by Steve Cole
But suddenly his hand began to twitch and shake – until he was pointing the gun at himself! “No!” he squeaked. “What’s happening?”
“How do you like it?” boomed a familiar voice – the voice of Dr Frankensaur, lifting his own dusty head from the wreckage. “All this time you’ve been controlling me – making me say your words, steering me around. I’ve been a prisoner in my own body.” He smiled grimly at Hydra. “You thought you were my master. But I’ve been resting, building my strength, waiting for the best moment to fight back. And that time has finally come!”
As the astrosaurs watched, amazed, Frankensaur swung his tail round and round – throwing Hydra’s head into a spin. “Stop!” the carnivore wailed. “Stop him, my body . . .”
The headless black-and-white creature that had menaced Gipsy and Marsh reappeared, staggering down the stairs towards Frankensaur. But without a moment’s pause for thought, Teggs raced down the hallway and jumped on it, sending it crashing to the floor. Iggy and Arx quickly joined him on top of the strange beast; though it struggled, it could barely move beneath their weight.
“Thank you, astrosaurs.” Frankensaur grunted with effort, spinning his tail even faster. “I’m nearly finished here . . .”
“Nooooo!” moaned Hydra. “Can’t think straight . . . can’t control you . . . can’t—”
BWAMM! Frankensaur thumped the horrid head at the end of his tail against the wall with all his strength. Hydra went cross-eyed and his body jerked beneath Teggs, Arx and Iggy – and was finally still.
“There,” said Frankensaur with a huge sigh of relief. “Hydra is knocked out. I can think for myself again.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Teggs beamed. “And I’d be even gladder to hear that you can dismantle Tarxig and put everyone back to normal.”
“Of course.” Frankensaur nodded. “I know exactly what Hydra did. His thoughts are in my head, just as mine were in his. But I will need extra power – and since the spaceship is smashed and the castle a wreck . . .”
“You can use power from our ship, the Sauropod,” said Arx. “We’ll give you whatever you need.”
“Absolutely,” Teggs agreed, nibbling a few leaves from the end of his tail. “I’ll be glad to be back to normal – but in the meantime, I have to admit I’m quite tasty!”
*
The day that followed was very busy.
The Sauropod landed in the castle’s front garden beside the crashed spaceship. Alass, Teggs’s security chief, put Tarxig the tail-beast in a cage. Then her team of ankylosaurs arrested Rojan-Jack and Bim-Wim-Lim-Dim-Ponko. Neither put up a fight once they heard that Frankensaur was willing to turn them back to normal.
Marsh helped the Sauropod’s engineers, making Zeta Three spaceworthy again.
While they worked, Iggy was busy repairing IGOR. The robot was soon better than ever and ready to serve his master once again. In fact, he helped Arx connect power-lines to the MATTA-MAMMMA machines upstairs so that Frankensaur could use both at once without a hitch. The dimorphodon helped the doctor prepare for the reverse-transplants, lending their beaks to the complicated controls.
“No mad scientist’s lab is complete without a few useful dino-birds,” Teggs observed with a smile.
“I think we’re ready to start,” said Frankensaur, studying his tail to make certain that Hydra’s head was still fast asleep. “The sooner I’m my own dinosaur again, the better!”
Iggy and Teggs carried Hydra’s body into the cubicle, and Frankensaur stood beside it. Arx set up the focus tubes with care. Sprite switched on the MAMMMA machine while Gipsy worked the MATTA one downstairs. Lights and colour flashed and sparked about the lab as the power surged higher and higher . . .
“Let’s hope it works,” said Iggy, crossing his onions.
With a sudden flare of brilliant light and a hiss of weird energy, both machines shuddered to a stop – revealing Frankensaur now had matching arms and a headless tail! Hydra’s bonce was back where it should’ve been all along, and his body had regained its proper arm.
“Woo-hoo!” Teggs cheered. “You’ve done it.”
“And soon you will all be back to normal!” said Frankensaur happily.
The doctor was as good as his word. Tarxig was fetched, and Teggs, Arx and Iggy were lined up beside it. Gipsy assisted Frankensaur as he worked, desperately hoping that the operation would go smoothly . . .
And it did!
“We’re cured!” whooped Teggs. He danced around and kissed his tail, then did a can-can with Gipsy and Arx – whose horns were pointier than ever. Iggy joined in, once he had given Frankensaur a long, loud round of applause with his back-to-normal hands.
As for Tarxig, all that was left of the curious creature was a pile of nettles, a few onions, a lily pad, some cactuses and a large twig.
