Doctor Bonkers!

by Jeremy Strong

  The others nodded their agreement. ‘The Thing That Makes Planets Go SPLAT,’ they chorused quietly.

  The doctor looked at Dylan and Rosie and winked. The Vikings must be talking about the Doombuster! It couldn’t be anything else. Their first clue, at last.

  ‘Have you ever seen The Thing That Makes Planets Go SPLAT?’ asked Rosie.

  The other Vikings looked at her in surprise. ‘You’ve got a very girly voice,’ one of them told her.

  Rosie coughed and scowled before answering. ‘Had a bone in my throat,’ she said as gruffly as possible. ‘So, have you ever seen that weapon?’

  ‘Didn’t you see it?’ growled Patch-eye. ‘Huh. We had it, didn’t we? In our hands. It was ours. Then those sneaky ancient Egyptians came along with their scary dinosaurs and stole it from us. Took it for themselves, they did. Now we’re at war with them, trying to get it back. And we have to find the doctor as well, cos he’s the only one who knows how to make it work.’

  ‘The doctor?’ Dylan prompted. ‘I don’t know what he looks like.’

  ‘He’s very tall – a bit like your pal there next to you. And his hair sticks out – a bit like your pal there. But he’s bald on top – a bit like your pal there. In fact, he looks just like your pal there, apart from the beard.’

  Dylan nudged the doctor. ‘You look just like him.’ He was trying to make a joke of it. They were all chuckling at the extraordinary likeness of the doctor to himself when Alfie finished eating. He gave an enormous Viking burp and wiped his greasy mouth clean with the back of his hand.

  Unfortunately, before he wiped his mouth, Alfie PULLED DOWN HIS BEARD!

  Instant uproar followed. The Vikings goggled at Alfie and his removable beard. Patch-eye lunged forward and yanked hard on the doctor’s beard, tugging it from his chin. Then he tore at Rosie’s beard, and almost died of shock when he realized she was a girl.

  Before the Vikings could raise the alarm the four and a half were on their feet and racing away.

  ‘After them!’ roared Patch-eye. ‘It’s the doctor and a girl! And Erik the Radish –’

  ‘Redd-ish!’ Dylan yelled back.

  ‘Catch them!’ bellowed Patch-eye. ‘They’re after The Thing That Makes Planets Go SPLAT!’

  The Vikings leapt up in a heaving mass and came charging after the runaways. Howls and whoops rose from every corner. Swords sliced the air threateningly. Teeth got gnashed, beards got nasty and every face wore a fierce scowl.

  Dylan went racing ahead, desperately trying to find an escape route. He spotted a Viking standing guard behind a tank that had its engine running. If only he could distract the guard for a few seconds.

  ‘Hey! Your shoelaces are undone!’ he cried.

  The Viking looked at Dylan in utter bewilderment. ‘What are shoelaces?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ shouted Dylan impatiently and gave the Viking an almighty kick on his left shin.

  ‘Aaargh! That hurt! Aaargh! And so did that!’ cried the Viking as Dylan kicked his right shin. The Viking quickly discovered that trying to lift both legs off the ground at the same time was Not A Good Idea and went crashing to the ground. The runaways piled into the tank.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ the doctor yelled at Dylan. ‘You give me directions!’

  The tank gave an almighty lurch and, suddenly, they were moving at high speed, scattering Vikings in every direction as the tank crashed about.

  ‘Left!’ ordered Dylan. ‘I said left, not right. Go right now. Right. Right! RIGHT!! No! Left! Forwards, not backwards! CAN’T YOU DRIVE PROPERLY?’

  ‘I never passed my driving test,’ admitted the doctor. ‘I ran over the examiner and he didn’t like me after that.’

  ‘LEFT!’ screamed Dylan as the tank nearly drove through a massive tent.

  It carried on like a giant tin elephant trying to eat its own tail. It went round in circles. It went round in triangles. It went round in squares. Finally, it went round in a Very Bad Mood as Dylan got fed up with the doctor’s impossible driving.

  At last they broke free of the Viking camp and set off across the desert, with a thousand hairy Vikings in hot pursuit. Some were in tanks themselves. Some were running. Some were walking and some were dawdling at the back, because they didn’t really want to get involved in case they got hurt and they didn’t have any plasters with them.

