Astrosaurs 11

by Steve Cole

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Warning! Think you know about dinosaurs?

  Talking Dinosaur!

  The Crew of the DSS Sauropod

  Jurassic Quadrant Map

  Chapter One: The Shower of Gifts

  Chapter Two: Journey to Exmus

  Chapter Three: Intruder Alert!

  Chapter Four: Surprise Attack

  Chapter Five: The Metal Menace

  Chapter Six: A Fright in the Night

  Chapter Seven: The Plan of Evil

  Chapter Eight: Down the Chute!

  Chapter Nine: Danger at the Edge of Space

  Chapter Ten: A Festive Fate

  Chapter Eleven: A Christmas to Remember

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  DINOSAURS IN SPACE!

  Meet Captain Teggs Stegosaur and the crew of the amazing spaceship DSS Sauropod as the ASTROSAURS fight evil across the galaxy!

  Teggs and his crew visit the dinosaur Santa himself – Papa Claws. Strange dangers lurk in Papa’s gift factory, and an old enemy is loose. Can the astrosaurs save Christmas across the universe and live to tell the tale?

  For Freddie Hill

  WARNING!

  THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT DINOSAURS?

  THINK AGAIN!

  The dinosaurs . . .

  Big, stupid, lumbering reptiles. Right?

  All they did was eat, sleep and roar a bit. Right?

  Died out millions of years ago when a big meteor struck the Earth. Right?

  Wrong!

  The dinosaurs weren’t stupid. They may have had small brains, but they used them well. They had big thoughts and big dreams.

  By the time the meteor hit, the last dinosaurs had already left Earth for ever. Some breeds had discovered how to travel through space as early as the Triassic period, and were already enjoying a new life among the stars. No one has found evidence of dinosaur technology yet. But the first fossil bones were only unearthed in 1822, and new finds are being made all the time.

  The proof is out there, buried in the ground.

  And the dinosaurs live on, way out in space, even now. They’ve settled down in a place they call the Jurassic Quadrant and over the last sixty-five million years they’ve gone on evolving.

  The dinosaurs we’ll be meeting are part of a special group called the Dinosaur Space Service. Their job is to explore space, to go on exciting missions and to fight evil and protect the innocent!

  These heroic herbivores are not just dinosaurs.

  They are astrosaurs!

  NOTE: The following story has been translated from secret Dinosaur Space Service records. Earthling dinosaur names are used throughout, although some changes have been made for easy reading. There’s even a guide to help you pronounce the dinosaur names on the next page.

  Talking Dinosaur!

  How to say the prehistoric names in this book . . .

  STEGOSAURUS – STEG-oh-SORE-us

  TRICERATOPS – try-SERRA-tops

  IGUANODON – ig-WA-noh-don

  HADROSAUR – HAD-roh-sore

  DIMORPHODON – die-MORF-oh-don

  THE CREW OF THE DSS SAUROPOD

  Chapter One

  THE SHOWER OF GIFTS

  “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve!” cried Captain Teggs Stegosaur. “I can’t wait for our Christmas holidays to begin!” He hung a bauble on the tree in the control room of his spaceship – and then ate the bottom branch!

  “Captain!” said Gipsy, flicking him with a piece of tinsel – she was a stripy hadrosaur, in charge of the ship’s communications. “You keep eating the Christmas trees before I can finish decorating them!”

  Teggs grinned. “Sorry, Gipsy. I always feel extra-hungry at Christmas!”

  In fact, being an eight-ton stegosaurus, Teggs felt extra-hungry most of the time. He was in charge of the DSS Sauropod, the finest vessel in the Dinosaur Space Service, and going on exciting adventures the whole time was a hungry business.

  Right now, the Sauropod was taking them back to DSS Headquarters for a Christmas party. Teggs felt very content. His flight crew – fifty flying reptiles called dimorphodon – were hanging paper chains from the ceiling. Arx, his triceratops deputy, was fiddling with some fairy lights. And Iggy, the ship’s engineer, was getting messy making a Christmas pudding.

  “This will be the stickiest, slodgiest pudding you ever tasted,” the iguanodon declared, stirring ferns into the yellow mixture. “It smells delicious,” said Arx as the warm glow of the fairy lights filled the Sauropod. “But it needs one special ingredient . . .” He produced some spiky leaves from behind his back. “Holly!”

