojan-Jack.”

  “So I tracked Frankensaur to this castle,” Hydra went on. “When our spaceship landed, the doctor sent IGOR to investigate . . .”

  “And you caught the poor robot and reprogrammed him, I suppose,” said Gipsy.

  “With IGOR’s help it was child’s play to capture this fool.” Hydra’s head looked snootily at the body that supported him. “But as I demonstrated my MAMMMA machine to him, he tried to escape. I stopped him, but in the process we both blundered into the combining ray . . .”

  “And that’s how you became a monster,” Gipsy realized.

  “A lucky accident, as it turned out.” Hydra nodded to the broken door on the landing. “Now that Frankensaur’s mind is linked to mine, I can think bigger than ever! Take a look . . .”

  The headless body dragged Gipsy over to the shattered doorway. Inside was a big rusty generator, humming with power – hooked up to a powerful-looking black machine.

  A small TV screen was set into it, and Gipsy could see Teggs, Arx and Iggy standing frozen to the spot beside a spaceship.

  “What have you done to my friends?” she demanded.