by Steve Cole
While Abbiz, Teggs and Iggy travelled north, Gipsy, Arx and Chas headed east to see the nearest meteorite. It looked like a giant lump of green rock sitting in an enormous crater.
“We must take some samples for testing,” Arx announced, happily waggling his horns. He was always excited at the thought of running tests on things.
“What’s that grey goopy stuff oozing out from underneath the meteorite?” asked Gipsy. “Looks disgusting!”
Chas smiled. “It may look disgusting but it’s actually very precious. It’s called slodge, and it’s the best building tool in the universe – as well as the rarest. But Aggadon is full of it! There’s tons of it underground.”
“That’s nice,” said Gipsy politely. But secretly she thought it was smelly and boring.
“We only discovered it when we started building our camp,” Chas told her. “Feel how light it is.”
Gipsy picked some up and got a surprise. The slodge felt light as a feather.
“Now roll it into a ball,” he suggested.
She rolled it between her hooves – and felt the slodge start to harden.
“Very good,” said Chas. “Now throw some at the meteorite.”
Gipsy did as she was told – and Arx jumped as the ball of slodge smashed into the meteorite like a wrecking ball! A large lump cracked off from its stony surface.
“There’s your sample, Arx!” Chas beamed.
“That’s amazing!” Gipsy declared. “You can use it squidgy like cement, or make it harder than stone.”
“And with slodge you can build anything,” Arx agreed. “I only know of two other planets in the whole Jurassic Quadrant where it can be found.”
Chas nodded proudly. “Once we’ve built homes for all the triceratops coming to live here, we shall swap our spare slodge with other worlds, for food and other useful things. There’s enough to last us for years and years!”
“Hmm,” said Gipsy. “Maybe that’s what the monsters want too!”
“Can you show us another meteorite?” asked Arx. “If I take another sample I can compare the two side by side.”
“There is a meteorite a mile or so from here,” said Chas. “But we’ll have to hurry if we want to be back by nightfall. The days are short on Aggadon at this time of year.”
The three dinosaurs trudged over rock plains and grassland, stopping now and then to graze. Then at last, on the fringes of a forest, they found another green meteorite. It was twice the size of the first one – as big as a house. Sludgy slodge was splattered all around.
“I’ll get you another sample,” said Gipsy, scooping up some slodge. She made another, bigger ball and threw it at the meteorite as hard as she could. The slodge hit the giant rock like a bullet. It caused a long, narrow crack to appear. Then the meteorite began to rumble and crumble.
“Look out!” Chas cried, jumping back and clutching his hat. “It’s splitting in two – like an egg or something!”
Gipsy’s head-crest flushed blue with alarm. “Do you think there could be something inside that thing?”
“I don’t know,” said Arx as the green meteorite cracked open and rock dust flew everywhere. “But I think we’re about to find out!”
Chapter Four
CHASED BY MONSTERS!
Gipsy and Arx waited tensely, poised for action, while the rock dust slowly cleared. But the only danger was their having a coughing fit.
“That meteorite is solid rock all the way through,” Arx declared. “It only broke open because you hit it so hard!”
“So, these things aren’t secret monster ships after all,” said Gipsy with relief. “That’s one mystery solved.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Arx. “Hundreds of meteorites don’t just appear out of nowhere – and there were none at all marked on the local space maps. So where did they come from?”
“I don’t know.” Gipsy thought hard. “They’re the same colour as Aggadon’s moon. Could they have fallen down from up there?”
Arx shook his head. “If this many meteorites had fallen from the moon, there would be nothing up there in the sky at all!”
“Speaking of the moon, it’s coming out now,” said Chas. “Night is starting to fall. We had better get back to camp.” “Uh-oh,” said Gipsy. “I feel sort of . . . itchy.”
Arx started scratching his head-frill. “And me!”
“I’m itchy too.” Chas gulped. “Probably just our imagination.”
Gipsy gasped and pointed behind them. “We’re not imagining that!”