Woken by the noise of partying, Hydra opened his eyes. “Ouch! My head . . . What happened . . .?”
“You’ll have plenty of time to figure that out, Professor,” said Gipsy sweetly. “Behind bars in a top-security space prison!”
“Along with your tadpole-brained test cases,” Arx added as Alass brought in Rojan-Jack and Bim-Wim-Lim-Dim-Ponko for their treatment.
“Frankensaur will put your bodies back to normal,” said Iggy, “but don’t worry about missing each other – you can all share a cell!”
“And what will you do next, Doctor Frankensaur?” asked Teggs. “We’ll repair all the damage to your castle, of course . . .”
“No need,” said Frankensaur. “Now that you’ve taken care of Hydra and his friends, I don’t have to hide in this miserable old place any more. IGOR and I will move back to Hadros Major and live somewhere bright and busy again!”
“Coooool!” said IGOR with an electronic burble. “Can we shack up on a beach near a repair shop, so I can go surfing and check out all the metal mamas?”
Frankensaur chuckled. “Now that IGOR’s been rebuilt by Iggy, he seems rather more adventurous!”
“Adventure’s what you get with astrosaurs,” Teggs agreed happily. “And it’s high time we went looking for another one.” He winked at his crewmates. “In this crazy universe of ours . . . nothing else MATTAs!”
Meet the time-travelling cows!
THE TER-MOO-NATORS
BY STEVE COLE
IT’S ‘UDDER’ MADNESS!
Genius cow Professor McMoo and his trusty sidekicks, Pat and Bo, are the star agents of the C.I.A. – short for COWS IN ACTION! They travel through time, fighting evil bulls from the future and keeping history on the right track . . .
When Professor McMoo invents a brilliant TIME MACHINE, he and his friends are soon attacked by a terrifying TER-MOO-NATOR – a deadly robocow who wants to mess with the past and change the future! And that’s only the start of an incredible ADVENTURE that takes McMoo, Pat and Bo from a cow paradise in the future to the SCARY dungeons of King Henry VIII . . .
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK!
Chapter Seven
TUDOR CUD
The Time Shed blazed back into existence in a cold, quiet courtyard. It was the middle of winter and very dark.
“We’ve arrived,” said Professor McMoo, dancing around the shed like his hooves were stuffed with firecrackers. “At last, we’ve pitched up in the past! I’ve been dreaming of this for years. Tudor kings! Brave explorers! Unbelievably smelly toilets! All of that, out there waiting!”
“The toilets can stay waiting,” said Bo, turning up her nose. “Ugh!”
“If a ter-moo-nator comes after me I might need one in a hurry,” Pat confessed.
“Go now before we leave,” Bo advised.
“Just don’t splash the tea bags,” called McMoo.
“We’d better stick those ringblender thingies on,” said Bo, clipping hers in place. She had “decorated” it with pink and green nail varnish but luckily it still worked.
Pat finished his business and clipped his own ringblender into place. “Let’s see what we look like,” he said, crossing to
a special mirror that Yak had given them. It showed the way they would appear to human eyes.
“Wow,” said Bo, eyeing her reflection. She looked just like a Tudor lady! “Look at me – beef in a bodice! I make a pretty funky person, if I do say so myself.”
Pat grinned at his handsome human reflection. “From bullock to baron, in the blink of an eye. And, Professor, look at you!”
McMoo smiled. “From a no-bull bull to a nobleman!” The professor’s reflection was lordly as you like. The mirror showed a large, powerful-looking man with curly hair and a huge moustache.
“Well, that’s quite enough gawping in the mirror.” He pulled on the CHURN lever and all the fantastic technology vanished back into the walls and floor – if anyone forced their way inside they would see just a wooden building. “Let’s see what’s outside. Filth! Plague! No potatoes! Oooh, I do love history!”
“I’ll love it better when that ter-moonator is history,” said Bo.
“Er, Professor?” asked Pat nervously. “If this is the king’s palace, won’t people wonder what we’re doing here and, um, try to lock us up and kill us and things?”
“Not if they don’t see us, Pat,” said McMoo with a reassuring smile. “We’ll stay out of sight as much as we can.”
The three cows left the Time Shed and sneaked into the palace through a nearby gatehouse. They shuffled along gloomy passageways lit by flickering torches. The chill of winter was in the stone, and they shivered as they clopped quietly up some steps towards the sound of chatter and laughter.
“Someone’s having fun,” Pat whispered.
