# The Android

My name is Marco. People call me Marco the Magnificent. Mar-velous Marco. The Amazing Marco. And of course, all the girls just call me ... gorgeous. Okay, maybe I've never actually heard anyone call me gorgeous, but I am confident that someone, somewhere, must have called me gorgeous at some point. Or not. But definitely cute. I've heard "cute" with my own ears. And I'll soon be hearing it a lot more because I've made a major change. I've cut my hair. Or at least my stylist, Charise, cut it for me. That's right, Charise. And according to Charise, my cuteness quotient has risen from a nine to a definite ten.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. I was telling

you that my name is Marco. I can't tell you my last

name. I forgot it.

No, not really, I'm kidding. I know my last name.

I'm just not going to tell you. And I'm not

going to tell you the complete names of my

friends or where I live.

What I will tell you is the truth.

All except for

that part about "magnificent" and "marvelous."

Everything else I tell you will be true. I know it

will seem incredible. But it will be the absolute

truth.

Let's start with the reason why I won't tell you

my last name: I have enemies. We all sorta do.

But these guys are very powerful, very dangerous

enemies. Not like the guy in your class who keeps

calling you "dork-wad." And if they knew who I was, I'd be dead so fast I wouldn't even

know I was dead. The Yeerks don't play games.

The Yeerks don't worry about pity or kindness.

They don't care that I'm just a kid. The Yeerks

plan to enslave or destroy the entire human

race.

They won't hesitate to roll right over little old

me.

The Yeerks aren't just

my

enemies, though.

They are the enemies of every human being. The enemies

of Earth itself. And they are everywhere.

They're a parasitic species. Think

tapeworms.

That's what they are, when you get right down to

it: intelligent tapeworms.

They are slugs, just a few inches long. They enter

the human body through the ear canal. Once inside,

they flatten themselves out and

wrap themselves around your brain. They squeeze into all the folds and wrinkles of your brain and

tie into your thoughts.

They take over. They make you into what we

call a Controller. A human machine. A body

whose own, true mind is shattered and

helpless.

That's the special horror of the Yeerks. They

don't just take over your mind and eliminate you.

You continue to be aware. You continue to be conscious.

You sit there in your own head watching the Yeerk open

your memory, watching the

Yeerk fool your friends and family, watching the

Yeerk turn the people you love into the same kind

of slave you've become.

You try to move your hand, but you can't. You try

to make your mouth speak, but you can't. You don't even control what your eyes look at. That's

what it's like.

My mother is one of them. A Controller.

For a long time, we thought she had died. I

believed she had drowned. But I learned later

that she was still alive.

A very powerful Yeerk had taken her body. I

don't even know how long she was a Controller

before she disappeared. I don't know how many times her good-night kiss was the action of a Yeerk trying

to pass as a human.

She is Visser One now. A Visser is a

sort of Yeerk warlord or general. Visser One

launched the secret invasion of Earth.

Visser Three is now in charge.

Visser One, in my mother's head, took off after

faking her death by drowning. She's somewhere now . . .

maybe millions of miles away.

No one knows about my mom but me and my best friend,

Jake. I don't want the others to know. I

don't want their pity.

The Yeerks are here. Everywhere. Not just my mother, but maybe yours, too. Maybe your teacher, maybe your

best friend, maybe everyone around you. When you get together with family and friends, you may be the only one in the room who is not a Controller.

That's why we fight them. We Animorphs.

I made up that word, by the way. Pretty cool,

huh? Animorphs. Just popped into my head.

Animal morpher.

See, not every alien in the universe is a Yeerk.

The universe has its heroes, too. It was one

dying, doomed Andalite who gave us our power

to acquire the DNA of any animal and then

to become that animal.

His name was Elfangor. He, and a lot of other

Andalites, died trying to save Earth from the

Yeerks.

So for him, and for all the people of Earth, we

fight, hoping to slow the Yeerks down enough so that the Andalites will have a chance to come

again and save us all.

Who is "we"? Well, there's me, Marco the

Magnificent.

Then, there's Rachel-who-thinks-she's-Xena.-

Warrior Princess.

And there's Tobias, the Bird-boy. And

Cassie, the tree-hugger. And Ax, our

resident Andalite.

And of course, our fearless leader, my boy,

Jake.

My way-too-serious best friend Jake.

Responsible, practically adult Jake.

Jake, who grinds my nerves with his total

refusal to just have a good time.

"Look," I said to Jake, "it's not a crime or anything. There is absolutely no law against dogs

going to outdoor concerts. They don't have a

ticket for dogs."

"You know, Marco, the point of morphing is not for us to get into concerts," Jake said.

We were walking down one of the streets of our

subdivision. We'd shot some hoops down at the

outdoor basketball court, and now Jake

was

dribbling the ball as we walked.

"Nine Inch Nails. Alanis. Offspring," I

said.

He stopped and stared at me. "Marco?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened to your hair, man?"

"You're just noticing? Looks cool, huh?"

Jake just stared. "Offspring?" he asked.

"You're sure Offspring will be there?"

I could see him weakening. He was dribbling slower.

"I hear they are so great live. They kick. They

dominate. They crush all opposition under foot.

They rule. They -"

"Marco, after I've criticized Rachel and

Cassie for using morphing for personal reasons,

I can't just -"

"Who's going to tell them?" I argued. I ran

my fingers through my new, shorter hair. It was

cool-looking. I wasn't even going to pay

attention to the way Jake just stared at it. It looked

cool.

"I'd be a hypocrite," Jake said.

I thought for a moment. "You know, Jake . . . I

have long suspected that Alanis may be a

Controller. And, as a Controller, think of the

damage she could do by leading young, impressionable kids like us astray. Oh, I hate to even think of it!

We have a duty, Jake. We have a sacred

duty to

go to that concert and to find out once and for all whether any of these major stars are Controllers."

Jake smiled his slow smile. "That is easily

the most pathetic excuse you have ever come up with."

I laughed. "Get serious. I've come up with

lots of more pathetic excuses than that."

We were almost at Jake's house, so we stopped.

Jake's brother Tom is one of

them

-

a Controller. We don't talk inside his house.

"You know," Jake said, "the only possible way I could go along with this is if I found out

you

were going to this thing anyway. Then, see, I'd have to go along -- reluctantly -- just to watch your back."

Jake may be responsible and all, but he

isn't a total forty-year-old.

I grinned. "Jake, I'm going to this concert,

whether you like it or not."

"Then I guess I'd better go, just to cover your

butt," Jake said. "You'll have to figure out how to cover that hair."

I made a face. "Real funny."

"I thought so," Jake said, grinning at his own wit. "I'm going to morph Homer, I guess.

You're right. Dog is the way to go. No one will even

think anything about us being there, since there are always dogs at outdoor stuff. And dog hearing is great.

You need to acquire a dog morph."

"Already have," I said smugly. "An Irish setter. Girls love Irish setters. Heh,

heh, heh."

I laughed my "evil" laugh and gave Jake a

look, and he laughed, too.

There are these moments in your life that

seem totally innocent at first, you know? Like normal

everyday life. But then it's like you stepped

off a cliff, and before you know it you're falling.

Suddenly you realize your innocent little decision has

gone spinning out of control.

I had decided to sneak into a concert. I had not

decided to uncover one of the greatest secrets of

human history, or become the person

who would decide the fate of an entire

race.

I just wanted to hear some music.

It should have been no big deal.

here are a couple of big problems with mor-

phing. First of all, there's the two-hour time

limit. If you stay in morph for more than two

hours, you stay forever.

Second, there is the fact that all of the ani

mal's basic instincts come along with the body.

Sometimes when you jump into that animal brain it's like grabbing onto a power line.

Finally, there is the total creepiness factor.

I mean, major,

Stephen-King-meets-Ann-Rice

creepy.

The concert was taking place at this big outdoor arena

that's at one end of the city park. We needed a

private place to morph, but that turned

out not to be so easy. There were people every-

where. Thousands of people. Kids in black T-shirts.

Displaced Deadheads with little granny sunglasses

and dreadlocks. Parental units carrying babies

and trying to look cool in their Dockers.

And hardcore punk rockers with pierced every-

things.

Across from the park there was this little street with coffee shops and restaurants and an ecology bookstore.

There were alleys behind the restaurants, and we headed there.

Down one alley we found a little dead-end area

stuffed with Dumpsters.

"Wonderful," Jake muttered. "The two of us and the garbage. This is already fun."

"Come on, let's do it," I said. I was

impatient.

I could hear a warm-up band racing through a

power set.

"You haven't morphed a dog before, have

you?" Jake asked me.

"No."

He smiled. "Don't get

too

happy," he said.

I didn't really pay any attention to him. I

looked around and saw some hippie girls walking

by. They couldn't see us. I removed my outer

clothing and stripped down to my morphing suit.

I stuffed my clothes and shoes into the bag Jake and

I had brought along and shoved it behind the

Dumpster.

I focused on the dog I had acquired. I saw

it

in my mind. And as I focused, I felt the

changes

begin.

I've morphed much weirder things than dogs.

But every morph is strange. Every morph is un

predictable. You really never know how it's going

to go.

I expected the first thing to be fur. It wasn't.

The first thing that happened was the tail. I felt it

just sort of spurt out of the base of my spine.

I turned to look back over my shoulder. "Oh,

guh-ross!"

The tail was sticking out. But it had no fur

yet. It was just this kind of grayish, chicken-

skinned whip.

I looked back at Jake. His face was bulging

out like something was trying to climb out of his

mouth. At the same time my own muzzle started

to grow. There was a weird grinding sound from inside my head as the bones of my jaw stretched

outward.

I felt an itching in my mouth as my teeth

grew

bigger and rearranged themselves.

I saw my fingers shrink up inside my hands.

At the same time, the little stubs of fingers grew these gray-black nails. My palms became thick

and calloused.

I felt the bones in my legs and arms stretch-

ing, changing directions, and I began to grow

slightly smaller. Suddenly, I couldn't stand up

anymore. I fell forward onto my calloused

pads.

Only then did the fur begin to grow. It was a

good thing, too. I was one ugly animal without fur.

The reddish fur sprouted quickly, like the

world's fastest grass. It just seemed to explode out

of my skin, long and silky.

<Cool.> I said to Jake in

thought-speak. <Check out this fur. Every

girl in that concert is going to want to pet me.>

He said something back to me, but right then

the dog senses kicked in.

I've morphed a wolf, so I was prepared. I

knew the hearing would be amazing. I knew the sense of

smell would be incredible.

But what I didn't expect was the dog's mind.

It was not like the wolf. The wolf was a cool, in

telligent, ruthless killer.

The dog was just a big goof.

You remember that old song, "Girls Just Wanna

Have Fun"? That could be the theme song for dogs.

Dogs just want to have fun.

That's what fooled me. The Irish setter's brain

didn't feel like some strange animal. It felt

like it was just tapping into a part of my own mind. It was a perfect fit with the goof ball part of my own

brain.

I looked over at Jake through my slightly dim

dog vision. He had become his dog, Homer. I

lolled out my tongue and panted. Jake/homer

panted right back at me.

"RUFF!" I barked, for no reason. I did a

little

dance. Sort of like I was going to run away, but then

I stopped suddenly and crouched down on

my front legs and grinned like an idiot at

Jake.

I was inviting him to play.

I tore off down the alley at a run.

<Marco, wait up!>

<Catch me! Hah-hah! Like you even

could!>

I scrabbled away at top speed, my nails

click

ing on the concrete, my floppy ears flying, my

tail

held high and wagging.

I raced down the alleyway, totally ignoring the

rich, wondrous smells of rotting garbage.

I turned toward the park and raced across the

street. Jake fell back, caught up in a

small knot

of people.

SCRRREEEEECCCCHHH!

A car slammed on its brakes and missed me

by a couple of feet. A couple of feet! I

mean, if

the driver had been one millisecond slower to hit

the brakes, I'd have been roadkill. But my

complete dog-brain reaction to that near-death expe

rience was, "Cool! I smell something!"

I'm totally serious. The fact that I smelled

some other dog's pee on a curb was about ten thousand

times more interesting to my dog brain than the squealing car was.

The driver got out and started yelling. I gave

him a happy dog grin and trotted on my way.

<Marco! Would you wait up?>

Suddenly I was surrounded by people. But they were totally different from the people I'd seen before when I was still human.

For one thing, I wasn't really

looking at

these people. I was

smelling

them. What they looked like was so totally not

important. But the smells!

I smelled sweat, I smelled shampoo, I

smelled bad breath, I smelled what they had been

eating, I smelled what they had stepped in, I

smelled laundry detergent, I smelled everyone

they had touched or shaken hands with.

And I could smell all their animals. The

humans might as well have been wearing big neon

signs that said i own a dog, or i have cats. I

could not only smell who owned dogs, I could smell

whether the dogs were male or female, young or old,

fixed or not. Just by sniffing the people walking past, I knew if their dogs ate canned or dry food.

I mean, when you hook up to that dog nose

it's like you've been walking around with cotton balls

up your nostrils all your life and suddenly

you take them out and wow! Wow! You're into a

whole new experience of life.

I'd been a wolf in the forest. Now it was like I

was a wolf in civilization. The information from

my nose was so complex. So full, so rich, so en

joyable.

"Hey, boy!" someone said. A girl! I was sure

she was a girl. But was she a cute girl? I

tried to

make my dog eyes focus, but it was like sight was

just irrelevant. I could see pretty well, but

my

dog brain was way too busy smelling and hearing.

I did notice the scent of patchouli oil, though.

The girl reached out a hand and stroked my head.

Instantly a warm wave of pleasure washed over

me. Then she scratched behind my ear.

This was almost too good. This was sublime. This was

probably the best thing I'd ever felt in

my life.

I think I could have just stood there and let her scratch behind my ear forever. But then she was joined by a guy a guy who owned a cat,

incidentally

-

and she started in on my ribs. I

lay down and rolled on my side. The scratching of

my ribs felt like tickling. I was so happy. I

was

beyond happy.

See, dog happy isn't like human happy.

Human happiness always has this little voice in the

back of your mind going, "Don't be

too

happy.

Keep your guard up. Something bad could still

happen."

But dog happy is just pure, distilled essence of

happiness. I just lolled my wet tongue out and

slapped my tail against the grass, and then it started.

My leg started going all on its own.

"Hah, I love it when dogs do that," the guy

said. "That's so funny!"

His girlfriend scratched away on my ribs and my

back leg just motored away, out of control,

and I was in heaven. That's when Jake found me.

<That's nice,Marco.> Jake said. <Very

dignified. What's next? You going to lick

yourself?>

"Oh, it's another dog," the girl said. "He's even cuter!" She leaned forward to pet Jake.

That brought me to my senses. No way was Jake a

cuter dog than me.

<0kay, okay, that's enough playing

around.> I said. <Come on,

Jake. Let's get closer to the

stage.>

We took off, tails wagging, leaving the nice

hippie couple behind.

<See? I told you, Marco. Don't

get too happy. A happy dog is almost

too

happy.>

<Why not?> I asked, a little

wistfully. <Why

not just get happy?>

Then something stunning happened. There had been no

music for a few minutes, and all at

once, Offspring climbed onstage and unloaded.

They ripped into a song and I cowered a little.

The impact on my dog ears was shocking. But it

wasn't just that it was so loud. It was that I could

hear everything. Everything.

<Hey! I can understand the lyrics

now.> I

said.

<Cool.> Jake answered.

We trotted closer, into a thickening crowd of

humans. The smells were just overwhelming.

And not always in a good way.

Suddenly, I saw him. He was passing out flyers.

He was walking through the crowd and pass

ing out handbills.

A breeze caught one of the sheets and it fluttered

to the ground in front of me. I forced my dog eyes

to look at it. I couldn't read the fine print, but

I could see the two big words at the

top.

The Sharing.

The Sharing. The front organization for Con

trollers.

<Jake.> I said. <That guy. He's handing out flyers for The Sharing.>

<Yeah. You know what? Does he

look familiar,

or is it just my imagination?>

He had brown hair, just a little over his ears. He

was maybe five feet tall, but he managed to

look taller. A slightly shorter version of

Jake, strong and confident-looking. <Yes, he's familiar.

His name's Erek King. He transferred out of our

school like a year ago.>

Erek was coming closer, smiling and handing

out flyers to anyone who would take one.

He knelt down and smiled at me. He reached

out to pet me, but I pulled back. Erek shrugged

and walked on his way, handing out flyers.

<Jake, did you notice t?>

<0h, yeah.> he said.

<Definitely.> <0h, man.> I said. <There

is something very,

very wrong with Erek.>

He

didn't smell," I said.

"What do you mean, he didn't smell?"

Rachel demanded.

"I mean that he didn't

smell.

He had picked up some odors off other people, off the

ground, off dogs, whatever, but he had no smell

himself. None. Like a black hole of smell. Like

nothing there, nobody home."

It was later that same evening. Jake and I had

left the concert shortly after encountering Erek. We'd

called a meeting, and now everyone except Ax was in

Cassie's barn.

Cassie's barn is actually the Wildlife

Rehabilitation Center. It's a sort of

hospital for messed-up wild animals.

Cassie's parents are both

veterinarians. Her mom works at the Gardens, this

big combination zoo and amusement park.

Her dad (with a lot of help from Cassie)

takes in every sick or injured wild animal they

come across. The barn is lined with wire cages filled

with raccoons, foxes, opossums, eagles,

rabbits, geese, badgers, crows, squirrels

... I mean, you name it. It's animal central.

"Maybe you just didn't notice it," Rachel

suggested.

"Rachel, you've been in wolf morph," Jake

said. "You know how good your sense of smell

is? Well, the dog's sense of smell is almost that

good."

Rachel shook her head. That's what she does

when she's frustrated.

She was standing in the middle of the barn floor,

looking immaculate, as usual. Rachel is one

of those girls from the cover of

Seventeen.

Beautiful, fashionable, way too tall, far too

many bright white teeth, massive quantities of very

clean blond hair. But beneath all that fashionable

clothing and perfectly applied makeup there is a

sword-swinging Amazon warrior just trying to break

out.

Rachel's like one of those terrible elf-maidens in

Tolkien's

The Lord of the Rings

-

beautiful and dangerous.

Jake is her cousin and Cassie is her best

friend. Cassie actually experiences normal human

emotions like fear and doubt. I approve of this because I sure experience plenty of fear and doubt myself.

I've experienced more fear and doubt since I

became an Animorph than most people

experience in about ten lifetimes.

Cassie has never met a dress she liked.

She does not subscribe to

Teen

or

YM.

She's much more likely to buy a magazine like

Smelly Animals of America.

You know, the kind of magazine that would have articles like

"How to Give Suppositories to Raccoons,"

or "Let's Examine Owl Vomit!"

If you want to picture Cassie, think of a

short, cute girl with very short black hair,

wearing overalls and big muddy boots and looking

totally capable of giving a tetanus shot to an

angry bear.

Cassie is our animal expert, and our

resident ecology nut. I'd say she likes

animals better than she likes people, except that

she really likes Jake. As in

likes.

Actually, she and Jake

like

each other, although neither of them will admit it, of

course. The only time they'll act that way

is when we're about twelve seconds away from doing

something insanely dangerous. Then they'll kind of

give each other these pathetic sad looks.

It's so lame.

The last original member of our group was

perched in the high rafters overhead. Tobias had his

talons sunk deep into the wood to give himself a

firm hold. And with his hooked beak he was preening the feathers of his right wing.

Tobias is a red-tailed hawk. That's what

he's been since he stayed too long in morph.

