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 Disappearing Sun
Chapter Two: Attack of the Space Monster
Chapter Three: Desperate Mission
Chapter Four: The Solawurm Strikes
Chapter Five: Showdown in Space
Chapter Six: A Meeting of Minds
Chapter Seven: Hypnotic Horror
Chapter Eight: The Flames of Fate
Chapter Nine: Carnage, Collisions and Chaos
Chapter Ten: Great Balls of Fire!
Chapter Eleven: A New Dawn
About the Author
Also by Steve Cole
Copyright
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!
HOT STUFF!
Teggs is no ordinary dinosaur – he’s an Astrosaur! Captain of the amazing spaceship DSS Sauropod, he goes on dangerous missions and fights evil – along with his faithful crew, Gipsy, Arx and Iggy!
A world of woolly rhinos is in desperate peril – one of their three suns has gone missing! Racing to the rescue, Teggs and his team must fight a gigantic star-swallowing menace before the other two suns get snatched away. And all the time, other dangers are drawing closer . . .
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, and an editor of fiction and nonfiction book titles for various publishers. He is the author of the hugely successful Astrosaurs, Cows in Action, Astrosaurs Academy and Slime Squad series.
TALKING DINOSAUR!
How to say the prehistoric names in this book . . .
STEGOSAURUS – STEG-oh-SORE-us
TRICERATOPS – try-SERRA-tops
HADROSAUR – HAD-roh-sore
IGUANODON – ig-WA-noh-don
ALLOSAURUS– AL-uh-SORE-us
DIMORPHODON – die-MORF-oh-don
SPINOSAURUS – SPY-nuh-SORE-us
AMMONITE – AM-oh-NITE
PTEROSAUR – TEH-roh-sore
MUSSAURUS – moose-SORE-us
CARNOTAUR – kar-noh-TOR
SAUROPELTA – SORE-oh-PEL-tah
KENTROSAURUS – KEN-troh-SORE-us
RAPTOR – RAP-tor
THE SUN SNATCHERS
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17357 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, 2008
Cover illustration by Dynamo Design © Random House Children’s Books, 2010
Map copyright © Charlie Fowkes, 2005
Interior illustrations by Woody Fox © Random House Children’s Books, 2008
First Published in Great Britain
Red Fox 9781862302549 2008
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.
RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S PUBLISHERS UK
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Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
For Matthew and Stevie Howe,
who helped me come up with the
dino-villains in this book.
I would also like to thank James Barnes,
who suggested woolly rhinos, and
Laura Waterman for improving the title!
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.