The Journey
Author: K. A. Applegate
Date: 2001-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Juvenile Nonfiction; Extraterrestrial beings; Juvenile Fiction; Fiction; Science fiction; General
Description: From Wikipedia The Journey is the forty-second book in the Animorphs series, written by K. A. Applegate. It is known to have been ghostwritten by Emily Costello. It is co-narrated by Rachel and Marco. In the article: Product Description When the Animorphs try to stop the tiny alien Helmacrons from taking the morphing cube, Marco gets in the way and ends up with Helmacrons up his nose and inside his head.
Publisher: Milwaukee, WI : Gareth Stevens Pub., 2001.

My name is Rachel.

And I was facing down a Controller in a purple-
and-pink Dunkin' Donuts uniform. He was hold-
ing a Dracon beam. Smirking. The little jerk.

Tseeew! Tseeew!

He fired at point-blank range. Hit me right be-
tween my three-foot-long tusks.

OCR by Nihtelek

"HhhhREEEEEuuuhhh!" I roared in pain and
anger. Mostly anger. Like a couple of Dracon
beam blasts are enough to take down a thirteen-
hundred-pound African elephant.

Yeah, an elephant. I can morph into animals
whenever I want. I can also morph a cat and a
cockroach and lots of other animals and bugs.

Sounds like fun, right?

1

Wrong. Like, about one percent of the time

We're trying to hold on until help gets here
it's not seriously unpleasant. Mostly morphing is
from a few billion light-years away. See, the Yeerks
a weapon. A weapon in the most desperate battle
have enemies. A race of amazingly advanced
ever fought by human beings.

aliens called Andalites.

Here's the deal. Earth is under attack. The

Andalites look like deer. If deer had blue-
planet has been invaded by aliens called Yeerks.

and-tan fur, humanoid arms, and scorpionlike

These guys aren't into exploring strange new
tails tipped with wickedly sharp blades. An-
worlds. They're into exploring strange new bodies.

dalites also have two main eyes, on their face,

They're parasites. Like lice or ringworm. Only in-
and two on swiveling stalks that sprout from the
tensely worse.

top of their head. Beautiful and intelligent and

In their natural state, Yeerks are nothing but
cunning.

gray slugs. Until they infest a host body, enter

Not too long ago — who am I kidding, what
the brain, sink down into the little crevices, and
seems like a lifetime ago — an Andalite ship
take complete control.

got fried right above Earth. Torn out of the sky

Once they have you, you can't focus your own
while battling the Yeerks. My friends and I saw it
eyes, or draw your own breath, or decide when to
fall. Saw the dying Andalite war prince named
pee. You are powerless. A slave of the most com-

Elfangor crawl from the wreckage. Listened,
plete and hopeless kind.

stunned and just a little freaked out, as he gave

You can still do one thing. Just one terrible
us the technology that allows us to morph. To ac-
thing: You can watch in horror as the Yeerk in
quire the DNA of any animal we touch and then
your head lies to your family, betrays your
to become that animal. But there was one rule
friends, plots to take over your planet.

we had to follow: Stay in morph for more than

Frightening?

two hours and you stay there forever. Become

Oh, yeah. And it gets worse.

what the Andalites call a nothlit Stuck in your

Me and my friends are all that actively stand
morph for the rest of your life. Someone who
between the Yeerks and their evil conquest of hu-
means a lot to me knows about this firsthand.

manity. Just a group of five kids and a young

He'd stayed in morph too long and now he lives
alien.

his life as a red-tailed hawk. He did regain his

2

3
morphing ability, but when he demorphs he's not
while now. But mass production? That meant
a human. He's a bird. The sad part — at least for
each and every Yeerk, no matter how low down on
me — is that he seems to like his life the way it is
the corporate ladder, would be able to feed in the
now.

privacy of his or her own home as easily as you

But even though it seems futile, we've been
nuke a frozen pizza. The Yeerk pool would be
fighting ever since.

obsolete. Our enemies would be rid of their only

Trying to hold on even though we've just
flaw.

about given up waiting for any more help out of

We just couldn't let it happen.

the sky.

So we'd attacked their factory, a dingy old in-

So here we are: Jake, our leader and my
dustrial building on the edge of town, windows
cousin; Cassie, my best friend; Marco, Jake's best
painted black. The Yeerks had disguised it as a
friend and a totally annoying — never mind; To-

Dunkin' Donuts bakery. The human-Controllers
bias, a lost soul with the body of a bird; and
were even dressed in the ever-so-stylish polyester

Elfangor's younger brother, Aximili-Esgarrouth-
fast-food uniforms.

Isthill. We call him Ax.

The Pepto-Bismol pink poly did not help my

Oh, there's one important thing I forgot to
mood. Neither did the fact that we were way out-
mention: Yeerks feed on something called Kan-
numbered.

drona rays.

Thirty human-Controllers were working on a

The Yeerks' need for Kandrona is the one flaw
crude assembly line in the back of the building.

in their strategy. A weakness, an opening we can

Four more were pretending to make donuts up
exploit. Every three days, thousands of Yeerks
front. There were at least a dozen guards.

gather together at the enormous Yeerk pool com-

I wrapped my trunk around a Controller's
plex built under our town.

waist, tossed my massive head, and let go.

Destroy the pool and the Yeerks will starve.

"Ahhhhhhhh!" he yelled, as he went flying.

We just found out from our android allies, the

Then —

Chee, that the Yeerks were beginning mass pro-

THUMP!

duction of portable Kandronas. The heads of the

I didn't see where he landed.

Yeerk organization have had access to these for a

"HhhhREEEEEuuuuhhh!" I trumpeted.

4

5

Jake, Cassie, Ax, and Tobias were back by the
the factory was littered with downed human-
assembly line, on the other side of a false wall. I

Controllers. Yeerks who wouldn't be causing us
couldn't see them but the elephant's ears were
any headaches for a long, long time.

picking up moans and roars and cries and Dracon

<Let's bail!> Jake shouted. <Ax says we've
beam blasts. Also, something that sounded like
got three minutes left to stay in morph!>
equipment smashing to the floor.

I powered through the main entrance, taking

Marco was on my side of the wall, in gorilla
most of the door frame with me. Three minutes
morph. Three Controllers surrounded him. He
to demorph or be stuck as an elephant for the
lashed out with his ham-sized hands but the
rest of my life.

Controllers were slowly backing him against one

The others were right behind me. Ax in his
of the three commercial ovens.

own Andalite body. Jake moving fluidly in his

<Marco! I'm on my way!> I shouted.

tiger morph. Cassie as a wolf, fast and low. To-

<Just when I'm having so much fun.>
bias, the red-tailed hawk. And Marco, a gorilla,

The Controllers had their backs to me. Didn't
bringing up the rear.

see me coming.

We ran. Down the deserted alleyway where

I grabbed the middle one. Tossed.

we'd left our outer clothing. The pavement was

"Aaaahhhhhhh!" he yelled.

damp. Strange misty halos ringed the sodium-

Now they knew I was there.

vapor lights way overhead.

The right one turned his handheld Dracon

Not a minute to spare. Crowded in around the
beam at me.

stinking Dumpsters and piles of oily, wet rags, we

Too slow.

stopped.

I grabbed him. Tossed.

<Nice work, guys,> Jake said. <Let's get out

"Nnnnnoooooo!" he shouted.

of here.>

Marco moved forward. Knocked the Dracon

I focused on my own body, and felt the
beam out of the third Controller's hand. Whacked
changes begin.

him a solid gorilla punch to the jaw. The guy

My tusks went flaccid, like two overgrown
went down. And stayed there.

pieces of spaghetti. They slurped up into my face,

Marco and I looked around. Our part of
slapping side to side as they retracted.

6

7

Morphing is not attractive. Actually, it's pretty
much a freak show.

My eyes sort of moved up and down as they
traveled from the sides of my shrinking head to
the front. Things went blurry for a second until
human sight blinked on. And then —

" Hahooo wwwas that?" Cassie demanded
with a mouth that was half-wolf and half-human.

<A small explosion of light,> Ax said. <l be-
lieve it is part of a primitive visual recording de-
vice called a camera.>

"WHAT?" Marco exploded. "Someone took a
picture of me? Not cool. Do you see what I'm
wearing? I'm Spandex-boy. Totally not cool."

I heard a garbage can tumbling over. Squeaky
footsteps on the wet pavement. Someone was
running away!

"Everyone stay put," Jake said. "We can't let anyone see us. Tobias?"

8

9

<l'm on it.> Tobias flapped his wings and rose
shrank. The slimy bricks of the alleyway rushed
up over Marco's head.

up at me.

"Well, this is great, isn't it?" Marco said. "We A feather tattoo started at my fingertips and
close down a Yeerk-run operation only to let some
covered my arms in a few seconds. Suddenly, the
tabloid photographer sneak up on us. I bet we're
pattern sprang up and my arms and legs were
on the cover of the National Enquirer tomorrow."

covered with actual feathers. The feathers were

"You don't know it was a professional photog-
dark brown, except for the snowy-white ones that
rapher," Cassie argued.

replaced my blond hair and the skin of my face

"A kid can hope, can't he?"

and neck.

My feet split open and formed yellow talons,

"Not funny." Jake, his mouth pressed into a
each of which ended in a hooked claw. Claws
grim line.

that could grab a swimming fish out of a rush-

One of the reasons we've survived as long as
ing river. My human bones became hollow and
we have is that the Yeerks don't know who we
light.

are. They think we're a group of "Andalite ban-

Moments later, I was airborne, cruising sound-
dits."

lessly over the deserted streets. I could see the

If they found out we were a bunch of human

"Dunkin' Donuts" bakery a few blocks away.

kids we'd be dead or infested within hours. No

Rubble spilled out the door. Nobody was stirring.

doubt our entire families, too.

The whole neighborhood was quiet. Which

"I'm going with Tobias," I said grimly.

was good. No commando force of Controllers.

I concentrated on the bald eagle DNA buried

Not yet, anyway.

somewhere deep inside me. Demorphing and

There! I spotted Tobias maybe two hundred
morphing — especially after battle — is exhaust-
yards ahead and to my right, flying over some
ing. But I couldn't just stand around and wait. So
mid-rise buildings.

much easier to do something. Anything.

<Tobias!> I called. <Who was it?>

The first thing to change was my mouth. My

<Some kid,> he said. <About our age. He had
lips bulged out. Grew hard and stiff and turned
one of those disposable cameras.>
yellow.

<Where is he?> I asked.

THUD! I fell forward as my legs rapidly

10

11

<l lost him,> Tobias said grimly. <He ran into

Jake and Marco relieved us at five.

that building with the pigeon cages on the roof.>

I went back to my bed and my nightmares of

<Let's go after him,> I said.

exposure and infestation.

<No sign of him through any of the windows.

By eight-thirty Saturday morning, I was awake

But it's getting dark and I don't have the best vi-
and heading to Cassie's barn for a meeting. I was
sion for this job at night.>
tired and grumpy. The weather was rainy and

Neither did the bald eagle. But by then I
cold. I wanted a nap. Maybe after we got the film.

knew the others were on their way. When Jake

Tobias was in his usual spot in the rafters.

felt it was safe they'd gone owl and followed us.

Cassie was mucking out a stall. Marco was sitting

The six of us circled the building, waiting for the
on a stool, looking all conditioned and blown-dry.

kid to come back out or appear in a window.

Jake kept yawning. He looked rumpled, like he'd

Nothing happened except that the strange mist
just crawled out of bed. Which he probably had.

turned into a steady downpour.

Ax was back on watch at the kid's apartment

Jake made the call. <We need to keep an eye
building.

on this kid,> he said. <But there's no need for

"Let's try to keep this meeting short," Jake
all of us to be here. Ax, Tobias, take the first
said. "I don't want Ax on surveillance alone."

watch. >

"I don't get it," Marco said. "What was that We arranged a quick schedule then split up.

kid doing all night?"

I didn't sleep well that night. I spent two

"Probably sleeping," I grumbled.

hours dreaming I was on the cover of Time maga-

<We need a plan,> Tobias said.

zine as a half-human, half-elephant freak. Not

"Easy. We steal the film," I suggested.

exactly the kind of fame that makes Mom and

"That's not a plan, 0 reckless one," Marco

Dad proud.

said snidely. "That's obvious. But I'm ready."

At three o'clock, I morphed owl and flew

Jake nodded. "I spotted the kid around dawn.

back to the apartment building. Tobias and Ax re-

His apartment is on the fifth floor. The bedroom
ported that they hadn't seen anything. Cassie
faces an empty lot in back."

and I spent the next two hours flying in endless

"Did you see the camera?" Rachel asked.

circles.

"I think so," Jake said. "On his desk."

12

13

"We get it now," I said. "Before he hands it nal slaves! We will not crush and annihilate you
over to someone or takes it to Photos 'R' Us."

as we will crush and annihilate all the inferior

Cassie leaned against her rake. "Probably a
species of this planet!>
hundred people live in that apartment building,"

"Oh, man," I said. "You've got to be kidding.

she pointed out. "Some of them could be Con-

Not these guys again."

trollers."

"Yeah," Marco said. "So maybe the kid is in the elevator with a neighbor and he just happens
to mention these weird creatures he saw in a
dark alleyway last night. Before you know it,
there's a knock on your door. And it isn't some-
one with a check for a million dollars."

<He could be a Controller himself,> Tobias
said.

"We've got to go in," Jake said with another
yawn. "We could try —"

ZZZZZiiiiipppppp!

"What the — ?" Marco jumped to his feet.

A radio-controlled toy car blew into the barn.

More precisely, a slightly damp, pink-and-aqua

Barbie 4 x 4 . Only instead of Barbie, a very small
spaceship sat in the driver's seat. The ship was
three or four inches long, shaped like a baton
with two big "engines" at the back and a death's-head bridge in the front.

The ship looked way too familiar.

insignificant creatures! Give us the power
source and learn to accept your fate as our eter-

14

15

ready extremely ticked off. I wanted to pop those
little jerks.

"The Helmacrons," Marco said with an amazed
shake of his head. "I can't believe someone hasn't
blasted these maniacs out of the universe by now."

The Helmacrons are a race of tiny aliens.

About a sixteenth of an inch tall, tops. But it's a
sixteenth of an inch of egomania. They sound
pretty harmless, right? Wrong. They have this
shrinking ray. The technology to make you very,
very tiny. To bring you down to their size.

This makes them both annoying and danger-
ous.

O Most Powerful Emperor, Lord of the Galaxy! Bad

<You would have the Lords of the Universe
news. Our ship's engines have again malfunctioned!

wait?> the Helmacron voice in my head blus-

The treacherous popinjay males pushed the red but-
tered. <We demand the power source! And we
ton instead of the blue one! Weaker and less worthy
servants would be vanquished by this disaster! But
demand it now! Follow our orders and live as our
the brave Helmacron females are undaunted! We
debased swine! Or resist us and be blasted into
alone will capture the blue box of transforming
twisted molecules! See our might. Learn to obey
power! All the galaxy shall tremble before us, right-
your new masters!>
ful leaders of our race!