He lives as a hawk now, mostly. I mean, he

hunts and eats like a hawk. Not that he has much

choice. I don't think the school is really

interested in a Hawk-boy as a student.

Tobias lives in the woods, along with Ax.

Ax is an Andalite, the brother of Elfangor,

and the only free Andalite within a billion miles

of Earth.

Ax doesn't come to the meetings, usually. He

has a human morph, but he doesn't like

to overuse it. Besides, he basically figures

Jake is his "prince," and he'll do whatever his prince tells him has to be done.

So, that's our little group. Rachel, standing

in the middle of the room, looking like someone was shining a spotlight on her. Jake, pacing back and forth and

looking far too intense. Cassie, cradling a

duck in her arms while she changed its bandage.

Tobias, preening his feathers and looking around with that eternal hawk glare. And me, lolling back on a

bale of hay.

"Shh," Jake said suddenly. "I thought I

heard something."

<lt's just a squirrel up on the

roof.> Tobias assured him in

thought-speak.

"You sure?" Jake asked.

Tobias stopped preening and stared down at

Jake. His hawk stare grew even more intense.

<Am I

sure?

I

do

know what a squirrel sounds like.>

Jake nodded and looked a little embarrassed.

Hawks not only have amazingly good eyes, their hearing

is better than human, too. And Tobias knows

the sounds that prey make. He has to. Asking

Tobias if he recognizes squirrel

sounds would be like asking Einstein if he knows how

to add two plus two.

I tried to bring us all back to the topic. "So,

what does it mean if a kid doesn't smell like

a human?"

"There are plenty of times when you don't smell

human," Rachel said with a smirk. "But then,

maybe that's because you have a small monkey living on

top of your head."

Cassie made a snorking sound as she tried not

to laugh.

"Next time you decide to get a haircut,

talk to me first," Rachel said.

I ignored them both. We had important

business, and I was not going to lower myself to trading insults with Rachel. Besides, I couldn't think of

any.

"He doesn't smell,

and

he's handing out flyers for The Sharing," I said.

"He must be connected to the Yeerks," Rachel said with a shrug.

"But how?" Cassie asked. She was pushing the

duck back into his cage. "I mean, Yeerks

infest various species -- humans,

Hork-Bajir, Taxxons. But that doesn't

change the fact that a human with a Yeerk in his head

should still smell like a human. You know?"

"Chapman is a Controller. He still smells

human," I pointed out. "And by the way, I can't believe I'm even talking about how the vice

principal smells."

Jake shrugged. "I guess we need to find out

what's going on with Erek."

"But how do we find him?" I asked.

"Infiltrate a meeting of The Sharing?"

<I could do surveillance of his

school.> Tobias said.

"Or maybe we could go back to where the concert was and look for clues," Rachel said. Then she winced.

"Wow, that sounded so Nancy Drew."

"Maybe Ax can try and tap into the Internet and

get past all the security buffers and locate

him," I suggested.

Cassie held up her hand like she was asking a

question at school. "Those are all fine plans, but how about if we just look him up in the phone book?"

We all just stared at her.

"Or we could just look him up in the phone

book," Jake said sheepishly.

Cassie headed for the house to get a phone book.

"You know, she is just not getting the whole superhero thing," I said to Jake. "Does Wolverine look

things up in the phone book? Does Spider-man?

I don't think so."

"Yeah, well, Wolverine has a big

advantage over us," Rachel said dryly.

"He's not real."

Then she snapped her fingers. "That's what that

hair of yours reminds me of: a wolverine. I

knew it was something."

"Oh, yeah?" I shot back. "Well, how about your . . . your ..."

"My what?" Rachel asked coolly, with the

absolute confidence of a girl who never looked

less than perfect.

"Your tallness," I said lamely. "You're . .

. tall. Way tall."

Somehow this brilliant comeback did not cause

Rachel to break down in tears.

Cassie came back carrying the white pages,

already open to the "Knowledge's." "There are twenty-seven 'Kings" listed. But you said he transferred

to Truman, so there are maybe six "Kings" that are in that part of town."

"We work our way down the list," I said.

"Although he still could have an unlisted phone."

"I can't hang out tonight," Jake said. "I have got

to write that English paper."

"Here's a clue on the English paper. Don't

say "I have got to,"" I teased.

"I could go tomorrow, maybe," Rachel said. "But not tonight. My dad is in town just for tonight. He's taking me and my sisters to Planet Hollywood."

Cassie looked at me. "I'm free," she

said.

<l'm good till it gets

dark.> Tobias volunteered. Hawks

aren't much use at night.

"Fine. Me and Cassie and Tobias till it

gets dark," I said. "Shouldn't be too hard. Our mission: to find the boy who doesn't smell."

"Maybe he just showers a lot," Rachel said.

"Did you think about that?"

1 saw Jake the following day in the school

cafeteria.

I was wolfing down the Goo of the Day, drinking

milk, and trying to write

my

English paper at warp speed. See, I kind of

had some homework due, too. But I'd spent

yesterday evening cruising around in owl morph looking

for Erek's house.

"English paper?" Jake asked as he sat down

across from me.

"Yeah."

He laughed. "You're good for me, Marco.

Compared to you, I'm so responsible. You have a

topic?"

I looked up at him and thumped my finger

down on the paper. "I've already written three

pages. What do you mean, do I have a topic?"

But Jake knows me. "So," he said.

"Do

you have a topic?"

"A topic will . . . emerge. I'm going to just

write until I discover a topic. The topic will

rise

from these pages. It will reveal itself to me. I just have to keep writing."

He nodded and made a face at the Goo of the

Day on his tray. "This food is blue. Food

should not be blue. Hey, here's a topic for

you

-

the use

of total bull in the writing of English papers."

I grinned. "I am the master of bull. Three

pages

so far and I haven't actually said a single thing."

"S. Did you guys happen to find our friend?"

I shot a glance left and then right. No one was

seated near enough to overhear us. Besides, the cafeteria was so noisy from yelling and laughing

and clashing dishes and scraping chairs that no one could hear much of anything.

"Yeah. We found out where he lives. Saw him through a window. Too bad, though. One of the other King

residences we checked out had this girl living there who was amazing."

"You weren't window-peeping, I hope."

I gave Jake my best shocked-and-outraged

look. "How could you even say that? What kind of

person do you think I am?"

Jake nodded. "Cassie wouldn't let you, huh?"

"I am trying to write a paper here," I said.

"On the topic of

...

?"

"On the topic of how to write a thousand words and say nothing. Zero.

Nada.

Squat."

Jake lowered his voice to just above a whisper.

"We need to check Erek out. Definitely something

wrong there."

I put down my pencil. "You mean get inside

his house?"

Jake shrugged. "Not yet. Get Tobias to watch

him when he's outside. But Tobias will need some

help."

I shrugged and went back to my paper. "I'll

help. I'll have plenty of time. I'm dropping out

of

school this afternoon. Right after the teacher

gets done laughing at this paper."

"Topic

-

the use of rhetoric to obscure a lack

of content," Jake said.

I froze. I looked up. "That's brilliant!

It means

the same as "the use of total bull"

...

but it sounds so much better!"

"Eat your Goo. I gotta go."

He left and I saw him head over to the spot

where Cassie was sitting.

It's one of our rules. We can never start look

ing like a "group." In school or in public

places,

we keep our distance. We only reveal the

relationships that already existed before we became

Animorphs.

I happened to see Chapman coming in through the door of the cafeteria. He grabbed some kid who was running and

told him to slow down. Then he gazed around the

room, looking for troublemakers, like any normal

vice principal would.

But Chapman isn't normal. Chapman is a

Controller. The Yeerk in his head is high-ranking

enough to speak directly with Visser Three.

For about a second, Chapman's eyes locked

on mine.

It was nothing. But it sent a shiver up my spine.

Chapman runs The Sharing. The flyers that Erek

had been handing out at the concert had been about The

Sharing.

Erek had never been some major friend of mine. He

was just this kid I'd say hi to in the hallway.

Except that he had been there for my mother's funeral.

A funeral without a body.

Some other kids from school had come, so I

didn't think anything much about it. Still, it was a nice thing for him to do.

And now he was working for The Sharing.

The Sharing is a front organization for

Controllers. On the surface, it's a sort of

club. Kids join it and go on camp-outs and

field trips and stuff. Adults join it and

supposedly do business deals together and take

weekends at ski resorts.

And probably most members of The Sharing never even

know what's really going on. But the Controllers who

run The Sharing are always on the lookout for some

person with problems.

See, the Yeerks don't just spread by forcing themselves on people. A lot of people become Controllers by choice.

I guess they want to feel like they're part of something bigger. Or maybe it's the secrecy they think is

cool. I don't know.

All I know is that the Yeerks would rather have a

voluntary host. They'd rather have you surrender

your mind than have to take it by force.

They work you up slowly through the levels of The

Sharing, till they decide you're ready. Then they

make promises and tell you lies, and the next thing

you know, you're a slave inside your own mind, all

the more easily controlled because you

let

it happen.

I shoved the tray away from me and picked up my

pencil again. I stared down at the paper. But I was

seeing a funeral service. Singing. Flowers. Some

priest talking about how great my mother had been. He

hadn't even known my mother.

I remember turning around in my pew to look at

the church. A lot of people had come. A lot of sad

faces. A lot of tears. Most people just looking

solemn because that's the way you had to look at a

funeral.

Erek had been three rows back. He was wear-

ing a suit that was probably scratchy and

uncomfortable. But he didn't look solemn. He

looked angry. And he was shaking his head slowly,

barely, from side to side, as if he was

unconsciously disagreeing with everything the priest said.

At the time I figured he was mad because

he had to dress up. I understood that.

And now Erek had reappeared. The boy who

didn't smell human. The boy who worked for The

Sharing.

"Well, Erek," I muttered under my breath,

"we'll have to see about you. We will definitely have to see."

I here may be something in this world cooler than flying on your own wings, but I can't imagine what it is.

Rollerblading? Hah! Surfing? Big deal.

Skydiving? Closer, but not halfway to actual

flying.

Nothing is as cool as flying.

It was after school that same day. I'd finished the

English paper exactly nine seconds before the

teacher came around to collect it. Then I'd gone

to history and been assigned another paper. That's the

nature of school: It never really ends.

But finally the bell rang and blessed freedom! I

was outta there and looking for a private place

to morph. I wanted to check up on Erek.

Remembering the funeral and all had made it seem

even

more important, although I wasn't sure I

knew why.

I climbed up onto the roof of the gym. Of

course, no one is supposed to go up there, but hey,

it was for a good reason. I morphed into an osprey.

It's a bird, a kind of hawk that usually lives

right near the water.

I spread my broad wings and I flew away from

school.

Tell me you haven't sat there in some boring

class, while some teacher went on and on (and on and

on) about how x equaled y but only if you

multiplied it by pi, and wished you could just fly right out the window. Zoom! Good-bye!

Well, I can't fly right out of class because if

I morphed in class there would be a lot of screaming

and hysteria. But I can come close to doing it.

Kids were still piling onto the buses as I caught

a nice little headwind and used it to go airborne. I

zoomed high above all the kids heading for their

buses, and all the teachers heading for their cars. People were just ovals of black, brown, blond, and red hair

to me. That's mostly what a person looks like from a

hundred feet up. A hair oval.

I have never felt as totally alive as when I'm

in a hawk morph. Tobias doesn't have

it all that bad, in some ways. There are so many

worse animals to be.

I felt a thermal, a pillar of warm air,

billow up

beneath my wings and I went for it. Zoom! Like riding

an elevator to the top floor! Up and up. The

warm

air

currents swept me higher and higher.

<Yah-Hah!>

Now the hair ovals were just dots, and the buses were

bright yellow toys pulling slowly away

from the school.

But even from five hundred feet up in the air,

as high as a fifty-story building, I could still see

faces behind the school bus windows. With the osprey's

eyes, it's like wearing binoculars.

I floated up there, wings spread wide, my tail

fanned out to catch every bit of lift, my talons

tucked back against the underside of my body.

Air

rushed over the leading edge of my wings,

making a slight fluttering sound. Wind flowed

over my streamlined head, and I kept my hooked

beak pointed forward to maintain every ounce of

momentum.

I rode that thermal as high as it would carry me.

I'd learned that from Tobias. See, the thermal

will

give you altitude for almost no effort,

and you can turn that altitude into distance. It's like soaring to the top of a mountain, then skiing

down the slopes in whatever direction you want

to go.

Still, it did eventually require some hard

wing-flapping to get to Erek's neighborhood.

I spotted Tobias from far off, when he would

have been invisible to any human eye. He was

riding the wind, just like me. Maybe with a little

more style, since he'd had so much more experi

ence.

When I got close to enough to try thought-

speak, I called to him.

<Tobias? Can you hear me?>

<I can hear you and see you, Marco. I've

been

watching you for twenty minutes.>

<No way. I just spotted you.>

<You have to know what to look for,

Marco. By the way . . . when I count to three, you

need to

bank a very sharp, very fast left turn.>

<Turn? Why?>

<Just do it! One. Two.

THREE!>

I raised one wing, lowered the other, skewed

my tail, and cut a sudden, sharp left.

FWOOOOM!

<Aaaahhhhh!>

A missile blew past me, doing what seemed

like a thousand miles an hour! Only it wasn't coming

from the ground upward, it had fallen

from the sky down! And this missile had gray

feathers.

The wind from its passing nearly knocked me off

balance. It was half a mile away, down and

south, by the time I could even try to think about

focusing.

I saw swept-back, slate-gray wings and a

tight

tail. It was diving away from me so fast it made

me look like I was standing still.

<What the

...

What was

thatl backslash>

I yelled.

<Heh, heh, hen. Welcome to my

world.> To

bias said. <That's a peregrine

falcon. You know, like Jake's morph. They

usually prefer to knock off a tasty pigeon or the

occasional duck. It must

have been the way you were flying. He probably

thought you were a big old clumsy duck.>

<Jeez. What did I ever do to make

him mad?>

<Shake it off.> Tobias

advised. <He missed,

right? I know that bird. He's not as good as he thinks

he is. He's taken a shot at me before. He

must be hungry.>

Suddenly flying didn't seem nearly as fun.

<Yeah. I'll shake it off. That should be

easy,

since I'll be shaking for at least another hour.>

<lt's not all just about riding

thermals.> To

bias said dryly. <Come on, you want

to see our

boy Erek?>

I moved closer to Tobias. Much closer. This was

his world up here in the air. He knew what he

was doing. <By the way,

thanks.> I said.

<Always remember to look

up.> Tobias advised. <The

danger is usually above you. But on a

lighter note . . . that's Erek right there. He

walks

home from his school. See him? Coming to the

corner?>

I spotted the oval of hair below me. <Yeah, I

see him.>

<I watched him this morning on his way in.

I watched him play soccer during gym

->

<They play soccer? They play soccer

during gym? Man, we never get to play soccer.>

<Now he's heading home. I'm

going to let you

take over because I am hungry. And I am also

bored with looking at the top of his head.>

<Did he do anything weird or

different?>

<He scored a goal in soccer. Does

that

count?>

<Hey. Look.> I had

noticed three guys closing in behind Erek. Something

in the way they moved caught my attention. From high

up, it looked almost as if they were hunting Erek.

<Hmmm. That's not good.>

Tobias said.

We both spilled air from our wings and dived,

wanting a closer look. I could see the face of

one

of the guys behind Erek. It was an expression I

had seen before: the idiot, giggling sneer of a

bully.

Suddenly, the guys raced forward. Erek spotted

them and started to run.

It was a street on the edge of a development. There

was a lot of traffic to Erek's left and a stone

wall to his right. The stone wall ended about

fifty

yards away, where it opened for the entrance to

the subdivision.

<lf this guy is a Controller, these

punks are making a serious mistake.>

I said. <They may get him today, but they

might regret it later.>

<Maybe I'll just give that one jerk

a little talon haircut.> Tobias said.

Tobias hates bullies. Back when he was

human, he was the kid most likely to be pounded

on. Jake met Tobias when Tobias's head was

just about to be flushed in the toilet. Naturally,

Jake helped him.

<Tobias, I don't think

com> I started to say, but it was too late.

Tobias was in a stoop and aiming for the biggest guy's

head.

It all happened in a flash.

Erek ran. He tripped. He sprawled

forward, out into the street. He slammed into the broad side of a passing bus.

WHAM! I could hear the impact from up in the

air.

And then . . .

And then ... for just a second, Erek wasn't there

anymore. Something else was where he had been.

Something that seemed to be made of patches of steel

and milk-white plastic.

Then, in the next split second, Erek was

back. A normal boy, lying winded on the

sidewalk.

The bullies ran off. The bus driver never

even noticed and drove on.

Tobias opened his wings and nearly stopped in

midair.

<Did you see t?> Tobias

asked.

<Yeah. I sure did.>

<What was t?>

<I don't know.> I said.

<But 1 know what it

wasn't.

It wasn't human.>

<We need to talk to Ax.> I

said to Tobias.

<Definitely. That was not human. That

was seriously not human.>

<So you did see it, right? I'm not

crazy?>

<Yes, you're crazy. But I

did see it.> Tobias said. <Very

weird.>

Below us, Erek climbed up off the sidewalk,

dusted himself off like nothing had happened, and resumed walking toward home.

<Hang a right.> Tobias

said. <We'll get some good updrafts

off the road. Whatever your friend Erek is, I

don't think he's from around here.>

We flew hard and fast toward home. Tobias

split off to round up Ax. I demorphed and headed

home to check in with my dad and let him know I still

existed. Then I called Jake.

I got Tom instead.

"Hey, Tom. Is Jake around there?"

"I don't know. JAKE!" he yelled. "He

said he's coming."

"Cool."

"Haven't seen you around here much," Tom said.

"Keeping busy?"

I felt a little chill. It's weird, talking

to Controllers when you know that's what they are. It was Tom's voice, and it acted like Tom, but it

wasn't Tom. Tom was cowering helplessly in a

corner of his own mind.

I was talking to a Yeerk.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said.

"Uh-huh. We're going up to the lake, do some

waterskiing."

"You and Jake?"

"Yeah, right. No, me and The Sharing. You know

Jake's too much of a social misfit to join,"

Tom said with a totally human, big-brother laugh of

derision. "It's just that we have too many girls going and not enough guys."

A lie, of course. A lie that was supposed

to entice me. Why was Tom suddenly trying to get

me interested in The Sharing again? He quickly gave me

the answer.

"S. I heard your dad was back at work. That's

cool."

"Yeah, I guess so," I said. My father had

gone

through a bad time after my mom "died." Now he was back at work. He's an engineer, but he's

heavily involved in computers, too. He had been

working with the new observatory on ways to design

software that would aim the telescopes bet

ter.

He was also working on some projects he

couldn't even talk about. Projects I figured

must involve the military.

"You could bring your dad," Tom said as ca

sually as he could. "I mean, not like anyone wants their fathers along, usually, right? But I

mean, maybe he's ready to get back out there in the

world and all. The Sharing is a good place to make

business connections, you know?"

"Yeah, I'll ask him," I said.

"Do that, okay? Your dad could probably use some

down time to relax, take it easy, meet some

people."

S. They were after my father now. I felt something

burning inside me, like I'd taken a gulp of

lava. I wanted to reach right through the

phone and take a baseball bat to the evil

creature

in Tom's head.

"Here's Jake," Tom said. There was a scuffling sound as he handed the phone off. Then

Jake's voice.

"Hey, Marco. What's up?"

