Animorphs

The Message

K.A. Applegate

AN APPLE

PAPERBACK

SCHOLASTIC INC. New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney

1 For Michael

Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly.

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that
this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed"
to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received
any pay ment for this "stripped book."

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or
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permission, write to Scholastic Inc., 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

ISBN 0-590-62980-8

Copyright © 1996 by Katherine Applegate. All rights reserved. Published
by Scholastic Inc. APPLE PAPERBACKS and the APPLE PAPERBACKS logo are
registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. ANIMORPHS is a trademark of
Scholastic Inc.

12 11 10 789/90 1/0 Printed in the U.S.A. 40 First Scholastic printing,
October 1996

Chapter 1

M y name is Cassie.

I can't tell you my last name. I wish I could. But I can't even tell you
what town I live in or what state. We have to disguise our identities,
we Animorphs. It's not about being shy. It's about staying alive.

If the Yeerks ever learn who we are, we'll be done for. If they don't
kill us outright, they'll make us Controllers. They'll force a Yeerk
slug into our brains, where it will take control of us, making us slaves
- tools of the Yeerk invasion of Earth.

And I really don't like the idea of being under the control of an alien.
I don't like the idea of be ing dead, either.

2 On the other hand, there are some things I do like about being an
Animorph. Some very cool things.

Take the other night. It was late. I should have been in bed. Instead I
was in the barn, get ting ready to turn into a squirrel.

Technically, the barn is really the Wildlife Re habilitation Clinic. My
dad is a vet. So is my mom, but she works at The Gardens, this big zoo.
The Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is just my dad and me. We take in
injured birds and animals and try to save them, then release them back
into their natural habitats.

That's where I was. In the barn. Surrounded by dozens of cages full of
birds, from a mourning dove who'd run into a car windshield to a golden
eagle who'd almost been electrocuted by a power line.

In another part of the barn we have bigger cages for the badgers and
opossums and skunks and deer and even a pair of wolves who'd been
poisoned. At the other end (far from the wolves) we keep our own horses.

There's an operating room and a couple of small recovery rooms, too.

Back to that night. Have you ever watched a squirrel in the park? They
are constantly alert. Constantly looking around. It's like every minute
of every day they're thinking, "Hey! What's that?"

3 So I knew that if I morphed into a squirrel, all that nervousness and
fear would become a part of me. It's something we've all had to deal
with: controlling the animal instincts, the animal mind that comes along
with the animal body.

Anyway, that's where I was, in a gloomy barn with just the yellow
overhead bulbs to light the room. Why was I there? Because someone, or
something, had been sneaking in and getting at the birds. We'd lost a
patient just the night be fore. A duck.

And because I couldn't sleep, anyway. I kept having these dreams. Only
they weren't like normal dreams, somehow. More like ... I don't know.
Just really strange, that's all.

"Relax, Magilla," I whispered to the squirrel in my hands. "This won't
hurt at all." I pulled some chestnuts from my pocket and handed him one.
Another nut fell to the floor.

Some morphs are easy. Some are terrifying. When I was a horse, that was
cool. When I had to become a trout, well, that was a little more weird.
The whole time I just kept thinking how someone could fry me and serve
me with tartar sauce.

And I don't like tartar sauce.

"Squirrel," I told myself. I always try to get into the feeling of what
it might be like to be the animal before I even start morphing.

The first physical change was in my size. I

4 started shrinking. It's a very bizarre feeling. See, you feel like
you're standing totally still, but the ground keeps coming up toward
you. And the ceiling is moving away. Door handles aren't where they
should be anymore. All of a sudden they're over your head.

I had shrunk to maybe two, two-and-a-half feet tall when my arms came
sucking back into my body. Right about that point, the real Magilla tore
out of there. He ran back to his cage, got in, and - I swear this is
true - closed the door. Anyway, I still had normal (although short)
legs, but my arms were stunted. I still had the normal number of
fingers, but they were teeny tiny now, way too small for my body.

My ears traveled up the side of my head to rest on top. Soft gray fur
spread across my body in a wave. My face puffed out and grew pointed.

Then, the wildest thing! My tail sprouted out of my body! And what was
cool was that I wasn't a squirrel yet. I was still about half human, the
size of a small child, and my tail just shot out, about two feet long!
Much longer and bigger than it would be once I was totally squirrelified.

I tilted my head back and I could see this bushy gray tail arched up
over me. Way cool.

My legs sucked in and I was down on the ground, down on the cement floor
of the barn.

I suddenly discovered I hadn't swept and

5 mopped as well as I thought I had. Amazing what you can see when your
face is just an inch from the floor.

Then the squirrel brain kicked in.

WHOA! YOW!

Man, did I have energy!

It was like I was plugged into a million volts. I was supercharged! My
slow, sluggish human brain was just blown away by the sudden explosion
of energy.

A noise!

What's that? I cocked my ears. I swung my head, focusing my big eyes. A
bird in a cage!

A new sound! What was it? I spun around.

No, wait! What was that? And that? And the other sound?

PREDATORS! They were everywhere! I was surrounded! PREDATORS!

Birds! Big birds with nasty claws. All around me.

Wait. There was a nut. Oooh. A nut.

PREDATORS! Alert!

I scampered across the floor. Look left. Look right. Sniff sniff sniff
the air.

Oh, yes. Predators. I smelled them. I heard them. Birds. A wolf. A badger.

PREDATORS! RUN RUN RUN!

Oh, wait. Was that a nut? I hopped over to the nut. YES! A chestnut! I
seized it in my little front

6 claws and began immediately to chew a hole in it. Excellent!
Wonderful! Chestnut! And I had it! No one could take it away. Hah hah!

A noise! What?

PREDATORS!

Don't drop the nut! Run with the nut! RUN!

With the nut stuffed into my jaw, I ran.

I ran straight up the wall. Straight up.

And that was the moment when Tobias decided to show up.

7

T obias flew in through the hayloft overhead.

Unfortunately, in my squirrel mentality, with my human brain just barely
holding on, I didn't realize it was Tobias.

What it looked like to me was a red-tailed hawk. A bird of prey. And
this one was not in a cage.

No, this one was flapping around the high rafters of the barn. The hawk
had talons like steel and a hooked beak that could open me up like a can
of beans.

I felt his hawk's eyes on me.

RUN RUNRUNRUNRUN!

I didn't know what to do. I mean, me, the hu man being named Cassie. I
didn't know what to

j

8 do. I knew I had to get control over the squirrel. But it was so hyper!

However, the squirrel knew just what to do.

ZOOOM!

I ran straight up the wall. My little claws grabbed at tiny splinters
and cracks in the wood, and shot up at a terrifying speed. If you've
never been a squirrel - and let's face it, you haven't - you probably
don't have any idea what it's like to run up. The wooden wall was like a
floor under me. But at the same time I knew the difference between up
and down. I knew if I fell it would be down. It's as if you were running
across the floor in your house, but if you tripped you'd fall back
against the wall.

Very strange.

Tobias had come to rest on a rafter. But I could feel his eyes on me. I
froze. I froze corn pletely. Not even my tail twitched. I just clutched
onto the wall and froze.

But I couldn't keep it up. That torrent of squirrel energy would not let
me stand still for long.

Suddenly, with barely a glance to the side, I launched myself through
space. I flew. I mean, I just jumped and hurtled through the air for
what seemed like half a mile, but was actually just ten feet.

9 SLAM! I landed on the wooden beam that runs above the horse stalls.

Bad move. Tobias had seen my movement. Out of the corner of my eye I saw
his vast wings open. He swooped down, talons raked forward.

But then ... a new movement. Something large and furtive. A board in the
side of the barn pushed open. A head poked inside. It was just below me.
An intelligent, alert face, looking up at me and wondering if I was dinner.

A fox! Aha! My mystery bird-killer.

I had to get control of the squirrel brain. It al ways takes a minute in
any new morph, at least, to control those wild animal instincts, but I
didn't have a minute.

Tobias swooped.

Suddenly it was insanity everywhere. Birds in every cage began to squawk
and shriek! The wolves in the next room decided to start howling. The
horses were whinnying shrilly.

Tobias sheered away, startled.

Too late. I had jumped again, and now I was falling toward the
straw-covered floor of a stall. Fall ing toward the fox.

I hit the ground and blew out of there, leaving a storm of dust and
straw in my wake.

The fox came after me. He was fast. Very fast.

<Tobias! Help!> I yelled in thought-speak.

10 <What the ... Is that you, Cassie?>

I dodged left. The fox dodged after me.

He was faster than me and almost as agile. Unless I could find a place
to climb up and away, I was done for!

<Yes, it's me!>

<Well, why didn't you tell me?!> he said, sounding grumpy in my head. <l
was considering eating you.>

<l just morphed. I just got control of this crazy squirrel brain. Now
would you PLEASE save me?>

The fox's jaw snapped at my tail. I felt his teeth comb the fur.

<Good grief,> Tobias said. He opened his wings and came hurtling down,
straight at the fox.

The fox saw the shadow of the big hawk. He stopped dead in his tracks.

Too late. Tobias raked him with his talons and shot past.

The fox decided this was more trouble than he needed. He bolted for his
secret passageway.

Tobias came to rest on a crossbeam and looked down at me with his fierce
hawk's gaze. <Cassie? Why are you out here at midnight turn ing into a
squirrel?>

I was already starting to morph back to human shape. <Well, we've had
some birds taken

11 in the last couple of days. We figured it was a badger or a raccoon
or a fox, but we couldn't fig ure out how he was getting in. So I
decided to morph and wait to see when he showed up.>

<Well, I certainly can't criticize anyone who wants to rescue birds,> he
said. He fluffed his wings and began preening some ruffled feathers.

I was halfway back to human shape, growing up from the floor, feeling my
legs sprout beneath me. But my human mouth was not back yet. <So, what
are you doing here, Tobias? Looking for a squirrel sandwich?>

Tobias had almost completely accepted the fact that he was permanently
stuck in the body of a red-tailed hawk. Recently he had begun to hunt
and eat like a hawk. He was still a little sensitive about it, but I
thought if I just made a joke out of it, he would realize I wasn't
grossed out or any thing.

<Squirrel sandwich?> he said. <No, I was thinking barbecue. Sorry I
scared you.>

"It's okay, my friend," I said in my own voice. My mouth had formed. I
was almost back to nor mal, all but this huge tail, which was still
poking out of the back of my morphing outfit.

Normal, for me, is about average height, I guess. Whatever "average" is.
I'm kind of solidly built, not skinny and not fat, with hair I keep
short because I don't like messing with it. As my

12 friends would tell you, I'm not exactly Ms. Fashion. Mostly, if you
want to know what I look like, picture a girl in overalls and leather
work gloves, biting her lip as she concentrates on trying to force a
pill down the throat of a badger.

Jake once took a picture of me doing exactly that. He has it next to his
computer in his room. Don't ask me why. I would be glad to give him a
picture of me in a dress or something. Rachel could loan me the dress.
But Jake says he likes the picture he has.

<l hear something,> Tobias said, suddenly alert.

I strained my ears. Human ears are so lame. Almost any animal can hear
better. But then I heard it, too. A voice.

"Is someone in there?"

"My father!"

<You still have a tail!>

Too late. The barn door swung open. My fa ther stood there, blinking
sleepily and holding a flashlight. "Cass? What are you doing out here?"

I stuck my hands behind my back and tried to hold my big squirrel tail
down while I attempted to morph it away at maximum speed. "N-n-noth-
ing, Dad. l-l-l just couldn't sleep."

He nodded. "Okay. Well, go to bed now," he said crankily. My father is
one of those people

13 who needs about an hour and three cups of cof fee to wake up.

"Okay, Daddy," I said.

He hesitated. "Cassie? Turn around."

"Turn around?" I repeated in a squeaky voice.

"Yeah. Turn around. It's . . . just turn around."

Slowly I turned. As I did, the last of the tail shwooped back into my
spine.

"Huh," my dad said. "I gotta get back to sleep. I swear I thought you
had a tail."

"Heh heh," I laughed weakly.

When he left I collapsed back on the straw. "I really should have just
stayed in bed," I said to Tobias. "Dreams or no dreams."

<Dreams?> he snapped. <What kind of dreams?>

I shrugged. "I don't know. These kind of weird dreams about the sea."

<The sea,> he echoed. <And a voice, calling out to you from beneath the
water.>

It was warm in the barn, but suddenly I felt really cold.

14

N o, I haven't had any weird dreams about the sea," Marco said. "I've
had weird dreams about my sheets trying to strangle me. I've had weird
dreams about falling from way up high and when I finally land I'm in
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood talking to King Friday. I've had weird
dreams about that woman on Baywatch . . . hmm, well, that does kind of
involve the ocean, I guess."

"You have dreams about King Friday?" Rachel asked him. She put on a
worried look. "I see." She shook her head slowly and made a tsk, tsk sound.

"What? What's the matter with dreaming about King Friday?" Marco demanded.

15 Rachel shrugged. "All I'm going to say is you should think about
seeing a counselor before your condition worsens." Rachel turned so
Marco couldn't see her and gave me a wink.

"Very funny," Marco sneered. But he still looked a little worried.

We were in Rachel's room the next day, af ter school. Her room is so
neat. Straight out of a magazine, you know? Like everything matches or
goes together. She has this bulletin board where she puts little wise
sayings on Post-it notes.

I drifted over to the bulletin board and read '"Don't think there are no
crocodiles just be cause the water is calm.' - Malayan Proverb."

Just beside that was '"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need
not fear the results of a hundred battles.' - Sun Tzu."

It made me a little sad. In the good old days, Rachel would have had a
bunch of quotes about being a good person or whatever. It just showed
how much our lives had changed.

In a very short time we had all grown accustomed to a world of fear and
danger. We had arrived at Rachel's house separately. We had each checked
to make sure we weren't being followed. We had planned the afternoon in
advance to be sure that Rachel's mom and her two sisters would be out.

16 We had even had Tobias fly over the area look ing for anything unusual.

That's what our lives had become. That and quotations full of paranoia
and battle.

Jake hadn't said anything yet. Tobias and I had both told everyone about
our strangely iden tical dreams. About the voice that seemed to come
from beneath the sea. The strange voice that called to us.

No one else had heard the voice in their dreams. Marco had made jokes.
Rachel had been supportive but skeptical. Only Jake had re mained silent.

