The Sausage Dog of Doom! Read Free Page B

turned to face each other, eyes wide as they arrived at the same startling conclusion.

    they gasped, bounding away to search the ship, hoping that the new recruit was hiding from them as a game, or had finally worn himself out and fallen asleep somewhere.
    Poppy and Butch called out to the missing dachshund as they looked in the many little nooks where a mini dog could hide. But the usually yappy sausage dog was nowhere to be seen . . . or
heard.

Shhh!
    With the Rover securely docked on the underside of the giant airship, Rocket released the cockpit hatch and leaped aboard. The bone ship’s structure was a complex
skeleton of gas-filled chambers and stretched rubber that creaked and hissed creepily. The captain sniffed the air for any animal scent he could identify, but the smell of the gas in his nostrils
overpowered his senses.
    ‘Grrr,’ he growled, and set off on foot.
    The bone-white interior was a maze of damp, chilly corridors adding to the bleakness of the place. Rocket didn’t want to stay any longer than he had to, so he raced through the ship at
speed, paws bouncing on the spongy rubber floor.
    Eventually he came upon a vast circular door and skidded to a halt.

    Peering through a round portal, Rocket could see a colossal white hall within. It had curved walls and a wide walkway leading to the distant cockpit, but there was no sign of any dogs. Then he
looked closely at the pilot seat and saw a large brown tail wagging merrily.
    Relieved to see a friendly waggy tail, the captain hit the paw-shaped release pad and the door split down the middle, gliding open with a whisper-quiet whoosh and closing again when he
entered.

    ‘Hello there!’ called Rocket, bounding through the vast chamber of curved walls that he could now see were filled with tiered galleries of small white archways. ‘We picked up a
doggy distress call coming from this ship. Are you in need of assistance?’
    The tail continued to wag, but its owner ignored him.

    ‘Hello?’ the captain repeated. ‘Are you a member of . . .’
    The white chair suddenly spun round, but instead of a friendly dog with a wagging tail to greet him, there was a hairless sphinx cat waving a long stick with brown fur stuck to it.
    ‘R.U.F.F.?’ barked Baldy, making the most of his role.
    Realizing he’d walked into a trap, Rocket immediately turned tail and bounded back the way he’d come, but nearing the exit he saw the chihuahua from the hologram. It was grinning at
him through the round portal in the door, and without the hazy 3D filter, he could see that something wasn’t quite right.

    The door glided open and a curious creature slunk into the chamber.
    It had the head of a chihuahua wearing a green beret, but from the neck down it was a mass of snowy white fur! When the doors closed behind the abominable puffball, it ripped off the rubber mask
with a sharp-clawed paw and pinged it across the room like a rubber band.
    ‘Gotcha!’ hissed Lady Fluffkins, combing out her flattened whiskers.

    With his escape route temporarily blocked, Rocket skidded to a halt halfway down the catwalk and began circling with his head hung low, looking for an alternative exit.
    ‘You don’t really think you can hold me here?’ he laughed.
    ‘Not on my own, perhaps,’ sniffed Fluffkins.
    ‘Well, I don’t think he’ll be much use,’ Rocket added, as Baldy quickly slithered past to join his mistress. The servant was still clutching the fake tail and was petting
it lovingly.
    ‘I wasn’t talking about that fleshy fright!’ growled the empress, snatching the furry stick from her hairless minion. ‘Though Baldy does have some hidden
talents.’
    ‘Really?’ said Rocket, stalling for time as he scanned the walls.
    ‘Would you like to see him do an impersonation?’ asked the Persian.
    ‘An impersonation of who?’ frowned Rocket.

    In one swift movement Lady Fluffkins raised the furry stick and whacked the servant’s skinny tail, making him leap high