I went off. "What's up?! What's

up?

Those

scumbags are after my father, that's what's up!

How do you live with that? How do you look at

that piece of crap every day? He's all like, "Bring your dad to The Sharing, do a father-son bonding thing, and oh, by the way, would you mind if we

stuck a

-

?"

"Shut up," Jake hissed.

I shut up. But my hand was squeezing the receiver so

hard I could have snapped it. Jake let

me calm down for a minute. He made "uh-huh"

noises in the phone, like he was listening to me

talking. He made a couple of laughing sounds. I

guess Tom wasn't far away from the phone.

I knew Jake was right. We don't talk

secrets

over the phone. There's no way of knowing who

might be listening in.

"Okay, I'm cool," I said. I wasn't

cool, but I

was under control again.

"That sounds good to me," Jake said, still

pretending to have a conversation.

"We have to get together," I said. "It's a nice day out."

That was the signal that we should meet in

the woods.

"Okay. Later," Jake said casually.

He hung up.

I took a couple of deep breaths. Then I

took a

couple more.

The Yeerks had taken my mother. They weren't

getting my father. Before that happened I'd tell him

everything. Before I'd let that happen I'd take

Tom down, no matter what Jake said.

I'd take Tom, I'd take Chapman,

I'd take every Controller I knew of before I'd

let them have my father. I had power. Deadly

animals lived inside me. Their DNA swam with

my own.

I could feel the rage flowing through me, the blind,

violent rage that became little films in my head --

little head-movies of revenge and destruction. I

pictured the things I would do to Tom ... to Chapman

. . . someday even to Visser Three. I would do

terrible things to them. Terrible, violent things.

It was a sick feeling. It was sick, and I

knew it, and yet I ran those images over and over

in my head.

Rage is addictive, you know. I guess it's

sorta like a drug. Anger and hatred get you high.

They get you high, but like any addiction, they hollow

you out and tear you down and eat you alive.

I guess I knew all that. But all I could

think of was that they were

not

getting my father.

So I ran the scenes of violence over and over in

my head. I rode that rush of fury till at last

it burned itself out and left me feeling empty and

beaten.

-L hooked up with Jake and the two of us

rode our bikes to Cassie's farm. He didn't

say anything about my conversation with Tom. Jake

knew how I felt. We've all felt it before.

From Cassie's farm we walked across the

fields to the edge of the forest. There's a place we

meet there, deep enough in the trees that no

one is likely to see us.

Rachel and Cassie were already there. Cassie

was on her knees in the pine needles, looking into a

burrow hole. I have no idea what was in

there, but she seemed fascinated. Rachel was

sitting on a fallen log.

"Tobias is off finding Ax," Rachel said as we approached.

"I think there are three of them," Cassie said. I guess she was talking about whatever was in that burrow.

"So? What's the big panic?" Rachel asked.

Before Jake or I could answer, I heard something

crashing through the brush.

He leaped into view, sailing over the log

Rachel was sitting on.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill.

"Hey, Ax," I said. "Very dramatic

entrance."

Of course, any appearance by Ax was going to be

dramatic. Ax is an Andalite. The only

Andalite to survive when their Dome ship was

destroyed by the Yeerks in high orbit. He's an

alien.

You know how on

Star Trek

the aliens are always just humans with a little nose putty and some bad outfits? But they basically

look human and act human and speak English?

Well, Ax isn't like that. You take one look

at Ax and you know he isn't from around here.

Picture a sort of big, blue-and-tan deer.

Only instead of a deer neck and head, you have a

semi-human chest with two weak arms, topped by a

head that is definitely unusual. Ax has no

mouth and four eyes. Two of his eyes are in the

usual location, but his other two eyes are mounted on

stalks on top of his head. The stalk eyes can aim

totally independently. Ax can look right at you with his two main eyes, and still be looking behind him with one stalk and off to the right with

his other stalk.

It's kind of unsettling, till you get used to it.

But not nearly as unsettling as his tail. The tail

makes you think scorpion. It curves up and

over, so that the razor-sharp blade-tip is usually

poised somewhere above his sloping shoulders.

That tail is fast and dangerous. Very fast, very

dangerous. Basically, Ax could slice-and-dice a

human into bite-sized chunks in about two

seconds.

Fortunately, Ax is on our side.

<Hello, Prince Jake.

Hello Marco, Rachel.

Cassie? Did you lose something?>

Cassie stood up. Then, as an afterthought,

she brushed off her knees. "Baby opossums,"

she said, by way of explanation. "Too big for the

pouch, not ready to leave the den."

"Don't tell Tobias," I said. "He'll

eat "em."

<I already know about them.> Tobias

said.

I looked up in surprise. He was in the tree

above me. I hadn't heard him arrive.

Cassie shrugged. "Tobias is a hawk. He

has a right to be a hawk." Then she looked up at

Tobias

and smiled. "Of course, they are awfully cute."

<0h, man.> Tobias

groaned. <0kay, okay, this

litter is off-limits. Happy now?>

"You're a sweetheart, Tobias," Cassie

said.

<We should move while we

talk.> Tobias suggested. <There are some kids playing soldier just about three hundred yards west. Let's stay well out

of range.>

We all started walking east, and Tobias went

up again to scout ahead for any danger.

"Okay, Marco," Jake said after a few

minutes. "This is your party. What's up?"

I told them all what Tobias and I had

seen. Tobias came back and added some details.

Then I looked to Ax.

"So, Ax, you're the official alien. What

does this sound like to you?"

Ax turned his head toward me, making eye

contact with his main eyes. <Marco?

Something has happened to your hair. I believe it

has become shorter. Are you suffering from some sort of illness?>

"That does it!" I yelled, as the others all

broke up giggling. "It'll grow out, all right?

It'll grow out. Besides, it's easier to take care

of. Man! I make one little change!"

<Have I said something

wrong?> Ax wondered.

"No," Jake assured him. "Not at all.

Marco is just a little sensitive. Go ahead, Ax.

What do you think about this Erek person?"

<I do not know. It ... it

doesn't sound like any species I know of.>

"What? Dude, you're the expert on aliens," I

pointed out.

<Marco, even we Andalites don't know

every species in the galaxy.>

I swear he sounded embarrassed. Although since he

was using thought-speak, maybe

"sounded" isn't the right word.

"You don't recognize the description?" Jake

asked.

<No.>

"The way you guys describe it, it sounds more

like a robot or something," Rachel ventured.

"But how does it pass for human?"

<0h, that is technologically

possible.> Ax

said, relieved to be able to add something to

our speculation. <lt's probably a

holographic projection. Like your primitive

TV, only three-

dimensional.>

"Primitive

TV? Hey, we have cable at my

house," I said. Ax didn't think it was

funny, but

Cassie smiled.

Tobias swooped low over our heads and came

to rest on a branch. <So when Erek

gets hit by

the bus, he drops the hologram for just a split

second.>

<The power supply may have been inter

rupted or overloaded.> Ax suggested.

<But that's

the interesting question: What power supply? It

would take a great deal of power to maintain such a

hologram, hour after hour, day after day.>

"Hey, maybe Erek is nuclear-powered," I

said.

Ax laughed. Then I guess he realized I

wasn't

joking. <I don't think nuclear power is

likely.> he

said, still sort of giggling like I was the primitive

moron of the universe. <I think it would

take something much more advanced.>

"Is there any way to see through this holo

gram?" Cassie asked.

"We could hit him with something as big as a

bus," Rachel suggested.

"Now, there's a classic Rachel suggestion," I said with a laugh. I was feeling better, hanging

with my friends.

"Marco found out The Sharing is having a lit

tle waterskiing thing up at the lake," Jake said.

He bit his lip and added, "Tom told him. Erek

is

in The Sharing. He'll probably be there, too.

Per

fect chance for us to get a good look at him.

That's the 'where." Now we just need the "how.""

Ax thought for a moment as we ambled

through the woods. <The hologram is meant

to

trick humans. It would be tuned for

human

sight.

Hawk eyes are better than human, but still see

similar wavelengths of light. Maybe a totally

dif

ferent sort of vision would be able to penetrate the

hologram.>

My heart sank. I knew what was coming next.

Some gross morph.

"Unusual vision is our specialty,"

Rachel said with a careless laugh. She slapped me

on the back like life was just one big adventure.

Sometimes Rachel really grinds my nerves.

"No bugs, okay?" I said. "All I'm

saying is, no more insect morphs. Is that too much

to ask?"

J. guess it

was

too much to ask, as I found

out a couple days later.

"What do you mean, we're going to draw straws?"

I asked suspiciously.

"To see who morphs our new morph," Rachel

said. "Ax is in, regardless. We need his

expertise in aliens. One of us has to go in with

him."

"What's the morph?" I asked suspiciously.

"Spider," Cassie said.

We were at Cassie's barn. It was Saturday

morning. On Friday I'd found out I'd gotten

a B

on my English paper. How cool is that? I'd

stayed up watching TV with my dad and been late for

this meeting.

This was the kind of insanity they cooked up

when I wasn't there.

"Excuse me? I must have something wrong with my

ears." I tapped the side of my head with

my palm. "Because, see, I thought I heard you

say the word "spider." And I remember saying

"no

insects.""

Cassie held her hand out to me. And in that

hand was a spider. "It's not an insect. Arachnids

have eight legs and two body segments. Insects have

six legs and three segments."

I swear, I took a look at that spider and almost

passed out.

"Since I knew we were doing this today, I decided

to do some reading. This is a wolf spider. It has

pretty good eyesight. In fact, it has eight

eyes."

Cassie said this like having eight eyes was a

good thing. Like eight eyes was something everyone should want.

"Go away, Cassie. Go away. Go away, go

away,

I am

going to morph a spider!

You

can morph

a spider. I don't like spiders."

Jake gave me a look. "Marco, Cassie

always

gets stuck doing the new morphs. Besides, this is more

your mission than anyone else's."

"What? Why?" I demanded angrily. "Why is this my mission more than yours or Rachel's?"

Jake shrugged. "Erek is your friend."

"My friend? When did I ever say he was my friend?

He's not my friend. I barely know the guy!"

"Marco, you're such a wuss," Rachel said.

"Hey,

you

want to be a spider?"

Rachel shuddered slightly. "Sure." She was

lying. I just knew it. "If I draw the short

straw, I'd love to go spider."

Then she grinned. She couldn't keep a straight

face.

"Look, you don't

have

to do this," Jake said. "It's just that we're going to be infiltrating a meeting of The Sharing. The

Yeerks are totally on alert for animal morphs.

We have to fit into the environment of the lake. Whatever morphs we use have to belong there. We can't be showing up there as lions and tigers and bears."

"Oh, my," Cassie interjected.

"We need good vision, but not standard mammal-type eyes. And we can't all go in the same way. I

want two people to hang back as a rescue squad in

case we get into a mess. Ax has to go because we

need him to see if he can figure out what Erek

is. Ax is going in as a spider, and we need

someone to go with him."

"Has anyone told Ax about this?"

"He was here earlier. While you were sleeping in

late. He said he thought a spider's body was much

more sensible than a human's body,"

Cassie said. "His exact words were, "Ah,

good. With eight legs it won't fall over like a

human.""

"Be glad we waited for you at all," Rachel

growled. "Just draw a straw."

Jake had five pieces of hay in his fist.

There was no way to tell which was the shortest one.

"Hah. I know how to beat this," I said.

"It's mathematical. If I choose first, my

odds are just one in five. The next person to choose

has odds of one in four, then one in three, and so

on. So the safest thing to do is choose first."

I took a deep breath, reached out, and yanked

up a straw.

I took another deep breath and looked at the very

short straw. "Really, it made perfect sense

mathematically," I said.

I felt like crying.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "You know, if you're

going to be a big baby, I'll do it."

I should have just said "okay." That's what I should have said. What I

did say

to Rachel was, "Don't condescend to me, oh

mighty

Xena.

Just because I'm not a reckless idiot doesn't mean

I'm a wuss. I've never chickened out on a

morph yet. And if Ax is in, so am I. You

can hang around and be the backup, Rachel. I'm

going where the action is."

To which Rachel replied with a very calm, "Okay."

See, this is why guys and girls should not be

in combat together. Because it's much harder for a guy to be a coward when some girl is watching. Especially when

she's all gung ho. If it had just been Jake and

Tobias, I'd have been weeping and groveling on the

ground.

Cassie held out the spider. "It's not bad,"

she said. "I morphed the spider yesterday, just to see what it was like.

Charlotte's Web

was one of my favorite books."

"It would be," I muttered. Well, that was the clincher. Rachel was ready to go, and Cassie had

already done it.

I reached out a finger to touch the spider. It was

shaking. My finger, not the spider.

I touched the spider's back. It tried to get

away but Cassie closed her hand around the spider

and the tip of my finger.

The spider became very still as I acquired it.

Thanks to the Andalite technology that had

transformed me, the spider DNA entered my

system.

Maybe the Yeerks were right. Maybe the

An-dalites were just the big meddlers of the universe.

I know one thing: At that moment, as I touched

the spider's bristly body, I really wished the

Andalites had found someone else to give this power

to.

lake is in the mountains. It's a long way from

where any of us live. And if we'd had to walk it

would have taken several days. Fortunately, we

didn't have to walk.

We have our own little airline. TWA: Travel

With Animorphs.

It was a beautiful day. Just a few puffy clouds

in a blue sky. Bright sun. A canopy of

trees spread out beneath us as we flew toward the

mountains.

With my osprey wings spread wide and the sun

toasting the ground so it sent up elevators of warm

air, it was as perfect as life can get.

If you overlooked the fact that we were head-

ing toward utter, unspeakable grossness and certain

destruction.

<Time to split up.>

Tobias said. <The lake is just over that

next ridge.>

We had not been flying close together because that would have looked massively suspicious. Two

ospreys, a harrier, a bald eagle, a

peregrine, and a red-tailed hawk, all flying together?

Not in the natural world. But we were all within a mile of each other, and all heading in the same direction.

Tobias went into a lazy upward spiral,

hanging back. Rachel and Cassie split off,

too. The Yeerks would have heavy security around the

meeting of The Sharing. The Yeerks know all about

morph-+. They would be on alert.

Ax, in a harrier morph, Jake, in his

peregrine falcon morph, and I flew on toward

the lake, though still far apart.

<You know, one of your kind tried

to kill me the other day.> I said to Jake.

<Tobias told me.>

Jake said. <Gotta watch out.

Falcons rule.>

<Yeah, well I noticed he

didn't try it a second time.>

<Don't diss falcons.>

Jake said.

<0ne-on-one in a fair fight, an

osprey would kick your butt.>

<As if.> Jake sneered.

<Excuse me.> Ax

interrupted. <ls there some special meaning

to this conversation that I don't understand?>

<Yeah.> I said. <The meaning is that Jake and I are scared, so we're babbling in a desperate effort not to think about it.>

<Ah. I am frightened, too. I

don't really like morphing tiny animals. I keep

thinking about all the rest of my mass.>

<Your what?> I asked, not

really caring. I was focused on the morphing ahead.

<My mass. When you morph something

smaller than yourself, your body mass must go somewhere.

So it goes into Zero-space. Zero-space is the

space that ships travel through when they are going faster than light. It's not very likely to happen, but

sometimes a ship traveling in Z-space will

intersect with a temporarily parked mass.>

This got my total, complete attention.

<Wait a minute. Are you telling me

that when we get small, all the leftover . . .

stuff ... all the extra flesh and guts and bones

go bulging into Zero-space like some big balloon of

human tis-sue?>

<0f course. Where did you think all

the mass went?>

I shuddered. <I really didn't think

about it.>

Jake was no more thrilled than I was. <So right now there's a big bag of Jake floating

in Zero-space? And it's possible some spaceship

will zoom along and hit it and splatter it all

over?>

<No, no, of course n.>

Ax said.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Too

soon, it turned out.

<0f course no ship would actually

hit a

floating mass.> Ax said, talking to us like

we were nitwits. <The ship's shielding

systems would disintegrate the mass. That's what

troubles me about doing small morphs. It very

seldom happens. The odds are millions to one.

But it

could

happen.>

Jake and I thought about this for a while. About a

spaceship "disintegrating" some big wad of

our mass. It was not a pretty picture.

<Hey, Ax?> Jake said.

<You know how we wanted you to be honest with

us? To tell us everything you know?>

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

<Small change. In the future,

don't tell us things that will scare us silly just as

we're going into possible battle.>

<A big wad of Marco in

Zero-space.> I muttered. <Like hanging your butt out of a car window, waiting for a truck to come along and sideswipe it off.>

Just at that moment, I topped the crest of the ridge.

Tall pines nearly scraped my belly. And there,

spread out before me, sparkling in the sun, was a large lake nestled between the surrounding hills and mountains.

<0kay, boys.> Jake

said. <This is where I peel off. Just

one final word. I know spiders eat bugs, so do

not, I repeat, do

not,

eat any flies. I'll have enough to worry about in fly

morph.>

<Remind me again.>

I said. <Why are we doing this instead of

staying home and sleeping in late?>

<We're saving the world.>

Jake said.

<0h, yeah. Great. My mass is

hanging out in the Zero-space highway and I'm about

to become Spiderman. I knew there had to be a

pretty good reason.>

here were probably two hundred people around the lake below us -- boys, girls, older people. Some were swimming.

Some were water-skiing. Some were grilling burgers and

hot dogs over charcoal fires. A lot were just

milling around and talking and laughing.

You'd swear it was some kind of big community

picnic. From the air they all looked so normal.

And probably most of the people below us were normal. But a lot of them were Controllers. And one of them was Erek, who was certainly not normal.

We stayed well back from the lakeshore and

dropped down into the trees. We came to rest on the

ground, inside a cluster of tall bushes.

My osprey vision and osprey hearing had revealed

no one within a hundred yards. But I was tingling with

nervousness, just the same.

<Shall we

demorph?> Ax asked.

<Not yet. Tobias said he would

swing back over, once we were on the ground.>

So we waited there, looking a bit weird, two

birds of prey just hanging out inside a bunch of

bushes at the edge of the forest. I could hear the whine of power boats out on the water, and closer, little

snatches of human laughter.

<0kay, guys.>

Tobias's thought-speak voice suddenly spoke in

my head. <Looks clear to me. You've

got a guy and a girl maybe a hundred yards

off. But I think they're making out, so they should be

busy for a while.>

I quickly began to demorph. One of the limitations

on morphing is that you can't just morph straight from one form to another. You always have to return to your own body in between.

In Ax's case this meant returning to his

An-dalite form. That had to make him nervous. There

were dozens of Controllers just a few hundred feet

away. Yeerks might overlook one kid sneaking

around. They wouldn't overlook an An-dalite.

<Are you ready to morph

again?> Ax asked me, once we were back

in our normal bodies.

"I'll

neverbe

ready to morph a spider," I said. My teeth were

chattering, and it wasn't cold.

<I have to morph.> Ax said.

<I can't stay here in Andalite form.>

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. Okay.

Okay, I'm going to do this. But I'm going to keep

my eyes closed."

I focused my mind on the spider. But I lost

concentration, mostly because even the image of that wolf spider grossed me out. Then Ax started to change.

I knew still couldn't just stand there and watch. I knew I had to morph.

"It can't be any worse than morphing a fly,

right? Or an ant?" I asked no one. Not that I

wanted to think about the ant morph. We'd had a very,

very,

very

bad time in ant morph.

I closed my eyes and focused again. This time I

kept my concentration.

