Meteor Madness Read online

  For Tamara Clover ~ L A C

  For Josh ~ J D

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  MEET THE SPACE PENGUINS…

  INTRODUCTION

  1. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPLASH!

  2. A NASTY PRESENT

  3. THIS SHIP NEEDS REFUELLING

  4. SPACE-SPINACH SANDWICH

  5. OOH, THAT’S COLD

  6. SHAPE-SHIFTERS

  7. SPACEWALK!

  8. BURD FLOO

  9. FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT

  POSTSCRIPT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  EXTRACT FROM STAR ATTACK!

  OTHER EBOOKS IN THE SERIES

  CAPTAIN:

  Captain T. Krill Emperor penguin

  Height: 1.10m

  Looks: yellow ear patches and noble bearing

  Likes: swordfish minus the sword

  Lab tests: showed leadership qualities in fish challenge

  Guaranteed to: keep calm in a crisis

  FIRST MATE (ONCE UPON A TIME):

  Beaky Wader, now known as Dark Wader

  Once Emperor penguin, now part-robot

  Height: 1.22m

  Looks: shiny black armour and evil laugh

  Likes: prawn pizzas and ruling the universe

  Lab tests: cheated at every challenge

  Guaranteed to: cause trouble

  PILOT (WITH NO SENSE OF DIRECTION):

  Rocky Waddle Rockhopper penguin

  Height: 45cm

  Looks: long yellow eyebrows

  Likes: mackerel ice cream

  Lab tests: fastest slider in toboggan challenge

  Guaranteed to: speed through an asteroid belt while reading charts upside down

  SECURITY OFFICER AND HEAD CHEF:

  Fuzz Allgrin Little Blue penguin

  Height: 33cm

  Looks: small with fuzzy blue feathers

  Likes: fish fingers in cream and truffle sauce

  Lab tests: showed creativity and aggression in ice-carving challenge

  Guaranteed to: defend ship, crew and kitchen with his life

  SHIP’S ENGINEER:

  Splash Gordon King penguin

  Height: 95cm

  Looks: orange ears and chest markings

  Likes: squid

  Lab tests: solved ice-cube challenge in under four seconds

  Guaranteed to: fix anything

  I am ICEcube and you are on board the Tunafish, the coolest spaceship in the universe. It’s cool because it’s full of penguins, and penguins like to keep the temperature down. I’m the Tunafish’s onboard computer and I can’t tell lies, so you know that this is true.

  Yes. Penguin astronauts fly the Tunafish. As penguins don’t normally fly, and have never been to space before, this is unusual. But NASA decided that penguin astronauts could send useful information about space back to Earth. They trained five penguins, gave them spacesuits and blasted them into orbit. One disappeared to make plans for ruling the universe by himself. The rest lost contact with Earth, and now have only my very large brain to keep them company out here among the stars.

  My database says: NASA are a bunch of turnip-heads.

  It’s a shame that the penguins got lost, because we have learned a lot about space that we could share with Earth.

  Fuzz Allgrin invented a nice pickle using Massive Bugle-blasting Blagwit bogies.

  Captain T. Krill learned that being brave is all very well, until you upset a Massive Bugle-blasting Blagwit by picking its nose.

  Rocky Waddle recently found out that left and right are not the same thing, except when you’re on the planet Mirramirra.

  And Splash Gordon has learned not to have a birthday party when space pirates are attacking the Tunafish.

  RECALCULATING…

  Sorry, Splash hasn’t learned this yet. The crew are throwing him a birthday party right now, singing rude songs about seals and eating too much. I have been trying to tell them about the space pirates for four minutes and twenty-three seconds, but no one is listening.

  The space pirates will arrive in approximately twelve minutes and forty seconds. So will the birthday cake. In the meantime, I hope the Tunafish crew enjoy Fuzz’s piranha biscuits. They won’t make the space pirates go away, but they make a lovely SNAP when you bite into them.

  Yum yum. Enjoy them while you can.

  Balloons and streamers littered the cabin floor of the spaceship Tunafish. A large banner saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPLASH! hung overhead as three penguins in party hats sat round a decorated party table, happily resting their flippers on their full bellies. The Tunafish cruised along in autopilot.