  Inside the tank, Alfie, Rosie and Bandit were being bounced around like tennis balls in a spin dryer as the doctor hurtled across the sand at top speed. In the distance, Dylan spotted a pyramid. They were heading straight for it, closing fast.

  ‘Pyramid ahead!’ warned Dylan.

  ‘What?’ cried the doctor.

  ‘I said there’s a pyramid ahead. It’s pretty close, you’d better slow down.’

  ‘It’s very noisy. Can’t hear you. What did you say?’

  ‘STOP!’ screamed Dylan. ‘There’s a pyramid dead ahead and –’

  4¼ Meanwhile …

  Several metres beneath the desert a lot of digging was going on. A whole regiment of Roman soldiers was digging a tunnel towards the battleground of the Vikings and ancient Egyptians. It was very hot in the tunnel and rather smelly. Several hundred sweaty Roman soldiers all jumbled together make for a lot of BO.

  Julius Caesar mopped his brow and looked at his map.

  ‘Another few miles to go and then we shall be there. We’ll come to the surface, leap out, seize the Doombuster and vanish into our tunnel again. Won’t they be surprised? Ha ha ha ha ha ha!’

  And at the same time, thousands of miles away, the Titanic peacefully steamed across the ocean.

  5 Bandit Shows the Way. Pity it’s the Wrong One

  There was a dreadful noise as the tank hit the bottom of the pyramid at full speed. The exhaust coughed, belched and burped up a stinking cloud of black smoke as the caterpillar tracks clawed furiously at sand and stone. For a long, wobbly moment the tank was held there, rammed against the base of the pyramid. And then it began to climb, grinding its way up the side at a perilous angle.

  Inside, the contents were trying to sort themselves out. Alfie had ended up piled on top of Dylan. Rosie had one leg stuck under Dylan’s armpit and the other waving loosely in the air like some strange new plant. Alfie had Bandit draped over his head like a ginger wig. A wig with a tail. Only Doctor Starkly-Bonkers was still in his seat.

  Halfway up the pyramid the tank ground to a halt. It gave one more black burp and decided enough was enough. Besides, it didn’t like heights.

  The children clambered out, followed by the doctor. Gazing out across the desert they could see a fast-approaching swarm of angry Vikings. Then, from round the sides of the pyramid, another army appeared. Ancient Egyptians, many of them mounted on dinosaurs, went hurtling towards the enemy.

  ‘Go on!’ cried Alfie. ‘Go get ’em! Hooray! We’re saved!’

  ‘Not quite, I’m afraid,’ the doctor pointed out. ‘They’re also after us.’

  It was true. Ancient Egyptian soldiers were starting to clamber up the sides of the pyramid towards them.

  Rosie hastily searched for an escape route. ‘It looks like there’s some kind of entrance higher up. Maybe we can get inside.’

  ‘Good idea,’ agreed the doctor. ‘Come on.’

  ‘It won’t work,’ muttered Dylan.

  ‘Got a better idea?’ asked Rosie, as an ancient Egyptian spear whizzed past, almost taking off Dylan’s ear before clunking harmlessly against the stonework.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he shouted, hurrying ahead.

  They scrambled up to the hole that Rosie had seen. The doctor said it was probably a ventilation shaft and would lead down into the pyramid. They hurried inside. It was dark, hot and smelly. The shaft sloped down at a steep angle and it was hard work to move along it. Behind them they heard the shouts of the pursuing soldiers.

  ‘Now they’re in front of us and behind us,’ said Dylan gloomily. ‘We’re trapped.’

  ‘Maybe not. There are more passageways off this
one.’ The doctor was peering into the darkness of yet another shaft. ‘Let’s try to lose them all by going down here.’

  The new passage didn’t go down as steeply as the first and after a few bends they came to a small chamber lit by a single flaming brand. On the far side were two tall statues.

  ‘That’s Anubis,’ said Dylan, pointing at a man with the head of a jackal. ‘He was the God of the Dead.’

  ‘And that’s Bast, the Goddess of Protection,’ added Rosie, looking at the one with the head of a cat. Bandit trotted across to Bast, brushing up against her feet and purring happily.

  ‘The ancient Egyptians loved cats,’ Rosie went on. ‘If you hurt a cat you could be put to death.’ Bandit looked back at Rosie. He almost seemed to be smiling. He certainly looked pretty smug, but then cats often do.