"I don't get it," Jake said. "We already gave them one jump start. Why are they here again?"

— From the log of the Helmacron Females

"Who cares?" I asked. "Let's just get rid of them."

Tseeew! Tseeew!

"Maybe something went wrong with their ship,"

I felt two pinpricks on my neck. Like mini

Cassie said. "Hey — where are they going?"

mosquito bites. "Ahhh! Owww!"

The Barbie-mobile backed up, did a 180, and

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but I was al-
zipped toward the back of the barn.

16

17

"Let's go!" Marco said.

that was leaning up against the wall. "I'll get

We got up and trotted after them. I could hear
them."

Tobias flapping above us. We caught up in time

"I'll help." Marco grabbed a ceramic pot.

to see the truck's rubber tires bounce off a bat-

"I'm gonna trap these weirdos like bugs under
tered freezer chest in one of the empty stalls.

glass."

Jake met Cassie's eyes. "Is it in there?"

We moved toward the freezer.

"Yes."

The pink-and-aqua truck spun around and

"It" was the blue box. That's what we call it.

raced right between us.

The Andalites have another name for it. Several

Marco pounced.

actually. Anyway, it's the device they use to trans-

I pounced and jabbed the pitchfork down on
fer the morphing power to an individual. Kind of
top of the truck. Vaguely aware that my elbow
like a super-advanced alien battery. Elfangor
had hit Marco and that he was stumbling back-
used it on us.

ward, clutching his head.

Last time we saw the Helmacrons, we made a

So what? The Helmacron ship had rolled off
deal with them. They could use the blue box to
the truck and was tumbling toward the freezer.

power up their engines. Then they had to get off

All I had to do was grab it.

Earth. Pronto. And stay off Earth. Forever.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marco lose

Obviously, they hadn't kept their half of the
his footing and trip.

bargain.

"Get it!" Cassie screamed.

<They're cutting into the freezer!> Tobias an-

"Lookout!"

nounced.

THUNK!

I couldn't see anything, but hawks have amaz-

Marco. Sliding down the side of the freezer.

ing vision. You'd have to have outstanding eye-

Slumping forward into the hay.

sight to see what the Helmacrons were doing

"What happened?" I demanded.

with their tiny energy beams.

"Marco hit his head on the corner of the

Cassie shot a nervous look over her shoulder.

freezer," Jake said.

"My dad doesn't need to see this."

Cassie had already rushed to Marco's side.

"No problem," I said. I grabbed a pitchfork

"Marco? Marco? Can you hear me?"

18

19

No reply. He was out cold.

<They went up his nose,> Tobias said.

"Man, these Helmacrons are bad news," I

"How many?"

complained.

<About a dozen.>

Jake raised an eyebrow. "Rachel, you were

<Hah-HAH!> one of the Helmacrons cried.

the one who elbowed Marco in the head."

<The vicious human attacks us with a mighty
metallic weapon, but we are not defeated! Give

"Because the little monsters were distracting
us the power source now and we will kill you
me!"

quickly! Hesitate and we will prod you with sharp

<They're getting away!> Tobias shouted.

sticks before you die!>

I glanced down. The Helmacron ship was

"Give me one good reason why we should co-
right where it had fallen. I picked it up. "No wor-
operate with you pipsqueaks," I demanded.

ries," I said. "I've got them."

<Grovel and beg our forgiveness!> the Hel-

Tobias swooped toward Marco's head and nar-
macron demanded. <Do as we say or your oblivi-
rowly missed grazing Cassie with his talons.

ous comrade will die!>

"Hey, watch out!" Cassie yelled.

"News flash," I said. "Keep threatening us

<They're getting away,> Tobias repeated.

and you'll never get off Earth alive."

Then I got it. The Helmacrons had bailed out

<Brave Helmacron females care nothing for
of their ship. They were loose somewhere in the
their own safety!> the voice shouted. <We care
barn.

only for glorious victory!>

"Where are they?" I demanded.

<As do we, the newly liberated and coura-

<Heading straight for Marco's nose!>
geous Helmacron males!> came another voice.

"What?" But I was already down on my knees,

<We will kill the gigantic alien!> the first
inches from Marco's face.

voice shouted.

Frantically, I scanned the hay and dirt.

<Not if we kill it first,> the second voice an-

<Move!> Tobias ordered. <Get away from him
swered.

so I can see.>

Then the Helmacrons fell silent. Probably be-

Cassie and I scrambled back.

ginning their march deeper into Marco's nose.

<Oh, no,> Tobias said. <This is bad. Very,

"What's this about male and female?" Jake
very bad.>
asked.

"What?" Jake demanded.

20

21

•Ml

Cassie shrugged. "Don't you remember? When
the Helmacrons were here before, Marco and I
kind of gave the males a little . . . pep talk. We
didn't like the way the females were always boss-
ing them around."

"Yeah. Okay. This is a good thing," Jake said.

"Because now the Helmacrons have even more
reasons to fight among themselves."

Marco woke up about two seconds later. He
took one look at the three of us staring into his
face and got real worried, real fast.

"What happened?" he demanded, rubbing
the back of his head and giving me a murderous
look.

"Well, not anything good," I said. "Not anything you're going to like."

"What's the matter?" Marco asked.

"The Helmacrons kind of. . ." Jake started.

<You're sort of. . .> Tobias said.

"A hostage," Cassie provided.

Marco's eyes went wide. But before he could
ask any questions —

22

23

"Ah! Ah! AhCHOOOO!" He sneezed, cupping
tant! What exactly do we have to think about? Do
his hand over his mouth.

something!"

"Did he sneeze them out?" Jake demanded.

"We will!" I shouted. "Just give us time to

<l don't see them,> Tobias reported. <Marco,
think!"

open your hand.>

Marco frowned and flicked at his nose.

Marco glared at us and climbed to his feet.

"Tobias, you'd better get Ax," Jake said. "First,

"What is the matter with you people?" he de-
see if you can get Erek to keep watch for us. He
manded suspiciously. "Why are you interested in
won't be able to follow the kid with the camera if
my bodily fluids? Where are the Helmacrons?"

he leaves the building but at least we'll know

Cassie came forward and slipped an arm
where he is."

around Marco. "They cleared out of their ship,"

Tobias flared his wings and was gone.

she said calmly. "And they went up your nose."

"Can we go in after them?" Jake asked.

"To hide?"

Cassie made a face. "Smallest morph . . . I

"Well, no," Jake said. "More like —and I'm
guess a flea is small enough to get into nasal pas-
just guessing—it's because they want to kill
sages. It might be tight, though. Maybe a tick?"

you."

"Ticks are useless in battle," I said.

"No way!" Marco rubbed at his nose. Let out

"Excuse me," Marco cried. "Are you planning a snort. "That is so not okay with me!"

to have a BATTLE in my NOSE?!"

"Calm down," Cassie said.

"You have a better suggestion?" I demanded.

"Calm down?!" Marco bellowed. "I have Hel-

"No," Marco whimpered, slumping down on a
macrons up my nose! Lunatics! And they want
bale of hay.

me dead! No, I most definitely will not calm

"Ideas?" Jake demanded.

down."

Cassie sighed. "Well . . . we have the Hel-

"I just thought we could think more clearly
macrons' ship. We could power it up with the
without you shouting," Cassie said.

morphing cube, get tiny, and go after the Hel-

"Think about what?" Marco demanded. "We
macrons as humans. That is, assuming the con-
have to get them out! They're armed. They might
trols are still working."

blow an artery or a, a — something else impor-

Nobody said anything for a few beats.

24

25

Considering.

"What information?" Cassie demanded.

Pretending not to glance at Marco.

But Marco had already figured it out. "The

I know Marco. Marco is a get-it-done guy. He

Helmacrons know we're humans with morphing
has the strategic mind of a serious military man
power. From what we've seen, the Helmacrons
and he's never afraid to make unpopular deci-
hate the Yeerks and vice versa. But if the Hel-
sions for the good of the mission. He knew our
macrons learn that Visser Three is looking for a
going after the Helmacrons was the fastest way
group of morphing bandits, and there was some-
to solve the problem. He wasn't going to stand in
thing in it for them, the Helmacrons would sell
the way of the goal.

us out in a minute."

Still, we were talking about invading his body

Jake sighed. "Okay, we go after them. No
in an unbelievably intimate way. He had a right
choice."

to be a jerk about it if he wanted to be.

"Isn't anyone going to ask me what I think?"

"That could work," Jake said tentatively.

Marco demanded, his arms wrapped around his

Nothing from Marco.

belly. "The nose you're talking about happens to

<What could work?> Tobias asked.

belong to me!"

A red-tailed hawk and a northern harrier flut-

Like I said, I know Marco. He'd already ac-
tered into the barn and settled into the rafters.

cepted the plan.

Tobias and Ax.

Jake gave Marco an impatient look. "Well?"

"We were just thinking about using the con-

"Oh, sure," Marco said weakly. "Make your-
trols aboard the Helmacron ship to shrink our-
self at home. Just try to be neat. Think of it as
selves and go after the aliens in Marco's nose,"

the National Nose Land. Keep it in good shape

Jake explained.

for generations to come."

<Yes,> Ax said. <l believe it is the only way.

We have to find the Helmacrons. They have too
much informations

Marco squeaked. "This is so Magic School

Bus. Rachel, have I ever told you that you could
definitely be my Ms. Frizzle?"

I ignored him.

26

27

Cassie went to the freezer and started digging
for the morphing cube. I followed her. Mostly be-
cause the sick look on Marco's face was making
me uneasy.

"Why does your dad keep a freezer out here?"

I asked her.

"We store stuff in it," Cassie said. She handed
me an unidentifiable lump of something. It was
frozen solid, so cold my fingers started to ache.

"Like what?"

"Frozen grubs," Cassie said, leaning back down
into the freezer. "Certain, urn, bodily fluids from
the animals. Oh, and Popsicles. Dad likes grape."

"Sorry I asked." I considered the frozen lump

Ax fluttered down from the rafters.

in my hand. Decided I didn't want to know.

Jake nodded. "Tobias?"

"I figured nobody in their right mind would go

<No problem.>
pawing through this freezer," Cassie said. "Be-

Tobias would keep watch. Let us know if any-
sides, I needed a place where no living creature
one got close enough to the barn to see Ax do his
could accidentally come into contact with the
thing.

cube."

Ax began to change. His sharp raptor head

"I'm with you on that one," I agreed.

ballooned up. His bright yellow harrier eyes mi-

Ax went to work on the Helmacron ship.

grated to the top of his head, turned blue, and

I watched for a while. He used some of the
sprouted stalks.

surgical equipment Cassie's dad kept in the

Total freak show.

barn. Held the precise instruments in his deli-

"Why did the Helmacrons have to show up to-
cate Andalite fingers and carefully manipulated
day?" Marco whined. "I already used my Honey, I
control rods the size of human hairs. Squinting

Shrunk the Animorphs joke the last time they
at the procedure for ten minutes was enough to
were around. I just can't get a break."

give me a headache.

?8

29

My eyes kept drifting to Marco. Still sitting on
outnumber us more than two to one. I say he
the hay, looking miserable. I wandered over to
comes."

him. Sat next to him. Considered giving him a

<Operating the device is not difficulty Ax re-
hug, but couldn't quite bring myself to actually
peated. <l may be more useful up Marco's nose.>
doit.

Marco giggled nervously. "That didn't sound

"You okay?" I asked.

too weird."

"Great. I always wanted to grow up to be a

Jake looked troubled. "Marco, don't you want

Helmacron Holiday Inn."

to have someone here with you?" he asked.

It wasn't funny, but I smiled anyway. "We're

"You mean, in case I collapse?" Marco asked.

going to get them," I told Marco.

"Pass out? Or, to make things crystal clear, drop

An hour later Ax was finished.

dead?"

<This device is very simple to operate,> Ax

Jake rubbed his eyes. "Right," he said wearily.

told us. <The target size has been set. All we

"No." Marco shook his head. "If you don't
have to do is touch this panel and it should en-
mind, I'd rather have the maximum firepower
gage the shrinking ray.>
working to make sure none of those things hap-

I felt wired. Nervous energy. I was anxious to
pen. What's Ax going to do for me here? Hold my
get moving. The Helmacrons had been in Marco's
hand?"

body for over an hour. Plenty of time to do plenty

"We still have the camera to deal with," Jake
of damage.

pointed out.

"Just show me which button to push," Marco

"I'll handle the kid," Marco said. "One homey told Ax eagerly.

shutterbug is nothing compared to a tiny bunch

Jake looked at Marco. "You're going to shrink
of squabbling psychopaths from outer space."

us?"

Jake's expression got serious. "Look, you can't

"Who else?"

take unnecessary risks while this mission is go-

"I thought Ax would do it."

ing on. Don't play hero. Just keep in touch with

"Isn't he going, you know, on the mission?"

Erek or whoever he's got on surveillance."

Marco asked.

<Prince Jake,> Ax said, <l would also strongly

"Well, we know there are at least twelve Hel-
advise Marco not to morph while we are inside
macrons," I said. "Five of us. Even with Ax they his body. As far as I know, this is an unprece-30

31
dented event in the history of morphing technol-

<Simply place your hand on the panel and
ogy. There is no way to predict what the redistrib-
pull down the left rod,> Ax said.

ution of his mass into Z-space and the

"Yeah, I got it," Marco said. "Ready, set —"

substitution of a foreign DNA will do to our minia-

<Make sure it is the left rod,> Ax said. <You
turized bodies.>
do not want to touch the right one.>

Jake pushed his hair off his forehead. "Got

"I got it," Marco said, sounding annoyed.

that, Marco?"

"Ready—"

"Uh, not really. Ax, try English."

FLASH!

"Look," Jake said. "No morphing, under any

A flashbulb brilliance. The light was green
circumstances."

and shockingly bright, like looking into an emer-

"Don't worry," Marco snorted. "The thought
ald sun. Then, with surprising speed, we all
sort of makes me sick."

started to get very small.

"Okay, Ax, you're with us," Jake said. "I'm hoping we won't be gone long. But Marco . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, Erek's phone number is on the
fridge. Listen, is it okay if I help myself to a
snack after the kids go to bed?"

"All of this strategic planning is fun and all,"

I said loudly. "But we're giving the Helmacrons a
big honkin' head start."

"Okay," Jake said. "In the words of my gung-ho cousin, 'Let'sdo it.'"

"We should hold hands," Cassie said. "That
way we won't get separated when we shrink.

Maybe."

The five of us huddled together. I took

Cassie's hand and gently held Tobias's wing. We
watched as Marco hovered over the Helmacron
ship, looking too big and clumsy.

32

33

morph the fly instincts feel that being tiny is nat-
ural.

Being a teeny-weeny human is just plain weird.

I'd started out at five-foot-something. Now I
was roughly the size of an American Girl doll.

And getting tinier rapidly.

We were the Littles. The Borrowers. Thumbe-
lina and friends.

Marco was peering down on us. His face was
the size of a billboard on Times Square. If he'd
been wearing Calvin Klein briefs — and nothing
else — the illusion would have been complete.

