The Forgotten
Author: K. A. Applegate
Date: 1997-10-01 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Metamorphosis - Fiction; Extraterrestrial beings; Fantasy fiction; Juvenile Fiction; Fantasy & Magic; Fiction; Science fiction; Metamorphosis
Description: SUMMARY: The Animorphs, Jake and Ax steal a Yeerk Bug fighter and end up in another time and another place, with no way home.
Publisher: Scholastic

Converted to E-Book by:

Rumeth

1.22 PM

My name is Jake. I can't tell you my last name, or where I'm
from. That would just help the Yeerks. They'd love to find me
and my friends. They'd love to know who we are, even what we
are.

Knowing my last name isn't important for you. What you need to
know is that everything I'll tell you here is true. It's real.

It's actually happening. Right now.

The Yeerks are among us. The Yeerks are us. They're a
parasitic species. They live inside the bodies of other
beings. They take over your mind and body. Controllers. That's
what you call a creature that is ruled by a Yeerk. A

Controller. Something that looks human, acts human, sounds
human, but whose mind is Yeerk. They are everywhere. They can
be anyone. Think of the one person in the whole world that you
trust the most. Think of that one special per son. And now
realize, believe, accept the fact that they might not be the
person you think they are. Deal with the reality that behind
those friendly, loving eyes lives a gray slug. That's what a

Yeerk looks like in its natural state. Just a gray slug. They
enter your head, squeezing through the ear canal, and flatten
themselves out to envelop your brain.

You know all those nooks and crannies in brains? You've
probably seen pictures in school. Well, the Yeerk forms itself
into those nooks and crannies and it ties into your mind. You
wake up and you want to scream, but you can't. You can't
scream. You can't move your eyes or raise your finger or make
yourself walk.

The Yeerk controls you. You're still alive. You can still see
what's happening. Your eyes move and focus, but you're not
moving them. You can still hear your own mouth speaking and
using your voice. You can feel it when the Yeerk opens up your
memories and looks through them. You can hear the Yeerk
laughing at you as it pries into your every secret.

I know. Been there. For a few days, I was Controller. The

Yeerks are here, all right. Their mother ship is parked in
high orbit right now. It's hidden from human radar, but it's
there. And the Yeerk super-evil leader, Visser Three, is
there, too. We are being invaded. We are being enslaved. We
are losing our own planet. And we don't even know it.

My friends and I fight the Yeerks. But we're just five kids.

Well, five kids and one Andalite. Yes, we have some amazing
powers, but we're still desperately weak and outnumbered
compared to the force of the Yeerk invasion. We are the only
humans resisting the Yeerks. We may be the only hope that

Earth has. We have a lot on our shoulders. Which is why I
really, really, really did not see why I had to have more
suffering piled on. Wasn't I under enough stress? Life wasn't
bad enough? We had to have . . . square dancing? Square
dancing! The horror! The CD player was blasting out screaming-
cat fiddle music. Which, in my opinion, is possibly the worst
music ever created.

The lights in the classroom seemed blazingly bright compared
to the dark gray clouds outside. The teacher was standing off
to the side. She was wearing that smug, satisfied look
teachers sometimes get when they know they are grinding the
students" last nerves.

"Now promenade left! Bow to your partner, do-si-do!" the
stereo drill-instructor yelled.

I promenaded, which consists of walking like a BIG HONKING

GOOBER around in a circle. And then I bowed. A strange, jerky
sort of movement.

And finally, my least favorite thing: I did a do-si-do. Or as
the shrieking, yammering voice on the CD said, do-si-Doooo!

"You call that do-si-do?" Rachel sneered as I high-stepped
backward around her.

"Don't mess with me, Rachel," I warned.

"Smile, Jake. Big smile!" Rachel said. "We are happy while
dancing. Happy!" She was so totally enjoying torturing me.

Rachel is my cousin. She's an Animorph, too.

"Now swing your partner back to the left and promenade!"

"Promenade this," I muttered darkly. I grabbed Rachel to swing
her. I was considering swinging her into the nearest wall. But
although Rachel may look like some dippy Clueless type, she's
a lot closer to being Xena: Warrior Princess. In other words,

I'm just a little scared of Rachel. I've seen her in lots of
battles. You just really don't want to make her too mad. You
really, really
don't.

"Excellent swing," Rachel mocked me. "Now you're getting into
it. I can just picture you in a string tie, cowboy boots,
maybe a bright red-checked western shirt

"Don't push it, Rachel," I warned again. Then the worst
possible thing happened. As I was "promenading" yet again, I
heard Rachel
yell.

"Hey, Cassie! Come by to watch?!" My heart sank. Cassie is
another member of our team. She's also someone I really kind
of like. If you know what I mean. And I really didn't want her
watching me as I stomped clumsily around the circle. The sight
of me, big old Jake, galumphing around in time to fiddle music
was guaranteed to destroy any affection Cassie had for me. I
mean, I was making myself sick. I could just imagine how I
looked to Cassie. I met Cassie's gaze. She was standing in the
doorway of the classroom. And she was laughing. She was
laughing with her entire body. She was in convulsions.

I was so relieved. See, I was afraid I'd get a pity look.

Instead, she was cracking up. Tears were rolling down her
cheeks as I "do-si-doed" right in front of her.

"You find this funny? Me, trying to dance?"

Cassie couldn't talk. She was laughing too hard. She just
nodded. What could I do? I started laughing, too. There
wasn't anything else to do.

Oh, maybe one other thing. I grabbed Cassie's hands and pulled
her into the circle. Rachel backed away, letting Cassie take
her place in the pattern.

Cassie stopped laughing.

"No way!" she said, alarmed.

"Let's see you do-si-do," I said.

I grabbed her and swung her, and in a breathless voice she
whispered, "I just came by to tell you something. Tobias wants
us. Right after school lets out. It's something big."

I took a deep breath. Suddenly, I wasn't in the mood to laugh
anymore. Tobias wouldn't say "something big" unless it was
something big.

And "something big" meant something bad these days. Cassie and

I had to obey the music and separate then, but a few seconds
later, we rejoined in the pattern, bowing to each other.

"I guess square dancing doesn't seem so bad now, huh?" Cassie
asked me.

"Yeah, right. It would take more than the danger of sudden
death to make square dancing okay," I said. "A lot more." I
did some more promenading. I did some more bowing. I did some
more do-si-doing.

But my thoughts were already running ahead, wondering what

Tobias had seen. And just how much of a mess it would end up
being.Then . . .

FLASH!

I fell!

I fell down and down through the green, green trees! A branch.

I snatched at it with my hand and swung and released, then
flew through the air and caught another branch. I wrapped my
tail around the branch and turned to look back. Monkeys were
swinging toward me through the high treetops of the jungle.

I was giddy.

It was a rush!

It was . . .

FLASH!

Cassie was smiling, and looking a little strangely at me. The
music was done. The class was breaking up.

"Are you okay?" Cassie asked me.

"Yeah. Yeah," I said, shaking off the weird vision.

"Daydreaming?" Cassie asked me.

"I guess so," I said.

"I wonder what Tobias wants. Do you have any idea?"

I was too weirded out to really respond. One second I'd been
square dancing. The next second I'd been swinging through the
trees. And both moments had been real.

3:08 P.m.

What do you think?" Marco asked me.

"Personally, I figure Tobias found some really good roadkill,
and he wants us to share."

"Yeah, that's probably it," I said tolerantly. Marco's
approach to everything is to joke about it. Especially when
he's worried.

After school we all went our separate ways. Cassie to her
home, Rachel to hers. We all knew Tobias had some serious
reason to talk to us. We were all afraid it was trouble of
some kind.

But I had something extra to worry about. The hallucination,
or vision, or whatever it was I'd had was too real to just
forget. Everyone daydreams. This was no daydream. I was in the
jungle. Period. It was for just a few seconds, but it was
definitely real.

But like I said, priority number one was figureing out what
was bugging Tobias. So Marco and I walked home together
because that's what we usually did. And it is very important
for us to act normal. We don't want to draw attention. So we
try and be like we always were. Like we were before the night
that changed our lives forever.

We'd been walking home from the mall at night. We took a
shortcut through an abandoned construction site. A really
stupid, irresponsible thing to do. But it turned out it wasn't
ax murderers or kidnappers we had to worry about. Before that
night we'd all known each other, but we weren't a group. We
had just happened to hook up at the mall. It was an accident
or fate or something. Take your pick.

Anyway, the five of us ended up walking together as we were
leaving the mall. And in a dark, spooky construction site,
with empty, half-finished buildings all around us, we saw the
spaceship land. It was an Andalite fighter. It was badly
damaged. Up in orbit, the Andalites had come out on the wrong
end of a fight with the Yeerks.

The Andalite pilot of the fighter was named Elfangor. Prince

Elfangor. He was dying. He was the one who told us about the

Yeerks. Life changed that night. Life went from being just the
daily stuff any normal kid has to deal with, to knowing a
secret that made you want to sit down and cry. It was Prince

Elfangor who gave us the power to morph. It was all he could
do to help us. It was the only weapon he could give us. The
power to morph. To become any animal we could touch and

"acquire." A great and awful power. A power that has given me
some serious nightmares. I've seen things since that night at
the con struction site. Things I wish I'd never seen. And I've
done things I wish I couldn't remember.

"Hey," Marco said, interrupting my thoughts. "Speaking of

Bird-boy. Up there. Is that anyone we know?"

I followed the direction he was looking. It was a dark
afternoon and the sky just kept getting darker. It was filling
up with rain clouds the color of steel wool. And there,
silhouetted against the clouds, was a large bird.

Even from a distance you could tell it was a bird of prey.

"Could be. I can't tell," I said. "If it's Tobias he'll spot
us."

Tobias is in hawk morph. Permanently. See, there's a nasty
little hook buried inside the morphing power: Stay in morph
for more than two hours, and you stay in morph forever.

Tobias has the soul and mind of a human. But his body is the
body of a red-tailed hawk.

"He's coming closer," Marco said.

"Yeah." I had mixed feelings. Tobias is one of us. A friend.

More than a friend. He's risked his life for me many times.

But I sensed he was bringing bad news. And I really didn't
want to hear bad news.

I heard his thought-speak voice in my head. <Jake. Marco.>

"See? Figured it was him," Marco said.

We couldn't answer Tobias. He was still too high up to hear us
speak, even with his excellent hawk hearing. And you can only
make thought-speak when you're in morph. Or if you happen to
be an Andalite.

<You guys need to haul it a little faster.> Tobias said. He
sounded
tense,
impatient,
excited.

Not
that
he
really

"sounded" at all. But his thought-speak in my head carried
tension. <Morph as soon as you get a chance, okay?>

I looked at Marco. He sighed.

"My dad should still be at work. We can use my house," he
said. "We're almost there." We headed straight for Marco's
house. We live in the same subdivision, just a couple of
blocks away from each other. Most of the kids in our school
live there, including Rachel. Cassie lives out on her farm a
little ways down the road.

<l'll round up the others.> Tobias said. <We'll meet up with

Ax later. I'll catch up with you once you get airborne.>

"This has "big trouble" written all over it," I muttered. "In huge red neon letters," Marco agreed. We reached Marco's house
and went in. Marco checked to make sure we were alone. "Dad!

Dad, you home? Anyone home? Hey, Dad, I'm going to change all
the settings on your stereo!" Marco winked at me. "If he's
home, that'll make him come running."

There was no reply. Just a quiet house. We ran up the carpeted
stairs to Marco's room. We ran past framed pictures of Marco
and his dad and his mother, who everyone thought as dead.

Marco opened his bedroom window as wide s it would go. The
breeze was cool and damp. It as going to rain. And I hate
rain. Let's get this over with," I said. I kicked off y shoes
and removed everything but my morphing suit. Marco did the
same. focused my mind on a bird. It was a peregrine falcon.

The DNA of that falcon was part of me. And, thanks to the

Andalite morphing technology, I could trade that DNA for my
own.

I focused my mind and the change began.

Feather patterns appeared on my skin as if some invisible
person had drawn them there.

The not-terribly-clean floor of Marco's room came rushing up
at me as I shrank, dwindling down like a fast-burning candle.

It was like falling and falling without ever quite hitting the
ground.

Or in this case, hitting a dirty white sock.

"Oh, man," I said. "Marco, you could at least not leave dirty
gym socks around."

"Hey, I've seen your room," Marco said. "You still have some
of your old baby diapers lying around."

He started to say more, but that's when his human tongue
shriveled down to become a tiny bird tongue. So all he said
was "Craww hee hrrar."

Whatever that meant.

The dirty gym sock went from being the size of a sock to being
the size of a blanket. The only good thing was that falcons
don't have much of a sense of smell. I was grateful for that.

My lips became hard as fingernails and began to press outward,
forming a sharp, down-curved beak. It was weird and disturbing
because I could actually see the beak grow, like some
humongous nose.

My feet were gone, replaced by talons that could open up a
prey animal like a can opener on a can of cat food.

My bones made grinding, squishy noises as my skull shrank. My
arm
bones
became
hollow
and
other
bones
disappeared
altogether.

Then the patterns of feathers on my skin grew three-
dimensional. It was eerie to watch -- like my skin was
chapping really badly. Like skin was peeling up at an
incredible rate, and each peel of skin formed a feather.

Gray feathers, mostly.

I glared at Marco with my incredible Force-10 falcon vision.

He glared back with the eyes of an osprey. <Let's catch some
air.>I said.

I flapped my wings twice and hopped up to the windowsill.

<Last time I was in osprey morph some peregrine took a shot at
me.> Marco said. He sounded a little resentful. Like it was my
fault. He hopped up to the sill beside me.

<Don't worry, Marco. I'll protect you.> I said it knowing it
would
make him mad. <Protect me? Right. Come on, big guy, let's fly.

See if you can keep up with me first. Then see if you can

"protect" me. Hah!>

I opened my wings wide, kicked off from the windowsill, and
dropped straight for the grass in Marco's backyard. This is
always terrifying. See, you know you're a bird and all, but in
your mind you're still a human. And jumping out of windows
scares humans. I was ten, twelve feet off the ground, with
nothing but lawn to catch me if for some reason my wings
didn't work. But then my wings caught the air. I felt the
pressure of the air pushing up beneath me. I flapped hard,
one, two, three, four, and shot for ward. Forward and upward.

I flapped and flapped, working hard to get al titude in the
cool air. Flapping is hard. Just be cause you're a bird
doesn't mean flapping is easy. Marco and I had just managed to
climb maybe fifty feet when Tobias came zooming up alongside
us, zipping around like he'd been born a bird.

<Follow me.> he said.

<Follow you where?> I asked, maybe a little too grouchily.

Tobias laughed. <We're going to the grocery store.> he said.

<We're going to the Safeway.>

<Tobias, are you nuts?> Marco demanded. <The grocery store?

What, is there a sale on gourmet birdseed?>

<Funny, Marco.> Tobias said. <But it's not about birdseed.

This grocery store seems to be having a sale on high-ranking

Controllers.>

Lt's hard to be worried when you're flying. You feel so
powerful, floating high above the heads of all the little
people below you. People are so slow. They walk in little
lines along side walks, always stuck moving in two dimensions:

left-right, forward-back. A bird moves in three dimensions and
has a lot more going on when he's flying. There's the air
temperature, the speed of wind gusts, the steadiness of the
breeze crosswinds and thermals and humidity.

Your wings and tail are constantly adjusting -- extending your
wingtips, spreading or narrowing your tail, altering the angle
of attack.

Fortunately, the falcon's brain handles all of that. Because
let's face it, as a human, I know basically nothing about
flying.

All I know is it's the coolest thing in the entire world.

Marco and I flew along with Tobias till we spotted two other
big birds of prey rising up toward us: Rachel and Cassie.

<Break it up all.> Tobias advised. <We're going to draw every
bird-watcher within a hundred miles. Spread out. Stop thinking
like humans -- we don't have to be bunched together to see the
same things.>

He was right. Falcons, hawks, and eagles don't exactly fly
in flocks together. And with the intense vision of our bird
morphs, we could see whatever we were supposed to see from a
quarter of a
mile away.

I wanted to get altitude because I was struggling with the
dead air around me. I had the narrowest wings of the group. I
was brutally fast in a killing dive, much faster than the
others. But at the business of endlessly riding wisps of
breeze I was weak.

I split off from Marco, circled to the right, and kept my
laser-focus eyes on Tobias, careful to stay within thought-
speak range. <0kay, this is it.> Tobias said. <See the big car
lot down there? Track left a block.>

I was catching my first decent breeze, so I soared upward as I
searched the ground below. Then I saw it. <Left of the car lot

... that's a grocery store, right?> I asked. I was puzzled.

From the air, almost every building just looks like a big
rectangle. <lt looks like they had some kind of fire.>

<Yep. Now, look closer.> Tobias advised. <See the plastic
sheet across the left side of the store? Look how the breeze
blows it in. See?>

<lt looks like the entire left wall was knocked in or
something.> Rachel said. She was a bald eagle, riding high
above me and further west.

<Exactly.> Tobias said. <Now, see the parking lot on that
side? See the marks?>

I did. There were several long gouges torn in the blacktop.

Long, straight gouges, in perfect alignment, pointing right
toward the busted wall of the grocery store. A couple dozen
workmen seemed to be on the ground, rushing around to erect a
plywood wall to conceal the hole. Suddenly, I realized. I
guess Marco did, too.