  “That should certainly make it taste sharper!” Iggy agreed.

  Teggs chuckled. He loved Christmas. He wondered what Papa Claws would bring him the day after tomorrow. Every year, the red-and-white-clad Santasaurus whizzed through space on a space-sleigh – delivering billions of presents to plant-eaters everywhere . . .

  “Warning!” the alarm pterosaur squawked suddenly. “We’re going to crash! SQUAAAAAWWWKKK!”

  “What?” Iggy threw his pudding up into the air in shock, and it stuck to the ceiling.

  “Quick, Iggy, slam on the brakes!” Teggs commanded, leaping into his control pit.

  Iggy pulled on the big brake lever with all his strength. The Sauropod screeched to a halt.

  Arx jumped into his chair and peered at his space radar. “The alarm pterosaur is right,” he cried. “I’m picking up twenty thousand objects dead ahead!”

  “Gipsy, what’s the view from the ship?” Teggs demanded.

  Gipsy’s hoofs flicked over her controls, and the scanner screen glowed into life. Teggs stared out at the stars. They shone as white and bright as snowflakes. But some of those stars seemed to be getting bigger . . .

  “Maybe they’re meteors,” said Iggy. “Lumps of space rock.”

  “Or perhaps they’re little satellites,” Gipsy wondered.

  “I don’t think they’re satellites or space rocks,” breathed Teggs. The shapes on the scanner were gleaming in the starlight as they drifted towards the ship. Some were square, some were rectangular, some were all knobbly and bobbly . . . and they were all tied up with ribbons!

  “They look like parcels!” Arx gasped in astonishment. “I’ve heard of meteor showers – but a shower of gifts, floating in space . . .?”

  “Perhaps they fell off the back of a spaceship,” suggested Iggy.

  Teggs had a horrible thought. “Or maybe it’s a trick,” he said. “They could be booby-trapped presents – left here by CARNIVORES!”

  Iggy’s pudding fell from the ceiling and hit the floor with a wet splat, and the astrosaurs’ festive moods went much the same way. Plant-eaters and meat-eaters shared the Jurassic Quadrant of space, but they didn’t get on. Fights often broke out. It was the astrosaurs’ job to keep the peace – and to keep the carnivores away!

  “Wherever these presents came from, they are clogging up this part of space,” said Arx. “That makes them a danger to passing ships.”

  “We must clear them away,” Teggs decided.

  “But we can’t bring them on board until we know they aren’t a danger to us,” Iggy added. “Anything could be inside! Space bombs, killer slugs, acid mines . . .”

  “You’re right,” Teggs declared, jumping out of his control pit. “I’ll just have to take a space walk and check them out.”

  “Cheep!” said Sprite, the leader of the dimorphodon.

  “All right, Sprite, you can come too,” Teggs agreed. “Come on!”

  The other astrosaurs shared worried looks as Teggs and Sp
rite left in the lift . . .

  Five minutes later, dressed in protective armour and white, quilted spacesuits, Teggs and Sprite were floating out into space on the end of a safety rope.

  Teggs felt a trickle of sweat run down the spiny plates on his back as he carefully caught one of the gifts. What if it was dangerous?

  He read the label: “To Gladys Saurus, from Papa Claws.” He blinked. “Papa Claws?”

  The package looked innocent enough. But looks could be deceiving . . .

  Slowly, Sprite undid the ribbon with his claws. Little by little the knot unravelled. Teggs held his breath as the dimorphodon gently pulled away the wrapping paper . . .

  To reveal a pair of woolly bed socks! “With this helmet on I can’t smell them,” Teggs said. “But they look harmless!”

  Sprite nodded and flapped off to gather up more of the parcels.

  Teggs frowned. “These are from Papa Claws too!” He tore them open. There were all sorts of things inside – scarves, hats, toy spaceships . . . This is very strange, he thought. Very strange indeed.

  “Calling Gipsy,” Teggs said into his communicator. “The presents seem to be ordinary gifts – from Papa Claws. Send out all the dimorphodon to gather them up, double-quick.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gipsy. “But how come presents from Papa Claws have been dumped in the middle of space so close to Christmas?”