Almost.

"Remember, Marco," Jake called. "No mor-

Down.

phing."

Down, and down, and down.

"What did you say?" Marco asked. "Small

We were shrinking. Fast.

people are hard to hear."

The Helmacron ship and the blue box were

"I said, no morphing!" But at that point it
growing larger. Marco was positively enormous.

probably sounded like, "i said, no morphing."

"Hey, Marco," I said. "From this angle, you

"I can't HEAR you!" Marco was starting to
actually look tall."

sound like a cheerleader at one of those televised

"Hey —cool!"

competitions.

"Too bad you can't shrink the whole school," I

"Tell him," Jake said to Ax.

said.

<No morphing!> Ax yelled in thought-speak.

"Ha-ha. And, free this month only, a bonus

"Okay!" Marco boomed. "Your puny lives de-
ha!"

pend on my following orders."

That was when the first wave of fear rippled

Shrinking is something like morphing an in-
through me.

sect. But different, too. When I've been in fly

34

35

Okay, morphing is creepy. But, in a strange
a radio suddenly switched off. But I knew Marco
way, you're in control.

was still talking. I could sense his words as sound

Concentrate hard enough and you can control
waves breaking around me.

the morph, at least to some extent.

Cassie gripped my hand a bit tighter. "What

Concentrate hard enough and even when you
just happened?"

think you're about to take your dying breath, you

<We are too small to hear sounds,> Ax said.

can get your own body back.

"That didn't happen before," Cassie said.

But shrinking . . .

<Right,> Tobias agreed. <When the Helma-

I couldn't undo this on my own.

crons shrunk me and Cassie and Marco, we could

In a very real and spooky way, my life was in
still hear. You couldn't hear us. But we could

Marco's hands.

hear you.>

And, of course, Marco was infested with micro-

Cassie looked at me. "Something's wrong."

scopic lunatics that wanted him — and us — out
of their way.

Now we were flea-sized, and still shrinking.

The workbench loomed overhead like a win-
dowless skyscraper.

The treads on Marco's running shoes were
like enormous purple sculptures.

Down.

Down, and down, and down.

Down until rake marks in the dirt looked like
hills.

Down until bits of hay were huge, felled trees
and grains of dirt were the size of soccer balls.

And we were still shrinking.

Marco's mammoth form was entirely filling
my view. "I just thought of some —"

His voice just blinked out mid-sentence. Like

36

37

Adding to the general creepiness factor was
the fact that my friends weren't talking to me.

I heard Ax say, <No morphing!> Then . . .

nothing.

Nothing for at least a minute.

Then —

<Marco, this is Ax. We have a problem. You
will not be able to hear the others. Just Tobias
and me in thought-speak.>

"But you can hear me, right?"

M a r c o

Another long pause. Then —

<Cassie said I should explain that none of us
can hear you, either.> Ax, of course.

H

"Well, how annoying!" I said. "I mean, how
i, Marco here.

am I supposed to keep up troop morale when no-

You're expecting some sort of glib remark. A
body can even hear my comic genius?"

joke, a witty comment. Well, I wasn't in a Jim

Nothing.

Carrey kind of space.

Oh. Right. They couldn't hear me.

The Helmacrons hadn't exactly charmed me

<You need to pick us up and put us in your
the first time around. Basically, I'd decided they
nose,> Ax said.

were insane. Now they were inside my body.

Sure. Except — big problem: How was I sup-

In there with little unimportant things like my
posed to pick them up without squishing them? I
heart and my lungs.

had to squint just to see them. They were, like,

And my friends.

the size of dandruff flakes.

The truth: I was thinking about scribbling out

I leaned over and stared at the ground. Okay,
a little note. Telling Jake to take my stereo after I
second big problem: I'd lost them. Frantically, I
was gone. Explaining to Dad what really hap-
scanned the dirt and hay. Nothing.

pened to Mom. Telling Rachel about the dream

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

where she begged me to marry her.

I was ticked. We hadn't thought of this. We

38

39
should have arranged for everyone to hop on my

Weird pincers in the front. Scary. Considering how
hand when they got to about an inch high. Be-
panicked Tobias sounded, my friends were some-
cause finding my friends seemed totally impossi-
where near that big, bad beetle.

ble.

I dropped to my knees. At first nothing but

Major feeling of dread.

dirt. Then —

I'd faced death before. Each one of us had

There!

had at least one major close call. But this was

A few too-colorful grains of sand. I tried to
different. This was everyone. As in, I would be
count them. I couldn't smash the beetle if he
the only Animorph left alive. Little me against all
had one of my friends.

the bad guys.

One. Two. Three. Four... Five. Okay. I reached

I felt like puking.

out and snatched up the beetle by a back leg.

Stress.

Flung him toward the freezer.

Or. . . something else? Some strange little

<Thanks,> Tobias said shakily.

aliens marching through my . . . what? Nose?

"You're welcome," I muttered, even though

Lungs? Brain? Doing who knows what kind of
he wouldn't hear me.

damage.

Okay, I could see the colorful specks. But I

No time to freak out.

still had no idea how to pick them up. And I was

Time to find my friends and stick them up my
afraid to look away.

nose.

<Ahhhhhhhhh!> Tobias suddenly screamed
in my head.

My stomach took a lurch.

Definitely stress.

<Marco, now would be an excellent time to
remove us from the floor,> Ax said.

"Fine, fine," I muttered. "Just tell me where you are!"

Of course, they couldn't hear me.

Then I saw it. A black bug with a hard shell.

40

41

"Right," Jake said. "Let's tell him how to pick us up. Er — how should he pick us up?"

"Easy," I said. "We grab a piece of hay. He sticks it up his nose and we're off."

Jake nodded. "That piece there." He pointed
to a piece of hay a few paces away.

Climbing it was easy. At our size the hay
looked rough, like someone had taken a cheese
grater to its sides. I grabbed a couple of hand-

R a c h e l
holds and pulled myself up. No problem.

"I feel like I could take on Schwarzenegger," I
said.

Cassie nodded as she scrambled up beside
me. "Something about being small makes you

O
ur little vacation in the hay forest was nice
stronger." We noticed it before. "Like ants lifting but I was ready to leave. Especially after the bee-a thousand times their weight."

tle episode.

Once we were all aboard, Ax told Marco to

We could see Marco hovering overhead. His
pick up the hay. Two fingers the size of sequoia
face was an entire landscape. Nose mountain.

trunks lowered, pinched, and lifted.

Cheek plains.

"Ahhhhh!" Cassie screamed.

He was a giant.

"Ahhhhh!" I yelled.

"Why doesn't he pick us up?" Cassie asked.

We were being blasted into space! The G-force

Marco wasn't doing anything except staring
knocked me on my butt. I just managed to hang on.

at us.

The wind was whipping. I could barely breath. I saw

"Maybe he's waiting for Jake to tell him what
something flash by. Could have been Marco's knee.

to do," I said nastily. Tiny is definitely not my

<Slow down!> Tobias shouted.

thing.

The wind died down. The landscape beneath

Ax looked at Jake. <Prince Jake, it is possible
us shifted from jeans-color to T-shirt-color to chin-

Marco is afraid of hurting us.>
color.

42

43

"Fantastic Voyage," I said. "The voyage in-pressing myself into Marco's skin. Gave me a
side Marco."

massive case of the heebie-jeebies.

"You know," Jake said thoughtfully. "I think

<That was an old sci-fi movie. This is a horror this is the most disgusting mission we've ever
flick.> Tobias said.

done. Something about being inside Marco

We passed into shadow.

makes me feel like a Yeerk."

Apparently into — can I just say EWWW —

"Check it out," Cassie whispered. "You can

Marco's nose.

feel Marco's breath. In —"

When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw

A cool breeze blew up from the opening be-
a widely spaced forest of rough, textured black
low us.

hairs, sprouting out of what looked like a waxy,

"And out —"

pink granite wall. The hairs were sapling-sized,

Now a warmer moist breeze blew in the oppo-
long, criss-crossing high overhead. A shifting in-
site direction.

termittent wind tossed them.

I clung, staring up. The wall arched over my

"Okay, everybody off," Jake said. He reached
head at a forty-five-degree angle. I couldn't see
for a nearby hair.

the end of the overhang, but it went way, way up,

Tobias fluttered above my head.

disappearing into darkness.

<Prince Jake, I should morph first,> Ax said.

There was no sign of the Helmacrons. No

<l think my hooves will slow me down in this
footprints to tell us which way to go.

"terrain.">

"Now what?" I asked.

"Do it."

"Climb?" Cassie suggested.

I reached out for a hair and pulled myself onto

I watched as Ax completed his morph to north-
it. The hair sagged under my weight. Below . . .

ern harrier. As his stalk eyes withered and vanished.

the void. I could see a bright oval spot of light. I

SLURP! His tail violently disappeared into his
was looking straight out of Marco's nostril. The
body like an electric cord into a vacuum. Tail
ground was miles and miles away. I quickly
feathers shot out.

scrambled toward the overhang.

"Let's all get wings," I suggested. "Flying will Ugh. The wall was oddly warm. Body temper-be easier than trying to rock climb."

ature. There was something really weird about

44

45

Hanging onto delicate nose hairs and the

<The Helmacrons look kind of. . . big,> To-
slick wall, we morphed. Tricky, but I felt much,
bias said.

much better as a bald eagle. Touching Marco's

Kind of big. As in — enormous. Huge. Gar-
insides was wigging me out.

gantuan. They were the size of giraffes. No —

Morphs complete, we put our backs to
bigger. Twice as big. As big as air traffic control

Marco's nostril and flew. A red-tailed hawk, a per-
towers. I could morph elephant and still only
egrine falcon, a northern harrier, a bald eagle, an
come up to their calves.

owl.

Another thing. These were some seriously

On and on. Like flying into a cave. Darker and
ugly aliens. Heads: wide and perfectly flat on
darker the deeper we got.

top. Eyes rolled around up there like big green

Flying was easier than climbing, but it was
marbles. Faces: upside-down pyramids. Chins:

still hard work. Each time Marco exhaled, we lost
barbed. Teeth gnashed in from either side of
ground. A bald eagle can hover for hours on a
their mouths. And an extra set of legs made them
nice updraft. But there were no updrafts here.

look like walking tables.

Soon I was exhausted from flapping my wings, up

<They appear to be exactly a hundred times
and down.

our size,> Ax said calmly.

Before long, a flat plain opened up beneath

<How?> Jake wondered.

us. My raptor ears started to pick up sounds.

<lt is possible — perhaps I made a miscalcu-

<Helmacrons,> Tobias said. <Farther in.>
lation when I calibrated the shrinking device.>

They sounded angry. As if they were arguing.

Ax? Make a simple mathematical error? No.

Finally, I could make out their forms.

<More likely, the Helmacrons guessed we'd

<Do you guys see what I see?> I asked.

try to use the shrinking ray,> I said.

<The Helmacrons,> Jake said.

<Guessed — and sabotaged it before they

<Yes, but —> I hesitated, uncertain. Bald ea-
bailed out of their ship,> Jake said.

gles see well during the day. They can spot a

<The little stinkers,> Cassie said.

salmon swimming upstream from a mile up. But
it was dark now, and I was practically blind. <lsn't
something wrong?>

46

47

around a fire. Only there was a Helmacron where
the fire belonged.

<Consulting a map?> Cassie suggested.

<Making dinner reservations?>

<Quiet down, guys!> Jake ordered. <l can't
hearthem!>

<Why must we delay our glorious mission?>
one of the Helmacrons demanded of the others.

<A warrior who is stuck and cannot move dies a
hero! Should we deprive her of a valiant death?>

I heard what sounded like the rattle of swords.

<March on! March on!> several Helmacron voices
chanted.

O Great One, Most Courageous of all Leaders, we

<l care not for our goo-encrusted knight!> an-
have bravely marched into a breathing hole of the gi-
other voice said. <But we know not what lies
ant alien! Triumph was within our grasp until one of
ahead. Perhaps the muck extends through the
the treasonable females wallowed into a sticky body
entire alien!>
excretion! But we, the noble knights of Helmacron,
shall overcome this hardship and find the strength

<Excuse me,> Jake said. <But what?>
to silence the giant forever!

<Goo and muck,> Tobias said. <What little
boys are made of .>

— From the log of the Helmacron Males

<Coward!> one of the Helmacrons shouted.

<Fool!>said the other.

More rattling of swords. I was beginning to

Ihe Helmacrons didn't seem to notice us as
think the Helmacrons were going to take each
we flapped overhead. They were absorbed in
other out and save us a lot of trouble.

themselves. As usual.

Which kind of annoyed me. I mean, I was big-

<What are they doing?> Tobias said. The Hel-
time bugged with the Helmacrons for double-
macrons were standing in a circle like Boy Scouts
crossing us. It was their fault I was no bigger than

48

49
a gnat. I wanted revenge! I wanted to launch an

It happened suddenly. Gusts of cool, incom-
attack before there was no one left to attack.

ing wind. In a totally different rhythm than be-

<Eavesdropping is rude
fore.

(> I said. <Let's figure
out how we're going to capture them.>

With my excellent eagle hearing I heard a dis-

<l think I've got it!> Cassie said.

tant roar. My eagle brain panicked. Wanted to fly.

<Great!> Jake said. Then, <What?>

Wanted out of the way of whatever was coming.

<The human nose is lined with mucus,>

Louder!

Cassie said. <Mucus traps dust that floats into

Now the Helmacrons had noticed.

the nose. Marco's mucus must have trapped one

They were all shouting at once.

of the Helmacrons!>

<This sudden storm will not defeat the mighty
warriors of the Helmacron empire, just rulers of

I don't know why she sounded so happy. This
the universe!>
whole thing was just so far beyond gross.

LOUDER!

<Most animals with lungs have mucus,> Ax

The human part of me felt a bit jittery, too. The
said loudly. You wouldn't expect it, but trying to
sound was like a freight train closing in on us.

hear thought-speak over the huge debating Hel-

<Get in the snot!> Jake yelled.

macrons and the wind was becoming difficult.

<What? No way!>

<Andalites have it, t o o

Jake was already flapping toward the deepest

<lsn't that special?> I said. <Guys, could you
pool. <Do it. Now!> he hollered.

focus here? We need to talk attack.>

I flew. But it was practically impossible to

<Look. It's everywhere,> Tobias pointed out.

make progress in the rushing wind. Like flying

He was right. Now that I focused my dim eye-
into the eye of a hurricane. I used all of my
sight on the walls and floors and ceilings ahead
strength, pressed my wing muscles to the bone-
of us, I could see the snot. Oozing. Dripping.

popping point.

Pooling. Collecting like wax under a candle. Must

THUMP! And landed in a snot puddle. Stuck.

not have been as thick as wax, though. The wind

THUMP! Tobias came in for a wet landing on
was blowing up whitecaps on the surface of the
my right. Stuck.

pools.

THUMP! Cassie, farther up on the wall.

Whitecaps?

<Hey — why is it getting so windy?> I shouted.

THUMP! Ax.

