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First published in Great Britain in 2018
by Egmont UK Limited
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 2018 Katie Tsang and Kevin Tsang
Illustration copyright © 2018 Nathan Reed
Additional interior illustrations copyright © 2018 Egmont Ltd
ISBN 978 1 4052 8752 4
eISBN 978 1 4052 9364 8
www.egmont.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
67431/001
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TO OuR SIblIngs:
Jack, janE aNd StepHanIE
-Katie & Kevin Tsang
COnTenTS
CHaPter 1:
my HIStory AS A
CerTIfIEd, DefInItely nOT
afraId ghost-HUNTER
1
CHaPter 2:
one FISH,
Two FISh
7
CHaPter 3:
alIen eNcountER
15
CHaPter 4:
EVIL sHaRk lords
35
CHaPtER 5:
a dangerous
INvItatIon
55
ChaptER 6:
Sharks don’t lIVE
On THE mOOn
67
ChaptER 7:
BUtterButt ThE
Beach cat
87
ChaptER 8:
QUarantInE
103
ChaptER 9:
Prawn cRackerS
anD PYjamas
111
ChaptER 10:
UnderwateR
SpacesuIt
131
chapter 11:
An
attack IN
the pool!
139
chapter 12:
you
can’t gEt
chIcken pox twIce
151
chapter 13:
the eI ht senses
G
of doom!
165
chapter 14:
a party . . . for sharks!
183
chapter 15:
cake for heroes
195
CHAPTER 1
MY hIsTORy AS A
CeRTIfIeD, DefInIteLY nOT
AfraID
GhoST
-HUNTeR
My name is Sam Wu and I am NOT afraid of sharks. Or ghosts. Or anything else, no matter what a certain someone – that someone being Ralph Philip Zinkerman
the Third – might tell you. And whatever anyone tells you, I am NOT Scaredy-Cat Sam.
You might have heard about my
adventures with some ghosts. They started
1
in the
Space Museum
and then everything snowballed from there.1
Anyway, I’ve established that I’m NOT
afraid of ghosts. NOT even the Ghost
King, who is the number one bad guy in
the entire universe. I know this from my
favourite show,
There was a ghost in my house and we –
that’s me and my friends Zoe and Bernard –
had to find it and chase it out of my house.
1 I recently realized that when people say ‘snowballed’ they don’t
really mean an actual snowball like you’d throw at an enemy. They
mean an AVALANCHE. Which sounds terrifying. NOT that I’m
afraid of avalanches.
See,
totally
NOT
scared!
True story.2 We even have the
ghost-hunter certificates to
prove it.
Back to me being brave.
2 This story might NOT be 100 per cent true, but don’t tell Ralph
Philip Zinkerman that. Or his twin sister Regina.
I’m so brave that my sidekick is an actual,
genuine, man-eating snake named Fang.3
I thought that by proving I
wasn’t afraid of ghosts nobody
would call me Scaredy-Cat Sam
any more. I was wrong.
It was just the beginning of
proving how NOT afraid I am.
3 Fang doesn’t actually have fangs, and I’ve also
never seen him eat a man, but that isn’t important.
The important thing is that Fang is an actual snake
and he’s my very scary sidekick. NOT scary to me,
scary to everyone else. Except to my little sister
Lucy, who is apparently not afraid of anything.
Because aftEr tHe
GHOsTs...
CAme tHe
SHArkS!
5
CHAPTER 2
one FISH, Two FISH
After the INCIDENT at the Space Museum,
which won’t be spoken of (it involved me, an
Astro Blast Simulator
and a change of
trousers), I had to
prove my bravery
by getting a snake
sidekick and
becoming a certified
ghost-hunter.
7
It’s kind of a long story. All you need to
know is that I proved how BRAVE I am.
But apparently, bravery is something you
have to prove over and over again.
I thought everything would go back to
normal and I’d never have to hear the words
‘Scaredy-Cat Sam’
again. But then we had a school trip to
the aquarium. And that was when things
really went wrong.4
It should have been a perfect day. I wasn’t
100 per cent sure what to expect at the
aquarium, but my best friend Bernard swore
it was going to be
4 But not quite as wrong as they went at the Space Museum.
Maybe I should stop going on school trips.
8
AMAZING.
Up until this point I’d had exactly three
experiences with the deep sea:
1. On my favourite show,
there was once an episode where they flew
to a water planet and met a flying space
sea turtle named Stephanie. There was
also an Evil Shark Lord
who was in cahoots with the
Ghost King5. It was a great episode. Most people would have found it TERRIFYING, but I was only a little bit scared.
