Star Attack Read online

  For my godson James. If penguins can fly, imagine what you can do. ~ L A C

  For Indira ~ J D

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  MEET THE SPACE PENGUINS…

  INTRODUCTION

  1. ONE BOBBY CHEESE HAS A BAD DAY

  2. SMELLY SOCKS

  3. WARP SPEED WHIFF

  4. BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL

  5. DARK WADER

  6. THE GREAT ICE DECK

  7. PENGUIN PARADISE

  8. SHELLFISH ESCAPE

  9. CHEESEBALLS AND FISH CANNONS

  10. ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR FISH

  POSTSCRIPT

  Copyright

  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:

  Beaky Wader

  Emperor penguin

  Height: 1.22m

  Looks: yellow ear patches and evil laugh

  Likes: prawn pizzas

  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: fishfingers 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

  Welcome aboard the spaceship Tunafish. This is your Intergalactic Computer Engine speaking. You can call me ICEcube for short.

  I’m here to guide the Tunafish through the universe, scan the galaxy for meteor storms and spot any black holes. My penguin crew would have flapped their last flap years ago if it wasn’t for me.

  Penguin crew? Yup! Penguins are perfect for space missions. They’re good at swimming (being in space is a lot like swimming), cheap to train, and untroubled by temperatures of near zero.

  But why are these penguins in space? You’ll have to ask NASA about that. Their finest scientists started a top-secret mission to send penguins further and faster than any creature had gone before. They designed the spaceship Tunafish for all their needs. But the spaceship disappeared. Everyone thought that the mission had simply been a failure. Little did they know that the Tunafish and its penguin crew had just been sucked through a wormhole into Deep Space.

  My database suggests that the best word for this is: whoops!

  So now these penguins are travelling in search of a nice planet to call home. In the course of their quest, they’ve become intergalactic heroes. They’ve saved the cat race of Miaow from certain death on the planet Woofbark. They’ve even destroyed a large pair of frozen pants that was endangering space traffic on the tiny planet of Bum. This is mostly down to me, of course. Impressed?

  There were five penguins to begin with, but the first mate, Beaky Wader, disappeared from the Tunafish three years ago after a nasty argument about who was going to be Captain. The words, “You haven’t seen the last of me,” echoed around the spaceship for days. Good riddance, I say. Beaky Wader was Trouble with a capital Fish.

  And now – well, now they’re still looking for the perfect penguin planet. We’ll probably be rescuing things as we go along, so I know you’re as excited as I am to be here. Fasten your seat belt and have a sardine. I would say that you are in safe hands but penguins only have flippers.

  Five. Four. Three. Two. One…

  “HELP!” bawled Bobby Cheese, commander of intergalactic pizza-delivery spaceship, the Doughball, as he zoomed towards certain death.

  A crazy-looking spacecraft had appeared out of nowhere, driving him off-course in a blaze of gunfire.

  “Awaiting instruction,” said the Doughball’s computer.

  “I AM instructing you!” yelled Bobby Cheese. “HELP me!”

  He thumped all the buttons on the Doughball’s juddering control panel in a panic. Bobby Cheese was a six-armed alien from the planet Bo-Ki, but even so, two thousand buttons took a long time to thump.

  “Awaiting instruction,” said the computer again. “Chill out, Cheese,” it added.

  “Don’t tell me to chill out!” Bobby Cheese wailed. “We’re hopelessly out of control!”

  Stars shot past the Doughball’s windows at weird angles. Bobby Cheese moaned. He didn’t know if he was upside down or the right way up.

  “Awaiting instruction,” said the computer for the third time.

  “You’re useless!” cried Bobby Cheese. “We’ve got nearly a thousand pizzas flying around in the back. They’ll be ruined. We’ll be picking mozzarella out of the fuselage for weeks unless we get this craft back under control!”

  “We’ll be picking you out of the fuselage as well,” the computer said helpfully.

  “Quit the small talk and get me out here. Have you any idea who’s attacking us?” Bobby Cheese yelled.

  The computer was quiet for a second. “The attack is by Squid-G fighters,” it said at last.

  “Squidgy what?”

  “Squid-G fighters. Spacecrafts with considerable firepower and a strong smell of fish.”

  “But why are they attacking me?” shrieked Bobby Cheese.

  “For fun?” suggested the computer.

  The Doughball spun faster. Its nose dipped further. The stars outside grew wonkier. Bobby Cheese glanced at a tattered poster stuck on the wall. The poster showed four penguins posing beside a fish-shaped spacecraft.

  “Only the heroic astronauts of the Tunafish can help me now,” he gasped. “We have to contact them!”

  “But they’re just penguins,” said the computer. “Are you sure you want to put your life into the flippers of four flightless birds?”

  “They’re not just penguins!’ cried Bobby Cheese. “They’re space-fighting heroes! If I haven’t died by the time they get here, remind me to get their autographs!”