<0h, man.> Marco said. <0h, man.>

<You'd never notice it from ground level.> Tobias said smugly.

<But from the bird's-eye view, it's pretty obvious.>

<Something hit the ground. It was moving fast. It skidded
across the grocery store parking lot, hit the wall, plowed
inside, and started a fire.> I said.

<Exactamundo.> Tobias said. <It must have happened late at
night.>

Cassie pointed out. <0therwise there would have been cars in
the parking lot.>

<You still haven't seen the best thing yet.> Tobias said.

<Take a run, one at a time, over the site. Check out who's in
charge of the cleanup crew.>

I flapped hard, turned, flapped harder, and shot over the
smoke-scarred grocery store. I only caught a glimpse of the
man who was directing the work crew. I couldn't quite believe
what I saw.

<Chapman?> I asked.

<Chapman.> Tobias confirmed. <He's been here all day.>

Chapman is the assistant principal at our school. He's also a
high-ranking Controller-a very important part of the Yeerk
invasion.

<Why is the assistant principal from our school suddenly
working construction?> Cassie asked, adding, <As if I couldn't
guess.>

<Whatever this is, it must be important.> Rachel said.

<They're working fast. And look! That guy there with the long
coat? Up on the roof? I just caught a flash of a machine gun
under his coat.>

There were six or seven men and women on the roof of the
store. They were looking around with the kind of steely,
paranoid gaze you see on the faces of the President's Secret

Service guys.

<They're nervous.> Cassie agreed. <Scared, even. You cannot
see from the way they move. The way they act. Someone screwed
something up big time, and everyone down there is very
afraid.>

<So? What do we do, oh fearless leader?> Marco asked. He was
asking me. The others like to act as if I'm in charge. I don't
think of myself that way, not really. But you know, whatever.

If it makes them feel better to think I'm the leader, fine.

It's just that when people treat you like a leader, you start
acting like a leader. And like I said, that means making
decisions. Even when you're just guessing.

<Yeah, what's the plan?> Rachel asked.

FLASH!

Right in my face!

Big, glittering eyes, the only things shining in the darkness.

A muzzle open just enough to show long, curved fangs. The face
of an extremely big cat. Mountain lion? Leopard?

In a second it would lunge, open its jaws wide and -

FLASH!

<Whoa!> I yelled.

<What's the matter? Do you see something?> Tobias asked.

<Jake? I asked you, what's the plan?> Rachel said, sound ing
annoyed.

I was back in the air. I was flying. I was in falcon morph.

Below me I saw the grocery store.

But I was totally confused. My mind wouldn't focus on reality.

It was still in some jungle I'd never seen, staring into the
eyes of a beautiful, deadly predator. What was happening to
me? Was I going crazy?

<Um . . . um, I ... I guess we better take a closer look,
huh?> I managed to say.

<Definitely. Let's work up a plan. Let's do it.> Rachel said
with her usual enthusiasm.

<Rachel, why is it whenever I hear you say "let's do it" my
blood runs cold?> Marco asked.

<Let's see. Because you're a weenie?> Rachel speculated.

<Whatever this is, they're trying to clean it up fast. We have
no time.> I said. <Better do this tonight.>

<0h.> Rachel said. <Tonight? As in ... tonight>

She didn't sound so enthusiastic anymore.

<0h, good.> Marco said sarcastically. <An-other rushed,
unplanned, last-minute mission. Those always turn out so
well.>

Marco, I thought, you don't know the half of it. Because in
addition to all the other ways this could go bad, your

"fearless leader" is losing his mind.

Of course, I didn't say that. See, when you're the leader,
you're not allowed to be crazy.

<I hate this kind of stuff.> Marco said. <I hate rushing into
things.>

We had landed in the woods. Landing, by the way, is the
hardest part of flying. Taking off is scary, but landing is
terrifying. See, the difference between landing and crashing
is about two inches and two miles per hour.

We landed more or less gracefully on the pine needle floor of
the forest. Tobias flew off to look for Ax. The rest of us
demorphed.

<I seem to remember that the last time we rushed into
something we managed to screw up the plan.> Cassie said. <0n
the other hand, we did survive.>

"Barely," Marco said, as he made the transition from mostly
osprey to mostly human. "It's just a grocery store," Rachel
said with a shrug of shoulders that were just emerging.

"Come on, how hard can it be?"

"How should we go in?" Marco wondered, looking at
me.

I looked at Cassie. "Any suggestions?"

"We have a couple of morphs available for this job," she said.

"Like Rachel said, it's a grocery store. A burned-out grocery
store, but a grocery store just the same. You'd expect there
to be cockroaches, rats, flies..."

Suddenly, there came a rush of pounding hooves and a crash of
underbrush. Ax raced up to us, graceful and bizarre all at
once. He plowed straight toward us, moving as fast as a
panicked horse. Just when I was sure he'd run us down, he
kicked his hind legs and sailed easily over our heads. He
landed almost daintily, and turned back to face us.

Ax is Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill. He's the younger brother of

Prince Elfangor. As far as we know, Ax is the only Andalite to
survive the destruction of their Dome ship. Andalites have
certain things in common with Earth animals. But you'd know
right off that he's from a long, long way away. His body is
like a sort of strong pale-blue-and-tan deer. But where the
deer would have a neck, Ax has a somewhat human upper body. It
looks like the chest and shoulders of a boy. He has two weak-
looking arms and a few too many fingers.

His head is where you'd expect to find it, but it is missing
one very major ingredient: a mouth. Andalites eat by absorbing
plants through their hollow hooves. And they communicate
through thought-speak.

Ax has three small slits for a nose and two big, almond-shaped
eyes. He also has two other eyes. These are mounted on top of
his head on short stalks. These two eyes can move separately
in any direction. It's distracting till you get used to it. Ax
may look at you with his two main eyes, or he may look at you
with both stalk eyes, or one stalk eye, or a combination of
his two main eyes and one stalk eye.

To summarize: It's very strange making eye contact with an

Andalite.

And last, but definitely not least, there's the tail. It's
like a scorpion's tail, cocked up so that the deadly sharp
blade on the end sort of hovers above Ax's shoulder.

The tail is fast. Very fast. As in, you're bleeding and
wondering why you can only count to four on your fingers,
before you even see it move. Fast, accurate, and very good to
have on your side of a fight.

<Hello, everyone.> Ax said.<Tobias told me to hurry.>

Just then, Tobias swooped low overhead and landed with utter
confidence on a branch. He dug his talons into the bark and
began to calmly preen his wing feathers.

"Hi, Ax," I said. "What has Tobias told you?"

<Everything. I guess we are going in to take a closer look?>

"You guess right, Ax-man," Marco said. "You have a preference
for fly or cockroach morph?"

<I will do whatever Prince Jake orders.>

"Ax, don't call me Prince Jake," I said automatically for
about the thousandth time.

<Yes, Prince Jake.> he said.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe Ax has a sense of humor. We'd
never noticed one, but who knows?

"We have to get inside that Safeway," I said. "The closest
place to morph is a long way away. Clear across the street,
behind that boarded-up motel. No one will see us there, but
then we have to get to the store. Across four lanes of
traffic."

"Ouch," Marco said. "I hadn't really thought about that. Is it
too late for me to change my vote?"

"We didn't vote," Rachel said. "But if we had, you'd have
voted yes."

"How do you know how I'd have voted?" Marco demanded.

Rachel smiled. "Because I'd have voted yes. And you'd never
let yourself look like a total wuss in front of girls."

"You think you know me," Marco said. "Unfortunately, you're
right."

"Neither the roach nor the fly has very good vision," Rachel
pointed out. "I mean, we want to be able to see whatever is in
that store, right?"

"Yeah, but we also have to get across four lanes of traffic. I
don't know about you, but I'd rather fly over the cars than
try to walk in front of them,"Cassie said.

"Can flies even find their way that far?" I wondered out loud.

"Remember when we used to have normal, sane conversations?"

Marco said. "You know, we'd talk about baseball or who had a
crush on who?"

Cassie gave him a wink. Then, she was back to business. "That
grocery store must still be full of food, right? Rotting food,
since I doubt the freezers are working in there. What's better
at
finding rotting food than a fly?"

<I can help guide you, maybe.> Tobias said.

"You don't see that much better than humans do in the dark," I
pointed out. "It'll be dark by the time we get in position."

<Car lights . . . streetlights . . . I'm just saying maybe I
can help a little, all right?>

Tobias sometimes becomes frustrated because he can't go on all
the missions. I understand. I feel sorry for him. But that's
the way it is. I was about to tell him that when Cassie jumped
in.

"Tobias, the only reason we even know about this is you,"

Cassie pointed out. "You discovered it. You showed it to us.

The least we can do is take the next step."

Cassie is so good at fixing hurt feelings. Better than me,
that's for sure. But Tobias was still grumpy. <l'm still going
along.> he said.

"Okay," I said, clapping my hands together and trying to sound
cheerful and optimistic. "Flies it is. Everyone go home. We
meet behind the motel in..." I checked my watch, "in
approximately three hours. Around seven forty-five or so. We
do a quick morph, we're in and out of that Safeway in ten
minutes and back home again."

"Oh, man," Marco groaned. "I hate it when you try to sound
peppy, Jake. It always means you're worried. Next you'll flash
that big "no-sweat" grin. I know you."

"Three hours to fly time," I said, forcing up a big, confident
grin.

"We're dead meat," Marco said. Hi, Dad, what's up?" I asked
when I got home. My father was in his La-Z-Boy, remote control
in hand.

"What do you mean, "what's up"?" he asked, genuinely
surprised. "The fight's on tonight. Forty dollars on Pay-Per-

View. Corn chips, bean dip, loud grunting male noises, beer -
for me - soda for you and Tom."

I practically slapped my forehead. The fight! I'd totally
forgotten. It was a big thing. Not be cause I'm a boxing
fanatic. I'm not. But it was a big thing for my dad to
actually spend forty dollars on Pay-Per-View. He was doing it
as a male-bonding, father-son thing. Me and him and Tom, and
probably one or two of my dad's friends from work.

"That's tonight?" I asked. "What time?"

"Starts at seven o'clock. Do your homework, eat something
containing vegetables to make your mom happy, and then grab
some couch." I did a quick mental calculation. The fight
started in a little over an hour. The last championship fight
had lasted only three rounds. That would leave me maybe thirty
minutes to morph and fly to the motel. Should I come up with
some excuse for bailing out? No. No, there was no way my dad
would buy it.

"Excellent," I said to my dad. "I'll be here. Don't eat all
the bean dip. You know what happens when you eat bean dip."

My mother came into the living room. "Am I even allowed in
here?" she asked mockingly.

"When does this room become the temple of male aggression?"

"Not till seven," my dad said. "Until then we will allow
females. Especially if the females remembered to pick up chips
on their way home from work."

"Chips? Wouldn't you rather enjoy some nice carrot sticks and
hummus dip?"

My dad and I just stared at her. "Kidding," she said. "Just
kidding. I have chips. Are Pete and Dominick coming over?"

"Yeah, but you don't have to feed them," my dad joked. "Those
guys are lucky I don't charge them admission."

I raced through my homework and hoped the fight would be the
usual two-or-three-round easy knockout. The one good thing
about rushing was that it didn't leave me too much time to
think. Thinking meant worry, and worry gets in the way of
getting things done. It was a tense family gathering at seven
o'clock. Tom seemed as anxious as I was to get away. I could
guess why. You see, Tom is one of them. He's a human-

Controller.

He had to keep up appearances of normalcy, same as me. But I
guess he was trying to get away to go to the grocery store
site, too. Same me, again. Tom and I fought in the same war.

On different sides. It was strange thinking of Tom, still
alive deep down inside his own head. Trapped. Powerless. But
able to see and hear and think. Did he enjoy watching the
fight through eyes he no longer controlled? Was there
anything, any thing at all, he could enjoy? It didn't help,
having thoughts like that. When I started thinking that way
the rage would just build up inside me till I felt like I'd go
nuclear. I told myself, for probably the millionth time, that

I was doing all I could to help Tom. All I could. All I could.

Fortunately, my dad and his work friends made plenty of noise,
so no one noticed Tom checking his watch. Or the fact that I
kept glancing toward the kitchen, where I could see the wall
clock. By round six, I knew I was in trouble. In round seven
neither fighter even looked tired. I decided if it went past
round eight I'd have to make some excuse, no matter how lame.

In round eight, a lucky uppercut connected. "Oh, that had to
hurt!" my dad said. "Five bucks says he goes down!" my dad's
friend Dominick said quickly. He was right. The challenger
staggered, wandered around on rubber legs for a few seconds,
then toppled over. Boom! The fight was over. It was now seven
forty-five. I was already late. I snatched the videotape out
of the VCR.

"Dad, can I take this over to Marco's and play it for him?"

"It's almost eight. It's dark out," my father objected.

"Yeah," Tom said. "You might get lost and never come back. And
that would be such a pity. I'd have to use your room for my
weights and stuff."

It was exactly the kind of dumb big-brother joke Tom would
have made. But of course it was just something pulled up from

Tom's brain by the Yeerk in his head.

For just a second it occurred to me to ask him: "Hey, Tom,
what's the big secret with the grocery store? Just tell me,
and I can stay home tonight."

I smiled at the thought. Then . . .

FLASH!

Green. Green. Everything was green. It was the greenest place
on Earth: trees, moss, vines, ferns. Green everywhere.

Marco was there. And the others. They were all there.

Marco was talking. "... in a jungle fighting brain-stealing
aliens and ten thousand annoying species of bugs, and our
resident space cadet is a hot-looking monkey. Somebody wake me
up when we get back to reality."

FLASH!

I was back. Back listening to Tom tease me like he was
actually Tom. Back to hearing my dad say, "Walk, don't ride
your bike. Not at night. Especially not when it's about to
rain."

The vision was so powerful. So real. Not like a dream at all.

But like I was actually there in a jungle, listening to Marco
complain. I felt my heart pounding. I felt sweat forming on my
forehead. What in the heck was going on? What was happening to
me?

I noticed Tom back out of the room, sliding away like he was
going to the kitchen. That brought me back to reality.

I grabbed the videotape and took off, still reeling from the
insane feeling of being yanked back and forth from one reality
to another. I could hear my dad and his friends rehashing the
fight round by round as I went up to my room and opened my
window as wide as it would go.

It took me twenty-five minutes to morph and fly to the empty
motel.

<I know, I know, I'm late.> I apologized as I came in for a
landing. I misjudged the distance to the ground, hit it too
hard, and rolled over, a tangle of wings and talons.

<Nice landing.> Tobias said with a laugh.

"Are you okay?" Cassie asked me. She rushed over and picked me
up. Then she set me back down because I was starting to
demorph. And I was getting heavier pretty quickly.

"I'm fine," I said, as soon as I could speak. "Embarrassed,
but fine."

It was a shabby little hiding place. The back windows of the
motel were covered in plywood. The plywood was covered with
graffiti. There were overgrown weeds and broken bottles and,
for some reason, an old washing machine.

"We get to visit all the best places, don't we?" I said dryly.

Ax was hugging the darkness against the wall. He feels a
little obvious out of the woods. With good reason. Anyone who
saw him would run away, screaming like a little kid. Unless,
of course, they were a Controller. A Controller would know
exactly what he was.

"Well?" Rachel asked, looking at me. She was waiting for me to
say, "Let's go." But for some reason, I felt a strange
reluctance. I felt...

I don't even know what I felt. Just that that moment, that
very moment, was terribly important. The others all stared at
me, waiting. All I had to say was, "Let's go."

Instead, I looked at my watch. Eight-nineteen. Eight-nineteen.

Like it meant something. Like . . .

Oh, man, I was going nuts! I was losing it. What was the
matter with me?

"Should we do this?" I wondered. I was surprised to realize

I'd spoken out loud. I'd been talking to myself.

"Why not? I say we do it," Rachel said.

"There's a huge shock," Marco muttered. "Everyone who is
surprised Rachel wants to go for it, raise your hand."

"Yeah," I said, shaking off my doubts as well as I could.

"Yeah, let's go."

I was pretty sure it was the right thing to do, but the
responsibility was on me. I could have stopped it. I could
have talked them all out of it. I could have done something
different.

But I didn't. At least not then . . .

"Let's morph," I said.

Let's hope no one has a can of Raid," Marco said.

I tried to laugh. But I hate morphing bugs.

Back when we started morphing, I figured we'd morph things
like lions and bears and eagles. And we do. But we also morph
things a lot smaller. The insect world is very useful.

Sometimes smaller is better.

That never exactly makes it fun, though. There is no
nightmare, no horror movie, no weird psycho vision as scary as
actually turning into a cockroach or a spider or a flea or a
fly.

When you morph a tiger, you still have four limbs. You have
two eyes. You have a mouth. You have bones and a stomach and
lungs and teeth. Maybe they're all different, but they're all
still there.

The change to a fly is nothing like becoming a tiger. Nothing
is where it should be. Nothing stays the same.

The problem with morphs is that they are never exactly the
same twice in a row. And the changes happen in bizarre,
unpredictable ways. It's not smooth. It's not logical. It's
not gradual.

I started to shrink, but when I was still almost entirely
human, still probably three feet tall, I felt my skin harden.

See, flies don't have bones. They have an exoskeleton. Their
outer shell is what holds them together in one piece. And my
exoskeleton was growing. My soft, human skin was being
replaced by something dark, something hard as plastic.