A weird animal as tall as a tower was silhouetted against the darkening sky. It was covered in matted black fur. Its head thrashed about on the end of a long straight neck, and its terrifying fangs curved down like mammoth tusks. Five more monsters, identical in every way, came out of the forest behind it, screeching and roaring with rage.
“We can’t fight six of them!” cried Gipsy.
“Then let’s hope we can outrun them!” said Arx, scooping up the rock samples. “Come on!”
And with the roars of the monsters echoing in their ears, Gipsy and the two triceratops ran for their lives . . .
Teggs watched the moon float up from behind the mountains like a big green balloon. Its emerald light was brighter than the torch in his battle helmet.
“I’ve never seen the moon look so large,” said Abbiz. “It must be the time of year.”
“Lucky for us,” said Iggy. “We can still see quite clearly.”
“Not that we’ve found much to see.” Teggs sighed. They had been looking for monsters all day. But apart from six sorts of bog and a very smelly swamp, they had found nothing. “I suppose we should head back to camp.”
“Oh, can’t we keep searching?” asked Abbiz. “The monsters come out at night. We’re bound to find one soon!”
Teggs smiled. “You’re a very brave triceratops, like your uncle. But I promised to keep you safe. Come on, let’s go.”
“Hang on, Captain!” hissed Iggy. “Look, there’s something over here – stuck in that tree!”
Teggs and Abbiz hurried to join him, then they all investigated together. A big white bucket had been shoved in the tree’s bare branches. In the pea-green gloom, Teggs read the writing on the bucket’s side:
PERFORMING SPACE FLEAS
PROPERTY OF JOKO’S
INTERGALACTIC CIRCUS
WARNING!
These nocturnal fleas are extra itchy
To prevent escape, do not open container at night!
“That could explain the itchy feeling whenever the monsters are about,” said Abbiz. “They brought space fleas along to distract us while they get busy smashing our buildings!”
“But this says the fleas belong to a circus.” Teggs frowned. “Whoever heard of monsters running a circus?”
“What does ‘nocturnal’ mean?” asked Iggy.
“It means coming out at night and resting during the day,” said Abbiz. “Hang on – look!” She pointed to some strange burn marks in the long grass of a nearby clearing. “What are those?”
“They look like they were made by a spaceship,” said Teggs.
“A pretty flashy spaceship too,” said Iggy, his nose twitching. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s six-star dung I can smell – the finest fuel you can get.”
“There are funny footprints all around too,” Teggs realized. “Some big, some small.”
“Shh,” said Abbiz. “I think I heard something.”
Teggs listened. Something was thumping and crashing quickly through the undergrowth towards them.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” said Iggy, putting on his stun claws. “The monsters are coming! Now maybe we’ll solve this mystery!”
Teggs and Iggy got into combat positions. The crashing footsteps got louder. The undergrowth shook in the eerie sea-green light . . .
And suddenly Arx, Gipsy and Chas came charging out of the bushes at top speed!
“Captain!” gasped Gipsy in surprise.
&nb
sp; “Watch out!” cried Teggs, but it was too late – their friends were going too fast to stop. With an “OOF”, an “ARGH” and several “OWWW”s the astrosaurs and dinosaurs collided and fell down together in a tangled heap.
Teggs groaned. “What’s going on?”
“Monsters!” panted Chas, removing his horn from Teggs’s bellybutton. “Chasing us!”
Iggy pulled his head out of Gipsy’s armpit. “Did you see them?”
“We couldn’t miss them,” said Gipsy, extracting her hoof from Abbiz’s ear. “There are six of them right behind us!”
“They’re terrifying,” whispered Chas through chattering teeth.
“And they are not ordinary monsters,” said Arx, slipping a protective arm round Abbiz. “They appear to be . . . mutant sabre-toothed woolly giraffes!”
“Giraffes?” Teggs spluttered. He had only ever seen giraffes on wildlife videos. “But I thought they were gentle, quiet, plant-eating animals?”
Arx nodded. “Our super-high-power telescopes show that giraffes evolved on planet Earth – millions of years after we left to avoid that giant rock crashing into the planet. They are agile, nimble creatures. But this could be a dangerous, unknown breed that has managed to master space travel!”