I felt myself starting to shrink. Shrinking is always

a little weird, but now I was also thinking about some big, disgusting balloon of Marco mass suddenly bulging

out into Zero-space.

Whatever Zero-space was.

I could feel myself getting smaller. I could

feel very strange things happening inside me: sudden

feelings of emptiness where organs were simply

disappearing.

And there was a distracting squishy sound that came up

my spine and through my skull.

The sound of bones turning to marrow, and of marrow sort of oozing away.

I wouldn't be needing any bones, I guess.

I kept my eyes tightly shut, not wanting

to see what was happening. And I held on to my

fears with a death grip of determination. I mean, if

there's anything worse than being a spider, it's being

some disgusting mix of half human, half spider.

But then . . .

POP! POP! POP!

I could see! I tried to close my eyes, but

no! I didn't have eyelids. It's very hard

to close your eyes when you don't have eyelids.

Eyes were popping open in my forehead.

Eyes were erupting out of my head like zits.

I almost lost it right then. I would have screamed if

I'd had a voice any longer. But I was already

half spider. And I was staring at Ax as he

underwent a change very similar to my own.

I was watching him with vision that was half human and

half the shattered, broken-mirror vision of the

spider's compound eyes.

Something horrifying was growing from the place on

Ax's face where a mouth should have been. Something huge and bulging and foul. Two monstrous, swollen things

like . . . like nothing I'd ever seen before. They were jaws, but huge and

outsized. From the end of each one, a wicked, curved

fang grew.

Sometimes you really, really need eyelids. There

are definitely some things you don't want to have

to see.

I knew the same thing was happening to me. My

bulging jaw parts grew till they entered my own

distorted field of vision.

Fortunately, I didn't have to worry too long

about the jaws. See, I became distracted when

legs suddenly exploded from my chest.

SPROOOT!

Four new legs, two on each side, just shot

out of me, like I was a tube of toothpaste someone had

stomped. They sprouted all Gumby-unformed, then

began to form joints. Way too many joints.

My human legs and arms were changing to match these

first spider legs. I fell forward, no longer able

to stand erect.

It wasn't much of a fall. I was already pretty

small. The pine needles beneath me already seemed to be as big around as a human finger.

Not that I had any fingers left to compare with.

All the while, new eyes kept opening suddenly

where eyes absolutely did not belong. Some were

compound eyes. Some weren't.

Then, as if the extra legs, and the mix "n"

match eyes, and the huge jaw-and-fang combo weren't

enough, some new leglike things came sprouting out of

my ... well, out of where my neck used to be. They

were like extra legs, only they weren't. I had no

idea what they were. But they moved. Much later,

I found out they're called

pedipalps.

A sort of cross between a mouth part and a leg.

My head was swelling, compared to the rest of my

body. It was gigantic ... in a small

way. My entire body was now divided into two

big chunks: a sort of bulging head and an even

bulgier body.

I was almost entirely spider now. The pine

needles that had seemed as big as fingers were now as

big as two-by-fours.

As the last touch, strangely soft hairs began

to grow from everywhere on my body.

It was the hair that seemed to trigger the awakening of the spider brain.

The wolf spider has good eyes for a spider. But

it's all the thousands of tiny hairs that really get the spider brain's attention. They sense every subtle

clue in the wind. Every minor movement in every

direction.

And all of a sudden it felt like the whole world was

moving: leaves, pine needles, the dirt beneath my

claw-tipped eight legs, bugs in the dirt,

moles under the ground, birds in the air.

All of it seemed to be hardwired into the hairs that

covered my spider body.

With all that sensory overload, the spider brain

woke up. I had been afraid it would be like the

brain of an ant: a mindless machine. Or that it would

be the terrified, fearful, panic-stricken

mind of a prey animal.

But oh, no. Definitely no.

They didn't call it a wolf spider for nothing.

This guy was tiny, no more than two inches from the end of one outstretched leg to the end of the farthest back leg. A toddler could easily crush him underfoot.

But I guess it isn't size alone that makes

a predator, because as soon as I felt the edge of that

spider brain I knew this boy was trouble.

The wolf spider was a killer.

Hunger.

That was pretty much what the spider mind had

to say: hunger, it was hungry. It wanted to hunt.

It wanted to kill. It wanted to eat up a few

nice juicy bugs. It was hungry.

Did I mention hunger?

And it didn't care what kind of bug. Could be

beetles, could be grasshoppers, could be

crickets, could be a big mean mantis. The

spider didn't care. It ruled the world of bugs.

It was to bugs what a lion is to a herd of

antelopes. It was a shark among guppies.

They could run from the wolf spider, but they couldn't

hide.

Motion! Something moved, left to right across

my field of vision, and I was after it like a dog af

ter a rabbit.

Eight legs powered up and I blew across the

forest floor like a drag racer firing out of the start

ing gate.

The world was weird to my eight spider eyes. I

saw colors no human ever saw. It was like when

you mess with the color and tint knobs on the TV.

Things that should have been brown were blue,

and green was red, or whatever. From some an

gles the pictures were almost clear, but a second

later everything would shatter into bits and I'd be

watching a million tiny monitors at once.

I never could make logical sense out of it.

But mostly what I saw was movement. I was very, very

interested in movement. My eyes and

every hair on my disgusting little body were about

spotting movement.

And when the right thing moved, my body just

answered all on its own.

It was a rush, as they used to say in my dad's

day. A charge. It was like tapping into the main

pipe of adrenaline. It was electric. It was

nuclear.

I blew across pine needles and fallen leaves and

over patches of dirt and I kept that moving bug in

my field of vision and I knew what I was doing,

I mean, I knew I was Marco, a human in

morph,

and I knew I didn't really want to eat that

racing

bug, but man, I was too jazzed to stop.

The prey was running and I was the predator. I had

evolved for hundreds of millions of years to do

exactly this. When Tyrannosaurus rex was still

millions of years away from even thinking about

evolving, tiny arachnid hunters were killing and

eating. The entire history of Homo sapiens from

caveman to soccer mom was a blip in the history of

spiders.

I was death on eight legs.

It was a beetle. That's what I was chasing. A

big old beetle, much larger than I was.

Larger and slower. He grew in my distorted field

of vision. He grew and grew and I powered on.

I wish I could explain why I kept on with the

hunt. Sometimes the animal brain takes over for a

while and sort of overwhelms the human mind. But

that's not what was happening to me. I wasn't

overwhelmed. I was just into it.

A last burst of speed!

My front legs touched the beetle. He

dodged left, but too slow.

I clambered right up on his back.

I positioned my jaws with their deadly fangs, and

-

<Marco. What are you doing?>

It was Ax. I scampered down off the beetle,

feeling like I'd been caught doing something wrong. The beetle ran on, relieved to have escaped. If

beetles can feel relief.

<Nothing. I was just letting the spider be a

spider.> It was a pretty good answer,

I thought. <I guess its instincts kind of

carried me away.>

<Marco, I morphed the identical

spider.> Ax said.

I felt a wave of guilt and shame suddenly

swell up inside me. <Ax, it was just a

cockroach. Who cares? Come on, we have a job

to do.>

<Sometimes humans worry

me.> Ax said.

I didn't ask him what he meant.

Why had I gotten so into the hunt? Why hadn't I

resisted the urge?

I flashed on the rage I'd felt when I

talked to Tom. Was that it?

<I think it's this way.> Ax

said. He took the lead and I saw him moving in

front of me, a spider scurrying effortlessly on

his eight legs.

I fell in behind him. I was calm now. The

incredible, insane rush of the chase was over. Now the

spider was just a tool I was using.

Suddenly, from the sky . . . something fell toward

me!

It landed right between Ax and me. A grasshopper,

three, four times our size. It looked like an

elephant.

Then . . . thwap! It fired its huge hind

legs and shot into the air. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

We raced on through the forest, covering the

two hundred feet between us and the edge of the party. I sensed the nearness of humans. I "heard" vibrations that might have been speech, but the voices were too

garbled to make any sense out of.

<Hey, Marco, Ax, you

guys around?>

It was Jake's thought-speak voice.

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

Ax answered. <We are here.>

<We're not pretty, but we're

here.> I added.

<Cool. I'm not exactly handsome

myself. I'm in fly morph. Haven't found our

boy Erek yet, though.>

Something massive and slow appeared in the air above

me. I scampered sideways. It landed slowly with a

loud WHOOOMPHHH!

A human foot. A shoe. Nike.

<You know, I'd been worrying someone

might step on me.> I said. <But humans are so slow.>

<Be careful anyway.>

Jake said. <let me know if you find

Erek.>

<I don't know how I'm supposed

to recognize hm.> I complained.

<These spider eyes aren't good at seeing

distances. And human heads seem to be way up in the

clouds, from where I'm crawling down here.>

But Ax and I went on, skittering

swiftly through a forest of huge, slow-moving legs and

feet.

Then, right in front of me, I saw it.

It looked like a bare human foot. Except that

I

could see through the skin. Through the toenails. With my eight strange, distorted spider eyes I could see

right through the electronic haze of the hologram.

I could see what was beneath the hologram.

I saw what looked like interlocking plates of

steel and ivory. The "foot" had no toes. In

fact, it wasn't shaped like a human foot. More like

a paw.

It was not human. And everything in my tingling,

buzzing, hyper, spider's senses told me it was not

alive.

<Ax?>

<Yes, I see it.>

<What is x?>

<I do not know.>

<lt looks like a machine, almost. Like

it's made out of metal.>

<Yes.> Ax said.

<I think your friend Erek may be an

android.>

android?>

<Yes. A robot. A machine made

to seem like a

life-form.> Ax said, as though it was just the

most common idea in the world.

<This is like something you know about,

Ax?>

I asked, looking up at the thing called Erek.

<This is not a type of android I

know.> Ax

said. <lt is not Andalite. I don't

think it is Yeerk.

I don't know who

...

or

what

...

it is.>

My spider eyes could see the foot and most of the

way up the leg. It was like looking at a

double-exposure photograph. There was the out

ward appearance of a human leg and, way up

high, shorts. But beneath ail that there was this

machine made of what seemed like steel and ivory.

It was thousands of interlocked plates,

almost like the chain mail armor knights used to wear.

Each of the individual links was roughly triangular

in shape. The "ivory" segments were a little larger than the segments that looked like steel.

The robot . . . android . . . whatever it

was, was smaller than the human Erek. The leg

I was looking at was oddly constructed. More like a

stretched-out dog leg than a human leg.

The robot leg, along with its holographic

projection of a human foot, lifted off, as Erek

went on his way.

<Jake?> I called.

<Yeah? Hey, I think I see our

guy. There's this person . . . it's hard with fly

senses, but I see this person who is kind of

shimmering all over, and it's like there's something hiding underneath all the shimmering light.>

<Yep. That's hm.> I

confirmed.

<Wait a minute! There's another

one!>

<Whatl>

<Another one of

them.>

Jake answered. <I just buzzed

right past him. There are two of these things.>

<0kay, northings have gotten

com> I started to say.

FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! FWAP!

A hurricane of wind!

The ground in front of me exploded as two big

taloned feet landed in the dirt.

A shadow over my head! I ran.

Two big black triangles came down from the

sky above me. They dug in, just in front of me!

Just behind me!

Like a power shovel, the two triangles closed

together. I was inside. I was in darkness. Total

darkness. Some big, muscular thing was crushing me,

squeezing me.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see. I was being

squeezed and pummeled.

And then I realized . . .

I was being swallowed.

<AAAAAHHHHH!> I

yelled.

There are two kinds of thought-speak. Private,

which is like whispering right in one person's ear, and public, which is like yelling.

I was yell ing.

Every person near that lake heard me. Normal

humans, who probably wondered, "What was that?"

And Controllers, who knew it was thought-speak.

But I didn't care. I was being swallowed.

<Marco!> Jake yelled.

<What's happening?>

<Marco! Everyone can hear

y!> Ax warned.

I tried to control my panic. I was being

swallowed, but I wasn't dead yet.

<Something . . . something just grabbed

me!> I said, aiming my thought-speak at

Jake and Ax only.

<I think it was a bird.> Ax

said. <I saw it. Very big and black. It

flew off.>

My spider legs were crushed against my side.

Two of them were broken. The hairs all over my

body were blind. My eyes were blind. There wasn't enough air even for my spider body to live on.

I was being forced down the gullet of a bird, flying

through the air, and seconds away from suffocating.

<Tobias?> I cried

desperately. <Can you hear

me?>

<Marco? What's happening?>

Tobias answered. His reply came from far off.

<A bird ate me. Black bird.

We're flying. Can you see . . . his

Help!>

<Marco, there are a dozen big crows

flying. I can't tell which one.>

I felt my mind beginning to fade. The spider was

dying.

What would happen if the spider

died?

I wondered, as my attention drifted away.

What would happen to the big wad of Marco

mass in Z-space?

That thought did it. I was outta there.

Morph out!

I tried to form a mental picture of my own

real self. A mental picture of a human named

Marco. But it was all confused. My mind was dying,

and as it sank it called up a thousand images.

Images of wolves and giant ants and

gorillas. Images of all the animals I had

been, all the minds I had lived in.

I couldn't grab that human image and hold

onto it. But then, floating up in my

disintegrating consciousness, came the image of my

mother.

I guess that's not a surprise. They say dying

soldiers on the battlefield often call out for their

mothers with their dying breaths. And I guess that's what I was doing, too.

But this was my real mother. The way she'd been when

she was truly alive. Not the Controller. Not the

Controller known as Visser One, but my own real

mom.

She was smiling at me. She was much taller than

me, but she bent down to pick me up. I flew,

up in the air, up to her face. She kissed me.

"You are going to grow up to be so cute," she said.

"My little Marco."

Marco. The human boy. I saw myself clearly

then, like I was looking through her eyes at the little toddler I'd been. Not the Animorph Marco, but

the little kid Marco.

Suddenly . . .

The pressure was growing. Growing. I was squeezed

from all sides. I felt muscle tensing to restrain

me, but then, the muscle weakened and quivered.

A ripping, tearing sound!

Light! Light!

I was demorphing. Demorphing and growing. I had

burst through the throat of the crow! And now, I was

falling!

<Marco!> Tobias yelled.

Muddy, distorted vision showed me the crow falling

alongside me.

I was falling. Falling through the air, a vile

mix of crippled spider and emerging human.

I was the size of a baseball, I guess, and

getting bigger. I hate to even think of what I

looked like. I know I wasn't pretty.

WHAMMMMM!

I hit the ground. I bounced. I hit the ground

again.

I lay there, not knowing where I was, or what I

was. But I knew one thing for sure. I was going

to demorph. I was getting OUT OF THAT

MORPH!

If I'd had a mouth, I would have started screaming

and never stopped. But my mouth reappeared late.

Four of my spider legs withered and disappeared. My

remaining legs became human arms and legs. My

tiny claws became toes. My fangs and jaws

became teeth and lips.

My eight spider eyes shut down one after

another, leaving only two. And slowly, those two

eyes became fully human.

I looked up through human eyes at a blue

sky. At the high branches of trees looming above

me.

And then, I looked up into the face of my former

schoolmate, Erek.

Erek the android.

Marco?" Erek said. "Didn't you used to have

longer hair?"

The hair thing again. Anyway, to my human eyes

Erek looked completely, one hundred percent

human. I knew it wasn't true, but even so, it

was almost impossible not to believe the holographic

projection that surrounded the android.

Could I remorph into something powerful enough to ...

to make sure he wouldn't be a problem? Probably

not. There were Controllers all around the area. All

he had to do was yell for help.

Just then, a girl came running up. She looked

down at me, then at Erek.

"Who is this?" the girl asked.

"His name is Marco," Erek said calmly. "You know the "Andalite bandits" Chapman is

always talking about? The ones who use Andalite

morph-+ technology to carry on a guerrilla

war?"

"Of course," she said.

Erek pointed down at me. "I think this human

is one of them."

There it was: the end. The end of our existence as

Animorphs. We'd always known that if the Yeerks

ever discovered our true identities, or even that we

were humans, they would wipe us out within a matter of

days.

I felt sick. Sick with fear for myself, and for the

others. I'd blown it. I'd given away our great

secret.

Erek jerked his head toward the girl. "This is my

friend Jenny."

I was not pleased to meet her.

I heard the sound of people rushing through bushes.

"Nothing over here," Erek said loudly. "Jenny hurt her ankle. I'll help her. Keep

searching. I think I heard something over there."

Erek must have noticed the extremely shocked and

puzzled expression on my face. He grinned.

"There are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.""

"Shakespeare?" I said, amazed.

"Yes.

Hamlet.

I saw the very first performance."

"But ... but that would have been like centuries ago."

Erek nodded. "Do you know where I live?"

I nodded, with my head still down in the dirt.

"Morph into something small enough to escape from here,"

Erek suggested. "Come to see me at my house, you

and your friends. We have a lot to talk about."

For some stupid reason I said, "You're not

human. We know you're an android."

"And you're not an Andalite bandit," Erek said.

"How do I know I can trust you?"

Erek shrugged. "I could turn you in, right now.

I'd be Visser Three's new best friend. Even the

Visser knows how to reward those who carry out his

orders well."

"Maybe you want to catch all of us at once,"

I said. Don't ask me why I was arguing with him.

Maybe it was the humiliating position I was in.

Maybe I felt like I had to act tough since I

was on my back in the dirt, wearing severely

unattractive clothing.

Erek squatted down. "Marco, if I

gave you to Visser Three, he would get the names of

all your friends from you. I know you're a brave

person. You'd have to be, to do all you and your friends have done. But you are not brave enough to survive the

Visser's torture. You would tell."

I took a couple of seconds to think about that. He

was right, of course. I had a healthy respect for the

kind of torture Visser Three could inflict.

"We'll be there," I said. "I guess we

don't have a choice. You have us by the ... you have us cold."

Erek shook his head. "It's not like that. It will be a meeting of allies, Marco. You see, we, too,

fight the Yeerks."

My dad made chicken for dinner that night. I'd

spent the afternoon with my friends, debating the mess with Erek. We'd gone round and round, but in the end we

knew we would show up for the meeting. We had no

choice, really.

Barbecued chicken, skin-on mashed potatoes,

roasted corn on the cob. This was the absolute

height of my father's cooking ability. So I had

to eat it. I had to.

But man, there is something about popping out

through the throat of a bird that totally destroys your appetite for dead bird.

"How is it?" my dad asked.

"Great," I answered.

We were on the deck in our backyard. It was a

house like the house we'd lived in long ago when we

were a complete family. After my mom's "death" --

that's still how I thought about it- my dad had spiraled down for a long time. He'd lost his job. We'd

moved out of the house and ended up living in a pretty

terrible apartment on the edge of a bad part of town.

It was okay, really. I mean, having a lot of

stuff and a nice house is cool, but it wasn't being

poor that bothered me. It was being alone. My father had been off in some world of his own for a long time. I'd

been the one who had to cook and clean and all that.

It was nice to have a house and a yard and a barbecue

again. But it wasn't about the house. It was that my dad was my dad again.

I know that sounds corny, coming from me.

"Another piece?"

"Sure. Breast." I held out my plate and

tried not to think about exploding crows, or the fact that I'd come very close to having beetle for lunch.

Sometimes my life was just too weird.

I had questions to ask my father, but I wanted them

to sound natural. You know, like I was just making

normal conversation.

"So, Dad. What are you doing at work

lately?"

He shrugged and gave me a wink. "We're

finishing up the observatory project. I still can't

figure out what happened there. That software your

friend No accidentally created just sort of disappeared."

