The Sausage Dog of Doom! (6 page)

The Howling

As the bone-shaped airship soared overhead, Butch ran to the cannon at the back of the
Dogstar
and pulled the lever to dispatch a replacement spy-ball into
Jupiter’s orbit. Then Poppy swiftly turned the ship round and took off after the curious craft.

‘It has to be Lady Fluffkins,’ said Rocket, pacing up and down. ‘She must have disabled the satellite remotely and used the blind-spot to make a wormhole jump straight into our
solar system.’

‘Does she really think we’ll see a big juicy bone and just let it pass?’ said Butch, dribbling on the floor at the thought of a big juicy bone.

‘Me too!’ yapped Oscar.

‘All of us would, so why is she using an airship shaped like a bone?’ Rocket wondered aloud, knowing that the evil empress usually preferred cat themes for her invasion attempts.
‘There has to be a reason.’

‘Maybe she’s just stupid?’ yapped Oscar.

‘No,’ said Butch.

‘The empress is crafty and cunning,’ said Rocket, scratching his chin. ‘And this big white bone has her mucky pawprints all over it.’

‘I’m scanning the radio channels to pick up any audio signatures aboard the craft,’ said Poppy, high-pitched warbling sounding through the ship as she moved though each
bandwidth. ‘But I can detect no feline frequencies.’

‘No cats?’ yapped Oscar, hoping for some fluffy foes to yap at.

‘Then who else could it be?’ asked Butch.

‘Stop there!’ said Rocket, tilting his head as he picked up a faint call amid the crackling static between two stations. ‘Now lower the frequency and add a scramble-filter for
canine communication.’

‘Dogs?’ Poppy frowned, but she followed the captain’s order. He had the best hearing of all the Spacemutts and regularly picked up sounds that other dogs couldn’t
hear.

When the filter was added, all Spacemutts pricked up their ears as the transmission came through the speakers. The signal was weak and distant, but it was definitely the sound of howling.

‘A doggy distress call!’ said Rocket, watching through the observation window as the giant airship hurtled towards Earth. ‘And it’s coming from inside that
bone!’

‘Are there alien dogs in space too?’ yapped Oscar.

‘With millions of planets in our galaxy there could well be dogs in hiding or on the run from the feline forces,’ Rocket replied doubtfully. ‘The only way we can know for sure
is by making contact with the craft.’

The Spacemutts all gathered around the cockpit as Poppy pulled on her headset and spoke into the microphone, transmitting on the same channel as the distress call.

she said, repeating the message several times but getting no reply. ‘This is
Dogstar
answering your distress call. Please respond!’

The howling signal was growing weaker and weaker and then a sharp yelp blasted through the speakers before the signal was lost for good. Butch and Poppy exchanged worried glances while the mini
dachshund filled the silence with yapping questions about what they planned to do. Rocket was the only dog with head still tilted and his ears pricked.

‘WOOF,’ he said eventually, ‘did you make a backup recording of the doggy distress call?’

‘Affirmative, Captain,’ said the ship’s computer.

‘Play the last three seconds,’ said Rocket, dashing to the central hub and opening a program that would convert the audio file into visual sound waves.

Poppy and Butch joined the captain at his station and watched.

As the high-pitched yelp sounded once again, Rocket moved his paws over the consol until the sound appeared as zigzag lines in a graph on the screen. Then he looped the audio while studying the
image.

‘There!’ he said, eventually, paws moving over the touch screen to split the graph into two separate images. ‘There was a digital code woven into the distress call!’

‘What is it?’ asked Poppy, as the symbols scrolled up the monitor.

‘It’s a hologram!’ said Butch, recognizing the unique 3D code.

‘Can you run it through the holoprojector?’ Rocket asked WOOF.

‘The code sequence is incomplete, Captain,’ she replied as a wide beam of light appeared on the console. ‘But I should be able to pull something from the corrupted
file.’

Suddenly a fuzzy 3D image of a chihuahua wearing a beret appeared in the light beam and the Spacemutts all jumped back. ‘We are the Rebels United against Feline Foes . . . R.U.F.F. for
short . . .’ said the flickering blue hologram, its voice breaking up in the crackling static. ‘. . . some of us are wounded . . . we need your help, Spacemutts!’

The original message only ran for a few seconds and then played on a continuous loop until Rocket switched off the holoprojector and turned to his crew.