  Alfie plucked at Rosie’s hem. ‘I’m hungry,’ he began.

  ‘Don’t you ever stop eating?’ Rosie groaned.

  ‘If I don’t eat I shall never grow at all. I shall just get smaller and smaller and smaller until you’ll need a magnifying glass to see me. So there.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely to happen,’ Rosie told him. ‘You’ll just have to wait.’

  ‘Isn’t there a shop in here?’ Alfie moaned.

  ‘No, they didn’t have shops in ancient Egyptian pyramids.’

  ‘Why not? There should be a sweet shop and an ice-cream place and a burger bar and chips and everything.’ Alfie waved his arms about to show just how big everything was.

  Rosie was stumped. Why didn’t they have shops? When they did the ancient Egyptians at school the teachers hadn’t taught them things like that. She brushed the sweat from her forehead. An ice-cream parlour would be very welcome. She turned to her little brother.

  ‘Alfie, please be quiet so that we can think of a plan.’

  ‘I’ve got a plan already,’ Alfie declared. ‘We get some food.’

  ‘Alfie!’ chorused the twins. ‘Zip it!’

  The doctor sat down against a wall. ‘I think we are safe for the time being, but we can’t stay here forever. Now then, we know from what the Vikings told us that the ancient Egyptians have got the –’ He paused. ‘I’m not even going to try to say Doombuster because I always get it wrong.’

  ‘You just said it,’ laughed Dylan and Rosie.

  ‘I did? Did I? I said Bootbutter? I mean Who-nutter? Poocluster? See – that’s what happens.’ The doctor sighed heavily. ‘Anyhow, we may well find the you-know-what right here in this pyramid. You saw how quickly the army came out to defend this place from the Vikings. I think that’s a good sign that the weapon is here. All we have to do is find it.’

  ‘Without getting caught,’ Dylan added.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the doctor.

  ‘And then get it back to the invisible spaceship,’ Dylan went on. ‘Which will be very difficult to find again because WE CAN’T SEE IT!’

  ‘Yes,’ the doctor nodded.

  ‘Without getting caught again,’ Dylan finished.

  ‘You’re not being very helpful,’ the doctor complained. ‘We’re in enough trouble without you being so awkward.’

  ‘Where do you think we should start looking?’ asked Rosie, trying to be useful.

  ‘Good question,’ beamed the doctor, brightening up. ‘My feeling is that the ancient Egyptians have hidden it somewhere, and the best place to do that would be to put it in a coffin with a mummy.’

  Alfie pulled a face. ‘Yuck!’

  ‘Maybe, but yucky places are good for hiding things,’ the doctor said wisely.

  ‘It’s bound to be heavily guarded,’ Dylan put in. ‘And if they see us in these Viking clothes we’ll be mincemeat. If we take them off we’ll be cooler too. It’s like an oven in here.’

  The doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘Now that, young Dylan, is definitely a good idea.’

  As they got rid of their Viking garb they tried to decide what to do next. They couldn’t go back the way they’d come in case they ran into the soldiers. On the other hand, they couldn’t go forward either because there was no way forward. They tried as hard as they could, but there didn’t seem to be any way out of their problem.

  Rosie was sitting next to the doctor, leaning back against the wall. He was studying her pyjamas.

  ‘They’re very unusual,’ he said. ‘The pictures are particularly interesting. I don’t know if you have noticed, but they all seem to have something to do with Spice and Tame, Twice in Spain, Face and Spine, Space and Time!’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ admitted Rosie.

  ‘Mmm. And I’ve never seen wriggly writing on pyjamas either,’ the doctor went on.

  ‘Wriggly writing? Where?’

  ‘Look, just below your knee,’ the doctor pointed.

  Rosie and Dylan both stared at her knee. Sure enough, a little snake of letters was slithering around the pictures, making its way down towards her ankle.

  THE DOOR OF THE GODS

  That was all it said. The Door of the Gods. Even as they watched the word snake, it slowly faded and vanished.

  Dylan drew in his breath sharply. ‘Those pyjamas are just totally weird,’ he declared, backing away. ‘They give me the creeps.’

  The doctor was frowning and repeating the words to himself over and over again in his usual mixed-up manner. ‘Hmm. The Jaw of the Gobs. The Paws of the Dog. The Law of the Puds. What does it all mean?’

