Monster Moon

by Lucy Courtenay

  Wires, old piping, rusty tools. Rivets from the walls and ceiling. The ice-bath taps, rungs from the ladders that led from the bottom deck of the Tunafish to the top. The legs from the wing-pong table and the dining chairs, Rocky’s eyebrow comb, Splash’s second and third best toolbelts. And…

  “NOT MY SAUCEPANS,” Fuzz warned, barring the way to the kitchen.

  “It’s the only way, Fuzz,” said Captain Krill.

  “It’s not Cuddles’s fault he’s so hungry,” said Splash, as Cuddles munched through a coil of steel rope. “He’s growing!”

  “Arf!” Cuddles agreed.

  Fuzz had to stand aside. Even the PMUs had to go. The penguins piled everything they had in front of the Flogisaur – and crossed their flippers.

  Meanwhile, the Lovely Loot was zooming at record speed through an asteroid belt in section M of the universe.

  “Do you have to go so fast, Bigbutt?” squealed Crabba, watching through his claws as Bigbutt narrowly missed an asteroid the size of Antarctica.

  “Your boss wants to catch penguins,” Bigbutt growled, speeding up even more. “We need fuel to catch penguins. We’re nearly at the fuelling station.”

  The Lovely Loot shuddered as a jagged asteroid scraped over its roof.

  “They’ll be light years away by the time we reach those coordinates!” said Crabba in a trembling voice.

  Bigbutt patted a shiny golden box set into the control panel. “Top-of-the-range space nav,” he said. “Guaranteed to locate other spaceships within a hundred thousand light years of their last known whereabouts.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Crabba, rolling the eyes on the tips of his claws. “You stole it.”

  “Course I stole it,” Bigbutt boasted. “I steal everything.”

  “We will catch them,” said Dark Wader. “And when we do, guess what?”

  Guess the End of the Space Penguins was Dark Wader’s favourite game.

  “You’ll fire them out of the Lovely Loot’s space cannon,” suggested Crabba weakly, as another asteroid flew by with millimetres to spare.

  “I’ll build a special spiky basketball hoop,” giggled the big pengbot. “And score a hundred baskets each with those flightless freaks.”

  “You’ll pump them into penguin balloons and pop them with your beak,” Crabba groaned.

  “What did these penguins do to you?” said Bigbutt with interest.

  “They hatched before I could turn them into omelettes,” said Dark Wader in a dark and terrible voice. “How much further, Bigbutt?”

  “I’m in charge of the star charts,” Crabba moaned. “Not the cowhead.”

  “Better a cowhead than a crusty little creep,” growled Bigbutt, accelerating towards a cluster of asteroids that were too close together for comfort. “Not far now. In twenty minutes, we’ll be fuelled up and hitting that hyperspace button before you can say … I dunno, something long and complicated.”

  “Like ‘brain’,” muttered Crabba.

  Cuddles ate through every lock and door the Space Penguins put in his way. After three days of flying back towards Flogiston with a hungry, fast-growing Flogisaur aboard, there wasn’t much left of the Tunafish.

  “Any sign of our destination, Rocky?” asked Captain Krill tensely.

  Rocky’s pilot chair had disappeared down Cuddles’s throat two days earlier. Now Rocky was barely tall enough to see through the Tunafish’s windscreen. “There’s a red thing coming up,” Rocky said, as Splash hoisted him up so he could see out a little better. “So that’s hopeful.”

  There was every chance that the red thing wasn’t Flogiston at all, given Rocky’s terrible sense of direction. The penguins tried not to think about that.

  Splash suddenly dropped Rocky and looked around what was left of the flight deck. “Where’s Cuddles?”

  Rocky got back on to his feet, rubbing his head. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “If he’s found my last saucepan, I’ll put him into a casserole,” Fuzz threatened.

  “If he’s found your last saucepan, you won’t be able to make a casserole,” Captain Krill pointed out. “Keep flying, Rocky. As you know, Cuddles ate the auto-pilot mechanism yesterday, so we need you at the helm at all times. The rest of you, follow me. We need to find that Flogisaur.”

  Captain Krill, Splash and Fuzz tracked Cuddles to Splash’s engine room and the ventilation system. The grilles had gone. So had most of the metal tubing that filtered the air around the spaceship.