  “Sing that song about seals again, Rocky!” said Splash Gordon, the Ship’s Engineer. His party hat had fallen over his eyes and made him look like he had two beaks.

  The Tunafish’s pilot, Rocky Waddle, swept his long yellow eyebrows out of his eyes, parped on his party-blower and started singing:

  “OH, seals are fat, seals are smelly,

  Seals aren’t cute like they are on the telly.

  We don’t like seals, coz they think we’re yum,

  If we saw a seal in space, we’d kick it up the—”

  “THANK YOU, Rocky,” said Captain Krill with a frown on his yellow-striped face. “Can you check the flight instruments? I thought I heard a strange pinging noise coming from the autopilot.”

  Rocky parped on his party-blower again and waddled over to the flight deck. “All knobs, dials and flashing lights on the autopilot are working perfectly, Captain,” he reported. “The pinging noise must be coming from somewhere else.”

  A small fluffy penguin in a large chef’s hat came out of the kitchen.

  “The pinging sound is Splash’s birthday cake,” Fuzz Allgrin said, wiping a blob of cake mix off his face.

  “My cake is pinging?” asked Splash.

  “The oven is pinging,” Fuzz said, “to let me know the cake is ready.”

  “Calling all Space Penguins,” said ICEcube, for the fifth time in five minutes.

  “We’re having a party, ICEcube,” Rocky said, waving his flippers around. “Stop doing your bossy voice.”

  “ICEcube doesn’t have a bossy voice,” said ICEcube.

  “I’m sorry, but you definitely do,” said Fuzz.

  “Let’s talk after the cake, ICEcube,” said Captain Krill.

  “It’s important, Captain,” said ICEcube.

  “So’s my cake,” said Splash. “What flavour is it, Fuzz? Sprat? Kipper?” Fuzz wagged a flour-covered flipper.

  “You’ll have to wait and see, birthday bird. And you have to eat your space-spinach first.”

  The Space Penguins looked at the party table. All the piranha biscuits, stellar-salmon sandwiches and meteor-mackerel ice cream had gone. The only food left was a large plate of something dark blue and squishy-looking.

  “I don’t like space-spinach,” Splash moaned.

  “Me neither,” Rocky groaned.

  “It must be very good for us,” said Captain Krill, “because it tastes terrible.”

  “Space-spinach is full of vitamins!” Fuzz said. “Who knows when we’ll next find a planet where we can go fishing for proper penguin food?”

  “Vegetables are BAD for penguins,” said Rocky. “We’re from the fishy oceans of Antarctica, not a stinky space allotment.”

  “We’re not from Antarctica,” Splash said. “We’re from the zoo.”

  “And did they feed us on vegetables in the zoo?” Rocky demanded. “No.”

  Fuzz folded his flippers. “If you don’t eat it, I’ll put the cake straight into the waste-disposal chute and fire it into space.”

  “You wouldn’t,” gasped Splash.

  Fuzz narrowed his eyes
. “Watch me.”

  To set an example to his crew, Captain Krill ate a very small piece of space-spinach and drank a very big glass of iced water. Rocky and Splash nibbled a couple of leaves.

  “Very good,” said Fuzz. “Now why don’t you all play Hide and Beak while I ice the cake?”

  “One, two, three, four…” Captain Krill began, covering his eyes with his flippers.

  “Calling all Space Penguins,” said ICEcube.

  “Captain Krill said we’d talk after the cake,” said Splash, and switched ICEcube off. “The Captain’s counting. Come on, Rocky!”

  During their years in space, the Space Penguins had got very good at Hide and Beak. Splash and Rocky rushed away to hide as Fuzz went back into the kitchen.

  “…seven, eight, nine, TEN. Coming, ready or not,” said Captain Krill. “Make a noise!”

  “YOU HAVE TO LOOK FOR US FIRST!” Rocky yelled from the freezing-fog room.

