The Sausage Dog of Doom! Read online

  For Bella

  (a lovely Labrador)

  The Alien Invasion

  Have you ever looked up at the stars and wondered if aliens really exist? Well, they do! Lots of them! All across the galaxy bright green eyes are looking right back at us, studying our world as they prepare to invade it.

  Some aliens already walk among us, but they don’t have slimy skin or wiggly tentacles. They’re cute and fluffy, eat fish and chase mice, and if they’re not already living in your home, you’ve probably seen them in your garden.

  That’s right – all cats are aliens from outer space! Tiddles from next door is in charge of weapons. Pickle from the post office relays intergalactic orders. And the big ginger tom who lets you tickle his belly on your way to school is an expert in explosives.

  It’s true that some cats are harmless and happy just being our pets, but if you watch the others closely you’ll see they’re up to something. Most of them are spies, plotting in secret and preparing for the invasion. Cats have ruled the rest of the galaxy for thousands of years, conquering every habitable world, and now their sights are set on Earth to complete their evil empire.

  The feline forces have tried to invade our planet many times before, which is how so many cats got stranded here. But they were always doomed to fail because Earth is home to the best alien defence force in the universe . . .

  THE DOGS

  ROCKET Fearless leader of the Spacemutts

  POPPY Plucky pilot of the spaceship Dogstar

  BUTCH Inventor, dribbler and all-round genius

  OSCAR New recruit (a yappy mini dachshund)

  THE CATS

  LADY FLUFFKINS Evil empress of the entire galaxy (well, almost)

  BALDY Cowardly minion of Lady Fluffkins

  THE FELINE FORCES Every breed of cat across the galaxy!

  1. Yappy to See You

  2. Jumping to Jupiter

  3. The Howling

  4. Shhh!

  5. The Sausage Dog of Doom!

  6. Silent Sausage Dog

  Yappy to See You

  Running towards the exit with their hands pressed over their ears, the visitors to the Pooch Pound couldn’t leave fast enough. They passed Poppy, who was spinning in circles and snapping at her tail, Butch, who was howling, growling and frothing at the mouth, and Rocket, who was barking at the top of his lungs. But as the family fled the kennels and the warden closed the door behind them, only one dog could still be heard above the din.

  barked the mini dachshund in the fourth kennel as he raced around on his tiny legs. Oscar was only small, but his voice was so loud and high-pitched that it bounced off the bare brick walls and rattled the metal bars.

  ‘That’s the fifth family he’s seen off today!’ yelled Poppy, ceasing her tail-chasing and folding her ears down to block out some of the noise. ‘He’ll never be rehomed if he keeps this up!’

  ‘He’s hardly stopped yapping since he arrived this morning!’ yelled Butch, wiping the drool from his mouth and pulling his blanket over his head to muffle the sound. ‘If he carries on, that sausage dog will put me off sausages for life!’

  ‘Really?’ gasped Poppy, knowing how much the bulldog loved food, and sausages in particular.

  ‘No, probably not,’ Butch admitted.

  As the racket continued, the two dogs looked helplessly at Rocket, knowing he was the only one who could silence the dachshund. The big brown mutt nodded for his kennel mates to cover their ears, then he leaned forward and took a long, deep breath.

  Rocket boomed.

  The volume of the blast snapped the sausage dog out of his yapping frenzy, but he was only silent for a few seconds before he turned towards the other dogs and started wagging his tail enthusiastically.

  ‘That last family will be taking me home for sure!’ yapped Oscar. ‘Did you see how quickly they rushed out of here to tell the warden they want me?’

  ‘We saw them running,’ Poppy said, frowning.

  ‘They were definitely in a hurry,’ Butch added uncertainly.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll be coming back again, Oscar,’ Rocket added kindly. ‘We told you when you arrived that the people who come to the Pooch Pound usually go for the quieter dogs.’

  gasped Oscar, yapping three times at the thought of it. ‘And I’m quite small and low down, so they probably wouldn’t see me if I didn’t get their attention.’

  said Rocket.

  ‘You three always make a racket when the families arrive,’ said Oscar, eyeing them suspiciously. ‘Maybe you don’t want them to notice me so they’ll pick one of you instead.’

  ‘We wouldn’t do that,’ said Rocket.

  ‘We can’t let anyone take us home,’ said Poppy. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘That’s why we go bonkers when the visitors come,’ said Butch.

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ said Oscar, remembering his last home with sadness. ‘All dogs want a family who will love them and look after them even if they yap when they’re left alone all day. I don’t see what makes you three so different.’

  said Rocket.

  yapped Oscar.

  yapped Oscar, and because he wasn’t getting any answers he continued to yap, yap, yap in the background while the three dogs decided on the best course of action.

  ‘It’s the only way he’ll trust us,’ explained Rocket, tilting his head at the sound of the warden’s squeaky new boots as he locked up the Pooch Pound for the night. ‘And if he makes a racket when we leave, someone might investigate and find us three missing.’

  Poppy and Butch nodded in agreement and began clearing away chew toys and bowls, before bunching up their blankets and taking a seat in the centre of their kennels.