50

51

The wind hit me like a brick wall. Knocked
me off my talons. I landed beak-first in the sticky
sea and then started to slide toward Marco's nos-
tril.

Tobias grabbed my talon with his beak.

I stopped just in time for me to see something
tumbling toward us. Something big.

A Helmacron!

He, she, it — whatever — was bouncing head

M a r c o
over foot like a tumbleweed.

<l shall return!> the Helmacron shouted as
the wind tossed him/her into somersaults. <l
shall return to force your surrender, vile air-
breathing aliens!>

I stood in Cassie's barn holding a piece of

Then he/she was gone.

hay up my nose for about five minutes. Naturally,

And so was the wind.

I felt like a complete idiot. As soon as Ax said it
was okay to lose the hay, I dropped it, hid the

Helmacron ship, and hauled butt out of there.

I'd ridden my bike over to Cassie's earlier, so I
grabbed it and started to pedal toward home.

The weather was depressing, gray and over-
cast and misty. I knew I should probably just go
home and hang out in my room. Wait for a mes-
sage from Ax or Tobias. Mission accomplished.

We're heading out.

If Jake and the others didn't show up by din-
nertime, I'd slip out and contact the Chee. Check

52

53 g
on the camera situation. Arrange for some of them
what I wanted. Burglars do it all the time. How
to play my friends while my friends were . . . away.

hard could it be?

I felt strangely abandoned. Weird when you

I dropped my bike against the wall of an adja-
consider three people, a Bird-boy, an Andalite,
cent building, crumbling and abandoned. Spoke
and a bunch of Helmacrons were holding a con-
quietly to the filthy homeless man — a Chee —
vention in my sinuses.

who was watching the front door of the building.

I peddled on. My mind wandered.

Made my way around to the back.

Have you ever seen Fantastic Voyage?

The kid's apartment building was kind of seedy.

Dad and I caught it on the late-night movie

Peeling paint on the door. Dirty windows. Graffiti.

once. Raquel Welch. Very hot. Anyway, in the

Nobody lived in that part of town because they
flick this team travels into the bloodstream of
wanted to. I knew that firsthand.

some old dude. The doctors have him knocked

Maybe the kid was just a kid. Some bored guy
out on drugs and lying perfectly still. Supposedly
who wanted to be a photographer. Well, if that
to make Raquel and her posse safer.

was true it was time someone taught him to stay
out of alleyways late at night.

Maybe, I thought, / should go home and lie

The fire escape descended into an abandoned
perfectly still.

lot full of broken concrete, weeds, and blowing

On the other hand, I thought, if I'm going to trash. A chain-link fence surrounded the lot, but
kick, I don't want to go staring at the ceiling of
someone had knocked down one of the poles.

my bedroom.

Maybe hit it with a car. Anyway, the fence was

I changed directions. Headed toward the in-
sagging. I walked right over it and stood staring
dustrial outskirts of town, toward the photogra-
up at the building.

pher kid's apartment. I had no idea how I was

I kept expecting someone to ask what I was
going to get the film. I couldn't morph. Jake and
doing. To challenge me. But the whole block

Ax had made that perfectly clear. No unneces-
was deserted. Deserted at 11:00 on a Saturday
sary risks. But I had promised Jake I'd keep tabs
morning. The windows on the next building were
on the kid.

bricked over.

I decided a direct approach would be best.

I picked my way over the crumbling concrete

Nothing was stopping me from climbing the fire
to the fire escape. It had a handle, maybe four
escape, crawling in the kid's window, and taking

54

55
metal ladder with an even wobblier railing. I put
feet above my head. I jumped up six or seven
my foot on the bottom rung and started to climb.

times. Finally caught it. Pulled it down.

Jake had said the kid lived on the fifth floor. I

CLAN Kcl ickCLAN KCLAN KCLAN K!

went up, passing a bedroom on each floor.

The rusty fire escape made an incredible noise

Floor one: bare futon on the floor. Floor two:

as it unfolded toward the ground. Okay, maybe
empty. Floor three: flickering TV, empty beer
breaking and entering in broad daylight wasn't
cans. Floor four: stacks and stacks of books.

the brightest idea.

Floor five —

I got ready to run. Thought I saw a curtain on

The room was furnished with a metal frame
the third floor move. But nobody stuck a head out
bed. Tossed sheets. A desk. Empty bag of sour-
a window. Nobody yelled.

cream-and-onion chips. Some notebooks and

Maybe they thought I was the fire escape re-
pens. And . . . a disposable camera.

pairman.

Bingo.

Yeah, right.

The window itself was cracked, the frame splin-
tered. I easily hauled the window open with one

For a moment I considered abandoning this
hand. Stopped. Listened. All was quiet. Bent my
plan. Going home and sitting tight.

head, stepped through, lowered myself into the

I was worried about more than just the local
room. Then —
tenement rent-a-cop. The kid could be a Con-

Click, click, click, click, click.

troller. This could be a trap. Yeerks could be

A sound that was all too familiar. The sound
watching from the roof, or from the abandoned
of Euclid, my stepmom's annoying poodle, trying
gas station across the street. Waiting for the An-
to run on linoleum. The door to the hallway was
dalite bandits to make a move for the camera.

open. I lunged for it.

I was also worried about police, the ones that

"ARF! ARF! AR FAR FAR FAR F!"

weren't Controllers. They don't exactly encourage

CLICKETY CLICKETY CLICKETY CLICKETY!

breaking and entering. Get caught, and I'd be do-

This didn't sound like a poodle.

ing time in juvie hall.

Okay. I've been a dog. They are basically happy

On the bright side, I might be dead before
animals. Anxious to make friends. Even the an-
anyone could actually catch me.

noying ones like Euclid.

And, like Rachel, sitting tight is not my thing.

Unfolded, the fire escape was a wobbly black

57

56

"Nice doggie," I said shakily.

Picked it up with the hand that wasn't be-

Just then Fido poked his head into the room.

ing eaten. Whacked Fido across his haunches.

He was short and stocky. All shoulders, head, neck.

Just hard enough to get his attention — not

Small eyes. Evil, laughing mouth set with a row of
enough to really hurt him. Okay, so I'd broken
serious teeth. Every one of which was on display.

into his home but he didn't have to amputate my

A pit bull.

arm.

An angry pit bull.

"Arrrr " Fido growled quietly, released,

"Rrrrrrr," he growled low. A string of drool
and dropped.

spilled out of his mouth.

I held up my mangled arm.

Too far to make a dive for the camera, so . . .

Fido backed off about two feet, watching me

Morph! But I couldn't. Couldn't without the
hungrily.

possibility of hurting my friends. Not happening.

A neat semicircle of puncture holes marked

That left one choice: Run.

my wrist. A little blood dripped toward my el-

I started to back toward the window.

bow. Bat under my injured arm, I grabbed an

Fido lunged. Jumped.

old T-shirt off the bed. Wrapped it around my

"Ahhhhh!" I screamed.

wrist.

Snarling, snapping teeth — an inch from my

Crap. Yeah, I could morph and demorph to heal
nose! I heard Fido's teeth clank together. Smelted
the injury — except for the fact that I couldn't!

his hot doggy breath.

Wasn't allowed to. But the pain was pretty intense.

I put up a hand. "Get away, Cujo!"

Fido hunkered down and growled low.

Fido sank his teeth into my wrist. He shook his

Nobody had come running. The apartment
head, sending incredible waves of pain up my arm.

must have been empty. Unless Fido's owners

"Get off! Get off!"

were off somewhere calling the police.

Fido shook again.

I backed toward the window, still gripping the

"Ahhhhhh!" I screamed.

bat. No time to reach for the camera. I had just

A baseball bat was leaning against a wall. A
climbed out when the sirens started. I pounded

Louisville slugger. I slid toward it, Fido hanging
down the slippery rungs of the fire escape, feel-
from my arm like a very ugly charm bracelet.

ing light-headed.

58

59

How did burglars do this? I wondered ab-
sently.

I was running across the empty lot when I felt
something tickling my nose. I put up my good
hand and brought it away bloody.

R a c h e l

We pulled ourselves out of the snot.

My right wing was throbbing, hanging loose
and broken. I was missing handfuls of feathers.

Tobias hadn't been seriously injured. But Jake's
beak was broken, Cassie's neck was twisted at an
unnatural angle, and Ax was missing half his
feathers. We started to morph back to our own
bodies.

The Helmacrons were only a few yards away,
shouting and screaming like maniacs. They didn't
seem too worried about their sneezed-out friend.

<This mission may be more difficult than we
thought,> Ax suggested. <We should try to deal
with the Helmacrons as quickly as possibles

<Do you think?> I snapped.

60

61

<How exactly can we deal with them?> Jake

<So, we can assume Helmacrons need bright
asked. <They're bigger than us.>
light to see,> Ax said. <Or, at least, that they do

<A hundred times bigger,> Cassie added.

not like the dark.>

<We have the element of surprises I said.

Jake made the call: half battle morphs, half

My lips softened as my yellow eagle beak
creatures that see well at night.

turned into human lips. Talons turned into fin-

We morphed.

gers. I felt a distant itching as my feathers flat-

SPROOOT!

tened out, and the patterns they made on my

Big leathery ears popped from the side of my
skin faded like a bad bruise. I was getting bigger,
head.

much bigger. Five of me would have been a

SPRONG!

whole millimeter long.

My nose stretched until it was longer than my

My broken wing snapped as it twisted and
entire body had been. About a whole half a mil-
started to grow into a human arm. My insides
limeter. My legs grew massive. Two teeth twisted
sloshed and gurgled and turned back into human
and grew into curved tusks.

heart, kidney, liver, lungs.

I was at least three times taller than I had

Suddenly, it was as if someone had turned
been.

out the lights. My bird-of-prey vision blinked

A hundred and fifty times heavier.

out.

To the Helmacrons, I was a kitty-sized ele-

"Hey," I said. "It's really dark in here."

phant. Ax, in his own Andalite body, was smaller

<That may be —> Cassie's thought-speech
still. Tobias was a Hork-Bajir at Helmacron mouse
stopped as her head became more human than
scale. Jake and Cassie were fly-sized owls.

bird. "Another advantage," she continued. "We

<Maybe we should try to channel the Helma-
can morph animals that see well in the dark."

cron personality,> Tobias suggested. <They aren't

<How do we know Helmacrons don't see well
afraid of being small.>
in the dark?> Tobias asked.

<Maybe they think small is scary,> Cassie

"We don't," Jake said grimly.

said.

"I think I do," Cassie said. "Marco and I were

<Then they're going to be terrified of us.>
inside a Helmacron ship. It was very brightly lit."

<Now what?>

62

63

<Let's try to reason with them first,> Jake said.

<Respect us,> Jake bellowed, <or we will tell

<Oh, yeah.> I laughed. <That will work.>
our friend to bring the wind!>

<We don't want them shooting Dracon beams

The Helmacrons started laughing or cheering
if we can avoid it,> Jake said. <And Tobias,
or whatever that "Neep neeping" was.

watch those blades.>

One of them took the flat of his sword and

We marched forward until we were standing
knocked me off my feet.

right beneath the Helmacrons. They paid us zero

"Neep! Neep! Neep!"

Now, I was getting angry. Really angry.

attention.

<Jake, this negotiation is going nowhere,> To-

Jake addressed them. <Surrender now! Sur-
bias said.

render, and we'll let you live as our defiled beasts

<Okay, go for it,> Jake said. <Minimal dam-
of burden. Resist us and — and we'll sneeze in
age to Marco, please!>
your general direction^

<Neep this!>

<Very original,> Tobias whispered.

I stumbled to my feet. Ran forward.

<You call that reasoning?>

So did Tobias and Ax.

<Reasoning Helmacron-style,> Jake explained.

An ugly black Helmacron boot was right in

<What are they doing?> I asked, elephant
front of us. Ax slashed at it with his tail. Tobias
eyes useless in the dim light.

carved with his wrist and knee blades. I stood

<Looking for us,> Jake reported. <Uh-oh. One
right on top of the boot.

of them spotted Rachel. He's pointing his sword

No reaction.

at her.>

<Hah-HAH! You think to crush the toe of a

"Neep! Neep! Neep!" the Helmacrons cheered.

brave Helmacron warrior?> the foot's owner hol-

<What's that?> I demanded.

Cassie sighed. <l'm pretty sure they're cheer-
lered in my head. <Your weight is not enough to
bruise the hilna of a mighty Helmacron!>
ing.>

<Hah-HAH!> one of the Helmacrons crowed.

I had no clue what a hilna was. But I wanted
to pulverize some!

<The insipid aliens fell into our crafty trap! Now

I stepped off the boot. Then rammed my tusks
they are the ones lacking great size. Victory is be-
straight into it. The Helmacron didn't flinch. He
fore us!>
didn't bleed. He was, however, annoyed.

Congratulations,> I said.

64

65

<| will annihilate you, human!> He drew his

Dracon beam. His very, very large Dracon beam.

<Uh-oh!> Jake said.

Tseeew!

I dodged.

The beam barely missed me.

Hit the ground.

And then something awful started to happen.

Blood began oozing up under my elephant feet.

Marco was bleeding.

< S t o p ! > Jake yelled. <Desist or you will be blown to your doom!>

<Hah-HAH! Helmacrons never surrender! Give
us the power source and we will spare your lives.

Refuse and we will stop the heart of your com-
rade!>

<What will that get you?> I demanded. <lf
you make us mad, you'll never get the blue box.>

<The human in the morph with the elongated
nose tries to bluff! She is obviously unaware of
our superior intelligence. Perhaps we shall de-
stroy her next!>

<Can they really stop Marco's heart?> Jake
asked Ax in private thought-speak that included
us and not the Helmacrons.

67

66

<0f course. A few well-timed blasts from their

<This time you bend before the majesty of the

Dracon beams could interrupt the heart's rhythm

Helmacron superiority! Now you will grovel be-
fore your new masters.>
and stop it.>

<That's right, we're bending,> Jake said. <Now

<From here?>
let's go.>

<No,> Ax said. <They would have to be closer

<Half of us will follow you out of this body,>
to the heart.>
the Helmacron said. <The other half will stay to

<How are they going to —>
guard the hostage and assure that you do not re-

<Prince Jake,> Ax interrupted. <Perhaps we
nege on your end of the bargain.>
should offer them what they want.>

<No deal,> Jake said. <AII of you come with

<We can't give them the blue box!> I said.

us or we don't play.>

<l agree,> Ax said. <Andalite technology would

<You think us fools?> The Helmacron sounded
be particularly dangerous in the hands of these
miffed. As if we'd insulted her — his? — intelli-
beings. However, I am suggesting we deploy Hel-
gence. <The time for debate is finished! The time
macron tactics. What you humans call a double
for action is upon us. Brave Helmacron females,
cross.>
follow metoglory!>

Ax, suggesting something underhanded? That

With a clanging of swords, the biggest, nastiest-
made me nervous. Andalites are big on honor
looking Helmacrons began to run away from us.

and honesty. If Ax was suggesting subterfuge,

Well, not away from us, but in the direction we
the situation was even worse than it appeared.

weren't.