I suppose you could say Jake is sort of our "leader," although he's not
bossy in any way. It's more like this natural aspect of his personality.
He's the one you just automatically look to when there's trouble.

Of course, I look to him for other reasons. Not that I would ever tell
him or anything, but I really like Jake. You know, as in like.

He's very cute, in a big, strong kind of way. He has brown hair and
dark, dark eyes. He seems very serious until you get to know him. And
then you realize he's still pretty serious, but he also knows when to
laugh.

Jake has to know when to laugh because Marco has been his best friend
since they were both in diapers. They've competed and fought

17 and disagreed the whole time. Marco's mission in life is to find the
humor in everything. Even in his best friend.

Marco is kind of cute, too, although he's not my type. He wears his
brown hair long and has these amazing eyelashes that I would love to
have myself.

Marco isn't interested in being in charge, or even in being part of a
team. He wants us to just quit the whole thing. He wants us to forget
the Yeerks and forget morphing and just try and stay alive.

But at the same time, it's Marco who is very aware of all the security
problems. He's the one who makes sure we never discuss anything on the
phone, where enemy ears might be listen ing in.

Rachel is my closest friend. She has been for years. How can I explain
Rachel? First of all, she and Jake are cousins, and they have a lot in
common. They seem to grow strong people in that family, because Rachel
is the strongest person I know. It's like nothing ever intimidates her.
She's totally fearless, or at least that's how she seems.

To look at her you'd think, Oh, she'll grow up to be some airheaded
model, because she's very tall and pretty and blond. But I pity anyone
who mistakes Rachel for a wimpy airhead.

Sometimes I think Rachel likes the way every-

18 thing has worked out. It's like all along there was this Amazon
warrior locked up inside of her, and now she has an excuse to bring it out.

But she was not a person who believed in dreams very much. "Well, okay,"
she said, "if we're done with the dreams, let's - "

"Rachel," Jake interrupted, "I think I have something that may be
interesting." He pulled a videocassette out of his bag.

"Cool. Let's watch a movie," Marco said.

"Not a movie," Jake said. "I guess no one else watched the late news
last night?"

"I was busy watching my taped reruns of Mis ter Rogers' Neighborhood,"
Marco said, giving Rachel a sly look. "Last night it was the one where
it was a beautiful day in the neighbor hood."

Jake rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, the way he'd done a million
times before when Marco said something irrelevant or annoying. "Rachel,
can we go downstairs and use your VCR?"

"Sure," Rachel said.

We trooped down the stairs. Except for Tobias, who fluttered down above
our heads.

"Hey, Tobias," Marco said, "I've been mean ing to ask you, are hawks
like seagulls? I mean, do they poop while they're flying?"

<Depends on who's down below,> Tobias shot

19 back. <Let me just put it this way - if you get on my nerves, you'd
better buy a hat.>

Down in Rachel's living room, Jake turned on the TV and popped in his
cassette.

"There was just this one small story," he nar rated, as, on the screen,
an old guy in a bathing suit held up a piece of what looked like metal.

"So now we're interested in hairy old guys who should be wearing
shirts?" Marco asked.

"This old guy says he found that on the beach. It washed up during the
storm a couple of days ago. Watch."

The camera focused on what looked like a jagged piece of metal, about
two feet long and one foot wide. As the camera zoomed in, I saw what
looked like letters. Only they weren't any al phabet I had ever seen.

Now the tape was showing the anchorwoman smiling, and then it went
blank. Jake turned the VCR off.

"Okay . . . so?" Marco prodded.

Jake sighed. "So the night the Andalite landed, when I went inside his
ship to get the cube that gave us our morphing powers, I saw writing."

I felt a chill creep up the back of my neck.

"I could be wrong, I mean, I'm not some ex pert," Jake said. "But I
think it was that same al phabet. Those same kinds of letters."

20 Suddenly no one was laughing. Not even Marco.

"I think what washed up on the beach is a piece of an Andalite ship,"
Jake said.

Suddenly, without warning, I felt the ground swirl beneath me. I fell
straight back, not even caring that Jake caught me in his arms just be
fore I hit the carpet.

21

I was falling, falling, falling.

Falling into the sea.

Splash! I hit the water. But still I fell. Down and down and down
through blue-green, sunlit layers of water.

<I 'm here,> a voice called to me. <l am here. I cannot survive much
longer. If you hear me ... come. If you hear me ... come.>

Suddenly I opened my eyes. I stared up at Jake's concerned face.

Glancing across the room, I saw Rachel with the telephone to her ear,
preparing to dial.

"She's awake!" Jake said.

"I'd better still call an ambulance," Rachel said.

22 "No!" Marco snapped, "Not unless we know she's hurt. It's too big a
risk."

Rachel's eyes flared the way they do when someone tells her something
she doesn't want to hear. "I'm calling nine-one-one," she said tersely.

"No, Rachel, I'm okay," I said. I sat up. My head felt a little woozy,
but I was all right.

Rachel hesitated, her fingers just above the keypad. "What about Tobias?"

I looked around the room and saw Tobias spread out on the floor, one
wing crumpled beneath him.

He looked dead.

I jumped up and ran to him.

"Rachel, Cassie seems okay, and nine-one- one can't help Tobias," Jake
said.

Rachel replaced the receiver and ran over to Tobias.

"He's not dead," I said. I could feel him breathing. Then, just as
suddenly as I had, he woke up. His enormous brown hawk's eyes opened,
instantly fierce.

His first reaction was pure hawk. He hopped up and flared. Hawks flare
just the way cats do when they're trying to intimidate someone. They
hunch their shoulders and fluff up their feathers to make themselves
look bigger than they are.

"Everybody stand still," I said quickly. "It's

23 okay, Tobias, you were just out for a minute there."

He quickly gained control over the hawk in stincts. <That was strange,>
he said.

"It happened to me, too," I said. "I passed out. And then I had the
dream again. Only this time I could hear an actual voice. Or at least I
heard thought-speech."

<Me, too,> Tobias confirmed.

"Okay, now this is getting weird," Rachel said. "Because at the same
time I thought I kind of felt something."

"Yeah," Jake agreed. Marco nodded.

<l know this sounds crazy, but ... but it's like someone is sending out
a distress signal. Like they are calling for help.>

"Only this someone is in the water, or under the water, or something," I
said. "Seeing that video, seeing that writing, it was like suddenly the
message grew stronger."

"Or it may have just been a coincidence," Jake said. "This isn't a
dream. I don't know what it is, but it isn't a dream. Even I halfway saw
something. This is some kind of a communica tion."

"Well, this is all very interesting," Marco said, "but so what? I mean,
are we getting some kind of psychic message from the Little Mermaid?
What are we supposed to do about it?"

24 Jake looked closely at me. "Cassie? Was the voice in your dream a
human voice?"

I was startled by the question. I hadn't really thought about it. I
actually laughed. "When you asked me, the first thing that popped into
my head was no, it isn't human." I laughed again. "But that doesn't make
any sense."

<I t's not human,> Tobias said suddenly. <l understand the meaning of
what it's saying, but it's not human. It's not 'speaking' in words,
really.>

"So what is it?" Rachel asked. "Yeerk?"

I let my mind drift back to the dream. I tried to hear the sound in my
head again. "No, not Yeerk. It reminds me of something ... of some one."

<The Andalite,> Tobias blurted.

I snapped my fingers. "Yes! That's it! It re minds me of the Andalite.
When he first thought-spoke to us. That's what it's like."

"The Andalite," Marco muttered. He looked away. I knew he was
remembering. We all were.

We had been walking home from the mall at night. Walking through a big
abandoned construction site, when the Andalite ship had ap peared above us.

It landed, and out came the Andalite prince, fatally wounded in a battle
with the Yeerks some where in space.

25 He was the one who had warned us of the Yeerks - the parasite species
that inhabited the brains of other creatures and enslaved them, making
them Controllers. It was the Andalite who had warned us, and who, in
desperation, had given us the great and terrible weapon - the power to
morph.

We had been hiding, cringing in terror, when the Yeerks caught up with
the Andalite. When Visser Three himself, the Yeerk leader, had mur dered
him.

I shuddered at the terrible memory of the An- dalite's last, despairing
cry.

"Yes," I whispered. "Tobias is right. It's an Andalite. That's who is
calling to us from the sea. An Andalite."

For a few minutes no one said anything.

Then Rachel said, "He died trying to save us." She looked defiantly at
Marco. "I know that doesn't mean anything to you. But the Andalite died
trying to save Earth."

Marco nodded. "I know. And you're wrong, Rachel. That means plenty to me."

"Yeah? Well, if there's some Andalite calling for help, I'm going to try
and help him," Rachel said.

I looked over at Jake and we shared this look, like "Oh, big surprise,
Rachel is ready to go." I hid my smile and Jake kept a straight face.

26 "Tobias?" Jake asked. "What do you say?"

<l don't know if I should have a vote. I'm the one person here who isn't
going to be much help dealing with water. Besides, you guys all know how
I'd vote.>

Of all of us, it was Tobias who had stayed longest at the Andalite's
side, even as the An dalite ordered him to get to safety. Something
really deep had gone on between the Andalite prince and Tobias.

It was my turn. "I can't just ignore someone crying out for help, if
that's what this is."

We all looked at Marco. I could see Rachel getting angry, like she was
ready to jump all over Marco if, as usual, he disagreed.

Marco just grinned. "I really hate to do this. I really hate to
disappoint you all." Then he grew serious. "But I was there at the
construction site, same as all of you. I was there when Visser Three - "
Suddenly his voice choked. "What I mean is, if there's an Andalite who
needs any thing, I'm there."

27

Y ou do realize that if we're down here at the beach because of that
news story, some Con trollers are probably down here, too?" Marco asked
for about the tenth time.

"Yes, Marco," Jake said patiently. "But maybe Cassie and Tobias can get
some feeling from being down here, closer to the sea."

"So let me get this straight - we are now making decisions based on
Tobias and Cassie's dreams, right?" Marco said. "And yet my dreams are
totally ignored. The fact that I once dreamed about staying home and
watching TV in total safety, that means nothing, right?"

"Right," Jake said flatly.

We were at the beach. The same beach where

28 the guy on the news had found what we now be lieved was a piece of an
Andalite ship. It was night, with a sliver of moon that painted ripples
of silver across the black water. A salt breeze blew off the water,
making me feel peaceful and yet a little overwhelmed, intimidated, the
way the ocean always makes me feel.

There is nothing as big as the ocean. It's like this entirely different
planet, full of strange plants and fantastic animals. Valleys and
mountains and caves and broad, flat plains, all hidden from our sight.

All I could see was the surface. All I could feel was the barest edge of
the ocean, rushing over my toes as each wave crashed ashore.

But I could sense it out there. I could sense how vast it was, and how
tiny I was.

"How about my dream of living long enough to get a driver's license?"

Jake gave Marco an exasperated look. "Marco, you can turn into a bird
and fly. You could do it right now. Why would you care about driving a
car a few years from now?"

"The babes," Marco said instantly. "Duh. You can't pick up girls when
you're a bird." He glanced overhead, where we could see just the hint of
dark wings against the canopy of stars. "No offense, Tobias. The wings
are great, but I'm

29 thinking of something bright red with about four hundred horsepower."

Marco's cooperative mood hadn't lasted long. I knew it wouldn't. Marco
is never happy unless he's complaining about something. Just like Rachel
is never happy unless she has something to fight against. And Tobias is
never happy, pe riod. He thinks if he's ever happy, someone will just
come along and take his happiness away.

"So, Cassie?" Rachel said. "Do you feel any thing?"

"Well, I feel a little embarrassed," I admitted. "And a little foolish."

"Maybe we could try calling the Psychic Friends," Marco suggested. "Hi,
is this Psychic Friends? I've been dreaming about aliens lately - "

"Why Cassie and Tobias?" Rachel wondered aloud, ignoring Marco. "Why
would they get these images so clearly and the rest of us barely felt
anything?"

Jake shook his head. "I don't know. I mean, okay, say you're an
Andalite. And you want to call for help. Who do you want to come and
rescue you? Other Andalites, obviously."

"Tobias isn't an Andalite, and neither am I," I pointed out.

"I know," Jake said. "But maybe this commu-

30 nication, whatever it is, is tied into the ability to morph. You
know, like morphing ability makes you able to 'hear' it. That way, only
Andalites would be able to receive the call for help."

"Which still doesn't explain why Tobias and I _"

"Maybe it does," Marco interrupted, serious again. "Look, Tobias is
permanently in morph. And Cassie, you're the one who has the most tal
ent for morphing." Then he flashed white teeth in the dark. "Besides,
you know you like animals more than humans, so it's like you're halfway
into morph, anyway."

Suddenly a dark shape swooped low over our heads. <Lights!> Tobias said.
<Up ahead on the beach. There's a bunch of people moving in a line with
flashlights, like they're searching for something. You can't see them
yet because they're hidden by that dune. But they'll be here in a couple
of minutes.>

"Who are they?" Jake demanded.

<l can't tell,> Tobias said. <My eyes may be great during the day, but
at night I don't see any better than you do. I'm a hawk, not an owl.
Fortu nately, I still hear pretty well. You guys hide in the dunes. I'll
be right back.>

With that he was gone.

"Come on," Jake said. "He's right. Let's hide in the dunes."

31 We crouched down in a pocket between two dunes. I lay flat on my
belly in the cold sand and peered through the tall sea grass, focusing
on the bright line of the surf.

Tobias was back a few minutes later.

< It's them,> he said. He came to rest on a piece of driftwood. < It's a
group from The Sharing. Chapman is with them.> He turned his head to
look at Jake. <Tom is with them, too.>

The Sharing is a front organization for the Yeerks. Supposedly it's this
group for all ages, like Girl Scouts or whatever. In reality it's a way
for the Controllers to try and recruit new volun tary hosts. As
impossible as it may seem, some humans actually decide to become hosts
for the Yeerks. The Yeerks like it that way. It's easier for them to
have a voluntary host instead of a host that resists their control.

The Sharing is very subtle, of course. People are brought along very
slowly, over time. New members have no idea what it's all about at
first. They think it's just fun and games.

I don't know when they tell the members what's really happening. By then
I guess it's too late. They either become hosts voluntarily, or, like
Jake's brother Tom, they are taken, anyway.