A throaty, threatening roar rang out through the sea-green forest.
“They’re going to get us,” panted Chas, flat-out on the floor. “I can’t run any further.”
“You lot hide here and get your breath back,” said Teggs. “Then go back to the camp. I’ll try to lead those savage sabre-tooths away.”
“I’ll come with you, Captain,” said Iggy. With a quick wave goodbye, he and Teggs charged off towards the sound of roaring.
“Yoo-hoo, giraffes!” Teggs shouted. “Catch us if you can!” The creatures roared angrily, and he and Iggy dived off in a new direction through the forest.
“It’s working!” Iggy reported, glancing behind him and scratching his tail. “I’m ever so itchy – they must be coming after us!”
“Let’s lead them as far from the others as we can,” said Teggs.
They raced on into the thickest, tallest part of the forest, where the big moon’s light could hardly reach. Then suddenly Iggy cried out and stopped with a jerk. “Oh, no! My stun claws have fallen off!”
Teggs ran back to him. “What’s up?”
“Don’t come any closer!” gasped Iggy. “I’m stuck in quicksand!”
At once, Teggs skidded to a stop. But it was too late. He found his front two feet had fallen in the thick, gloopy mud, and now he couldn’t pull them free.
There was another ferocious roar, and the trees shook behind them. Iggy looked round and gulped. “Captain, we have company!” he said. Six sets of eyes were glaring at them from out of the leafy darkness. “The monsters have found us!”
“And we’re just stuck here, helpless.” Teggs pulled up on his legs but it was no good. “We’re sitting ducks!”
Chapter Five
A SUPER-QUICK GETAWAY!
The mutant sabre-toothed woolly giraffes drew closer. In the dull green light Teggs saw their terrible teeth, their thick, matted hair, their nasty little heads bobbing about on the end of their overlong necks. He tried to dig his back feet into the ground to pull himself clear of the quicksand, but it was no good.
One of the monsters reared up and threw itself against a tree. The trunk was bendy and springy. It bent over almost backwards under the monster’s savage attack before finally uprooting.
That gave Teggs a desperate idea. He wriggled backwards, stretched his tail out as far as it would go and waved the end about.
Iggy frowned, furiously scratching his back. “Captain, do you need the toilet or something?”
Teggs stretched even further, sweating with the strain, itching all over. “If I can just hook my tail-spike around that tree . . .”
“What good will that do?” cried Iggy. One of the giraffes stepped closer to them, shaking its neck from side to side and growling deeply.
Finally Teggs dug the tip of his tail into the tree trunk. “Got you!” he gasped. Then, with all his strength, he started to pull back on his tail, bending the tree over towards him. “Hold onto my leg, Iggy. I’m going to try and pull us both free!”
“Too late,” Iggy shouted, though he clung on as ordered. “Those mutant giraffes are going to attack!”
Still pulling on the tree with all his strength, Teggs could only watch as the nearest giraffe loomed over them and lowered its head . . .
And a big teardrop fell with a splash onto the end of Teggs’s nose!
“It’s crying!” Iggy frowned. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know,” said Teggs, just as baffled. The giraffe stared sadly down at them, gnashing its teeth, its big eyes full of tears. “Who are you?” Teggs asked it. “Why are you invading this world?” But then he felt something tugging on his tail. His front feet started to slide out of the quicksand.
“You’re pulling us free, Captain!” cheered Iggy.
“It’s the tree, not me!” Teggs realized. He felt like a fish caught on the end of a line. “It’s bending back into shape!”
The mutant giraffe blinked as its prey was slowly dragged away by the straightening tree.
“Quick, Iggy, take the astro-tracer from my pocket,” said Teggs. “If we fix it to one of those monsters we’ll be able to find it again later!”
Iggy grabbed the tracer and threw it at the nearest giraffe. It landed on the monster’s woolly back. “Direct hit!”
“Well done, Iggy!” Teggs beamed. “Now you’d better hang on tight, because any moment now—”
BOIIINNNGGG!
