The Hairball of Horror! Read Free

and then all three spread out and searched the ship for the missing new recruit. They eventually found the poodle under his blanket on
the transportation deck, but he wasn’t moving at all.
    ‘MONTY!’ they yelled, clearing space around him.

    growled the poodle, lifting the edge of his eye-mask and frowning at the panting dogs. ‘Now would you mind keeping the noise down? Some of us are trying to
sleep!’
    The Spacemutts rolled their eyes and hurried back to work.
    Butch fetched a large boom-bone from the munitions lock-up while Poppy patched the bomb’s remote timer into the
Dogstar
’s control panel, so they could monitor the explosive
device after take-off. At the central hub, Rocket instructed the computer to scan the terrain, to measure the weight and mass of the giant ball, and then estimate the force needed to send it into
the sun.
    ‘Ten megatons, Captain,’ said WOOF, displaying a diagram of her calculations on the screen. ‘Which means burying the boom-bone at a minimum depth of fifty metres and detonation
within thirty minutes.’
    ‘We don’t have time to dig that far down!’ said Rocket.

    ‘Not even with all of our paws digging together!’ said Poppy.

    ‘Actually, we only need one paw,’ said Butch, trotting away to the back of the ship and returning with a large metal paw-shaped shovel. ‘I present to you the amazing
dogged-digger!’
    ‘The amazing doggy what?’ said Poppy.
    ‘Dogged-digger! I invented it to bury big juicy bones where no other dogs could get to them,’ said Butch, drooling at the thought of big juicy bones. ‘It can dig through
anything and burrow to a depth of one hundred metres in ten minutes flat!’
    ‘Then let’s get going,’ said Rocket.

    The Spacemutts quickly gathered at the back of the ship with the boom-bone and the dogged-digger, and then set out across the surface of the object. They had invited Montague to join them,
hoping he might discover the joys of digging, but the poodle took one look at the dirty brown landscape and volunteered to stay behind and look after the ship.

    Montague gave a little whine as the Spacemutts left without him. He wished he could have joined them on the expedition, but his fear of filth kept him aboard the
Dogstar
.

    ‘This is one small step for dog,’ said Poppy, the first to place a paw on the strange, lumpy surface. ‘And one giant leap towards saving the whole of mankind from being blasted
out of the sky.’

    ‘It’s very sticky,’ said Butch, prodding the ground with the digger.
    ‘Hairballs!’ said Rocket, sniffing out a scent as the wild wind battered his nostrils.
    ‘Huh?’ Poppy and Butch said together.
    ‘Can’t you smell it?’ said the captain, scooping up a handful of matted hair with his paw. ‘It has the scent of a million different cat hairs all stuck together with
fish-flavoured dribble.’
    ‘Now that you mention it . . .’ said Butch, snuffling along the ground.
    ‘We’re hurtling through space on a gigantic, apocalyptic hairball!’ said Rocket.

    ‘So Lady Fluffkins has given up trying to conquer planet Earth and wants to destroy it instead?’ said Poppy, shaking her head. ‘Well, at least we won’t have to fight the
feline forces or do battle with a kitty-cat army!’
    ‘Let’s just get this thing buried and get out of here,’ said Rocket, glancing around the dark terrain of rounded hills and sharp mountains as the cold wind shrieked and
whistled. ‘This place gives me the creeps.’
    The Spacemutts moved through the peculiar lumpy landscape and behind the nearest hairball hill, where Rocket set the boom-bone down and Butch went to work with the dogged-digger. The noisy
shovel device made short work of the hole while filling the air with a fountain of hairballs and Poppy was soon lowering the armed boom-bone on an extendable dog lead before the hole was filled
again.

    ‘Not bad for ten minutes’ work,’ said Rocket, patting the mound down with his paws when