Selby Spacedog (2 page)

Round and round the pen Sunny leapt with the terrified Selby still clinging to the boot. Then, he started to make one last great leap and suddenly stopped, sending Selby hurtling high
into the air and landing outside the pen. Dr Trifle came running and picked up the trembling dog.

‘Poor Selby!’ the doctor cried. ‘He must have fallen into the pen. Sunny butted him out!’

‘You mean
booted
him out,’ Postie said, picking up the boot that now lay on the ground. ‘Look at this: the boot came loose! Thank goodness, now we don’t have to use the tranquillising dart.’

‘And speaking of forgetting,’ Selby thought as he jumped down from Dr Trifle’s arms and ran for the car. ‘Those Forget-Me-Not chocolates gave me some excitement that I’ll never forget!’

THE DANGLING DOG

Every bone in Selby’s body ached. The final weekend at the girls’ Bush-Bashers Weekend Camp had been exhausting. He’d run through mud, he’d walked twenty kilometres, and he’d waded through water so cold that his paws went numb. And every time he tried to rest the girls patted and cuddled him to within an inch of his life.

‘I’ve had it!’ Selby thought. ‘I just want to go home and rest.’

It was Mrs Trifle, the organiser of the camp, who’d brought him along, thinking that the exercise would be good for him.

‘And now for the final event,’ Mrs Trifle announced, as she passed out maps and compasses. ‘All you have to do is follow the dotted lines I’ve drawn on your maps to the spot marked X and then race back as fast as you can. The first one back will win the Bush-Bashers Weekend All-Rounder trophy. On your marks, ready, get set, go!’

A cheer went up as the girls thundered off across Kookaburra Flats toward Gumboot Mountain.

‘Oh joy, oh joy. Oh, lucky me,’ Selby thought. ‘They forgot to take me along with them. I can rest at last!’

Selby was just looking around for a comfy lying-down spot when he heard a tiny voice behind him.

‘Ah … er … excuse me,’ the voice said.

Mrs Trifle and Selby turned to see Prunella Weedy standing behind them.

‘What’s wrong?’ Mrs Trifle asked. ‘Why aren’t you off with the other girls?’

‘Pardon me,’ the girl said quietly, ‘but I can’t.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t?’

‘Well, I didn’t get a compass … or a map.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Prune,’ Mrs Trifle said, using the nickname the girls had given Prunella. ‘I didn’t notice you. Here’s a compass and here’s a map.’

‘And would you mind terribly if I took Selby along for company?’ Prunella asked.

‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Trifle. ‘Just hold on to his leash so he doesn’t get lost. Now off you go.’

‘Great woolly wombats,’ Selby thought as he trotted off after Prunella. ‘The girl is hopeless. She’ll never be able to follow the map — and here I am following her! I’m not the one who’ll get lost — she will.’

For the next two hours they bashed their way through dense bushes, getting lost a dozen times. Finally Prunella found the big rock at the spot marked X on the map.

‘We made it,’ she said, putting the map down and tying Selby’s leash to a tree. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment, Selby, I have to make a rest stop.’

‘It’ll be just my luck,’ Selby thought as Prunella disappeared into the bushes, ‘if she gets lost while she’s off doing her business. But, what am I saying? I could just untie this silly thing and go back. I’ll bet I could find my way back
to camp in half the time she could. Hmmm, let me see now …’

Selby looked at the map that lay open on the ground next to Prunella’s backpack. He then opened the compass and turned the map around till it was facing in the right direction.

‘Oh, no,’ he thought. ‘If we follow this dotted line we have to make a huge loop to get back to camp. We’ll be stumbling around in woods till midnight even if we don’t get lost again. But hey now, hold the show! Forget the dotted line — there’s a perfect shortcut. All we have to do is cut straight across all these squiggly close-together lines, across a thin blue line and we’ll be back at camp in a jiffy!’

Quick as a flash Selby opened the side pocket of Prunella’s backpack and took out a pencil and an eraser. In a second he’d erased the long loop and put in a short dotted line that led straight back to camp. No sooner were the pencil and the eraser safely back in the pack than Prunella returned and picked up the map.

‘That’s strange,’ she said. ‘I thought we had a long way to go but we haven’t. We’re practically back.’

Prunella untied Selby’s leash, tied it to her belt and started off.

‘Now, let’s see,’ she said, holding the map up in front of her face as she walked, ‘there’s a thin blue line we have to cross. I wonder what that is. And before we get there there’s a bit with lots of squiggly close-together lines. Doesn’t that mean it’s a cliff? No, it can’t be. Mrs Trifle wouldn’t make us climb down a cliff.’

Selby was off in a daydream: thinking about resting his weary legs by the fire in the evening while listening to the girls sing campfire songs. Of course Mrs Trifle would feed him Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits but the girls would slip him lots of lovely sausages from their own plates. He wouldn’t even mind being patted and cuddled.