  The wonky stars suddenly disappeared from view altogether as the spinning Doughball plunged into a bank of mist. Bobby Cheese typed a shaky distress call to the spaceship Tunafish and pressed SEND. Squinting desperately through the windscreen, his eyes widened at the sight of a gigantic five-pointed star looming ahead of him.

  “What’s that? Is it a planet?”

  “Planets don’t have pointy bits. That’s a space station,” reported the computer.

  The air filled with a humming sound. Bobby Cheese groaned and pressed his hands to as many of his ears as he could reach. It was over. The Doughball was stuffed.

  Where was the Tunafish in his hour of greatest need?

  The problem with Deep Space is that it is extremely Deep. And Spacious. And at that particular moment, the spaceship Tunafish was a hundred million light years away.

  The Space Penguins had just sorted out an army of invading purple blobs on the planet Tentakle.
After chilling in the freezing fog room (the penguin version of a steam room), they were now back at work and on their way to – well, anywhere that looked nice, really.

  “Rocky,” said Captain Krill, addressing his pilot. “Tell me again exactly how far we’ve travelled since our rescue mission on the planet Tentakle.”

  “Two hundred thousand light years, Captain,” Rocky Waddle repeated.

  Captain Krill had a frown on his face. He placed his flippers behind his sleek black back and stared at his large black feet. “I thought we’d gone at least a hundred light years further,” he said. “Are you sure?”

  Rocky was a pretty good pilot but his navigating could sometimes be a few million miles off – mainly because his eyebrows got in his eyes. Rockhopper penguins have VERY big eyebrows.

  “I’m one hundred per cent sure it’s two hundred thousand light years, Captain,” Rocky promised. He checked the engine screens. “Engine one is firing on all cylinders. Engines two and three, likewise. Aha! What’s this?”

  He twiddled a knob and zoomed in on one of the engine sections, where a red light was flashing. “There’s a problem with engine four, Captain.” Rocky tapped the screen with his flipper. “Something’s jamming it.”

  A small, fluffy blue penguin put his head around a door marked DO NOT ENTER THE KITCHEN ON PAIN OF PECKING UNLESS FUZZ SAYS IT’S OK.

  “It’s not a Tentakle blob, is it?” asked Fuzz Allgrin, Security Officer and Head Chef aboard the Tunafish. There was a fierce expression in his tiny black eyes and a terrifying knife gleamed in one of his flippers. “I was about to roast one for dinner, but it escaped through the ventilation hatch.”

  Captain Krill wrinkled his beak. “We’re having a Tentakle blob for dinner?”

  Fuzz glared. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Captain, but decent fish in space are hard to come by. Tentakle blobs may taste of feet, but at least they have a texture like octopus.”

  “It’s not a Tentakle blob. It’s sort of long, and yellowish, and feathery-looking— Oh, sorry, no. That’s my eyebrow,” said Rocky. “So what’s jamming engine four, ICEcube?”

  “Species identification in engine four: Tentakle blob. One of 233 presently aboard the Tunafish, acquired for food during our recent mission on the planet Tentakle,” said ICEcube at once. “Known for their lack intelligence, vibrant purple colour, rubbery texture and powerful smell of socks.”

  “We know that,” said Rocky with a shudder.

  A door hissed open and a large King penguin in a huge pair of goggles bustled in, wiping his flippers on his tummy and leaving long oily smears on his feathers. It was the Ship’s Engineer, Splash Gordon.

  “Turn engine four to full,” said Splash. He removed his goggles with a twang. “The blob will be blasted out in one point four seconds. I’ve adjusted the heat regulator on the engine.”

  “Good advice, Splash,” said Captain Krill. “Rocky? Proceed as Splash suggests.”

  Rocky flipped engine four to full. There was a blast of heat and a sizzling noise. A hot sock smell filled the air. One point four seconds later, the crew felt the Tunafish leap forward.

  “Back to full cruising speed, Captain,” Rocky confirmed, settling back into his pilot’s chair.

  “Distress signal just in, Captain,” said ICEcube. “Attack by Squid-G fighters. I need your help. Free pizzas if you get here quick.”

  “Free pizzas?” said Splash.

  “Squid-G? Sounds fishy,” said Captain Krill.

  Rocky slapped the arms of his chair with his flippers. “Good one, Captain!” he said, roaring with laughter. “Squid! Sounds fishy!”

  “This is no time for jokes,” said Captain Krill with a frown. “Download the coordinates of the stricken craft, Rocky. We must go to its aid immediately. One for all and all for fish. Warp speed, right away!”

  Rocky hit warp speed faster than you can say SEAT BELTS.

  As the Tunafish zapped through a hundred million light years in the wink of an eye, the penguins were all flung about. Captain Krill struggled to his feet. Splash unpeeled himself from the ceiling.

  “You total squid-head, Rocky,” shouted Fuzz from beneath a pile of twitching Tentakle blobs. “We didn’t have time to fasten our seat belts. It STINKS under here!”

  “The Captain said right away!” Rocky said, laughing uncontrollably.

