Doctor Bonkers!

by Jeremy Strong

  Doctor Starkly-Bonkers made for the throne where Alfie and Bandit had been sitting.

  ‘Just a moment. I must look under here. I have a funny feeling that –’ The doctor broke off and stared beneath the seat of the throne. ‘At last,’ he breathed. He bent over the seat, reached inside and pulled out a long, silver, blue and red sausage.

  ‘Behold! I have the Broomshutter, I mean the Zoomnutter, the Spooncustard, Moonduster, Doombuster! We have it back! Now we must get to the spaceship as prickly as crossible!’

  With Dylan leading they made their way to the outside. A ghastly sight met their eyes. The Vikings were on the rampage everywhere. Tanks were thundering across the desert, but not necessarily in the right direction. The Vikings were still clanking round in circles, crashing into each other, lifting their huge barrels and firing straight into the air. They brought down several of their own planes.

  BOOOM! ‘Ow! That hurt, porridge-brain! I’m on your side!’

  BOOOM! ‘Stop it! You’ve just shot both my wings off! I can’t fly now! Aaaargh!’

  At that point the dinosaurs came charging out. Hundreds of pterosaurs took to the air, their vast black wings darkening the sky with their heavy flip-flop-flapping.

  They swooped down on the Viking biplanes, beating them to matchwood with their great wings or stabbing them with their terrifying beaks. A squadron of gigantic pteranodons drifted across high above and began bombarding the Viking troops with heavy-duty dino poop. (Which, if you have never seen it, is surprisingly similar to rice pudding.)

  While all this chaos was going on, the children, Bandit and the doctor headed for the invisible spaceship, wherever that was. But one band of particularly fierce Vikings had spotted the doctor carrying the world’s deadliest weapon. A shout went up and they came roaring after them, brandishing their swords and rattling their beards.

  ‘Hurry!’ yelled Dylan, but it was hard work running across sand, especially for Alfie, who had the shortest legs. (Apart from Bandit, of course, but at least he had four of them.) Dylan swung Alfie on to his shoulders and gave him a piggyback.

  ‘We’ll never make it to the ship at this speed,’ panted Rosie in despair.

  By this time they were close to the pyramid where they had been captured, and Dylan had an idea.

  ‘This way!’ he cried, plunging through one of the entrances.

  BERRANNGGG! SHHLUNNKKKK-CLUNNK-BUDDUNGGG!!

  A Viking tank scored a direct hit on the pyramid wall above them and stones came tumbling down all around. They hurried inside.

  ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Rosie. ‘We need the spaceship.’

  ‘I know, I know. Just follow me! This way – come on!’ He plunged down a passageway, deep into the pyramid. By this time they were all breathless, but Dylan forced them on and at last they came to the animal park.

  Some of the dinosaurs were still there – a few tyrannosauruses and stegosauruses, the triceratops and brontos. They roared and stood on their back legs. They stamped the ground and huffed and puffed. Once again, Bandit went running forward, hissing and spitting, and within seconds all the dinosaurs had backed off.

  ‘That’s amazing!’ said Rosie.

  ‘It’s just what I was hoping,’ Dylan answered with a smile. ‘This is what happened to Alfie and the doctor. Alfie’s been shouting it into my ear while we were running out there. This is our best chance to escape. Grab a dino.’

  ‘You what?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Quick – everyone – find a dino. We’re going on the ride of our lives, back to the ship.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ cried Rosie.

  ‘No, I’m being chased by thousands of Vikings and ancient Egyptians and goodness knows what else and I don’t want to be killed. Get on a dinosaur and let’s go!’ As he spoke, Dylan was clambering up the back of a tyrannosaurus and hauling Alfie up with him. Think big – that was Dylan’s motto.

  The doctor plonked himself on a triceratops.

  ‘Be careful with that one,’ warned Dylan. ‘They don’t have any brakes.’

  Rosie hastily stuffed Bandit down the front of her pyjamas. ‘And no scratching this time,’ she warned. ‘Or I’ll throw you overboard.’ She gingerly seated herself on a knobbly ankylosaurus.

  Dylan swung his monster round. ‘Here we go!’ he yelled and, with a kick of his feet, launched the tyro forward. Moments later they burst out of the pyramid and into the desert, scattering the Vikings in all directions.