<What's your idea, Ax?> Jake asked.

<Would these jackanapes outrun us to vic-

<Tell them we will give them the blue box,>
tory?> came another Helmacron voice. Coura-

Ax said. <Get them out of Marco's body. Then do
geous Helmacron males, follow me!>
not give them the box.>

More clanging. More running. The smaller,

<As simple as that?>
gentler-looking males took off after the females.

<Yes.>

<Stop them!> Jake hollered from overhead.

<Okay, you win!> Jake told the Helmacrons.

<They're heading for some sort of precipice.>

<We'll give you the box. Let's go get it.>

I ran.

The Helmacrons' marble eyes began to roll

Tried to wrap my trunk around a Helmacron's
around madly. <Hah-HAH!> one of them exulted.

68

69

leg and hold him back. But it was like a bunny
trying to stop an eighteen-wheeler.

Not happening.

<Rachel! Let go!> Cassie hollered. <They're
going to drag you over!>

Over. . . what?

I let go.

Too late!

One of my massive front legs tipped into an
abyss. Momentum dragged my other front leg
over. I slipped. Fell.

<Aggggghhhhhh!>

I tumbled wildly.

Down, down, down into absolute darkness.

<Aaaaahhhhhhhh!> I yelled.

Flipping trunk to tail. Over and over. Couldn't
sense the bottom. Couldn't sense the shape of
the tunnel through which I fell.

<Rachel, it's okay!> Cassie's voice in my head.

<You're falling down Marco's esophagus — >

<Oh, gross !>

<You should hit in a few seconds,> Cassie
continued. <Don't panic, we're coming after you.>

Above, beneath, beyond Cassie's voice — a
deep, resonating —

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

The slow rhythm vibrated through me the way
the bass guitar does at a loud concert. Discon-

71

70
certing. At the same time, something about the

I needed air now!

rhythm was comforting, like the hum of the

I tried to see above me. Too dark!

fridge in a darkened kitchen.

Air. . .

Also . . . I smelled something. Something that

I needed air. . .

wasn't pleasant. Something sour. Like rotting

And then, through the panic, like a vision, came
food. No, not exactly. More like —
an image from the Discovery Channel. An ele-
phant . . . swimming.

Puke!

I let the elephant brain bubble up. My massive

Oh, man. What else would be in your stom-
legs kicked. Slowly, I started to rise, I reached my
ach? Half-digested food mixed with some sort of
trunk high, up toward where I thought the air
stomach juice. I didn't even like thinking about
should be.

the stuff much less —

Yes!

KER-PLASH!

I broke the surface. Sucked air in through my

I went under!

trunk, filling my lungs. Ahhh . . .

Submerged into a pitch-black sea.

Rotten, stinking air. Glorious.

My elephant body started to sink. And then I

Whoever says TV isn't worthwhile isn't watch-
realized the fluid surrounding me was strangely
ing the right shows.

hot. My leathery skin began to itch. To burn!

I looked around, dazed and disoriented. My

Air!

weak elephant eyes more useless than before.

I flailed my big back legs. Rose higher.

But the sounds! Overwhelming sounds. Slosh-

I hit something soft with my head. Something
ing. Bubbling. Far away, that low thump thump.

that gave under the impact and sprang back.

Also — voices!

The side of Marco's stomach? Or the top?

<Look! One of the aliens has followed us!>

My lungs were burning!

Tseeew!

Was there air inside a stomach? Good ques-

I jerked sideways.

tion. And not one I had an answer to. I had to

The Dracon beam shot went wide.

find the opening I'd fallen through! Somehow get

The Helmacrons!

back up . . .

The beam had lit up the air pocket long enough

Morph! I told myself.

for me to see I was sharing the cavernous space

No time!

72

73
with eight or ten of them. They were huddled to-
first time I'd been nearly digested. But that's an-
gether, way off to my left side. To me in my sub-
other story.

miniature state, they seemed about half a mile

<Cassie!> I roared. <Where are you guys?>
away.

<We're coming!> Cassie replied.

More media imagery. Now it was the drowning

<What's taking so long?> I asked.

scene in Titanic. Only instead of Leonardo DiCaprio

<We had to morph.>
and Kate Winslet, this nightmare flick starred a

<What's the big hurry?> Jake asked.

pachyderm and a handful of marble-eyed aliens.

<0h, no hurry. It's just that Marco is digesting

Tseeew!

me!> I shouted.

That wild shot let me see that though the Hel-

<Does it hurt?> Cassie asked.

macrons' legs were submerged, the rest of their

<Remember in Batman when the Joker
bodies bobbed above the liquid. Treading water
dropped his enemies into a vat of acid?>
or floating? Couldn't tell. Couldn't see any effort

Jake: <I'll take that as a yes.>
to stay afloat.

I could, however, hear them arguing.

<We must blast through the left wall! That is
the path to true glory!>

<lmbecile! Do you think us morons? Only the
right wall can feel the sting of the Helmacrons'

wrath !>

Tseeew!

Missed.

Tseeew!

Missed.

The Helmacrons' aim was way off.

But I almost didn't care because the pain in
my skin was intensifying. Hundreds, thousands
of raw nerve endings were screaming madly. The
ironic part about all this was that it wasn't the

74

75

Tseeew!

Tseeew!

<And the Helmacrons.>

<Hey, that was close!> Cassie complained.

<We've got to figure out a way to take the Hel-
macrons' toys away.>

<What can you see?> I demanded.

<There's only one way out,> Cassie reported.

<We're going to have to go back up the esopha-
gus. You too, Rachel.>

Great. That meant I had to morph a bird or bat.

That meant passing through my human form —
and hoping I wasn't burned alive in the process.

Most Omnipotent Leader! Catastrophe has stucK

I braced myself for a new phase of pain.

our ranks! The alien is full of bizarre lightless cav-

<Okay, I'm going to morph out.>
erns and caustic fluids! Two of the weaker males

<Rachel, try to do it as fast as you can,> To-
have succumbed! But even though some of us are
bias said in private thought-speak.

blinded, we are the boldest of the bold! We will march

I began to shrink. My trunk collapsed into my
forward to the beating organ, stop it, and embark on
face with shocking, slamming force. I fought to
our plan to conquer the universe!

keep my half-formed nose and mouth up in the air.

— From the log of the Helmacron Females

Vaguely, I was aware of the sound of Dracon
beam blasts and my friends' thought-speak voices.

I tried to focus on them. Anything to distract me

I couldn't see my friends by the time they ar-
from the blistering agony.

rived. The acid had splashed into my eyes, eaten

<Prince Jake, I believe we have a problem,>
away at the vulnerable eyeball, painfully blinding

Ax was saying. <l'm not sure we can go back the
me. But I heard a clumsy flap, flap way overhead.

way we came. Some sort of circular muscle has

Wings. Bat wings. The perfect morph for "see-
closed off the passageway.>
ing" in the dark.

<A sphincter!> Cassie, of course.

<Stay away from the acid!> I shouted to them.

77

76

<So, we'll tell Marco to open it,> Jake said.

Tseeew!

<Think again. That muscle keeps food from

Through the incredible pain seeped anger. I
traveling up the esophagus. It's involuntary. Like
was starting to get incredibly ticked off. Marco
breathing. Marco can't control it.>
slowly digesting me, Helmacrons shooting at me.

<We're trapped?> Jake said.

No way was I dying here, like a piece of bacon in

<Trapped above a sloshing pool of acid,>
a frying pan. And that meant I couldn't pass out.

Had to morph.

Cassie confirmed.

Bat, bat, bat, I thought.

<Something else,> Tobias said. <A couple of

<Go, Rachel!> Jake called.

the Helmacrons aren't moving.>

Then —

<Dead?> Jake asked.

Tseeew!

<Digested.>

"Agggghhhh!" I yelled.

My leathery hide had smoothed, softened into
human skin. Was I fully human? Must have been,
because an intense agony hit me, made me gasp
and swoon.

My skin was burning! And it felt like I was be-
ing rubbed with red-hot sandpaper. Eaten away
by flame and acid. Tightening, as if it were shrink-
ing away from the bone, shriveling into ash.

I gritted my teeth. Morph! I ordered myself. But my brain was foggy with pain. I couldn't. . . concentrate. I was nauseous and sweaty and my
heart was beating way too fast.

<Keep going, Rachel!> Cassie cried some-
where far, far away.

<l hear the humans over there!> one of the

Helmacrons shouted.

Tseeew!

78

79

<Aaaaahhhhh!> Ax yelled.

"What is going on?> I asked foggily. But I
could see. They were demorphing. Cassie quickly.

The other three more slowly.

<Don't — > Cassie yelled as her human lips
and teeth began to form. "Morph!"

"What!" I screamed wildly, kicking to keep my
face above the acid, desperately chanting Bat,
bat, bat in my head. "My skin is bubbling off!"

"Give me a second," Cassie grunted in a
strange, pain-filled voice. "Then, climb on my
back."

Cassie was growing. In the weird red half-
light, it looked as if a rock were rising out of the
churning liquid. And then the rock was twice my

<Agggghhhh!> Jake yelled.

size. Then double that. Bigger and bigger.

KER-SPLASH!

Cassie was going humpback whale.

<Watch out, they're shooting at us!> Cassie

Our own personal aircraft carrier appearing
shouted.

out of the sea. Maybe not impervious to the acid,

Tseeew!

but tougher-skinned than a human.

<l have been hit!> Ax.

Now fully human, Jake crawled onto Cassie's

KER-SPLASH!

still growing back. Then he leaned down and

Tseeew!

pulled me up, my raw skin screaming at his

<Cassie, watch out!> Tobias called.

touch. I lay back, gasping. Tobias was back in

KER-SPLASH!

hawk form. He took to the air, hovering over us.

Tseeew!

Ax's hooves and weak Andalite arms weren't

KER-SPLASH!

much use on the slippery back of the whale, so

<Aaaaahhhhh!> Cassie yelled.

Jake held on to him.

<Aaaaahhhhh!> Jake yelled.

<l am beginning to think this mission was fool-

<Aaaaahhhhh!> Tobias yelled.

80

81

<Capture the Helmacrons and leave,> Tobias
ish,> Ax said, glancing with stalk eyes at the
stated, coming to land on the whale.

patch of burned fur on his hindquarters. <Marco's

"Great," Jake said. "How?"

body seems to be doing an excellent job of de-

<Attack,> I said.

fending itself .>

"Attack with what?" Jake asked. "We tried.

<Against us,> Cassie said.

They're armed. We're not."

"Two more of the Helmacrons are dead?"

<Morph shark?> Ax suggested.

I asked, lips and teeth and tongue about the

"Could work."

only part of me not fried. "And excuse me while

<Look out.> Tobias. <The Helmacrons are up

I try to morph and demorph to get whole," I
to something.>
added.

I squinted into the gloom. All I could see was

"Yeah," Jake answered, still panting. "Two
a bright glow, like a welder's flame. Time to de-
more down."

morph, get some better eyesight.

"Arrivederci and good-bye," I said bitterly.

Tobias took off again, disappearing into the

And then the changes began. Didn't matter what
black. A moment later, he was back. <Looks like

I became. So I chose grizzly. Just to feel like I
they're trying to blast through the cavern with a
hadn't been totally defeated.

Dracon beam.>

<Well, not dead, exactly,> Ax said now. <Re-

<You mean, blast through Marco's stomach,>
member, Visser Three told us the Helmacrons are

Cassie said.

fungible. Kill one, and his mind is absorbed by

<What's on the other side of the stomach lin-
the rest of the species.>
ing?> I asked, balancing precariously on her big,

<Whatever,> Jake said. <The good thing is
curved back through the demorph. <Where do
they're not shooting at us.>
they think they're going?>

<Should be —> Cassie hesitated. <Um. A

Tseeew!

blood vessel?>

Tseeew!

"Good." Jake sounded relieved. "Then we have

<Ouch!> Cassie said. <The bad thing is that
nothing to worry about. The Helmacrons wouldn't
you're wrong. And that I'm an awfully big tar-
go into a blood vessel. They're not fish. They'd
gets
drown."

<We've got to get out of here,> I said. Briefly
bear and a little less horrified. <What's the plan?> 82

83

<So they're stuck.> Tobias.

Tseeew!

"Stuck unless we ask Marco to throw up," I

<Agggghhhh!> Cassie shouted. <My eye!>
said, gingerly running whole fingers up an intact

"Stop shooting!" Jake shouted at the Hel-
macrons. "We can get you out of here. Surrender
arm.

now before any more of you die!"

Jake nodded. "Which means we'd be vomit,

<Brave and worthy Helmacrons do not surren-
too. Maybe they'll surrender once they realize
der^ one of them yelled. <lt is you who must ca-
they're cornered."

pitulate to us! Grovel, humans!>

<Surrender is better than drowning or frying.>

"Why?" Jake asked. "Without our help, you'll

<Hang on!> Tobias shouted. <One just went
never get out of this stomach alive. If you refuse
into the blood vessel!>
to cooperate, you're going to die here."

"What? No way!" Jake exclaimed.

"Neep! Neep! Neep!" <We will be victori-

"We need to be closer!" I yelled.

ous^ one of them shouted. <And when we rule

Cassie powered her tail and flippers. The rest of
the universe, we will not spare your lives! Not
us held on, fingers and talons anxiously gripping.

even so you may scrape our boots!>

The Helmacrons were gathered around a long

The Helmacron stepped forward. He pulled
slice in Marco's stomach. The slice had closed,
apart the slice in Marco's stomach. Began to wig-
the way a cut automatically does. But I could
gle in through the flaps of skin. Then —
half-see the skin oozing a red liquid.

SLLLLLUUUSSSH!

Blood.

With an awful sucking sound, he disappeared.

What was happening to Marco? Was he expe-
riencing intense pain? Lying in bed, at home or in
a hospital, groaning, expecting a gruesome death?

Whatever, he had to be lonely. And scared.

And extremely angry.

"Marco must have the worst case of heartburn
in history," Jake said. A joke. But Jake sounded
worried, too.

The Helmacrons turned away from the open-
ing to face us.

84

85

<What are they doing?> Cassie asked, trance-
like.

I couldn't look away. None of us could. We
were exhausted, from the rapid-fire morphing,
the acid bath painfest, the utter strangeness of
being inside the human body.

We did nothing to stop the Helmacrons.

<Maybe it's a kamikaze mission,> Tobias sug-
gested. <Maybe they don't care if they die as long
as they kill M a r c o

"But they're going to drown before they get to

Marco's heart!" I said.

"It's suicide," Jake agreed. "Pointless. Crazy.

Doesn't make any sense."

<Nothing these beings do makes any sense,>

< To victory!>

Ax pointed out.

SLLLLLUUUSSSH!

Two more Helmacrons wiggled through the cut.

Another Helmacron disappeared through the

Only two were left in the stomach now.

stomach lining.

<To the cowardly heart of the swollen alien!>

<To glory !>

SLLLLLUUUSSSH!

SLLLLLUUUSSSH!

That sound. I was going to hear it in my night-

Another, gone.

mares.