"Tom is with them?" Jake asked.

< I'm pretty sure,> Tobias said. <Some of the senior members - Chapman
and Tom - are fol-

32 lowing behind the others. I could hear some of what they were saying.
They're very worried about that fragment of Andalite ship.>

"So it is Andalite?" Rachel asked, excited.

<l guess so,> Tobias said. <l heard something else, too.>

The way he hesitated made me tense up. "What?"

<Something about Visser Three having vi sions. That's what they said.
Visions. I guess the visions made the Visser cranky. He was on the
mother ship at the time and decided to shove a Hork-Bajir out of an
airlock because he broke the Visser's concentrations

"It's because of Visser Three's Andalite body," Marcosaid.

"That's the connection. These dreams or vi sions or whatever they are
must be some kind of communication that's only supposed to be heard by
Andalites."

Suddenly I saw the line of flashlights swing into view. There must have
been twenty people strung across the beach, all looking down at the
sand, moving forward slowly.

"They're searching for any other fragments," I whispered.

A part of the line stopped moving. I heard someone yelling. Others came
running up, ex cited.

33 "What did they find?" Jake wondered.

"I don't. . ." Then, in a flash, it came to me. "Our footprints! Four
sets of fresh footprints that suddenly turn off into the dunes!"

"Let's get out of here," Jake hissed. "Now!"

Too late!

The flashlight beams raced across the rippling sand and up the side of
the dune. In an instant a dozen flashlight beams focused on the notch
where we crouched.

We slithered back, down and out of sight. Then we jumped up and ran.

"We should morph!" Rachel gasped as we stumbled over the sinking sand.

"No!" Marco said. "Tracks. We would leave tracks that went from human to
animal."

"Get them!" someone yelled. Chapman, I think. He's our assistant
principal at school. I knew his voice from hearing him yell in the hall
ways.

Jerky, wild beams of light danced all around us. We ducked and ran as
fast as we could. But running across the sand was like running through
quicksand.

Jake was gasping out whispered instructions. "Double around ... if they
follow us deeper into ... the dunes ... we can double around . . . get
to the water. . . then morph ..."

"There! There! I see them!"

34 A beam of light swept over me. I could see my shadow, long and
twisted, projected on the sand. I dodged left, out of the light. Just in
time.

BAM! BAM!

Gunfire!

Someone was shooting at me.

35

It seemed totally crazy.

I mean, I've been in one-on-one combat to the death with seven-foot-tall
Hork-Bajir war riors, and I've been shot at by Dracon beams that sort of
disintegrate you slowly. But I'd never been shot at with plain old
everyday guns.

It seemed nuts after all we'd been through.

BAM!BAM!BAM!

Phit! I heard something hit the sand just inches from my foot.

"Aaaahhh!" I cried in surprise.

This was real. Real! This was really happen ing.

A rough hand grabbed me and dragged me

36 forward. Jake. I had frozen when I'd heard the bullet so close.

<They're all in the dunes!> Tobias cried. <Now's the time.>

"Come on!" Jake snapped. He half dragged me up the side of the nearest
dune, but by then I was moving fine all on my own. I was scurrying up
the side of that hill, snatching at handholds of scrub grass, pistoning
my feet into the sand.

Over the top. We slid and rolled and ran down the far side.

We were back on the beach. I stole a quick glance to the right. No
lights on the beach. They were all in the dunes. Looking for us.

"Head to the water," Jake said. "Morph to fish."

"Jake," I panted. "Trout. . . they're freshwater fish . . . this is
saltwater."

"You have a better idea?" he asked.

BAM!BAM!

"No," I said. We splashed into the boiling surf. As I ran I pictured the
fish. I remembered being the fish. I focused as much as anyone can focus
with a dozen or so Controllers chasing her and shooting.

My feet went out from under me. They had shriveled and begun to
disappear. I hit the water and got a mouthful of salty foam.

I tried to keep my head above water, but my

37 arms were rapidly disappearing. The waves were high around me as I
became smaller and smaller. My clothing billowed.

The people from The Sharing, the Controllers, raced to the water's edge.
I could see their lights, weirdly distorted as my eyes went from the
air- adapted eyes of a human to the eyes of a fish.

With what was left of my ears I heard, "The tracks lead right to the
water."

Tom's voice. Then Chapman's. "I don't see them. They can't swim far. The
current is too strong. Fan out up and down the beach."

"Do you think these are the Andalite gueril las?"

"No. The tracks are human. Just some kids, probably. I doubt they saw
anything. That fool should not have been shooting."

"Sir," a new voice said. "We found a pair of jeans in the surf. Look
like they could be for a kid."

"Any identification in them?"

"No. Nothing."

"Coincidence," Chapman said. "Probably."

"If they're human, why don't we see them out there?" Tom asked. "Four
sets of human tracks. No humans in the water. Is it possible ... is
Visser Three wrong? What if they're not Andalites at all?"

I sank beneath the water. The morph was al-

38 most complete. But as I went under I heard Chapman laugh cruelly.
"Visser Three wrong? Maybe. But I'm not the fool who's going to try and
tell him."

The morph was complete. I was a fish, less than a foot long. A trout, to
be exact. Excellent broiled, fried, or grilled.

The saltwater was harsh on my scales, and my gills were barely able to
breathe.

<Everyone okay?> It was Jake. Now that we had morphed we had the same
thought-speech ability as Tobias.

< I'm okay,> I assured him. <But I can barely breathe. I think we'd
better be quick.>

< I'm with Cassie,> Rachel said. <l feel like my scales are burning up.
And my gills are on fire.>

<Keep the shore on your left and go full speed as long as you can stand
it,> Jake advised.

<Marco? Are you with us?> I asked.

< Oh , sure. Where else would I be? What could possibly be more fun than
running around the sand dunes getting shot at and then jumping into the
ocean and turning into a trout, who, incidentally, can't live in
saltwater? I wouldn't miss it for anything. Now can we go home and watch
TV?>

39

T he next couple of days we didn't get together, except for passing each
other in the hall ways at school. We do have lives beyond being
Animorphs, after all.

Rachel was busy with her gymnastics class. Plus she got to go to this
ceremony where her mom received some award for being Lawyer of the Year.
(And since this is Rachel we're talking about, going to an awards dinner
meant major shopping for new everything.)

Jake had totally blown a test because he hadn't studied, so he had to do
a paper as makeup work. And I was busy helping my dad out in the barn
with the golden eagle who had almost been elec-

40 trocuted. He was at a difficult stage of his recov ery.

Tobias dropped by one evening and acted kind of snippy about me trying
to save a golden eagle. Golden eagles and hawks don't get along.
Probably because golden eagles are known to kill and eat hawks.

It was a couple of days later that Jake rode his bike over to my house.
I didn't expect him, so I was dressed like even more of a slob than
usual. Plus I reeked of various horrible things because I was mucking
out the stables and cleaning the birdcages.

Typical guy. He had the totally bad timing to show up when I looked like
Ms. Manure.

"Hey, Cassie," he said in his usual casual way, like nothing was going on.

"Hi, Jake. Did you come by to help me shovel manure?"

He grinned. He has a great smile. It appears kind of slowly, like it
doesn't quite belong on his serious face. "I don't know. Did I?"

"Yes, you did," I told him. I handed him a shovel. "If I have to smell,
so do you."

We worked a little bit, with no sound but the steel shovel blades
scraping the concrete. I knew he had something to tell me. I can always
tell. But I figured I'd let him get around to it whenever he was ready.

41 "So," he said at last.

"So?" I echoed.

"Look, um, I guess everyone is kind of waiting to see what you decide to
do."

This surprised me. I stopped shoveling. "What? What do you mean?"

"I mean, we're waiting to see what you decide to do about this dream of
yours."

I shrugged. "I don't know. Besides, it's not just my dream. Tobias has
it, too. And all of you guys felt it a little, at least."

"Yeah, but Tobias figures he isn't going to be much help when ... I
mean, if we decide to do something. We're talking water, and Tobias
can't morph. As for the rest of us, I don't know. Rachel and Marco were
talking about whether it might have just been something they imagined,
you know? Because you made it seem so real and all."

"What do you think, Jake?"

Jake stopped working and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
He looked straight into my eyes. "Cassie, if you tell me it's real, it's
real. I think you and Tobias are right. But Marco is having second
thoughts." He raised one eyebrow, as if to say "You know Marco."

I felt a queasy, sick feeling. "You mean, I'm supposed to make some kind
of a decision? Like I'm supposed to say what we do?"

42 "Cassie, you're the one with the dream. Only you can decide if it's
real, and if it's real enough for us to try and do something about it."

"I don't know i f i t's real," I said. What was he asking me to do?
Every time we had tried to get into it with the Yeerks, we had ended up
barely escaping with our lives. Just two days had passed since I'd heard
bullets whizzing past me.

Jake waited until I met his gaze again. "Cassie, you know we all trust
your instincts. You're the best at understanding animals. You're the
best morpher. You know everyone in the group respects you."

I made a face. "Give me a break."

"If you think we should pursue this, you know Rachel will be right
behind you. Me, too."

"And Marco?"

Jake grinned again. "Marco won't be right be hind you. He'll be several
feet back."

We both laughed.

"I don't know, Jake. It's a dream. It's like a vi sion or something. How
do I know if it's real?"

He shook his head. "I don't know, Cassie. I guess you just have to take
your best shot and hope you're right."

I cringed at that. I'm not Rachel. I'm not a risk-taker. "Can't you
decide for me?" I asked, joking.

43 He nodded solemnly. "If you want me to, sure."

"And then if it's a disaster, it will all be on your head," I said.
"You'll be the one who feels bad. You'll be the one to blame." I reached
out and touched his cheek. "That's incredibly sweet of you. But you're
right. I guess it's my decision this time."

I sighed and looked around at the barn. It smelled pretty bad, and
sometimes it was a nuthouse of yammering birds and howling wolves and
whinnying horses, all needing care, and all scared of the care we gave
them. But it was the place I felt most at home in the whole world.

Out through the door of the barn, the fields of corn and open meadow
stretched off into the distance, till they pressed up against the dark
trees of the forest.

"I know this is crazy," I said, "but the ocean scares me a little. I
understand the land. I under stand soil and things that grow out of it."
I laughed. "I guess I'm just an old farm girl. You know this farm has
been in my family since the Civil War?"

Jake winked. "Do I know that? Puh-leeze. I had Thanksgiving with your
family last year, you may remember. Your great-grandmother gave me the
complete history."

44 "Going all the way back to when dinosaurs ruled the earth," I said.
"Grammy does tend to go on about our history, doesn't she?"

He looked serious again, almost hard. "It's your call, Cassie. It will
be really dangerous and we probably won't do much good. I mean, it's a
big ocean out there. But it's your decision."

"Yep," I agreed. I shook my head slowly, sadly. "I believe these dreams
are real. I believe there's an Andalite out there, somewhere . . .
somehow . . . trapped. Calling for help."

"Good enough," he said. "Now. How do we get out there?"

I frowned, thinking of the possibilities. "Some kind of fish? It would
have to be some thing fast. Something that isn't prey. You know, not
some fish that's going to get snapped up by a hungry tuna or whatever."

Jake nodded. "And it has to be something we can acquire. Which means,
probably, something at The Gardens."

"They have sea lions. And dolphins. But we can't morph them, can we?"

"Why not?"

"I ... I don't know. It's just that, I mean, dol phins? They're highly
intelligent. It seems kind of, I don't know, kind of wrong."

"Well, you decide," he said, leaning his

45 shovel against a wall. "I have to go. I can't blow another test, and
I have to study."

He climbed back on his bike.

"You're just saying that to get out of shoveling manure," I said.

"Cassie," he said, "I would rather shovel manure with you than do
homework without you, any day."

I think it was a compliment. Sort of.

He rode off, leaving me much less at ease than I had been before he'd come.

46 C

T he next day after school, the four of us headed toward The Gardens on
a city bus. Tobias flew. He said he'd be there before we were, but he
wasn't sure how close to us he actually could get.

The Gardens is this big amusement park that also includes a zoo. Only
they don't call it a zoo, they call it a "wildlife park." My mom works
there. Actually, she's the head of medical services, the head vet.

I have a pass to get in anytime I want, but the others all have to pay,
which is kind of a drag be cause Marco never has any money. Ever since
Marco's mom died, his dad has been kind of

47 messed up. He just takes temporary jobs, and they're always broke.

I guess I kind of think it's romantic, the way Marco's dad has never
gotten over his wife dying. But on the other hand, it's like I had to
learn when I started helping my dad with the animals - sometimes death
just happens, and all you can do is get over it the best you can.

It's tough for Marco because he feels like he has to take care of his
dad - instead of having his dad taking care of him.

On the bus, I glanced over at Marco. He was looking out of the window,
being kind of quiet.

"Hey, Marco," I said.

"What?"

"Is that a new haircut? It looks good."

"Yeah?" He looked surprised. He ran his fingers back through his long
brown hair and kind of smiled.

I did some homework on the bus (math, gag, yuck!) and listened to my
Walkman.

When we got there, it turned out there was a special on tickets - buy
two and get the third ticket for a dollar. Marco had a dollar,
fortunately, so we didn't have to go through any big scenes.

We cruised through the area where all the rides were, heading toward the
wildlife park.

48 Jake shook his head sadly, looking up at the monster roller coaster.
"That used to be the coolest thing in the world to me," he said. "But
ever since I morphed a falcon, it just hasn't seemed like any big deal.
I mean, you're going maybe eighty miles per hour on a steel track. When
I was a falcon I did like two hundred miles an hour in midair."

"This morphing stuff does kind of change things," Marco agreed. "I used
to want to get all pumped up. Then I morphed into a gorilla, and it was
like, why bother lifting weights? I can just become a gorilla and bench
press a truck."

"I don't feel that way," Rachel said. "Being a cat made me more
interested in gymnastics. I mean, as a cat I was just so totally,
totally in con trol and graceful. Ever since then I've been trying to
use that feeling. When I'm on the balance beam I try and remember that
cat confidence."

"And then you fall off just the same as al ways?" I teased.

"Oh, yeah," Rachel said with a laugh. She made little walking fingers in
the air that then fell over. "Boom. I slip right off. But I feel confi
dent while I'm falling off."