  “Either Papa Claws lost them,” said Arx, “or else something bad has happened to him.”

  Teggs hauled himself back inside the Sauropod. “Tell DSS HQ we can’t make their party tonight,” he told Gipsy. “We must return these presents to Papa Claws and check he’s OK – and fast!”

  Chapter Two

  JOURNEY TO EXMUS

  There was no time to lose. While the dimorphodon flapped through space collecting up the presents, Teggs and Arx checked the top-secret star charts that showed the exact location of Papa Claws’s space base.

  “Papa Claws lives on Exmus,” noted Arx. “It’s an asteroid orbiting the North Pole Star.”

  “That’s near the edge of the Jurassic Quadrant,” Teggs realized, chewing on a juicy vine from the floor of his control pit. “We’ll have to travel at top speed to get there in time.”

  As soon as the dimorphodon had scooped up every last gift and were safely aboard, the Sauropod headed for Exmus. The astrosaurs scraped up Iggy’s extra-sticky Christmas pudding and ate it on the way. They even pulled some crackers. But no one felt very jolly.

  At last, after many hours, an asteroid appeared on the scanner. It was shaped like an enormous candy cane. Green and red satellites glowed around it like Christmas lights.

  “I think we’ve found the right place!” said Teggs. “Send a greetings message, Gipsy.”

  “Calling Exmus . . .” Gipsy spoke into her space microphone. “This is the DSS Sauropod . . .”

  Suddenly, four glowing satellites whizzed towards them. They were round like Christmas baubles – with laser guns sticking out! “Halt!” came a robotic voice. “Identify yourselves or we will fire.”

  Teggs frowned. “And a merry Christmas to you too!”

  “We are astrosaurs,” said Gipsy quickly. “We come in peace.”

  Suddenly, the image of a small, stern dinosaur with pointy ears and an even pointier hat appeared on the scanner.

  “That’s an elfosaur,” Arx observed. “Papa Claws employs them as helpers.” “I am Nickel, Head of Security,” said the elfosaur. “Sorry about the rude welcome, astrosaurs. Some presents were stolen from Exmus last week – so now these security satellites defend us against any unknown ship.”

  “Well, you know us now,” said Teggs. “And I think we might have found your stolen presents . . .”

  Teggs explained all that had happened, and Nickel invited him to come down to Exmus in a shuttle. Arx, Gipsy and Iggy were allowed to come too. They took the presents in another four shuttles, which Iggy flew by remote control.

  As they soared over the asteroid’s snowy plains and mountains, Teggs felt a tingle of excitement. “Not many people are allowed to visit Exmus,” he remarked. “Papa Claws is far too busy for visitors.”

  “I’d love to know how he delivers all those presents,” said Arx. “He’s the only Santasaurus in the universe, so he’s very mysterious.”

  “And to think, we might get to meet him!” Gipsy grinned. “What a Christmas treat!” Two doors opened up in the asteroid’s frozen surface to reveal an underground parking bay covered in tinsel and streamers. It was full of space-sleighs and empty carriages, waiting to be loaded with goodies.

  Iggy landed all five shuttles with his usual skill. Then a group of elfosaurs dressed in big red-and-white furry parkas scampered out through a silver doorway to meet them, led by Nickel.

  “Welcome to Exmus,” said Nickel. “May I check the presents, please?”

  Iggy hit a button on his remote control and the shuttle doors opened. The elfosaurs rushed inside. In a blur of movement they started sorting the presents into neat piles.

  Gipsy gasped. “They’re so fast!”

  Nickel nodded. “Papa sends out fifty billion presents each year – so his helpers have to be speedy!”

  “These are the stolen presents, all right!” shouted a young elfosaur with one huge powerful arm and one that was skinny. “All twenty thousand of them. I recognize my handwriting.”

  Nickel saw the astrosaurs staring. “Writing fifty billion labels has given Hans mega-muscles!” he explained.

  “But only in one arm!” Hans added.

  “Well, thanks for returning these gifts,” said Nickel. “But it’s too late for us to use them now. Papa has had to buy replacements – if he hadn’t, twenty thousand dinosaurs might have gone without presents!”

  “What I don’t understand is: who stole these gifts in the first place?” said Iggy.