My body was squeezed into segments. Insect segments: a head, a
thorax, an abdomen.

And when I was still at least two feet tall, way too tall to
be anything like a fly, the extra legs came bursting,
squishing, slurping out of what had been my chest.

My own true legs collapsed as they shriveled down to match my
new fly legs. I fell forward into the dirt. Facedown. Not that

I had much of a face anymore.

My proboscis had already begun to form from my melting mouth
and lips and nose and tongue. The proboscis was as big as my
fly legs - a long, retractable, hollow tube. Flies eat with
the proboscis. They spit saliva all over the food, wait till
it gets mushy, then suck it up. It isn't pretty. But that
wasn't the worst of it. The worst was the eyes. I still had
semi human vision when I saw Cassie, lying in the dirt beside
me, suddenly grow fly eyes. They popped out of her human eyes.

Popped out, huge and devoid of soul. Big, black balloons that
sort of inflated out of her own eye sockets. That's a sight
that will make you heave up your lunch.

My own vision went dark then. I was blind for a couple of
seconds, then yow! The fly eyes turned on, and the whole world
was different. How can I explain what it's like to look
through compound eyes? It's like you're watching a thousand
tiny TV sets all at once. A thousand tiny TV sets, all
clustered together. And each set has really weird color. Like
someone twisted all the color knobs. Yellow is purple, green
is red, blue is black. It's insane. Like some disturbed kid
got loose with a Crayola box and colored in everything with
different colors. But what's awful is the way the eyes look in
all directions at once. I could see the tube, that was now my
mouth, sticking out in front of me. I could see my own twig
legs. I could see the stiff hairs poking out of my armored
body.

Still, there is one good thing about being a fly -- if you can
get past the screaming horror of it. Part of what I could see
was the pair of gossamer wings that sprouted from what should
have been my back.

Flies can fly.

Man, can they fly.

<Everyone okay?> I asked.

<Aside from the fact I make myself sick? Yes.> Marco said.

Then . . . PAH-LOOOSH!

An explosion on the ground ahead of me. The dirt just seemed
to blow up. Like a mortar explosion.

<What the . . .> Rachel yelped.

PAH-LOOOSH!

<It's starting to rain, guys.> Tobias informed us calmly.

The explosions of mortar shells were just big, fat raindrops
hitting the dirt.

<Jeez! I thought someone was trying to kill u.> Cassie said.

<Let's get on with th.> I said.

I fired the springs in my legs and turned on my wings. I was
airborne instantly. It's not like being a bird. A bird has to
really
work
at
flying.

For
a
fly,
it's
automatic.

Instantaneous. You think let's fly and a split second later
you're zooming crazily through the air.

Across the weird mass of tiny TV sets I could see the others
rise up from the ground. They flew like pigs. Like big fat
balls with these tiny little wings that looked like they
couldn't lift a speck of dust. But, like I said before, flies
can fly. I zoomed

Wildly upward. Like a wallowing rocket!

<Hah-Hah! Oh, man!> Rachel exulted. <I'd forgotten how great
this was!>

<Disgusting, but oh yeah, these things can haul.> Marco
agreed. <Tobias, you only think you can fly. You haven't flown
till you've flown Maggot Airways.>

<Maybe> Tobias said calmly. <And, not to burst your balloon,
but you guys are all heading the wrong way.>

<We are?>

<Yes. You're heading toward a Dumpster.> Tobias said with a
laugh. <Turn left. Turn left and get some altitude. Then you
should be able to see the car lights on the road.>

I would have smiled if I'd had a mouth. The fly brain had been
easy to control because we'd already done this morph before.

But the fly's instincts still had some input. See, the fly
smelled rotting food in the Dumpster and it knew right where
it wanted to go. We followed Tobias's directions. I rocketed
higher, and then . . .

<Whoa! Whoa! What is that? Are those cars?> Cassie demanded.

<These eyes are seeing ultraviolet light.> Ax commented.

<They're seeing something, that's for sure.> I agreed.

The cars racing past were not cars so much as they were
glowing, red-and-purple meteors. The road was a blur of
movement, all of it strange and disturbing to the fly brain.

<Stay above the cars.> Tobias warned.

<Why?> Ax asked.

<A little something we call windshields.> Tobias said dryly.

<A windshield moving sixty miles an hour is death to bugs.>

<Good point.> I agreed.

<Going higher.> I powered my wings and bobbed and weaved and
rolled higher and higher. But the fly inside my head didn't
like it. He lived close to the ground. The ground was where
you found food. And food was all the fly brain cared about.

<It's starting to rain harder.> Tobias said.

I began to notice more drops. They were sparkling meteorites,
each three times my own size. They plummeted around me. But in
my fly scale of things they were fairly far apart. Then . . .

more rain. Closer together. Falling thick and fast all around
me.

WHAM!

<Ahhhh!> I was slammed. I tumbled through the air, covered in
something like heavy glue. Water! Just water, but sticky as
glue to my fly body.

My wings shook off the water and I found myself flying upside
down. I spun around and advanced again.

<0h, man.> I complained. <This is a whole new reason not to
like rain!>

<I'm going ahead.> Tobias said tensely.

<Raining too hard. I gotta land.>

WHAM!

A glancing blow from a raindrop the size of a truck. It spun
me around in the air.

<Ahhhhhhh! Man!>

<Jake! Are you okay!> Cassie cried.

Once again, those amazing fly wings turned me around and kept
me in the air. But suddenly I realized I was in a sea of
brilliant lights.

Purple! Red! Green!

Green?

Motion! Every hair on my nasty fly body felt it. Every screen
in my fly eyes sensed it. Something moving. Fast! Big! A
monstrous wall came at me with impossible speed! It was a
mountain! Huge. Tall. Sloped. A mountain moving sixty miles an
hour right at me, glowing in a rainbow of eerie colors! A
windshield!

<Uh-oh.> I said.

<TAAAAAHHHH!> I screamed in thought-speak as the deadly
windshield blew toward me.

FLASH!

The jungle! Sudden movement in the deep bush.

A cocked arm.

A human arm belonging to a kid!

A spear flew!

I saw it coming for me. Saw the bamboo point, blackened with
deadly poison. One scratch and I was dead. I .

FLASH!

Spear! No, windshield.

My wings beat the air at hundreds of strokes per second. I was
fast, but not fast enough. A downdraft! A vicious wind that
sucked me toward the windshield. I fought it, then ... in a
split second, the wind became a magic carpet.

The power of my wings, the slipstream of wind ... I missed the
top of the windshield by a millimeter!

I could actually see color-distorted human faces inside the
car. I saw their glowing eyes as I flew past and over and
seriously hauled my little fly butt up and up and up.

<Jake? You still with us, Jake?> Rachel asked.

<0h, yeah.> I said. <Barely. But I'm here. You know, they
really need to lower the speed limit. Cars shouldn't go more
than maybe ten miles per hour.>

We passed the road and left the eerie stream of fast lights
behind us. We all got slammed by more raindrops, but
personally, I was past caring about that. Then, even through
the cleansing rain, I be gan to smell the grocery store. The
fly sensed food. We didn't need Tobias to guide us the rest of
the way. Our fly bodies were eager to head for the smell of
rotting garbage. I was still reeling from the twin sensations
of being attacked by a windshield and a spear. The jungle
visions were so real. They were so absolutely real. I mean, I
felt every single thing while I was in them. I felt heat and
humidity on my skin, I felt bugs buzzing my face, I felt . . .

But I didn't have time for that now. The Safeway was beyond
our ability to see. I mean, it was just so big it had no
meaning to our fly eyes. What had meaning to the fly was that
there was food up ahead.

We zipped in under the plastic sheeting that covered the
damaged wall. Once inside the store, everything was very
bright. I saw brilliant lights that seemed to be spewing a
whole rainbow of unusual colors. There were people walking
around below us. There was machinery moving. And there was a
mound, a mountain of food all shoveled into one corner.

The Controllers had simply used earthmovers to shove all the
shelves, the freezers, the refrigerators, the loose cans, the
glass meat display' case, the donuts and cupcakes from the
bakery area, the flowers, the cooked chicken and beans . . .

everything that had been in the store, all into one corner.

<You know.> Marco said,<if you threw in some dog poop, this
would be fly heaven.>

<We are not alone.> Ax pointed out. <There seem to be many
others of this species here.>

He was right. We had chosen the right morph. There had to be
ten thousand flies in that store. I could hear them and smell
them and even see them as they flew past.

<Well, no one is going to notice us, that's for sure.> Cassie
said. <We could dive right in.>

<Excuse me? Hello? We're not here to eat garbage and make
maggots.> I said. <We are in and out, so let's pay attention.

What's going on here?>

<Well . . . there's that big thing in the middle of the room.>

Cassie said. <That's what all the Controllers are clustered
around.>

<Let's get closer.> I suggested. We zipped in our crazy fly
way toward the middle of the store. There was a huge object
there. As big as a small house, I would have guessed. But it's
hard to tell how big something is when you're less than a
quarter-inch long.

<Wait ... I think I hear Chapman's voice.> Cassie said.

<I don't know how you can make sense out of all this noise.>

Rachel grumbled.

<I've done the fly morph more than you.> Cassie said.

<Remember, I was in fly morph when I spied on Chapman at the
mall. There he is! I'm going closer.>

I couldn't see where Cassie was going or where she landed. One
fly looks pretty much like the next. And the store was like a
fly airport. Flies were zipping all around.

<Cassie? Where are you?>

<I'm close to Chapman.> she said. <0n his head, actually. On
the bald spot.>

<Get off of there! He could swat you!>

<Wait... I'm listening . .>

I buzzed around aimlessly, afraid for Cassie, and trying to
figure out what on Earth the big ... thing. . . was.

<Whoa!> Cassie said. <Whoa! Whoa!>

<What? What? What?> I asked.

<Whoa!>

<What whoa!> I practically yelled in frustration. <What's
going on!>

<It's a Bug fighter.> Cassie said. <It's something new. An
experimental Bug fighter. Faster, more weapons ... a new,
prototype Bug fighter.>

Bug fighters are the small, basic Yeerk spacecraft. They look
like a streamlined cockroach with two long, serrated spears
pointing forward. Those are the Dracon beams.

<What's it doing here? In a Safeway?> Marco asked.

<It crashed. Duh.> Rachel said.

<I don't know.> Cassie said. <Chapman isn't talking about how
it got here. He's just telling this other Controller it has to
be out of here in three hours or Visser Three is going to be
madder than he already is. The guy says it's almost ready to
go, he just needs to run some tests. Three hours will be no
problem. Chapman says, "Good, because if it's three hours and
one minute, I'll personally feed you to Visser Three for a
snack.">

<Three hours?> Tobias said.

I was surprised to hear his thought-speak voice.

<Tobias! I thought you went for cover.>

<The rain stopped.> he said. <And I can see down into the
store. They've knocked a hole in the roof so the security guys
up on the roof can get down into the store quickly. There's a
ladder.

I'm flying over.>

<What do you see up there?>

<A bunch of nervous human-Controllers with machine guns.>

<What should we do?> Rachel wondered. <In three hours they
could fly this thing out of here.>

<If only we could get some TV news people here.> Cassie mused.

<If people could see this thing, and have proof. .>

<The Yeerks have too many people at the local TV stations and
newspapers.> I pointed out.

<You know what we could do, though?> Rachel began.

<Uh-oh, a suggestion from Rachel.> Marco groaned.

<What we could do is steal this thing.>

<Steal it and do what with it?> Tobias wondered.

I laughed. <We could always steal it and fly it to Washington
and land it on the White House lawn. Let the Yeerks try and
cover that up.>

I meant it as a joke.

Really. A joke.

<Hey.> Rachel said. <That could work.>

<Ax? Can you fly that thing?> Tobias asked.

<I am an Andalite.> Ax said. <That's just a Yeerk fighter,
even if it is experimental. No second-rate Yeerk technology is
too sophisticated for me.>

<But. . . we'd have to do this like right now.> Cassie pointed
out.

<Yep.> Rachel said. <Right now. Jake?>

<There can't be many people inside the Bug fighter.> Ax
pointed out.

<They usually only have a crew of two. At most there would be
four or five technicians inside, Prince Jake.>

<Yeah, well, four or five people versus five houseflies is not
good odds for usr> I said. It was moments like this that I
resented. Moments when I tended to make the decisions. And
when I would carry the responsibility. <Still . . .>

<I hear the gears in Jake's little brain grinding away.> Marco
joked.

<Still.> I said. <There may be a way.>

<Okay, fellow flies, into the Bug fighter.>

We zoomed crazily around the outside of the huge-seeming Bug
fighter till we spotted a door. Inside we saw the blurry,
strangely
colored
shapes
of
humans.

Actually,
human-

Controllers. We buzzed right on inside.

<I count five.> Rachel said.

<Just what we expected.> I said. I was trying to sound
confident, to help everyone else stay calm. But I was tense. I
was on edge. This was a spur-of-the-moment plan thought up by
a guy who was having jungle hallucinations. It was a
desperate, possibly stupid plan. I didn't know for sure. It
could easily end with Tobias dead.

Maybe the rest of us as well.

But Tobias was thrilled to be playing a major role.

<Tobias? You ready?>

<Anytime you say, Jake.>

<0nce around the room, that's.> I warned him.

<You're the boss.> Tobias said.

<0kay. Now!>

Outside, above the grocery store, Tobias had been gaining
altitude. Which was extremely difficult in the cool night air.

Hawks are not night birds. But Tobias flapped his way up and
up, always keeping sight of the bright hole in the grocery
store roof.

<Here I come!> Tobias yelled.

He plunged at maximum speed, straight for the hole in the
roof. <I'm inside!>

I could tell, because right away there was shouting. Yelling.

Orders being barked out.

Then . . .

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Gunfire! They were shooting at him!

<These guys couldn't hit... yikes! That was close!>

The plan called for Tobias to provide a distraction. The

Yeerks knew we used bird morphs. And they would know that a
hawk did not belong flying around inside a store. They would
put two and two together. They would know Tobias was not a
real hawk.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

Someone was firing a machine gun. Even with my vague fly
hearing I could hear the air shaking with the noise. Hundreds
of rounds were being fired inside that store!

A human voice yelled something like, "Get out here and help!

It's an Andalite bandit in morph!"

That's
what
the

Yeerks
think
we
are:

Andalites.

The
technicians inside the Bug fighter went piling out the exit,
glad of the chance to take shots at an Andalite "bandit."

<That's enough, Tobias! Bail out! Bail out of here!> I yelled.

<Ax! Morph! Everyone morph! Now! Now! Now!>

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

<Can't get out!> Tobias cried. <The guys on the roof are
shooting
down through the hole!>

Of course! Why hadn't I realized that? Of course they would
block Tobias's escape.

I was still mostly fly, but morphing as fast as I could. I
could feel myself getting bigger. I could see my fly wings
shriveling away. Tobias couldn't escape. They'd get him.

Sooner or later, no matter how fast he flew, they'd get him.

An answer... an answer...

I needed an answer. I needed to -

<Tobias! Tobias! This way.> I yelled. <Inside the Bug
fighter!>

<No, that will draw them after -- YAH! Whoa! That one clipped
my tail feathers!>

<Come inside!> I yelled.

<Whatever you say> Tobias said.

My human eyes were just reemerging as Tobias blew in through
the door of the Bug fighter. I looked left. A horrifying
creature with a small scorpion tail and fly legs and a semi
humanoid face with a gigantic proboscis was trying to work the
controls of the ship with clumsy fly stick legs. It was Ax,
halfway through morphing.

Suddenly, the door shut. Or in this case, the bulkhead simply
dimpled and closed up again, eliminating the door.

"They're in the Bug fighter!" I heard Chapman howl in rage.

"They're in the Bug fighter! Get them!"

I was mostly human now, but still at that stage where I
wouldn't have wanted to see myself in a mirror. The rest were
coming out of morph, too. Cassie was fastest, as usual. She
was already checking Tobias for wounds.

Ax was almost fully Andalite once more.

"Ax, get us outta here!" I said, as my human mouth returned.

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

I didn't waste time telling him not to call me "Prince."

<These are unusual controls.> Ax admitted.

BAPFFBAPFFBAPFFBAPFFBAP!

Bullets rattled against the Bug fighter's outer skin.

Then I heard the grinding sounds of the engine. Through the
cockpit window, I saw the Controllers turning big earthmovers
toward us.

"They're going to ram us!" Marco warned.

"Ax?" I asked tersely.

<I think I... I don't know. Prince Jake, I can try but it may
not work.>

"Just do it!" I yelled. There was a whirring noise. Lights
came on all over the cockpit. A sound like a low siren.

<I found the "on" switch.> Ax said.

"Great," Marco said. "Now find the get-us-the-heck-outta-here
switch!"

I felt the ship lift up off the Safeway floor. It rose just a
foot and sort of wallowed slightly, side to side. The heavy
equipment was still coming for us.

Ax turned the fighter, pointing it toward the missing wall.

<Is that plastic sheeting very strong?> Ax asked.

"Let's find out," I said. Then . . . WHOOOOOOOSH!

It was like getting kicked in the chest. We all tumbled
backward -- all but Ax, who has four legs. The acceleration
was incredible. The Bug fighter rocketed forward. We blew
through the plastic sheeting.

We blew across the parking lot.

We arched up toward the dark night sky.

