Microsaurs--Follow that Tiny-Dactyl Read online

  “That way!” Lin shouted, pointing to a line of rock cliffs just on the other side of a little creek lined with purple mushrooms.

  Part of me was terrified, but an even bigger part of me was thinking this was the best day EVER! I mean, I was being chased by a real, live dinosaur! Luckily, the terrified part controlled my legs, so I turned and ran as fast I could.

  I shouted ahead to Lin. “We’re being chased by a triceratops!”

  “I KNOW!” Lin shouted back. She laughed as she ran, and I could tell that a part of her was loving this as much as I was.

  Being chased by a three-horned dinosaur made Lin run even faster than normal, and before long she’d left me in the dust. Lin parkoured over the mushrooms and sprinted through the little creek so fast I wondered if her shoes even got wet. She bounced up the other side of the creek and slipped into a crack in the rock wall in a flash.

  My backpack bounced on my back, making it hard to really get moving, and by the time I made it to the mushrooms I could feel the hot breath of the dinosaur behind me. I launched over the mushrooms and splashed down in the creek and realized that the excited part of me had gone. All that was left was the terrified part.

  Turns out having a triceratops chase you through a jungle was not as fun as I had imagined. The dino splashed behind me, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I wished I’d left my backpack home. At the very least I should have left behind the pineapple I planned on eating for lunch. Canned pineapple is extra heavy when you’re running away from a two-thousand-pound triceratops.

  My legs burned as I sloshed out of the creek and glopped my feet down on the muddy bank. I took one big step out of the mud when the nose of the triceratops bumped into my backpack, sending me facedown in the mud.

  I landed so hard that everything went black for a second. I could smell the dinosaur’s breath all around me. It smelled like old broccoli and dirty gym socks. I was too afraid to open my eyes, but I remembered something my dad told me. He said, above all things, a scientist is brave.

  I rolled over on my back and braved a little peek. The sharp, bone-like beak of a triceratops was less than an inch from my nose.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE GRASS CLUMP MAN

  The massive beast sniffed, creating a vacuum with its nostrils that snuffled a handful of hair right up its nose. It blinked a few times, sniffed again, and wrinkled its big wrinkly nose, then sneezed right in my face.

  The dino half smiled at me, as if this was fun for the both of us, then stuck out its big pink tongue and licked my red shirt and grumbled deep in its chest.

  Covered in dino sneeze, mud, and slobber, I closed my eyes again because I was too afraid to see what would come next. I figured I was about to be smooshed, or snacked on, and I let out a little noise that was supposed to be “help” but it came out more like that squeaky noise you hear when you slowly let the air out of a balloon.

  “Hiiiiii-YAH!” someone shouted. It sounded like an old bear who’d just earned a black belt in karate.

  “Heeeey-you-Two-EEE!” he shouted again, and both the dinosaur and I looked in the direction of the shouting man. All I could see was a man-shaped clump of ferns and grass, but then it moved and I saw the reflection off the grass clump’s glasses.

  I didn’t know what was scarier, the triceratops standing over me, or the wild man shouting nonsense words with twigs and grass twisted into his hair and mustache. The Grass Clump Man carried a large stick. He waved it around his head, which was covered in spiky red grass.

  I didn’t think it was possible for the day to get any stranger, but I was wrong. “Over here, you big overgrown puppy!” Grass Clump Man shouted as he smashed the stick down on the ground. It snapped into three pieces. He picked up the shortest piece, then from somewhere deep inside his grassy suit, he pulled out a large jar of peanut butter. He dipped one hand in the peanut butter, then smeared it all over the stick before he threw it across the creek.

  “Go get it, Twoee!” Grass Clump Man shouted.

  The triceratops that had me pinned to the ground splashed through the creek, chasing after the stick. Its tongue drooped from its mouth like a big goofy puppy.

  Grass Clump Man ran my way, moving just as slow as you’d expect a man covered in ferns and grass to run. The muddy ground didn’t want to let me up, but I slurped out of the brown goop and scrambled to my feet. Lin came flying off the bank and landed between me and Grass Clump Man. She was swinging her skateboard over her head like a pirate sword, and she wore a snarl on her face.