  ‘YAP?’ yapped the dachshund, wondering what was going on.

  ‘Move into the middle of your kennel,Oscar,’ said Rocket, turning away to swipe his collar, which made its spikes light up around his neck. ‘This is Rocket calling the Dogstar,’ he said. ‘Come in, Dogstar.’

  ‘Hello, Captain,’ said the female voice of WOOF, the spaceship’s onboard computer. ‘The Dogstar is orbiting Earth above your location and all systems are prepped for boarding. How many dogs need teleporting this evening?’

  ‘Three and a half,’ Rocket said with a smile, watching the mini dachshund dashing around on short little legs, clearing away toys and bowls as Poppy and Butch had done.

  ‘A half?’ said WOOF. ‘That does not compute, Captain.’

  ‘Make that four,’ said Rocket, remembering that WOOF was a computer and didn’t really understand his jokes. ‘Over and out,’ he added, and moved into position.

  The three Spacemutts watched as Oscar bunched up his blanket and trotted to the middle of his kennel, yapping so many questions that he didn’t even notice when the overhead dome-lights flickered on and off.

  ‘In space, no one can hear you yap!’ smiled Rocket as four shafts of light shot down from the ceiling.

  ‘No one except us,’ Poppy and Butch sighed together.

  The four dogs suddenly sparkled and shimmered in the brilliant light beams and then disappeared one by one. Rocket was the first to go, quickly followed by Poppy and Butch. Oscar was the last to leave, but before he vanished the sausage dog stopped yapping long enough to utter a very loud ‘HUH?’

  Far across the solar system, the clockwork Mouseship hovered in close orbit on the dark side of Jupiter where it could not be detected from Earth. At the observation deck, Lady Fluffkins watched as a giant hose pumped gas from the planet into a vast white balloon that wobbled in the sky.

  ‘It’s working, Majesty!’ gasped Baldy. ‘It’s beginning to take shape!’

  ‘Of course it is, you cat-shaped worm!’ hissed the empre
ss, green eyes glaring at her mammoth masterpiece. ‘This has been years in the making. Nothing can possibly go wrong.’

  The hairless servant’s wide eyes widened even further as the colossal blob continued to swell, blotting out the stars and filling the inky night with its dazzling whiteness.

  ‘It is the most wonderful thing I have ever seen!’ Baldy whispered.

  growled the empress, pulling on sunglasses to protect her eyes from the sudden glare. ‘Would you like to take a moment to think about that?’

  The meek minion gasped when he realized what he’d said.

  ‘Er, except for you, M-M-Mistress!’ he stammered. ‘Nothing in the whole universe is as wonderful as you. You are the most wondrous of wonders!’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ spat the empress, flicking the underling away with a swift swish of her tail before kicking the levers to shut off the hose. ‘And my cunning craft is finally complete!’

  ‘Does that m-m-mean . . .’ said Baldy, looking slightly more petrified than usual.

  ‘Yes,’ said the empress. ‘It is time to load my deadly weapons!’

  ‘Are they really as deadly as they say?’ whispered Baldy.

  ‘Deadlier,’ grinned the empress, drumming her claws on a monitor that was showing a live feed of Earth. ‘They will devastate that little blue planet and complete my empire by morning, and there’s nothing those fleabag dogs can do to stop them.’

  Jumping to Jupiter

  As the four teleport beams sparkling on the transportation deck of the orbiting Dogstar faded away, four dogs were standing in their place. The three regular Spacemutts quickly bounded to their stations, leaving Oscar gazing about the spaceship with wide eyes and an open mouth that was uncharacteristically silent.

  The stunned sausage dog saw Poppy in the cockpit, her expert paws moving over the controls as she switched the Dogstar from autopilot to manual. He saw Rocket standing upright at the central hub, scanning data from local satellites and deep-space telescopes. Then he looked around to find Butch snuffling through his toolbox and examining the engines at the rear of the massive metal craft.

  The dazed dachshund shook his head, making his floppy ears flap, then he leaped from the deck and made up for lost time by yapping all of his questions at once, dashing from station to station like a wild thing.

  ‘Where are we? What’s that big blue ball? Is it planet Earth? Are we in space? How did we get here? What does that do?’ he yapped, on and on, getting louder and faster, until he was racing in circles and yap, yap, yapping.

  The sound bounced around Dogstar’s metal belly and was so loud that Poppy pulled on her headphones and Butch shot under the white sheet that covered his latest invention. Rocket was left to deal with the noisy new recruit, so he pressed the intercom button on the central hub and leaned forward.

  ‘OSCAAAAR!’ he yelled into the microphone.

  The booming speakers made the spaceship rattle, shaking the sausage dog into seated silence. Oscar then sat panting in front of Rocket while the captain explained all about the Spacemutts and their role in fending off Lady Fluffkins and her feline forces.

  ‘Cats rule the whole galaxy?’ yapped Oscar.

  ‘All except for planet Earth,’ said Poppy, pulling off her headphones.

  ‘That’s why we behave badly at the Pooch Pound,’ said Butch, waddling out from under the sheet. ‘We can’t go to new homes until we’ve captured Lady Fluffkins.’