"We did it!" Rachel yelled.

<Sorry about the acceleration caret Ax said. <I forget that
humans fall over easily.>

"Just get us out of here, Ax," Marco said.

"We're going to Washington, D.c., to meet the President."

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 I like.>

"Can we do anything to help?" I asked.

<Someone should take 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, spiky 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 ... urn ... 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->

FAH-WHOOOOOOOM!

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, DC.>

"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 knew what it was.

"The Blade ship," I whispered.

The Blade ship of Visser Three.

8:54 P.m.

Visser Three, leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. Visser

Three, the only Yeerk in all of history to take control of an

Andalite body. Visser Three, the only Yeerk with the power to
morph.

"Can we outrun him?" I asked Ax.

<No.>

"Can we outfight him?" I asked. My voice was a whisper. My
mouth was too dry to work right.

Ax turned his stalk eyes to look at me. <No, Prince Jake. We
might get in a lucky shot. But the Blade ship is very
powerful. This is the Blade ship that destroyed our great Dome
ship.>

"Here he comes!" Rachel yelled in warning.

A red glow illuminated the Blade ship as the Visser fired his
engines and came for us.

<We can try and run. Or we can take a chance on a lucky shot.>

Ax
said.

He was looking at me. They were all looking at me. I grabbed
the joystick. My hand was trembling.

"I feel lucky," I said. It was an absolute lie, of course. I
didn't even feel slightly lucky. But it sounded good.

I caught Marco giving me a sardonic smile. He knew I was
faking it.

I felt Cassie's hand touch my shoulder for encouragement.

<Hold on. You may be unsteady on your human legs.> Ax warned.

He threw the Bug fighter into a quick, tight turn. Ax was
right. I almost fell over before the Bug fighter's systems
compensated for inertia.

Then Ax really lit up the engines and we leaped forward,
straight for the Blade ship.

<Ready to fire!> Ax said.

It wasn't a question. <Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Wait until . . . NOW!>

I swept the red target circle toward the black-diamond head of
the Blade ship. I squeezed the trigger. And I kept squeezing.

Brilliant Dracon beams stabbed toward the Blade ship.

But at the same instant, the Visser fired!

Dracon beam hit Dracon beam.

ZZZZZOOOOOWWWW!

An explosion of light so intense I could actually see Through
my own hand. I could see Cassie's teeth inside her head!

WHAAAMMMPPPH!

I was thrown against the ceiling.

I fell to the floor and rolled, out of control.

Rachel landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of me.

The Bug fighter was spinning. My eyes were filled with balls
of light, like suns inside my own head.

Spinning . . . spinning . . . spinning . . .

And with each turn I was thrown hard. Into Ax. Into Marco.

Tobias batted his wings wildly, trying to get some control. It
was like we had all been tossed into a washer on spin cycle.

Then, with a sickening lurch, the Bug fighter came upright.

There was a floor again. And a ceiling.

And through the window, there was a planet.

Earth.

Big, blue, and getting closer very, very fast.

"We're going down!" Rachel yelled. "Ax! Ax! We're going down!"

Ax scrambled to his hooves and made his way back to the
controls. <Too fast!> he said. <We're going down too fast!>

<Look!> Tobias cried. <0ver there. To the left. We're not
alone.>

Tumbling down alongside us, just a mile away, was the Blade
ship. It was twisting and twirling and falling, just like us.

"Wait . . ." Cassie said, sounding more confused than
terrified. "It's daylight in the western hemisphere."

"Do I care?!" Marco yelled. "We're going down!"

"It was dawn in the Middle East," Cassie insisted. "Now it's
daylight in the western hemisphere."

Suddenly, friction flames began glowing from the nose of the

Bug fighter. We were going back into the atmosphere.

"Ax, can you pull us out of this?" I demanded.

<I am slowing our descent.> he said. <We are slowing down. B.

. .

but I don't think it will be enough.>

"Great," Marco moaned.

"At least the Blade ship will go down with us," Rachel said.

"Does that make you feel better, Xena?" Marco grated.

Rachel actually smiled. It was a sad, brief smile. "Not much
better," she admitted.

<Ten seconds to impact!> Ax said. <Ten . . . nine . . . eight.

. .>

FLASH!

I was no longer in the Bug fighter.

I was square dancing.

I was giving Rachel a resentful look as I bowed to her in time
with the music. What the ...

FLASH!

<Four. . . three . . . hold on!>

I saw green. Green on green, rushing up at me.

And then we hit.

And for a while, I didn't see anything at all. Time Unknown.

00! HOO! HOO! HOO!

HOOHOHOHO-HOHO! HAH! HAH!

KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH!

I woke up.

I woke up very suddenly.

KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! YAHA-HAHAHAH!

My head hurt, and the screaming noises didn't help. My back
hurt, too. I was lying on the ground. On mildewed, rot ting
leaves. Trees towered over me. Insanely tall trees. Ferns
dipped down to

Tickle my face. There was a root or something under my back,
which explained the back pain.

But I was alive.

KeRAW! KeRAW! KeRAW!

VrrEEET! VrrEEEET! VrrEEEET!

I sat up quickly. But that sent a spear of pain through my
head.

"Oh, man," I groaned.

Then I saw the bug. The bug on my lap. The big, giant, MONSTER
bug. I guess it was some kind of beetle. It had yellow and
black stripes and something that looked almost like curved
antlers. I swear it was six inches long. Or at least three
inches. It would have been beautiful, if it hadn't been on me.

"AAAAAHHH!" I yelled and brushed the beetle away.

Then, I felt the itchy, crawling feeling on my leg. Ants!

There were a dozen ants climbing up my right shin.

I have been an ant. So you'd think maybe I have some sympathy
for them. Wrong. I slapped at my leg till I was sure they were
gone.

I climbed to my feet. I felt woozy and confused. Where was I?

Where were the others?

I looked around. Green. Green everywhere. I mean, every where.

"The visions," I said to no one.

I was in a jungle. I knew that for sure. I'd never been in a
jungle before, but there was no doubt in my mind. Maybe it was
the monkeys and birds screeching at an insane volume all
around me in the trees that gave it away. Maybe it was the
creepers and vines. Maybe it was a flash of an amazing red-
and-blue bird flitting through the branches. Maybe it was the
fact that beetles really shouldn't be as big as that beetle
had been. It was jungle, all right. Just like it had been in
the weird flashes I'd been experiencing since that afternoon
while square dancing.

"That's what did it," I muttered. "It was the square dancing
that drove me crazy." I decided to yell for the others. "Hey!

Hey! Cassie! Marco!"

It was like my voice had no power. The sound was just
swallowed by the trees and ferns and bushes.

"Okay, get a grip, Jake. Try to remember. You were coming down
in the Bug fighter. Obviously you crashed. Duh. So look for
the Bug
fighter. It can't be far away."

I glanced around me at the solid wall of green in very
direction. The air was steaming with humidity. And the mells
of overly sweet flowers and tropical rot made me feel like I
was walking past some department store perfume counter. Then I
spotted a tree where the top half had been snapped off. I
started walking, trying to get a better angle on the broken
tree. I saw a second tree, splintered. I began to notice what
looked like a tunnel plowed through the dense foliage. A
tunnel plowed through the trees and foliage should lead to the

Bug fighter.

"Or the Blade ship," I reminded myself.

HOO! HOO! HOO! HOOHOOHOOHOO! HAH! HAH! HAH!

The jungle was quieting down a little, but there was still
some fairly crazy screeching from up in the tall trees. The
jungle
animals
sounded
annoyed.

Probably
they
didn't
appreciate someone crashing a Bug fighter into their home. And
they didn't like my looks, either. The jungle floor was
surprisingly clear. Down at foot level there wasn't much
growing, just dead leaves. But at face level there were vines
and bushes and ferns, all slapping me in the face as I pressed
on.

Suddenly I came to a clearing. A hole in the canopy where a
tree had fallen. Bright sunlight shone down through the gap.

And it was as if every species of plant life you could imagine
was crowding into that sunny spot. I found myself facing an
incredible wall of vegetation: a dozen types of brilliant
flowers, mosses so green they didn't seem real, small vines
wrapped around bigger vines wrapped around tree trunks. It was
the greenest place on Earth. There were even plants growing
out of the smooth trunks of tall trees. I trudged on, back
into the shadows of the forest, and when I looked up, I could
no longer see the tunnel through the foliage.

That's when I started to get really scared. I was in a jungle.

And jungle isn't like forest, where you can usually see for
hundreds of feet in any direction. Jungle presses in close
around. It's like being buried in green.

Ger-Ak! Ger-Ak! AKAKAKAK!

"Marco! Cassie! Rachel!" I yelled, feeling the edge of panic.

<How about Tobias?> a voice said in my head.

I looked up and saw nothing. Then I noticed him swooping down
toward me from the high branches of a tree.

"Tobias!" I yelled. I waved. Of course, he'd already seen me,
obviously. But I was massively relieved. So I waved again. The
red-tailed hawk body seemed almost bland, boring in the
context of this jungle. He landed on a rotting, moss-encrusted
log.

"Tobias! The others?"

<Everyone is alive.> he said.<It took a while to find
everyone, though.I think the Bug fighter must have spun around
a few times tearing through the trees. Cassie ended up
practically on top of this snake. This extremely large snake.>

"Where are we?"

<I don't know.> Tobias said. <But I'm pretty sure this ain't
home. Come on, follow me. It's not far.>

I followed Tobias, pushing and shoving and fighting my way
through forest that seemed determined to stop me. I was
dripping with sweat and gasping in the thick air.

Then, a clearing. Not a natural clearing, but one created by
the crashed Bug fighter.

"Jake!" Cassie yelled and ran over to give me a hug. She had a
nasty cut on one hand, which she'd bandaged with strips torn
from her T-shirt.

"You're alive," Marco observed. "For now," he added darkly.

"I told you he'd be okay," Rachel said.

The Bug fighter was upright, but one whole side looked as if
it had been peeled back. You could see right to the inside.

The left engine pod was cranked out at a sharp angle.

Ax was inside the fighter. He lowered his head to peer at me
through the hole in the fighter's side.

<Prince Jake. I'm glad you're all right.>

"I'm glad I'm all right, too," I said. "Now . . . where are
we?"

"Where is easy," Cassie said. "Rain forest. Not Africa,
because I've seen monkeys with prehensile tails. You know,
tails they can swing by. Most likely, we're in Central or

South America. Either the Costa Rican rain forest, or the

Amazon rain forest."

"I'm betting Amazon," Marco said brightly. "I'm also taking
bets on whether we live long enough for me to collect on
bets."

I laughed. "You're always such an optimist, Marco."

I turned back to Cassie. "Amazon rain forest, huh?"

"Like I said, the question of where we are is fairly easy."

"Cassie, why do I have the feeling there's something you're
not telling me?" I asked her.

"Remember when we were in orbit? Remember how it was night in

North America, but the sun was just coming up over the Red

Sea?"

I shrugged. "I guess so."

"Well, after we fired at the Blade ship, as we were going down
it was daylight here. Over South America."

It took me a few seconds to realize what she was talking
about.

Ax came trotting out of the Bug fighter. He wiped his hands on
a rag. < Thanks to Cassie's observation, it seems pretty clear
that when we and the Blade ship fired simultaneously and the

Dracon beams intersected, we created what we call a Sario

Rip.>

"A what? A Sario Rip? What's that?"

<We blew a small hole in space-time. And were drawn in through
that hole.>

"English, please," I warned. "Plain English, please."

"We were blown through time, Jake," Cassie said. "We aren't

Where we want to be. And we aren't when we want to be."

I stared at her. "Did we go forward or back? Are we in the
past or the future?"

<Yes.> Ax said.<It's definitely one of those two choices.>

1:22
p.m.

Again.

So let me just summarize here. We are probably in the Amazon
rain forest. And we are either in our own past, or in our own
future. We have no way to fly this Bug fighter out of here. We
have no way of knowing if there's a city or town or even a
road near here." I looked around at my friends. "Anyone have
anything to add?"

<I know that it is one twenty-two p.m..> Ax said. <I just
don't know what day or year it is.>

Andalites have the ability to keep track of time naturally.

Like some kind of internal clock. It's useful. Of course, it's
more useful if you know what century you're in.

Cassie held up her hand, like she was in school. "The rain
forest is full of poisonous snakes, poisonous insects,
poisonous plants, and poisonous frogs."

"Excuse me?" Marco said. "Poisonous frogs? Did you say
poisonous
frogs?"

"Plus, there is at least one large predator, the jaguar."

"Love their cars," Marco said.

"Right now we have no food and no water,"

Rachel added helpfully. "Also, no weapons."

<Why do we need weapons?> Tobias asked. <Morph into birds and
we'll just fly out of here.>

"None of us can stay in morph for more than two hours," Cassie
pointed out. "Realistically, we can't fly more than twenty or
thirty miles an hour at best. That's maybe sixty miles per
morph. And we could be a thousand miles from nowhere."

"Besides," Marco said glumly. "What are we supposed to do?

Find a town, make a collect call to our families and tell them
we're in South America? "Hey, Dad, guess what? I'm in Brazil.

Or maybe Costa Rica. Could you come pick me up?"'"

"If there even is a town," Rachel said. "If there even are
phones. If our parents have been born yet, or are still alive.

You're kind of missing something
we may be in the year two
thousand b.c. Or... we might be in the year ten thousand a.d."

"Ax, what's the deal with this Sario Rip?" I asked the

Andalite. "I mean, is there some way to undo it?"

Ax didn't answer. Instead, I noticed his stalk eyes turning
slowly to his right. <We are not alone.> Ax said.

I shot a glance in the direction Ax was looking. Something
moved! I had a fleeting impression of a shoulder, arm, and
head.

<Humanoid.> Ax said. <I didn't see it very well. But it was
watching us.>

"Swell," I said. "Tobias?"

<I'm on it.> he said, opening his wings and flapping away
through the trees. <As for the Sario Rip, I... all I know is
what it is. It's a rip in space-time.>

"Yeah, you told us that," Marco said.

<I think . . .> Ax hung his head. <Prince Jake, we studied the

Sario Rip effect in school. But there was a game later that
day. And I was thinking more about the game than class. Also,
there was this female who distracted me.>

Marco laughed. "Ax, are you telling us you were too busy
flirting with some girl to pay attention to the lesson?"

Ax didn't answer. He just said, <I don't exactly know whether
you can reverse a Sario Rip. I remember some things, but not
everything.>

"I'm thirsty," Rachel said. "Whatever else we're going to do,
we have to find water. And food. Ax, can we fix the Bug
fighter?"

<We can fly with just one engine.> Ax said. <The ripped skin
of the craft is irrelevant as long as we stay in the
atmosphere and fly slow. But the effects of the Sario Rip have
wiped out the ship's software. It's been erased.>

"Can you rewrite the software?" Rachel asked.

<Yes. But it would take me twenty years, atleast.>

"Better and better," I said. "Hey. Wait. What happened to the

Blade ship?"

Ax looked blank.

"I saw it going down along with us," Cassie said. "But I
didn't see it crash."

"So maybe, in addition to everything else, we have Visser

Three and a shipload of Hork-Bajir warriors to worry about," I
said. "Someone please give me some good news."

"Well, it's still daylight," Marco said, putting on a big
phony grin. "When night falls, then we'll be

<Jake! Duck!> Tobiasyelled.

For once in my life, I didn't stop to think about it. I
ducked. And even as I ducked, I saw the face. I saw the arm. I
saw the spear.

It was coming straight at me.

Right for my face.

The vision! It was the hallucination!

I ducked. The spear went over my head and flew on harmlessly
into the bush.

Tobias flapped wildly into the air.

<I shouldn't have been resting.> he berated himself. <I should
have been in the air.>

I was too weirded out to worry about Tobias.

"I knew that was going to happen," I said. "That spear. The
kid who threw it. I knew!"

Cassie looked strangely at me. "Jake, what are you -"

<There> Tobias interrupted. <They almost look like they might
be kids. They're hauling butt out of here. Which is what we
better think about doing, too.>

"Why?" Rachel demanded indignantly. "We can handle some kids
with spears."

<Forget the kids. I see a group of twenty . . . maybe thirty

Hork-Bajir. They're tearing up the forest and coming this
way!>

"We can't leave the Bug fighter!" Rachel protested. "How else
are we going to get out of here?"

"We can't stand and fight twenty Hork-Bajir warriors, either,"

I said. "We have to pull back."

I glanced over and saw Cassie. She had retrieved the spear
from the bushes. It was a long, thin stick. There was no
spearhead on it. It was just a sharp stick with the sharp end
blackened.

"That doesn't look too deadly," I said.

Cassie shook her head. "No. You probably couldn't kill much
with this stick. Unless the tip was dipped in poison. And we
are in the home office of natural poisons."

"The local people ... I guess they wouldn't waste their time
using a weapon that didn't work, would they?" I said.

"No," Cassie said flatly. "The chances are pretty good that
this spear is poison-tipped. There are poisonous frogs and
plants down here that are used for arrow and spear poison.

Very deadly. Very, very deadly. The Hork-Bajir are definitely
not our only problem."

<Jake, you guys need to move.> Tobias warned. He was overhead
again. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was up above the
jungle canopy. <I can't see well enough through all this
foliage. But I think a group of Hork-Bajir is getting close to
you.>

Decision time. Stay and fight? We'd lose. Run away? We'd be
giving up the Bug fighter, our only way home.

