Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Characters
Chapter One: A Rubbish Robbery
Chapter Two: Invisible Walls
Chapter Three: Robbed of Power
Chapter Four: A Mexican Outvestigator Calls
Chapter Five: The Sinister Symbols
Chapter Six: Beware the McMummy!
Chapter Seven: Action off the Scales!
Chapter Eight: The Sting of the Symbols
Chapter Nine: The Enemy Within
Chapter Ten: In the Lair of Sobek
Chapter Eleven: Grave and Watery!
Chapter Twelve: All Change!
Chapter Thirteen: To Battle a God – and Eat a Cod
Mysteries of Ancient Egypt
About the Author
Also by Steve Cole
Copyright
Riddle of the Raptors
The Hatching Horror
The Seas of Doom
The Mind-Swap Menace
The Skies of Fear
The Space Ghosts
Day of the Dino-Droids
The Terror-Bird Trap
The Planet of Peril
The Star Pirates
The Claws of Christmas
The Sun-Snatchers
Revenge of the Fang
The Carnivore Curse
The Dreams of Dread
The Robot Raiders
The Twist of Time
The Sabre-Tooth Secret
The Forest of Evil
Earth Attack!
The T-Rex Invasion
The Castle of Frankensaur
Destination: Danger!
Contest Carnage!
Terror Underground!
Jungle Horror!
Deadly Drama!
Christmas Crisis!
Volcano Invaders!
Space Kidnap!
The Ter-Moo-nators
The Moo-my’s Curse
The Roman Moo-stery
The Wild West Moo-nster
World War Moo
The Battle for Christmoos
The Pirate Moo-tiny
The Moogic of Merlin
The Victorian Moo-ders
The Moo-lympic Games
First Cows on the Mooon
The Viking Emoo-gency
The Udderly Moo-vellous C.I.A. Joke Book
Astrosaurs vs Cows in Action: The Dinosaur Moo-tants
The Fearsome Fists
The Toxic Teeth
The Cyber-Poos
The Supernatural Squid
The Killer Socks
The Last-Chance Chicken
The Alligator Army
The Conquering Conks
Secret Agent Mummy
The Cleopatra Case
Z. Rex
Z. Raptor
Z. Apocalypse
Young Bond: Shoot to Kill
For Peter Kittel
SECRET AGENT MUMMY: THE HIEROGLYPHS OF HORROR
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 15829 4
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Penguin Random House Company
This ebook edition published 2016
Text copyright © Steve Cole, 2016
Logo artwork copyright © Andy Parker, 2014
Cover artwork copyright © Dave Shelton, 2016
Interior illustrations copyright © Donough O’Malley, 2016
Ancient Egypt Advisor – Louise Ellis-Barrett
First Published in Great Britain
Red Fox 9781849418713 2016
The right of Steve Cole to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S PUBLISHERS UK
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THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
These MYSTERIOUS visitors from the realm of KaBa inspired the old Egyptians, who treated them like gods. But EVIL, BAD, FREAKY CREATURES also came to stay – so BIONIC SECRET AGENTS from KaBa were sent to catch them.
Thousands of years later, ONE of those secret agents is STILL on the case. Because SPOOKY MONSTERS are still on the loose . . .
In these pages you will meet:
Brave, bold – but not very bright, Sam is the only Secret Agent Mummy still fighting crime all over our world. His super-tough bandages protect him from enemy attacks and the passing years – he is thousands of years old! He lives in a portable Pyra-Base, hidden from human eyes. With magic, might, cool in-built weapons and a LOT of good luck, he blunders through adventures with the help of his friends . . .
This snooty cat goddess is the brains of Sam’s outfit. She stayed on Earth because she loves the taste of fish! Annoying and vain, she will only help out on anti-bad-guy operations in exchange for worship and cod.
This semi-robotic dog was once Sam’s loyal hunting hound, until he met with a terrible accident. Only his bottom survived. Now wrapped in bandages, Mumbum can be strapped into different metal bodies for different situations – the ultimate utility pooch.