We reached the wildlife park entrance. The marine mammals are one of the
first exhibits. There's a main building, then there are several outdoor
tanks.

49 We went straight for the largest outdoor tank. There were bleachers
all around it on three sides where people sat for performances. A show
had just ended, and hundreds of people were leaving. The next show would
be in a couple of hours.

"Good timing," Jake said. "Not too big a crowd."

"It's a weekday afternoon," I said. "It's never all that crowded on
school days."

We forced our way upstream against the rush of people, and reached the
side of the tank.

It's pretty big. Like four or five big swimming pools. It's very blue,
very clean-looking. There's a low platform on one side where the
trainers stand to communicate with the dolphins.

"So what's the difference between porpoises and dolphins?" Marco asked.
"Both just fish, right?"

SPLOOSH!

The placid surface of the water exploded a few feet from us. Water
sprayed across me.

"Oooooh!" we all said as one.

He flew straight up out of the water, like a sleek, pale gray torpedo.
Eleven feet long from nose to tail. Four hundred pounds. He simply flew
into the air, seemed to hang there, ten feet above the surface of the
water, took a skeptical look at us, gave us his permanent wise-guy grin,

50 and slid back beneath the water so smoothly that there was barely a
ripple.

"That is a dolphin," I said to Marco.

"Okay, I like that. That is excellent," Marco said. "Did you see what he
did?"

You know how really great athletes never look like they're even trying?
Like Michael Jordan? How everything they do is perfect, and you know
they must have practiced for a million hours, but they always look like,
"Oh. No big deal. Of course I can fly through the air. Nothing to it."

That's a dolphin in the water. Effortless. Per fect. Utterly in control.

Fish swim through the water. Sharks swim, tuna swim, trout swim, even
people swim. Dolphins don't just swim through the water. They own the
water. The water is their toy. The water is one big trampoline and the
dolphins bounce around like kids having a good time.

Just watching them makes you happy. It also makes you feel like you're
just this clunky, awk ward windup toy, jerky and stumbling and clumsy.
Human beings may be the smartest creatures on Earth, but we sure are
dorky compared to a lot of other species.

"He's trying to get me to give him some more fish."

We all spun around. It was one of the dolphin trainers, a woman named
Eileen.

51 "Oh, hi, Eileen," I said.

She nodded toward the dolphin, who was just exploding out of the water
again. This time he turned a neat little somersault. "Joey is the
biggest con artist. He's always trying to get extra fish."

"He's amazing," I said.

"Yes, he is," Eileen agreed, with a look of pride.

I introduced Jake, Marco, and Rachel. "We were looking at some dolphin
information on the Internet," I lied, "so we thought we'd come out and
see the real thing."

"Well, as you know, we have six dolphins here. Joey, whom you've met,
Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Rachel. Hey, you guys want to feed
them a little? You start throwing fish in the water and they'll all come
over."

"It won't upset their schedule?"

"Nah. Just don't let Joey get it all. He's kind of pushy."

Eileen left us with a nice big bucket of fish.

"That is some nasty-looking fish," Marco commented.

"Once you morph into one of these dolphins, you won't think that,"
Rachel pointed out.

Marco gave her a skeptical look. "Do you realize that just a couple days
ago we were fish? Not that much different than these fish ?"

52 He was right. But it wasn't something I wanted to think about. I've
always been very in volved with animals. But it is a whole different
thing when you can become different animals.

I took a fish by the tail and tossed it into the water. Just as Eileen
suggested, the rest of the dolphins showed up very quickly.

"Wow. Think these guys like to eat?" Rachel asked.

The dolphins put on quite a show. They obvi ously knew how to impress
humans.

"It's just weird the way they grin at you," Marco commented. "I mean,
it's like they actu ally think something's funny."

"And they make eye contact," Jake pointed out. "They look right at you,
right in the eye. Most animals seem like they're looking past you, or
just looking to see what you are. These guys look at you like maybe they
recognize you from somewhere."

Jake leaned over the edge of the tank to stroke one of the dolphins. "Hi
there. Do I know you from somewhere? Jake's my name."

The dolphin tossed his head back and forth like he was nodding "yes,"
chattering in his high- pitched dolphin voice.

"Okay, now that was weird," Rachel said. "It was like he was answering
Jake."

53 "Are you so sure he wasn't?" I asked. "Dolphins are very intelligent.
Not our kind of intelligence, but still, I guess they're one of the two
or three smartest animals around."

"It will be strange morphing something so in telligent," Rachel said.

"Yes," I agreed. Strange, and . . . wrong, somehow. I felt a twisting in
my stomach. "How is doing this any different than what the Yeerks do?"

Rachel looked surprised. "Yeerks take over humans," she said. "Besides,
they don't morph, they infest. We don't take over the actual animal, we
just copy his DNA pattern, create a totally new animal, and then - "

"And then control the new animal," I said.

"It's not the same," Rachel insisted. But she looked troubled.

"It's something I'll have to think about," I said. "It's kind of been
bothering me."

Jake joined Rachel and me. "We'd better do it."

I nodded. "Yes, we should, before we run out of fish to feed these
guys." I leaned over the side of the tank and patted the head of the
nearest dolphin. Her skin was rubbery, but not at all slimy. Just like a
wet rubber ball.

She grinned up at me, fixing me with one eye as she cocked her head to
see me.

54 I pushed away my doubts, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the
dolphin. She became peaceful and calm, as animals always do during the
acquiring process.

May I? I asked her silently. But of course she couldn't answer. . . .

55

T hat night I dreamed again of the voice un der the sea, calling for
help. Only this time it sounded faint. Like a radio with the batteries
growing weak. I wasn't sure if it was just a regular dream this time. A
dream of a memory that might or might not be real.

And I dreamed of the dolphin in her tank at the wildlife park. The one
they called Monica, al though who knew if she had a true name of her
own? How long had she been in that tank? How long since she had been
free in the open sea?

The next day was Friday. There was no school because of some teacher
conference, so we had a three-day weekend ahead of us.

56 I called Jake. "Hi, Jake. Are we going to the beach today like we
planned?"

We were always very careful about anything we said over the telephone.
Phone lines can be tapped. Besides, Tom, Jake's brother, could lis ten
in on an extension and overhear something we didn't want him to hear.

"Actually, I was thinking the beach will be re ally crowded today," Jake
said, sounding very casual. "I was talking to Marco and he said maybe we
should go down to the river instead."

It was a good suggestion. We couldn't exactly morph on a beach full of
people.

"I'll be there in two hours, okay? I have some chores to do."

I ended up being a little late. They were all waiting for me.

It was an area I had been to before with my dad. It's a little park near
a bridge. A good place for fishing. About half a mile away, the river
empties into the ocean. The river is lined with trees along most of its
length. Here and there are homes and private docks, but the spot we'd
cho sen was hidden from the bridge and from any houses.

"Hi, Cassie," Jake said, smiling at me.

"Hi, everyone," I said. I spotted a movement in one of the tree
branches. "Hey up there, To bias. How's it going?"

57 <The same old thing. You know how it is. It's a hawk-eat-mouse world
out there.>

I laughed, pleased to hear that Tobias was learning to be at peace with
the fact that, at least for a while, he was as much a hawk as he was a boy.

< I'm going to be the timekeeper, watching the deadly two-hour limit,>
Tobias said. < I'm the only bird in the world with his own watch.>

I looked closer and saw a very small digital timer strapped to one of
his legs.

<Rachel put it on for me,> he explained. < I'll be over water the whole
time, so I figured it was fairly safe. No bird watchers around to see me
and wonder 'Hmmm, when did red-tails start wearing Timexes?'>

Jake said, "I figured we'd hide our clothes, then wade into the river a
little way, then start morphing."

"Sounds good," Rachel said.

"Cassie? Will you go first?" Jake asked.

I nodded. "Sure." For some reason everyone has decided that I am the
best morpher. I think it's mostly silly. We can all morph fine.

But the first time we morph a new animal it's always kind of tense. You
never know what it's going to be like. You never know how much the
animal's instincts and mind will resist you.

And this time there was a new fear, at least

58 for me. What sort of mind would I find? Would it be just the dolphin
instincts, or would I encounter a true dolphin mind, with thoughts and
ideas of its own?

I shed my overalls and kicked off my shoes, leaving just the leotard
that I thought of as my morphing outfit. See, it's possible to morph
some clothing along with you, but only something skintight. Anything
bulky you try to morph just ends up as rags. And shoes? Forget shoes.
We've all tried morphing shoes and it never works.

I stepped into the water. "Cold," I reported. The current tugged at my
ankles.

I waded in a little farther, up to my waist.

Then I focused on the dolphin that was now a part of me.

The first change was my skin. It lightened from brown to pale gray. It
was like rubber, tough but springy.

That was good. I wanted to hang on to my legs as long as I could. I
wanted to change as many other aspects as I could before I had to drop
down into the water.

I felt the odd crunching sound you get sometimes when bones are
stretched or compressed. And right before my eyes - literally - my face
bulged out and out and out still farther.

"Oh, man, that's definitely not attractive,"

59 Marco groaned from the shore. "Not a good look for you, Cassie."

Morphing isn't usually very pretty. In fact, it's the kind of thing
that, if you didn't know it was going to be all right, would freak you
out. I mean, I've watched while Rachel does her elephant morph, and I
can tell you, it is the creepiest, scariest, most disgusting thing
you'll ever want to see. Let alone watching people go from human to
fish. Truly gross.

I didn't have a mirror, but I could guess how gross I looked. I had this
huge, long bottlenose sticking out of my otherwise normal face. My skin
was gray rubber. And when I felt behind me with my rapidly shriveling
hands, I could feel the triangular blade of a dorsal fin rising out of
my spine.

My arms were gone, replaced by two flat flippers, and I was now standing
about ten feet tall, wobbling on my puny human-sized legs.

It was time to let the rest of the morph proceed. I surrendered my human
legs. Instantly I fell face forward into the water.

I looked down and saw my tail. I was corn plete. The water was too
shallow, though, and I was barely afloat. I kicked my tail, scraped
across the sandy bottom, and finally surged out into deeper water.

60 I waited for the moment when the dolphin brain would surface, full of
instinct-driven need and hunger and fear. The way it had always been
before.

But it wasn't like that. It wasn't like a squirrel or even a horse.

This mind was not filled with fear and need.

This mind was ... I know this sounds strange, but it was like a little
kid. I tried to listen to it, to understand its needs and wants. To
prepare my self for a sudden onslaught of crude, primitive animal
demands. Flee! Fight! Eat!

But that didn't happen. I felt hunger, yes. But not the screaming,
obsessive need that Jake felt when he morphed a lizard or when Rachel be
came a shrew.

There was no fear. None.

And fortunately, I did not find a true thinking, conscious mind. I
breathed a sigh of relief. Just - again, I know it sounds strange - but
I just found this feeling, like she wanted to play. Like a little kid
who wants to play. I wanted to chase fish, catch them, and eat them, but
that would be a game. I wanted to race across the sur face of the sea,
and that would be a game, too.

<Cassie?> I heard Tobias's thought-speech in my head. <Are you okay?>

Was I okay? I asked myself. <Yes, Tobias.

61 I'm ... happy. I feel like . . . like I don't know. Like I want you
to come and play with me.>

<Play with you? Mmmm, I don't think so, Cassie. Hawks don't do water.>

<Come on, everyone!> I called to the others. <Come on! Let's go! Let's
swim to the ocean! I want to play!>

62

<Le t's go! Come on, you guys, let's go!>

I didn't like the river. I wanted the ocean. I could feel it close by. I
could feel it in the way the current rushed me forward. I could feel it
in some deep, hidden part of my dolphin being.

The ocean. I wanted it. It was my place. It was where I should be.

We swam in a school, the four of us, with To bias flying overhead.

We raced the river's current, and soon I could taste the salt. I could
feel the saltwater on my skin. It was as if I had opened the door of a
toy store with every toy on Earth, and I had all the time in the world
to play.

I saw my friends around me, swift, pale

63 shapes in the water. Sleek gray torpedoes as they rose to breathe.

I lived in both worlds - the sea and the air. I saw the blue-green of
the ocean, the pale blue and white of the sky. I slipped back and forth
through the bright barrier that separated them.

Jake went zipping by, shooting up from beneath me to explode into the
air. I heard the slap of his belly as he landed. It was a game! I dove
deep, down to where the sandy floor sloped toward depths even I could
not explore. Then I powered my tail, steadied my flippers, and drove
hard toward the surface. Above me I could see the shimmering, silver
border between water and air.

Faster! Faster! I was a missile.

<Yah haaaaah!>

I shattered the barrier of the sea and hurtled up into the sky. I felt
warm wind on my skin, in stead of cold water. I hung, poised in midair,
almost floating above the surface of the water. Now the barrier was
beneath me. I pointed my nose toward it and dropped from the sky.

<Aaaaah!>

The water wrapped around me, welcoming me back.

<ls this cool, or what?> Marco laughed in my head.

<This is cool,> I answered.

64 <This is beyond cool,> Rachel chimed in.

<Let's all do it at the same time!> Jake said.

The four of us dove deep. The ocean floor was still far below us,
rippling sand dotted with rocks and clumps of seaweed.

Near the ocean floor we leveled off, practi cally scraping our bellies
on the bottom. And then, aiming at the silver barrier once again, we
shot upward, racing each other, ecstatic from the joy of our own bodies'
strength.

We launched into the air like a well-trained team of acrobats.

We flew, side by side, exhaling and refilling our lungs with warm air.

Life was joy. Life was a game. I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance
through the sea.

So I did.

There was nothing I could not do. There was nothing I could ask of my
body that it would not give me. Racing, spinning, turning, diving, skim
ming the surface, flying up into the sky.

I wasn't just in the sea. I was the sea.

<Are you guys just going to play all day?> It was Tobias. <You realize
you've wasted forty-five minutes already?>

Minutes? I laughed. Who cared about min utes?

<Look, guys? I know you think the dolphin

65 mind hasn't affected you, but it has. You need to get a grip. You
have a reason for being here.>

Reason? What was that?

<You're supposed to be looking for ... well, for something,> Tobias
said. <Something un usual. An Andalite spaceship or something.>

Yes, he was right. He was definitely right. But would it be fun? Would
it be a game?

<Find the spaceship. Cool,> Rachel said. <l bet I can find it first!>

<No way!> Jake said instantly. <l'll find it.>

<Where is it? Let's go look!> Marco said.