"Ax? Is there something . . .anything. . .you can take out of
the Bug fighter that would make it impossible for the Yeerks
to fly it?"

Ax stared at me with his main eyes, even as his stalk eyes
swept the forest around us. <Yes. Yes, I can think of
something.>

"Then get it," I said.

<Jake! There's no time.>

Tobias called down. He must have been close enough to hear me.

But the foliage was so dense I had no clear idea where he was.

Ax hesitated, not sure what to do.

The others all looked at me.

"Do it, Ax," I said. He raced for the Bug fighter. "Everyone
else, get out of here."

"I'm staying with you," Rachel protested.

"I'm not staying. Minimum risk," I snapped. "We only need Ax
to handle this. No point risking anyone else."

I plunged into the green. I grabbed Rachel's arm and pulled
her along. Cassie and Marco followed me.

<Jake.> Tobias called down. <lf Ax isn't out of there in under
two minutes, he's not going to get out of there.>

I didn't answer.

It's the worst thing about being a so-called leader -- the
times when you take a risk with someone else's life. If Ax
ended up dead, it was going to be very hard to explain to my
friends.

And to myself.

1:48 P.m.

I can't begin to explain what the rain forest is like. To
explain it, you'd have to be a poet and a scientist and a
horror writer.

All I can say is how it makes you feel. You feel small. Tiny.

Alone. Hopelessly weak. Afraid.

You feel heat and suffocating humidity. It's like there's not
enough air. Every breath is like sucking air through a straw.

You're breathing steam and perfume and the stink of dying,
rotting things.

The jungle is all around you. It presses against you on all
sides. Wet leaves in your face; creepers that seem to reach up
to trip you; sharp-edged stalks that cut you.

And then there are the twin horrors: bugs and thirst.

Mosquitoes, gnats, big flies, and other flying insects I
didn't even have names for followed us in swirling clouds.

They'd descend and attack, then disappear for no reason, only
to attack again later. If you stopped, even for a few seconds,
you could find your foot covered with ants or centipedes or
beetles or bugs that defied description.

And it didn't help that we were shoeless.

The heat sucked every ounce of moisture out of us. It was as
bad as any desert. You'd think with all the greenery there
would be water everywhere. But no. The actual ground under our
feet was dry. All the water is captured in the plants.

All the while, as we fought our way through the thickets of
vines and ferns and bushes and gnats and flies and mosquitoes,
we were followed by a serenade of cackles, groans, screams,
yelps, insane animal giggles, clicking, scratching, and the
occasional coughing roar as each new species comments on the
idiocy of a bunch of suburban kids wandering around the rain
forest. For all we knew, they were taking bets on how long the
dumb humans would survive.

We had pushed two hundred yards deeper into the rain forest
from the Bug fighter when we heard an uproar behind us.

"Andalite!" a Hork-Bajir voice bellowed. "Andalite!"

<They're after him!> Tobias called down from above. <Ax has
six Hork-Bajir on his tail! You happy now, Jake? Ax-man! Look
out! Behind you!>

I bit my lip till I tasted my own blood.

"We have to morph and go back for him," Rachel said. Her eyes
were blazing. I could have said no. I had reasons to say no.

We were in an unknown place, facing lousy odds. Besides, of us
all, Ax was the fastest and best able to escape. But Rachel
would have just gone anyway.

"Just two of us go," I snapped. "Me and you, Rachel. Marco and

Cassie, stay back."

"Why are we staying back?" Marco asked, outraged.

"Because we need backup, Marco," I said tersely. I don't know
if he understood this or not. Rachel did. She started to
morph. I was morph ing into my tiger morph as fast as I could.

Rachel was already well into her grizzly bear morph - massive
shoulders and shaggy brown fur and long, curved claws.

TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!

The sound of Dracon beams reached us. The jungle animals up in
the trees exploded in a fury of commentary.

Ke-Rrrraaaaawwww!

HOO! HOOHOOHOOHOO!

I could hear something large crashing around the brush, but I
couldn't see anything. In the rain forest you're lucky if you
can see five feet in any direction.

<I'm ready.> Rachel said.

<Wait for me.> I told her.

<Catch up when you can.> Rachel snapped. She lumbered away,
back toward the Bug fighter, a huge, rolling mass of heavy fur
and muscle. I cursed her silently.

My body was already covered with orange-and-black-striped fur.

I was on all fours. Long, yellow fangs grew in my mouth. Long,
wicked claws grew where my fingernails had been.

I felt the tiger's mind.

I saw through the tiger's eyes.

I felt the surge of power, the rush of the tiger's might. He
was at home in a tropical forest. This was the kind of place
he belonged. The tiger was lord of his own native turf.

But of course in the tiger's native jungles, there aren't

Hork-Bajir. And there's no Visser Three.

I leaped forward, following the path Rachel had plowed through
the bushes. I caught up to her easily. I belonged in the
jungle. The grizzly did not. Rachel was breathing hard.

<I can't see... can't find them . . . keep hearing noises, but
they keep moving.>

I listened with my tiger's ears. I receded just a bit within
the tiger mind and let the animal in stincts guide me. The
tiger knew how to follow sounds in the rain forest.

<Come on, Rachel.> I said. I plunged forward, toward where I
heard the loudest sounds crashing through the forest. But I
soon realized Rachel couldn't keep up.

I was really ticked off right then. At Rachel, for being so
impulsive. At Tobias for acting like I wanted to put Ax in
danger. At the Yeerks for causing all this. At the jungle
itself. And worst of all, at me.

I'd made mistakes. Too many mistakes. Now I had to choose.

Stay with Rachel, or rush ahead and try to find Ax.

Help came from the sky. <Left about fifty feet, Jake.> Tobias
called down to me.

I was mad at Tobias. But not so mad I would ignore him. I
charged left, slinking swiftly through the brush.

<Jake! Look out! There's one right->

"Haarrgghh!" the Hork-Bajir yelled trium phantly. He swung a
bladed arm at me and sliced through the ferns and bushes like
a lawn mower going through grass.

His elbow disblade missed me by inches. I felt the breeze from
it. I knew what to do next. I fired the coiled muscles in my
hind legs and I flew. In midair I extended my paws, each as
wide as a frying pan. Out came my claws.

And I roared. HRRROOOOOWWWWRRRR!

I swear, that sound actually silenced the monkeys and birds.

I hit the Hork-Bajir. He went down, swinging fast, but too
slow. Hork-Bajir are fast. But when it comes to close-in work,
slashing and parrying and applying the teeth, the tiger is
faster and nastier.

He slashed. I felt pain sear my right shoulder.

I slashed and heard the Hork-Bajir cry out.

His snake-head jerked fast, aiming his forehead blades for my
face.

I ducked and dove in, sinking my teeth into his neck.

From somewhere I heard the sound of a bear's pained roar. I
heard crashing, thudding sounds.

I pulled back, leaving the deadly, bladed, seven-foot-tall

Hork-Bajir lying on the jungle floor, moaning in pain.

I actually felt a moment of pity. The Hork-Bajir race has been
enslaved by the Yeerks. This Hork-Bajir warrior didn't ask to
be here, bleeding from a dozen wounds in an alien jungle a
billion miles from his home.

But then, I didn't ask to be here, either.

I listened for sounds of Ax. Nothing.

I listened for Hork-Bajir. Nothing.

I listened for Rachel. Nothing.

It was like they'd all just disappeared in the green. Green,
everywhere I looked.

Then . . .

A sharp pain in my left paw. I looked at the Hork-Bajir, but
no, he hadn't moved.

I realized I was falling over.

Simply falling over.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the snake slithering off.

It was bright yellow.

<Demorph!> I told myself. <Demorph!>

But my head was swimming. And the green was closing in around
me. Burying me in green.

A bird landed beside me. I could see that.

<Jake! Morph back, man! Morph back!>

I was trying. I was trying to remember what it was I was
supposed to become. Then . . .

FLASH!

I was walking home from school. Me and Marco.

We were talking, wondering what Tobias wanted. Tobias's
thought-speak voice was in our heads saying

FLASH!

Tobias's voice saying, <That's it, Jake. Come on, man. Keep at
it.>

I could see again! I could see my hands stretched out in front
of me on the ground. They were half-human, half-tiger. Could I
morph away from poison? Would morphing get it out of my
system? Should have asked Ax, I berated myself.

But I was already learning the answer. As I became more human,

I felt the poison weaken.

<Come on, Jake, come on.> Tobias said. <There's no time!>

"What. . . what is it? More Hork-Bajir?" I asked him when I
had a mouth again.

<No. It's Rachel.>

I felt my heart miss several beats. I climbed up, rickety from
the quick change. I felt like throwing up. Maybe it was the
poison. Maybe it was just too much happening at once. "Where
is she?" I asked.

<Straight behind you. Maybe a hundred feet. Hurry! I'll go up
and see what's happening.>

He flapped away, leaving me alone and barefoot and vulnerable
in the rain forest. I found Rachel by following the damage she
had done: three Hork-Bajir lying unconscious or worse. I
didn't have time to worry about them.

Because that's when I saw Rachel. She was out cold, still in
grizzly morph. She'd been cut up badly by Hork-Bajir blades.

She was lying there on her side, bleeding. But that's not what
made me want to scream.

Her fur was alive.

Alive with a million ants that were already ripping away a
million tiny bites from her wounded flesh.

2:30 P.m.

Rachel!" I yelled. "Wake up!"

<Jake! Stop shouting.> Tobias warned from up above me. <Hork-

Bajir could still be all around here! I can't see through all
this undergrowth caret I threw myself down next to Rachel
and started swatting at the ants. But instead of getting rid
of them, the ants just swarmed across my hands. There had to
be ten thousand ants. Rachel had fallen almost on top of their
mound. I could see
ants carrying away tiny pieces of bloody bear flesh.

"Do you know if there is any water near here?" I asked Tobias.

<There's a stream. But it's too far, Jake, she weighs hundreds
of pounds. What are you going to do, carry her to the water?>

I could see Rachel's bear chest rising and falling. She was
breathing. Still alive. I kicked her. I kicked her hard. "Wake
up!" I hissed. "'Come on, Rachel, wake up!"

The ants were getting at her ears now. They swarmed across her
closed eyes. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry.

I don't think I've ever felt so totally helpless.

Rachel was out cold. The thousands of swarming ants would make
sure she never woke up. They would kill the bear before Rachel
could morph out. They would eat out her eyes and crawl into
her head, and there was nothing I could do.

"Tobias! More ants! Find more ants!"

<Are you nuts?>

"Do it!" I yelled, not even caring if someone heard me. "I
need another colony of ants!"

Tobias clicked. I could see his fierce eyes grow wider. He
flapped away, staying as low to the ground as he could. He
circled tightly, and then flared to kill his speed.

<Here! Here!> he yelled.

At that moment I heard movement in the bushes. I looked and
saw
two
wolves.

Two
very
out-of-place
wolves.

Their
intelligent faces were sticking out of the brush.

"Cassie! Marco! That is you two, right?"

Looking closer, I could see that they had been in a fight.

There were cuts. There was blood. They began to demorph.

<0h, my God.>

Cassie moaned as she saw Rachel and realized what was
happening. I didn't have time to explain. I bent down and
began yanking out tufts of bloody grizzly bear fur.

<What are you doing? Leave her alone!>

Marco yelled.

I yanked several handfuls of bloody fur. Then I raced toward
the spot where Tobias waited. He was resting on a strong fern,
looking down at a swarming mound of ants. I took a small
sample of the grizzly fur and laid it right beside the mouth
of the ant mound. The reaction was instantaneous. Hundreds of
ants swarmed across the bloody fur. I used another tuft of fur
to lift a handful of ants, then I walked a few feet toward

Rachel and dropped the tuft. I repeated the process, getting
closer and closer to Rachel. I was worried the ants might lose
the scent. But they were keeping up with me, and even racing
ahead. Slowly, surely, I led the ants to Rachel. Cassie and

Marco were human once more. They looked like I probably
looked: scared, horrified, vulnerable.

"We have to get them off her!" Cassie cried when she saw me.

"They're inside her ears! They're in her mouth! They'll kill
her!"

"I know." I dropped my last blood-soaked tuft of fur. If this
didn't work, Rachel was finished. I stepped aside and put my
arm around Cassie.

The new colony of ants followed the trail I'd left them. There
was a moment's hesitation, almost as if the whole rampaging
colony paused upon seeing the bear. But then, like the well-
trained army they were, they attacked. Ten thousand new ants
swarmed onto Rachel's unconscious body. They slammed into a
wall of ants from the first colony. I've been an ant. I've
seen how different colonies of ants get along. I hoped they
would act the same way here. They did. It was like some old

Civil War battle. The two armies charged at each other.

Perfect, obedient automatons responding only to smell and
instinct.

They attacked each other. The ants swarmed back out of

Rachel's ears and mouth, ready for the battle.

"That was good thinking, Jake," Cassie said. "But sooner or
later, one colony will win."

"We have to hope Rachel regains consciousness before then," I
said.

The enemy armies of ants battled ferociously. It wouldn't look
like much to most people. But having been an ant, I had some
idea of the awesome slaughter that was going on in the fur of
the grizzly.

Down there, ants were being torn apart by other ants.

Literally torn apart. Legs ripped out. Heads bitten off.

Stinging poisons being sprayed.

The battle was turning. The challengers" mound was too far
away. They weren't able to call up enough reinforcements. In a
few minutes the desperate ant war would be over.

But while they fought, they did not tear into Rachel's flesh.

And then . . .

<Unh . . . wha ... oh! Oh!Oh! I'm covered in ants!>

"Rachel! Rachel! It's me, Jake. Morph out. Morph out and be
ready to run!"

Rachel didn't have to be told twice. She started demorphing.

She shrank. Pink flesh re-placed fur. Massive shoulders and
huge paws became smaller, human features.

"Oh!" Rachel cried as soon as she had a human mouth.

"Arrrrggghhi"

"Rachel, get up! Follow me!" I said to her. "Tobias? Where's
that stream?"

Tobias rose up and flew swiftly through the trees. I followed,
crashing through the bushes, my bare feet torn, tripping. It
was no more than a hundred feet. It felt like a mile.

Rachel was screaming now. Rachel is the bravest person I know.

But the thousands of vicious ants were beginning to attack
her, now that they were done attacking each other. No one can
stand that.

No one can stand that.

"Get off me! Oh, no! Oh! They're in my -"

Suddenly there was no more green. A muddy stream ... I leaped
for the water. Pah-Loosh!

I heard Rachel hit the water beside me.

Pah-Loosh!

I swam toward her. She was still underwater. The water was too
murky for me to be able to see her well. All I saw was
flailing limbs.

Ants were floating to the surface of the water and being
carried away by the current.

Then . . .

SPLOOSH!

Rachel came up, gasping for air.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

She looked around, confused for a moment. Then she recognized
me. And she spotted Marco and Cassie on the bank of the
stream.

"Get out of the water!" Cassie screamed.

I grabbed Rachel's arm and dragged her toward the bank. I
pushed her ahead of me, slipping and sliding up through the
muddy grass. I was just pulling my feet up out of the water
when I saw the churning, frothing commotion Cassie had seen
first.

I yanked my feet away, inches ahead of a school of flesh-
eating piranha.

"This is the rain forest?" Rachel demanded angrily, spitting
water and combing through her hair for any remaining ants.

"This is the rain forest everyone wants to save? Ants and
piranha and snakes and bugs the size of rats? Well, as far as

I'm concerned they can burn it down, pave it over, and put up
malls and convenience stores!"

I sat staring at the piranha. They say a school of piranha can
strip a cow down to nothing but bones in a few minutes.

Right then, thinking about what almost happened, shaking and
panting and wanting to cry, I agreed with Rachel.

3:09 P.m.

Now we need to find Ax," I said. "But we need to be careful.

This jungle alone is enough to mess us up bad. And we have the

Yeerks to deal with as well."

<I am not lost, Prince Jake.> a thought-speak voice said.

"Ax!" I cried.

<Yes, it's me.> Ax said.

<But I am in a morph. Don't be startled.> With that, he
dropped from the tree above us and landed on the ground.

"Well," Marco commented with great satisfaction. "Someone
finally made a monkey out of Ax."

He was small, covered in brown fur, and definitely a monkey.

But he was alive.

I don't think I've ever felt so relieved in my life. I had
been screwing up plenty. First by deciding to go into the
stupid Safeway to begin with, then by endangering Tobias, then
by endangering Ax, then by leaving Rachel alone to almost get
killed. But at least no one had gotten killed.

Yet.

"I'm thinking spider monkey," Cassie said, frowning. "But I'm
not sure. I'm not all that strong on rain forest animals."

The monkey -- Ax -- was holding something in his paw. It was
bright yellow and about the size of a computer diskette, only
round and a little thicker.

"What is that?" I asked.

<I did what you told me to do.> Ax said. <This is a vital part
of the Bug fighter -- the computer core. No one can fly the

Bug fighter without it.>

<That thing is the computer?> Tobias asked.

<Yes, the Yeerks are still somewhat primitive. An Andalite
version would be a third this size.>

"Well, I'm relieved you're okay, Ax," I said. "We haven't been
doing very well."