5 He’s the number one-enemy in the universe, according to Captain Jane, Spaceman Jack and ME. But Evil Shark Lord is probably enemy number two.
9
,
2. The beaches in Hong Kong (where my family
is from) very sensibly have shark nets. To
keep out the sharks. My little sister Lucy
wondered what would happen if a shark
got IN the shark net, but I told her that
was impossible.6
3. When I asked Na-Na (that‘s my grandma –
she lives with us) what an aquarium was,
she told me it was like the big fish tanks
at the seafood restaurants in Chinatown,
which we go to on special occasions.
Na-Na always picks out a fish that is STILL
SWIMMING in a fish tank for us to have
for dinner. One time I named the fish, but
then it came out on a plate, so I don‘t name
the fish from the tank ANY MORE.
6 It actually sounded very possible and EXTREMELY scary. But I didn‘t
want to worry her so I put on a brave face. All part of being a big brother.
10
So I thought that the aquarium was
going to be like a giant fish tank where you
picked out your dinner. When I told Bernard and Zoe that their mouths dropped open.
‘EW!’ said Zoe.
I frowned. ‘Zoe, you eat fish. Just
yesterday you had fish fingers for lunch,’
I said.
‘That’s different!’ she spluttered. We were
on the bus on our way to the aquarium.
‘How?’ I said.
‘It just IS! Tell him, Bernard,’ she said.
Bernard frowned and
then took out his thinking glasses. He only wears them when he is thinking VERY HARD.
11
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Fish fingers come in a box.
So obviously it is a completely different
thing.’
‘Yeah!’ said Zoe. ‘And fish
don’t even have fingers.’
‘Exactly! Why are they
called fish fingers?’ I said,
wiggling my own fingers.
‘I don’t know,’ Zoe said loudly (the more
unsure about something she is, the louder she gets). ‘They just are. But I do
know you don’t eat the
fish at the aquarium.’
I shrugged. ‘Try telling Na-Na that.’
And then we arrived at the aquarium.
CHAPTER 3
alIEn eNcOUNter
From the outside, the aquarium looked a
lot like the Space Museum. It was a BIG
building and we had to queue up to go inside.
‘Hey, Sam Wu-ser,’ someone further
back said with a snort. ‘Do you
have a stupid outfit for the
aquarium too?’
It was Ralph. Only Ralph thinks
it’s hilarious to call me Sam Wu-ser
because it rhymes with loser. And only Ralph
15
snorts like that. I took a deep breath and
tried to remember what my dad had said
to do about Ralph. His
advice was:
‘Just ignore
him.’
NOT
that easy!
Ignoring Ralph is
Ralph pushed
his way up through the
queue until he was right
behind me. He started poking
me in the back. ‘Hey! Hey!
Sam Wu-ser! I’m talking to
you! Hey! Hey!’
This was, as you might
imagine, very hard to ignore.
‘He doesn’t have his
outfit on because we’re going to the
16
aquarium not the Space Museum!’ said Zoe.
‘OBVIOUSLY.’
I was, in fact, wearing a
T-shirt, because it is the best show ever.
I made it myself. And in honour of the
aquarium trip, I’d even drawn on space
turtle Stephanie. I didn’t feel
the need to point this
out though.
Ralph was
quiet for all of
FIVE SECONDS.
But then he
barrelled on.
17
‘Hey. Hey, Sam. I heard there is a submarine simulator in there. Bet you are too scared
to get in it. Especially after what happened
at the Space Museum.’ He started
laughing, but it wasn’t a real laugh, it was some sort of pretend villain laugh. Then
he pushed past me, because Ralph always pushes in queues, and went to the front.
‘I’d like to put him in a submarine
simulator,’ Zoe muttered. ‘And send it to the BOTTOM OF THE SEA!’
‘Yeah!’ said Bernard. Then he patted me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t listen to him, Sam. Everyone has forgotten about—’
‘Don’t say it!’ I said. ‘We don’t talk about it,
18
RemeMber?’
‘Sorry!’ said Bernard. Then he coughed.
‘But, um, you aren’t going to get into the
submarine simulator, are you?’
‘Bernard might have a point,’ said Zoe,
tugging on her ponytail.
‘I wasn’t planning to,’ I said. ‘But please
can we stop taking about it?’
They nodded. Spaceman Jack, my
favourite character on ,
never has to deal with this kind of thing.
He NEVER does anything embarrassing,
but if he did, his friends would definitely
NEVER bring it up.
19
‘Come along, you three, hurry up!’ It
was our teacher, Ms Winkleworth. ‘We have
lots to see – and we don’t want to be late
for the feeding at the shark tank!’
THe
FeedIng?
at tHe wHat?
WHat kInD of
FeedIng?