  Although the Tunafish looked small from the outside, it was very spacious with plenty of good hiding places. There were sleeping quarters, a kitchen, an extra-cold store down in the hold, an engine room, a freezing-fog room where the Space Penguins liked to chill out, plenty of big cupboards, a slushy vending machine, a large ice-bath and a room with a wing-pong table.

  After ten minutes of looking, Captain Krill shouted, “I give up!”

  Rocky popped his head out of the freezing-fog room.

  “I’m sure I looked in there,” said the Captain, frowning.

  “Not hard enough, Captain,” said Rocky with a smirk.

  Splash popped up from underneath the table as Fuzz waddled out of the kitchen with a huge fish-shaped cake covered in glittery grey icing and topped with candles. “A supernova sardine cake!” he gasped. “Just what I wanted! Are you sure you didn’t borrow the mind-reading hat I invented last week, Fuzz?”

  Splash rubbed his flippers together, admiring his cake.

  “Who turned ICEcube off?” Captain Krill asked, noticing that the Tunafish’s computer was quiet and dark.

  There was a stony silence. Splash looked down guiltily.

  “No harm done,” said Captain Krill, switching ICEcube back on again. “I hope.”

  “Happy Birthday to you,” the Space Penguins started singing to Splash, “sushi takeout for two. You look like an orca, but you smell like a—”

  “Red alert,” said ICEcube. “Space pirates attacking. Action stations!”

  “Bouncing barracudas!” Captain Krill gasped. “Space pirates?”

  Space pirates were ruthless and cunning outlaws who cruised around looking for spaceships to capture and treasure to steal. They showed no mercy to prisoners. Every spaceship in the universe was terrified of a space-pirate attack.

  The Space Penguins rushed to the window. At first, they couldn’t see anything. Then, suddenly, they saw a fleet of black spaceships. The fleet’s perfect blackness made it look as if someone had cut a lot of spaceship-shaped holes out of the starry universe.

  “There are dozens of them!” said Captain Krill.

  “Sneaky little kippers,” said Fuzz. “How dare they interrupt my cake!”

  “It’s my cake, Fuzz,” said Splash.

  “We haven’t even cut it yet!” Fuzz went on. “Don’t they realize that this is a birthday party? That’s just rude!”

  A beam of light blazed at the Space Penguins, dazzling them.

  WHOOSH!

  Something whizzed past the windscreen of the Tunafish, as dark and ripply as a black octopus.

  “Time to get out of here,” said Rocky.

  WHOOSH!

  Rocky jumped into the pilot’s chair as another something whizzed at the Tunafish. Grabbing the controls, he spun the ship around. More jet-black spacecraft were waiting behind them.

  “PARTY POOPERS!” Fuzz shouted.

  “We’re surrounded!” said Splash.

  “What now, Captain?” asked Rocky.

  “Straight up?” Captain Krill suggested.

  Rocky walloped a button. The Tunafish rocketed upwards like a crazy elevator. It went so fast that the Space Penguins and the birthday cake were flung to the floor.

  “My beautiful supernova sardine cake!” cried Fuzz, struggling to his feet.

  “My beautiful supernova sardine cake!” shouted Splash.

  “It’s a flatfish cake now,” said Captain Krill sadly.

  WHOOSH!

  Another ripple through the air. The jet-black attackers were fast. Four of them shot after the Tunafish, blocking the penguins’ escape. Rocky flipped the little ship like a lucky coin and rocketed back down again. Cake flew everywhere.

  The space pirates were closing in, trapping the Tunafish like a sprat in a great black net. Rocky revved the engines, but they sounded sluggish.

  “Come on,” Rocky muttered, revving again.

  JUDDER-JUDDER-JUDDER went the engines. The Tunafish didn’t move. The pirates crowded in a little closer.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Captain Krill. “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “I don’t know!” said Rocky. “It feels like we’re stuck in space glue.”

  “There must be a problem with the engines,” said Splash. He took off his party hat and pulled down his goggles. “I’ll go and investigate.”

  WHOOSH!

  “What is that whooshing noise?” said Captain Krill, as Splash headed for the engine room. He looked around the cabin. “I’ve heard it four times now.”