My friend "No" was really Ax. There was a long story behind all that. You could probably ask our

friendly neighborhood Andalite about it, but it

wasn't a story I could tell my father.

"What'll you do then, after you get done at the

observatory?" I asked, trying to seem totally

casual by chomping on corn the whole time.

My dad's eyes flickered toward me, almost

suspiciously. He shrugged. "A project I

can't talk about for this company called Matcom."

I laughed, trying to stay very casual. "Building

a better bomb?"

He didn't answer for a few seconds. Then,

in a strange voice, he said, "I've never done

weapons research."

I was actually surprised. "Why not?"

"You gonna eat that chicken or just tease it?"

He gave me a long look, like he was trying

to decide if I was old enough to hear what he was going to say.

I picked up the chicken breast. Chicken

wasn't crow, after all.

"It was your mom," he said.

I stopped eating.

"The last year, year and a half before . . . you

know. Before. It was like this perfect time for us." He smiled at some picture only he could

see. "We used to fight every now and then when you were younger, like most couples. But then it was as if all our problems were gone, settled. Maybe I had

changed. Maybe she had. I don't know."

I felt cold fingers around my heart.

"It was the best time of my life," he said. "It was like we'd achieved some level of perfect peace and

perfect love. But at the same time, there were these

times when your mom would seem upset. Like she was

struggling with some problem she wouldn't tell me about."

I had stopped breathing. I knew. I knew now

when the change had been made. The perfect love

my father was talking about was the Yeerk at work in my mother's head. The Yeerk wasn't interested

in stupid little domestic battles. It wanted

peace so that it could focus on deeper goals.

"Anyway, one day I woke up in the middle

of the night. Your mom was sitting up in bed, wide

awake. I knew she'd had a bad dream or

something. But it made the hair on the back of my

neck stand up. It was just. . ." He shook his head.

"It was so strange. She sounded like she was trapped in a deep well, and trying to call out to me."

There were tears in my eyes. I hoped my father

wouldn't notice.

"She said, They won't take you if you stay away

from the military." It didn't make any sense.

But the way she said it... like it was the hardest thing she'd ever said . . . like it was the most important

thing she'd ever said."

I had some idea just how hard it had been for my

mother to say that. Sometimes, when there is some terrible need, the human being crushed beneath the Yeerk can force its way out. It can seize control for a few

desperate seconds.

They say the price the human host pays is

terrible. The Yeerk has mental tortures it can

carry on for weeks.

My mother, my

real

mother, had struck when the Yeerk was distracted, and for a few seconds regained control.

"Anyway," my dad said, "I know it was just your mom having a bad dream. But ever since then, whenever

an opportunity came up to do defense work, I just

got this bad feeling about it."

I couldn't even pretend to eat any more.

"Dad, are you thinking about taking on a military

project now?"

He avoided my gaze. "There are some very

exciting things going on with this Matcom. The thing they want me on isn't military in any way.

But... well, they do carry on some very secret work.

I guess some of what they do is probably

military."

There it was. The reason Tom was trying to get me

to bring my father to The Sharing. My father was working on some project that the Yeerks wanted to control.

My mother had warned him. It may have been the last

words that she, the real, human woman, ever spoke

to him.

He was going to ignore that warning, and now the

Yeerks wanted him.

92

We had decided to meet with Erek at his house.

We had not decided to trust him completely.

Jake, Cassie, Ax, and I were going to the

meeting.

Rachel and Tobias stayed outside as backup.

Rachel was all primed to use her grizzly bear

morph if we called for help.

"I'll be within range of Ax's thought-speak,"

she said for the tenth time. "I can morph my bear in a minute and go through that door about ten seconds later."

"If you do that, try not to stomp over me in the

process, okay?" I said.

I glanced up and saw Tobias swooping down

to settle in the tree in Erek's yard.

I could joke about it, but the truth was, it did

feel reassuring to know Rachel and Tobias were

ready to be the cavalry.

We went up to the front door of the very

ordinary-looking house. I sent Jake a look that

said, "Man, I hope we're right about this." But Jake was busy exchanging solemn glances with

Cassie.

"So? Someone knock on the door," I said. I

glanced at Ax. He was in his human morph. His

human morph is made up of DNA

gathered at the same time from all of us except

Tobias. There's some of Jake and Rachel and

Cassie and me in Ax's human shape. In the end

result he's male, but almost as pretty as a

girl.

Plus, he's annoying in human morph.

"Knock? Knock on the door? Why?

Knockon. Knock-kuh."

Andalites don't have mouths, and Ax can't get

over how fun it is to make actual sounds.

Plus, you don't even want the boy in the same

room with certain foods.

Jake knocked.

The door opened. I was surprised. It wasn't

Erek. It was his father, Mr. King.

He nodded. "Come in."

We stepped inside. I felt completely

dorky. It

was like we were coming over to ask if Erek could come out and play. I mean, the house looked so normal

inside. Normal furniture and normal lights

and normal dishes displayed in a hutch. A

normal TV on "mute," showing pictures from

CNN.

There were two dogs, a Labrador mix

and a fat little terrier. The Lab just lolled over on

its back. The terrier came running over to sniff

our shoes.

"Is Erek here?" I asked.

Mr. King nodded. "Yes. Would you like a soda

or anything?"

"No thanks, Mr. King," Cassie said. She

bent over to scratch behind the terrier's ears.

"You like dogs?" Mr. King asked.

"She likes any animal," I answered.

"She even likes skunks."

"But dogs, do you like dogs?"

Cassie smiled. "If reincarnation were real,

I'd want to come back as a dog."

Mr. King smiled, nodding as if Cassie had just

said something profound. "Would you all come with me?"

He turned and led the way toward the kitchen.

Once again, the total normalcy of it seemed

jarring. There were little Post-It notes on the

refrigerator saying things like "dozen eggs, bell

peppers." Someone had left a box of Wheaties out

on the counter.

Mr. King opened a door. It led down to the

basement. We followed him down the narrow wooden

steps.

At this point I started to wonder. I noticed that

Ax was morphing slowly out of his human shape,

returning to Andalite form a little at a time.

Good old Ax. He sensed danger and he wanted

his tail available.

I wanted his tail available, too.

Mr. King paused when we all got down to the

basement. He watched with absolutely no

surprise as Ax finished transforming. He waited

politely for Ax to be done.

Then, to my utter amazement, I felt a slight

dropping sensation. It took a few seconds

to realize what was happening. The basement was dropping like an elevator. When I looked up I couldn't

see a roof overhead, just darkness.

"Whoa," Cassie commented.

"Don't be afraid," Mr. King said.

It didn't last long. We may have dropped

four or five floors. At least that's what it

felt like to me. Then, with a slight lurch, the

basementst elevator stopped.

"Is this the floor for men's clothing?" I asked.

I was almost not surprised when one entire wall

of the basement, hung with tools and garden hose and a

rake and hoe, simply disappeared.

Where the wall had been was now a hallway lit with a

golden light.

"My basement won't do this," I muttered

to Jake.

"Have you ever tried?" he asked.

"This way," Mr. King said.

We followed him. It was way too late to start

worrying now.

The hallway wasn't long, just fifty feet or

so. It reached a dead end, a blank wall. But then

that wall, too, disappeared.

"Yah!"

"No way!"

<Strange.>

"This is just a hologram, right?" I said. But somehow, I knew it wasn't. It was real.

Unbelievable, yet real.

What was beyond the hallway was a vast, vast

chamber, lit in glowing gold light, soft and

buttery warm.

I stepped out of the hallway onto springy

grass. And over my head, maybe a hundred

feet up, there was a glowing orb, like a sun. That's

where the yellow light came from.

Stretched out before us, for more than the length

of a football field, was a sort of park.

Trees, grass, streams, flowers, butterflies

flying around jerkily, bees buzzing from flower

to flower, squirrels racing up and down the trees.

Walking here and there were androids. Androids in their natural form, machines made of steel and something

white. The androids had mouths that were almost like

muzzles, clumsy-looking legs, and stubby fingers.

But it wasn't the presence of half-dozen or so

androids that was really shocking. What was really shocking was that there were hundreds, maybe even a thousand dogs.

Normal, everyday Earth dogs, every breed and

half-breed you could imagine, running in packs,

yipping, yapping, bowwowing, howling, growling,

ruff-ruffing dogs. They were chasing squirrels,

smelling each other, and generally having a great ole

dog time.

Jake, Cassie, and I stood there with our jaws

hanging open like complete idiots. If Ax had

possessed a mouth, his would have been hanging open,

too.

It was doggie heaven. Dogs and robots in a

huge, underground park.

One of the robots came trotting toward us. As it

got near, a hologram shimmered around it.

A second later, it was Erek.

"Welcome," he said. "I guess you're

probably a little surprised."

e are the Chee," Erek said.

Mr. King had left, and Erek had brought us to a

place beneath a large tree. A little stream trickled

by, just a few feet away. A wall of silence

had come down, as if someone had turned down the sound

of all the barking dogs. I could still hear them, but it was as if the sound were far away now.

<You are androids.> Ax

commented.

"Yes."

<You show a very high level of

technological sophistication.> Ax said.

Erek smiled with what looked exactly like human

lips. "We are just the creation. It is our

creators who were the great builders."

"Why did you bring us down here?" Jake asked.

"Why show us all this?"

"We want you to trust us," Erek said. "We know that you're suspicious. You have to be. I'm sure

you've left some of your people outside, just in case we betray you. I wanted us to be equal. I

wanted you to know our secrets, since we know yours."

"We saw you at the concert," I started to say.

He looked surprised, then nodded. "Ah,

yes. You were the two dogs, weren't you? I sensed

something odd about you. Tell me: What's it like

to actually be a dog?"

"It's truly cool," Jake said. "You knew

we were the two dogs?"

Erek shook his head. "We didn't know, but I

felt something strange. We've known there were

morph-capable forces on Earth. There is very little that the Yeerks know that we don't also know."

"You were handing out flyers for The Sharing. You were at a meeting of The Sharing," I accused.

"True. But maybe I should tell you our story.

Then you'll understand who we are. And why we are your

allies. And also why we ... or at least

some

of us ... would like your help."

"That would be nice," Cassie said.

You have to say one thing for Erek: The boy

knew how to tell a story. Suddenly, everything around

us dissolved. In its place there grew a

vast, three-dimensional picture. It looked as

real

as Erek.

We were no longer on Earth. There were two

suns in the sky, one small and almost red, the other

four times as big as Earth's sun and a

deeper gold.

The trees and flowers and grasses around us

were definitely not anything that had ever grown on

Earth. The trunks of the trees were green and smooth.

But instead of leaves, the branches just kept

splitting into ever smaller branches and twigs that

grew gradually from green to silver to a brilliant

shade of pink. These pink twigs were all

intertwined, so that from a distance the trees

looked like huge balls of pink steel wool.

The trees were no larger than Earth trees, it

seemed to me, but what was huge were the

mushrooms. At least, they looked kind of like

mushrooms. They were half as large as the trees

themselves. Messy nests of some leathery, leaping,

three-legged animal seemed to be perched

on each of the mushrooms.

There were other animals around, each stranger than the last. But the main animal we

saw was a two-legged creature that stood may

be four feet tall. It had long,

floppy ears and a

muzzle.

It looked weirdly like a dog that could walk on its

hind legs. It looked, in fact, a little like Erek

when he dropped the hologram and showed his true

self.

"Our creators," Erek said. "They were known as Pemalites. A hundred thousand years before the

Andalites learned to make fire, the Pemalites

were capable of faster-than-light travel."

I noticed Ax's tail twitch a little at that.

"And of course, humans were just hairy apes when the Pemalites first visited Earth. The Pemalites

were not interested in conquest, or in interfering in the lives of other planets. They enjoyed life."

Erek smiled. "They loved to play. They loved

games and jokes and laughter. And they had been a

fully evolved race for so long that all the harsher

instincts were gone from them. They had no evil in their hearts. They had no evil in their souls."

I found this hard to believe. But as I watched the

hologram around me, it was possible to believe that on

this weird planet the Pemalites had found some

deep inner peace. There was just a sense of deep

calm about the place. Like one of those Zen

gardens or something. It just felt peaceful.

Peaceful, but not dead or tired or boring. In

fact, everywhere I looked, I saw Pemalites

jumping around, chasing, playing, and making

an odd

CHUK

CHUK CHUK that must have been

laughter.

The scene around me changed, like a movie

doing a flash-forward. Now, mingled in with the

Pemalites, were androids like Erek. The androids

looked vaguely like their canine creators.

"We were toys, originally," Erek said. "The Pemalites made us to play with. They called us the

Chee. It's a word that means "friend." They

also had work for us to do, but they created us

mostly to be their companions. An artificial

race,

yes, but not a race of mechanical slaves."

Erek looked at us and I swear there were tears

in his holographic eyes. "We were their friends and equals and companions. They taught us to

laugh and play. They loved it when they were able

to create androids who could tell a joke. There was a

celebration that lasted a year."

Then . . . ZZZZZZZAAAAAAAARRRRPPPP!

I jerked back. A monstrous beam of light

sliced the ground open right in front of us, like some

insane plow tearing up the earth. It inciner

ated the pink Brillo pad trees and the huge

mushrooms.

"Then the Howlers came," Erek explained. "They suddenly popped out of Zero-space, thou

sands of powerful ships. They had come from clear

outside this galaxy. The Pemalites had no

idea who they were. And they never found out what the

Howlers wanted. The Howlers made no demands.

They just attacked. Maybe that's all they wanted:

to destroy."

What Erek showed us next was like one of those

horrifying films from World War II.

Pe-malites hunted from the air. Pemalite

space stations blown apart. Pemalite ships

sliced open, and helpless Pemalites left

to drift through cold, dead space. The scenes of

massacre just went on and on.

I noticed Cassie was crying. I think I was

crying, too. It was too horrible.

"Almost the entire race of Pemalites was wiped

out," Erek said. "A few hundred Chee

and a few hundred Pemalites left the planet,

escaping in a single ship just seconds ahead of a

new wave of Howler attacks.

"We escaped into Zero-space. We had no

plan, no idea what to do."

"Why didn't you fight back?" I demanded.

"I mean, you talk about how advanced the

Pemalites were. If they could create androids,

they could create weapons."

Erek looked at me and nodded, like he agreed.

"The Pemalites had forgotten the ways of conflict

and war. They were creatures of peace. They'd

forgotten that there could be such a thing as pure evil."

That answer just frustrated me. It made no sense.

But I let Erek tell the rest of his grim story.

"As we ran for our lives through Zero-space,

we discovered that the Howlers had achieved a special

revenge. The Pemalites began to become sick.

They began to die. The Howlers had unleashed germ

weapons. The Pemalites were doomed. But we

Chee, we androids, were unaffected."

The scene around us became the inside of a space

ship. A scene of Chee, looking on helplessly

while one of their creators writhed in pain.

"Then we remembered a planet. A

planet similar to our own, but very far from our home

and the Howlers. It had only one sun and the light was

pale, but there were trees and grass and wonderful

oceans."

"Earth," Cassie said.

"Earth," Erek said. "The Pemalites had not visited Earth in fifty thousand years, and in that time, everything had changed. The wandering tribes of

primates had created cities. They had

domesticated animals. They were planting crops.

"We landed on Earth with just six Pemalites still

clinging to life."

The hologram disappeared, and the underground cavern was back to its normal self -- a wide park of

Earth trees and Earth plants, with dogs everywhere.

"We could not save the Pemalites. They

would die. But we could try and rescue some

part

of them. We hoped we could keep their hearts,

their souls alive somehow. We looked for an Earth

species we could use to harbor the essence of

the Pemalites. Their decency. Their kindness.

Their playfulness and love."

"Wolves," Cassie said, once again way ahead

of me.

Erek looked surprised, but he nodded his

holographically projected human head. "Yes.

They looked most like the Pemalites themselves. We

grafted the essence of the Pemalites into the

wolf species. And from that union, dogs were cre

ated. To this day, most dogs carry within them the essence of the Pemalites. Not all, but most.

Wherever you see a dog playing, chasing a stick,

running around barking for the sheer joy of life,

you see the remnants of the race of Pemalites."

"That's why all these dogs are here," Jake

said. "They're your. . . what, friends? Creators?"

"They are our joy," Erek said, "because they remind us of a world without evil. The world we lost.

We Chee are all that is left of Pemalite

tech

nological genius. The dogs of Earth are all that

is

left of Pemalite souls."

i. don't think I would have believed any of it.

Except for the small fact that we were in a huge

underground park. And there were androids walking around.

Plus, there was the fact that my entire life had

become one long, incredible, unbelievable story.

So who was I to laugh at Erek's story?

"So you all pass as humans?" I asked

Erek.

He nodded. "Yes. We live as humans.

We play the role of children and then grow older, and

eventually our hologram is allowed to "die"

and we start again as children."

"How long has this been going on?" Cassie

asked.

Erek smiled warmly. "I helped to build the great

pyramid."

"You designed the pyramids?"

"No, no, of course not. We have never interfered

in human affairs. I was a slave. I helped

to quarry the stone. It was a challenge, because I was

new at pretending to be human. I had to hide my

real strength, of course. The Pemalite home world

had a gravity four times stronger than Earth's.

Naturally, we were designed for that gravity, which

means we are quite powerful by human standards."

"And you stayed as a slave?" Jake asked. "You could have taken over Egypt. You could have taken over the world."

"No. We are not the Yeerks," he said

coldly. "You see, when our creators made us,

they hardwired us for nonviolence. We are

not capable of hurting another living being. No Chee

has

ever

taken a life."

Just then, I noticed a group of four Chee

walking quickly toward us.

Erek saw them, too. Even though I know his

"face" was just a hologram, it seemed to me he was annoyed.

"What have you done?" one of the Chee demanded.

"What have you done, you fool?"

The four Chee came up and glared at us with

robot eyes. "Humans? An Andalite? Here?

What have you told them?"

"Everything," Erek said defiantly. "These are the ones, these humans and this Andalite, who have been

resisting the Yeerks. They're the ones who can

morph." His voice rose. "They are the ones who are fighting the battle

we

should fight."

"We are Chee. We do not fight," one of the

androids said. It turned on its holographic

projector. A human body appeared. The body

of an old woman, maybe eighty years

old.

"I am Chee-lonos. My human name for now

is Maria," she said. "I did not mean to seem

angry toward you humans, or you, my Andalite

friend. My dispute is with this Chee called Erek and

some of his friends."

"We stood by helplessly as the Howlers

annihilated our creators," Erek said to Maria.

"We can't stand by helplessly and watch this world be destroyed, too. Dogs and humans are intertwined.

They have evolved a dependency. Dogs cannot

survive without humans. If the humans fall to the

Yeerks, we, the last great masterpieces of the

Pemalites, and the dogs, their spirit-homes, will all

die, too."

I gave Jake a look. That's why the Chee

wanted to help humans? To save dogs? Jake

shook his head slightly in amusement.

"We do

not

fight," Maria said heatedly. "We do

not

kill. You know that, Erek. Yet you bring these

outsiders here. You blurt the secrets we have kept

for thousands of years. Why? What good can come

from it? We cannot fight to save the humans."

"That's where you're wrong," Erek said softly.

"We

can

fight. While you and the others merely hope everything will work out, my friends and I have been infiltrating the

Yeerk organizations here on Earth. The Yeerks

even think that I am one of

them."

Maria and the three unhologrammed Chee just stared.

"The Yeerks have been busy. They control a

computer company called Matcom."