  “Stop right there!” Lin shouted, and Grass Clump Man obeyed. I knew Lin was brave, but I’d never seen this side of her. I knew Lin wasn’t the type to actually clobber someone with a skateboard, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that Grass Clump Man wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Hang on, hang on. I’m only trying to help,” Grass Clump Man said. The closer he got, the less crazy he looked, and I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

  “We need to hurry, before Twoee finishes his snack. Something about your arrival has changed his behavior. It’s fascinating, but when you’re Twoee’s size, fascinating can become dangerous in an instant.” While he said this, the Grass Clump Man smothered one of the stick pieces in more peanut butter.

  The man whistled, and the triceratops stopped chomping on his treat and looked our way. His head poked up over the tall reeds on the bank.

  The big beastie tilted his head, lolled out his tongue, and barked. I tried to feel scared or maybe even worried, but he reminded me so much of a big puppy that I kind of just wanted to run across the creek and scratch his belly.

  The Grass Clump Man threw the next stick and the big dino bounced after it.

  “All right. That will buy us a few minutes.” He licked the peanut butter off his fingers, then stuffed the jar of peanut butter into a secret pocket inside his grass-covered suit. “Are you ready?”

  “Um, ready for what?” Lin asked.

  “To head back to my lab,” the Grass Clump Man said. “We need to get out of here before Twoee finishes his snack. It will give us more time to figure out what is making him act so strange.”

  “You mean acting like a dog? That seems pretty strange to me,” I said.

  “No, no, no. That’s totally normal behavior for Twoee. It’s why I named him after my dog, Bruno. His real name is Bruno 2, but I call him Twoee for short.” The Grass Clump Man looked so proud to have named the triceratops after his dog, and it clicked in my mind.

  “You’re Penrod. Lin and I saw your note in the microscope and came to save you,” I said.

  “Professor Penbrook Penrod, actually. Glad you found my note. I hope you brought the juice,” he said. Twoee chuffed and barked from across the creek.

  I shrugged my shoulders and looked at Lin. “We didn’t know that we were supposed to bring juice. Danny has a water bottle,” she said.

  “It’s a canteen, actually. Official Army Issue,” I explained.

  “Well, we’ll top that taco with cheese when the time comes.” He threw the last stick chunk to Twoee. “Right now, we need to go.” He turned and stomped his big grass-covered feet through a tall crop of weeds, and in a second he was gone.

  “You know he’s completely insane, right?” Lin said.

  “Do we follow him?” I asked Lin, and she rolled her eyes at me like I was asking the most obvious question in the universe.

  “Wait for us, Professor,” Lin shouted, then we chased after our new jungle guide.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE MICROSAURS

  It wasn’t hard catching up to the grass-covered professor, but by the time we had, my mind was full of questions.

  “Did you invent the shrink-a-fier thingy?” Lin asked.

  “Huh. Shrink-A-Fier, I like that,” Professor Penrod said. “I did invent it, but I’ve been calling it the Particulate Matter Reductor. I think I’ll keep your name for it, Lin.”

  “Cool,” Lin said with a very proud smi
le.

  “So, I don’t get it. You shrunk the dinosaurs too?” I asked.

  “Oh no, not at all. And they aren’t dinosaurs, Danny. They are MICROSAURS. They have always been this size. I just shrunk everything else to fit their world.” He looked at me and winked. “Myself included.”

  “Where did you find the Microsaurs?” Lin asked. She crouched under a fallen log, and I climbed over it.

  “Well, it all goes back to this notebook.” Professor Penrod reached inside his grass suit and pulled out a leather-bound book about the size of my dad’s wallet. “It was sent to me from my favorite uncle, a paleontologist and professor with a fantastic name.”

  “Let me guess, his name was Professor Penrod, too,” Lin said.