  Bouncing madly up and down behind his big brother, Alfie turned in his seat and pointed his Utter Death space-gun at the Vikings.

  ‘Peeyoww! Peeyoww!’ he went, and suddenly shouted in triumph. ‘I got one! I got one!’

  Sure enough, one of the Vikings had hit the ground, but that might have been because he’d tripped on the shoelaces he didn’t have.

  And then the pterosaurs came screaming down at the children, with beaks as sharp as mountain peaks and teeth like chainsaws.

  10 Can a Big Mess Save the World?

  NEEEEEYOOOWWWWWWWWW!

  ‘That was too close for comfort,’ cried Rosie as a diving pterosaur almost took off her head.

  ‘I think we are almost there,’ the doctor shouted to the others. ‘I’m sure the place pip is around here somewhere. I mean, chase blip, face chip, spaceship.’

  ‘Can’t you switch off the invisibility shield?’ asked Dylan, ducking like crazy as another pterosaur went shooting past, beak wide open. It came so close, Dylan could even see its tonsils!

  ‘If you remember, the button is on the side of the ship,’ the doctor answered.

  ‘That is the most stupid thing I have ever heard!’ yelled Dylan crossly. ‘How are we ever supposed to find – Oww!’

  KERTHUDDDD! KLANNGGG!!

  There was an almighty bang as Dylan’s Tyrannosaurus rex went thundering into something very hard, very heavy and very not there at all.

  KERPLONKKK! KRRUNNCH!!

  That was the noise of Doctor Starkly-Bonkers and his triceratops colliding with what wasn’t there, closely followed by Rosie’s ankylosaurus. The whole lot fell over. Dylan sat up and shook his dazed head. What on earth had happened?

  ‘Aha!’ cried the doctor triumphantly. ‘I knew the spaceship was here somewhere.’ He got to his feet and began wandering round, pressing the sides of the invisible ship. Meanwhile, several pterosaurs went crashing straight into it and flopped to the ground, stunned.

  ‘Hurry up, before these horrible things wake up and decide we’d make a nice picnic,’ Dylan urged.

  SHWOOOOOFFF!

  With a noise like the arrival of Father Christmas down a chimney, the spaceship suddenly appeared before them. The hatch opened and they all tumbled in. The doctor started the engines and moments later, they whooshed into space. Soon they were whizzing silently through a sea of stars in utter peace.

  It was the most wonderful moment. The doctor put the ship on to automatic pilot and they settled down to sort things out.

  ‘Is there anything to eat?’ asked Alfie.

  ‘No!’ the others chorused and burst out laughing. It was the relief.

  ‘Now I must sort out the mess I have made down there,’ the doctor explained. ‘We have the thingy thing back, you know, the dum-di-dum –’

  ‘Doombuster?’ offered Rosie.

  ‘Exactly. I need to use some of the parts from it to build a Time Separator and Redistributor.’

  Dylan nodded. ‘I guess that will separate time and redistribute it.’

  ‘Who would have thought it?’ Rosie murmured.

  ‘But we have one problem,’ the doctor went on. ‘To make the Time Separator I also need many parts from the spaceship. We can’t use the spaceship while I build the machine. We have to land somewhere.’ He peered at everyone from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. Rosie was sure they were growing fast.

  ‘On Earth,’ the doctor added, so things were quite clear.

  ‘But –’ Alfie began.

  ‘But –’ Dylan added.

&nb
sp; ‘But –’ Rosie shivered.

  ‘Mia–’ began Bandit, distressed.

  ‘I know,’ sighed the doctor ‘We have only just come from there, but we must go back. Don’t worry. We will find somewhere quiet, with a little stinkly cream, I mean tinkly stream and sunny trees and the birds going chirpy chirpy. I am sure all will be fine.’

  The scientist looked at everyone and they returned his look. Why didn’t they believe him? They watched in disappointed silence as he turned the spaceship round and they headed back to Earth.

  The doctor found somewhere quiet, but there was no tinkly stream and no sunny trees and no birds going chirpy chirpy. That was because he had landed on the side of a massive iceberg.

  It was dark – very dark. And cold – very, VERY cold. Moonlight twinkled on the waves slapping quietly along the towering sides of the iceberg. The only other sound was the creak and squeak of icy chunks rubbing together.