It took me a couple of seconds to remember

that name.

Erek went on. "The Yeerks are working on a

master computer to infiltrate and rewrite all the

software in all the computers on Earth. When they have

achieved sufficient force among humans, they will

launch this computer bomb, and in a flash, control

all computers."

"What does this have to do with us?" Maria asked.

"The heart of this system is a crystal the

Yeerks obtained from a Dayang trader. The

Dayang didn't know what he had. But the Yeerks

did. The crystal is a processor more

sophisticated than anything even the Andalites could

create. And it is more than fifty-thousand Earth

years old."

"A Pemalite crystal!" Maria gasped.

"Yes. A Pemalite crystal. If we had

it, we could rewrite our own internal systems. Do

you understand now? We could erase the prohibition against violence. We could be free! Free to fight!"

"A Pemalite crystal," Maria whispered.

"You can't do this, Erek. You can't!"

But Erek just turned away. "If we can get the

crystal, there is very little we can't do. Our strength, joined with these Animorphs? The Yeerks would have

to double their forces just to contain us."

<How did you convince the Yeerks that you

are one of them?> Ax asked him.

Erek turned off his hologram and became a

machine once again. And then the front of his head

split open. Inside his steel and ivory head was a

chamber, just a few inches in diameter.

And inside that chamber was a gray slug,

helpless, unable to escape. Tiny wires, no

thicker than hairs, wrapped around it.

<Yeerk!> Ax hissed.

"Yes," Erek said. "The Yeerks

believe I am human. I accepted infestation. But

of course the

Yeerk cannot make a Controller of me. I made a

place for him instead. He sees nothing. Knows

nothing. I tapped

his

memory, not the other way around. And now I can pass

among the Yeerks like one of them."

I had two reactions. One, I was sick at the

thought of that Yeerk, trapped inside a steel cage.

As much as I hated Yeerks, it seemed harsh just the

same.

But another reaction was much stronger. We had an

ally! A powerful ally. An android who could

pass as a Controller, who could enter Yeerk

society. And an android with many powers of his own.

"How do you keep the Yeerk alive without

Kandrona rays?" Cassie asked.

See, every three days a Yeerk has to return

to the Yeerk pool to absorb Kandrona rays. Without

that, they die.

"I am able to use my own internal power

to generate Kandrona rays to keep this Yeerk

alive," Erek explained. "When I go to the Yeerk pool I am able to trick the Yeerks

into believing that my Yeerk is swimming in the pool.

I generate a hologram of a Yeerk leaving my ear

and dropping into the pool. Later, I create a

hologram of it returning. The Yeerks never

notice that they don't encounter this Yeerk actually

in

the pool. Yeerks communicate very little in their

natural states."

"How do we fit into all this?" Jake asked. "I mean, what do you want with us, Erek?"

Erek resumed his human appearance. He stepped

toward us, eager, excited. "We could fight together against the Yeerks. We could be allies. If only

... we need that Pemalite crystal. But the

Yeerks have created a maze of defenses like nothing you can imagine. That crystal is in a room at the

heart of the Matcom building. There are

Hork-Bajir everywhere. Elite Hork-Bajir

warriors, the best.

"And the crystal itself is guarded by an ingenious system. It is concealed in a room of absolute

darkness. Absolute darkness. The slightest,

faintest light, ultraviolet, infrared, any

light, will set off alarms. Within the darkness are

wires that are set off by the slightest

touch."

"So to get to the crystal you'd have to be able to find it without seeing it, and avoid the wires that are also

invisible in the darkness," I said.

"It's like finding a needle in a haystack when

you're blindfolded and can't touch a single piece of

hay. The walls, ceiling, and floor are all

pressure-sensitive, so you can't touch them. It

may be impossible," Erek said.

"How are we supposed to do that?" I demanded.

"How can you find something you can't see? It's not like it'll smell or call out to us."

"Urn . . ." Cassiesd.

"Excuse me?" Jake asked in surprise.

"It can be done," Cassie said. "I mean ...

if we

want

to."

"Of course we want to," I said. "With these guys on our side, we actually have a chance of

winning. Of

course

we want to. Animorphs and Chee together? Our

morphing ability, their strength and holographic

tricks? We'd kick Yeerk butt."

"No," Maria cried. "You don't understand.

Chee do not hurt. Chee do not kill. No Chee

has ever taken a life." She grabbed my arm and

looked right in my eyes. "While humans and

Yeerks and Andalites and Hork-Bajir and a

million other species on a million worlds

warred and slaughtered and conquered, we remained at

peace. Would you end all that? Would you make us

killers, too?"

"Yes, ma'am, I guess I would," I said,

a little coldly. "We're in a fight for our lives

here. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our friends

-- they are all going to be slaves of the Yeerks,

if we don't win. So I'll do whatever it

takes. If you'd fought all those thousands of years

ago, the Pe-malites would still be alive. And you

wouldn't be living with dogs in a big underground

kennel."

I didn't mention the sudden interest The Sharing had

in my father. I didn't want to make this personal.

Maria let me go, and Erek nodded.

"A big underground kennel," Erek said

bitterly. "Exactly."

"We'll get your crystal for you," Jake said.

"Tell us all you know about this Matcom, and

we'll get your crystal." He looked at the

Chee called Maria. "Sorry, but Marco is

right. The Yeerks have my brother. There's nothing I

won't do to get him back."

We rode the fake basement back up, leaving the

eerie golden world of dogs behind.

"S. Do we have a deal?" Erek asked. "You'll help us get the Pemalite crystal? And then

we'll fight alongside you to defeat the Yeerks."

"Sounds good to me," I said quickly.

"Unless anyone has any objection -" Jake

started to say.

That's when Cassie interrupted. "Erek, let us

talk it over. It's a big decision."

I was surprised, but not as surprised as Jake

was.

Then we heard a noise coming from directly above

us.

"HhhhrrrAAAAWWWWRRRR!"

"Oh, man," I said. I knew that sound. We

all knew that sound.

"Rachel," Cassie said under her breath.

"We were down there a long time," Jake said.

"Erek, I think a friend of ours may have come

in to rescue us."

Erek shrugged. "I don't think it's going to be

a problem."

"You don't know our friend," I said.

The basement had settled back into its normal

place. I tore up the stairway. "Rachel!

Chill!"

I burst back into the utterly normal kitchen and

raced into the utterly normal living room.

The front door of the house had been ripped off

its hinges. The couch was thrown against one wall. And

there, in the middle of the room, standing so tall its head scraped the ceiling, was a full-grown grizzly

bear.

"HhhhRRAAAAWWRRR!" Rachel roared in

rage and frustration.

Frustration, see, because the Chee who passed as

Erek's father had her in a full nelson. His

human-holograph arms were wrapped around the

unbelievably massive shoulders of the grizzly,

and he was actually holding the great bear still.

He had pinned a grizzly so powerful it could

literally turn a Toyota into an aluminum can.

"Okay, now I've seen everything," I said.

<You Chee are very

strong.> Ax commented.

This was the understatement of all time.

<Where have you been8!> Rachel

demanded. <I waited as long as I could.

I figured you were dead or something. And if you don't

have a good explanation, you

will

be dead!>

"Oh, we have a story, all right," Cassie

said.

Rachel had calmed down and stopped roaring when she

saw us. Now the Chee slowly released her, and she

began to change back out of morph.

Jake looked embarrassed and started to pull the

couch back down. "Urn, Erek, this is our friend

Rachel."

"It was smart of you to keep a reserve," Erek commented. To Rachel he said, "I hope you weren't

hurt."

"How come you can wrestle a grizzly if you have

to be nonviolent?" I asked Erek.

"Of course, my "father" here knew she was not a true bear. And he only held onto her. He

did not destroy her. If Rachel had been strong

enough to win, my "father" would have had no choice but to allow himself to be destroyed."

I laughed. "I see why you want to change that."

I expected Erek to agree. Instead, he

looked a little sad. "Yes," he said. Just that one word.

We started to leave. I let the others get a

few steps ahead of me. I pulled Erek over.

"Hey,

Erek. You were at my mom's funeral. I don't

think I said thanks at the time."

Erek looked away and bit his lip. "Marco .

. . there's something I have to tell you."

"I think I already know. My mother isn't dead.

She's a Controller. She's Visser One."

It was Erek's turn to be impressed. "You

guys have learned a lot."

I shrugged. "Is that why you were at the funeral?

Did you know?"

Erek nodded. "I knew. I might have been able

to save her... if."

I met his gaze. "Too late to save her,"

I said. "But payback is going to be very painful for those filthy slugs."

On the way home, we filled Rachel and

Tobias in on what had happened. It

took a while. We were back at Cassie's barn

before we were done.

"I say do it," Rachel said. "That Chee guy held onto me like I was a baby. They're strong.

They have technology we don't. They've already

penetrated The Sharing. They would double our chances.

End of story."

"No,

not

end of story," Cassie said, contradicting her friend.

"What right do we have to interfere and destroy the thousands of years of peace this species has had? Didn't

you hear Maria? No Chee has ever taken another

life. You

want them to be saying a thousand years from now that no Chee ever took a life till

we

made them killers?"

I rounded on her, angry. "What I don't

want a thousand years from now is for people to be saying, Too bad about the humans. They ended up as dead as

the Pemalites.""

"Ax?" Jake asked. "You haven't said much."

Ax was in human morph, of course, since we

were in the barn. "As you know, we Andalites

are not supposed to interfere in the lives of other

species. I am already breaking that law with you. And

I am proud to be breaking that law in this case. But

the Chee . . . Chee! It makes a funny sound,

doesn't it? Chee." He smiled with his human

mouth, then grew serious again. "The Chee are a

different species. Older than Andalites. I

feel . . . badly . . . helping another

species to become violent."

Rachel said, "Look, no one likes violence.

All right? But we didn't ask for this war with the

Yeerks. When the bad guys come after you, when

they

start the violence, they leave you no choice: fight

or die."

"Fight or die," I agreed. "And you want

proof? Look at the Pemalites. They didn't

fight, they died. All gone. No more. Scratch a

whole species. Now their 'essence," whatever that

means, is stuck inside dogs, and their robots

feed them

extra kibble. Yippee. That worked out real well for

them. And even that's better off than we'll be if

we lose to the Yeerks."

"Law of the jungle," Rachel said.

"You eat or you get eaten."

<Maybe s.> Tobias said,

speaking up for the first time. <But still,

wouldn't it be nice if that wasn't the

law?>

"How can you take that attitude?" I demanded.

"You're a predator. You know how it is."

<Yes. I know exactly how it is.

That doesn't mean I like it. Look, the

Pemalites were wiped out, maybe because they didn't

fight. Maybe they'd have lost even if they had

fought. We'll never know. But the Chee have lived for

thousands of years. I know they're androids, but

they're a species, too. They've survived without

killing. Doesn't something about that make you jealous?

Don't you wish we could say the same? Don't you

wish Homo sapiens could face the universe and

honestly say, "We do not kill? We don't

enslave. We don't make war"?>

"I don't make the rules," I said. "I

didn't start this war. Humans didn't start this

war. Look, I don't want to make this

personal, but I know the name Matcom. My dad

is involved in some work with them. And the other day Tom

..." I shot a glance at Jake.

"His brother was on me to come to The Sharing and bring my father. The Sharing

is targeting my dad, and now we know why. So for

me, it's simple: If we take this Pemalite

crystal,

maybe my dad isn't involved with Matcom any

more. And maybe the Yeerks find someone else

to infest."

No one had an answer to that. I knew they

wouldn't.

Cassie walked down to the far end of the barn

and came back carrying a small cage.

"Total darkness, can't touch walls, floor, or

ceiling, and you have to travel through a room

strung with sensitive wires you can't even see."

She held up the cage. "Meet the animal that can

do all that."

It was no larger than a small rat with its leathery

wings folded back.

"Cool," I said. "First I'm Spiderman, now I

get to be Batman."

I thought for once we'd get a chance to practice

with the bat morph. We were planning to go after the

Pemalite crystal the next weekend.

Plenty of time to plan and prepare.

Yeah, right.

"Marco?" My dad yelled up the stairs to my

room, where I was desperately trying to figure out

some math homework.

"Yeah?"

"Phone."

""X" equals point oh-three-nine," I reminded myself so I wouldn't lose my place. I

went out into the hall to grab the upstairs phone.

"Point oh-three-nine. Yeah, who is it?"

"Hi, Marco. It's me, Erek."

"Oh, hi, Erek, what's up?" I hoped he would

remember our phones could be bugged.

"Not much," he said, sounding very convincingly human.

"I was just thinking, though, you know that thing we were going to do next weekend? Why don't we just do it tonight

instead?"

I knew what the "thing" was. And I knew

Erek wasn't calling on a whim. Something had gone

wrong. I swallowed my heart, which had jumped up

into my throat. "Okay. Maybe I'll call

Jake and see if he wants to do it, too."

"That'd be excellent," Erek said. "Later, man."

I hung up the phone and thought seriously about

pretending I hadn't gotten the call. I mean,

I wanted to do this. It was important, life and

death. But it was like something out of

Mis

sion: Impossible.

And without planning or practice, it was beyond

impossible.

Plus, I had homework to do.

I picked up the phone and called Jake. Four

hours later, with all of our parents asleep in their

beds, we met at Cassie's barn. All of us,

including Ax. Erek arrived last.

He didn't waste time with small talk.

"There's a problem. The Yeerks are putting in a

brand new security system on top of the existing

systems. I don't think it's active yet, but

I can't find out what it is."

<Fine. We can wait a few weeks

till you can get the details.> Tobias

said.

"The crystal is already so well protected that

any new system may put it beyond our grasp for

good," Erek said. "And don't forget -- the Yeerks are racing to use this crystal to create a

computer system so powerful it can take over every computer on Earth. They're not there yet. But the longer we

wait. . ."

"Oh, man, this sucks," I said. "No

planning? No preparation? Just go in and hope for the

best?"

"I'll tell you everything I know," Erek said.

"Listen carefully. It's not too complicated."

For a few seconds we sort of teetered on the

edge. We weren't sure what to do. Erek wanted us

to go in, obviously. But he had his own interests, which might not be the same as ours.

It was the worst possible situation. Any one of

our parents could wake up and discover we were not at

home. That would mean frantic phone calls back

and forth from our folks to our friends' parents, calls to the cops, probably search teams out beating the woods.

"Go or don't go?" Jake asked.

"Go," Rachel said, but with less enthusiasm than usual. A lot less.

"Go," I said. "But personally, I can't blame anyone who wants to sit this one out."

Cassie gave me a dirty look. I guess

she took

it personally. "I say go," she said. "I

don't sit

anything out, Marco."

<l'm not in th.> Tobias said.

<l'm useless

on this mission, so I don't vote.>

<I go where Prince Jake

goes.> Ax said.

"Don't call me "prince,"" Jake said wearily for the thousandth time. "Okay, we go."

Erek immediately began telling us all he knew about

Matcom and the security for the Pemalite crystal.

After about two minutes I was ready to

change my vote.

But by then it was too late. We'd made our

decision, and it was as if we were being swept toward a waterfall

-

like a bunch of canoeists

who'd lost their last paddle. We'd survive

...

or

not

...

but one thing was sure. We were definitely going over

the edge.

"Q rek was not going with us. But he would

be waiting outside Matcom when we came out.

Assuming we came out.

We flew from Cassie's barn to the Matcom

building. It was one of those boring-looking,

three-story glass and cement buildings you see in

industrial parks everywhere. Just a bunch of blue

glass rectangles with a big parking lot in back.

In fact, it looked so much like every other bor

ing square building in the industrial park, we had

trouble finding it. We flew around, a lost gang of

owls, for a good fifteen minutes before Rachel

spotted the Matcom sign.

We landed on the roof of the building. Erek

had assured us there were no cameras or guards

up there.

"Let's find that pipe," Jake whispered as soon as we were all human again. Or, in Ax's case,

An-

dalite.

"Erek said southwest corner, right?" I said.

"Astost8st8west," Cassie said.

She sounded sure, so I decided to agree.

"Yeah, that was it. Which way is northwest?"

Ax laughed in thought-speak, till he realized I

was serious. <You can't find

directions?> He sounded shocked. Like

he'd just discovered we had hidden tail blades.

<lt's that corner over

there.>

The pipe was about three inches in diameter.

"I hope this works," I said. "I don't even know if my Spiderman can make silk."

"Spiderwoman," Cassie said. "Your spider morph is female. Wolf spiders don't make

webs, but they do make silk. It should work."

"Easy for you say. I don't even know how to

turn on the silk thing."

But Ax was already morphing into the wolf spider, so I

hurried to catch up. By the time Ax

and I were in spider morph, the others had all be

come cockroaches.

<Man, you two are ugly at this

scale.> Rachel said. <Jeez, I don't ever need to see another spi der my own size again.>

<We're ugly? You want to know what

you

look like right now? You look like

dinner.> I said, laughing evilly.

<Juicy cockroach. This spider morph

is hungry, and you look tasty.>

<Marco, get a grip.>

Jake said patiently. <lancet's do this.>

<l'll demorph and step on your ugly

butt.> Rachel growled.

From where I was standing in the gravel of the rooftop, the pipe looked like a round skyscraper. It extended

above the roof by about a foot, which is quite a distance when you're half an inch high.

I scampered around the pipe. One side had been

splashed with tar. It would be easy to grip. I raced

easily up the pipe to stand precariously on the

lip.

I could feel a breeze blowing up from the

blackness beneath me. It was like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The pipe went down through all

three stories and an extra underground story. Four

floors. Bad enough when you're human size. A

million miles when you're a spider.

Ax came crawling up to teeter alongside me.

<0ooookay.> I said.

<Now comes the fun part.>

I tried to search the spider brain, looking for the

subtle, secret signals that would start me spinning

silk.

Fortunately, the spider wasn't exactly

Albert Einstein. It only knew how to do about four

things, one of which was spin silk.

The spider body sort of... well ... pushed

out a strand of gooey white filament. It stuck to the

edge of the pipe.

Ax did the same.

<Well, this is certainly

disgusting.> I said. <Ready,

Ax?>

<Yes.>

<Then . . .

Yeeeeee-Haaaaahhh!>

I sprang from the lip of the pipe into the darkness.

It was so totally Spiderman.

I fell slowly down, down, down, twisting and

turning my way down the pipe. Behind me a long

white string grew. It braked my fall, so that I

was dropping in slow motion. The spider eyes were not

bad at seeing in the relative dark. A bit of

moonlight followed us down part of the way as

we dropped.

And then it started being fun. I kicked away from the

side of the pipe and cartwheeled through the air. My

web looped around Ax's, and soon we were weaving a

weird silk rope.

It was cool in a way . . . till I felt a

certain emptiness.

<Ax! I'm running out of web.>

<Yes, me, too.>

<How far do you think we've

dropped?>

<I don't know.>

<You know which way is northwest but you

don't know how far we've dropped? We could still have

two stories to g.> I said.

<I think our plan has a minor

flaw.> Ax said with his usual understatement.

<But we are very light, small

creatures. We should survive a fall. So should the

others in cockroach morph.>

<Maybe. See, the problem is,

there's only one way to find out if we'll

survive. By dropping.>

Ax didn't say anything.

<0h, man.> I groaned.

I cut the strand of web.

And I fell. Down through the darkness, toward a

landing I could only hope wouldn't kill me.

It was a long drop.

<Aaaaahhhhhhh!>

<Aaaaahhhhhhh!>

WHAP! WHAP!

We hit something hard. We bounced. We hit

again.