  Captain Krill felt his way to his commander’s chair as Fuzz and Splash chased the blobs back into the kitchen and shut the door. The smell improved.

  “So where are the Squid-G fighters that were attacking the spaceship in distress?” Captain Krill asked when his brain had stopped spinning. He peered through the Tunafish’s windscreen at the misty bit of space they’d landed in.

  “No one’s out there,” complained Fuzz. “Typical. You drop everything, get covered in blobs and then—”

  “Wait!” Captain Krill interrupted. “What’s that?”

  Looming through the mist was a ginormous structure, hanging in the sky like a Christmas star. It was fat and silvery and covered in thousands of tiny windows that winked with light. Dazzling beams shot from the tips of its five arms. It was so vast that the penguins had trouble seeing all of it.

  The Tunafish took an unexpected nose dive, squashing the crew to the backs of their seats. With perfect timing, the Tentakle blobs tumbled back through the kitchen door, shot across the bridge and splatted on to the windscreen. The pong was terrible.

  “Now I’m really angry,” said Fuzz.

  “Like you weren’t angry before?” said Rocky.

  “What’s going on, ICEcube?” asked Captain Krill.

  “We are caught in the traction beam of a large star-shaped space station,” ICEcube replied.

  “Any sign of the craft we’re supposed to be helping?” asked Rocky.

  “Nope,” said Fuzz.

  “Maybe the space station gobbled it up?” Splash suggested.

  There was a strange humming sound. Captain Krill could feel his yellow ear patches shrivelling up. “I think that’s exactly what it did,” he said, shouting over the noise. “And it looks as though it’s about to gobble us too! Hold on tight!”

  The crew of the Tunafish couldn’t see it, but right in front of their blob-covered windscreen, one of the starfish arms on the gigantic space station was lifting up. Up, up, up it went, opening like the beak of a huge silver pelican. Quick as a flash, the Tunafish was sucked inside.

  It landed with a crunch. The blobs slithered off the Tunafish’s windscreen and flopped into the penguins’ laps. Everyone blinked, dazzled by the blinding white light around them.

  They had arrived in some kind of spaceport. Several shiny starships were parked nearby. It was huge and airy and very, very cold.

  “Hopping halibuts,” said Fuzz. He stood on his chair to get a better view. “Check this place out! It looks like it’s been carved from a huge block of… What’s that stuff called? You know, the stuff that’s cold? And white? And rhymes with mice? We used to sit on it all day in the zoo.”

  The others looked blank.

  “It’s a long time since we were on Earth,” said Captain Krill.

  “Polystyrene?” Rocky suggested.

  “Ice,” said Splash at the same time.

  “That’s the stuff!” said Fuzz. “Ice!”

  “I remember!” said Rocky.

  “I used ice cubes to work out my first ever maths problem,” said Splash.

  “These are exciting observations, crew,” said Captain Krill. “But let’s not forget our mission here. The creature who sent us the distress signal is somewhere on this space station. And I’m guessing that’s his ship.”

  A rusty craft was parked right in front of the Tunafish. It looked small and out of place among the gleaming starships and white icy walls. A wobbly picture of a pizza was painted on its wings and tail fin with the word DOUGHBALL on both sides. Piles of empty pizza boxes lay scattered around the craft’s grubby landing gear.

  “Don’t look now,” said Roc
ky, “but someone’s noticed we’ve arrived.”

  The penguins looked over to where hundreds of strange-looking silver robots were moving rapidly towards the Tunafish. Their bodies gleamed and their eyes flashed as their moving metal parts clonked loudly on the ice.

  “Something about those guys makes me nervous,” said Rocky, gazing out of the windscreen at the clonking silver robots.

  “Wuss,” Fuzz said.

  “Interesting,” said Splash. “Apart from their mechanical and electronic specifications, their overlapping plate armour, their visible circuit boards and flashing red LED eyes, they look exactly like leopard seals.”

  “You mean we’re looking at robot versions of the greatest penguin predator of all time?” said Rocky in shock.

  “Yup.”

  Fuzz started practising his fight moves, punching the air with his little flippers and muttering things under his breath like, “Take that, you blubbering bully! You mechanized mollusc! And that! And that!”

  The robot seals were getting closer. CLONK. CLONK. CLONK.

  “Arm yourselves, crew,” Captain Krill commanded. “We may have a battle on our flippers. Let’s show those seals what we’re made of!”

  “Approximately fifty kilos of blubber,” said Splash. “If you add everyone up.”

  “ICEcube?” said Captain Krill. “What weapons have we got that are fully-charged and ready for fighting?”

  CLONK. CLONK. CLONK.

  “Pulse pistols: three,” said ICEcube. “Rocket rifles: two. Bazooka-blammers: one. Zap-o-blasters: two. Stun guns: three. Space cannon: one.”

  “Bring it on!” shouted Fuzz.

  The penguins grabbed their weapons as the door of the Tunafish blasted open. They were dazzled by the fierce red beam of a hundred robot seal eyes.

  “All for one and one for FISH!” roared the Captain. “Attack!”