<Good grief,> Tobias said. <You're like a bunch of five-year-olds.>

But I was too distracted to care. <Hey. Can you guys do this?> I
concentrated, and suddenly, from someplace in my forehead, came a series
of loud, very rapid clicks, almost like loud static.

<Whoa! What was that?>

Then, to my total surprise, I heard something in those clicks. It was
weird. It was kind of like hearing, only not. The clicking noises had
hit something, far off in deeper water. I sort of felt the sounds as
they came back to me, like scattered echoes.

There was a universe of information in that echo. Some of that
information made me uneasy.

<You guys?> I said. <l know this is crazy, but

66 I feel like there's something out there. Some thing ... I don't know.
But I don't like it.>

The others immediately began firing off the clicking noise that is the
dolphin's underwater radar. It's called echolocation.

<Yeah,> Marco said. <Now I see it. I mean, I don't see it, but you know
what I mean.>

I searched in my dolphin mind, deep down in the places where instinct
had been hidden be neath layers of intelligence.

Then a picture just popped into my con sciousness.

<l know!> I cried, as if I had just won a con test. < It's a shark!>

Suddenly we weren't playing anymore. The others had all found the same
instinct in themselves. The echolocation indicated that there was a
large shark nearby.

And we knew one thing for sure. We didn't like sharks.

67

<Y ou know, I hate to sound like the only sensible person - so to speak
- > Tobias said, <but you aren't here to fight sharks!>

<He's right,> I agreed. <Dolphins don't attack sharks unless the sharks
attack first.>

<Wait ... I'm getting more echoes,> Rachel interrupted. <There's more
than one shark. And there's something bigger, too.>

I reached out with my echolocation sense and "felt" the sea ahead of me.
<You're right,> I said. <Several sharks. And a great one.>

<A what?> Tobias asked.

I was confused. What did I mean? The words great one had just popped
into my mind. <l

68 mean there's a whale. A whale. Being attacked by sharks.>

<A great one being attacked?> Marco asked. He sounded upset. It was
strange, because we were all upset. More than we should have been.

<You guys do what you want,> Rachel said. < I'm going in.>

< Oh , there's a big surprise,> Tobias said with weary affection.

The four of us lanced forward, faster than ever, toward the whale in
distress.

<l see them,> Tobias reported from the sky above. <Straight ahead of
you. Looks like four, maybe five sharks and a big - really, really big -
whale. Did I mention big? Wow. Big.>

We were steaming through the water when I caught sight of my first
shark. He was bigger than me, maybe twelve feet long, with faint
vertical stripes.

He was too excited by the hunt to notice me. Until it was too late. With
every bit of speed and power I could get from my tail, I rammed the
tiger shark in his gill slits.

WHOOOOMP!

It was like hitting a brick wall. My beak was strong, but the shark was
made of steel or some thing.

I fell back, dazed. But as I tried to collect my-

69 self I saw that a trail of blood was billowing from the shark's gills.

I swam beneath him, and then I saw the huge shape of the whale. He was a
humpback, more than forty feet long. Each of his long,
barnacle-encrusted flukes was bigger than me.

He was trying to surface to breathe, but sharks were attacking, tearing
at the soft, vulner able flesh of his mouth.

It made me angry. Very angry.

Suddenly, from the murky depths, Jake and Rachel zoomed upward, like
missiles aimed at the sharks.

WHOOMP! Rachel hit her target.

Jake's shark twisted just in time. Jake scraped across the shark's
sandpaper skin, and before he could get clear, the shark was after him.

<Jake! He's on your tail!>

<l got him!>

<Look out! Conning up on your left, Marco!>

They were as fast as we were, as maneuver-able as we were, and the
sharks had one terrifying advantage - they did not know fear.

<He's on me! He's on me!>

<Aaaaarrrrggghh!>

<Marco!>

<l can't see! Where is he?>

70 <Cassie! Below you, lookout! Look out!>

It was no longer a game. I had gone rushing into a fight full of
confidence and determined to help the whale. But now I was in a war. The
sharks were killing machines. They seemed to be nothing but armored skin
and razor-sharp fins and wide jaws with row after row of serrated teeth.

The water was boiling with twisting, turning, speeding sharks and us
dolphins, locked in a high-speed battle to the death.

It suddenly occurred to me that we might lose. We might be killed.

I might be killed.

The water was dark with blood, still billowing from the shark I had
hammered.

Suddenly two of the sharks turned away. They just turned and swam away.
At first, I didn't know why.

Then I saw that they were following the shark I had wounded.

They were following the trail of blood.

They were at the limits of my sight when they struck. They ripped into
the injured shark with wild, uncontrolled fury.

The last shark turned from the battle and went after them. Robbed of his
meal of whale meat, he would feast on his brother instead.

<Everyone okay?> Jake asked.

71 <l have some cuts, but I'm okay,> I said.

<Same here,> Rachel said. She sounded tired. I guess I did, too. I felt
exhausted and drained. The fight had probably only lasted two minutes
from beginning to end. But it had been a long two minutes.

<Marco?>

< I...I think I'm hurt,> he said.

I looked for him. He was drifting in the water, almost motionless,
twenty yards away. We all swam over, crowding around him.

Then I saw the wound. I think I would have screamed, if I could have.
His tail had almost been bitten off. It was hanging by a few jagged
threads. It was useless.

We were miles out in the ocean. And Marco could not hope to swim back.

72

< H e's going to die if we don't do something,> Rachel cried.

<Cassie?> Jake asked. <What do we do?>

< I...I don't know!>

<Cassie, you're the closest thing we have to an animal expert,> Jake
said urgently.

But I wasn't feeling at all like an expert. I was feeling like a fool.
This was all my fault. It had been my decision to go ahead. I was the one.

<Aaaahhh,> Marco moaned. < Oh , man. That's a major ouchie. Ahh, ahh!>

<What's happening?> Tobias called down. <Marco sounds hurt.>

<He is,> Jake answered tersely.

73 < Oh , man, I don't want to die as some fish,> Marco cried. <l don't
want to die out here. My mom drowned. I'm going to die just like she
did. My dad . . .>

<Morph!> I yelled. <l think I know what to do. Morph back to human.>

<lf he morphs to human, he'll just drown,> Rachel argued.

<No. Morphing uses DNA, right? The basic pattern of the animal. Marco
morphs back to hu man. I don't think the injury will affect him, be
cause it doesn't affect his human DNA. Then, as soon as he can, he
morphs back to dolphin. The dolphin body was injured, but the dolphin
DNA should be the same. He should be a healthy, nor mal dolphin again.>

<What if you're wrong?> Rachel asked bluntly.

<There's no other choice,> Jake said. <Marco? You have to morph back to
human. We'll keep you from drowning.>

<Jake . . . buddy . . . You know I can't swim.>

<l know, Marco. But we'll take care of you.>

< Okay . Yeah, okay. Might as well die in my own body. Ahh. Ahhhh! Maybe
it won't hurt as much. Maybe . . .>

He was drifting off. <He's losing blood,> I said. <He may pass out.
Marco. Morph. Now!>

74 We formed a circle around him, the three of us, with Tobias drifting
overhead and the big humpback resting alongside.

Then Marco began to change. Arms sprouted from his flippers. His face
flattened down, with his wide, grinning dolphin mouth shortening to form
Marco's own lips. His skin turned pink and his morphing suit appeared.

His shattered, injured tail split in two. Legs formed from the halves,
toes appeared. Human toes. At the end of human legs.

<He did it!>

"Yeah, I did it. And now I'm drowning!"

<Here,> I said, swimming beside him. <Grab onto me.>

He wrapped his arms over my back, and I held him up to the air.

Then I noticed something strange. It was like the ocean floor was rising
to meet me.

No. It was the humpback. He had dived beneath us, and was rising slowly,
slowly to the sur face.

<Look out! The whale!> Rachel yelled.

But at that moment the most incredible part of an incredible day happened.

My mind, human, dolphin, both minds, opened up like a flower opening to
the sun.

And a silent, but somehow huge, voice filled

75 my head, it spoke no words. It simply filled every corner of my mind
with a simple emotion.

Gratitude.

The whale was telling me that it was grateful. We had saved it. Now it
would save our school mate.

<Back away,> I told Rachel and Jake. < It's okay.>

<Yeah,> Rachel agreed, sounding amazed. <l hear it, too. Or feel it. Or
whatever.>

The humpback rose beneath a sputtering Marco. The broad leathery back
lifted him up. And when I looked again, I saw Marco, sitting nervously
on what could have been a small island, high and dry above the choppy
waves.

Tobias fluttered down and rested beside him.

The whale called me to him.

Listen, little one, he commanded, in a silent voice that seemed to fill
the universe.

I listened. I listened to his wordless voice in my head. I felt like it
went on forever.

Tobias said later it was only ten minutes. But during that ten minutes,
I was lost to the world. I was being shown a small part of the whale's
thoughts.

He had lived eighty migrations. He had many mates, many mothers, who had
died in their turn. His children traveled the oceans of the world.

76 He had survived many battles, traveled to the far southern ice and
the far northern ice. He re membered the days when men hunted his kind
from ships that belched smoke.

He remembered the songs of the many fathers who had gone before. As
others would remember his song.

But in all he had seen and all he had known, he had never seen one of
the little ones become a human.

Marco, I realized. He means Marco. And little ones? Is that what the
whales call dolphins?

We are not truly. . . little ones.

No. You are something new in the sea. But not the only new thing.

I wasn't sure what he was telling me. He spoke only in feelings, in a
sort of poetry of emotion, without words. Part of it was in song. Part
of it I could only sense the same way I could sense echolocation.

Something new?

He showed me a picture, a memory. It was a broad, grassy plain, with
trees and a small stream. All of it underwater. And across the grass ran
an animal that was part deer, part scorpion, part almost human.

Where is it? I asked him in a language of squeaks and clicks and
mind-to-mind feeling.

And he told me.

77 Suddenly I woke up. That's how it felt, any way. The whale released
me. It was like coming out of a dream.

<Are you okay?> Jake asked. <You were start ing to worry us, but we had
this feeling maybe the whale didn't want us to interferes

< I'm fine,> I said. < I'm beyond fine.>

<Marco's ready to try remorphing,> Jake re ported.

<Uh-huh,> I said, still lost in images from a mind larger and older and
so utterly strange.

<Guys? You have about twenty-five minutes,> Tobias reported. <And it's a
long way back to shore.>

I heard Marco say something, but he was speaking normally now, not in
thought-speak, so it was hard to make it out with my ears under the water.

I stuck my head up and saw him begin to re sume his dolphin shape.

Halfway through, he slipped off the side of the whale and back into the
water. His fins formed. His beak.

And his tail. Perfect and healthy and undam aged.

We headed for shore, tired but alive.

I felt strange, leaving the whale. But when we were a mile away, I heard
his song - slow, mournful, haunting notes.

78 <Why didn't he sing more when we were with him?> Jake wondered.

I smiled inwardly. And of course, since I was a dolphin at the moment, I
smiled outwardly, too.

<He doesn't sing for the little ones,> I explained. <He sings for the
mothers.>

<What?> Marco asked.

<He sings for a mate.>

<Ahh. Cruising for chicks. Got it. I wonder if the big old guy even
realizes that he helped save my life.>

<Marco, that big old guy realizes things you and I will never even be
able to guess.>

79

T he next day I went to see Marco at his home.

He and his dad live in a garden apartment complex. One of the older
ones, on the far side of the big neighborhood where Jake and Rachel both
live. I'd only been over there a couple of times. I think Marco is kind
of embarrassed be cause he doesn't have much money.

He used to live in a house just down the street from Jake. But that was
when his mother was still alive, and before his father had a breakdown
and quit his job.

I knocked on the door. From inside I heard Marco's voice. "Dad, there's
someone at the door. Put on your bathrobe, okay?"

80 There was a delay, and then the door opened. Marco looked annoyed.

"Cassie. What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

"To me? What about?"

"About yesterday," I said.

He hesitated. "Look, I'm spending the day with my dad, okay? We're
thinking maybe we'll . . . you know, do something together."

"That's good," I said. Over Marco's shoulder I could see his father. He
was wearing a bathrobe and sitting on the couch. He was staring at the
TV. That was normal for any dad, I guess, on a weekend morning. But I
had the feeling that Marco's dad was always sitting right there in front
of the TV.

"Look, Marco, I just want to talk for a minute. Can I come in?"

"No, no," he said hastily. He stepped outside onto the concrete
breezeway. Down below us was a swimming pool. It was drained and closed.
Leaves covered the bottom.

"Marco, I wanted to talk to you about yester day."

"What about it?"

"You could have been killed. It would have been my fault. This whole
mission was my idea. Jake asked me if we should do it and I said yes."

81 Marco rolled his eyes. "That's it? Look, it wasn't your fault. It's
this whole thing we're do ing, this whole Animorph thing. I mean, it's
been dangerous right from the start. It's insanely dan gerous. What else
is new?"

I shrugged. "What's new, I guess, is that the other times it was always
someone else's idea."

"Oh, I get it. You don't like responsibility?"

I winced. Was that it? Was I afraid of taking responsibility? "I don't
want to get my friends killed."

"And let me assure you your friends don't want to get killed, either,"
Marco said with a laugh. "I am completely opposed to getting killed." He
grew serious, even sad. "But you know what? Sometimes bad things happen.
That's the way it is."

I leaned against the rail, looking down at the dismal empty pool. "I see
things die all the time," I said. "Animals, I mean. Sometimes you can't
save them. Sometimes we even have to put them down - end their
suffering. But my dad makes those decisions. Not me. He's the vet. I'm
just his assistant."

"Look, here I am, all alive," Marco said, tap ping his chest. "Get over
it. I didn't have to go. It was my choice."

"Were you scared?"

82 For a while he didn't answer. He just came over and leaned on the
railing beside me. "I'm scared all the time now, Cassie," he said at
last. "I'm scared to fight the Yeerks, and I'm scared of what will
happen if I don't. I look at Tobias, and what happened to him scares me
to death. What if I get stuck in morph someday? And most of all, I am
scared of ... of him."

I didn't have to ask who Marco meant by him. Visser Three.