<I barely made it.> Ax said simply. <There are several dozen

Hork-Bajir out combing the forest, looking for us. I think
they are divided now into platoons of five, each accompanied
by a human-Controller, I haven't seen the Visser, but he will
be around as well. And as you know, Visser Three can morph, so
he could be any of the animals we see.>

"That's a good point," Rachel said. "We have to be on the
lookout for animals as well as Hork-Bajir and the natives."

"The human-Controllers," Marco said thoughtfully. "I think I
know why they're traveling with the Hork-Bajir. See, the
human-Controllers would know which animals belong here in the
rain forest, and which don't. If they see a grizzly bear or a
tiger or a wolf, they'll know that it doesn't belong. They'll
know it's us."

"Good thinking, Marco. We need local morphs," I said.

<I can take you to the monkeys.> Ax suggested. <I believe they
are close relatives of yours.>

"Marco is second cousin to a monkey," Rachel said.

I was glad to see she was teasing Marco again. It meant she
was back. Still, there was a darkness in her eyes. Not even

Rachel could just shake off what she'd been through. And
knowing Rachel, she would react by being more aggressive.

Maybe too aggressive.

"Monkeys would be good," Cassie said. "It would get us up off
the ground and into the trees."

"Okay, Ax, lead on. Tobias? I hate to ask, but we could use
some air cover."

<No problem.> Tobias said.

He flew up into the trees. I knew he was tired. And I knew he
was hungry. Flying is hard work, and a bird's metabolism is
fast. They can't endure long periods of hunger as well as a
human. But what else could I do?

Ax did not lead us very far. Within ten minutes we were
standing beneath a group of monkeys chittering and yipping in
the trees high above us. It isn't possible to acquire a morph
from a person who's morphed. In other words, we couldn't just
copy Ax's monkey morph. We had to go to an actual monkey.

<I believe I can get one of them to come down.> Ax said.

"How?" Marco asked.

Ax hesitated. It's hard to tell if a monkey is embarrassed,
let alone a monkey with an Andalite mind. But I could have
sworn Ax was embarrassed.

<I ...! believe that I am that is to say my morph is an
attractive
female.

One
of
the
males
seemed
interested
earlier.>

"Well, that does it," Marco said flatly. "We have moved
permanently to bizarre-o world. We've traveled in time, we're
in a jungle fighting brain-stealing aliens and ten thousand
annoying species of bugs, and our resident space cadet is a
hot-looking monkey. Somebody wake me up when we get back to
reality."

Wake me up when we get back to reality." Marco and I said it
at the same moment. He stared at me. I stared at him. Everyone
else stared at us.

I sighed. "I guess I have something to tell you guys. I should
have said something earlier, probably. But I thought I was
just going nuts or something. See, I've been having these
flashes. Really intense. It's like, I'd be in school and then
suddenly I was here. And since we got here, I've been having
flashes that I'm back home."

Rachel rolled her eyes as if to say, "What next?" Cassie
looked concerned. Marco looked like he was trying to find a
joke in the situation, but was too tired to come up with
anything.

"I knew what Marco was going to say just now because that was
one of the flashes," I said.

Ax stared at me with large monkey eyes.

<Prince Jake, how long ago did you start having these
flashbacks?>

I shrugged. "It was just this afternoon. Yesterday, or today,
whatever you'd call it. I was square dancing when the first
one happened. Why?"

"You were square dancing?" Marco said. "I'd have paid to see
that."

Ax scratched his neck vigorously, then looked intently at what
he'd scratched up. He popped whatever it was into his mouth.

Obviously, he was letting the monkey mind have some control.

<Prince Jake, as I said, I'm not an expert on Sario Rips. But

I
think
what's
happening
is
that
the
flashbacks
are
fluctuations where two simultaneous identical states of
consciousness intersect outside of space-time."

"That would have been my guess," Marco said. "Simultaneous . .

. whatevers."

<I have a theory . . .> Ax began.

"A theory is more than I have. What is it?"

<I suspect we have moved backward in time. But not far. We are
existing simultaneously both here and back home. There are now
two

Marcos, two Cassies, two of each of us. One here, one there.

At the same time. The flashbacks only started today. So I
suspect we have gone back one day in time, a little less.>

"That's good," Marco said.

<No.> Ax said solemnly.<It's not good. We are in two places at
the same time. That is impossible. It's a time-space anomaly.

It's an unstable conditions>

"Meaning . . . ?" I pressed.

<I think it means that the two groups, the two Marcos,

Rachels, and so ons, will annihilate each other. Like matter
and antimatter, it is not possible for there to be two of us
in the same time.>

"So why haven't we annihilated ourselves yet?" Rachel asked.

<We are still within the Sario Rip effect.> Ax said. <I think

So ... so I think we're okay till we get back to the time when
the rip occurred. At that time, the rip will end, and we'll
have an impossible situation: two identical groups of people
existing in two places at one time. I think my teacher said it
would cause a mutual annihilation. We'd cease to exist. Both
groups. Here and back home. The time when the Sario Rip
occurred was eight fifty-four, exactly.>

"In other words, if we're getting back to our own time, we
have to do it before the Sario Rip occurs at eight fifty-
four," I said.

<Yes. We'd have to go back and change the time line. So that
none of this would happen. We have less than six hours.>

"How do we do that?"

<I'm not sure.>

I nodded. "Well, if we're trapped, so is Visser Three, right?

He must know about Sario Rips, too. If he's going back, we can
go back with him.

All we have to do is get to the Blade ship, hide out on board,
and let Visser Three take us home. I mean, that's the only
way, right?"

<There could be -> Ax started to say. Then he stopped.

"What?" I asked him. "Is there some other way to get back?"

Ax gave me a long look. Like he wasn't quite sure what to say.

Or whether to say anything at all. He was in monkey morph, so

I couldn't read his expression.

<As I said, Prince Jake, I wasn't paying attention the day
they taught this in school.>

I knew he was hiding something. I should have pressed him. But

I didn't.

Just one more mistake from the "fearless leader" of the

Animorphs.

It was easy to "acquire" the monkeys. Several of them swung
down from the tree to sniff at Ax. And they didn't seem
terribly frightened by any of us, since we were all standing
very still and
quiet.

I reached very slowly, very gently for one particular monkey.

He looked at my hand, considering it. Then he turned his back,
as if asking me to scratch it.

"Okay," I said. "I'd be glad to."

I scratched the little monkey's back. And as I did, I closed
my eyes and focused my thoughts on the monkey. He became
quiet, like he was in a trance. That's how animals usually are
when they're being acquired.

I absorbed the monkey DNA into me.

"This should be especially easy," Cassie commented as she
finished acquiring a different monkey. "These monkeys aren't
direct relatives of Homo sapiens, but still, most of our DNA
will be identical. After all, a chimpanzee's DNA is like
ninety-seven percent identical to human DNA."

"Or in Marco's case, ninety-nine point nine percent," Rachel
interjected.

"Yes, it's like the fact that Rachel's DNA is actually ninety-
nine percent identical to Malibu Barbie," Marco shot back.

"Could we concentrate here?" I said gruffly. Actually, I was
relieved to see everyone behaving normally. It's when Cassie
isn't talking about animals and Marco and Rachel aren't
teasing each other that you have to worry.

"Ax? Did you have any problems with the monkey's mind when you
morphed?" Cassie asked.

<No. Except . . . well, they are similar to morphing a human,
but much more excitable. Also, they don't fall over as easily
as humans do.>

Ax is constantly amazed that humans walk around on just two
legs, without even a tail to hold us up.

"Okay, let's do it," I said. "We're short on time, and we are
exposed, sitting out here looking like dumb, barefoot kids
from the suburbs. Tobias? Ax? Both of you keep an eye out for
any trouble."

<This whole rain forest is nothing but trouble> Tobias said
darkly. <Especially when you're a red-tailed hawk and you
stick out like a sore thumb.>

He was right, but I had to worry about one thing at a time.

And I knew from my "visions" that we could successfully morph
into monkeys. Unfortunately, the visions didn't tell me
whether we'd succeed or fail, end up alive ... or not.

I concentrated on a mental image of the monkey. And very, very
quickly, I began to feel the changes.

The real monkeys began to see the changes, too.

SQUEEE SQUEEE! SQUEEE!

The real monkeys leaped onto the tree trunk and scampered up
toward the high branches.

I shrank. That was to be expected. But the more I shrank, the
more vulnerable I felt. Brown fur sprouted from my arms and
legs. My face remained furless, and my lips puffed out to form
a rubbery muzzle. The largest single change was the tail. I
felt it come shooting out from the base of my spine. But I'd
had a tail before, so I didn't think much about it.

Then I realized something. The tail moved. Not just back and
forth, like a dog's tail. It moved like a fifth arm.

<Hey, the tail is neat.> Cassie said. <Try moving it. You can
feel that there's a part of your brain that controls it. Just
like an extra hand.>

She was right. And Ax was right, too. There was very little
that was new or strange inside the monkey's mind. Like a
human, it had only a few basic instincts. Like a human, it
depended on learning to guide its actions.

The eyes were similar to human eyes. The ears no better than
our own. The sense of smell was a bit improved, though.

<That was an easy morph.> Rachel said. <So. What can this
monkey
do?>

I shrugged my narrow monkey shoulders.

<I guess it climbs trees.>

I turned to the tree trunk. Like almost all the rain forest
trees, it was shockingly tall. And there were no low branches.

But there were strangling vines wrapped all around the trunk,
like a nest of
snakes.

<Let's try it out.> I said. I reached for a vine and held it
tentatively. I positioned one foot. Then I carefully reached
for another handhold.

<Prince Jake.> Ax said. <Let the creature do the climbing. It
knows how. Like this.>

He put the Bug fighter's computer in his mouth and leaped
right through the air, snatched a handhold, and was fifty feet
up the tree before I could blink three times.

I took a deep breath and relaxed my control. I allowed the
monkey mind to come forward and just said, <Climb.>

Ax was right. The monkey knew how to climb. You know the way

Michael Jordan knows his way around a basketball court? Or the
way Kristi Ya-maguchi knows her way around the ice rink?

That's how the monkey knew the trees. It knew the trees. It
understood the trees. It was born to be in the trees.

Hands, toes, hands, toes, it found every little handhold,
every foothold, never a hesitation, never a doubt, never a
question. That monkey knew exactly, precisely what to do.

I felt like I had swallowed ten Mountain Dews and a box of

Ring-Dings. I was tiny, but man, I had energy. I flew up that
tree.

I met Cassie up in the high canopy.

<Yow! Ax was right. This monkey can climb trees!>

<That's not all it can do.> she said. The others were just
catching up to us. <Watch this.>

She launched herself out into the air. We were fifty feet up,
easy, as high as a five-story building, and Cassie just fired
her hind legs and flew through the air.

She snatched a
hanging vine with one hand, but never stopped swinging
forward.

That was all I needed to see. It was a game of chase through
the treetops. The monkey wanted to play, and so did I. I
needed some fun. to needed some fun in the worst way.

I leaped. For about two seconds that felt like ten minutes, I
hung in the air. Then, my left hand simply reached out, found
a branch, swung me forward, launched me once again through the
air, reached out again . . .

Swing and fly and grab and swing and fly and grab!

<0h, yes! Oh, definitely!> Marco exulted as he followed Cassie
and me through the trees.

Swing! Flyyyyy! Catch! Swing! Flyyyyy! Catch!

The little monkey brain processed every move, prepared every
action and reaction. The entire world was branches and vines
to the monkey.

Swing! Fly through the air with the ground a deadly fifty feet
down! Catch at the last possible second! Swing again, out into
the void, catch just in time to save your life!

It was the scene from my flash. Me, zipping through the trees.

Ax paused to let us all catch up. He wrapped his tail around a
branch and hung there, panting. I wrapped my own tail around
the branch and let go with my hands and feet. I hung there,
high above the forest floor, by my tail. I swayed gently in
the breeze.

<This sounds weird, but there's something . . . familiar about
this.> I said to Cassie when she caught up to us. <I mean, not
to the monkey, but to me. To me, the human.>

<It's called brachiating, I think.> Cassie said. <Swinging
through the trees. It's what our distant ancestors did,
millions of years ago. Maybe little bits of that memory are
still stuck in the back of our human brains. Maybe all the
stages of evolution are still a part of us.>

<0r maybe it just reminds me of playing on jungle gyms when I
was a little kid.>

<0h, sure, if you want the boring, obvious explanation> Cassie
said with a laugh.

<It's like gymnastics.> Rachel said. <0nly this monkey could
totally destroy any human on the uneven parallel bars. If the
monkey team could be in the Olympics, they'd win every medal.>

<Can I ask a question?> Ax interrupted. <Where are we going?>

We all stared at him. Then we burst out laughing. The monkey
bodies laughed, too, a wild, chittering sound. That just made
us laugh all the more.

<I guess we did get kind of carried away.> I said to Ax. <Now
get serious. We have stuff to do. We have to find the Blade
ship. And we have to get back to our own time before eight
fifty-four.>

<Can we play chase some more first?> Marco asked.

And I would have said yes, because I was as caught up as he
was in the idiot joy of being a monkey.

But right then, I saw down below us a troop of Hork-Bajir.

Five of them, slashing their way through the undergrowth with
a human-Controller following along behind.

<Let's follow them.> I said. <Sooner or later they'll head
back for the Blade ship, right?>

I don't think I ever realized how strong Hork-Bajir are till
we followed them as they rampaged through the rain forest.

They used their arm blades to slash at the vegetation, leaving
a path of destruction in their wake. They slashed and slashed
and never seemed to tire.

There was a human-Controller with them. A guy who looked like
he might be nineteen or twenty. He was in good shape, but he
was gasping and sweating and struggling to keep up with the
powerful, tireless Hork-Bajir. Far above them we swung and
flew and caught and swung again.

<Are these guys going somewhere, or just wandering around?>

Rachel grumbled. <Tick-tock, ticktock. We're running out of
time.>

"There! There!" the human-Controller rasped weakly, pointing
in the direction of the base of the tree we were in. "That
animal! That piglike thing, I don't think it belongs here."

I think the guy was just tired. Looking for an excuse to sit
down and rest. But without pausing even to consider, the lead

Hork-Bajir drew his Dracon beam and fired.

TSEEEWWW!

The wild pig, or whatever it was, sizzled and disappeared. The

Dracon beam kept traveling. It hit and sliced through the
trunk of our tree.

<Move!> I yelled as the tree began to shudder and sway.

We leaped wildly for the next tree. I fired myself out into
the air. The tree was falling too fast. No time to plan a
landing!

I flew through the air for a very, very long two seconds. I
dropped. The ground came rushing up. I could see the face of
the human-Controller staring up at me, wondering . . .

A branch! I reached. Missed!

No, wait! Suddenly I was stopping, swinging in a crazy circle.

I almost laughed when I realized what had happened. My tail
had grabbed the branch my hand had missed.

"I don't like that monkey," the human-Controller said.

The Hork-Bajir leader once again drew his Dracon beam and
aimed for me.

But I was out of there. I raced back along the branch, holding
on with my toes. And I swung around the back of the trunk a
split second ahead of...

TSEEWWW!

ZZZZAAAPPP! The tree trunk exploded right in front of me as
the Dracon beam turned its sap to steam. Heat scorched my
face. I lost my hold and began to fail.

Then ... a hand grabbed me.

<Hold on!> Rachel said as she swung me toward a new branch.

"That does it! That's no real monkey," the human-Controller
yelled. "The monkeys! Kill all the monkeys! Kill every monkey
you see!"

Five Hork-Bajir drew their weapons.

<No!> Cassie cried. <Jake! We have to stop them!>

<Cassie, get out of here!Go!> I yelled.

TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!

Dracon beams fired their killing light. Tree branches fell
away like someone was trimming a rosebush. And one of the
beams hit a monkey.

<Cassie! Marco! Ax!> I yelled.

<It wasn't one of us.> Marco answered.

Monkeys were destroyed. Birds in the trees were destroyed. A
sloth and its baby, hanging from a branch, were destroyed. The

Hork-Bajir were on a rampage. They were past just shooting at
monkeys. They were shooting at anything that moved in the high
branches.

<They're killing everything!> Cassie cried, outraged. <We have
to stop them!>

<This isn't time to play save-the-rain-forest, Cassie.> Marco
snapped. <This is time to play save your own butt!>

<Jake!> Tobias yelled down from above. <I see Dracon beams
being fired!>

<Yeah, we kind of noticed.> Rachel answered.

We had swung away from most of the slaughter. But we were
still near enough to hear the wild, huffing laughter of the

Hork-Bajir and the giddy, insane cries from the human-

Controller.

I know there is a difference between human life and the lives
of other animals. I mean, I guess there is. And I definitely
know there is a difference between human life and the lives of
trees. But still, that mindless, pointless massacre of trees
and the animals in them made me sick.

The Hork-Bajir were just cutting everything down. Smoldering
stumps stood where trees had been sliced up. The forest was
screaming in anger and confusion.

HOO! HOOO! HOOHOOHOO!

Ke-Raw! Ke-Raw! Ke-Raw!

Then something strange happened.

As the Hork-Bajir stomped on through the rain forest,
something fell from a tree. It was very long, and it wrapped
itself around the lead Hork-Bajir.

<A snake!> Rachel yelled.

<Man, I didn't know snakes came that big!> Marco said.

The snake swiftly coiled around the Hork-Bajir and squeezed.

The other Hork-Bajir began to slash at it. Then . . .

<Get back, fools, and be glad I don't kill you all.> a
sneering, thought-speak voice said.

