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: Robbery in Space
Chapter Two: The Asteroid
Chapter Three: The Wreck and the Castle
Chapter Four: What’s the Matta?
Chapter Five: Headless Horror
Chapter Six: Heads and Tales
Chapter Seven: The Monsters’ Power
Chapter Eight: Monster Madness!
Chapter Nine: Tears and Trickery
Chapter Ten: Castle Carnage!
Extract of Cows in Action Book 1
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!
On the trail of carnivore space-robber, the astrosaurs find a creepy castle on a distant asteroid – the secret hideout of super-scientist Dr Frankensaur. Plunged into a sinister mystery, Teggs must fight deadly robots, headless horrors, mutant monsters and a threat to the entire cosmos . . .
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.
For Candi Scarlett Featherquill (and Poppy Bristow, her inventive owner)
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
HADROSAUR -
HAD-roh-sore
DIMORPHODON -
die-MORF-oh-don
KRITOSAURUS -
CRY-tuh-SORE-us
DASPLETOSAURUS -
Dass-PLEE-tu-SORE-us
TRICERATOPS -
try-SERRA-tops
SAUROPELTA -
SORE-uh-PELT-ah
THE CREW OF THE DSS SAUROPOD
CAPTAIN TEGGS STEGOSAUR
ARX ORANO, FIRST OFFICER
GIPSY SAURINE, COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER
IGGY TOOTH, CHIEF ENGINEER
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.
exactly