  The doctor at least was happy. ‘There – you see? No Vikings, no ancient Egyptians. We have no worries. Let’s get to work.’ He took Dylan by the arm. ‘Come, my boy, you can help me build the machine.’

  In the engine room, Dylan and the doctor set to. Soon they were up to their ears in coils of different coloured wires. Bits of spaceship lay all around them. Dylan was constantly having to hold this or that while the doctor wired up tiny components or screwed things together, unscrewed things, dropped things, picked them up, and generally made a BIG MESS. Dylan hoped very much that the BIG MESS would work when it was finished.

  ‘There!’ the doctor cried triumphantly. ‘Help me carry it through to the others.’

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Rosie, staring at the extraordinary confusion of wires and bits of metal. ‘It looks like mum’s knitting after Bandit has played with it.’

  ‘My dear young lady,’ the doctor said tetchily, ‘this machine will save the world! All we need now is a pigglety botch.’

  ‘A pigglety botch?’ repeated Rosie.

  ‘Yes, you know, a diggerty potch, fiddly snotch, digital watch!’

  ‘Oh!’ chorused the others, and they all looked at each other.

  Dylan had an ordinary watch. Rosie didn’t have one at all. They looked to Alfie.

  ‘I’ve got one at home,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘Surely one of you has a digital watch?’ pleaded the doctor. ‘How can we put in the dates for everything without a digital watch?’

  He collapsed in his seat, hands clasped to his head and began muttering to himself. ‘We have destroyed the engine of the spaceship to make the Time Separator, so now we can’t go ANYWHERE. We are stuck on this iceberg FOREVER and the world will NOT BE SAVED. I have wasted my time.’

  Rosie went over and sat next to him. ‘Surely you can think of something?’ she asked hopefully and with her fingers crossed. But the doctor shook his head. He stopped and frowned.

  ‘There’s something moving on your pyjamas.’

  Rosie was on instant alert. ‘Where?’ she demanded. ‘Show me, quick!’

  ‘Right there,’ said the doctor, pointing at Rosie’s knee. It was another message.

  FIND THE POCKET

  ‘What pocket?’ snapped Rosie. ‘These pyjamas don’t have a pocket. They’ve never had a pocket.’ She got to her feet. The others crowded round to help her look.

  ‘It might have some food in it,’ Alfie suggested happily.

  ‘Turn right round,’ ordered the doctor.

  ‘Lift your arms up,’ said Dylan.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Rosie grumbled. ‘You won’t find a pocket in my armpit!’

  They soon gave up. There was no pocket. The trickle of words faded away. The message had gone. Gloom descended once more. Alfie tugged at Rosie’s sleeve.

  ‘Suppose the pocket is inside the pyjamas?’ he suggested.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody would put a pocket inside a pair of pyjamas,’ said Rosie, starting to pat herself all over. ‘What on earth would be the – oh! What’s this?’ She was feeling the back of her leg, just above the knee.

  ‘There’s something there. Excuse me a moment.’ Rosie disappeared into the spacepod, stuck her arm down her pyjama bottoms and fiddled around until she found the strange little pocket. She screamed and rushed back out to the others.

  ‘I don’t believe it! It’s a digital watch!’ Rosie waved the watch and danced and yelled and hurriedly handed it over to the doctor. ‘These pyjamas are driving me MAD!’

  ‘We have no time to lose,’ the doctor said. ‘Listen carefully. First we connect the watch to the Time Separator and Redistributor with some bits of wire. Then we use the Redistributor to gather up all the ancient Egyptians. We reset the watch to ancient Egyptian times and we send all of them back to their own time, Kerpow! Like that!’

  ‘That’s clever,’ murmured Dylan. ‘And I helped make it,’ he added proudly.

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t go wrong, in that case,’ muttered Rosie.

  Doctor Starkly-Bonkers carried on. ‘Then we do the same thing for the dinosaurs and the Vikings and for me.’ The doctor beamed, but his smile suddenly vanished.

  ‘But we must hurry because I don’t think you have noticed that there is a very, very big ship steaming straight towards us and I am sure it is going to crash into our iceberg, Smish-Smash-Whoopsy!’

  ‘It’s the Titanic!’ screamed Rosie.

  10¼ Meanwhile …

  The desert moved. It heaved. It bibbled and bubbled. It even bobbled a bit and then, suddenly – ‘TA RA!’ Julius Caesar yelled triumphantly, leaping out of the sand, closely followed by a thousand Roman soldiers, armed to the teeth and yelling like crazy demons who’d been stuck in a tunnel for two years, digging.