The tree sprang up straight. As it did so it hauled the two astrosaurs out of the mud – snatching them away from the mutant giraffes – and shot them into the air like a big leafy catapult!
The two astrosaurs found themselves soaring through the night, flying high over the forest and past the cratered face of the enormous emerald moon.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” gasped Teggs.
Iggy nodded, the night air rushing past his ears. “Brace yourself!”
They dropped out of the night sky and landed heavily, not with a thump and not into fire – but with a spectacular, spluttering SPLASH!
Dazed and confused, Iggy spat out a mouthful of water. “We landed in a giant puddle!” he gurgled. “Lucky for us!”
“But unlucky for the camp,” wailed a nearby triceratops, carrying a bucket. “That ‘giant puddle’ was our water supply. And your crash-landing has just splashed all the water away!”
“Oops.” Teggs looked down and realized the triceratops was right. The trickle of water remaining barely came up to their bottoms. “Sorry,” he called, blushing as he licked up some pondweed from his uniform.
Teggs and Iggy helped the triceratops fill his bucket with the little water still remaining and followed him back to the camp. Gipsy, Arx, Abbiz and Chas had just arrived, puffed out from their scramble through the forest, and Teggs told them – a little soggily – what had happened.
“I’m so glad you had a safe splashdown.” Chas sighed. “But it will take time for the watering hole to refill. We will have to fetch water from deeper inside the forest.”
Abbiz nodded. “But what if we run into more of those dreadful giraffe things?”
“I think we should take everyone up to the Sauropod,” Teggs declared. “There is room and water for everyone and you will feel much safer.”
“Now I’ve made the shuttle super-fast, it’ll take no time at all,” Iggy added.
“Thank you,” said Chas gratefully. “I’ll tell everyone at once.”
“I shall go back to the ship too,” said Arx. “I want to study those bits of meteorite – and to see if the dimorphodon have finished marking the spots where they fell, in case there’s a pattern.” He waggled his horns thoughtfully. “I also want to check my wildlife books for info on sabre-toothed giraffes!”
> “Look up Joko’s Intergalactic Circus while you’re at it,” Teggs told him. “I want to know how performing space fleas came to be dumped on Aggadon.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Arx. “Abbiz, you can help me.”
“No!” Abbiz stamped her big foot. “I’m staying here.”
“I’m afraid I have to agree, Arx,” said Teggs. “You heard what a mess Iggy and I got into. We will need her to guide us through the forest tomorrow morning if we want to catch one of those monsters.”
“We haven’t had much luck so far.” Gipsy sighed.
“Check your tracker, Gipsy,” Teggs told her.
Gipsy turned it on – and to her surprise, it beeped noisily. “Hey! I’m getting a signal. What is it?”
“Iggy fixed a tracer on that crying giraffe,” Teggs explained. “Tomorrow we will track it down in broad daylight – and get some proper answers!”
Chapter Six
THE SECRET OF THE SABRE-TOOTHS
Iggy spent the night whizzing about in the shuttle. He took the trembling triceratops up to the Sauropod in groups of four or five, then zipped back to Aggadon to collect the next lot.
“I feel like I’m running a space taxi!” he declared.
Arx spent the night studying lumps of green rock, and looking for any mentions of sabre-toothed woolly giraffes in his wildlife books. But there were none at all.
As for Joko’s Intergalactic Circus, he found that it had gone out of business. Joko spent so long training his animals to do incredible stunts, they hardly ever had time to put on a show! What a shame, thought Arx. Where else could you go to see a spoon-juggling blugbeast, a fire-swallowing ant, super-hoppy fleas – even giraffe acrobats!
He smiled. “I wish we were dealing with acrobatic giraffes instead of nasty, woolly sabre-toothed ones!”
The dimorphodon fluttered about the flight deck, recording where the meteorites had landed and what size they were.
And as the sun came up, Teggs, Gipsy and Abbiz stood alone in the empty camp, ready to track down their mysterious monster, wherever it had gone.
“Look!” said Abbiz. “The moon has normally set by now, but it’s still up in the sky.”
Teggs frowned. “And it looks even bigger than last night!”