One fateful day, Niall found a magical relic from KaBa, touched it – and absorbed its powers! As a result, Niall is the only human able to see Sam’s secret world. He has become Sam’s special sidekick, helping him on his mad mummy adventures. Quick-thinking, courageous and good with gadgets – both those from Earth and those from KaBa – Niall shares Sam’s mission to protect the world from incredible dangers.
NOW, LET THE ADVENTURE BEGIN . . .
“RIGHT!” Niall Rivers couldn’t take any more. “That does it!”
His annoying little sister, Ellie – also known as the Snitch – had taken the last of the good cereal, leaving only Mum’s gross muesli for breakfast . . . Then she drank the last of the orange juice . . . Now, she was sticking her tongue out at him.
“Hungry for more, huh?” Niall lifted a spoonful of his oaty mush and flicked it at her face. SPLAT! “There!”
“Mum!” The Snitch shrieked, her blonde bunches trembling. “Look what Niall did!”
Mum sighed from behind the local newspaper. “Be nice to your sister, Niall.”
“Maybe one day.” Niall grinned at the Snitch. “Anything good in the paper, Mum? Like evil aliens visiting earth and abducting little sisters?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mum said.
It could happen, Niall thought to himself.
In fact, it had happened – just a few weeks ago!
He smiled. Incredible, impossible adventures were never far away when you lived next door to someone as incredible and impossible as Sam . . .
Of course, Sam wasn’t just any old neighbour. The three letters of his nickname – S, A, M – stood for Secret Agent Mummy; almost three thousand years old and covered from head to toe in bandages, this ancient detective from a far-off realm had fought crime in Ancient Egypt – and had continued to fight it (or continued trying to fight it) ever since.
Since Sam was a secret agent, no one was meant to know any of this. But just a few months ago, Niall had got caught up in one of Sam’s investigations. He’d stumbled across a magical Egyptian relic and accidentally absorbed its powers! Now he could see things that other people couldn’t – like Sam’s home, the Pyra-Base: a massive magical sandstone pyramid that was parked in next-door’s garden. And his natural skill with gadgets had been amplified to mega-levels, so that he could even understand the bonkers technology from Sam’s world . . .
“Every story in this rag sounds ridiculous!” Mum lowered her newspaper, and caught the Snitch wiping cereal off her face. She frowned. “Ellie, what have you done?”
“I told you,” the Snitch whined, “it was Niall!”
“It’s not my fault if you can’t eat your breakfast without getting half of it all over your face!” Niall shot back with a grin.
“Honestly, you two!” Mum threw down the paper. “Come on, Ellie, you’ve got dance class this morning – it’s time we were getting dressed.”
As the Snitch followed Mum out of the kitchen, she glared at Niall. “Bum-head,” she mouthed at him.
Niall shrugged. “I know you are!”
He glanced down at the newspaper and a headline caught his eye: SOUVENIR SNATCHERS! Burglars had broken into an old man’s house, but all they had taken was a box of keepsakes from his recent Nile cruise.
“Probably the most rubbish robbery of all time,” Niall murmured, reading on. The box – private property of one Mr Hoyle – apparently contained postcards, a stuffed toy camel, a model pyramid . . . and a small round stone, discovered near the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Niall studied the picture in the paper more closely. It was a photo of the missing stone – round and smooth like an eyeball and marked with an Egyptian symbol Niall recognized as the forelegs of an ox – the hieroglyph meaning “power”.
“That’s no ordinary stone,” Niall breathed. It looked like something from Sam’s world, the realm of KaBa. And if it was powerful, it could be dangerous . . .
I’d better show this report to Sam, he thought.
Once Mum and the Snitch had left, Niall wrote a note to say he was going round to a friend’s house, tucked the newspaper under his arm and went into the back garden. Over the fence, he could see Sam’s Pyra-Base towering over the tangled weeds in the garden of the empty house next door.
Funny, he thought, it seems to be shimmering slightly. It couldn’t be a heat haze; it wasn’t warm enough.
He climbed over the fence and jumped down the other side. Making his way towards the pyramid, he heard a sinister humming sound . . .
The Pyra-Base’s triangular entrance was standing wide open. Inside, Niall could see a huge tangle of wires spilling from a hole in the wall like a waterfall of multicoloured spaghetti.