  “Precisely, Lin. Very smart.” He handed me the leather-bound notebook and I checked it out as we made our way to his lab. “I hadn’t seen my uncle Penrod in more than twenty years. In fact, nobody had. He’d just disappeared. Last we heard from him, he’d been studying fossils in a jungle in Peru. Imagine my surprise when I received this notebook in the mail.”

  “Wow, this is so cool,” I said as I turned the pages in the book. It was filled with drawings of the Microsaurs, as well as notes about what they ate and how many of them there were, and he’d even given each of them a name.

  “At first I thought it was all a joke. Most uncles, and nearly all paleontologists, are practical jokers. But the more I read his notes, the more I became convinced he was telling the truth.”

  “How much farther is this lab of yours?” Lin asked.

  “Just over that little hill there. You’ll see it any minute now,” Professor Penrod said.

  “So, did you go to Peru?” I asked.

  “Of course. As quickly as I could, but it took me a while to find the Microsaurs. They are quite shy little creatures. Or at least they are when you’re four hundred times taller than they are. Things change when you get down to their level, as you’ve noticed firsthand, Danny.

  “I followed my uncle Penrod’s map, and searched and searched for the tiny critters. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a single sign of them, or of my uncle for that matter. But then I remembered something I’d learned from my old days as a bird-watcher. The best way to observe is to blend in. So, I invented and built the first Wearable Environmental Concealment Apparatus.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “His grass pajamas,” Lin said.

  “Precisely, Lin. My, you have a knack for naming things. I think grass pajamas is a much better name. I believe I’ll adopt that as well.”

  “Thank you, I’ve always been good at renaming things. I even renamed my little sister ChuChu, but my parents still call her Chen. ChuChu is a much better name, if you ask me.” Lin looked so proud I was afraid she would pop.

  “And so the grass pajamas helped you find the Microsaurs?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. While wearing my grass pajamas, I blended right in to the jungle, and before long I saw my first real-life Microsaur. A tiny pterodactyl flew by, then landed on my nose. I was so excited I forgot how to breathe for a moment. I stayed in Peru for nearly three months, studying the little miracles in their natural habitat, but it was obvious to me that they needed my help. What was originally a remote jungle location was soon to become a high-rise apartment building. You see, another discovery had happened at the same time. Someone had found gold in the jungle hills of Peru, and a mining town had popped up nearly overnight.”

  “Is that why your uncle sent you the notebook? So you could go rescue the Microsaurs?” Lin asked. I had passed the leather notebook to her and she was looking through it as she walked.

  “Undoubtedly, Lin. While I was never able to find my uncle Penrod, I am certain this is exactly why he sent it my way,” Professor Penrod explained.

  “So, what did you do? How did you get them here?” I asked.

  “There weren’t many of them at first. Eleven of them, to be exact. Three flyers, two sprinters, two long-necked sauropods, a couple of grumpy stegosauri, and a pair of old triceratops, but the longer I looked the more I found. Before long, I had rounded up nearly a hundred Microsaurs.”

  “Bruno 2?” I asked.

  “No, actually. Twoee and his two sisters were the first Microsaurs hatched in the Microterium. He’s just a puppy,” Professor Penrod said. Now he looked so proud I was afraid he was going to pop.

  “I collected the gang of Microsaurs, and as much of their habitat as I could gather. Packed them up in large shipping crates, and sent the entire collection to my home here in the desert. I built the Microterium out of this old barn, invented the Shrink-A-Fier, and the rest, as they say in the movies, is history.”

  “Do they say that in the movies?” Lin asked, and Professor Penrod laughed.

  The hill we climbed seemed to go on forever, but eventually we made it to the top. On the other side, I was surprised to see an upside-down cereal box with a hole cut in it for a door.

  “Well, here we are. The Microterium Paleontological Center for the Study of Living Microsaurs,” Professor Penrod said.

  “Not a bad name, Professor, but I think we can do better,” Lin said with a smile. She looked out over the old cereal box, then waved her hand slowly across the land. “The Fruity Stars Lab.”

  Professor Penrod laughed and nodded his head. “I love it. The Fruity Stars Lab it is.”

