Doctor Bonkers!

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘But the first time I switched it on it created an explosion so massive it disturbed Tace and Spime. I mean Space and Time. That’s what caused this mix-up on the planet below. The whole of history has been muddled together. Just before I came here to get you, I flew over the ocean and there was the Titanic steaming along, and sailing after it was a Roman warship. Incredible. Such a mess! Now I am trying to put it right.’

  ‘Good,’ declared Rosie, who was very pleased to hear it. She didn’t like the sound of the Doombuster at all. ‘So I imagine you are trying to mend the Doombuster and make it into a proper vacuum cleaner?’

  The doctor shook his head and looked uneasily round the room, as if he was suddenly feeling rather guilty about something. Which he was.

  ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know where the Doombuster is,’ he admitted.

  Rosie turned white from head to toe and back up to her head again. ‘You mean to say you have invented a weapon that can destroy worlds and YOU’VE LOST IT?’

  ‘It got stolen by pirates.’ That was the doctor’s excuse. ‘They sold it to Julius Caesar, but then Robin Hood snaffled it from him. He was caught by the Vikings and then it went somewhere else and now I’m not sure where it is. The ancient Egyptians might have it. Or even Veen Quicktoria. I mean Queen Victoria.’

  Rosie and Dylan stared at each other. This was terrifying. Someone, somewhere, had a weapon that could destroy whole planets, but nobody knew who, or where, it was.

  ‘The good thing is that nobody knows how to use it, except me,’ the doctor offered as a ray of hope.

  ‘Is it difficult to use?’ asked Dylan.

  ‘You do have to plug it in and switch it on,’ the doctor told them.

  ‘But anyone could do that!’ Dylan gasped.

  ‘The switch is hard to find and it’s a bit stiff,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s not my fault pirates stole it. Anyhow, the thing is, everyone is after it and they’re after me too. They want me to show them how it works so they can destroy their enemies. That’s why I am so pleased to see you two. I mean three. No, four … if you count the cat.’

  ‘Miaow,’ muttered Bandit, who definitely wanted to be counted.

  Rosie was puzzled. ‘Why us? What can we do?’

  The doctor’s face broke into a broad smile and he laughed dismissively. ‘Well, if you haven’t been sent here deliberately to find the Doombuster, then my name’s not Doctor Bonkly-Starkers. Which it isn’t. I’ve got it wrong again, haven’t I? I mean Doctor Stonkly-Bonkly. Binkly-Stinky. Stinkly-Wonkers. Starkly-Bonkers! That’s it!’

  Rosie and Dylan weren’t listening. They were too busy taking in what the doctor had just told them. He was expecting them to find the world’s most dangerous weapon. They would have to go back to the warring planet, right in the middle of the Vikings, the ancient Egyptians and the dinosaurs. THEY COULD BE KILLED!

  Little Alfie stroked Bandit and smiled. ‘It’s going to be brilliant!’ he breathed happily.

  3 A Lot of Beards and One Sore Bottom

  ‘Have you got any cola?’ asked Alfie. He was very disappointed when the doctor said there was no cola on board and he would have to make do with a few peanuts and a cup of coffee. Alfie reckoned it wasn’t much use having your own spaceship if you couldn’t even get something decent to eat or drink.

  ‘We went to Italy with Mum and Dad,’ he told the doctor. ‘On a plane, and they gave us crisps and a BIG meal on a tray AND cola. I had two lots.’

  ‘Cola’s not very good for you,’ said the doctor, which prompted Alfie to say that the doctor was ‘as bad as Mum’.

  ‘Have another peanut,’ suggested the doctor. Alfie shot him a very dark look and took three peanuts because they looked so tiny. ‘It’s not enough for an ant,’ he muttered. ‘Not even a baby ant. Not even a baby ant’s baby. Not even a baby ant’s baby’s baby.’

  ‘Alfie,’ snapped Dylan, ‘zip it! You’re beginning to sound like the doctor.’

  Doctor Starkly-Bonkers stiffened. ‘I’m not six!’ he complained childishly.

  Bandit wasn’t interested in peanuts either. He wandered off to see if he could find something bigger, more chewy, and, hopefully, with four legs and a tail so he could chase it around a bit. It might even come in the shape of a mouse, if he was lucky.