  “Arf!” said Cuddles, in an echoey sort of way, deep inside the vents.

  Splash wrung his flippers. “I think Cuddles has eaten through the ventilation system and found the hull.”

  “That’s the outside of the ship,” said Fuzz. “Right?”

  Splash nodded.

  “If Cuddles finds the hull, will he eat it?” checked Captain Krill.

  Splash wrung his flippers again. “Yes. And then the hull will stop protecting us and the cabin will stop being pressurized and we’ll all be sucked into the vacuum of outer space.”

  “In other words, we’ll all go pop?” Rocky shouted from the flight deck.

  “Exactly,” Splash said.

  “I will tempt Cuddles back inside the ship with my last saucepan,” Fuzz said heroically.

  He fetched the saucepan and dangled it in front of the gaping ventilation hole. There was a loud sucking noise deep inside the vent. In the snapping of a clamshell, the saucepan was pulled from Fuzz’s grasp. The little penguin gaped at his empty flipper.

  “You slurping squid-for-nothing!” he shouted furiously. “You iron-eating imbecile! You … metal-munching maniac!”

  “Arf!” came Cuddles’s echoing answer.

  “I’ll have to go out there to strip the landing gear of its metal plating and reinforce any breaches in the hull,” said Splash.

  “Right,” said Captain Krill. “What?”

  “I’m going on a spacewalk to stick the outside of the ship back together again,” Splash explained.

  “Definitely Flogiston coming up, guys,” Rocky called down the passageway.

  Splash slid down the rungless ladder to the extra-cold store to fetch his spacesuit. “I would advise everyone to put their spacesuits on,” he said. “In case we lose pressure before we reach Flogiston.”

  The Captain and Fuzz joined Splash in the extra-cold store, where they put on their extra-toughened suits. Fuzz helped Splash put on his moon boots.

  “Good luck out there,” Fuzz said, as Splash headed for the airlock. “Remember to hold on.”

  Splash patted his boots. “The magnets on the soles will hold me in place. And I plan to tether myself to the ship with a hundred metres of knitting wool, left over from a Christmas jumper I’ve made for the Captain. I’d prefer the usual steel rope, but Cuddles ate it. Tell Rocky to keep flying whatever happens.”

  With quite a lot of puffing, Captain Krill struggled back up the ladder to take Rocky’s spacesuit to him at the controls.

  “Not long until we land, Captain,” said Rocky, getting dressed as quickly as he could. “Hold on to your beak.”

  “An unidentified ship has just leaped through hyperspace ahead of us,” said ICEcube. The computer’s voice sounded a little distant because Cuddles had eaten most of its wiring.

  Captain Krill was the only one who could see out of the windscreen. A sleek golden ship was speeding towards them like a bullet. He knew in a flash that the ship was the Lovely Loot.

  Beaky Wader had found them.

  Instinctively the Captain checked the state of the Tunafish’s weapons. Then he remembered that all the ship’s pulse pistols, zap-o-blasters, bazooka blammers, stun guns, rocket launchers and space cannons were inside Cuddles’s tummy.

  “Well, hello!” said Dark Wader’s voice down the intercom. He sounded extremely cheerful. “Fancy meeting you out here.”

  Captain Krill groaned. Of all the sections in the universe, Beaky Wader had to be in theirs. It just wasn’t fair.

  “Hello, Bea
ky,” he sighed. “How did you escape from prison?”

  “I’m called Dark these days, Krill, and you know it. And I escaped from prison because I’m brilliant. Do you like my new ship? She has a hyperdrive, you know. The Tunafish is looking very scrappy. What have you done to her?”

  The Captain wasn’t about to tell his arch-enemy how much metal they’d stripped from the Tunafish to feed Cuddles. Not now Flogiston was so close.

  “It’s called ‘streamlining’,” he lied. “She goes a lot faster now.”

  “She looks like she’s about to fall apart,” Dark Wader sneered. “Mind you, she always looked like that.”

  “Is that Beaky I can hear?” said Fuzz with excitement, waddling on to the flight deck. “I’ve missed him. Hey, mackerel-breath!” he shouted down the intercom. “Fancy a fight?”

