Monster Moon
Page 4
“No way, stingray,” said Splash. He ran his flippers thoughtfully over his toughened spacesuit. “Put your helmets back on, guys. We’re in for the ride of our lives.”
The Lovely Loot rocketed through the hot smoky atmosphere of Flogiston. The planet’s famous volcanoes came into view, spouting red-hot magma, throwing glowing rocks into the air and blasting out clouds of thick black ash. Sitting at the Lovely Loot’s control panel, Bigbutt expertly dodged the dangers.
Dark Wader pointed through the windscreen at a mega-massive fiery mountain ahead, whose steep sides ran with boiling lava.
“Let’s drop the penguins in that one!” he said, clanging his metal flippers together with excitement.
“Yes, yes, yes!” crowed Crabba, and clattered his claws.
Bigbutt gave a nasty smile. And as the Lovely Loot flattened out near the top of the volcano, he pressed a button to open the trapdoor and send the penguins to their fiery doom.
The four Space Penguins felt the trapdoor opening beneath their boots.
“Hold on to the bars until I say go!” Splash shouted through his headset.
“Can I just say that I don’t like this plan much?” Rocky shouted back.
The penguins grabbed on to the golden bars of their prison as the floor disappeared. Despite their protective spacesuits, they could feel the heat from the bubbling cauldron of lava below. They dangled there like Christmas decorations for several long hot seconds until the far side of the crater came into view.
“GO!” ordered Splash.
The space mates obeyed. They brought their flippers into their sides and sped through the clouds of smoke like bullets.
“I hope this works, Splash,” Captain Krill shouted.
“So do I,” Splash shouted back.
BOOOM! The volcano erupted beneath them, throwing up a fountain of fire and rock.
“THIS WASN’T IN THE PLAN!” roared Rocky, flapping his flippers in fright. “We were just going to slide down the side of the crater, not land in the middle of a fresh eruption!”
They landed on top of the spewing flames, toppled on to their bellies and started shooting down the mountainside on a great red wave. Splash’s extreme-temperature coating on their spacesuits was working.
“This … is … awesome,” Fuzz gasped through his headset. His helmet was fogging up with the heat.
“I am on FIRE,” Rocky roared. He did a somersault over a lumpy bit of lava and landed perfectly back on his belly. “I am SMOKING!”
The bottom of the volcano rushed towards them. With one final WHOOSH, they bumped down a slope of black pebbles and landed on the charred ground with a bounce.
“Talk to me, Rocky,” Captain Krill said urgently, staggering to his feet. “Are you alive?”
“Never been better,” panted Rocky.
“You said you were on fire!”
“I was the hottest penguin in the universe.” Rocky got to his feet and dusted off the black, sooty belly of his spacesuit. “But not literally.”
“Again!” Fuzz shouted, clapping his suited flippers.
“Look who’s over there, guys,” said Splash.
The Lovely Loot had landed a hundred metres further on, in the heart of a forest of glittering metal trees. Still attached by the Lovely Loot’s steel rope, the Tunafish lay beside it. Dark Wader, Crabba and Bigbutt were tearing metal off the trees, uprooting it from the ground and loading it on to the golden ship. They hadn’t noticed the penguins.
“Let’s clobber them,” said Fuzz enthusiastically.
“And get in the way of those guys?” said Rocky in a faint voice.
The Space Penguins boggled at the sight of two enormous iron-grey creatures galloping towards the Lovely Loot, their massive tails lashing behind them and their vast hoover mouths open wide.
“Fully grown Flogisaurs,” said Splash in awe.
Dark Wader’s metal beak clanged open in shock. He whacked Bigbutt and Crabba to get their attention. “Run!”
The Flogisaurs were almost on the Lovely Loot when they suddenly swerved sideways and hoovered a perfect hole in the side of the Tunafish.
“Our SHIP!” Rocky yelled in horror. “Get off, you great greedy groupers!”
But as they watched, Cuddles zoomed out of the hole in the side of the Tunafish. The creatures brought their thin tails together in a great twisting knot of delight.
Cuddles had found his family.
In the mad scramble to get away from the Flogisaurs, Dark Wader seemed to buckle. He staggered, lost his balance and landed on his back.
“Beaky could use some of your heatproof coating, Splash,” said the Captain. “Flogiston is too hot for his runners.”
“What are we waiting for, guys?” Fuzz demanded. “Let’s nick the Lovely Loot and tow the Tunafish out of here!”