  ‘I’m sorry I doubted you all,’ said Oscar, and began a swift sniffing tour of the spaceship, yapping his way through the millions of questions he still had about the Spacemutts. Poppy and Butch took turns to answer him from their stations, while Rocket returned to the central hub to finish analysing the Dogstar’s security data. All of the information seemed to be in order, until he noticed that one of the files was missing.

  ‘WOOF,’ said Rocket, calling out to the ship’s computer.

  ‘Yes, Captain?’ replied the female voice.

  WOOF was short for World Orbiting Observation Facility, which among other things involved gathering data from far across the galaxy and feeding it through the central hub for the captain’s sharp-eyed analysis.

  ‘We seem to be missing one of the spy-ball satellites,’ said Rocket, double-checking the screen and keying in the location code. ‘Can you show me which one it is so that a replacement can be dispatched?’

  ‘Right away, Captain,’ said WOOF.

  The monitor over the hub immediately displayed an electronic map of the galaxy and a scrolling list of numbered coordinates. One of them began flashing red and the map zoomed in on its location.

  ‘Jupiter?’ said Rocket, as an image of the giant gas planet filled the screen.

  ‘Affirmative,’ said WOOF. ‘The signal was lost one hour ago.’

  ‘That’s unusual,’ said Poppy, swinging round in the cockpit seat. ‘Meteorites often take out satellites in deep space, but we’ve never lost one this close to home before.’

  ‘The spy-balls are very small,’ said Butch, who had made them all himself using tennis balls and tinfoil. ‘Jupiter’s gravity field could easily have sucked one in. The planet is like a massive magnet to anything that comes too close.’

  ‘Can we go and fetch it?’ yapped Oscar, feeling left out.

  ‘I think we’ll have to,’ said Rocket, rolling out a star map to calculate the distance. ‘We can’t have a blind spot in our own solar system. Jupiter is only twenty minutes away from Earth travelling at the speed of light, which is too close for comfort.’

  said Butch, pulling levers and adjusting pressure valves until the back of the ship groaned and hissed with the sudden surge of power.

  said Poppy, programming the instruments on the pilot’s control panel before resting her paws on the acceleration levers.

  ‘Countdown whenever you’re ready, Butch,’ said Rocket, bounding over to the pilot station. The captain saw Oscar sitting in the middle of the floor yapping unhappily to himself and called him up to the front of the ship. ‘There’s a better view from here, little one,’ he said.

  The dachshund hurried forward wagging his tail excitedly and Rocket lifted him up on to the control panel. As Oscar stared through the observation window howling with excitement Butch began the countdown.

  he barked.

  On the count of one, Poppy pushed down on the levers and the Dogstar shot though the starry night like a blazing comet, passing Earth’s moon in the blink of an eye, swerving around Mars and weaving through the rocky asteroid belt on its way to Jupiter. As they travelled at the speed of light, only one voice could be heard asking the same question over and over again.

  yapped Oscar, unable to contain his excitement. He only stopped asking when the great orange ball appeared in the distance, growing larger and larger until it filled the observation window with its churning surface of swirling storms.

  ‘WOW!’ gasped the new recruit as they entered the gas giant’s orbit.

  The mini dachshund was used to feeling small next to bigger dogs and humans, but compared to the supermassive planet Oscar felt like a tiny speck of dust.

  ‘Impressive, huh?’ said Rocket, returning to the central hub.

  ‘Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system,’ said Butch, shutting down the light-speed engines and stabilizing the ship. ‘It’s bigger than all the other planets put together!’

  ‘And it has lots of little moons!’ said Poppy, hopping down from the cockpit to stretch her legs. ‘You might be able to spot one yourself if you look very closely.’

  ‘There’s one!’ yapped Oscar, pressing his nose against the glass as he scanned the starry sky. ‘Though it’s a bit of a funny shape. More of a lumpy blob than a proper round moon.’

  The Spacemutts all stopped what they were doing and raced to the front of the ship. There they leaped up to the control panel in time to see a pale, hazy object creeping over the north pole of Jupiter.

  ‘It’s leaving the planet’s gravity field,’ gasped Poppy, as the
strange shape continued to rise instead of following a circular lunar orbit. ‘Maybe it’s a runaway moon?’

  ‘One that bounces off its own magnetic field?’ Butch frowned. ‘With the speed that thing is travelling it’s more likely to be a rocket, but Jupiter has no solid ground to launch from.’

  ‘It’s not a moon or a rocket,’ said the captain.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ asked Poppy and Butch.

  ‘Because it seems to be changing course!’ said Rocket.

  The Spacemutts’ mouths dropped open as the white blob slowly halted its upward trajectory, paused in mid-air and then took off in another direction.

  ‘Where’s it going?’ yapped Oscar, jumping up and down to get a good view through the observation window as Rocket, Poppy and Butch all leaned forward at the same time. ‘Can we follow it?’

  ‘No need!’ said Rocket. ‘It’s heading straight for us!’

  As well as changing course, the colossal object was picking up speed, growing larger and more distinct as it shot towards the Dogstar. And the closer it came, the more vivid and unbelievable it seemed.