  In the meantime, Rosie had been doing some thinking. It was all very well for the doctor to claim that the children must have been sent there to help him, but they had only just escaped from deadly danger – and now he was suggesting they should go back into the thick of it. She decided to point this out to him.

  ‘Ah! But I have the answer,’ the doctor beamed. ‘I agree that it would be very silly to jump straight back into that awful ding-dong going on down there. No, no, no. It would be much better to start with something a lot safer. I think we should go and join the Vikings.’

  ‘Should we?’ Rosie answered weakly. She could remember the Vikings charging towards her. They had looked very fierce and had nasty, pointy swords, not to mention the tanks.

  ‘Surely the Vikings will spot us straight away?’ Rosie suggested.

  ‘Not at all. We shall be in disguise. It just so happens I have a whole load of costumes on board from my grandson’s birthday. He had a dressing-up party – that’s how the food fight started. They couldn’t agree on who’d be what.’ The doctor shook his head sadly. ‘People – always fighting. Anyhow, the costumes could be useful. Let’s take a look.’

  The doctor took them to the rear of the ship and there they found a whole range of costumes – funny hats, clown gear, cowboy stuff, Viking kit, pirate clothes – all sorts.

  Alfie pounced on some Roman armour. ‘It’s the same as mine, only even better. Wow!’

  ‘When you’re trying to sort out history, it’s useful to have the right clothes,’ the doctor explained, pulling out some Viking jackets and leggings. Rosie’s cosmic pyjamas still showed here and there, but it was the best she could do. As a final touch, the doctor produced several false beards.

  The children fell about laughing at each other. Rosie had a great fat ginger beard. Dylan’s was a full black one with lots of pointy tufts. Alfie’s face had completely vanished behind the whopper he had chosen.

  ‘Pull it down under your nose, drain-brain,’ Dylan ordered.

  ‘Drain-bottom,’ sniggered Alfie. He picked up a small beard and tried to fit it round Bandit’s chin. ‘Look! Look! Bandit’s a Viking cat!’

  Bandit didn’t bother to try to remove the beard. He was used to Alfie treating him like a kind of four-legged doll.

  ‘We’re not taking him with us, are we?’ asked Dylan.

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Alfie. ‘He has to come.’

  ‘He’ll only get us all into trouble,’ Dylan grumbled. ‘I mean, how many Vikings wander about with a cat?’

  ‘He’s in disguise!’ Alfie yelled. ‘Nobody will notice. He’s got to come. You’re coming, aren’t you, Bandit?’

  ‘Miaow.’

  ‘He said “Yes”.’ Alfie claimed.

  ‘He said “Miaow”,’ Dylan growled. ‘Anyway, if he’s coming, he can’t wear a beard. It looks stupid.’

  The children finally managed to stop arguing and the doctor explained that they would have to hide the spaceship. They would land near the Vikings, but out of their sight.

  ‘The spaceship has an invisibility shield that I can turn on when we leave, so nobody will spot it.’

  ‘They will if they bump into it,’ declared Alfie. ‘They’ll be walking along and suddenly – BANG! They’ll probably get a nosebleed or knock themselves out. Then they’ll know where it is. And they’ll have to go to hospital and I bet their mums will be really cross with you and come round to your house and say you’re a bad, bad man and you’ll be in BIG trouble.’

  The doctor sighed and asked the twins if there was an invisibility shield for small boys, or at least something that would stop him talking. It wasn’t necessary because by that time they were about to land back on the planet. A hush fell on al
l of them. Their adventure was about to get even more dangerous.

  With a gentle bump the spaceship made contact with the ground. The doctor checked all was clear and they clambered down the ladder. He pressed a button on the side of the spaceship and all of a sudden they couldn’t see it.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! The doctor tapped his finger on the side of the invisible ship. ‘You see? It’s still there,’ he said happily, and led the way towards the Viking camp.

  ‘We must all pretend to be Vikings, so try to speak in a low voice,’ suggested the doctor. ‘We must have Viking names too. Here are some I know: Erik, Thor, Sigurd, Harald, Magnus, Ulf, Leif – take your pick. We’re almost there and we’ve been spotted,’ he finished urgently. ‘Get ready to be a Viking!’

  ‘Pull your beard down, Alfie,’ whispered Rosie as they entered the Viking camp.