<To still the beating organ!>

"Will it hurt Marco to have them in his blood-

SLLLLLUUUSSSH!

stream?" Jake asked suddenly.

Another.

<They should suffocate quickly,> Cassie said.

Now there were only five left. Four had al-

<And then they should be broken down and
ready entered Marco's bloodstream as calmly as I
washed out like any waste.>
would step onto an escalator at the mall.

SLLLLLUUUSSSH!

It was horrifying.

87

86

The last of the Helmacrons disappeared

"If Helmacrons don't breathe, why do they
through the cut.

have noses?" Jake.

<Another possibility occurs to me,> Ax said.

<lt is possible the organ has another use,> Ax

"What possibility?" Jake demanded.

said. <Although it is hard to imagine what it

<Perhaps our basic assumption is incorrect.>
would be.>

<What assumption?> Tobias said. <You go

"This from a boy who eats with his feet," I
into an airless environment, you suffocate.

said dryly.

Where's the big debate?>

Jake sighed. "Are you telling me the Hel-

<The bloodstream isn't airless,> Cassie said.

macrons we just saw walk through a hole in

<Blood contains oxygen. The main purpose of

Marco's stomach aren't dead?"

blood is to carry oxygen around the body.>

<They don't really die,> Cassie said miser-

"Yeah, but you'd have to be a fish to breathe it,"

ably. <Fungible, remember?>

Jake argued.

"Whatever!" Jake bellowed. "Are you telling

<You'd need specialized lungs.>
me we have to go after them?"

"How do we know Helmacrons aren't fish?" I

<The Helmacrons' physiology is unusual,> Ax
asked, knowing in a flash that we'd royally screwed
mused. <l observed that they were unusually
up. "The Helmacron home world could be an
buoyant in the stomach fluids. It is almost as if
aquarium somewhere in Iowa for all we know."

they are —>

<They walk on dry ground,> Tobias said.

"Cork," I interrupted.

"Maybe they're, you know, those animals that

"Or mushrooms," Cassie said.

can live in water and on land," I suggested. "Like Great. So, how do we go after a bunch of mushrooms?"

frogs. Or turtles."

<Amphibians,> Cassie said.

"Dolphins?" I suggested.

<Or maybe they do not breathe at all,> Ax said.

<Dolphins have to surface to breathe,> Cassie
said. <And we won't be able to surface in a vein.

"How can you be alive and not breathe?" 1 ar-

The only possible morph is shark.>
gued.

"Will we be able to breathe in blood?" Jake

Ax blinked his main eyes at me. <Trees are
asked.

alive and they do not actually breathe.>

88

89

<l think so,> Cassie said uneasily. <l vaguely

"Okay, we go shark," Jake said. "But I want remember hearing some scientist interviewed on
everyone concentrating on controlling the morph."

NPR once. She said plasma evolved from seawa-

One by one, we tumbled down off Cassie's
ter. Plasma and seawater have the same basic
back.

properties.>

"Agh." I moaned as the acid hit my fresh, re-

<The shark's gonna be hard to control,> To-
newed skin.

bias said. <We're surrounded by blood, folks.>

I heard the others gasp and groan as they hit
the liquid.

"We have to try," I said. "If Marco dies, so do we. We've got to stop the Helmacrons."

We began to morph, Cassie to demorph first.

Jake raised his eyebrows at me. "That didn't

Almost immediately, my legs fused together right
down the middle. I fought to stay afloat as my
sound too self-serving."

legs stretched out and out, forming a long, pow-

"I don't care if it did," I said harshly. "We've erful tail.

got to survive. The Yeerks, remember? That

Half-girl. Half-fish. Mermaid Rachel.

whole save humanity bit? The Helmacrons aren't

Then the teeth began to grow. Row after row
the baddest aliens on Earth. Just the most an-
of small but very sharp teeth. My eyes migrated
noying. And remember," I added, "we have no
down to my cheeks. My cheeks exploded out-
proof the Helmacrons aren't working with the
ward, forming a dumbbell-shaped head. The pain

Yeerks this time. Or that they won't decide to in
of the acid bath drained away as the rough sand-
the very near future. In which case, we are very
paper skin of the shark grew over my own tender
ancient history."

human flesh.

<Rachel is correct,> Ax said. <For all we know,

I was almost enjoying the morph. Liked the

Visser Three put the Helmacrons up to this fool-
tough skin. Liked getting bigger.

ish scheme. Perhaps it is simply a way of divert-

Then the shark's mind infiltrated my own.

ing our attention while something far more serious

And I completely lost control.

occurs in the outside world.>

Silence. If what Ax and I were saying was
true, we were finished.

Okay, Rachel, block out the fear and deal with
the Helmacrons. Now.

90

91

The prey — where was it? I was confused. I should
see the prey silhouetted against the sunlight
above.

But there was no sunlight.

And the blood was everywhere!

Imagine a drug addict awash in a sea of drugs.

Ax anywhere near a Cinnabon.

The prey is here! the shark brain shouted. It's everywhere! But.. . where?

The shark could hear a low thump, thump.

The stomach gurgling. It could see walls sloping
above, sloping below. Contracting and expanding
ever so slightly.

The shark could sense the electricity given off

"Blood!

by other living things. Could sense a strong, sur-
rounding hum. And four more weaker pulses.

So close!

I twisted my head, spinning my entire body in

Find the prey. Kill the prey!

the process.

I powered my tail, swam rapidly toward the

There!

overpowering smell. Sharks can smell one drop

A shark surrounded by, immersed in, blood!

of blood in a vast ocean reeking with life. But

Prey.

this smell! So rich, so strong.

I attacked!

I turned tightly. Poked my strange head into a

Lunged with my huge mouth open. Clamped
tight opening and pushed through.

down, tore with my teeth, tossed my head.

A narrow space. A few inches on one side. A

<Aaaaahhhh!> something cried in my head.

few inches on the other. The shark didn't care.

<Who's biting me? Geez, a chunk of my tail is

Sharks have no fear.

gone! Hey, I was using that!>

And the smell! So much blood!

That voice — it sounded familiar. Jake. Jake!

I swam with the current, crossing frantically

I'd attacked him!

from one side of the confining space to the other.

93

92

Suddenly, I remembered who I was. Rachel. I

<What's wrong with Marco's blood?> I asked.

struggled against the shark brain. Fought to re-

<lt's not red.>
gain control. Tobias had warned us. Stupidly, ar-

<You're seeing plasma,> Cassie explained.

rogantly, I'd thought he was being overly cautious.

<Blood only looks red because it contains so many

I'd been wrong.

red blood cells.>

<Oh.>

<Jake, you okay?> I asked. <l — I lost con-

<Hey, check it out,> Cassie said. <Those are
trols
red blood cells! The dark red ones pressing up

<Yeah, I'm okay. I'm having a hard time calm-
against our gills. About the size of a serving plat-
ing the shark's mind, too,> Jake said. <The blood
ter. Somehow we're capturing the oxygen mole-
is driving it crazy.>
cules without sucking in the blood cells.>

<Cassie? Tobias? Ax? You guys in the driver's

I'm not much of a sightseer. Generally, sight-
seat?>
seeing puts me in a tedium-induced rage.

<l'm cool,> Tobias said.

This was different.

<l am in controls Ax.

<We need to focus on something else,> Cassie

I was happy to be a tourist, especially if it
said tensely. <Keep our own, human minds alert.>
would keep me from going cannibal. Besides,

We swam on. First Jake. Then Cassie, Ax, To-
how many suburban girls get to travel down a hu-
bias, and me. Concentrating on the goal — stop
man vein as a tiny hammerhead shark?

the Helmacrons — to avoid eating one another

Disney has nothing on the Animorphs.

alive.

Red blood cell. Red blood cell. Red blood

The current dragged us along the narrow tun-
cell. After I'd seen a few thousand, I stopped
nel of blood. A tunnel not completely dark, but
paying attention to them and started to focus on
the other floating shapes.

extremely dim.

<What was that?> I demanded.

Globs of stuff floated along next to us. Brushed

Something seriously small passed in front of
off the tunnel walls, bounced off our shark bod-
my eyes. To the sub-mini shark, it was about the
ies. Some were rod-shaped and about the size of
size and shape of a pill bug. A pill bug with little
grapefruit. Others, just shapeless pieces of mate-
spikes covering it. A 3-D millipede.

rial. Still others, fuzzy balls, like Ping-Pong balls

<What?> Cassie asked eagerly.

stuck all over with cotton.

94

95

The thing looked out of place. Sharp and

<Pay attention! Small spiky vitamin pills. I
pointed in a world where everything else was soft
think they could be dangerous!>
and oval.

<l see one,> Ax said. <Now it is gone.>

<Something strange.>

<What happened?>

<AII sorts of stuff travels in the blood,>

<A large translucent blob surrounded and con-

Cassie said. <Food particles. Waste. Hormones.>
sumed it,> Ax explained.

<Hormones?> Jake interrupted. <We're swim-

<l saw it, too,> Jake said. <Blob ate it like
ming in hormones?>

Pac Man.>

Again, I spotted the spiny thing. It wasn't just

Silence.

bumping along in the current. It seemed to have

Then Cassie began to laugh.

a purpose. A mind or a will. I watched as it

<What's so funny?> I said shakily.

brushed up against a red blood cell, probed it,

<This is amazing,> Cassie said. <Ax and Jake
then bounced away.

just saw Marco's immune system fight off an in-

I'm not big on superstition or New Age crap.

vader. That Pac Man was a white blood cell.>

Don't read my horoscope. Never had my fortune

<So, the spiky thing?> I asked.

told. But I had a feeling about that spiky thing.

<A bacterium or a virus,> Cassie said.

Some primitive, instinctual part of my human

<What kind?>
brain didn't like it.

<How should I know?> Cassie replied. <The

<Rachel?> Tobias called. <Come on. You're
important thing is that Marco's immune system
is working.>
falling behind.>

I powered my tail and caught up.

Oh, yeah. That's the important thing.

<There's a branch up ahead,> Jake said.

<Listen!> Cassie. <l think I can hear the Hel-
macrons.>

<So they aren't dead,> Jake said grimly.

<Arrrrrgggghhhh!> The pill bug from hell! It
was on my morph. Probing me!

<Get it off!> I yelled.

<What?> Tobias asked.

96

97

hammerhead to the right and swam in a small
circle. Hovering without progressing.

<Any idea which way we should go?> Jake
asked.

<l'm thinking,> Cassie said.

The blood cells and miscellaneous blobs that
had been washing along beside us were still with
us, but no more joined them.

<Where does human blood travel after it leaves
the stomach?> Ax asked calmly, almost conver-
sationally.

<That's what I'm trying to remember!> Cassie
answered.

<Are not these basic facts about your own

We continued down the tunnel that was
physiology taught in human schools?> Ax said.

Marco's vein. When we reached the branch Jake

<On the Andalite home world, the youngest child
had pointed out, we followed the bloodstream
is able to —>
into a wider tunnel.

<Ax. Would you please shut up?> I said.

The Helmacrons' voices were growing slightly

Bump.

louder.

Tobias, knocking up against me. <And spread

Then, suddenly —
out, you guys!>

Dead end!

<Touchy, touchy.>

The vein just. . . stopped.

<Don'tyou feel it?> Tobias asked. <The . . . un-

We had stumbled into a fun house. Tunnels
easiness^
opened all around us, in every direction. Above

I bumped into Jake. Turned to the right,
the shark's head, below its belly. Each one seemed
swam in another tight circle.

to be a different size and shape. Some big enough

<The hammerhead mind is uneasy,> Ax agreed.

for us to pass through. Some far too small.

The shark sensed danger. Not fear. Sharks have

The current had also stopped. I turned the
no understanding of fear. The shark was calm,

98

99
confident. But it sensed some sort of change

<Something is transforming the cellular struc-
in the liquid surrounding us and it wanted to get
ture of the molecules around us,> Ax said.

out.

<l think we're in some kind of sorting device.

Maybe this is how sharks feel swimming in

Look. The round blobs go into that tunnel, there.

polluted ocean waters. I don't know. The shark's

But the rod-shaped ones go up there.>
mind didn't offer any explanation. It just said:

Weird, but true. Some of the molecules were

Haul butt. Now.

lining up for the girls' bathroom; others, for the

I clamped down on the shark's mind. Now
boys'.

wasn't the time to panic.

I bumped up against Ax. <Sorry,> I muttered.

<Acid?> Ax asked.

Turned to the right to swim out of his way.

I tuned into the shark's skin. But there was no

To the right.

pain. Just a dim sort of tingle that wasn't un-

Again.

pleasant. Nothing like the all-out agony of being

<Okay,> I said. <l am seriously drawn to a
in the stomach's violent digestive juices.

particular tunnel.>

<l don't think we —>

<Yeah, me, too,> said Tobias.

<Look,> Tobias interrupted. <The globs.>

<The shark is definitely compelled.> Ax.

One right in front of me. It wasn't any particu-

<lt's like Rachel at a fifty-percent-off sale at
lar shape or color. A fat molecule? A tiny bit of

The Gap,> Cassie said. <Resistance is futile. Oh.

adrenaline? No way of knowing. And then . . .

I think I know where we are.>

<lt exploded!> I exclaimed.

<And that would be —>

As if a bomb had gone off inside, the glob

<ln the liver.>
silently broke into a thousand pieces.

<What is a liver?> Ax asked.

<Watch one of the rod-shaped things,>

<An organ. The part of the human body that

Cassie said.

filters out impurities,> Cassie explained. A s -

I twisted my hammerhead and turned in an-
suming the liver thinks we're impurities — and it
other tight, right-hand circle. Noted a rod-
must — it's pushing us into the colon.>
shaped thing a few inches off to my right. And,

Suddenly, the current felt stronger. Maybe I
then, suddenly, it was round and slightly green.

was just more aware of it. <The colon? You mean,

<Presto chango,> Jake said.

we're going to be waste?>

100

101

<Product,> Cassie confirmed.

<l can't tell exactly where it's coming from,>

<Thanks a lot, M a r c o

Jake said.

<lf we are expelled, we will not reach the

<Think,> Cassie said. <What would the liver
heart.> Ax, calmly stating the obvious as only Ax
send to the heart?>
can.

<Blood,> I said.

<We've got to swim,> Jake said.

<Great. Follow that red blood cell!>

<Fine,> I agreed. <But which way?>

<Toward the heart,> Cassie said.

<Which is — ?> I asked.

<Above the liver,> Cassie said.

<Who said you were directionally challenged?>

About a dozen tunnels went up to the left
and up to the right. One tunnel seemed to go
straight up.

<Eenie, meenie, minie, moe?> Ax said.

<You really have been on Earth too long,> I
told him. <You'll never fit in on the Andalite home
world now.>

<l would miss Saturday morning cartoons,>

Ax said.

Thump, thump.

And then . . .

Click! My brain made one of those sudden
leaps. Like two puzzle pieces falling together.

<Marco's heart!>

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

Louder. Coming from all directions at once.

<Can we follow the sound?>

102

103

And I had no idea what was going on inside me.