  Dylan was studying the two statues. Finally, he went over and examined them more carefully. He traced lines with his fingers up the wall while the others watched, puzzled. Then he started pressing the wall in different places. When that got him nowhere he began stamping on the floor, leaping from one stone slab to another, like a small, annoyed kangaroo.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Finding a way out,’ muttered Dylan, hopping on to another slab.

  ‘You’re mad,’ Rosie told him.

  ‘And you’re –’

  SKRREEEEEEEEKKKKKKK!

  With an awful scraping and tearing the two tall statues began to move. Slowly, they shifted away from each other, one to the right and one to the left. Hardly had they stopped when the section of wall between them slowly slid up into the ceiling.

  SHWOOOOOFFFFFF!!

  Everyone gawped at the magical doorway. Beyond lay another room. They gathered at the opening and peered in. The new chamber was much bigger than the one they had been in, and finer. Flaming brands lit the walls. These were painted with beautiful images of ancient Egyptian people going about their everyday work. The floor was made up of coloured stone slabs, all squares and triangles, cleverly fitted together in a locking pattern.

  ‘It’s gorgeous.’ Rosie’s face was full of wonder.

  ‘We must be careful,’ warned the doctor. ‘I have heard of rooms like this in the pyramids. They are designed to look lovely, but in fact they are deadly traps. We must take care where we walk. I suggest we don’t walk on any lines.’

  ‘Suppose it’s not the lines that are unsafe?’ asked Rosie. ‘Maybe it’s the spaces between the lines, or the squares, or the triangles.’

  Dylan looked at her in despair. ‘OK, so if we don’t tread on lines or spaces or squares or triangles, that only leaves us the walls and ceiling. Tell you what, Rosie, you go across the ceiling and we’ll go round the walls. Or maybe you’ve got a hot-air balloon in your pocket and we can sail across in that.’

  ‘Oh, very ha ha. You’re just being stupid,’ Rosie sniffed. ‘I was only saying we don’t know which bit is unsafe.’

  ‘We don’t even know if any of it is unsafe,’ Dylan said. ‘But we have to get across the room.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ added Alfie predictably.

  ‘Miaow,’ Bandit put in for good measure.

  Doctor Starkly-Bonkers was tired of their bickering. ‘Right,’ he declared. ‘This is what we are going to do. We must only bare on the beds, I mean head on the bears, ted on the stairs, tread on the squares!’

  Th
e doctor edged into the room, closely followed by the others. They began to cross the floor on tiptoe, hearts in mouths and holding their collective breath.

  Bandit, being a cat, had a mind of his own and went marching off in a quite different direction. He didn’t give two hoots about keeping to squares or tiddling about on tippy-toes like some frilly ballet dancer. Squares and triangles were all the same to him. Alfie went after him.

  There was a sudden rumble, quickly followed by a crunching bang and a startled squeak from Alfie as a stone slab in the floor opened up and swallowed both Bandit and Alfie. SHOOODDOOOFFF! They were gone and before Rosie or Dylan could do anything, the slab slid back into place. KRRRRUNNKKK!

  The twins scrabbled madly at the slab, but it was no good. Rosie was aghast and looked helplessly at the doctor. ‘We’ve lost Alfie and Bandit! What are we going to do?’

  The doctor had no idea. He hurried across to the stone, but before he was halfway there the ground opened up beneath his feet and Doctor Starkly-Bonkers vanished too.

  SHURRRRUPPPPP! KRRRRUNNNNKKK!

  Dylan and Rosie stared at the empty space where the doctor had been a moment earlier. The chamber filled with a deadly silence. They stared all around at the sea of squares and triangles, not knowing where to tread next.

  Rosie’s face was white. ‘We’ve lost Alfie,’ she whispered. ‘What are we going to tell Mum and Dad?’ As she stared hopelessly at Dylan a tear ran down her cheek.

  5¼ Meanwhile …

  Thousands of miles away the Titanic was slicing through the waves towards its date with destiny.

  And deep beneath the desert Julius Caesar was making very good progress in his tunnel, although he had plugged his nostrils with bits of cloth. The sweaty stink from the hundreds of digging soldiers really was getting to him. He had almost reached his destination and now he rubbed his hands together with glee.

  ‘Soon! It will be very soon! I shall have the Doombuster in my hands and then I shall be able to destroy all my enemies in one go and I shall RULE THE WORLD! This will be my master stroke! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!’