  ‘Aha!’

  ‘Raaaaargh!’

  ‘Neeeeehah!’

  ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Now we’ve got you!’

  But Julius Caesar and the thousand Roman soldiers hadn’t got anything. The spaceship had gone. The Doombuster had gone. The ancient Egyptians were no longer there and neither were the Vikings. The desert was empty and silent.

  Caesar gazed around for a long time and slowly lowered his sword. ‘Rats!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re too late.’

  His eyes narrowed. (Roman soldiers always narrowed their eyes when they were thinking.) He narrowed his eyes until they were teeny weeny slits. He narrowed them until he couldn’t even see. That’s how hard he was thinking. All of a sudden, they sprang wide open and a cunning smile played along his lips. Julius Caesar turned to his men.

  ‘I have had an excellent idea! We are going to dig a tunnel all the way to Britain and when we get there we shall INVADE AND TAKE OVER!’

  ‘Hurrah!’ cried all the soldiers. They had to say hurrah or they would have been poked with nasty, pointy swords by their commanders. In fact, they were fed up with digging tunnels.

  So the soldiers climbed wearily back down into their stinky, sweaty tunnel. Julius Caesar pointed his sword and gave his orders.

  ‘That way!’ he bellowed. ‘Britain, here we come!’

  Dig, dig, dig. Shovel, shovel, shovel.

  And thousands of miles away, upon the ocean, the mighty Titanic …

  11 BLAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

  The doctor jabbed a finger towards the mega-gigantic, four-funnelled, gazillion-ton ocean liner that was bearing down on them.

  BLAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!

  ‘Quick – hand me that bit of wire, Dylan!’ ordered the doctor as he made the last few connections. ‘There is no time to lose. First we set the watch for the ancient Egyptians and now we press the button like this.’

  FFWISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

  It was as if a giant red hand snaked out from the watch. It went arching out, high above their heads. They watched it come back down to Earth in an ever widening ripple. As it touched the planet, a red glow rose up from the ground. It grew and grew in brightness and then suddenly, SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSIWFF! It was gone, and so were the ancient Egyptians.

  ‘Quickly now,’ said the
doctor. ‘We reset the watch and say goodbye to the Vikings.’

  FFWISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

  The same thing happened and, somewhere in the world, all the Vikings found themselves returned to their own time. The doctor looked at the children and Bandit.

  ‘And now I must leave you and return to my own time. I thank you for all your help. Without you I could not have rescued the –’ The doctor smiled, gathered his thoughts and his tongue very carefully, and said, ‘The Doom-bust-er! There! First time. And we would not have been able to put everything back as it should be. And now it’s goodbye from Clocktor Sickly Barking, I mean Barkly Plonkers, Farty Starkers, Winky Hooters, Stinkly Stonkers, Oh, you know – ME!’

  The great scientist reset the watch. He pressed the button.

  FFWISSSSSSSSSSSSS! SSSSSSSSSSSIWFF!

  The glowing red hand came and went and a moment later, Doctor Starkly-Bonkers was no longer on the iceberg. For a brief second the children looked out into the dark sky, but they could see nothing.

  BLAAAAHHHHHH!!

  Rosie and Dylan spun round; so did Bandit. The Titanic was practically crawling up the iceberg.

  ‘It’s our turn,’ said Rosie urgently. ‘Quick, Dylan, set the watch.’

  Dylan was iceberg colour from head to toe, making him almost invisible.

  ‘The doctor was holding the watch,’ he choked. ‘And he also had the Time Separator and Redistributor. We’re stuck!’

  BLAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!

  ‘The spaceship!’ cried Rosie. ‘We can escape in the spaceship!’

  ‘Do you know how to fly it?’ asked Dylan.

  ‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘Surely you do?’

  ‘Why me? I can’t fly it,’ snapped Dylan.

  ‘But you’re a BOY!’ squealed Rosie. ‘I thought boys did things like that.’

  ‘And you’re a GIRL,’ Dylan yelled back. ‘And you can’t do ANYTHING!’

  They both rounded on little Alfie. ‘Well?’ they chorused. ‘Can you fly the spaceship?’

  ‘No,’ squeaked poor Alfie.

  So that just left Bandit.