The Hork-Bajir stopped trying to free their trapped friend
very suddenly. They stepped back. And just watched the
struggling Hork-Bajir.

I knew that thought-speak voice. We all did. Somehow the sound
of it in your brain made you feel afraid.

Once the Hork-Bajir stopped struggling, the snake began to
change. From the impossibly long snake body, an Andalite grew.

An Andalite body, at least. But not a true Andalite. Because
in that Andalite head lived the Yeerk slug who held the rank
of Visser Three.

It's strange, how two almost identical things can be so
totally different. See, Visser Three looked almost exactly
like Ax, or any other Andalite. And yet, there was never a
moment of doubt when you saw him that this was an evil
creature.

The four remaining Hork-Bajir and the human-Controller were
shaking with terror before the Visser.

<What are you fools doing?> the Visser asked in deceptively
calm tones. He looked at the human-Controller.

Visser Three is never very careful about his thought-speak.

Thought-speak is like E-mail: You can decide who it goes to.

Or you can just blast it out for all to hear. I guess if
you're as powerful as Visser Three, you just shout away.

The human-Controller turned several shades lighter than his
natural color. "We... we... we we we were following your
orders, Visser. To destroy any animals that don't belong here
because they could be the Andalite bandits."

<And you thought perhaps the trees were Andalites, as well?>

"No ... it was . . . urn . . ."

The Visser raked his Andalite tail forward and pressed the
blade against the man's throat.

<Did it occur to you that the Bug fighter is less than a
hundred yards from here? Did it occur to you that Dracon beams
travel a long way? Did it occur to you that we cannot get back
to our own time without that Bug fighter? And did it occur to
you that I MIGHT BE IN MORPH and that you might end up
shooting me?>

The human-Controller sank to his knees. "I didn't... we
never... it... it... was them!" He pointed a finger of blame
at the Hork-Bajir.

I whispered to Ax. <What's that about needing the Bug fighter
to get back to his own time?>

Ax shrugged his monkey shoulders.

<I don't know. I think . . . maybe we need to exactly recreate
the intersection of the two Dracon beams to undo the Sario

Rip. I remember something like that from school.> He held up
the little disk from the Bug fighter's computer. <But they
can't fly the Bug
fighter without this.>

It came to me then, in a flash of insight: I had made a
terrible mistake. I had risked Ax's life to get the computer,
to make it impossible for the Yeerks to fly the Bug fighter.

But now, we knew they'd have to fly the Bug fighter to get us
home.

You could say we had a bargaining chip. You'd think maybe we
could trade Visser Three the computer for a ride home. But I
knew better. Once he had the computer, the Visser would just
kill us.

We were trapped. Trapped, because of my own mistake.

We had been in monkey morph for almost the two-hour limit. It
was time to change and regroup, and hopefully figure out what
to do next.

We swung away through the trees, far from Visser Three. We
scampered down to the ground and began to demorph.

Tobias flew up and landed on a fallen tree beside us, since
there were no low branches. There was a black, singed area on
his tail.

"Tobias!" Cassie cried. She rushed over to him as soon as she
was human again.

<I'm fine.> Tobias said, as Cassie lifted his tail to check
for damage. <But someone took a shot at me and almost hit me.

I guess one of the human-Controllers must have been a
birdwatcher. He knew red-tails don't fly in the Amazon. But
before they chased me off, I saw them working on our crashed

Bug fighter. Three Taxxons crawling all over it, repairing it.

And a bunch of Hork-Bajir shooting anything they didn't like.>

I told Tobias what we'd overheard Visser Three saying. "They
need the Bug fighter to get back to the right time. I don't
know why, and Ax doesn't know why."

Ax was fully Andalite again. He held up the yellow disk. <They
cannot fly that Bug fighter without this. I guarantee it.>

He was still focusing on that. Not thinking ahead to the fact
that we needed the Yeerks to have the stupid computer now. I
know it sounds weird, but I was actually mad at Ax for not
seeing what an idiot I'd been. I wanted someone just to say,

"Jake, you've blown it, man. You're not the leader anymore."

It would have been a relief.

"Jake!" Rachel hissed.

"What?"

"Don't move. Don't anyone move a muscle," Rachel said.

I moved nothing but my eyes. From the bushes around us,
utterly silent, the heads began to rise. Beside each head, a
spear, cocked and ready to fly.

"I think the local guys have the drop on us," Marco said
nervously.

I was amazed. It is impossible to sneak up on an Andalite. It
is even more impossible to sneak up on a red-tailed hawk. And
yet about twelve guys, some older, some younger, all with
intense, jet-black eyes and black hair, had done just that.

There was no doubt in my mind that if we even twitched, let
alone attacked, twelve poison-tipped spears would fly, and the
six of us would go down permanently.

"Uh . . . Cassie?" Marco whispered. "You're the tree-hugging,
save-the-rain-forest, love-the-planet person here. Who are
these guys?"

"Humans," Cassie said.

"Noduh," Marco said.

"That's all I know. Humans. Some bunch of people who live
here. What am I, an encyclopedia or something?"

"I don't think they like us," Rachel said. "But they don't
look like they want to kill us."

I recognized one of the faces. It was the kid who'd thrown a
spear at me before. His alert, black eyes watched me. Rachel
was right: They didn't like us.

"I wonder if they saw us morph?" I decided to try raising my
hands in a gesture of peace. Slowly, slowly, I raised my
hands, palm out.

No one stabbed a spear in me. That was a good sign. I took a
deep breath. Until that moment, I'd forgotten to breathe.

"Hello. We ... um, we don't want any trouble," I said.

"You got that right," Marco whispered.

One of them stepped forward and came right up to face me. He
may have been thirty or forty or eighty. I couldn't be sure.

But he was definitely the leader of the group. You could tell.

He was wearing extremely little. So little I think Rachel and

Cassie would have been embarrassed, if they weren't busy being
terrified.

The man lowered his spear and peered intently into my ace. He
spoke. But it was no language I knew.

"Sorry, I don't speak, um, whatever."

The man thought that over for a moment. Then, he pointed a
finger at me and said, "Macaco."

I guess when I didn't understand that, either, he decided I
was an idiot. He launched into an amazingly good pantomime of
a monkey. "Oh, monkey? Monkey is macaco?"

The man nodded and smiled. Then the smile was gone. He jabbed
a finger right in my chest. "Macaco. Tu. Espirito macaco."

"Whoa!" Marco said. "Tint's Spanish.Espiritu means spirit or
soul."

"Maybe it's Portuguese," Cassie said. "They speak Portuguese
in Brazil. This man is probably the headman of his village. He
probably has some dealings with the Brazilians. He must have
learned some Portuguese."

"Portuguese, Spanish, they're sorta alike," Marco said.

"Spanish is all my grandmother speaks. And my mother grew up
speaking Spanish."

"So you can translate?" Rachel asked.

"Well, no. I mean, I know maybe fifty words. But it's easy to
figure what he's saying. He's saying Jake is a monkey spirit.

Espirito macaco."

"So they did see us morph," I said. I nodded at the man. "Yes.

Espirito macaco."

Yes, I was a monkey spirit.

He looked hard at Ax. At his extra stalk eyes and his wicked
tail.

"Mat. Diabo."

"I'm guessing he's calling Ax a devil," Marco said.

I shook my head firmly. "No mat.No diabo."

The man glared at Ax. Then he took the butt of his short spear
and began to draw something in the dirt. It took a few seconds
for me to recognize it. It was a creature with two arms, two
legs, and a tail. It had blades on its elbows, knees, and
head. The man pointed at the drawing."Diabo. Monstro."

I swear I almost started laughing in sheer relief. The man had
drawn a Hork-Bajir. "Yes, definitely. Mat. Diabo. Monstro and
any other bad word you can think of."

I took my bare foot and rubbed out the drawing.

"He liked that," Rachel said.

The guy grinned and slapped his chest. "Polo."

"That's either his name or his favorite brand of shirt,"

Marcosd.

I pointed at myself and said, "Jake."

The man nodded. Then he rubbed out what was left of the Hork-

Bajir picture. He grinned a huge grin. He laughed out loud,
and all his men and boys laughed with him. Even the kid who'd
tried to shish kebab me.

"You know, I think I like these guys," Rachel said.

Suddenly, the skies opened up, and rain came pouring down on
us. Pouring down like we were standing under Niagara Falls.

Polo grabbed my hand and forearm in a strong grip. We were
sealing a deal. "Diabos. Matar diabos."

"I think he said hunt. . . kill the devils," Marco said.

I looked into Polo's eyes. I had no doubts. "That is exactly
what he said."

Polo and his people stepped back into the bushes, and in an
instant they were invisible in the pouring rain.

"Those little guys up against Hork-Bajir warriors?" Rachel
shook her head skeptically.

"I have a feeling about those "little guys,"" Cassie said. "I think maybe this forest is theirs, and they don't like a bunch
of alien diabos stomping around killing everything in sight."

"Better to have them on our side than against us, that's for
sure," I said.

Suddenly I felt really tired. Too many dangers. Too much
adrenaline. And even though it was just late afternoon here,
in Brazil, in this time, my own body had been awake and
fighting and morphing for almost twenty-four hours.

The rain was just absolutely pouring down from the sky. Tobias
couldn't even think about flying. I could see I wasn't the
only one exhausted.

"So this would be the "rain" part of rain forest," Marco said.

"They don't do anything halfway around here, do they?"

We trudged through the downpour, drinking our fill from the
water that drained down off the leaves.

But finally, I could see that no one could go any farther. At
least I couldn't. Time was running out --we had just about
three hours. We had no solid plan. It was the worst possible
time for a rest. But there was no going on. Not yet.

"Let's take a break," I said.

"Where?" Marco asked.

I flopped down in the mud and rested my back against a tree.

"Right here, man. Right here."

Cassie came and sat beside me. The noise of the falling rain
made our conversation private.

"How are you doing?" Cassie asked me.

I shrugged. "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"

She looked at me skeptically. "Jake, I know you. I can see it
on your face. You're worried. And you're mad. Since I don't
think you're mad at any of us, I'm guessing you're mad at
yourself."

I looked away. "Everything will work out," I lied dully.

"You know, it was kind of funny seeing you and Polo together."

"Yeah? Why?" I didn't really care. I was too tired to care.

But Cassie was being kind, and I needed some kindness.

"Because you're the same, you and Polo. He's you, and you're
him. The leaders. You know, he took a risk putting down his
spear. We might have killed him and his people. There was no
way he could know if it was the right thing to do. He just
made the best decision he could. That's all anyone can ask
from any leader."

I felt for Cassie's hand in the rain. It was too dim and gray
to see her face well.

"I'm so tired," I said.

Cassie laid her head on my shoulder. "I know, Jake. Rest. Just
rest."

6:49 P.m.

I woke up suddenly, with the feeling that I had slept too
long.

I opened my eyes.

Black night. Night so black it was like being smothered in
black felt.

But not everything was dark.

Six inches away from my face, two eyes glowed green and gold.

I could smell foul breath. I could feel its breath on my face.

Jaguar!

The big cat stuck its nose closer to me, trying to decide who

I was, and what I was doing in its forest. I might have wet my
pants right then from sheer terror. I don't know, because I
was soaked to the bone from the rain, which had finally ended.

I was sitting in mud, feeling the adrenaline pump into my
veins. Feeling fear again.

I was going to live or die depending on what the jaguar
decided. Was I food? Or was I not? If the cat was hungry, and
if I smelled like prey, it would sink its massive yellow fangs
into my neck and it would all be over in a second.I wouldn't
even get the chance to scream.

Then, a faint memory of hope! There was one thing I could do.

No time to morph, but . . .

As slowly as I could, I raised a trembling hand to touch the
jaguar's spotted fur. I focused my mind. I concentrated
fervently on acquiring the jaguar. And I prayed the jaguar
would act like most animals act when they are acquired. I
hoped it would go into a trance.

When I opened my eyes, the jaguar closed his.

"Marco!" I hissed. "Cassie! Rachel! Ax! Tobias! Somebody!"

"Wha? Huh?" Marco said groggily. Then, "Whoa! Whoa! Wake up,
you guys! Jeez, Jake, what are you doing? That jaguar could
chomp you."

"Really? I hadn't thought about that, Marco. Thanks for
pointing that out to me. Now, look, I'm acquiring him to keep
him calm. Here's what we do. One after another, we acquire
him, then we move off. Ax?"

<Yes, Prince Jake.> Ax said.

"You think you can outrun this big kitty?"

<Yes.>

"Okay, then Ax, you acquire him last, and run for it. Just in
case he's in a bad mood."

Five minutes later, we were all a safe distance away.

"You know, you were probably fairly safe, Jake," Cassie said.

"I doubt jaguars eat prey your size."

<I'll bet they eat prey my size.> Tobias muttered.

"What's cool is we all have a jaguar morph now. Perfect for
traveling the rain forest at night," Cassie pointed out.

"Speaking of which, it's late," Rachel said. "Ticktock."

<We have two of your hours left.> Ax said.

"Two hours to find the Blade ship, smuggle aboard, and hope

Visser Three knows how to get us all back to our normal time,"

Rachel said. "Wonderful."

"The jaguars are predators," Cassie pointed out. "That means
senses adapted for hunting in the rain forest. They would be
able to find the Yeerks, if any animal could."

Marco laughed. "Cassie, you're just looking for an excuse to
morph something new."

"Cassie's right," I said. "Look how dark it is. I can't even
see you guys. No streetlights, no house lights, no car lights,
even moonlight and starlight can't penetrate the trees. We're
helpless in this dark. Barefoot, lost, and blind. We need
eyes. We can morph owls, but we don't know what dangers the
rain forest might hold for a plain old horned owl. Jaguars, on
the other hand, look like they can take care of themselves."

"Let's do it," Rachel said. "We're totally helpless in this
darkness."

"We need a way to carry the Bug fighter's computer with us,"

Cassie pointed out. She tore a strip of cloth from her
shirttail, twisted it, and threaded it through a small hole in
the computer core.

"I'll take it," I said. The computer was my stupid mistake. I
should carry it. Cassie slipped it over my head. It hung like
a big, dorky medallion.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, boys and girls and Andalites.

Let's morph."

<Jake, I have to try to fly up above the trees, try to get
some moonlight.>

Tobias said. <I'm as blind as you guys are down here.>

The jaguar was a strange morph for one reason: because it
wasn't strange at all. It was just like morphing the tiger.

The jaguar is smaller and stockier than a tiger. But it is
still one of the big
cats.

But for the others, it was their first experience with a big
cat. As my jaguar eyes came on and the darkness grew much
lighter, I could see the final transformations.

I saw the long, yellowed teeth grow in Cassie's mouth. I saw
the pattern of large, hollow spots spread across Rachel's
skin. I saw the claws sprout from Ax's weak Andalite hands. I
saw the way Marco fell forward to land on all fours as his
tail extended like a snake behind him.

<0h, this is beautiful.> Marco said. <0h, man! Oh, man! Feel
the rush!>

<Hah-hah!> Rachel crowed. <This is like, so alive! It's so not
afraid!>

I knew the feeling. It's different being an animal at the top
of the food chain. An animal that doesn't worry much about
being killed. It's not arrogance, really. It's an absence of
fear. Just like a tiger, a jaguar may be startled, surprised,
alarmed, but never afraid. It may run away in the face of
humans or loud machinery, for example, but somehow it isn't
afraid when it does that.

I saw Rachel take a swipe at the air, testing the speed of her
paws. <Not as powerful as a grizzly bear, but awfully fast.>

<Excellent senses.> Cassie said. <I smell . . . wow. I smell
about a million things.>

<I'm having a strange desire to eat a monkey>Marco said. <And
yet,

I was a monkey a few hours ago. We're all going to end up in
the nuthouse someday. You realize that, right?>

<Tobias? Can you hear me?> I called in thought-speak.

<Yeah, I hear you. It's much better up here. There's a three-
quarter moon and a million stars! I can see well enough to
fly, but I'd break my neck if I tried to land.>

<There are far more than a million stars.> Ax commented.

<I know, Ax-man.> Tobias said with a laugh. <Hey! Hey! There's
a glow. Like a town, maybe. Lots of lights.>

<If they're still working on the Blade ship, they'd have
lights, right?> Cassie pointed out.

<It's the only clue we have, and we are running out of time.>

I said. <Let's go.>

<Go into the light.> Marco said.

<What?>

<Poltergeist. That old movie. Don't you remember? The little
munchkin lady saying, "Go into the light, go into the
light"'?>

<What was this light?> Ax asked, completely mystified.

<I think it was like . . . death, or something.> Marco said.

<But,
hey, I could be wrong. Maybe it was just a big, bright,
afterlife McDonald's.>

<Shut up, Marco.> Rachel said.

We had two hours left. Then, if Ax was right, the Sario Rip
would end, and the universe would have two Jakes and two

Cassies, and would eliminate them both.

Go to the Blade ship. Get aboard. Hope Visser Three could get
us back. Somehow. Even without the Bug fighter's computer.

Not much of a plan. But I was the leader, and a leader has to
give people hope. Even when he doesn't have much himself.

<Let's go see what this light is.> I said.

Living through the eyes of the jaguar, the rain forest was
dark.

But, oh, the things I saw, gliding like a ghost along the
jungle floor.