  “And how?” Gipsy added.

  “And, more importantly, why?” said Arx.

  “I don’t know,” Nickel confessed. “So far, I haven’t found a single clue—”

  Suddenly an alarm went off. “Ho-ho-NO!” it blared at top volume, “Ho-ho-NOOOOO!” The lights in the parking bay turned warning red, and the strands of tinsel hanging from the ceiling shook like rattlesnakes.

  “What’s happening?” Teggs demanded.

  “That’s the ‘Whoops-naughty-no-you-don’t’ alarm!” cried Hans, putting his hands to his ears and almost squashing one side of his head. “Someone is opening presents before Christmas!”

  Nickel checked a gadget on his shiny black belt. “It’s coming from storehouse one . . .”

  “Lead us there,” said Teggs, taking charge. “Quick!”

  Nickel sprinted away with a gaggle of elfosaurs. The astrosaurs followed them through a maze of wide, candy-striped corridors with sliding doors until they reached storehouse one. Its large metal door was standing ajar, and beyond it . . .

  “Oh, no!” wailed Nickel, skidding to a sudden stop. Crossly, he hit a button on his belt. The alarm cut off and the lights went back to normal.

  Teggs pushed past him and peered into the vast storeroom. It was the size of a supermarket and filled from floor to ceiling with a crumpled mess of torn wrapping paper, ripped ribbons and discarded gifts.

  “Looks like we’re too late,” Teggs told his crew grimly. “The Christmas thieves have struck again. They’re still here on Exmus!”

  Chapter Three

  INTRUDER ALERT!

  “Whose presents were kept in here?” wondered Arx, nosing through the mess in the storeroom.

  “That’s the strange thing,” said Nickel. “These are the very presents that Papa Claws bought to replace the ones that were stolen!”

  “The first lot get stolen, the next lot get torn open,” Gipsy mused. “Why?”

  Teggs turned to Hans. “You wrote the labels. Is there anything special about the dinosaurs getting these presents?”

  “Nope.” Hans shook his head. “They’re just ordinary folk from the Tri S
ystem.”

  “I’d better check what has been taken,” said Nickel. He clicked his claws and the elfosaurs burst into action. Their bodies were a blur as they sorted through the wrecked wrapping paper and piled up the presents.

  “Nothing’s been taken!” Hans reported. “Whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find it.”

  Nickel cheered up a bit. “The alarm must have scared them away.”

  “Perhaps . . .” said Arx, deep in thought.

  “Goodness me, whatever’s going on here?”

  Teggs and his crewmates all jumped at the sound of the high, twittery voice. Then they gasped as an old, fat dinosaur with a long white beard and a big red hat came waddling round the corner. His scaly skin was green, but his cheeks were red. A pair of small, round spectacles were perched on the end of his snout.

  “Papa Claws!” Gipsy gasped. “It’s really you!”

  The newcomer smiled. “You must be one of those astrosaurs I heard arriving! What was that alarm about?”

  “I’m afraid it was intruders again, sir,” said Nickel. “They wrecked all those presents you bought!”

  “But luckily we found the stolen presents dumped in deep space,” Teggs explained. “I am Captain Teggs Stegosaur and this is my crew . . .” He introduced Arx, Gipsy and Iggy, and then smiled. “May I add, it’s a real blast to meet you, sir. I’ve always wondered . . . what made you devote your whole life to Christmas like this?”

  “Er . . .” Papa Claws shrugged. “I really wanted to play professional golf – but I wasn’t good enough. So I took this up instead.”

  “I see,” said Teggs, feeling a bit disappointed.

  “Papa’s only joking,” said Nickel quickly. “Aren’t you, Papa?”

  The Santasaurus looked at him for a moment – then roared with laughter. “Yes, of course I am!” he bellowed. “I’m here because I love Christmas. It’s as simple as that!” Papa Claws started looking around. “Now, where are these intruders? I’ll give them a piece of my mind!”

  “I . . .” Nickel blushed. “I’m afraid they got away, sir.”

  “We will help Nickel find them,” said Teggs. “Did you happen to see anything unusual on your way here?”

  Papa Claws shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Then they must have gone the other way,” Iggy realized, pointing down the corridor.