by Steve Cole
“Little Bo’s right,” said Teggs, picking up Toro once more – and an abandoned cream pistol. “That carnivore king plotted the doom of the entire Vegetarian Sector. We have to bring him to justice.”
The others grabbed washed-up weapons and quickly scaled the rocky cliff face, climbing back towards the entrance of the arena. They found the Raptor Royal looking down from the top of the precipice and hopping with rage.
“My ssssinister grassss-eating army is undone!” he snarled. “How can thisss be? Those pathetic plant-eaters can’t have beaten the great Raptor Royal!”
“I think you’ll find we have!” cried Teggs, dropping Toro on the ground. “And now we’ve caught you too.”
The big, blubbery raptor spun round to face them, his eyes narrowing with hate.
“Hold it!” Gipsy aimed her sour-cream squirter. “Try to escape, and we’ll turn your army’s weapons back on you – extremely hard.”
“I think not.” The Raptor Royal pulled the F.B.I. time-travel disc out from under his robes and jumped on top of it. “Thanksss to Toro, I can escape through time—”
“No!” Teggs and McMoo started forward to try and grab him. But the Raptor Royal was already disappearing in a haze of black smoke. Gipsy fired a volley of sizzling sour cream, but it passed straight through the ruler’s ghostly image.
McMoo shook his head. “It’s too late. We can’t stop him now.”
A low snigger from ground level warned them that Toro had woken up – and he seemed to like the view. “No one can stop that raptor,” he muttered. “Not even himself!”
The black smoke was turning green. The carnivore started to flicker and blur like a bad TV picture. “What … is … happening?” he groaned.
“I planned to betray you, Raptor – just as you betrayed me!” Toro shouted. “I booby-trapped your time machine to get rid of you when your usefulness was ended. It will fling you millions of years into the future and then self-destruct!”
“No!” moaned the Raptor Royal, fading away like a ghost. “You can’t do thisss to me …”
“He didn’t.” Teggs grinned. “You did it to yourself.”
Pat waved. “So long, sucker!”
There was a loud POP!, a small, sooty explosion – and the Raptor Royal vanished.
“He’s … gone,” Arx murmured.
“Vanished,” Iggy agreed, stunned by what he’d seen.
“Uh-oh,” said Gipsy, pointing behind them. “Toro’s attempting his own disappearing act!”
With his enemies distracted, the buffalo had seized his chance and was running for the nearest saucer.
“Don’t think so!” said Bo. She let rip with her yoghurt cannon, while Teggs fired his cream pistol. The combined blast knocked Toro off his hooves and slammed him into the side of the saucer. He collapsed in a heap, unconscious again – and Teggs and Bo high-fived.
“The menace of the moo-tants is over,” breathed Gipsy. “It’s really over!”
Pat nodded in a daze. “We’ve brought down all the bad guys.”
“I can’t quite believe it,” said Arx.
“Seeing is believing, big fella,” said McMoo, a smile spreading over his face – the biggest smile Pat had ever seen. “Although on this occasion, ‘seaing is tea-leafing’!”
Everyone groaned at the professor’s awful joke. But the groans soon turned to laughter – joyful laughter that carried over the roar of the waves to where Shuttle Alpha still hovered, and beyond, all the way to the distant stars above.
Epilogue
FAREWELLS
“Well, then!” said Teggs at last. “That seems to be just about everything wrapped up.”
“Yes,” McMoo agreed. “The F.B.I.’s greatest ever plan has been foiled.”
Arx stared down at the sleeping scaly figures on the beach. “The Raptor Royal has been defeated and the dinosaur moo-tants returned to normal …”
“And losing their rulers should leave the raptors in a right royal mess,” said Gipsy. “I bet they won’t be dreaming up any more invasions for a while.”
Bo sat down heavily on Toro’s stomach, squashing him into the ground. “As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve captured the Head Bull of the F.B.I… .’
“And stopped him from changing history,” Pat added. “Both here and back on Earth.”
“And we’ve met each other too,” said Teggs. “Two groups of friends, fighting evil, millions of light years apart …”
“It’s been a meeting I’ll never forget,” said McMoo with a smile.
“We won’t, either,” said Gipsy, and the other astrosaurs nodded.
“After all, we’ve got enough bumps and bruises to remind us for months!” joked Iggy.
“Just don’t forget to take Toro with you when you go,” said Arx.
“We’ll stow him aboard our flying saucer,” McMoo assured him, “ready to face the justice of the C.I.A.”
“Could you possibly tow his saucer behind you?” asked Teggs. “Then you could use it to send that kidnapped torvosaurus back here where she belongs.”
“Good plan,” said the professor. “I’ll leave it pre-programmed – once you’ve taken care of her, you can send T-5 back to us.
“Captain, you are so thoughtful,” said Iggy, “worrying about Cindy the big-bummed carnivore like that.”
“It’s only thanks to her that we got into the Carnivore Sector at all,” Teggs reminded him.
“Eep!” came a plaintive call from Shuttle Alpha above.
“Sorry, Sprite, you’re right!” Gipsy shouted up to him. “The dimorphodon’s needlework played a vital part too!”
Sprite waved and nodded happily.