  ‘What about Bandit?’ asked Alfie. For a moment the others were silent, then Rosie scooped up the cat and shoved him down the front of her top.

  ‘Stay still and don’t dig your claws in,’ she commanded.

  The camp was hugely busy. Many of the Vikings were sharpening their swords. Others were preparing food or building shelters for the night. Some of the Vikings were polishing their tanks. Everywhere there were Vikings wandering about, looking grim and battleworn.

  A trio of guards stopped the newcomers at the gate. ‘Who goes there?’ shouted the biggest, hairiest Viking.

  ‘I’m Th-Th-Thief,’ blurted the doctor. ‘I mean Teeth, Keith, Chief, Leif – that’s it! Leif Bonkersson!’

  Dylan stepped forward next and growled in as low a voice as he could manage. ‘Erik the Red.’

  One of the other Vikings bent down and pushed his scarred and hairy face right up close to Dylan’s. ‘You can’t be Erik the Red,’ he snarled. ‘I’m Erik the Red already!’

  Dylan thought quickly. ‘I mean I’m Erik the Redd-ish,’ he corrected.

  The other Vikings hooted with laughter. ‘Erik the Radish? He said he’s Erik the Radish!’ Even Rosie giggled.

  Dylan stamped one foot. ‘Erik the REDD-ish, and don’t you laugh at me, or I’ll turn your brains inside out.’

  ‘Ooooooh, we are so scared,’ sniggered one of the three guards. ‘All right, who are these others, then?’

  ‘Sigurd the Strange,’ said Rosie calmly.

  ‘What’s so strange about you?’ demanded Erik the Red. Then he noticed the strange lumps and bumps moving about under Rosie’s jacket.

  ‘That’s certainly peculiar,’ he said. ‘What’s going on there?’

  The doctor came to the rescue. ‘She’s got squirmitis.’

  At that moment a ginger tail slipped out from the bottom of Rosie’s jacket.

  ‘And it’s getting worse,’ the doctor added as Rosie hastily pushed it back in. ‘Squirmitis – horrible disease. Highly infectious.’

  Erik the Red backed away and turned to Alfie instead. ‘Well, titch, who are you?’

  ‘I’m Thor,’ said little Alfie. ‘Thor Bottom.’ It’s a good thing Alfie’s face was almost completely covered by his beard, otherwise the Viking guards would have spotted the huge grin underneath it.

  ‘You’re mighty small, Thor Bottom. How come you’re so short?’ demanded Erik the Red.

  ‘He hasn’t had any breakfast,’ Dylan answered quickly.

  Erik the Red frowned for a moment and then nodded. The guards parted and the little band of adventurers entered the camp proper, one of them holding her wriggling tummy and cursing Bandit under her breath as the cat kneaded her stomach with his claws.

  4 A Nice, Quiet Viking Chat Round the Campfire – As If

  The Vikings were very noisy, shouting and roaring at each other, pushing and shoving and collapsing with laughter when someone fell over, as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

  ‘It’s like the playground at school,’ Rosie remarked tartly. ‘Only worse.’

  ‘Keep your eyes open for the Boomduster, Broom-mustard, I mean Doomfluster. Oh, you know! The Thingy!’

  ‘I take it you mean the weapon that can destroy planets?’ Rosie still hadn’t forgiven the doctor for creating such a monstrous thing in the first place.

  ‘I didn’t know the vacuum cleaner would go so wrong,’ the doctor explained. ‘Besides, we have to get the Doombuster – there, I said it! – we have to get the Doombuster back for two reasons. One – we must stop anyone trying to use it to destroy things. And two – I have realized that we need the Doombuster to put everything right. There are bits and pieces in the machinery that will help me put history back in the right order.’

  Dylan wanted to know what the Doombuster looked like, so they knew what to search for.

  ‘It’s long, silver, blue and red. One end looks like a very large, fat sausage. There’s a long tube poking straight out of it with a wide mouth on the end. That’s the bit that was meant to suck things up, only it didn’t. Blew them to bits instead.’

  It occurred to Rosie that maybe the doctor’s big problem was that he often got things mixed up. The Doombuster was blowing instead of sucking, and he was always getting his words round the wrong way. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t. Rosie decided to keep a close eye on the doctor in case he got anything else important muddled up.