"That first time, in the construction site, when he killed . . . when he
murdered the An dalite." Marco made a twisted smile. "I see that in my
head every day. And the Yeerk pool." He shook his head. "That's
something I would like to forget, too."

"Yes," I agreed. "There has been a lot of fear."

"So was I afraid yesterday? Bet on it. I was scared plenty. It was like,
man, it's not bad enough we have to fight Hork-Bajir and Taxxons and
Visser Three, we also have to fight sharks? Sharks?" He laughed, and
hearing him brought the laughter out of me.

We both just stood there and giggled like id iots for a few minutes. It
was that laughter you get after something really tense has happened.
Relief laughter. "We're still alive" laughter.

"Urn, by the way, I was going to wait and tell

83 everyone at the same time," Marco said, "but I think we have a problem."

"What problem?"

"It was in the newspaper this morning - two stories. One is about this
guy who is going to be looking for some supposedly lost treasure ship
off the coast. The other was this story about some big marine biologist
guy who has a ship and is going to be doing some underwater explo ration
off our coast."

"Yes? So?"

"So, all of a sudden our nearby ocean seems to be very interesting to
people. Treasure hunters and an underwater exploration? At the same time?"

"Controllers?"

He nodded. "I think so. I think it's all a cover story to explain why
two ships will be out there with lots of divers in the water. I think
it's them, all right. And I think they're looking for the same thing
you're looking for."

I felt weak. The image the whale had given me surfaced in my mind. And
the faint cry in my dreams, the cry for help.

"I ... I can't ask anyone to go out there again," I whispered. "This
time we might not be so lucky."

Marco looked uncomfortable. "Cassie, you know how I feel about all this.
I think we have to

84 take care of ourselves first. And our own families." He glanced back
at his apartment door. "On the other hand ... I guess after what the
Andalite did for us, I wouldn't feel like much of a human being if I
didn't try to save whoever is out there."

"I don't know who's out there," I said. "I don't know if it's even real."

"But you think it's an Andalite."

"I think it is. But Marco, I don't know. If someone gets hurt. . .
killed . . . just because I have these dreams - I can't make that kind
of decision."

"Yes, but can you decide to do nothing? That's a decision, too."

I had to smile. "Marco, you know, for a guy who's always joking around
and being annoying, you're awfully smart."

"Yeah, I know, but don't tell anyone. It would destroy my image."

I started to walk away.

"You know what was strange about yester day?" Marco said.

"What?"

"The sharks. They were so totally deadly. I mean, we worry about
Hork-Bajir and Taxxons and Visser Three. You kind of forget that right
here on little old planet Earth there are creatures

85 just as tough and dangerous. It would be funny if it wasn't some
alien that ended up getting us, but some normal Earth creature."

I didn't think it was funny at all.

Marco grinned at my stone face. "Okay, not funny ha-ha. More like funny
weird."

86

?O kay," Jake said. "Here's what we know. Or at least, what we think we
know."

We were all at Rachel's house again. It was a few hours after I had gone
to see Marco. Tobias was perched on the windowsill. He didn't feel all
that comfortable being inside for long. He liked the feel of the wind
and the open air.

"First, we believe that somehow a surviving Andalite, or maybe more than
one Andalite, is trapped out in the ocean."

"Hopefully Andalites can hold their breath for a really long time,"
Marco joked.

"Second, Cassie believes she can find this Andalite, thanks to the
information from the whale."

87 Everyone kept a straight face for about ten seconds. Then, all at
once, everyone cracked up.

"Information from a whale," Marco repeated, giggling.

<Have our lives gotten really weird, or is it just me?> Tobias asked.

"Weird? Weird?" Marco crowed. "The talking bird wants to know if getting
information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you've just
saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins . . . You're suggesting
that's weird?"

Jake smiled. "Well, stay tuned. It just gets weirder. Cassie and I have
been going over maps. She says the location we're looking for is pretty
far out to sea. Too far for us to swim and still have any time left of
our two-hour limit."

"Well, that's the ball game, isn't it?" Marco asked.

Jake nodded at Rachel. "I was talking to Rachel earlier and she has an
idea."

Rachel stood up. She'd been lounging on the bed. "We hop a ride on a
ship. First we morph into something like a seagull."

Marco groaned. "I hate plans that begin with the words 'first we morph.'"

"We morph into seagulls," I said, picking up the plan we'd worked out.
"Then we fly out into the shipping channel. We land on a tanker or a
container ship or something that's going the right

88 direction. We morph back to human, rest up, let the ship get us
closer, then jump over the side, morph to dolphin and go the rest of the
way."

"Oh, well, when you put it that way, it sounds so easy," Marco sneered.
"How about if we just walk over to Chapman's house and tell him to call
Visser Three to finish us off? It's so much easier, and the results will
be the same."

Jake sighed. "It is dangerous and risky, and there are about a hundred
things that could go wrong. Plus, as Marco has told us, we have rea son
to think that Controllers will be out there, searching for the same
thing we're searching for."

"This idea just gets better and better," Marco said.

"Let's put it to a vote," Jake suggested.

"I'm in," Marco said instantly.

A split second behind him, Rachel said her usual "I'm in."

Everyone stared openmouthed at Marco.

"Just once I wanted to beat Rachel to it," he explained.

"Tobias?" Jake asked.

<l don't think I should vote. I have to sit this one out. I can't stay
up that long with nowhere to set down. Sorry.>

"You had the dreams, just like Cassie," Jake

89 pointed out. "Do you think we should do this or not?"

Tobias fixed his fierce glare on me. <Yes, Cassie and I both had the
dreams. I think they're real.>

"Okay, looks like we go," Jake said briskly. "Tomorrow. First thing in
the morning. We can't wait any longer. The longer we hold off, the
greater the chance the Yeerks will beat us to it."

We left Rachel's house. Marco split off in one direction. Tobias flew
off to some unknown destination. Jake and I walked together for a while,
even though it was out of his way.

"I think Tobias is feeling kind of left out," I said. "You should talk
to him later, remind him of how many times he's helped us out."

"That's a good idea," Jake agreed.

We walked a little farther in silence. It's one of the nice things about
the relationship Jake and I have. We can be quiet together and feel okay
about it.

"This is really dangerous, isn't it?" I asked him.

He nodded.

Suddenly I stopped walking. I don't know why, but I had this need to
tell him something. I took his hand and held it between both of mine.
"Jake?" I said.

90 "Yes?"

It was on the tip of my tongue, but then it seemed ridiculous to say it.
So instead I said, "Look, don't ever get hurt, okay?"

He smiled that smile. "Me? I'm indestruc tible."

The way he said it, I almost believed him. But then, as he went his way
and I headed toward home, I glanced up at the sky.

Against the blaze of sunset I saw a flash of russet tailfeathers.
Tobias. Our friend, who had been trapped forever in a body not his own.

None of us was indestructible.

91

<H ey! Half a sandwich! It's salami!>

<Look over there. Is that a Jujubee?>

<Pizza! Pizza! Part of the crust and it's one of those stuffed crusts!>

Fortunately, one thing we always have plenty of in the Wildlife
Rehabilitation Center (also known as my barn) is seagulls.

We acquired the seagull DNA. Then the four of us, with Tobias watching
from the high rafters, morphed into the new bodies.

I have been a bird before. An osprey, to be ex act, one of the types of
hawk.

But gulls are different in some ways. For one thing, they are
scavengers, not predators. So as we took wing and flew in a rush of
white from the

92 open hayloft, I noticed different things, felt dif ferent things. My
seagull mind was not searching for mice or scurrying animals. It was
much more openminded. My seagull intelligence looked for anything -
anything - that could even possibly be food.

Fortunately, the gull brains were close enough to the other bird brains
we'd all experienced that it was fairly easy to control them. We didn't
waste a lot of time getting started.

Although, once we did get started, everyone was constantly pointing out
food.

<Hey! Look! French fries on the ground.>

<Whoa! That's half a 3 Musketeers bar by that car!>

<O ooh, ooh! Look at the Dumpster behind that McDonald's!>

Sometimes you just have to accept the ani mal's basic mindset and go
with it.

<There's the beach,> Jake said as we flapped and soared and flapped some
more.

It's easier being an osprey in some ways. Much less flapping.

Once we were out over the water, we could at least stop scanning for
food. Mostly.

<Hey! Is that a bag of potato chips floating down there?>

We flew low, just a few dozen feet above the

93 water. Not like hawks, who can ride the thermals up to the bellies of
the clouds.

But Tobias wasn't much higher than we were now. There are no thermals
over water and he was having to flap a lot to stay aloft.

We flew on, skimming the choppy surface of the water.

<Hey, look,> Rachel said. <0ver to the left.>

Sleek gray shapes sliced through the water, up, down, up, down, breaking
the silvery barrier between sky and sea. It was a school of dolphins.

<You know, sometimes this is just so wonder ful^ Rachel said. <l mean,
we're flying. We're flying! And later, we'll be like them, at home in
the water.>

<Yeah, just us and the sharks,> Marco said darkly.

<Still, it is cool,> Rachel said.

<There's a ship up ahead,> Jake announced.

<You just now noticed it?> Tobias laughed. <Wow. Seagull eyes aren't
exactly great, are they? It's a container ship called Newmar. It's from
Monrovia. You want to know what color the captain's hair is?>

<Show-off,> Jake grumbled.

Hawk eyes are totally amazing. As long as it's sunny out, Tobias can
read a book from like three blocks away.

94 It was hard, flying to catch up to the ship. It was moving fairly
fast, and by the time we were close I was exhausted.

The ship was gigantic, painted a rusty blue, with a deck longer than a
football field. The superstructure was all crammed toward the back.
That's where the crew would be, so we flew forward, hoping to find
someplace private.

The deck was stacked with containers, big steel boxes like trailers. Row
after row of them lined the deck, and we could see hundreds more down in
the hold.

We settled in the narrow space between two rows of containers, far
forward. It was like having walls all around us. Corrugated metal walls
that went high over our heads.

<Tobias? How much time?> Jake asked.

Tobias twisted his head down to see the tiny watch strapped to his
talon. < It's been about an hour and a half.>

We decided to resume our human shapes. The space between the rows of
containers was even narrower when we were fully human again.

"Brrr. It's chilly out here," I said. The steel deck was cold beneath my
bare feet. And even though the sun was high in the sky, we were in shadow.

"Man, I swear, this is the worst thing about

95 morphing," Marco said. "Can someone please figure out how to morph
shoes, and maybe a sweater? Come on, Cassie. You're the morphing genius.
I'm sick of these morphing outfits."

"But you look so cute in Spandex," Rachel teased him.

"Plus, they aren't exactly fashionable. All I'm saying is - uniforms.
Something cool-looking. And warm. Warm would be nice. When winter comes,
we are going to be some sad little Ani- morphs."

"I have a more important question," Rachel said. "How do we know when
we're there? You know, our destination."

Jake made a "who knows?" face. "I figure this ship is going like, what,
twenty miles per hour? Figure an hour, and that puts us twenty miles
out, right?"

Rachel pointed a finger at her forehead and said, "Jake's a total
mathematical genius. One hour at twenty miles per hour. Right away he
fig ures out that's twenty miles."

Jake laughed. "That's about all the math I can do."

<Actually, we're moving about eighteen miles per hour,> Tobias said.

We all just stared at him.

<l fly along the roads sometimes and watch

96 the car speedometers. So I have a pretty good idea how fast I'm
flying. When we were flying alongside the ship, I clocked it.>

"Okay, eighteen miles an hour, more or less, straight south," Marco
considered. "That would put us within a couple of miles of where Cassie
thinks we should go."

I winced. Every time anyone said something about me deciding where to go
or what to do, it made me nervous.

<l'd better head back,> Tobias said regret fully. <l don't want to try
and fly eighteen miles back without a rest. And if I stay on this ship
I'll end up in Singapore.>

"Singapore?" Rachel asked.

<Yeah. I read the captain's log as we were fly ing alongside. That's
where they're headings

Tobias flew off, leaving us the little watch.

It was extremely dull waiting for an hour, with nothing to do but try
and guess what was in the big containers all around us. On the other
hand, we knew what we had to do next would definitely not be boring.

So basically, we were happy to just be bored for a while, huddling
together to stay warm in the whipping ocean breeze.

After a long time, Jake checked the watch. "It's been about an hour.
Cassie? What do you think?"

97 "I don't know," I admitted. "I ... I guess I was hoping that when I
was back in dolphin morph I would be able to make sense of more of the
details the whale communicated to me. It was mostly images. And some of
the images were about sounds and currents and water tempera tures, and
stuff you can't see from the surface."

Jake thought for a moment. "Oh, well, now is as good as any time, I
guess. Let's head for the side."

We stood up, uncramping our cold, stiff legs and arms. We moved along
the row of containers toward the left side of the ship. The port side,
as they say.

We reached the side. There was a solid steel railing that ran all
around, about waist high. Jake checked to see if we would be in view of
the bridge, and we headed forward a little more to a blind spot where no
one should see us.

The four of us leaned over the rail and looked down at the water. It
looked like it was a million miles below.

Marco whistled. "Man. That is some high dive."

"No big deal for a seagull or a dolphin, but a mighty long way for a
human," I agreed.

"We can't morph up here. We'd never get our dolphin bodies over the
side," Rachel pointed out.

98 "Nope," Jake agreed. "We have to jump in with our human bodies. All
except Marco. He can't swim. I thought he could morph up here, and then
we could all shove him over the side."

Rachel looked skeptical. "Jake? When Marco is in dolphin morph, he'll
weigh like four hun dred pounds."

Jake looked worried. "I kind of didn't think about this when I was
planning."

I had a sinking feeling. The plan was falling apart before it had even
begun.

"I'll lean against the railing," Marco sug gested. "I'll start morphing,
then, before I lose my legs, you guys help shove me over. I'll finish
morph ing within a few seconds of hitting the water."

"Unless the water knocks you out and you just sink," I said flatly.
"Forget it. Forget it. Let's just morph back to seagulls and fly back
home. This is insane."

"Insane?" Marco echoed. "Hey, that's my word. Look, we came this far."

"I don't care!" I yelled, surprised at my own passion. "I'm not going to
be responsible for any one dying! This isn't going to work. I don't know
where I am. I don't know where we're going. I don't know what to do!"

Marco laughed. "Excellent pep talk, Cassie. Now I'm really looking
forward to this."