WHAP! WHAP!

<You okay?> Jake called

down.

<0h, yeah, I'm great.>

I said. <I fell about a billion feet

and landed on a steel trampoline. Couldn't be

better.>

<Sarcasm.> Rachel commented

coolly. <He must be okay.>

<Laugh now, Rachel. We'll see

how much you laugh when it's

your

turn.>

The plan was for Ax and me to create a silk cable the

others in cockroach morph would be able

to climb down. That way, they wouldn't all have to go

spider. Not that it would have helped, anyway.

<We're coming down.> Jake

said. <When we reach the end of the silk

we'll jump. If you two survived, we will.

Nothing kills a cockroach.>

<Why don't you stand right beneath me,

Marco?> Rachel suggested. <You can break my

Ax and I scurried out of the way. A few

seconds later, after they had clambered down to the end of our silk . . .

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! Three cockroaches

landed nearby.

<Where are we?> Jake

asked.

<lt's pretty dark. Who

knows?> I answered. <lt's a

heatingstair-conditioning vent, I guess. Erek said it

would be part of the furnace system. Supposedly we

go west a hundred feet or so, then drop down,

then go across the furnace, then down again, then right.

Then we're at the edge of the High Security

Room, where the real trouble starts.>

<Excuse me? Did someone

say furnace?> Cassie asked.

<Yeah. I said furnace.>

<Does it occur to any of you that the

furnace might actually come on?>

Cassie said.

<Not till right this minute.>

I said.

<lt's not very cold ou.>

Rachel pointed out.

<0kay, I've

seriously

changed my mind.> I said. <Let's go home.>

Of course, no one listened to me. We scrabbled

along the steel floor, two spiders and three

cockroaches. Our rough claws seemed to make a

horrible din on the metal, scuffing and scratching.

But it probably wouldn't have sounded like anything to a human.

As we ran, there was more and more dust on the floor

of the vent. It was weird, like walking through dried

leaves. My eight legs kicked through it, and it

swirled behind me as I passed. Eventually the dust

became as thick as a carpet, although in reality it was probably no more than a few

millimeters thick.

Every ten feet or so there would be a grilled opening.

Through the massive upright bars I could see offices.

The light in the offices was very dim, just the glow of computer screen savers and red or green function

lights. But it helped us to find our way through the

darkness of the vent.

Then . . .

<What's t?> Rachel

yelled. She was the farthest back. <Uh-oh. Something coming! I feel the vibrations!

Something big!>

She took off. I took off. We all took

off.

Now I could feel the vibrations, too. Quick,

confused-sounding footsteps. And a dragging sound, like something was being hauled.

I ran. To my left, another spider. Ax.

Ahead of

me, two roaches, almost as big as I was.

Rachel

was just back to my right.

I couldn't exactly turn and glance over my

shoulder. I had no shoulder. And I had no

actual head to turn. So I paused,

spun around, and in

the dim light from a vent, I saw it.

Huge. Twenty times my size! A vast,

horrible

menace.

<Arat!>

I yelled. <lt's a RAT!>

The thing I'd heard dragging was its naked tail and

furred abdomen. It was hungry, and it was after us.

And, unfortunately, it was faster than me.

<Go! Go! Go! lt's

gaining!> I yelled.

We blew at top spider and cockroach speed.

Which seems really fast when you're an inch

long, but isn't really that many miles per hour. A

rat can do maybe five or six miles per hour.

A spider is lucky to break one mph.

<We'll have to morph back!>

Jake said.

<Not in here!> Cassie

cried. <Not enough

room.>

<Next vent.> Jake said.

<We go out through the next vent.>

The next vent was about ten feet away. I

couldn't turn around to look at the rat, but every hair on my spider body told me it was just inches behind

me.

Yet there was something else making my hair tingle,

too. Something about the breeze . . .

<YAAHHH!> I heard

Jake yell.

A split second later, my spider legs were

clawing air. It was like a Roadrunner cartoon.

I zoomed out into space, seemed to hang there with my

little feet motoring away, and then I fell.

<0h, yes.> Ax said

calmly. <Erek mentioned we had to go down

again.>

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

We hit steel again, and each impact sent dust

clouds swirling.

<Keep running!> Cassie

cried, and fortunately, for once, I didn't

argue.

Buh-Booooom!

The rat dropped behind us! It was still after us!

Fortunately, it was a little stunned by the impact,

whereas we were outta there!

Suddenly, ahead of us, the steel floor

opened up again. But instead of a drop into darkness, there was a weird, vast plain of jagged spires. Each

of the spires was steel, three times as tall as my

little spider body. Each metal spire opened at

the top. There were hundreds of them, all arranged in

perfect rows. A foul smell, something

my spider mind knew nothing about, came from this

field of spires.

A weird, flickering glow lit the landscape.

In the eerie light, it looked like some awful

graveyard, with the spires like industrial-strength

gravestones or something. I mean, it was creepy.

<What is th?> I asked.

<Let's just get going, all

right?> Rachel suggested. <We

can sightsee some other time.>

I would never have walked into that "field" if the rat hadn't been just two feet back and gaining again. I

didn't need spider senses to know there was danger

here. It screamed danger.

I stuck out one spider leg and touched the top of the

nearest spire. Then another and another. I walked

from spire to spire, carefully, cautiously. The

cockroaches crawled and squirmed through the valleys

between spires. Unable to stand normally, they

had to drag themselves inch by inch.

<What is th?> I asked

again.

<You don't want to know.>

Jake said grimly. <lancet's just get out

of here, okay?>

Right then it hit me. From the tone of Jake's

thought-speak voice.

<0h, man. This is the furnace,

isn't it? These spires . . . the holes in the

tops of them . . . it's where the gas comes

ou!>

<Not if no one turns on the

heat.> Rachel said grimly.

Over my head now, I saw the source of the

eerie glow. It was the pilot light. It was a jet

of

blue flame as long as my body. I could feel the

heat from it, even though it seemed to be as far

above my head as the ceiling of a cathedral.

The rat, smarter than we were, decided to stop at

the edge of the furnace. But there was no going back.

We had to cross the furnace. We had

to hope the Matcom Corporation was into energy

conservation and didn't waste heat. We had

to

pray that no one had messed with the thermo

stat.

Because if the heat came on

...

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

<Gas!>

The gas blew with hurricane force up through the tops

of the spires. In seconds the gas would

rise to the pilot light. In seconds the entire

land

scape would erupt in flame!

I thought I'd been moving as fast as I could

move.

I was wrong. I had a whole extra speed.

Ahead of me I saw Jake, Rachel, and Ax

all reach safety. Only Cassie and I were still

deadly inches away from safety.

<RUN! RUN!

RUNRUNRUNRUN!>

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Then . . . WHOOOOOOSH!

Fuh-Wwwuuuummmp!

The whole world seemed to explode around

me. A wall of flame

...

a hurricane of hot air.

I was blown head over heels, somersaulting

through air as hot as an oven.

JL somersaulted backward, hit steel floor

again, and screeched like a skidding car. I plowed

straight into Jake, and a split second later,

Cassie plowed straight into me.

<Cassie! Cassie! Are you

okay?> Jake asked.

<Yes, yes. I think so. Who can

tell with this roach body?>

<l'm okay, too.> I said.

<You know, just in case anyone cares.>

<I guess they like to keep this building

nice and warm, eh?> Rachel said.

<That was very close to being a

disaster.> Ax said. <We should

thank the rat. If he had not chased us, we would have

been crossing those gas jets several seconds

later.>

That was not a nice picture to think of. We would have

fried, sizzled, and popped open faster than we could

even try to think about de-morphing.

<That would have left a big wad of

Marco mass floating in Z-space.>

I muttered. I could joke about it, but I was

quivering inside.

The rest of the trip through the heating and air-conditioning system was calm. But that just gave me time to think about the close call. One second slower, and I'd have

gone out as a roasted spider.

<There are walls up here.>

Jake warned from the head of our little pack of singed

bugs. <No, wait, not walls. Like a

maze. Like Erek said.>

We traveled through a series of switchbacks,

around a steel panel, then back around another. It

was a light-blocking system. It would block out every

last photon of light that might come through the vent.

Then we came to the edge of a drop. Beyond it, I

knew, was the High Security Room itself -- the

location of the Pemalite crystal.

We were six feet up. We had to drop, and then

stay within two feet of the wall. Any movement

farther toward the center of the huge room, and we would set off pressure sensors in the floor.

By this time, we were used to falling.

<Next I want to try

jumping out of a plane.

Without a parachute.> I said as I stepped

into

the black void.

It is an eerie experience falling in total dark

ness. You have no idea where the floor is. It's

al

most like you're not falling at all. Until you hit

the bottom, that is.

<Stay close to the wall.>

Jake reminded everyone. <Hug the wall

and demorph.>

I was relieved to be human again. But my human

eyes were no better than spider eyes at pen

etrating the darkness. It was darker than any

night. Darker than hiding in a closet at

midnight.

This was the darkness of being buried alive.

"There could be six Hork-Bajir standing three

inches away, and we wouldn't know it," I said, in a whisper that seemed to be deadened by the

darkness itself.

"That's a nice thought," Rachel said dryly.

<Even a single photon of light would

set off

the light sensors.> Ax said. <This is complete

darkness.>

"And according to Erek, if we stepped two feet away from the wall, we'd run into a maze of

ultrasensitive wires. Any contact and the alarm

goes off. We have to travel forty feet without

touching a wire. Without touching the floor or ceiling

or walls," Jake reminded us.

"Let's morph. We'll be able to see then,"

Cassie said. "Or maybe not see, exactly, but

you know what I mean."

What she meant was that we would be able

to echolocate. Kinda like the dolphin morph. We

would be able to make very fast, ultrahigh sounds that the human ear would not even hear.

Those sounds would vibrate off any solid

object and send back a sort of sound picture.

At least, that's what we hoped. We had been

planning to practice and find out if it was true.

Instead, we were morphing without any knowledge of what we were getting into.

"Someday we'll think all this is funny," I

said. "You know, if we happen to live long enough."

I focused my mind on the bat morph

we had each acquired. They aren't as creepy as people

think. Certainly not as creepy as morphing a

spider. This particular bat was very small, just a few

inches long. It looked like a mouse, with huge ears

and the face of a Pekinese dog. If you forgot about the leathery wings, it was just another basic mammal.

But this was one case where the weirdness wasn't

something you saw. I couldn't see anything. Nothing.

I couldn't see myself shrinking, the ground rushing up

at me. I couldn't see the way my legs shrank

to almost nothing and brown fur sprouted from my body.

I couldn't see the way

my fingers grew so long and a paper-thin leather web

filled the spaces between them.

I saw none of it. I didn't even know I was

a bat, until my bat brain sent an order for

me to open my mouth and chirp out a pulse of sound.

I fired a string of superfast sound pulses. Like

making a loud machine-gun sound, only a lot

higher, and way, way faster.

And then . . .

<Whoa, ho!> I said.

The entire black, pitch-black, invisible

room, had just lit up.

It wasn't like seeing, exactly. It was

like . . . like feeling, almost. Except it was like you were feeling from a distance. I

felt

a vast room. I

felt

thousands of wires strung taut, up and down, left

to right, at angles.

And, at the center of the room, beyond the maze of

wires, I

felt

a raised, flat surface, and a sort of pedestal.

There were curling wires coming from the top of the pedestal.

All that came in a flash. Then it was gone. The

others each fired off their own echolocating blasts,

but I couldn't

feel

their sounds as clearly.

<0kay,

that

is cool.> Rachel said. <That is way cool.>

<The wires seem awfully close

together.> Cassie worried. <I

wish we'd had time to try out

these wings. I guess all we can do is

hope for the best. Trust the bat to do the flying.>

<Abandon yourself to the Force, Cassie

Sky-walker.> I said.

<Thanks, Darth. You first.>

<Me

first? Oh.> Suddenly, I didn't

feel at all like laughing. I licked my lips with

my little bat tongue. Assuming I had lips. I

wasn't sure.

I opened my wings. I spread them wide and

thought,

Well, this should be interesting.

I tested the wings cautiously. They moved

differently than bird wings. More like I was reaching out with each stroke to grab the air and push it behind me.

<0kay. Here goes.>

I fired an echolocating burst and took off.

Fired again! There were tight strings all around me!

Left!

Left again!

Down!

No, up!

Right, left, right, right, straight up!

Again and again the high-pitched sound machine

gun fired. Again and again I dodged, millimeters

from a wire.

It was insane! It was so fast my human brain was

three steps behind. It was instantaneous. It

was impossible! The speed, the agility, the instant

translation of the echolocating blasts.

And suddenly, I was through! I was through the wires.

I landed on the table in the center of the room. It was all over in ten seconds of lunatic flight.

<0kay, now

that

is a roller-coaster ride! Yes!> I

said, incredibly jazzed from having made it.

<Yes!>

The others came, one by one. I could watch them

fly, seeing them in my echolocating flashes.

Everyone made it. And we were feeling pretty good

about it, too. It was a rush.

<We did x!> I said.

<These bats can fly!>

Rachel added.

<ls that the crystal?>

Cassie asked.

Ax fired a burst and said, <That must

be it.>

It was no bigger than a grape. It rested on a

small pedestal. Wires -- not the sensor wires,

but curling electrical-type wires, edged in all

around it. But the crystal itself was not attached to anything.

It just lay there, where anyone could grab it.

It made a low sort of humming noise. I know

it makes no sense, but it was almost like that crystal was alive.

<Um ... I have a stupid

question.> I said. <How do we

grab this thing?>

For about ten seconds, no one said a word.

<We don't have hands.>

Cassie said, pointing out the obvious.

<We can grab it in our

mouths.> Rachel said. <Right?

Bats eat moths and stuff. They must have pretty

strong jaws. Strong enough to get that crystal back to the air vent.>

<0h, duh. Of course.>

Jake said, sounding relieved. <l'll do

it.>

<I believe that may not work.>

Ax said.

<Jake?> Cassie

said. <Jake? If you have a crystal in

your mouth, how do you fire the echolo-cating

burst?>

At which point we were suddenly no longer fee I

ing so good.

<I believe our plan now has somewhat

of a flaw.> Ax said quietly.

<See? We should never get

cocky.> Cassie said. <lt's

tempting the irony gods.>

<Irony gods?> Ax

asked.

<Yeah.> Cassie said.

<The bitter spirits who wait around till you

get cocky, then hammer you.>

<These are

real?>

<No, of course n.>

Cassie said impatiently. <How do we

get out of here with that crystal?>

<We power our way ou.>

Rachel said.

Ax said, <Erek's opinion was that there

were many guards here in this building.>

<We didn't see any on

our way through the shafts.> Jake remarked.

<But Erek's been pretty

accurate so far. I have a feeling if he says there

are guards here, there are

guards

here.>

<No choice.> Rachel said.

<We morph whatever we have that's big,

mean, and nasty, then slam our way out of this place.>

<Speaking of irony gods.>

I muttered.

<What do you mean?> Rachel

asked.

<I mean, we came here to get this

Pemalite crystal so the Chee could be free to be

violent. And now, despite all our clever

planning, all our sneakiness and subtlety, we're

stuck in the end going for total Schwarzenegger.>

<Rachel's right.> Jake

said. He sighed. <We're looking at a

fighting retreat.>

Cassie said, <I think there's a door

over there. Try echolocating. You'll see

a raised rectangular outline. I think it's a

door.>

<Yep.> Jake agreed.

<Morph out, keep that direction in mind.

Remorph, and be ready to haul butt for that door.

Head for any way out of this building. Don't stand and

fight, just try to force your way past anyone who comes after us.>

It was times like this I was glad Jake was our

so-called leader. We all knew what we had to do,

but someone had to actually

say

it. And boy, was I glad it wasn't me.

<I have such a bad feeling about

th.> I muttered.

Have you ever watched those old war movies where the

Americans would be heading for some enemy beach? You

know, they'd be in a little boat, riding through the surf, getting ready to jump out on a beach that was going to be chewed up by machine-gun bullets and mortars?

That's what this felt like. Like we were pretty calm

now, but in a few seconds it was going to be life and

death. Things would happen very fast. And none of it was going to be good.

I morphed back to human. Then I

focused my mind on the morph I liked for

fighting.

It was still absolutely dark, so I didn't see

my body grow big and hairy. But I could feel

my shoulders bulk up beyond anything any

bodybuilder ever even dreamed of. I could feel the

strength. Strength like no human could ever possess.

It was comforting to think that I was stronger than three, four, maybe five strong men. But not even the

gorilla is invincible.

<Everyone ready?> Jake

asked.

There in the darkness, near enough to touch, but invisible, was enough power to shred a small army. Jake was in his tiger morph. Cassie had gone wolf. Rachel was one

of the few animals mightier than my gorilla:

She was a full-grown, massively powerful

grizzly bear. And Ax ... well, Ax was Ax.

And trust me, when you've seen an

Andalite in battle, you know that tail is all he

needs.

<Ready? Why, I'm looking forward

to it.> I

said, trying to sound like I wasn't scared silly.

<l'll go first.>

Rachel said. And before anyone had time to object . .

.

HHHRRRRRAAAAWWWWRRR!

Rachel barreled past me, hitting me and

practically spinning me around like a top.

A microsecond later. . .

ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEEET!

ScreeEEEEET!

The alarm was deafening.

The others barreled after her. I hesitated for

just a moment while I felt in the dark for the Pe-

malite crystal. Aside from Ax, I was the only

one with hands.

Then I went after them. I plunged wildly into

total darkness with a tiny crystal in my massive

fist.

Rachel tore a path through the alarm wires, and I

could feel where she had gone. I slammed

into Ax, then bounced into Jake, then sud

denly

-

WHAM!

-

hit the wall.

ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEET!

ScreeEEEET!

Ka-Rrrrunch! A loud, screeching, tearing

noise.

Sudden light! I could see.

Man, it was a relief to be able to see some

thing at least.

Dim light came through the door. Or what was left

of the door, after Rachel had given the door a thousand pounds or so of mad, ready-to-fight grizzly.

The door was splinters. It was steel, and it was

still

splinters.

I saw a flash of orange and black, moving

fast but almost delicately -- Jake, in tiger

morph. Cassie the wolf followed him. Right behind

her was the one animal that wasn't from anywhere on

Earth.

There was a hallway outside. Jake said

<Left!> and we went left.

Past doorways, past offices, past normal

things like copiers and computers and fax machines and

desks and cubicles, we ran. Rachel was in the

lead, a huge, lumbering truck on four legs.

Her roars mixed with the endless scream of the alarms.

ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEEET!

ScreeEEEEET!

Suddenly, another door, a dead end. Rachel

hit it with her shoulder, and the door was gone. There was a big room beyond. High ceilings, open space, a

lobby sort of room. Windows! I could see faint

stars through the tinted glass.

Escape was just a hundred feet away.

Freedom! Life!

And all that stood in our way was twenty men:

human-Controllers, armed with automatic rifles.

And behind them, two dozen or more Hork-Bajir

warriors.

Rachel's bear had very poor vision, especially in

this dim light. <Hork-Bajir?> she asked. <Yep.> I said. <How many?> <Too many. Way too

many.>

DcreeEEEET! ScreeEEEEET!

ScreeEEEET!

The alarm was howling. And then, a far worse sound:

Cha-Klick!

The human-Controllers had cocked their rifles,

chambering a round. If they fired, we'd be

blown apart before we could twitch.

A human-Controller stepped out in front. She

was a nice-looking, middle-aged woman wearing

normal street clothes. She had bleached blond

hair. She could have been someone's grandmother.