  “I’ll prime the guns, Wader,” said a rough voice the Space Penguins didn’t recognize.

  “Thank you, Bigbutt,” said Dark Wader.

  Rocky burst out laughing. “Seriously, Beaky? You’ve found a friend called Bigbutt?”

  “What’s so funny?” said Dark Wader crossly.

  “Bigbutt…” gasped Fuzz, leaning against the wall with one flipper and hooting.

  “What do you want, Beaky?” Captain Krill had to raise his voice over Fuzz and Rocky’s shrieks of laughter.

  “Your total extermination, of course,” said the pengbot. “Bigbutt? Fire!”

  On the other side of the ship, Splash was emerging from the external hatch. He tied one end of the wool to his toolbelt and the other end to the door hatch.

  He checked his tools one more time. Then he stepped out on to the hull, settling his moon boots firmly on the metal fuselage so the magnets on the soles would hold him in place.

  The Tunafish lurched sideways and a space cannonball exploded over his head. With horror, Splash realized they had company.

  Then he realized something a whole lot more important.

  Cuddles had sucked the magnetic soles off his boots.

  “Oh, guppy guts,” he gulped.

  And he started floating away from the Tunafish into the vast darkness of space.

  Captain Krill picked himself up off the floor as the Tunafish spun upright again. “Too close for comfort, Rocky,” he panted. “That space cannonball missed us by a catfish whisker.”

  “Sorry…” Rocky struggled to control what was left of the Tunafish’s flight instruments. “I … I was laughing so much that … that I hit the wrong button…”

  “Bigbutt!” Fuzz howled, lying on the floor and clutching his belly.

  Captain Krill suddenly saw Splash drift past the windscreen of the Tunafish. He was still holding on to the length of wool attaching him to the ship – but only just.

  “Galloping goujons!” he gasped, clapping a flipper to his forehead.

  Following the Captain’s gaze, Rocky and Fuzz stopped laughing and goggled in horror at their friend.

  “Help!” shouted Splash, though no one could hear him. “I’m sorry I never did the washing up when I said I would, Fuzz! I’m sorry I drove that PMU over your belly, Captain! I’m sorry I put superglue in your eyebrows, Rocky! HELP!”

  Two things happened at once. The Lovely Loot dived – and Splash landed face-first on its windscreen.

  “Oh goody-goody goldfish,” said Dark Wader down the intercom. “We have a penguin hostage. Bring him in, Crabba!”

  The Space Penguins could only watch as a hatch in the Lovely Loot’s belly popped open. A metal claw snaked out to catch Splash round the waist and haul him inside. Then a steel rope shot out of the Lovely Loot’s tail, looped round the Tunafish and went taut.

  “So,” said Dark Wader in a chatty sort of voice. “I have your Ship’s Engineer. I have your ship. What will happen next, I wonder? Surrender or I’ll throw Splash back out into space. You have ten minutes.”

  The intercom clicked off. The Space Penguins stared at each other.

  “What are we going to do?” groaned Rocky.

  “Splash will give that flightless maniac a waddle for his money,” said Fuzz. He shook a flipper out of the windscreen at the Lovely Loot. “Short-circuit his wires, mate! Fuse his brain!”

  There was a sudden noise behind them. Cuddles had come out of the vents and was peering through the kitchen door with a greedy look in his eyes. He was so big now that he could hardly fit through it.

  “Leave my kitchen ALONE!” roared Fuzz.

  He waddled at top speed towards Cuddles. The Flogisaur blinked uncertainly, and shot back into the vents again with its scaly tail tucked between its six legs.

  “You scared him, Fuzz,” said the Captain sternly.

  They could all hear a whimpering “Arf!” from deep inside the ship. Cuddles sounded like he wouldn’t be coming out for a while.

  “Now perhaps he’ll stay out of trouble,” said Fuzz. “Focus, team! It’s time to fight that pongy pengbot and rescue Splash!”

  “Rocky,” said Captain Krill suddenly. “Can you fly us directly underneath the Lovely Loot?”

  “Easy as eel pie,” said Rocky. “What’s the plan?”

  Captain Krill clasped his flippers behind his back. “A steel rope links our two ships. We’re already in our spacesuits. If we hide underneath the Lovely Loot, Wader won’t be able to see us as we climb the rope and board the ship by surprise.”