It was like some incredible theme park ride. Like one of those
haunted houses, where each turn of the little car you're in
brings you face-to-face with a new goblin or ghoul or
skeleton.

But it wasn't dead spirits that I saw in my trip through the
rain forest. It was life. Life in more shapes and types than
you can imagine.

Huge snakes, twenty feet long and as big around as the
branches they hung from. And snakes so tiny they could almost
have been worms.

Monstrous insects, beetles the size of your fist, and
centipedes as big as rats. And rats as big as poodles. At
least, they looked like rats. And frogs in bright, warning,
touch-me-and-die colors.

And ants everywhere, some marching along in columns, with each
ant carrying a piece of leaf ten times its own size. Lizards
that shot past, flashes of green. And what I assume were
salamanders, like lizards but in brilliant, slimy colors. And
overhead, birds and monkeys and more birds.

We had been blind as bats, stomping through the rain forest in
our human bodies. We had seen nothing. But the jaguar saw and
smelled and heard everything.

A million species of life filled the forest around us. Forms
of life stranger than anything that had come from outer space.

Incredible, insane, brilliant life, all fighting to stay
alive, all working to grab one little piece of the rain
forest.

It was overwhelming. For a long time, none of us said
anything. We were discovering a world we had never even
guessed at. It was as if Polo and his people had been
transported to a shopping mall at Christmastime. They would
have been amazed and stunned at all the things man creates.

Now, the reverse was happening. This was the world the jaguar
knew. And it was the world that Polo and his people knew.

Their shopping mall at Christmastime, filled, not with all the
things man makes, but with all the wild, amazing, insane,
extreme, shocking creativity of nature.

And every time I thought, Well, I've seen it all, the rain
forest would answer, Kid, you haven't seen anything. Take a
look at this
bird! Take a look at that flower! Get a load of this creature!

Little human boy, I have more to show you than you could see
in ten lifetimes.

<0kay.> Rachel said, breaking the silence at last. <I take it
back. I don't want to pave over the rain forest. I don't care
if it is dangerous and deadly and it's trying to kill us.>

<You have an amazing planet.> Ax said. <Amazing.>

Surprisingly, it was Cassie who reminded us of our mission.

<We have very little time left. We have to get to the Blade
ship.>

<You're right, Cassie, but I thought you'd be enjoying this.>

I said. <This is the ultimate nature walk.>

<Yes, it is.> she said softly. <And the Yeerks want to destroy
it, and anything else they can't use on this planet. I'm not
going to let that happen. So let's haul butt, find the Blade
ship, get back where we should be, stay alive to keep
fighting, because no one, man or alien, is messing this place
up while I'm around to stop them.>

<Yes, ma'am.> I said.

<I see lights up ahead.> Marco said.

From high above us: <I'm over the lights now. It's not a
village. It's the Blade ship. And guess what? They dragged the

Bug fighter here, too.>

Something about that fact . . . that the Bug fighter was with
the Blade ship, made me uneasy.

There was no reason for Visser Three to have his people drag
the two ships together. There was something wrong there.

Something I should see. Something I should realize.

But I shook it off. My problem was that I needed a plan. It
was time to think, not time to worry about things that made no
sense.

We crept, silent as a dream, through the bush. One foot in
front of the other, sliding through leaves, our jaguar spots
confusing to the eye, invisible.

The Hork-Bajir had chopped down a clearing around the Blade
ship. There were Taxxons crawling over and around the ship,
working feverishly. The Taxxons appeared to have finished work
on the Bug fighter. Taxxons are like gigantic centipedes with
raw, red circular mouths at one end, and a ring of eyes like
red Jell-0.

<They fit right in.> Marco said.

I was thinking the same thing. The Taxxons could be rain
forest natives. Although, even by rain forest standards, they
would have been huge.

<Not enough Hork-Bajir.> Ax said. <There should be more. Many
more. They should be ringing the perimeter.>

<I count just five Hork-Bajir.> Rachel said.

<Wait! Look! Inside the Blade ship. Through that window.

Visser Three.>

I stared hard and saw the outline of an Andalite head. <Yeah.

Good. At least we know where he is.>

<What do we do?> Rachel asked.

She was asking me. And I didn't happen to have any brilliant
answers.

<0kay, we know Visser Three needs the Bug fighter to get back
to our time, right? And we have the computer core, so he can't
use the Bug fighter without us. So... we could bargain with
him, but he can't be trusted. Or we could sneak aboard the

Blade ship and just leave the computer core where he can find
it>

<If he just happens to find the computer core lying around,
he's going to know how it got there. And he's going to know
what we're up to.> Marco said.

<Time is running out.> Ax said.<If we stow away on the Blade
ship but don't give Visser Three the computer core, we're
trapped here, along with him.> Cassie pointed out.

I felt like my head was swimming. Somehow I'd just hoped there
would be an answer at the end. But there wasn't.

<Look, I don't know, all right!> I yelled. <I don't know. I
don't know what to do. I don't have any magic answer.>

<Jake, you're supposed to be our fearless leader.> Marco said.

I swear, I almost lost it right then. If we'd both been in
human form, I might have punched Marco.

<I never said I was anyone's leader! I never asked to lead
anything. Why do I have to know the answers? You don't, Marco.

You don't, Rachel.>

<0h, man.> Marco groaned. <Jake, you can't lose it, man. We
need you.>

I
was
about
to
say
something
very
rude
when

Cassie
interrupted. <Something has been bothering me. Why is Jake the
only one who had
those flashes? We all exist in both places at once, right? So
why is he the only one who had jungle hallucinations?>

The question hit me like a sledgehammer. Of course. It made no
sense. I should have seen it. Should have, should have, should
have! There were too many should haves! Ax! I remembered
asking him if there was some other way to get back. I
remembered the way he avoided answering. <Ax? What do you know
that you're not saying?>

<What do I know> he answered evasively.

<What do you know ... or guess?>

<Prince Jake, as I said, I know very little about Sario Rips.

I was preoccupied by ->

<Ax. You call me your prince. Fine, I'm your prince. So answer
my questions>

<Prince Jake . . . it's possible that you are ... I mean, it's
possible that you are the only real person here. The rest of
us may only be memory.>

I felt a chill. <What are you talking about?>

<We may not actually be here. Not really. I mean, yes, we were
here in one time line, but that time line was later erased.>

<Erased? Who erased this time line?>

<You, Prince Jake. It is possible that only you will escape
from this time line. You may go back, alone, and alter
everything, so that none of this ever really happens.>

<Is it just me, or is this truly insane?> Marco asked.

<Ax, how would I be the only one to escape this time line? We
think the way to get back to our own time involves repeating
the Dracon beam accident that caused the Sario Rip. Right?>

<Maybe . . . Prince Jake, that may not be the only way.> Ax
said. <There may be another way. I didn't want to say anything
because I wasn't sure. And ->

<Hey!> Tobias interrupted sharply. <Visser Three in the window
over there? I just saw him wobble. Like a TV picture with
interference. It's not him! It's a projection>

<A decoy!> Rachel said.

Suddenly, I saw my terrible mistake. Visser Three knew that
eight fifty-four was the cutoff. He knew. And he figured we
knew, too. So he knew that we'd show up, either at the Bug
fighter or the Blade ship, trying to beat that deadline. He
knew we'd try to hide out aboard one of the two ships. That's
why he had his creatures drag the Bug fighter through the
forest to be alongside the Blade ship. So we'd have only one
place to go. So he'd know exactly where we'd be before eight
fifty-four.

<It's a trap!> I yelled.

<It's a trap! He's expecting u!>

And at that very moment, we heard his voice in our heads.

<Five cats and a bird. Hah-hah-hah. This will be too easy.>

<That right! It's a trap!>

I bolted. But a vine reached up and snagged my front paws. I
tumbled, head over heel. Instantly the jaguar was up, but
again a vine grabbed me, wrapping around my neck.

The vines were alive!

Like a snake, it wrapped around my jaguar throat and
tightened. I couldn't breathe! I writhed with all the jaguar's
strength and broke free.

I ran, then ... it hit me! I'd been wearing the Bug fighter's
computer around my neck. It was gone!

<It's a Lerdethak> Ax yelled. <The vines! It's Visser Three in
a morph. It's a creature from the Hork-Bajir home world: a

Lerdethak. It ->

Suddenly Ax was silent.

The darkness was erupting around me in a tangle of vines. It
was like being in a storm of snakes. The vines shot through
the air, reaching, grabbing, wrapping themselves around me.

I saw a flash of a jaguar -- maybe Ax, I couldn't be sure --
being lifted in the air by one of the living vines. Lifted by
his neck, with three more vines wrapping around his legs and
body.

I wanted to help, but the snakelike things were everywhere! If

I hesitated even a second, they would have me.

<Jake!> I heard Marco yell. <It's got me!>

Cassie's thought-speak voice just screamed.

<Aaaaahhhh!>

<Cassie!> I yelled. <Marco!>

<Jake! It's huge!> Tobias yelled down from above. <Can't see
well, but like a ... like an octopus but with a thousand
tentacles!>

A slither of tentacles slapped against me, wrapping around my
legs. I leaped ... a split second away from being caught.

I ran. What else could I do? I ran!

<It's swallowing them!> Tobias cried. <0h, no! NO! It has a
mouth. Huge! Help them!>

<I can't! I can't!> I cried. The vine-tentacles were less
numerous now, smaller, weaker.

<I'm inside something!> Rachel said. <Smothering!>

<Prince Jake, we've been swallowed by the Lerdethak>

<Can't get to you!> I yelled. <I can't even see you! Claw your
way out!>

<Can't . . . can't move . .> Cassie moaned.

<I can't just watch th!>Tobias yelled. <I'm going down!>

I was reeling from sheer shock and horror. I was running in
panic, running flat out. The tentacles no longer surrounded
me. But when I paused, panting, to look back, I saw it.

It was like some gnarled old tree come to life. Like Medusa's
head, alive with snakes. I saw it outlined against the bright
lights around the Blade ship. It was rising from the ground,
growing taller and taller. Tentacles like bullwhips! A maze of
snakelike arms, all surrounding a dark core. Through the
tentacles I could see a wide, drooping, blue-outlined mouth.

As I watched, a struggling jaguar was tossed inside.

And one thin tentacle reached, whipped, and wrapped around a
bird that was diving toward it.

<Hmmm.> Visser Three said. <Just five little Andalites inside
my craw. That leaves one still free. But don't worry. Plenty
of time to find you.>

He had them all. He had them all but me.

<Settle down, my Andalite friends. Relax. I won't kill you,
yet. But you won't morph your way out of this. My Lerdethak
morph will hold you tight till I decide your fates.>

He had them. Visser Three had won. I was the only one left. I
was their only hope.

Some hope, I told myself bitterly. I was the one in charge.

And I had walked them into Visser Three's trap. Don't feel
sorry for yourself, Jake. Find a way out!

The huge, thousand-tentacled creature moved easily and swiftly
through the rain forest. And now, on both sides of it, I saw
the Hork-Bajir warriors.

Behind me! All around me! A ring of Hork-Bajir penning me in
as Visser Three slithered toward me.

Then . . .

FLIT!

Even my jaguar eyes couldn't see the spear fly. I could only
see it when it stuck into the back of a Hork-Bajir.

FLIT! FLIT! FLIT!

Spears appeared from nowhere. Hork-Bajir began dropping!

Polo stepped into view. He looked past me and launched his
spear at the Lerdethak. Launched it at Visser Three.

But the Visser's morph was far too quick. One vine reached
out, snatched the spear from the air, and contemptuously
tossed it back. It stuck in the ground where Polo grabbed it.

There was no way to stop the Lerdethak.

It was safe, surrounded by its vine-tentacles. The only
vulnerable part was the head, and it was surrounded by a
forest of the -

Wait a minute!

Not like vines! Not like tentacles! Wrong way to think, Jake,

I realized. Branches. Like branches!

I dove into darkness and even as I ran, I began to demorph. I
heard the flit of spears flying and the cries of Hork-Bajir.

But nothing was stopping the Lerdethak.

The Visser kept coming.

I was human now, blundering blindly through slapping leaves,
my bare feet cut and bruised. But at least I had a plan. I ran
and focused on a quick morph. I ran and shrank, but still I
ran, even as my legs became bowed and I bent forward to use my
knuckles like extra feet.

And when I was fully monkey ... I turned.

The Lerdethak loomed huge above me. Its thousand bullwhip
tentacles slashed the air.

<Is that you, my last Andalite?> Visser Three crowed. <Is that
little creature your final morph? Pathetic.>

Maybe so, I thought. But as far as I'm concerned, you're just
one big jungle gym.

I leaped through the air.

Leaped for the nearest tentacle.

I grabbed it, swung, and flew!

No other animal could have penetrated that maze of swinging,
snapping, slithering tentacles. But to the monkey, it was all
vines and branches.

Swing! Fly! Catch! Swing! Fly! Catch!

All at hyperspeed! All at warp factor ten! But the monkey
could do it!

I grabbed one especially big tentacle. It swung me far up in
the air, trying to snap me loose. But I held on. And now, down
below, I could see the Lerdethak's head. I could see the
drooping blue mouth that had just swallowed the others.

I glanced aside. Polo! Yes, he was standing with his spear in
his hand.

<Your spear!> I cried in thought-speak. <Your spear!>

In a flash, Polo understood. He threw with all his might.

The spear flew straight and true.

And from high in the air, holding to the whipping tentacle
with my tail alone, I reached with both hands and snatched the
spear out of the air. Did you know that one of the reasons
humans can throw is because we once swung through the trees?

Yep. The shoulder design that makes it possible to swing from
branch to branch makes it possible to throw a spear.

Very possible.

I threw.

The spear hit home! It sank into the flesh of the Lerdethak,
delivering the poisons of the rain forest into the deadly
alien creature.

But I had used up all my luck. A tentacle whipped toward me.

Like a snapped high-tension wire, it wrapped itself around my
neck, and...

8:19 P.m.

I misjudged the distance to the ground, hit it too hard, and
rolled over, a tangle of wings and talons.

<Nice landing.> Tobias said with a laugh.

"Are you okay?" Cassie asked me. She rushed over and picked me
up. Then she set me back down because I was starting to
demorph. And I was getting heavier pretty quickly.

"What the ..." I demanded. I almost had a heart attack. I was
back! Back, behind the motel. Back, getting ready to go to the

Safeway.

Was it a flashback? One of the visions?

No, it was lasting too long. This was real. I was behind the
motel. Getting ready to morph and go check out the Safeway.

I looked at my watch. Could it be? "What time is it?" I asked

Ax.

<Eight-nineteen.> he said.

Eight-nineteen. Of course. I knew the time. At eight-nineteen,

I had felt strange -- uneasy about making the decision to go
into the grocery store. But I had made the decision to go
ahead. And from that decision, everything else had followed.

The Sario Rip. The disaster in the rain forest.

"Cassie? Have you ever been to the Amazon?" I asked.

"What? No. Of course not," she said.

It hadn't happened. At least not to this Cassie.

It was still something that was going to happen. Unless I
changed the time line.

"Are we doing this or what?" Rachel demanded impatiently.

"Come on, Jake, are we doing this or what?"

I grinned. I laughed. I'm afraid I flat out giggled. "Or what,

Rachel. Definitely "or what." We are out of here!"

It was a day later before I finally got a chance to talk to Ax
alone. I told him everything. He thought I was nuts until I
said the words Sario Rip. Then he knew.

<This is all very amazing.> he said as we walked through the
woods. The good old, familiar woods. The woods without killer
ants and piranhas and jaguars and snakes and natives with
poison spears. <I have no memory of any of this.>

"Yeah, it was pretty amazing," I said. "I made so many wrong
moves, I screwed everything up. The computer. . . letting us
walk into a trap. . . . I mean, we were pretty much doomed.

Then it was like I got a second chance to keep it from
happening. But I don't even know how. You ... I mean, that
other you, or however you want to say it, thought we had to
recreate the Sario Rip in order to undo it."

Ax nodded. <Yes, I suppose that would have worked. And there
was only one other way.>

I stopped him. "You never told me about any other way."

<No, I wouldn't have.> Ax said. <I don't know it for sure ...

but there is a theory.>

"I thought there might be," I said dryly.

<It is impossible for one person to be in two places at once.

In theory. So if you . . . eliminate . . . one of the two,
well, the consciousness snaps back together. I think what
happened, Prince Jake, is that you died.>

I felt a chill run up my spine.

<But even as you died in the rain forest, you were still alive
here. So your mind snapped back. Then you undid the time line,
so none of it ever really happened. You would find you cannot
morph the jaguar or the monkey, because you never really
acquired those animals.>

He made an Andalite smile, which just involves the eyes, since
they have no mouths.

"They teach this stuff in your schools, huh?"

<Yes.>

"And you didn't pay much attention to this lesson, huh?"

<True.>

"I can see why," I said. "This time travel stuff will make
your head explode."

<Exactly.> Ax agreed. <And on that day, there was this game .

. . and this female . . .>

We walked a while farther. "It was a disaster down there, Ax.

I blew it. The only reason we're all still alive is that in
the end, I got lucky."

<Maybe that is true, Prince Jake. But my brother Elfangor once
told me, "It's a leader's job to be lucky." Sometimes, success
is just luck.>

I nodded. It didn't make me feel any better. "Elfangor's luck
ran out."

<Yes. We must hope yours does not, Prince Jake.>

I laughed. "Don't call me Prince.""

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

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