"S. The Andalite bandits," she said. Her

face was twitching with tension, but she tried to sound calm. "You've done me a big favor. When I

turn you over to Visser Three he'll promote

me two grades. Maybe three!"

<0r he may decide to destroy you

for letting us get this far.> Ax said

coolly.

"Surrender. You can't escape," the woman

snapped. "I'd rather take you alive, but the Visser would still be happy to have your corpses."

We stared at her. And we stared at the muzzles

of the twenty automatic rifles that were leveled at

us.

I held up my hand. Between my thick, brute

fingers I held the Pemalite crystal.

The woman turned as pale as her hair.

"Give me that."

I shook my big gorilla head.

"Lower those guns," the woman snapped.

"What?" some guy behind her yelled. "We have them!

We have them cold!"

The woman's jaw twitched again, but she stayed in

control. "What do you think a bullet would do to that crystal?"

"But the odds that a bullet would hit the crystal

... It's not going to happen."

The woman smiled grimly. "That crystal is

worth more than the mother ship and everything in it," she said.

Then she started yelling. "You want to shoot? Go

ahead, fool! If you hit the crystal, you can

explain it to Visser Three."

She got a grip on herself while the guy who

had spoken out decided he was not interested in

explaining anything to Visser Three.

"All human-Controllers, back. Weapons

on safety," the woman snapped.

The rifles faltered, then lowered toward the ground.

But I knew better than to breathe a sigh of

relief. See, I knew what was coming next.

The woman looked right at me and smiled.

"Hork-Bajir, forward."

The Andalite who'd given us our powers had told

us that the Hork-Bajir had once been a gentle,

decent race before they were all enslaved by the

Yeerks. All Hork-Bajir were Controllers

now.

But it was hard to believe the Hork-Bajir had

ever been the sweethearts of the galaxy. They were death on two legs: seven feet tall, eight, if you

counted the forward-raked blades that protruded from the top of their snake-heads. They had blades at their

elbows, blades at their wrists, blades at their

knees. They had huge claw-feet like

tyrannosaurs, and a short, thick tail that ended in

cruel-looking spikes.

They were walking razor blades. All sharp

edges and lightning speed.

I've fought Hork-Bajir before. And I can

count. Two dozen Hork-Bajir was at least a

dozen more than we had any hope of defeating.

Then, behind the Hork-Bajir, beyond the retreating

human-Controllers, outside the building,

staring horror-stricken through the glass, I saw

Erek.

Erek, who could do nothing at all to help us. Who

was helpless to do anything but witness our slaughter. I felt like throwing up. The fear was all over me. The

fear was surging through me, washing over me, drowning me from inside and out.

We were going to lose.

We were going to die.

And life, any kind of life almost, is so much

better than being dead.

"Attack," the woman said. Her voice was

nearly a whisper.

The Hork-Bajir leaped forward, a wall of

slashing, whirling blades.

Right in front of me!

SEEEEWWW!

A huge Hork-Bajir slashed and a bright red

line cut across my black leather chest!

I swung my fist and hit the Hork-Bajir

hard enough to fold him in two. But another leaped over him and came at me. I blocked his arm, but he

kicked at me with his clawed foot.

I fell back. I looked down and saw a

hole in my stomach.

A hole! I could see the gorilla's insides!

My insides. My insides!

<Ahhhhh!> I screamed in

thought-speak, as the gorilla bellowed in agony.

The Hork-Bajir leaped on top of me. I

swung again and knocked his legs out from under him. He toppled down, but landed beside me. My left

hand went to his throat and I squeezed. I

squeezed with all the strength I had. The

Hork-Bajir slashed at me again and opened a gash

in my hairy arm. But I kept my grip tight.

I screamed as the Hork-Bajir twitched and

scrabbled wildly and began to jerk

uncontrollably.

The battle raged all around me.

Screams. Cries. Bellows of animal

rage. The garbled roars of the Hork-Bajir. Even

the guttural roar of the human-Controllers, who

watched and cheered the Hork-Bajir on.

I saw Jake leap through the air and close his

jaws around a Hork-Bajir's face.

I saw Rachel swing her paw and open up a

Hork-Bajir like someone cleaning a fish.

I saw Cassie dodging swiftly, biting,

backing away, lunging to bite again, red foam flying

from her muzzle.

And Ax, striking again . . . again . . . again with the deadly speed and perfect accuracy of his Andalite

tail.

But we were losing. It would be over in a few

seconds. We were losing.

<0h, God!>

someone screamed. Maybe it was me, I don't know.

<Help! Help! Get him off

me!>

<Look ou!>

<No! Nooooo!>

It was all one combined thought-speech scream.

And still the alarm howled its screeEEEEET!

I felt my grip weaken on the throat of the

Hork-Bajir. But it didn't matter anymore.

It was safe to let him go.

My vision was red. Red and fading.

I felt a sharp stab as another Hork-Bajir

sunk a blade into my gorilla heart.

None of it mattered, though. It was all coming to an

end ... all coming to an end. . . .

Through a red mist I saw a face on the other

side of the glass. Erek. Somehow, in the battle,

I had ended up not far from the wall of windows.

Erek was just a few feet away. Just on the other

side of the glass.

I felt something hard in my palm. The crystal.

I crawled. A vicious Hork-Bajir

kick, and I went sprawling right against the glass.

<0h . . . no.> I said.

I could see the damage the kick had done.

I was dead. I could feel my brain shutting down.

Human-Controllers were closing in around me,

hammering me with the butts of their rifles.

With my last ounce of strength, I rammed my

fist through the glass.

I felt strong fingers pry open my hand. I felt

the fingers lift out the crystal.

And then . . . later, much later, someone

slapped my face.

"Morph back, Marco. Morph back! Do it!"

-L woke up on the ground. Not a floor, the

ground. Dirt and leaves.

I sat up very fast. I looked at my body.

"Human!" I said. I wanted to cry from the sheer relief of being myself again. Myself and alive.

I looked around. Jake. Cassie. Rachel.

Ax. All there! All human! Except for Ax,

of course.

Tobias was perched in the tree above us.

Someone else was there, too. I heard a voice

sobbing.

"You okay, Marco?" Jake asked.

"Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Man, I was so

close to being dead!"

"You were," Jake said solemnly. "He gave you an electric shock to start your heart again."

"Who did?"

Jake jerked his head toward the source of the crying.

It was Erek, sitting in the dirt with his head down.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Little bunch of trees, just down from Mat-corn.

Or what's left of Matcom."

"How did we get here? How did we get out of

that place? We were toast!"

Cassie came over and sat beside me. "You saved

us by getting the crystal to Erek. He used it. He

rewrote his programming. He's the one who . .

." She looked away. "He . . ."

"He took care of the Hork-Bajir," Rachel

said. "I saw some of it. I was still conscious."

I was confused. "How did Erek take care of the

Hork-Bajir?"

<He destroyed them all.>

Ax said.

I almost laughed. "Erek took out two dozen

Hork-Bajir?"

No one laughed with me. Erek had stopped sobbing.

I thought,

Why would a robot cry?

<AII the Hork-Bajir.>

Ax said. <AII the

human-Controllers. All of them.>

I stood up. I could see the Matcom

building. It was only a few hundred yards

away. There was a big hole in the front glass.

I had a very bad feel-

ing about what was on the other side of that glass.

All I could think of to say was,

"All

of them?"

"It lasted about ten seconds," Rachel said.

She closed her eyes, trying not to remember what

she had seen. But I guess the images weren't

easily shut out. She opened her eyes again, and to my

utter amazement, I saw tears.

That's what brought the horror home to me --

Rachel's tears.

<lt was extremely

brutal.> Ax said. <Very

brutal, and very swift. He carried us here. He

revived you. He even reattached my arm.>

I saw a scar on Ax's left arm.

"He hasn't said anything since then,"

Cassie said sadly. "He won't talk to any of

us."

"He saved us, though, right?" I said.

"Yeah," Cassie agreed, smiling a deeply

sad smile. "He saved our lives. And lost his

own soul."

I went to Erek. I wanted to thank him. I

wanted to tell him he'd done what was right. He'd

beaten the bad guys. Saved the good guys.

He stood up as I came over.

"You okay, man?" I asked him.

He looked at me with holographic human

eyes. Maybe he had to

choose

to make them cry. Maybe he had to choose to give

them that empty, hollow look. I don't know what

the connection is

between the android Chee and his projected human body.

But his expression answered my question.

No. Erek was not okay.

"You saved our lives, Erek," I said.

"How do you . . . how do you live with the memory?"

he asked me.

I knew what he meant. See, win or lose,

right or wrong, the memory of violence

sits inside your head. It sits there, like some lump

you can't quite swallow. It sits there, a black hole

that darkens hope, and eats away at everyday

happiness like a cancer. It's the shadow you take

into your own heart and try to live with.

I shrugged. "I guess I try not to think about

it. I try and forget. And after a while, the

nightmares don't happen as much."

Erek put a finger to his head. "Android," he

said. He made a bitter, ruined smile. "I

can't forget. See? I can never forget . . .

anything."

I looked at him. Already in my own human

mind, the memories of that night's horror were

fading. The flash of blades and the pain and the sickening feeling of my fist closing around the

Hork-Bajir's throat . . . they were being covered

over by scar tissue.

What if I could never forget?

What if all those memories were fresh forever?

I realized then why the Pemalites had forbidden their

creatures to kill. The Chee lived forever. Forever was

a long time to remember what Erek had done.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Erek nodded. "Yes." He held out his

clenched fist, palm down. I knew what he was

doing. I didn't want it. But I held out my

own hand, and took the Pemalite crystal from him.

"I've changed my programming back," Erek

said. "We ... I ... maybe at times I can

tell you things. Information. But I'll never fight

again. I can't join this war, my friend."

He walked away. We went to our homes and

crawled into beds our parents never knew we'd

left.

I was beyond exhausted. But I couldn't sleep.

Too many images. Too many memories. And I

was afraid of the nightmares.

There are evil things in life, and I guess there

are times when a human being has to fight those evils.

I closed my eyes and wandered lost and afraid

through my nightmares.

And already, my mind was forgetting.

Teah! Yeah! Go boy!"

Homer ran flat out, kicking up divots of sand

as the Frisbee soared over his head. With a burst of

speed, Homer got out in front of the Frisbee,

jumped, pivoted in midair, and snatched the disc

out of the air. His jump carried him to the water's edge and he landed in the surf.

"Yeah! Good boy!" Jake said.

"Not bad," I said. "He's not quite that Frisbee dog we saw on TV, but he's not bad."

"Hey, that was a

professional

Frisbee dog. Homer's just in it for the sport.

Homer doesn't even have any endorsements."

Homer came trotting back across the sand with the

Frisbee in his mouth.

It was a week after our battle for the Pemalite

crystal. Jake and I were at the beach. Tobias was

high overhead, riding the thermals. I didn't know

where the others were.

And my hair had finally grown out a little. But

I'd gotten used to having it shorter. I decided

to keep it that way, just to spite everyone.

There weren't that many people on the beach because it was a little too chilly for lying out. Instead, people came down and flew kites, or walked along, looking for sand

dollars and shells. And they played with their dogs.

Jake knelt down and tried to take the

Frisbee from Homer. But Homer, like just about every dog in all of history, refused to give it up.

"They just don't get the point of this whole

game," I said. "You throw, they catch,

they bring it back for you to throw again. Why is that so hard to figure out?"

Jake scratched right behind Homer's ear, and

Homer dropped the Frisbee. "Oh, they know how

to play the game, all right," Jake said with a laugh.

"For them, the game is "I throw, they catch, they bring it back, they get a good head scratch,

then

they give up the Frisbee.""

But just then, Homer lost all interest in the

Frisbee. Two dogs were trotting by, tails in

the air. Homer jogged over to greet them. They

sniffed each other by way of introduction, then took

off,

running like the giddy, happy, always-excited, dog

goofs they were.

It made me smile to watch them.

"It must have been a nice place," I said.

Jake knew exactly what I was talking about.

"Yeah. A planet where the people were as sweet and decent as dogs. Yeah, that would have been okay."

"I ran into Erek at the 7-Eleven yesterday,"

I said. "I think he was looking for a place to

"accidentally" run into me. Anyway, he gave

me a phone number. He says it's an

absolutely safe phone. He says the Yeerks

couldn't tap it or trace it if they tried."

"Yeah? So?" Jake asked.

I shrugged. "So, he says if we ever need him

we could leave a message at that number. And if

he has something to tell us, he'll record a

message for us."

"Huh," Jake grunted. "Think anything will ever come of it?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "But I

think the Chee are going to go on fighting the Yeerks.

They'll just be doing it in their own way."

I reached into my pocket and drew out the small,

diamondlike crystal. "I still have this, by the way.

I don't know what to do about it. Erek didn't even

want to talk about it. But this is the

most powerful computer ever created. It could rewrite

the Ghees' programming. It could take over every

computer on Earth. The Pemalite crystal. We

almost died getting it. What am I supposed to do with

it?"

Jake and I stood there, looking down at more power

than any human had ever held in his hand.

Suddenly, I realized we weren't alone.

Homer and the other two dogs were standing right

in front of us, watching us. I know this sounds

crazy, but I swear some flicker of intelligence

appeared in those laughing dog eyes.

The three of them looked at us, and we looked

back.

I held out my hand, palm up, to show the dogs the

crystal. Homer scarfed the crystal out of my hand as

if it were a dog biscuit. But he didn't

swallow it, just held it in his teeth, where it

glittered like a diamond.

The three dogs turned and ran down the beach.

They ran into the surf and splashed out into the water, paddling for a dozen feet or so.

Then they came back to shore, and had a glorious

time shaking themselves violently and spraying water all over two old ladies who were hunting shells.

Maybe someday the Pemalite crystal will wash

back up on some beach somewhere. Maybe

by the time it does, we'll be as wise as the race that

created it.

"Homer!" Jake yelled. He threw the

Frisbee.

And all three of the dogs, happy, silly,

loving fools that they were, went racing after it.

Don't; miss

It was crowded inside the Bug fighter.

Especially because Ax takes up a lot of room.

But we huddled together and looked over Ax's

shoulders as he worked the controls. And we looked

past Ax, out through the transparent panels at the

front of the Bug fighter.

<This ship is very difficult

to handle.> Ax said. <The

design is strange. Some controls are

psychotronic. But others require physical

handling. Unfortunately, those controls are designed

for Taxxons. They have more hands than like.>

"Can we do anything to help?" I asked.

<Someone should take the weapons

station.> Ax said.

"Cool," Marco said. He leaped forward, but I

was closer.

I slipped into the area beside Ax. Ax's pilot

"seat" wasn't a seat at all, of course.

Taxxons are like huge centipedes, so they can't

really sit. Which was good, because Ax doesn't sit,

either.

But the weapons station was built for

Hork-Bajir. Hork-Bajir are seven feet

tall and have thick, spikey tails, but they do sit.

"No

way

you should handle the weapons," Marco said, leaning over my shoulder. "I kick your butt in video

games."

"Yeah, right," I said. "In some alternate universe, maybe."

"Grab the joystick," Marco suggested.

As strange as it seems, there actually was a

joystick. It was for much bigger hands than mine, and the two buttons on it were clumsy to reach. But it was a

joystick.

"Maybe I should test the weapons," I said

to Ax.

<Yes.> he said tersely,

distracted.

We were rising up through the atmosphere. We were

above the clouds already. I could see brief flashes

of the lights of the city down below, but mostly it was clouds and more clouds.

But we weren't rising as fast as I would have

expected. Ax was definitely working to control the

ship.

I looked ahead, saw nothing in the way, and

pressed one of the buttons on the joystick.

Nothing.

Ax glanced over. <That was the safety.

The Dracon beam should be armed now. See the screen

before you? The red circle is how you aim. Use a

combination of moving the joystick, but also use your mind.> Marco put his hand on my shoulder. "Phasers

on full power!" he said in a Captain Picard

English accent. "Arm photon torpedoes! If the

Borg want a fight, we'll give them one!

Make it so!"

I moved the joystick and watched the target

circle track across the screen. It still showed nothing but starry sky. That should be safe enough.

I squeezed the second button.

TSEWWWW! TSEWWWW!

Twin red beams of light fired forward, converging

too far away for me to see.

"Yes! Most splendid!" Marco yelled.

"Okay, that

was

cool,"

I admitted, trying not to cackle like an

idiot with his first video game.

"Boys with their toys," Cassie teased gently.

<Prince Jake?> Ax said.

<I must apologize.>

"Why?"

<I did not at first realize: This Bug

fighter's cloaking field is not working.>

It took a few seconds for me to track on

that. "You mean . . . people can see us?"

<The clouds will hide us from people on the

ground.> Ax said. <But

human radar will observe us. In fact, they have already observed us.>

"Uh-oh. Maybe we better get higher," I

suggested.

<Yes. But we are rising slowly. I

don't know why. And there are two objects

approaching us.>

"Probably just airliners," Rachel said.

<The objects are moving at

one-and-a-half times the speed of sound.>

Ax said.

"Okay, that's not a passenger plane," Marco

said.

I groaned. "Military jets. Oh,

man, it's the Air Force after us. They're "good

guys." They're on our side. We can't shoot

them down."

Suddenly . . .

SWOOOOOSH!

SWOOOOOSH!

Two pale gray jets blew past us. The

backwash rattled the Bug fighter.

<I can access their radio

signals.> Ax said. And a second later

we heard the voice of one of the pilots.

"Urn . . . Base Control, I ... um

... Bogie is of an unknown type. Say again,

unknown type."

"Definitely unknown," the other pilot said.

"Way unknown."

"We're coming around for another pass."

I looked at Ax. "We really don't want

to get shot down by a couple of F-sixteens."

<No, Prince Jake. That would be

embarrassing. I believe I now know how to increase

com>

FAH-WHICH 0000000 M!

Suddenly, we were outta there. Out of the clouds. Out

of the atmosphere.

"Yes! This thing can move!" Marco exulted.

"We need to buy this game."

We heard a fainter, crackling voice over the

radio. "Did you see that? Did you see that thing

move, Colonel? Did you see that? What the -"

Then we were out of range, still zooming straight up

into black space. Below us I could see the

curvature of the earth. It looked just like one of those pictures the shuttle astronauts take from up in

orbit.

"That's so beautiful," Cassie said. "Look at that! You can see daylight coming up over the Red

Sea."

<Excuse me.> Tobias

said, <but I don't think the Red Sea

is exactly on the way to Washington, D.c.>

"Yeah, I guess not," I said. Although it was such a wonderful sight that I almost didn't want

to worry about where we were going. "Ax, maybe we'd better slow down, get some idea of where Washington

is and -"

<No! No!> Ax snapped.

I was shocked. Ax is always polite.

<No, Prince

Jake.> he said, a little more calmly.

<We cannot slow down.>

"What's the matter?" Cassie asked him.

Ax pointed at one of the view screens before him.

On the screen I saw stars. Then the moon came

into view, a vast gray-and-white lightbulb.

And silhouetted against the glowing moon was a shape.

It was like some medieval battle-ax. The rear half

was a two-headed blade. From the middle, like an ax

handle, extended a long shaft. At the end of the

shaft was a triangular head, very much like an arrow's

point.

It was black on black. And even if you had

never seen it before and had no idea what it was, you'd know right away it was death.

I

had seen

it. I stggnew what it was.

"The Blade ship," I whispered.

The Blade ship of Visser Three.