Then, suddenly, something crept into Selby’s brain. It was a word, a simple one-syllable word — ‘cliff’.

‘Cliff? Did she say, cliff?’ Selby thought. ‘Gulp. She’s right! Squiggly close-together lines mean a cliff! And there it is, right in front of us! I’ve got to warn her before she walks off the edge!’

Selby was about to say, ‘Excuse me, Prune, but I’d like you to know that I speak perfect English and that I changed the map and now we’re about to fall off a cliff’, when Prunella suddenly disappeared over the edge. A split second later Selby’s leash pulled tight and he was yanked over the cliff after her.

Selby let out a long scream as they fell through the air towards the river below.

‘Oh, no!’ he thought. ‘If the fall doesn’t kill us, we’ll drown! That little blue line on the map was a river!’

Over and over Selby and Prunella tumbled and as they neared the bottom, Selby spotted a small tree sticking out from a crack in the cliff.

‘If I can sky-dive over to one side,’ he thought, ‘Prune will be on the other and the leash will hook around the tree. It’s our only chance. But when the leash catches — it’ll pull on my collar and break my neck! Oh, well.’

Selby stretched out his legs and glided to one side. Then, just before the leash caught the tree, he grabbed his collar with his front paws, pulling it with all his strength. In a second they’d stopped dead and were hanging from the
tiny tree. Selby looked over at Prunella, dangling unconscious, just above the water.

‘We made it this far,’ he sighed. ‘But in a minute the branch will break and we’ll be swept away. Even if I could swim — which I can’t — useless old Prune here would pull me under. The water’s moving so fast that it would take an Olympic champion to make it to shore.’

Just then Selby heard a crack and then another crack and he and Prunella splashed into the icy water. As he went under, his whole life passed in front of him. He remembered when he’d been an ordinary little barking dog. And he remembered when he learned to talk while watching TV. And he remembered the day he decided to keep it a secret even if it killed him. Suddenly, just when he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, Selby felt himself being pulled through the water like an out-of-control submarine. In a second he was dragged up onto the riverbank.

‘Gosh, that was a very short shortcut,’ Prunella said as she poured the water out of her backpack.’ Come on, Selby, we’re nearly there.’

Five minutes later Selby and Prunella pranced proudly into camp. Mrs Trifle stared at them in disbelief.

‘Prunella, you’re the first one back!’ she cried. ‘You started off last and you finished first! Here you go,’ Mrs Trifle added as she handed the girl the Bush-Bashers Weekend All-Rounder
trophy. ‘You win the grand prize. What a great map-reader you must be.’

‘I — I’m really not,’ Prunella said, blushing till her ears turned bright red. ‘But I’m an okay swimmer — and I guess I’m lucky.’

‘Are you kidding? You’re a
great
swimmer,’ Selby thought. ‘And, luckily for me, your swimming is much better than my map-reading!’

BOOKS, BOMBS AND BOOK WEEK

While Dr and Mrs Trifle were talking to their old friend, Gary Gaggs, the corniest comedian in Australia, Selby was hiding in the study quietly listening to his favourite rock group on the radio.

‘That Gary is sooooooo funny,’ Selby thought, ‘but I have to be sooooooo careful not to laugh when I’m around him. One little snicker and everyone would know that I’m not an ordinary non-talking dog.’

Suddenly there was a newsflash on the radio.

‘We interrupt this program to say that there’s an emergency at Bogusville Primary School. The librarian has barricaded herself in the library and is threatening to blow it up. A Special School Crisis Coordinator is due to arrive soon. We now return you to “The Screaming Mimis’ Greatest Hits”.’

‘That must be Camilla Bonzer, the school librarian!’ Selby thought. ‘I wonder what happened? This is terrible! She’s really nice. I wonder if Mrs Trifle knows about it.’

Selby turned off the radio and went into the lounge room where Gary Gaggs was trying out some of his newest corny old jokes on the Trifles.

‘Did you hear about the race between the rabbit and the echidna?’ Gary asked.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Dr Trifle said.

‘Well, the rabbit was the first across the finish line but the echidna won on points,’ Gary laughed, adding a ‘Woo! Woo! Woo!’ as he often did at the end of a joke.

‘The echidna won on
points!
That’s really funny!’ Selby thought as he fought back a giggle.

‘The other day I was cutting the grass with my lawn-mooer -’ Gary started.

‘Don’t you mean your
lawn-mower?’
Mrs Trifle asked.

‘No, I mean my lawn-mooer — my pet cow,’ Gary said. ‘Woo! Woo! Woo! But seriously folks, that evening the light in the lounge room burnt out. I was delighted!’

‘De-lighted!’ Selby thought. ‘The light went out! That’s so funny!’