Who
is FeedI
ng
Who
WHat?
Before I had a chance to think about
all the ways a live shark-feeding was more than a little dangerous, we were shuffled
into the aquarium.
It was nothing like the fish tanks in Chinatown.
‘See, Sam! How COOL is this?’ Bernard waved his arms around. I tried to look
at everything all at once but it was impossible.
It was as if we were underwater but somehow breathing air. It was like being on a spaceship in water – dark and filled with aliens! Luckily, I have lots of experience
with aliens from watching
so I was TOTALLY fine. But otherwise I might have been a tiny bit afraid.
21
‘That thing isn’t a fish,’
I spluttered, pointing at this HUGE
PURPLE BLOB that was somehow
floating above my head. I could hear Captain
Jane (she’s the captain of TUBS, The
Universe’s Best Spacecraft) in my head,
telling me to take a deep breath and stay calm.
‘What IS that?’
‘It’s a jellyfish!’ said Zoe. Her eyes were huge.
22
‘LIKE THE POISONOUS
KIND?’ I said in a very calm but
also very loud way.
‘Yep! That’s right,’ said a friendly voice from
above me. I looked up. It was someone who
worked at the aquarium. Her name tag said
‘Betty’. ‘That is a jellyfish! One of forty-eight
species we’ve got here in the aquarium.’
23
‘Ohhhh!’ said Zoe and Bernard and everyone else. They all seemed way too excited about the fact that we were
now trapped underwater, surrounded by POISONOUS JELLYFISH.
‘Mmmmm,’ I said, nodding as if I too was
excited. ‘But, Zoe,’ I whispered, ‘what if it
gets out?’
‘It can’t get out!’ she whispered back. We’d been pushed forwards till our noses were almost touching the glass.
‘That’s what we thought about Fang!’ I
said in a louder whisper. ‘And
we were pretty wrong
about that!’
As I’ve told
you, Fang is my
FIERCE SNAKE
sidekick. He escaped
from his tank once. With the help of Butterbutt,
my sister’s cat. It’s
kind of a long story.
But the point is, he wasn’t
supposed to get out of
his cage and he did. So I
didn’t think Zoe could blame me
for being a little . . . antsy7 about
the possibility of super-dangerous creatures escaping from their cages.
‘That was totally different!’ she said. ‘And anyway, Butterbutt isn’t here.’
‘You never know with Butterbutt,’
I muttered darkly.
7 Antsy but definitely NOT scared.
25
‘Okay, everyone,’ said Betty the guide,
leading us over to what looked like a pool of
sea monsters, ‘it’s time for the petting
tank! Everyone is going to get a turn to
touch some of their favourite sea creatures.
We’ve got starfish, sea slugs and
stingrays! Who wants to go first?’
I stared at Aquarium Guide Betty. ‘Touch
. . . a stingray?’ Didn’t Betty hear herself?
It says STING in the name! Who would want
to touch a STINGray? That’s like asking,
‘Who wants to pet this SPIKY porcupine? Or
this POISONOUS scorpion?’
‘We’ve got a volunteer!’ said Betty. She
reached out and pulled me forwards.
‘Sam won’t do it!’ Ralph said with a
snort. ‘He’s too scared.’
26
‘No he’s not!’ said Zoe. ‘Right, Sam?’
‘Right,’ I said. I tried to smile bravely but
my mouth wasn’t really working.
I
was
totally
NOT
scared!!
It was rubbery and slimy and VERY unpleasant. It felt deadly. And I wasn’t even touching the stinger!
My whole class gasped.
Bernard gave me a thumbs-up. I really
hoped the stingray didn’t decide to, you
know, STING ME.
‘You all right?’ said Betty. ‘You seem to be
a bit shaky.’
‘I’m fine! Fine!’ I said. ‘The water is just . . .
cold. Really cold. Brrr!’
Betty raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s room
temperature.’
‘SO COLD,’ I said. I wanted to pull my
hand out of the water but I didn’t know how
to do it without everyone noticing.
‘Um, it is probably someone else’s turn,’
I said.
‘I want to try!’ It was Regina, Ralph’s twin
sister. She isn’t awful like he is.
29
She is actually kind of nice. She also
doesn’t snort as much. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her snort even once.
‘Well, come on up!’ said Betty, who still hadn’t let go of my hand.
Regina SQUEEZED in next to me and
put her hand straight into the water. ‘This
is so cool,’ she said, grinning at me.
‘Oh yeah,’ I said casually. ‘Super cool.’
Then Betty let go of my hand and I whipped
it out of the water so fast that I splashed Regina.
‘Sorry!’ I said.
She laughed. ‘That’s okay! It’s just water.’
