The Hairball of Horror! (10 page)

‘MONTAGUE?’ gasped the Spacemutts.

‘Call me Monty,’ panted the poodle, feeling like a proper Spacemutt as he set down the dogged-digger. The puffy white dog was completely filthy, with mucky fur and droopy pompoms,
but he looked happier than they had ever seen him.

‘YOU DIRTY DOG!’ growled Lady Fluffkins, flexing her metal claws menacingly.

‘Oh, it’s under here somewhere,’ smiled Monty, patting down the pile with his mucky paws. The proud poodle then held up the ticking timer for the boom-bone.

‘Artificial enhancements?’ Monty frowned, shaking his head at the spinning shovels as the empress made her way up the hill. ‘In the dog show circuit we call that cheating, so
I’m afraid I’ll have to relieve you of them!’

The Spacemutts watched with wide eyes as the poodle bounded down the disgusting pile and skidded to a halt with perfect posture in a shower of hairballs. The prize-winning poodle then showed off
his agility training as he weaved through the hissing blue cats, leaped on to Lady Fluffkins’s metal leg and scaled it like a silly circuit obstacle course.

Monty imagined he was competing in a dog show: that way he could relax in the spotlight and focus on his footing. The empress swung her arms around wildly, trying to swat the climbing canine,
but he was much too good at performing under pressure.

When Monty finally came face to face with the Persian, she swiped at him with her real claws, but the nimble poodle hopped above her head, pulled a nail file from his collar and began loosening
the screws of her mechanical arms.

‘Stop that!’ hissed the empress, swivelling her robotic torso back and forth to see what he was doing, but the movement caused her metal arms to fly off in different directions, and
when Monty leaped to safety, the shift in balance brought the whole machine crashing to the ground.

With the boom-bone timer ticking, the poodle bounded away to rescue his friends, digging desperately to release Rocket who then helped to free Poppy and Butch.

‘Hurry up, you blue buffoons!’ yelled Lady Fluffkins, kicking her mechanical legs as Baldy dragged his mistress from the chest cage of the robot wreckage, while the Russian Blues
swarmed up the hill and started digging for the
Mouseship
.

As the giant hairball hurtled towards Earth, dogs and cats fought to reach their ships so they could flee the deadly ball of doom. And as the clock began counting down from sixty seconds, the
four Spacemutts sprinted towards the distant
Dogstar
.

‘WOOF!’ called the captain, swiping his collar until the lights shone around his neck. ‘Start the engines and prep for an emergency take-off. We’re on our way!’

‘Yes, Captain!’ said WOOF, back in control on Rocket’s command.

The fuel jets were all firing when the Spacemutts skidded through the cargo doors and bounded to their stations, then the
Dogstar
shot away from the mangy matted missile like a flea from
a flea collar.

Rocket, Poppy, Butch and Monty were a good distance away when they heard a very large BOOM!

The four dogs all ran to the observation window and wondered if Lady Fluffkins and her feline forces had made it off the hairball in time, or whether things were heating up for the evil
empress.

As the hairball headed for the surface of the sun, the extreme temperatures caused it to singe around the edges and then fizzle into nothing. Moments earlier, the clockwork
Mouseship
had zigzagged away from the sizzling fireball like a metal baked potato, heading back to the Catnip Nebula in a trail of black smoke and cinders.

With the cargo bay full of hot cross Russian cats, Lady Fluffkins sat below the observation deck, wafting her singed fur with a fan as she tried to cool down. The empress glared at Baldy, who
was reclining in the pilot seat. He was wearing sunglasses and enjoying the rare sensation of warmth on his thin, hairless body.