“Now, it’s time we got aboard that shuttle and zipped back to the Sauropod,” Teggs declared. “We can’t risk being found here in meat-eater space.”
“No, of course not.” McMoo looked fondly at Teggs. Then he saluted. “Cheerio then, Captain.”
Teggs gave him a crooked smile. “Look after the Earth for us, won’t you? Don’t let those funny human things muck it up!”
“We’ll try.” Pat shook Teggs’s paw while Bo settled for half strangling the stegosaurus with an ultra-tight hug. She then grabbed Gipsy and Arx in a warm embrace, and kissed Iggy on the cheek.
“Actually, could I ask for something?” asked Iggy.
Bo fluttered her eyelids. “My hoof in marriage?”
“Er, no.” Iggy smiled. “A couple of cowpats, if possible.”
“Oh,” said Bo.
“Y’see, the Sauropod will have to move pretty fast to get back past the Raptor Border Patrol,” Iggy explained, “and your dung drives an engine like nothing I’ve seen!”
“Well, I left one over there by the entrance when those moo-tants came out,” Pat confessed. “Help yourself!”
McMoo sniffed. “And from the smell of things, when you blasted Toro, he dropped enough dirties to see you all the way home in no time.”
Gipsy grinned. “Nice of him to try and make amends like that!”
“Isn’t it?” said Teggs. “Safe journey, Professor – you too, Pat and Bo. Perhaps, one day, we will meet again.”
“You could be right,” McMoo agreed. “I’m sure you have no end of adventures out here – and we can’t let you have all the fun, can we?”
“Luckily, you’re not too far away from us by flying saucer,” said Pat. “If you need us, give us a shout.”
Teggs nodded. “And if you ever need help with a crisis in history …?”
“We’ll get straight on the time-telephone, Cap’n!” Bo assured him. “So long!”
The professor and Pat followed Bo as she dragged Toro into their saucer. “I wonder if we can stop off mid-voyage for a cuppa?” McMoo wondered. “There’s bound to be a nice intergalactic café somewhere in the Milky Way …”
With a final cheery wave, he closed the spaceship’s battered door.
Teggs waved back, then whistled up to Sprite. “All right, down you come! It’s time for us to go too.�
��
Just a couple of minutes later, Shuttle Alpha touched down in thick clouds of smoke. Iggy completed his cowpat collection, and the saucer took off, dragging Toro’s spacecraft silently behind. Within seconds, both vessels had vanished into the clouds.
“There go the Cows In Action,” said Gipsy. “Back to Earth, and more adventures.”
“I wonder just how long their journey will take?” mused Arx.
“I think they’ll always be journeying,” said Teggs. “Through the past, present and future.”
“And what about our future?” wondered Iggy. “What’s next?”
“For us?” Teggs beamed round at his friends. “Why, even more action and excitement in outer space, of course.
Wild, crazy adventures are what our lives are all about – and always will be!”
Also by Steve Cole:
ASTROSAURS
Riddle of the Raptors
The Hatching Horror
The Seas of Doom
The Mind-Swap Menace
The Skies of Fear
The Space Ghosts
Day of the Dino-Droids
The Terror-Bird Trap
The Planet of Peril
The Star Pirates
The Claws of Christmas
The Sun-Snatchers
Revenge of the Fang
The Carnivore Curse
The Dreams of Dread
The Robot Raiders
The Twist of Time
The Sabre-Tooth Secret
The Forest of Evil
Earth Attack!
The T-Rex Invasion
The Castle of Frankensaur
ASTROSAURS ACADEMY
Destination: Danger!
Contest Carnage!
Terror Underground!
Jungle Horror!
Deadly Drama!
Christmas Crisis!
Volcano Invaders!
Space Kidnap!
COWS IN ACTION
The Ter-Moo-nators
The Moo-my’s Curse
The Roman Moo-stery
The Wild West Moo-nster
World War Moo
The Battle for Christmoos
The Pirate Moo-tiny
The Moogic of Merlin
The Victorian Moo-ders
The Moo-lympic Games
First Cows on the Mooon
The Viking Emoo-gency
The Udderly Moovellous
C.I.A. Joke Book
SLIME SQUAD
The Fearsome Fists
The Toxic Teeth
The Cyber-Poos
The Supernatural Squid
The Killer Socks
The Last-Chance Chicken
The Alligator Army
The Conkering Conks
For older readers:
Z. Rex
Z. Raptor
Z. Apocalypse
About the Author
Born in 1971, Steve Cole spent a happy childhood in rural Bedfordshire being loud and aspiring to amuse. He liked books, and so went to the University of East Anglia to read more of them. Later on he started writing them too, with titles ranging from pre-school poetry to Young Adult thrillers (with more TV and film tie-ins than he cares to admit to along the way). In other careers he has been the editor of Noddy magazine, and an editor of fiction and nonfiction book titles for various publishers. He is the author of the hugely successful Astrosaurs, Cows in Action, Astrosaurs Academy and Slime Squad series.
ASTROSAURS VS COWS IN ACTION
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17437 9
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
Text copyright © Steve Cole, 2013
Illustrations by Woody Fox, copyright © Random House Children’s Publisher’s UK 2013
Cover illustration © Dynamo, 2013
First Published in Great Britain
Red Fox 9781782951223 2013
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