Sneaking further along the corridor, they glimpsed several women folding sheets in a grand bedroom and gossiping.
“Chambermaids,” whispered McMoo. “Let’s listen in on their chat.”
“What a boring waste of time,” Bo complained.
Pat looked at McMoo. “Shouldn’t we get on with finding the ter-moo-nator, Professor?”
“A chambermaid’s job takes her all over the palace,” McMoo reminded them. “They may well have seen the ter-moo-nator—”
“– and so they could give us a clue about where to find it.” Pat gazed in awe at McMoo. “You’re a genius, Professor!”
“True,” agreed McMoo. With a wink, he led the two of them closer to the bedroom doorway.
“Just think,” a lanky woman said as she plumped up a pillow. “The king’s new wife is coming here this very night!”
“I hope she sticks around longer than the last one,” said a spotty girl beside her.
“Of course,” McMoo whispered. “December 1539 – that means King Henry is getting ready to marry his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. He ties the knot on 6 January 1540 . . .”
“Oh,Molly, you are lucky being her lady-in-waiting,” the lanky woman went on. “They say she’s as lovely as a summer’s day . . .”
“Yeah, a summer’s day when it’s raining poo-poos!” The voice was gruff, sour – and very familiar. “Pah! Still, better get ready to meet her, I suppose. The king should be greeting her in the main hall any time now . . .”
Bo’s jaw dropped. “That sounds like—”
“It can’t be,” squeaked Pat.
“It is!” McMoo murmured.
A large woman came thumping out of the room and wobbled off down the corridor with a sneer on her face. The cows ducked out of sight as she went past. She looked exactly like the dreaded Bessie Barmer!
“Clodhopping clover clumps”, exclaimed Pat, trembling. “What is she doing here?”
About the Author
Born in 1971, Steve Cole spent a happy childhood in rural Bedfordshire being loud and aspiring to amuse. He liked books, and so went to the University of East Anglia to read more of them. Later on he started writing them too, with titles ranging from pre-school poetry to Young Adult thrillers (with more TV and film tie-ins than he cares to admit to along the way). In other careers he has been the editor of Noddy magazine, the voice of a Dalek and an editor of fiction and nonfiction book titles for various publishers.
ALSO BY STEVE COLE:
Read all the adventures of Teggs, Gipsy, Arx and Iggy!
1 Riddle of the Raptors
2 The Hatching Horror
3 The Seas of Doom
4 The Mind-Swap Menace
5 The Skies of Fear
6 The Space Ghosts
7 Day of the Dino-Droids
8 The Terror-Bird Trap
9 The Planet of Peril
10 The Star Pirates
11 The Claws of Christmas
12 The Sun-Snatchers
13 Revenge of the Fang
14 The Carnivore Curse
15 The Dreams of Dread
16 The Robot Raiders
17 The Twist of Time
18 The Sabre-Tooth Secret
19 The Forest of Evil
20 Earth Attack!
21 The T. Rex Invasion
22 The Castle of Frankensaur
Read all the adventures of Teggs, Blink and Dutch at the Astrosaurs Academy!
1 Destination: Danger!
2 Contest Carnage!
3 Terror Underground!
4 Jungle Horror!
5 Deadly Drama!
6 Christmas Crisis!
7 Volcano Invaders!
8 Space Kidnap!
Meet the time-travelling cows!
1 The Ter-moo-nators
2 The Moo-my’s Curse
3 The Roman Moo-stery
4 The Wild West Moo-nster
5 World War Moo
6 The Battle for Christmoos
7 The Pirate Moo-tiny
8 The Moo-gic of Merlin
9 The Victorian Moo-ders
10 The Moo-lympic Games
11 First Cows on the Moon
12 The Viking Emoo-gency
If you can’t take the slime, don’t do the crime!
1 The Fearsome Fists
2 The Toxic Teeth
3 The Cyber-Poos
4 The Supernatural Squid
5 The Killer Socks
6 The Last-Chance Chicken
7 The Alligator Army
8 The Conquering Conks
Visit www.stevecolebooks.co.uk for fun, games, jokes, to meet the characters and much, much more!
ASTROSAURS 22: THE CASTLE OF FRANKENSAUR
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17287 0
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
Text copyright © Steve Cole, 2012
Cover illustration copyright © Dynamo Design, 2012
Illustrations by Woody Fox © Random House Children’s Publishers UK, 2012
First Published in Great Britain
Doubleday 2012
The right of Steve Cole to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Steve Cole, Astrosaurs 22