99 I was going to yell at him, something like, "Look, Marco, this is not
a joke." But when I looked at him, I saw that his face was bulging way
out, forming a long, grinning beak.

He had already started to morph.

"I'm nock koink to ..." he started to say. But his mouth no longer worked.

He was growing larger, straining his weak human legs with his weight.
His arms were flatten ing into flippers.

"Now!" Jake said. He grabbed Marco's flipper arm. Rachel and I jumped
forward and seized his legs just as they began to shrivel.

"Heave!" Jake yelled.

Marco, half human, half dolphin, tumbled backward over the railing and
fell into the sea.

"Let's go," Jake said.

"Yee-hah!" Rachel said with a wild grin. She jumped up on the railing,
balanced for a moment like the gymnast she was, then launched herself
off in a neat swan dive.

Jake and I exchanged a glance.

"Rachel," he said, and rolled his eyes.

"She's your cousin," I pointed out.

"On the count of three. One, two . . ."

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" I climbed over the rail ing and launched myself as
far from the steel wall of the ship as I could.

100

?A laaaaaaaaaahhhh!"

I fell for what seemed like a very long time.

PAH-LOOOOSH!

I hit the water feet first and plowed beneath the surface in a pillar of
bubbles.

The cold shocked me. The water was like ice. And just a few feet away
was the intimidating steel wall of the tanker, sliding past at what felt
like incredible speed.

I kicked my feet and began to rise to the sur face. I've been a swimmer
since I was little, but it frightened me, being this far out in water
this deep. This wasn't a pool or a pond. This was the ocean. Twenty
miles from land.

I broke the surface and gasped a lungful of air

101 and a mouthful of saltwater. What had looked like a little
choppiness from up in the ship felt like towering waves down here. I
couldn't see any of the others. All I could see was the side of the ship.

Come on, Cassie, I told myself, morph. Do it. This is no place for a
person.

There is just about nothing as helpless as a human being in the ocean.
Without my ability to morph I would not have lasted an hour.

I felt the change begin as I focused on morphing. At first, I thought it
would kill me. I soon had most of the weight of a dolphin, with nothing
but my human feet paddling to keep my head above water. My arms had
already become flippers.

A wave washed over me, leaving me sputtering from my mouth and my
blowhole at the same time.

I realized I could no longer keep my head above water. I took a deep
lungful and let myself sink.

As my eyes went from human to dolphin, my underwater vision improved. I
could see other figures kicking and writhing in the water around me.
Jake, half-changed. Rachel, almost corn plete. Marco, with a dolphin
grin, looking amused.

Then, with a kick of my newly completed tail, I knew I was safe. I had
made the change. I was a

102 dolphin in a dolphin's world. The human clumsi ness, the human cold,
the human fear of an alien environment, all evaporated.

I was warm and in control and right where I should be.

<Everyone okay?>

One by one they answered. We had made it. Too bad this was just the easy
part of the mis sion.

<Well, that was fun,> Marco said sardonically. <Let's never, ever do it
again.>

<Cassie?> Jake prodded me.

I tried to relax, to let my human mind recede just a little. I needed to
listen to the dolphin instincts. I needed to understand the whale's in
structions. Something no human could ever do.

<Not far,> I said. <We're just a few . . . urn . . . Forget it, there's
no word for it. Just be lieve me, we're close.>

<After you, Cassie,> Jake said.

It felt strange, taking the lead. But only I knew the way. We traveled
near the surface for a while. This made it confusing for me, because
whales go deeper, and the world the whale saw and knew was a deeper
world than I, as a dol phin, experienced.

And yet, I knew I was going in the right direc tion. My echolocating
clicks painted murky, half- understood pictures in my mind of underwater

103 hills and valleys and rifts. I felt currents tugging at me. I sensed
changes in water temperature.

In the end, I just knew.

< Okay , everyone, get a good lungful,> I said.

We surfaced, blew out the stale air, and filled our lungs with the good
clean ocean air.

<Hey. What's that?> It was Rachel.

<What?> I asked her.

<O ver there. It's a helicopter.>

We all watched as a helicopter flew low and very slowly over the water.
It was just a few hundred yards away, and with our dolphin vision, we
couldn't see it as well as we might have with our human eyes.

But as it flew closer, I could see that it was dragging a cable through
the water.

<Som e sort of sensor,> Jake speculated.

<They're looking for something in the water,> Marco agreed.

< It's them,> I said.

No one argued. We all knew it was true. Con trollers were flying that
helicopter.

The Yeerks were here.

104

<E veryone take in as much air as you can,> I said again. <We're going
deep.>

We dove and swam almost straight down. Down, down, leaving the bright
barrier behind. Away from the sun. Away from the light. Away from the
air that we needed just as much as hu mans did.

I echolocated a school of fish ahead, just below us. But we weren't
there to eat lunch. We swam through the fish and still we headed down.
Down until we could see the ocean floor beneath us.

We leveled off and skimmed across the ocean floor, like low-flying jets
racing at treetop level. Over waving fields of seaweed. Through darting

105 schools of fish. Over jutting extrusions, of rock, encrusted by
barnacles and home to a thousand bizarre crabs and lobsters and urchins
and worms and snails.

Ahead was a ridge, a sort of long, low hill. We sailed over it.

< I'm starting to feel like maybe taking a breath would be a good
thing,> Rachel said. <How much farther - >

We all saw it at the same time.

Saw it, yes, but could hardly believe it.

I've become used to seeing impossible things - aliens, spaceships, my
own friends turning into animals. But this was just plain mind-boggling.

It was round. As round as a plate. A very large plate. From one side to
the other, the diameter must have been half a mile.

It was covered by a transparent dome. Clear glass, or whatever it is the
Andalites use for glass.

And within the dome, protected from the crushing force of the water, was
what looked very much like a park.

A park, in a plastic dome, at the bottom of the ocean.

There was grass, more blue than green, but it still looked like grass.
There were trees like huge stems of broccoli. And other trees like orange

106 and blue asparagus spears. At the center was a small lake,
crystal-clear blue water. From the water grew fantastic, transparent
green crystals in shapes like eccentric snowflakes.

<Whoa,> Marco said.

<Man,> Jake commented.

<I s this what you expected, Cassie?> Rachel asked me.

<I ... I had dreams ... I saw flashes of something . . . but this! This
is unbelievable.>

<l think that may be a hatch down there,> Marco said. <You see the part
that sticks out?>

<L et's try it,> Jake said. <l can't hold my breath much longer.>

We arced down toward a part of the glass dome that seemed different from
the rest. As we got closer, we could really begin to feel the size of
the dome. It was like approaching one of those huge stadiums where they
play football. But even bigger, if you can imagine that.

<I t is a hatch,> Rachel reported. She was a little ahead of the rest of
us. < It's some kind of a glass door. On the other side there's a little
room, then another door that leads into the dome. There's a little red
panel beside the outer door.>

<Let's either try it or surface,> Marco said ur gently.

<That red panel. That's got to be the door-

107 knob,> Jake said. <Here goes. Let's hope this works.> He pressed his
beak against the panel.

Instantly the outer door opened.

<We should try this one at a time, see if it's safe,> Marco said.

<Not enough time,> I said. My lungs were burning. I needed air.

The four of us swam in through the outer door. There was a second red
panel. I punched it with my beak and the door closed, sealing us into a
small, glass room. We could see out and up into the ocean all around.
But the side leading into the dome was opaque.

<l knew we'd end up in an aquarium sooner or later,> Marco said.

The water began to drain from the room, slowly, a little at a time. This
opened an area of air at the top of the enclosure. I raised my blow hole
and sucked in blessed oxygen.

< Okay , let's morph,> Jake said.

I had already started. By the time the enclo sure was half drained, I
could stand on my own human feet.

"We made it," Marco said after his human mouth reformed. "I don't know
where we made it to, but we made it."

The enclosure was empty now. The four of us stood there barefoot,
dressed only in our soggy

108 morphing outfits. There was one last red panel beside the door
leading into the dome.

"Ready?" Jake asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Marco said.

Jake pressed it with his hand.

The door slid open. I felt a wave of warm, incredibly fragrant air rush in.

I caught a glimpse of. . .

Then a brilliant flash of light. . .

And suddenly I was unconscious.

109

I opened my eyes. I was staring straight up. I was on my back. Above me
I could see the ocean all around. High overhead, fish swam by,
sparkling. Higher still I could see the bright bar rier between sea and
sky. But it was very far away.

I rolled my head to the side. Jake was beside me, still unconscious.
There was blue grass under my head. I looked the other way.

"Yaaaahh!"

<Do not move. I stunned you to see what you are. But if you move, I will
destroy you.>

He stood on four delicate hooves, looking, at first glance, like a pale
blue and tan deer or ante lope.

110 But he had a strong upper body, like a mythical centaur, with two
small arms and many-fingered hands. His face was almost triangular,
built around two huge, almond-shaped eyes. There was a small vertical
slit where his nose should have been, and nothing where his mouth should
have been.

From atop his head rose twin horns. Only they were not horns. They each
ended in an eye and turned this way and that, independent of his main eyes.

He seemed gentle, quizzical, almost delicate. Until you noticed the
tail. The tail was like a scorpion's. It was thick, powerful, and ended
in a wicked scythe blade that literally glittered along its razor-sharp
edges.

I knew what he was. There is no mistaking an Andalite when you see one.

And there was no question about what he was holding in his hand, either.
It looked a lot like a Yeerk Dracon beam.

He was pointing it at me.

The others were waking up all around me.

"What the ... Oh," Marco said. "Please tell me that's a real Andalite
and not Visser Three."

Suddenly, without warning, the Andalite's tail arched forward. The blade
stopped inches from Marco's face.

111 <Visser Three! Do not speak that name!> the Andalite thought-spoke.

"O -o-o-o-kay," Marco said slowly. "Whatever you want."

"We are friends," I said.

<l don't know you,> the Andalite said. But he withdrew his tail and
Marco started breathing again.

"You called me," I said. "We've come to help you."

<Called? You heard my call?> He fixed all four of his eyes on me. <What
are you?>

"Human. A person of Earth."

<l have seen images of your kind. My call was to my cousins. How did you
hear it?>

"I don't know," I admitted. "I heard it in my dreams. So did a friend of
mine. We guessed it was an Andalite. We wanted to help."

<What do you know of Andalites? My people are not known to humans. You
do not travel the stars. You know only your own planet. My elder cousins
have taught me this.>

"We knew one Andalite. We were with him when . . . when he was killed."

The Andalite narrowed his main eyes. <Who was this Andalite you say was
killed?>

I searched my memory for his name. He had told us, but it was a strange,
long name. "I can't

112 remember all of his name. But part of it was Prince Elfangor."

The Andalite jerked as if he'd been hit. His entire body seemed to
quiver. His deadly tail arched high in the air.

<Prince Elfangor? No one could kill Elfangor. He is the greatest warrior
ever. No one could kill him!>

"Someone did," Jake said. "We were there."

<Who? Who do you claim killed Elfangor?>

"The one whose name you don't want us to speak," I said softly.

The Andalite held his head high, but his tail sagged and dragged down to
the grass. He lowered his weapon. <He was my brother. Did . . . did he
die well? In battle?>

Jake answered. "He died protecting us, and defying the Yeerks to the
end. At the very last moment he struck with every weapon he had."

The Andalite closed his main eyes for a brief moment. <My brother was a
great warrior. His cousins loved him. His enemies feared him. No more
can be said of any Andalite warrior.>

I was surprised by what Jake said next. "I've lost a brother, too. He's
one of them. A Con troller."

The Andalite opened his eyes. <And you, human. Do you serve the Yeerks
or fight them?>

"I fight them. We fight them."

113 <With what weapons? Do you have powerful weapons?>

"Only the weapon your brother gave us," I said. "The power to morph."

<Elfangor gave you that? It is never done!> He seemed disturbed. <The
situation would have to be very bad for him to give you morphing capa
bility^

"The situation is worse than you think," Marco said. "The Yeerks seem to
know you're here. Some piece of Andalite wreckage washed up on shore.
They are up on the surface right now."

For the first time the Andalite seemed uncertain. <What is your plan?>

"To get you out of here and hide you," I said.

<You came only to rescue me? This is true?>

"Yes."

He smiled with his eyes, just as Prince Elfan gor had done. <You will be
tired after this last morph. You will need to rest.>

"A little while, yes," I agreed.

"What is this?" Rachel asked. "This dome, I mean. It's like a park or
something."

<This is the main part of an Andalite dome ship. It is where we live.
The engines and the war bridge are in a long section that sticks out
from the bottom, with this dome perched on top.>

"Like a mushroom. Or an umbrella," I sug gested.

114 The Andalite just looked blank.

"Never mind," I said.

<During the great battle in orbit over your planet, the dome was
separated from the rest of the ship.>

"Why?"

The Andalite dug at the grass with his fore- hoof. < I...I was too young
for battle, by the laws of our people. Besides, the rest of the ship
maneuvers better without the dome.>

"You're a kid? I mean, like a young person?" Marco asked.

<Yes.>

"Are you the only one left? The only Andalite here?"

<Yes. I am alone. When the Blade ship ap peared unexpectedly, they
caught us off guard. I saw the main section burn. Dracon beams dam aged
the orbital stabilization of this dome. It fell. It splashed into the
ocean and sank to the bottom. I have been here for these many weeks,
hoping that my cousins would come for me. Hoping that some survived.
Finally I risked sending out a mirrorwave call. It works by . . .> He
stopped, and looked embarrassed. <l am not supposed to explain Andalite
technology. My brother will ... He would have been angry with me.>

"Just you survived," I said sadly.

115 <Just me,> he said. <No prince. No warriors.>

I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach. I think the others felt the
same way. I guess we'd all kind of been hoping this Andalite would be
like the prince. A leader. Someone who could take over the battle.
Someone who would know more than we did.

"We're young, too," I said. "Too young to fight, according to the laws
of our people."

<But still you fight!>

"We feel like we don't have a choice. Look, we don't even know your
name. This is Jake, Rachel, Marco. I'm Cassie. There's one more. His
name is Tobias."

<l am Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthil.>

We all just kind of stared.

"Ax," Marco said. "Pleased to meet you."

<Who is your prince?>

One by one we looked at Jake.

"Oh, give me a break," Jake said. "I am not anyone's prince."