  “What about weapons?” said Rocky. “We haven’t got any!”

  “We’ll have to use our wits instead,” said the Captain.

  “It’s the most dangerous plan you’ve ever suggested, Captain,” said Fuzz. “I love it!”

  Rocky brought the Tunafish gently underneath the Lovely Loot. Within moments, the penguins were scaling the rope leading up to the belly of Dark Wader’s new ship.

  “What do we do when we get there, Captain?” Fuzz asked through his headset.

  “We sneak aboard and free Splash,” Captain Krill answered. “Then we fly down to Flogiston, release Cuddles, repair the Tunafish and leave again.”

  “You make it sound so easy, Captain,” Rocky said.

  The Space Penguins went silently up the steel rope, flipper over flipper, their booted feet floating behind them. Soon they were clustered around the Lovely Loot’s external hatch. Captain Krill gently turned the handle and the penguin astronauts slipped inside. Easing open the connecting airlock, they entered a long room where a tall pengbot was standing, alone and unarmed.

  Dark Wader swung round. “Krill!” he gasped.

  Captain Krill took off his helmet. “Yes, it’s me,” he said.

  “Me too,” said Rocky.

  “Me three, whale wee,” said Fuzz.

  “Where’s Splash?” Rocky demanded.

  “I don’t know,” said Dark Wader with a shrug of his metal flippers.

  Captain Krill noticed the way the pengbot’s red eyes had flicked towards a small door set in the wall.

  “Aha!” He strode towards the little door. “You can’t fool the Space Penguins, Beaky. Splash is in there, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Krill,” Dark Wader smirked.

  Captain Krill rattled the handle. “It’s locked,” he told the others.

  “Try the key,” suggested Fuzz. He pointed to the key in the lock.

  “I was going to,” said Captain Krill with dignity.

  He took the key with both flippers and turned. At once, he glimpsed Splash sitting tied up inside a small golden room.

  “It’s a trap!” shouted Splash, struggling against his ropes. “Waddle for your life, Captain!”

  Crabba and a big bull-like alien the Captain had never seen before leaped out of nowhere and shoved him hard from behind. He tumbled into the room beside Splash.

  “Get them all, Bigbutt!” Crabba crowed.

  “Fight, team!” shouted Captain Krill, as Rocky and Fuzz roared with laughter.

  “Can’t,” Fuzz gasped, chopping weakly at Bigbutt.

  “Laughing … too much…”
Rocky moaned, kicking aimlessly at Crabba’s claws.

  SLAM! The door was locked behind the struggling penguins. Dark Wader, Bigbutt and Crabba grinned at them through a little window.

  “I thought you said these penguins were clever, Wader,” sneered the bull-like alien.

  “My mistake,” said the pengbot. “Welcome aboard, old friends. Make yourselves comfortable. Bigbutt, Crabba and I plan to land on Flogiston shortly, where we will help ourselves to all the lovely free metal that grows there. You, meanwhile, will land a bit earlier than that.”

  Bigbutt sniggered.

  “What are you planning, Wader?” Captain Krill demanded.

  “It was Bigbutt’s idea,” said Dark Wader. His red eyes gleamed. “But I think it’s terrific. You know that Flogiston is covered in volcanoes?”

  “Yeeees,” said the Captain. He didn’t like where this was going.

  “We’re going to drop you in one on our way to land,” said Crabba gleefully.

  “You’ll sizzle like sausages when you hit the lava,” said Dark Wader. “Doesn’t that sound marvellous?”

  The penguins looked at their feet. The floor of their golden prison was one massive trapdoor.

  “There really is no escape,” said Wader.

  “Landing in ten minutes, Wader,” growled Bigbutt, checking the large gold watch on his hairy purple wrist. “Losing the penguins in five.”

  “Eat my flippers, Hugebum,” said Fuzz.

  “No thanks,” smirked Bigbutt. “I don’t like fried food.”

  “Oh, ha ha, Giant Buttocks, you think you’re so clever,” Rocky shouted.

  But Dark Wader, Bigbutt and Crabba had already disappeared.

  “Now what?” said Fuzz.

  Captain Krill untied Splash. “We prepare to die as nobly as narwhals,” he said.