  “Well, nothing’s hit us,” said Rocky. He revved the engines again. With a sudden roar, they flamed powerfully back to life.

  “Splash is a genius!” exclaimed Fuzz.

  Rocky pressed hard on the thruster. The Tunafish whipped towards the surrounding starships at full speed. Fuzz and Captain Krill flung their flippers round the nearest chairs and hung on with their feet flying out behind them.

  “What are you doing, Rocky?” gasped Captain Krill. “We’re going to crash right into them!”

  “I’m playing a game called Chicken,” said Rocky, as the spaceship gained speed. “We’re going to see who swerves first.”

  “That’s my favourite game,” said Fuzz.

  The Tunafish streaked fearlessly towards the black starships, hanging still and silent in front of them like a massive black wall.

  “They’re not going anywhere, Rocky!” said Captain Krill.

  Rocky accelerated again. “They will.”

  “Galloping groupers!” shrieked Fuzz. “Show them who’s boss, Rocky! We’re the Space Penguins, hear us FLAP!”

  They could see nothing but the noses of the starships in front of them now. Captain Krill closed his eyes and prepared to be smashed into tiny penguin pieces.

  Then the Tunafish suddenly tilted on to its side, squeezed through a tiny gap between the enemy ships and shot to freedom on the other side.

  “I think we lost them,” Rocky said breathlessly.

  “That was a brave piece of flying,” Captain Krill panted.

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “But we swerved first!” Fuzz complained. “That makes us the chickens! The Fuzzmeister is not a chicken. He’s a penguin!”

  “We didn’t swerve,” said Rocky. “We just turned sideways a bit and squeezed through a gap.”

  “We swerved,” insisted Fuzz.

  “I think they did move away from us, just a bit,” said Captain Krill in a soothing voice. “And at least they’re not following us now. How about some cake to celebrate the fact that we’re still alive?”

  The cake lay in sad squishy piles around the cabin of the Tunafish. Glittery grey icing glooped from the ceiling. As the Space Penguins helped themselves, their terror of the space pirates began to fade.

  Splash reappeared from the engine room. He looked at his cake-eating space mates with a blank expression.

  “Splash!” said Rocky, wiping his mouth guiltily. “We couldn’t wait. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Splash turned his eyes on Captain Krill.

  “
Sugar is good for shock,” Captain Krill explained. “Thanks to Rocky’s expert flying, we just had a very narrow escape from the pirates.”

  “You mean the pirates had a very narrow escape from us,” corrected Fuzz. Icing hung off his beak like a sticky grey beard. “There’s a bit of cake left under the table, Splash. It’s a mess but it still tastes fantastic, even if I say so myself.”

  Splash went towards a splattery heap of space-spinach in one corner of the cabin and scooped up a beakful. Gobbling it down, he fixed the others with a nasty glare.

  “Did you mean to eat that?” Fuzz said in shock.

  “This ship needs refuelling,” said Splash in a flat voice.

  Rocky frowned. “That’s not what the instruments say.”

  “This ship needs refuelling,” Splash repeated.

  Rocky hopped out of the pilot’s chair. “Show me the fuel gauges in the engine room,” he said.

  Captain Krill watched his ship’s engineer and his pilot head for the engine room with a strange feeling in his tummy.

  “Now I’ve seen everything,” said Fuzz. “Splash eating space-spinach instead of cake?” Shaking his head, he fetched a mop and a brush and started to clean up the mess.

  “Do you think Splash is OK?” Captain Krill asked.

  “He’ll be healthier than a freshwater salmon after all that space-spinach,” said Fuzz. “Lend a flipper with that duster, will you, Captain?”

  Fuzz and Captain Krill worked together to tidy up the birthday mess, loading the astrodynamic dishwasher, scrubbing the Tunafish’s metal floor, polishing the rivets in the ceiling and the walls, and putting the leftover food into the waste-disposal chute. Soon the cabin was gleaming like it had been through a cosmic carwash.

  “Good job, Fuzz,” Captain Krill said, looking around the cabin. “Tidy ship, tidy mind. Astronauts need tidy minds. It helps us to think more clearly in our dangerous space environment.”