Astrosaurs 3 (8 page)

“What a brilliant plan, Captain!” said Gipsy admiringly. “But how did you know that using your electro-tail underwater would light up anything it touched?”

Teggs stared at the glowing squid. He was almost as surprised as Mira. Then he grinned. “You know me, Gipsy,” he said. “I may have a brain the size of an acorn, but I've always been a bright spark! Come on, let's get out of here before Mira comes back!”

They quickly left the cave. The water was dark and gloomy as they tried to retrace their steps across the sea bed. But it was hard to tell which way they should go. At the bottom of the sea, everything looked the same – dark and spooky.

Soon, Teggs and Gipsy realized they were totally lost.

“We're running out of air, Captain,” said Gipsy.

“Someone will find us soon!” Teggs said confidently.

“Yoo-hoo!” came Mira's voice.

“Oh no,” groaned Teggs. “I didn't mean
him!”

“Hello?” The liopleurodon was getting closer. “Where are you?”

The two astrosaurs ducked down behind some clumps of seaweed.

“The ghosts have gone!” he shouted. “You can come back now!” Then his mouth opened in a big smile. “Oh, I see! It's a game! Hide and seek! Can't we play hunt the spaceship instead? I know it's round here somewhere . . .”

Mira swam closer, his massive head searching this way and that. Soon he would find them.

“Run for it!” hissed Teggs.

Together, the two astrosaurs sprinted through the murky water. They slipped on slimy seaweed. Coral scraped their legs. Their sides ached with effort.

“Found you!” cried Mira, behind them. “You can't hide from me!”

“We have to keep going,” gasped Teggs.

There was a big patch of slimy seaweed ahead. They slipped and skidded over it. Then, with a shout, Teggs fell
through
the seaweed!

Gipsy grabbed hold of his vanishing tail. She tried to pull him back up, but he was too heavy.

With a cry, Gipsy was dragged down through the slimy seaweed after him, into the blackness beyond.

The fall lasted only a few seconds. Teggs went tumbling through the water until he landed on his bottom with a bump. Gipsy landed beside him a second later. They were in a wide tunnel. Although the walls were thick with limpets and seaweed, something shiny was glinting through underneath.

Teggs took a closer look. “This isn't rock. It's metal!” he cried.

“A metal tunnel under the seabed?” Gipsy frowned. “What could it be?”

“Let's find out,” he said. The astrosaurs walked cautiously along the tunnel, straining to see through the murky water. Then they came to a doorway. A sign glowed eerily above them:

CONTROL ROOM.

Teggs nodded gravely. “I think we're inside a spaceship!”

“Mira's
spaceship!” gasped Gipsy. “The one he's trying to find! But what's it doing here?”

“He didn't
park
it under the water,” Teggs realized. “He must have
crashed
it into the ocean and right through the sea bed! I think we fell in through a big hole in the roof, hidden by the seaweed.”

“But how do we get back out?” wondered Gipsy. “There's no way we can climb out of that hole again! And a search party would never think of looking for us down here. They don't even know this place exists!”

“And on top of all that, our air is running out fast,” said Teggs. “Come on, Gipsy. Let's try to find another way back to the sea bed. . .”

Cautiously, they crept on into the gloomy spaceship's control room.

The sunken spaceship's control room was large and wide with a low ceiling. It was clearly designed for giant sea creatures. The controls were built into the floor, so the crew could work them with their tails and flippers.

Gipsy looked at a plastic newspaper floating in the water
“The Liopleurodon Times.
It's six years old!” she said. “This ship has been down here for six whole years at the very least!”

“So the ship crashed here a year before the cryptoclidus first arrived,” Teggs realized. “And the trouble only started when they started building factories around this area.”

“Maybe they disturbed something,” said Gipsy. “Something dangerous!” Teggs nodded. Then he noticed a metal box on the floor with an aerial on top, half covered by the water. “Hey, Gipsy! This looks familiar . . .”

“It's for sending distress calls!” cried Gipsy. “We've got something like it on the
Sauropod
.” She looked closely at the box. “It's broken. But maybe I can fix it!”

“Try!” Teggs urged her. “If we could only send an SOS to Sea Station One . . .”

He waited anxiously while Gipsy went to work with her delicate claws. Finally she gave a small hoot of success. “I think I've got it working,” she said. “But there's not much power. The signal is very weak.”

“Someone will hear it,” said Teggs quietly. “They
must
.”

With nothing to do but wait, the astrosaurs moved on into the cold shadows of the creepy ship.
Meanwhile, back on Sea Station One, Iggy and Arx were hard at work down in the storeroom. The two of them had been waiting ages for news of Teggs and Gipsy. They were worried sick.