  Something rumbled in the jungle behind us and we all turned to look. Down at the bottom of the hill, Bruno 2 was stomping down the grass and rubble, sniffing around like a hound dog on a trail. He looked up at me, made eye contact, and I swear he looked ready to charge again.

  “Um, he’s looking at me like I’m lunch again, Professor Penrod,” I said. My insides were rumbling, and not just because I hadn’t eaten anything since the corn dog earlier that day.

  “He’s not much of a climber, but we better make our way to the Fruity Stars Lab in a hurry,” Professor Penrod said.

  “That’s not the only reason we need to hurry back. I have plans on being the Ramp-O-Saurus long-distance jumping champion in a couple of hours. It’s going to be pretty hard to do that if I’m only a half-inch tall,” Lin said.

  I couldn’t believe it, but I had been so caught up in the awesomeness of hanging out with the Microsaurs that I totally forgot about Lin’s competition. I checked my smartphone. It was 2:14:49. We had exactly 1 hour and 45 minutes and 11 seconds before Lin needed to be at the top of the ramp.

  “Can you unshrink us at the lab, Professor Penrod?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, without the juice, we’re stuck here in the Microterium,” he said. “But like they say in the movies, necessity is the mother of invention.”

  “Now, I know they don’t say THAT in the movies,” Lin said.

  “What kind of juice are we talking about?” I asked.

  “Battery juice, Danny. Power. We need high voltage and LOTS of it, or the three of us are trapped. For good.”

  CHAPTER 9

  I HAVE A THEORY

  “I just don’t understand how we could be trapped,” Lin said.

  “It’s simple, really. Twoee ripped apart the Particulate Matter Expander 1,” Professor Penrod explained.

  “The what?” I asked.

  “The Expand-O-Matic 1,” Lin said, once again renaming Professor Penrod’s invention. She slumped down off the dice, sliding to the floor like a rag doll. “This is sooooo frustrating. All I want to do is grow four thousand times bigger and beat B.J. Hooper in the Ramp-O-Saurus competition. Is that too much to ask?”

  “If you grew four thousand times bigger, you’d be larger than that skate ramp you keep talking about. We actually only need to expand 86.274 times larger than we are now, to be exact,” Professor Penrod explained. “The good news is that I’ve rebuilt most of the machine already.” He motioned to the contraption in the middle of his lab. “But the power source has been completely destroyed. I don’t know what has gotten into Twoee lately.” Professor Penrod look
ed over at me. “Actually, it was very similar behavior to how he acted when he met you, Danny.”

  I looked around the room, and felt like shrinking even more. I didn’t mean to change Bruno 2’s behavior. I was just being me.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Danny. It wasn’t your fault. There’s something else altogether that is changing Twoee’s actions. But before we can even think about finding a new power source for my Expand-O-Matic, we’ve got to figure out this Twoee problem. I wish we had more time to observe him, because I get a feeling the answer is so close I can almost reach out and grab it.”

  Right next to the professor, behind the rebuilt Expand-O-Matic 2, was the destroyed shell of the Expand-O-Matic 1. He had made the machine out of an empty cherry soda can. Sometimes rubbing my chin helps me think, so I gave it a good scratch while I tried to figure out the problem.

  “So, where was the Expand-O-Matic before Twoee tore it apart?” I asked.

  “It was just outside the lab, where Twoee is sitting right now,” Professor Penrod said.

  I looked out the door, peeking at the oversized puppy-saurus. He was sleeping in the sun, totally unaware that I was hiding inside the Fruity Stars Lab.

  “You’re doing that chin-rubbing thing again. What are you thinking, Danny?” Lin asked.

  “I don’t really know yet. Has he chewed up anything else?” I asked.

  “Now that you mention it. I’ve been growing a few vegetables here in the Microterium, running a few experiments about reductive plant growth in a controlled environment. Very interesting stuff, I promise you that. Anyway, the other day, Twoee stomped on every ripe tomato in my garden,” Professor Penrod said, and the answer to the Bruno 2 problem clicked into place like the last piece in a puzzle.