Hours passed and all I heard from my friends
were occasional strange orders.

Don't sneeze.

Don't eat or drink anything.

I wanted to tell them to include me in their
thought-speak. Maybe. I mean, did I really want
to know what a group of morphing warriors and
egomaniacal lunatics were doing to my delicate

Marco
internal tissues?

I contacted Mr. King. Had the Chee show up
for dinner as Jake, Rachel, and Cassie.

Dinner.

I told my dad I was sick.

When I finally got home from my pathetic at-

Just after the sun went down, I fell asleep,
tempt at breaking and entering, I put on a long-
sprawled across my bed. About an hour later I
sleeved sweatshirt. Couldn't let Dad see my wrist.

woke up feeling weird. Sweaty. Wild. Angry.

Didn't want him to know I'd been trying to rob

Angry . . . at the Helmacrons! It wasn't fair
some kid when his deranged dog took a chunk
that I couldn't protect myself. Stupid freakin'...

out of me.

The usual hang and chill routine was not go-

I dabbed some hydrogen peroxide on the punc-
ing to happen. I was way too restless. Needed to
ture marks. Added a little Neosporin. Wished for
do something. Got up and started to pace. Door
ibuprofen. My whole arm throbbed.

to windows. Windows to door. Back. Forth.

But so what?

And the anger continued to grow. Welled and

A little dog bite wasn't going to kill me. The
surged and wouldn't be held in check by my

Helmacrons had that under control.

usual habit of black humor, transforming tragedy

In a way, I welcomed the pain. It reminded
into comedy. There wasn't one joke in me.

me I was alive. For now.

Maybe I just missed my audience.

The afternoon dragged on.

Anyway, I was in an exceptionally foul mood.

104

105

A soft knock at the door. It opened. My dad
kitchen, nuked it until it was defrosted and warm.

stuck his head in. "Marco, hey, I thought I heard

Then I got my bike out of the garage.

you moving around. How are you feeling?"

I was going to get the camera.

"Urn, fine."

So what if I couldn't morph? So what if my

Dad pursed his lips. Came in and put a hand
friends couldn't help me? So what if Cujo had
against my cheek. "You're flushed. And you feel
practically ripped my arm off?

a bit hot."

That camera was mine.

I turned away. "I said I was fine!"

The ratty-looking Chee was still on guard. That

"Okay, okay." He was taken aback by my re-
meant that the camera, if not the kid, was still
action. "Well, if you're feeling better . . . Nora
inside.

and I have that dinner party. It's a work thing. If

For about half a second I wondered if I should
you don't need me to stay with you."

ask for his help. Maybe he could throw a holo

I immediately saw the opportunity. "Go," I
around me, make it easier to sneak into the
said soothingly. "I'm just going to rest. Read that
apartment.

book for English."

Rejected the idea. It would probably violate

He probably didn't buy that last part, but he
the Chee's code of nonviolence. What a joke.

headed for the door.

I could do this alone.

"Okay," he said. "Well, I'll leave the number The kid's apartment building looked even
on the refrigerator. Give us a call if you start to
more decrepit at night. But I felt no fear. I walked
feel worse."

straight over the fence and across the concrete

"I'll be fine," I said again, through suddenly
lot to the fire escape. It was still hanging down
clenched teeth.

the way I'd left it. I charged up.

Dad left.

Cujo was waiting.

Ten minutes later I heard the car pull out of

"Rrrrrrr!" He growled deep in his throat when
the driveway.

he saw me on the fire escape.

I waited another couple of minutes. Then I

Then he flung himself madly against the win-
went down to the basement. Rooted around in
dow. Totally airborne. Toenails clicking on the
the freezer until I found a steak. Upstairs in the
wooden sill. Drool flying. Teeth gleaming.

106

107

I grabbed the bottom of the rickety window
and yanked it up about halfway.

"ArfARFARFARFARFARF!" Cujo's snapping
jaws were inches from my throat.

"Stuff it," I said, tossing the steak into the
room.

He lay down with it between his paws. Licked.

Slobbered. Seemed to be having a hard time eat-
ing it. Something was wrong with his jaw. Maybe
he'd lost a tooth gnawing my arm off.

R a c h e l

I heaved the window open farther. Dropped
down onto the floor and eased around the slaver-
ing dog. The camera was a few feet away, still sit-
ting on the kid's desk.

I'd just closed my fingers on the bright yellow

T hump, thump.

box when I heard voices in the hallway, surpris-

Pause.

ingly close.

Thump, thump.

Cujo heard them, too. He rose to his feet and

As we swam the beating grew louder and
growled at me. Blocking my only exit.

louder, until it was impossible to hear anything

Door. People. Cops. Juvie hall.

else. Impossible to know if the Helmacrons were

Window. Cujo.

near.

Two options.

Ax didn't ask questions. Tobias didn't make

Both bad.

any dark observations. Jake didn't talk strategy.

Either way, I was going to get caught.

Cassie didn't point out landmarks.

We were overwhelmed by the incredible rever-
berating noise surrounding us. The sound of

Marco's heart beating.

THUMP! THUMP!

Pause.

108

109

THUMP! THUMP!

current swept us along, it opened wider, wider.

Each beat vibrated through my body, over-

Fluttering in front of the opening were three red
powering any human thought or emotion. We didn't
sheets of flesh. They moved like curtains blowing
have a plan for capturing the Helmacrons. I didn't
in an open window. Like those felt strips at the
try to think of one.

beginning of a car wash. As the valve widened,

Closer. Closer. Thump, thump. The sound be-
they blew inside.

came so intense I felt it would blow me apart.

The current was smooth but powerful. The

But it was a wonderful sound. As long as we ex-
heart was sucking us in.

perienced that thump, thump Marco was still

Closer . . .

alive.

Closer...

The red blood cells we were chasing had

Closer! Then —
changed color. They were darker now, maroon,

SLLLUMP!

the color of a scab. Cassie didn't need to explain

The aperature closed. The curtains of flesh
what was happening. I'd read the Magic School
sealed together with a wet, sucking noise.

Bus, too.

We slowed, stopped. We were in a vast open-

Close to the heart, the level of oxygen in the
ing just outside the heart, surrounded by an
blood cells was low. The cells would pass through
ocean of blood.

the heart and then into the lungs to pick up more

<That's okay!> Cassie said. <That valve must
oxygen.

be to keep the blood from flowing back this di-

Less oxygen in the blood cells meant less oxy-
rections
gen for the sharks. But we couldn't turn back. We

THUMP!

had to stop the Helmacrons from killing Marco.

<How are we going to stay inside the heart?

Do or die.

How are we going to stop ourselves from being

The vein through which we were traveling
swept out into the lungs?> Tobias called. <l'm
grew larger. Other veins emptied into it and the
not sure we can fight this current!>
current picked up. This time, it was like moving

<We don't know if the Helmacrons can, ei-
from a small street to a larger road to a busy
ther. Just be ready to fight!> Jake shouted. A s -
thruway. And finally, to a six-lane superhighway.

suming the Helmacrons are inside the heart

Ahead was a sort of aperture of flesh. As the
now!>

110

111

THUMP!

that connected the walls like chaotic gothic arches.

The valve began to open. The curtains began

Maybe bobbing in the thrashing ocean of blood.

to billow in.

I didn't know.

Then —we flowed into the first chamber of

I didn't care.

the heart.

And I didn't care what had happened to the

Things happened fast.

other four Helmacrons. Maybe the liver had taken

<Turn around!> I shouted. <Swim against the
them. Maybe they had been washed away by the
current!>
last heartbeat.

Furious turbulence! Blood was flowing past so

The Helmacrons were enormous compared to
fast I could hardly suck in any oxygen. Imagine
my shark morph.

swimming up Niagara Falls. And the walls were

And armed. But I was going to stop them from
contracting like a trash compactor!

shooting if it was the last thing I did.

<Obey me, foolish male! Dracon beams will

All of these thoughts passed in about one sec-
only fire in liquid if you increase the power to
ond.

full!>

I turned my flattened rudder of a head and

<l grow weary of your meddling, female! I will
began to swim. The excellent shark sense of
blast on low if I choose!>
smell told me one of the Helmacrons was to my

<The Helmacrons!> Tobias shouted.

left.

<Where are they?> Cassie yelled.

<Prince Jake, we have to stop them now!>

<Jake, they can't shoot!> I hissed.

<Go!> Jake shouted. <Now!>

<Stop!> Jake cried in general thought-speak.

Powering through a forest of tissue strands,

<Put down your weapons and we will help you
an ocean of blood. Hunting for the Helmacrons!

out of here. We will even let you use the power

Tissue!

source.>

Turn — left!

<Hah-HAH!> one of the Helmacrons shouted.

<Two!> the Helmacron shouted.

<Too late! We shoot on my count! One!>

No!

I couldn't see the Helmacrons. But I could

Frantically I fought the current. Pushed and
smell them. Somewhere in the heart. Five of
strained with my tail, my flippers. Struggled for
them. Maybe tangled in one of the tissue sprays
every paltry inch.

112

113

And meanwhile, the walls around me closed
in as Marco's heart prepared to beat.

Tissue!

Turn — another left!

Push, push, push!

The shark was exhausted. And the Helmacron
smell was only the faintest bit stronger.

THUMP!

The first part of Marco's heartbeat.

The heartbeat that might be his last.

What's wrong with Buster?" A voice, just
outside the door. Female. Maybe the photogra-
pher's mother, sister, aunt.

Buster?

Oh, come on. This dog was no Buster.

Bruiser, maybe. Fang, Killer, Psycho. But not

Buster.

Buster's bloodshot eyes were on me. Blocking
the window. My only escape.

I could hide under the bed. Except the metal
frame was only about six inches off the ground.

No way.

The door handle turned.

I jumped for the closet and crashed into the
flimsy sliding doors. Great. The woman in the

114

115 J f t
hall had to hear that. Too late to run. What the
ing? Where's your compassion? It's just a dumb
heck had I been thinking!

dog, doing what he's supposed to do. And your

I closed the doors behind me, scooted down
friends, their lives are valuable.

onto a pile of sweaty-smelling clothes, backed to-

Roach, I answered.

ward the corner.

I felt the changes begin at the same time I

"ARFARFARFARFARF!"

heard footsteps crossing the room.

Whooosh! Buster's head was a wedge, shov-

Each morph is different. I'd gone roach plenty
ing open one of the sliding doors. He bounded
of times before. But each experience is com-
into the closet and went for my ankle.

pletely unique.

"Rrrrooo — ARFARFARFARFARF!"

This time, my skin hardened first.

A strange rage filled me. I lifted the shoe.

Then, vision pixilated. Compound roach eyes,

A very low voice in my head said: Dangerous
with about two thousand lenses, ballooned up
dog. Be afraid.

out of my eye sockets.

No.

Two thousand Busters.

"Buster! Good dog!"

Two thousand sets of snapping teeth.

Buster turned toward the sound of his master.

Four legs exploded out of my sides and I

A split second hesitation before biting off my
fell forward. My arms fused to my sides, then
head. That gave me just long enough to decide.

reemerged as delicate wings.

Morph — or get caught.

Buster tilted his head and moaned as I shrank

Morph — or get chewed up like a Milk-Bone.

down to the size of a quarter.

Yeah, I'd promised Jake I wouldn't morph.

Don't eat me, I warned him silently. / have

But I hadn't heard from my so-called friends in
enough problems already.

hours and hours. For all I knew they could be

My antennae twitched as the roach's amazing
dead.

sense of smell surged to life. Roaches can smell

A little voice in my head, that intangible but
anything. The closet smelled of sweat and dog
incredibly annoying thing called a conscience,
pee and laundry detergent.

was concerned. Marco, it said, can't you see some-Buster took a step back and moaned again.

thing is wrong with you? With what you're do-

The closet door burst open.

ne

117

"Oh — sick!" someone yelled. "I'm going to
sue that filthy landlord! Honey, bring a shoe! I
just caught the world's biggest roach!"

Then came the change I had been waiting for.

With a sickening lurch, my innards began to
twist and change.

<Aaaaahhhhhhhh!> someone yelled in my
head.

<Marco is morphing!> Cassie shouted. Some-
thing must be wrong! Marco must be in trouble!>

Ah, so now I could hear them all. Must be in
morph.

<We do not know how this will affect us,> Ax
said unnecessarily. <lt could be deadly.>

<Marco, cut it out, now!> Rachel screamed.

n

A inch.

<That's an order!> Jake shouted.

One more inch and a Helmacron would be

My friends were still alive.

down to three legs. I pumped my tail hard.

And they sounded terrified.

Opened my mouth to bite. Then —

Good for them.

THUMP!

I was yanked away from the Helmacron. Spun,
head over tail. Another aperture — this one on the
opposite side of the chamber — rapidly opened.

It grew from a crack, to a hole, to a chasm.

Blood started to flow out of the chamber,
sweeping all of us along with it.

<Are the Helmacrons being washed out,
too?> Jake shouted.

<l can't tell!> I answered.

<Try to stay inside!>

118

119

I strained. Tried with every cell to resist the

SLLLURPPPP!

sucking of the current. And still I lost ground.

<You will grovel for this!>

<l am unable to maintain my position!> Ax

<Marco,> Jake shouted, <you'd better be in
called.

serious trouble! Because things are not pretty in

And then —
here!>

The chamber all around me began to shift

Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!

and blur! The forest of tissue melted like heated

<Ahhhhhh!> I screamed. An enormous night-
wax.

mare glob of pulsing organ bulged out in front of

But the changes continued. The chamber sur-
me. Then it did a fast-forward shrivel and disap-
rounding us shrank down, down, down. Half the
peared.

size it was. Half that. Then half that. Smaller,

<Watch out!> Tobias shouted.

smaller, smaller.

What looked like a femur poked into the

The rootlike tissues came unglued. Bounced
chamber and caught me on the head. I spun,
like loose electrical cables, and then sucked up
knocking into Jake and one of the Helmacrons.

into the walls.

<Just relax,> Cassie urged. <lt should be over

<Fiendish alien! You will not destroy the Hel-
soon!>
macron knights! We will ru — agggghhh!>

Seconds later —

SLOOONG!

Poof! The hurricane was over. Marco's morph

The walls separating this chamber of the heart
was complete.

from the next stretched like a rubber band and

<Hey, you guys?> Marco called with a laugh.

exploded. The red blood faded to rose, then pink,

<Still alive or what?>
then white.

<Still alive,> Jake said shakily.

Air! Would we still have air without the red

We were squashed together in a tiny space
blood cells? I gasped and found I could still
filled with bluish-white liquid. The walls surround-
breathe.

ing us were smooth — and they were squeezing

The noise was deafening. I wanted to cover
together. Another trash compactor, only dollhouse-
my ears, but I had no ears, no hands.

sized.

An earthquake, a tornado, a volcano, a tidal

<Probably an insect of some sort. Marco, what
wave, a monsoon!

kind of morph are we in?> Ax said.

120

121

<lsn't it obvious?> Marco said nastily.

Tseeew!

<Just tell us,> Tobias replied.

Tseeew!

