The Sausage Dog of Doom! by Michael Broad Page B

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