“Arf!” Cuddles cried. He sucked a long metal branch off one of the trees and spat it in the penguins’ direction. It landed by Splash’s feet with a clang.
“Did you see that?” Splash said to the others, picking up the stick of metal. “Cuddles gave me a present. Bye, Cuddles! Be good for your other daddy!”
The penguins sneaked aboard the golden ship, the metal branch still clasped in Splash’s flippers. Through the windscreen they could see Dark Wader ordering Bigbutt and Crabba to help him up.
Captain Krill pulled off his helmet and smoothed his ear patches. “We shouldn’t steal this ship,” he said. “It’s against space regulations.”
“Hugebum dropped us in a volcano,” Fuzz said indignantly. “I think we deserve his ship.”
Splash looked at the piles of metal branches that Bigbutt, Beaky and Crabba had already loaded on to the Lovely Loot. “There’s enough metal here to mend the Tunafish and replace everything Cuddles ate,” he said. “We can tow the Tunafish to Serac, make our repairs there and leave the Lovely Loot behind when we’re finished. That’s not stealing. It’s borrowing.”
“When we’ve mended the Tunafish, we could do more ice sliding in our toughened suits,” said Rocky happily. “And Splash can rebuild the PMUs. After all this excitement, boring little Serac feels like the perfect place for a holiday.”
Captain Krill nodded. “Borrowing, not stealing. I can live with that. Fire up the thrusters, Rocky.”
Rocky pressed a button on the control panel. The Lovely Loot thrummed smoothly beneath the penguins’ feet.
“I love the sound of a well tuned engine,” said Splash.
“Nice saucepans,” said Fuzz approvingly, as he checked out Bigbutt’s kitchen cupboards.
The steel rope tightened on the Tunafish as the Lovely Loot lifted off the scorching ground, towing the fish-shaped craft behind it. Already Cuddles and his family looked tiny. Beaky, Bigbutt and Crabba were even smaller.
Two tears rolled off Splash’s beak as he waved through the windscreen. “Bye, Cuddles,” he shouted.
“Bye, Beaky,” said Captain Krill more cheerfully.
“By the way, Beaky’s going to be seriously annoyed with us now,” said Rocky.
“He wasn’t before?” Splash asked.
The Lovely Loot blasted through Flogiston’s atmosphere, setting its nose towards Serac.
Fuzz emerged from a kitchen cupboard and waved a big jar of caviar at his space mates.
“Anyone for a snack?” he said.
P.S.
“POO POOPY POO-POO-POO!” Dark Wader shrieked. “How are we going to get off this boiling nightmare of a planet now? My runners are melting!”
Quickly, Crabba pointed a claw at Bigbutt. “It’s all his fault, boss.”
Bigbutt gawped at the empty Flogiston sky and burst into tears.
“My SHIP!” he bawled, like a toddler with a burst balloon. He stomped his feet. “THEY ST … ST … STOLE MY SHIP!”
“You stole it first,” Crabba sniped.
“BUT IT WAS LOVELY AND GOLDEN AND M … M … MINE!” wailed Bigbutt.
“Oh, grow up, Butthead,” said Crabba. “We have bigger problems rig
ht now.”
The adult Flogisaurs had started grazing on the large metal trees nearby. But the smaller one was padding towards them, his eyes fixed on Dark Wader’s shiny metal-plated body.
“WAAAH!” Bigbutt weeped.
“What was that thing doing on board the Tunafish in the first place?” said Dark Wader irritably. “And what is it looking at now?”
“You,” said Crabba.
And the scaly little alien sat on his claws to hide his eyes as the creature opened its odd-shaped mouth and slurped.
About the Author
Lucy Courtenay has officially been writing children’s fiction since 1999, and unofficially for a lot longer than that. She has contributed to a number of series for Stripes including ANIMAL ANTICS and, most recently, SPACE PENGUINS. In her spare time she sings with the BBC Symphony Chorus and forages for mushrooms, which her husband wisely refuses to touch. If she were a penguin, she would be a rockhopper. Her eyebrows are already fairly awesome.
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of Little Tiger Press
1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2014
Text copyright © Lucy Courtenay, 2014
Illustrations copyright © James Davies, 2014
Cover illustration copyright © Antony Evans, 2014
eISBN: 978–1–84715–532–0
The right of Lucy Courtenay and James Davies to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case wwwof reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.littletiger.co.uk
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