<You haven't told me anything for hours! Now

<No!> I screamed.

I'm supposed to be all Mr. Communication?>

And then . . . silence.

<Oh, very mature,> I snapped.

<Marco!> Cassie cried. <Marco, can you hear

Okay, so Marco had good reason to feel the
us?>
way he did. Five of his friends up his nose, Dra-

Nothing.

con beams blasting his stomach lining, yada,

<Marco!>
yada, yada. But, come on. He sounded like a

<Marco!> Cassie cried again. A wrenching
spoiled two-year-old.

sound, horrified, full of pain.

Marco was often annoying but never stupid.

<He can't answer you, Cassie,> Jake said, his

<Would you like to explain why you morphed?>
voice strangely flat.

Jake demanded. <Why you morphed when I told

Next I heard Tobias's voice. <Who would have
you it could kill us?>
predicted this? Who would have thought the Hel-

<l plead the fifth.>
macrons were more dangerous than the Yeerks?>

Jake, to us. <lf I were a real general, I'd court-

"Neep! Neep! Neep!" A cheer went up from
martial his sorry . . .>
the Helmacrons.

Then, from a jumble of alien parts, a Helma-

A strange coldness swept through me. Not sad-
cron shouted. <Hah-HAH! No doubt you thought
ness. Not exactly. In a way, I was prepared for this.

we were killed by the transforming of our pitiful

We had been through so many missions, so much
hostage. But we are still alive! We shall rule the
danger. That one of us should die seemed . . .

universe yet!>
inevitable. Unavoidable.

And before any of us — Jake or Cassie, Ax or

And then —

Tobias, before even I—could do anything to

Fury.

stop them . . .

A wave of fury like a kick to the gut.

The Helmacrons fired in unison.

I wanted those Helmacrons dead.

Tseeew!

Tseeew!

Tseeew!

122

123

<Cassie, Ax, grab the Dracon beam!> I shouted.

<Jake, Tobias, hack through the walls.>

<But Marco — > Tobias said.

<Marco is dead!> I said savagely. <Do it!>

<No!> Jake shouted.

<We have to,> Cassie said quietly.

<We must fight to save ourselves,> Ax said.

<There will be time for mourning later.>

<Fine,> Jake said bitterly.

<The treacherous aliens have severed my
limb!> the Helmacron cried. <But I shall still
hobble on to victory!>

<We must seize the power source!> another

O Majestic Leader, Humans are a race of fools! We

Helmacron shouted. <The brave Helmacron fe-
told them time and time again that Helmacrons do
males shall lead the way!>
not surrender! And yet they delude themselves, be-

<We got the beam!> Cassie shouted. <Now
lieving that we uuould deal with them simply because
me have suffered minor injury! Does it not make you
what?>
laugh, and prove that we are the only fit rulers of the

<We'll tunnel through to the lungs,> I said.

universe?

<You and Ax get inside, demorph, and turn that
beam on them. The rest of us will bite a few

— From the log of the Helmacron Males
holes in these creeps.>

<One problem,> Cassie said. <That Dracon

N eep! Neep! Ne —Aggggghhhh!"

beam is bigger than the human me. How am I go-

I attacked while the Helmacrons were still
ing to pick it up?>
cheering Marco's death. I bit clear though a Hel-

<Ant power,> I said.

macron's leg with my powerful shark jaw.

<Schwarzenegger, right.>

The Helmacron jerked. He didn't lose his bal-

Whoooosssh!

ance, but I felt something heavy fall near me.

A pillow of air escaped from Marco's lung.

124

125

<Bingo!> Jake yelled.

<Choice two,> Jake said coldly. <Die.>

<We got the lungs!> Tobias shouted.

<You killed our friend,> I added. <And let me

By then, the other four Helmacrons had lost a
tell you, payback is no fun.>
limb. Been forced to drop their weapons. Quieted

The Helmacrons blustered and complained.

down some. And when they realized we were now

But they agreed to surrender and unshrink us.

armed — well, they were suddenly interested in

They didn't really have a choice.

dealing.

In the lungs we demorphed. Tobias to hawk.

<Perhaps a strategic alliance is in order,> one

Ax to Andalite. The rest of us to human.

of the Helmacron males said. <You will help us

And then, we marched out of the body. Out
power up our ship.>
through what Cassie later called spiracles, or the

<And you will?> Jake prompted.

breathing holes on either side of a cockroach's

<Conquer all of the other planets in the uni-
body. We kept the Helmacrons under guard like
verse before returning to crush Earth!>
prisoners of war. We moved fast, anxious to aban-

<Tempting,> Jake said.

don the corpse. A corpse that was all that was

<Don't deal with these idiots,> I said angrily.

left of Marco.

<l say we waste them and bail.>

Zombielike, I walked. Looked straight ahead.

<l've had enough death for one day,> Cassie

Didn't talk. Too busy processing.

said. <Letting them power up their ship won't do

Marco, my fellow warrior and, yeah, even
any harm. If we'd suggested that in the begin-
friend .. . gone forever. Killed. Not by the Yeerks,
ning, Marco might still be alive.>
as we all half-expected to be, but by a race of

<Okay, Helmacrons, you have two choices,>
tiny egomaniacs.

Jake said. <Choice one: We march out of here to-

There was no justice, poetic or otherwise, in
gether. You unshrink us. We let you use the blue
that.

box once to power up your engines and get off
our planet.>

<Never! Helmacrons are the masters of the —>

<Shut up and listen to your second choice!> I
shouted.

<We are listening to your unworthy scheme!>

126

127

"Tobias?" Jake said.

<l'll try to figure out where we are,> Tobias
said wearily. With difficulty, he gained some alti-
tude and was lost in the darkness.

Jake shook his head. "Somehow I imagined
we'd come out in the barn and the Helmacron
ship would just be there."

"Where did Marco go? He was supposed to
stay put," I complained. Then felt bad for com-
plaining.

<The ship may have been destroyed,> Ax said.

"Now there's a happy thought."

Cassie laughed grimly. "I wonder how long it
will be before humans invent an antishrinking

"This isn't the barn," Cassie said.

ray."

Wherever we were, it was dark and vast. At

<A long, long time,> Ax stated.

least it seemed that way. Then again, we weren't

"Look on the bright side," I said, manically.

much bigger than bacteria.

Desperately. "We're useless to the Yeerks. We're

"Does anyone see the Helmacron ship?" Jake
much too small to be Controllers now."

asked.

"Useless to humans, too," Jake snapped. "We

<No,> Tobias said.

can't fight Visser Three when we're the size of a

<lf we cannot find the ship we will not be able
shredded fingernail clipping."

to return to our full size,> Ax said.

"Don't worry about the fight," I said. "We're

"Duh."

going to spend the rest of our lives just trying to

"Ax, just guard the Helmacrons," Jake said.

get home."

<Yes, Prince Jake.> Ax held a Dracon beam

Tobias was back. <l didn't see the ship,> he
on our little band of gimpy, marble-eyed prison-
reported. <But I think we may be in Marco's
ers. His tail hovered above his head, ready to
closet. I think that big cliff over there is a hiking
strike.

boot.>

128

129

"What is he?" Jake asked, glancing over his

"You think we can still reach him?" Jake de-
shoulder to the dark, looming mass that had
manded.

once been our friend.

"It's possible."

<Roach, I think.>

This was too good to believe. A tiny breath of

"ARFARFARFARFARF!" A vicious-sounding
hope against the cold wall of death.

dog, somewhere nearby.

Naturally, I was suspicious. "Hasn't he been

<We can hear a dog barking,> Ax said. <lt is
in that morph for" more than two hours?"

likely a dog's voice has a different frequency than

"Ax-man?" Jake asked.

that of a human.>

<One hour, fifty-five minutes,> Ax said, mov-

"That doesn't sound like Euclid," Cassie said
ing his stalk eyes toward us and keeping his main
musingly.

eyes on the strangely silent prisoners.

"Roach," Jake said bitterly. "It's Marco's last

"Five minutes," Cassie said. "There's hope."

joke. Roaches are, like, impossible to kill. Pretty

I looked up, up, up. On one side — an enor-
ironic, huh?"

mous leg spiked with disgusting dirty hairs. On

"I think we should organize a search party," I
the other — a shiny smooth nut-case wall of ar-
said. "I'll go eagle. Tobias and I can try to deter-
mor.

mine if we really are in Marco's house."

The roach was giving off a dusky, filthy

"Jake's right," Cassie said suddenly. "I did smell. A roach smell. But at that moment, the
an oral report on roaches in the fourth grade.

highly evolved roach body looked beautiful to

Nothing kills them. Cutting off their heads doesn't
me. Marco had ultimately picked the perfect
kill them. Submerging them in water doesn't kill
morph.

them —"

And he just might be alive to gloat about it.

"Enough with the Animal Planet report," I

We started to yell.

said. "We're a fraction of an inch high and proba-

"Marco — morph out!" Jake cried desperately.

bly miles from home. It's time to focus."

"Come on, Marco!" Cassie shouted.

"I'm not just babbling," Cassie argued. "Lis-

<You have only five Earth minutes left!> Ax
ten. I'm saying: Nothing kills a roach. Not even
yelled.

stopping its heart. They have some sort of

<Morph out!>
backup system."

"Do it now!"

130

131

No response.

shouted. <The transforming alien is not really

<He's not moving,> Tobias said.

dead!>

"Maybe he's in a coma," Cassie said.

Ax pointed the Dracon beam. <Shut. Up,> he

"Or sleeping," Jake added, attempting a joke.

said calmly.

Bad attempt.

The Helmacrons' marble eyes all turned to

"Marco," Cassie said. "Come on, now. Listen face Marco.

to me. If you're in there, start to demorph. I'll

Then —
help you through."

A rumbling of sound.

<C'mon buddy, don't get stuck as a roach,>

<l believe Marco is awake,> Ax informed us.

Tobias said desperately.

"Marco. Man! You are in serious doo-doo."

"Dude," I said. "How dumb is it to live the Jake tried to sound serious, but he didn't.

rest of your life in a body that makes girls scream

"Ax, he probably can't hear my voice, so ask
in terror? Your dating life is so over before it's
him where we are!" I said. Then I smacked
even begun."

Marco on his growing human arm. Ridiculous. All

<Four minutes,> Ax said.

less than an inch of me.

"Marco, man, come on," Jake pleaded. "We

<Marco, Rachel has just hit you in anger. And
need you."

Jake demands to know why you morphed when

"Yeah, we haven't had a good laugh all day."

he expressly forbade you to do so. However, at

Who knows what finally reached him? Cas-
the moment there is no need to answer this
sie's gentle coaching. Tobias's too-real fear. Jake's
question as I will be unable to hear your re-
pleading. My pathetic wisecracks. Maybe even
sponses

Ax's cold countdown. I'm not even sure any of our

"ARFARFARFARFARF!" Cujo, in the hallway.

puny voices, thought-speak or not, got through.

Then, a rumbling of sound. A massive human

All I know is that the hairy leg near me began
voice.

to puff outward. Growing, growing — until it was

There was no way I could hear or understand
a roach-colored wall. We ran to keep from getting

Marco's words, but I bet he said something like
squashed.

this: "Oh, man. I'm getting it from both sides!

<We have been viciously tricked!> a Helmacron

Everybody's always blaming me! This whole thing

132

133

is Rachel's fault. If she hadn't hit me in the first
place, I wouldn't have fallen and hit my head

"Ax, tell Marco to stop whining and thank us
for saving him from a life under the kitchen sink!"

Ax did. Here's what I know Marco said: "Re-
mind me to send flowers after I save your sorry
butts."

M larco morphed a gull.

We clung to him. The five of us, and our five
prisoners.

<Prince Jake instructs that you not forget the
camera.>

Marco explained to us where we were as he
bird-walked out of the closet, hopped up onto the
desk, and grabbed the camera with his beak.

Then, we flew through the open window and
headed toward Cassie's barn.

Now that he was in morph, Marco could en-
gage in two-way communication with Ax and To-
bias.

134

135

<That crappy dog attacked me!> he told us
it is too risky. We'll burn it as soon as we get to
as we passed into bright sunshine. <Practically
the barn."

chewed my hand off.>

We did.

"How'd you get away?" Cassie asked, via

Marco had hidden the Helmacron ship in the

Ax.

freezer, along with the blue box. Ax hooked every-

<Even though I was dripping copious amounts
thing up and forced the protesting Helmacrons to
of blood, I performed like a brave and stalwart
unshrink us.

knight and marched down the ladder of rattling

Relief.

steel!> Marco said. <Then I rode home on my

Then we let them power up their ship and take
trusty purple steed.>
off.

"Please tell me you're not going to be imitat-

"Promise us you'll never come back to Earth,"

ing the Helmacrons for the next two months,"

Jake said as the Helmacrons hovered in front of

Jake said.

the barn door.

<Nah,> Marco said. <l'm going to be too busy

<You have our word, as honorable female ser-
conquering the universe.>
vants of the Helmacron empire!>

Had we actually missed this guy? Hard to be-

<A Helmacron male would never lie!>
lieve.

At the same time, I noticed the blue box

<Dog bites can be nasty,> Cassie said. <Did
beginning to elevate. I couldn't see the Hel-
you have a doctor look at it?>
macrons minuscule tractor beam, but I knew it

<Please, like I had the time? Besides, when I
was there.

morphed and demorphed, the thing was gone.

Marco and I both jumped to grab the box. I

I'm perfect again.>
snagged it. We even managed not to hit our heads

"Yeah, and we'll talk later about your brilliant
together.

decision to disobey orders." Jake. "I just know

Cassie stowed the blue box somewhere safe.

you had a good reason."

Again, for security, she didn't tell us where. Then

<Uh . . . yeah, I hope so.>
we all headed home for a little quality time with our

"I wonder what's on that film," I said.

parents. I had piles of homework. I was research-

Jake frowned. "We'll never know. Developing
ing the Salem witch-hunts on the Internet when I

136

137
flashed on that strange spiky thing we saw in
and with this interesting piece of information I

Marco's bloodstream.

could get him off the hook with Jake and the

Ten minutes later I found it on the Web site
others.

from the Centers for Disease Control.

I reached for the phone. Stopped.

A sketchy line drawing of the spiky thing.

Smirked. Maybe in the morning.

A rabies virus.

The dog bite Marco had told us about.. .

What I read about rabies didn't make me feel
all warm and fuzzy inside.

Rabies is not a pretty disease. Get it and you
have two choices: Start a series of injections
within three days. Or die. Die after going awfully,
violently insane.

Bottom line: If Marco hadn't morphed, to roach
or anything else, he'd be dying. He wouldn't have
known he had rabies so he wouldn't have started
the treatment in time. When he'd morphed in the
kid's closet, almost twelve hours had already
gone by.

Other bottom line: It was clear to me that

Marco had morphed not to upset Jake or to save
his own skinny butt. Not to betray us or because
he valued his own life over ours.

He'd morphed because the disease had al-
ready begun to twist his mind and distort his
judgment. He'd morphed against direct orders
because he was slowly going insane.

This was good news. Marco wasn't dying

138

139