  The four and a half searchers, (that’s four humans and a cat, but don’t tell Bandit), wandered around the camp for hours. At least that’s what it felt like, especially to Alfie. After all, his legs were shorter than everyone else’s, apart from Bandit, of course.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Alfie complained. Again.

  ‘We haven’t got any food,’ Dylan said wearily. ‘And I’m fed up.’ He flung a scowl at his twin sister. ‘This is all your fault. You and your stupid cosmic pyjamas.’

  ‘I didn’t know they’d bring us here,’ responded Rosie. ‘Besides, it was Bandit who trod on the flashing picture.’

  ‘Huh! Don’t know why you wear pyjamas anyway,’ Dylan grumbled.

  ‘Because it was bedtime, beans-for-brains!’ Rosie shot back.

  Doctor Starkly-Bonkers could see a major argument was brewing. It was because everyone was hungry. He pointed out a small group of Vikings sitting round a fire, barbecuing some meat. The smell of roasting drifted across and went straight up his nose, making all his taste buds tingle.

  ‘Let’s see if we can join that group of Pikings, I mean Bikers, Vipers, Vikings! They might let us share their food.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ cried Alfie, already hurrying over with Bandit in tow.

  ‘Don’t suppose they’ll let us have any,’ Dylan muttered grumpily.

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Rosie. ‘He complains about everything.’

  ‘I don’t complain about everything,’ Dylan complained. ‘I only complain about you and one or two other things.’

  ‘Everything,’ teased Rosie.

  As Dylan opened his mouth to argue, the doctor hastily broke in. ‘Oh, look, they’re toasting a boat. I mean posting a stoat, roasting a goat! Smells delicious. Come on, and while we’re there we might find out something about the Doombuster.’

  The group of diners shuffled along the logs they were sitting on, to make way for the newcomers. They introduced themselves, with Dylan telling everyone he was Erik the Reddish – ‘That’s red, the colour,’ he underlined. He didn’t want any more radish jokes. He was feeling grumpy enough as it was.

  The Vikings were quite happy to share their meal, but they stared at Alfie and Bandit an awful lot.

  ‘You’re pretty small,’ said one, who was wearing a patch over his left eye.

  ‘I’ve always been the smallest,’ Alfie burbled, trying hard to produce a deep voice. It sounded as if he was talking underwater. ‘I was small when I was born.’

  ‘You should eat more meat,’ nodded another Viking. ‘That’ll make you grow.’

  ‘No, it’s fish that makes you grow,’ said the third Viking.

  ‘Uh-uh,’ grunted the fourth. ‘Fish is for your brain. It’s cabbage that makes y
ou taller.’

  ‘Meat,’ repeated Patch-eye.

  ‘Fish,’ snapped the third Viking.

  ‘Cabbage,’ put in number four.

  The first Viking, the one who had started it all by saying how small Alfie was, got to his feet. ‘Actually,’ he said, rolling his head commandingly, ‘it’s not meat, fish or cabbage that makes you taller.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ chorused the others, along with Alfie. They all wanted to know.

  The first Viking sniffed and smiled. ‘Actually, what makes you taller is a pair of stilts. Ha-haah!’ And he roared with laughter while the other three fell backwards off their log, clutching their sides. They clawed their way back on to the seat. Bandit gave them a withering glance and carried on tearing at the piece of goat he’d managed to steal.

  When the Vikings finally settled back down, Doctor Starkly-Bonkers tried to steer the talk round to the Doombuster.

  ‘That’s a mighty sword you have there,’ the doctor told Patch-eye.

  The Viking drew his sword and waved it proudly over his head. ‘This is my sword Belly-Ripper,’ he declared. ‘With this weapon I have slain many men.’

  The other Vikings wanted to show off their swords too. One by one they drew them from their leather sheaths.

  ‘My sword is named Skull-Splitter,’ said one.

  ‘And mine is called Headache,’ said another. ‘Because when I hit you on the head it will give you the worst headache ever!’

  The doctor nodded and said nice things about all the swords, but he had a more important question for the Vikings. ‘What do you think the most powerful weapon in the world is?’

  The Vikings looked at him sharply. Patch-eye’s good eye glinted in the flickering flames from the fire. He smiled, stroking his thick beard. ‘That would have to be The Thing That Makes Planets Go SPLAT,’ he declared.