Just STINGRAY-
INFESTED WATER, I thought, but I just nodded as if I wasn’t at all worried about the contents of the water.
I turned around and gave Zoe and Bernard a big grin.
No more Scaredy-Cat Sam here!
Spaceman Jack and Captain Jane would have been
proud.
32
33
CHAPTER 4
EVIL SHARK LORDS
Now that I’d obviously done the BRAVEST
thing anyone could do at the aquarium, I felt
much more relaxed.
‘That was great!’ I said to Bernard as
we made our way through the rest of the
aquarium. ‘Did you see me wrangle that
stingray?’
Bernard blinked. ‘You mean when the
guide put your hand in the water?’
‘I touched it too!’ said Zoe.
35
‘Yeah, but I think the one I touched was
the scariest one,’ I said. ‘Definitely the
ringleader of the group.’
‘I don’t think stingrays have leaders,’ said
Bernard.
‘These ones do,’ I said. ‘I could just tell.’
Bernard frowned. ‘I’ll have to look it up
later.’ Bernard loves to look things up. It is
kind of his superpower – being smart and
knowing facts. Zoe’s super power is being
super fast. My super power is being SUPER
BRAVE, obviously.
We turned the corner and in front of
us was the biggest tank we’d seen yet.
THE SHARK TANK.
Maybe the stingrays weren’t the scariest thing in the aquarium.
‘Gather in close,’ said Betty. ‘But don’t rap on the glass – we don’t
want to bother the sharks.’
‘Of course we don’t want to bother
the sharks,’ I said to Zoe. ‘Who would
want to bother A SHARK?’
Then I saw who was rapping on the glass.
Ralph. Of course. If anyone was going to annoy a shark it would be him.
‘Did you know that sharks are older
than dinosaurs?’ said tour-guide Betty.
‘They’ve been around for over FOUR
HUNDRED MILLION YEARS.’
Bernard gasped. As I said, he loves facts.
He raised his hand. ‘Does that mean that
they are like dinosaurs that live in the sea?’
‘Kind of!’ said Betty. ‘But unlike the
dinosaurs, they’ve managed to survive all
these years. Masters of survival!’
And then I saw one. My very first shark
sighting. It was NOT going to be my last.
It looked just like the sharks in the
movies but BIGGER and MEANER. It
had big black eyes and rows and rows of
razor-sharp teeth. And I was sure it was
looking right at me.
38
‘Whoa,’ said Zoe.
‘Whoa,’ said Bernard.
I didn’t
say anything. I
couldn’t believe that
I was staring at a REAL
LIVE SHARK. Which could EAT ME.
A few other sharks swam by too, but the
first one – the one staring me
down – was definitely the
scariest one. NOT that
I was scared of it. But
everyone else probably
was because it was a
very scary shark.
39
‘And we arrived just in time for the feeding!’ said Betty.
Oh no! The FEEDING! With all of the excitement, I’d forgotten about the FEEDING.
Ralph cheered. ‘This is going to be the best!’ he said to his friends. ‘I can’t wait to see the shark DESTROY something.’ Then
he bared his teeth like a shark.
‘Ralph,’ said Regina. ‘Please calm down.’
But she looked excited too. Everyone looked excited. I didn’t get it! How could you be excited when we still didn’t know WHAT or WHO was going to get fed to the sharks?
In one episode of
they
went to Shark Planet, which was run by
the Evil Shark Lord, and he almost tricked
40
Spaceman Jack into being his dinner!
Doesn’t everyone know that sharks are evil masterminds? How else do you think they have survived for MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of years?
The sharks were swimming faster now –
all of them except the big one. The big one just kept moving in slow circles, going slower every time it passed me, Zoe and Bernard. It was looking at me. I was sure of it. Every time it
swam by, its eyes fixed on me. Even Bernard said, ‘Why is that shark looking at us?’
41
‘It’s not looking at us,’ scoffed Zoe. ‘How
can you even tell what it’s looking at? Its
eyes are on either side of its head! It’s
looking everywhere!’
‘Well, if it is looking everywhere then that
also means it is looking at us,’ said Bernard.
‘So I’m technically right.’
‘The shark isn’t looking at us,’ repeated
Zoe.
And then, as if the shark was LISTENING
(which it probably was, because, as I said,
they are SNEAKY MASTERMINDS), it
slowly turned and came right at us!
We all took a step back from the tank.
Even Zoe.
‘Now can you admit it is looking at us?’
I whispered.
42
Then the shark . . .
UNHINGED ITS GIANT
JAWS AND SHOWED
US ALL ITS TEETH. AND
IT WAS STILL COMING
TOWARDS US.
43
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