But the Andalite had stepped forward. He bowed his head and lowered his
tail. <l will fight for you, Prince Jake, until I can return to my
cousins.>

116 CHAPTE R 19

<T his is a derrishoul tree,> Ax said. He pointed to one of the
asparaguslike spears that grew straight and tall. He was showing us
around while we recuperated from the morphing.

<And that we call enos ermarf.>

"What?" I didn't see what he was pointing at.

<That. The way the lake curves forward into the grass, framed by
derrishoul trees.>

"You have a word for something like that?" I asked.

<There are names for all the many ways the water and sky and field
interact,> he explained. <And for the way the suns and the moons hang in
the sky of our planet, and cast their lights in one

117 way or another on the different aspects of the world.>

Rachel caught my eye and silently mouthed the words, "He's cute." Then
she winked.

I wasn't sure I agreed. Andalites are halfway between looking cute and
looking scary. You can get past the weird stalk eyes and the fact that
they don't have mouths (at least not that you can see), but that
scorpionlike tail is far from cute. It reminded me of the sharks.

"You all live here?" Marco wondered. "I mean, just out in the open? Out
on the grass?"

<Where else would we live? Here we have space to run. There must always
be space to run.>

"This is like actually being on another planet," Jake marveled. "This is
all like part of the Andalite world."

<Yes. We take our home with us into space. It angers the Yeerks,> he
added grimly.

"Why do they care what you take into space?" Marco asked.

<lt is a part of everything they hate and would destroy if they could.
The Yeerks would take our world and make it as barren as their own. As
they will to your planet unless they are stopped.>

I grabbed Ax's arm. "What . . . what are you saying? What do you mean
about making the planet barren?"

118 He turned his big eyes on me. <The usual Yeerk pattern. Once a
planet is under their con trol, they alter it to suit their own desires.
They will leave enough plant and animal species to keep the host bodies
fed - humans in the case of Earth - and the rest they eliminates

He said it like it was obvious. Like it was just something I should know.

He started to move on, but I held his arm tightly. "Wait, wait. I don't
think I understand you. What do you mean, they eliminate species?"

<They eliminate them. They will make Earth as much like the Yeerk home
world as possible. They will destroy most of the plants and all of the
animal species except those they eat.>

I let go of his arm. I rocked back and grabbed at the air for balance. I
felt like I'd been hit by a car. "No," I whispered. "That can't be.
You're just saying that because you don't like Yeerks."

The others were staring. No one was moving.

Ax looked around at us. His eyes narrowed. <Don't you know? Don't you
know whom you're fighting?>

"We know they take over people's minds," Rachel said weakly.

<Yes. And that is one of their great crimes. But the Yeerks are more
than that. Yeerks are killers of worlds. Murderers of all life. Hated
and feared throughout the galaxy. They are a plague

119 that spreads from world to world, leaving nothing but desolation and
slavery and misery in their wake.>

I felt cold. Small and weak and cold and afraid. I looked around, but
even the inviting, lush Andalite landscape did nothing to warm me. Up in
the "sky" and all around us, I felt the im mense pressure of the ocean,
waiting to rush in.

<There are only three races left in all the known galaxy that still
fight the Yeerks,> Ax said proudly. <And only the Andalites can stop them.>

"How long until your people return to Earth?" I asked.

He hesitated. <O ne of your years. Maybe two

"Two years!" Jake looked stricken. I went to his side and slipped my arm
through his. "Five kids against an enemy that has destroyed half the
galaxy? Five of us?"

Ax gave that smile, the one he did with his eyes. <Six, my Prince,> he
said.

"Six. Well then," Marco said with grim sar casm, "with six it shouldn't
be any problem."

"How did these Yeerks get this far?" Rachel demanded. "How did this
happen? If you An dalites are so tough, why didn't you stop them a long
time ago? How did a bunch of slugs who live in dirty ponds manage to
become so powerful?"

Ax looked at her. <l am forbidden to tell cer tain things.>

120 Rachel's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You're telling us all of planet
Earth may be scheduled for destruction and we are the only thing stand
ing in the way, and you are going to keep secrets? I don't think so."

The Andalite looked angry, but no angrier than Rachel.

"Look, urn, I feel ready to morph again," I said, interrupting the
tension. Rachel was angry because she was afraid. What Ax had told us
had shaken her. It had shaken all of us. I guess we felt enough pressure
already. We didn't really need to think that every living thing on the
planet was depending on us.

It was kind of a lot to handle.

"Cassie's right," Jake said. "It's time. Let's get going before it's too
late."

I followed him along with the others as we crossed alien land, heading
for an environment just as alien - the ocean.

I wished I could forget what Ax told us. I wished I could stop seeing
the pictures in my head of an Earth without birds and trees. An Earth
where the ocean was empty and dead.

<Don't you know whom you're fighting?> the Andalite had asked.

Yes.

Now I knew.

121

?H ey, I have a stupid question," Marco said.

"What?" Jake asked.

Marco jerked his thumb toward the Andalite, Ax. "How do we get him out
of here?"

Jake looked blank. "Um , Ax, I don't suppose you can swim? Swim really
well, I mean. We're a long, long way from land."

<l would not swim in this body. I would morph a sea creature.>

"Like what?" Marco asked bluntly. "We have to travel far and fast."

<l have acquired a creature from this ocean. It was a large creature who
swam close one day. I stunned him and acquired him. I thought he would
be useful if I was to escape.>

122 "What kind of animal? What did he - " I stopped suddenly. I'd felt
something. A shadow. I looked up. Through the air of the dome. Through
the clear dome itself and up through the water.

It was on the surface. A cigar-shaped shadow riding the surface of the sea.

"That's a ship," I said. "Up there. I think it's stopped."

"Let's get out of here. Now," Jake snapped.

We ran for the hatch.

PING-NG-NG! PING-NG-NG!

The sound echoed through the dome.

"Sonar!" Marco hissed.

"How do you know?" Rachel asked.

"Didn't you ever see The Hunt for Red Octo ber? Great movie. Now let's
leave. They've found us!"

PING-NG-NG! PING-NG-NG!

We crammed inside the small hatch enclosure, the four of us and Ax.

"Morph!" Jake yelled.

I had already started. I could feel the dolphin features emerging. My
friends were beginning to mutate. Water rushed into the chamber,
swirling up around our legs.

Ax was changing, too. It almost broke my con centration, watching him.
In their normal forms Andalites are strange enough. When they morph it
is totally bizarre. Instead of two legs shriveling

123 and disappearing, it was four. And then there were the stalk eyes.
And the tail, which lost its scythe blade but split into a new kind of
tail, with a long, raked, vertical blade and a shorter lower blade.

The water swept up to my neck, but by that point I was more dolphin than
human.

BA-BOOOOM!

The explosion shuddered through the dome. It rattled my teeth. I felt
like my eardrums would explode.

<Yeerks,> Ax said. He said the word in our heads the way his brother
had. With hatred and rage so deep it was impossible to comprehend it.

BA-BOOOOM!

A second explosion! Suddenly the exterior door opened and we swam out in
a rush. Four dolphins and one . . .

Shark!

I'd been distracted by the explosions.

Ax had morphed a shark.

< Oh , good choice, Ax,> Marco said. <You morphed a shark? >

<I s it wrong?> the Andalite wondered.

<Your species and ours are mortal enemies,> I explained.

< Oh . I have a lot to learn about Earth.>

<Here's the first lesson - let's get OUT OF HERE!> Marco screamed.

124 I soared up through the water, angling toward the distant surface.
But as I rose I looked behind me. There were two jagged holes in the
dome. Water was gushing in like Niagara Falls. As I watched, a third
dark cylinder was falling slowly from the surface. Even I had seen
enough sub marine movies to know it was a depth charge.

<What hosts have these Yeerks used?> Ax de manded urgently.

<Um . . . Hosts? You mean bodies? Controllers? They use Hork-Bajir and
humans,> I answered.

<Hork-Bajir do not swim,> Ax said. <We may be safe. The Yeerks know
little of deep waters. They have no oceans on their world, only shallow
pools.>

<Good,> Jake said. <AII they've had here are Hork-Bajir. And Taxxons, of
course.>

< Taxxons?>

<Yes, is that a problem?>

We were near the surface now, just a dozen feet from the bright barrier
of sea and sky.

Just then a larger, darker shadow swept over us. A shadow that was dark
inside of dark. A shadow that touched your soul. It skimmed just above
the surface of the water.

It was shaped like a long battle-ax. Twin semi circular blades at the
back, a long, diamond-headed point at the front.

The Blade ship of Visser Three.

126 Something was falling from it as it passed over us. There were a
dozen splashes. I rolled over to get a better look.

What I saw made my flesh crawl.

Taxxons. In the water. Coming toward us.

<Those nasty worms can swim?> Marco yelled.

But the answer was obvious. The Taxxons, ten-foot-long centipedes
bristling with dozens of pairs of sharp needle legs, were racing after
us. And they were very fast in the water.

Very fast .

From this angle we couldn't see the several red-jelly eyes. But we could
see the circular mouth at the top of each vile body.

I had seen Taxxons straining to catch bits of Prince Elfangor as Visser
Three devoured him.

I had seen Taxxons, on orders from Visser Three, devour one of their own.

<Tell me,> Ax said. <l have the feeling that this body I am in might be
able to fight. Is this true?>

I grinned inwardly. <Yes, Ax. Sharks can fight.>

<Then, Prince Jake, shall we deal with these Taxxon scum?>

<Don't call me 'prince,'> Jake said. <And the answer is yes. Let's go
kick some Taxxon butt.>

125

Chapter 21

T here were a dozen Taxxons in the water. Five of us. Swimming in a
straight line, the Taxxons were faster. But, as we soon discovered, we
were more maneuverable.

<Pick a target,> Jake said tersely.

I focused on one of the big worms. But I had to force myself into the
fight. This was not a shark, and the dolphin's instinctive dislike of
sharks was not there to prod me.

I had to find the will to fight in my own, hu man mind. It's not such an
easy thing. I had fought the Yeerks to preserve human freedom. Now I
fought to help the entire world. Still, fight ing doesn't come naturally
to me.

127 And yet, I knew what I had to do. The Yeerks would show no mercy. If
the Taxxons won, we would be killed. Or worse.

I powered toward one of the Taxxons as he powered toward me. We were
like two trains run ning on the same track. Head to head.

At the last possible second, with the gaping red mouth of the Taxxon
just a foot away, I zoomed sideways, arched my back, and rammed the
Taxxon's side.

I expected it to be like the shark - hard, tough, unyielding. It was
not. It was like hitting a soggy paper bag with a sledgehammer. The
Taxxon burst like a dropped watermelon.

<Aaaaarrrggghhh!> I wanted to throw up. I beat the water with my tail
and recoiled from the horrible scene I had created.

All around me the battle raged. Dolphin against Taxxon. And Ax's shark
against Taxxon.

Scientists believe that sharks are one of the oldest species of animals
still in existence. Nature built them as perfect predators. Perfect
killing machines. Nature hasn't had to revise or update them much. They
were built right the first time.

Dolphins are very different. Scientists say that millions of years ago,
dolphins were land animals. Sea mammals not very different from humans

128 and other mammals. They evolved their way back into the ocean. Part
of that evolution included learning to cope with predators - with killer
whales and sharks.

I don't know what sea the Taxxon race evolved in. I don't know what
natural predators they faced there. But they were not ready for this
ocean. They were not ready to go one-on-one with the masters of Earth's
deep seas. They were no match for dolphin or shark.

< Okay , let's get out of here,> Jake ordered. <They've had enough.>

<Not so tough, are they?> Rachel asked, trying to sound tough herself.
But she seemed shaky to me.

I shot to the surface and filled my lungs with warm evening air. The sun
was dropping toward the horizon. Two ships were close by and steam ing
in our direction.

But far worse was the Blade ship, which hovered now just a hundred yards
up in the air.

<We can't waste any more time,> Marco said. <The plan was to head back
for one of those little channel islands, unmorph, rest, and then take
the rest of the distance. But even the island is al most two hours away
at top speed. We have to make a run for it, or we'll have to choose
between being trapped in morph or drowning. And that's not a great choice.>

129 <You're right, Marco,> Jake said. <Top speed for the nearest island.>

<How do you tell the time?> Ax asked.

<Sometimes we can carry a watch. Some times, like now, we just have to
guess and hope for the best.>

< Oh . With your permission, I will keep track of the time.>

<You have a watch?>

<No, but I have the ability to keep track of time,> Ax said.

<Good enough,> Marco said. <How much time left?>

<We have been in morph for approximately thirty percent of the safe time.>

<Thirty percent?> I tried to think. Math was never my best subject. And
it's hard to be mathe matical when you've just come from a battle and
are scared half to death. <That would be about thirty-six minutes. Which
means we have an hour and twenty-four minutes left.>

BAH-LUMPH!

I heard a huge concussion behind me. Like someone had dropped a big
truck in the water.

<What was that?> Marco wondered.

<Something hit the water,> I said. Some thing big.>

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

< Okay , now what is that? > Rachel asked.

130 I rose to the surface to breathe and look around. The two surface
ships were still closing in, but they were not very fast, and they were
not gaining on us. The Blade ship had disappeared. I scanned the sky in
all directions, but I couldn't see it.

<Does anyone see the Blade ship?> I asked.

<No. But that doesn't mean it isn't still nearby,> Jake said. <lt may
have recloaked.>

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

<What is that?>

<Whatever it is, it's getting closer,> I said.

Suddenly I remembered that I was not limited to the usual human senses.
I fired off a rapid se ries of echolocating clicks.

The picture that came back was startling.

< It's something in the water. Big. Huge. The size of a whale, but not
moving like a whale.>

Jake, Marco, and Rachel all echolocated.

< It's after us, whatever it is,> Rachel said.

< It's big, it's fast, and it's after us,> Marco agreed.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

I rose to breathe again and looked back. At just that moment I saw, far
behind me, a huge, dark red, almost purple hump above the water. It
seemed to be covered with hundreds of small fish tails, all beating
frantically.

131 I went under. <Ax, there's something back there. I don't think it's
from Earth.> I described it to him, at least what I had seen of it.

<Mardrut,> Ax said.

<Mardrut? What does that mean?>

<A mardrut is a beast that lives in the oceans of one of our own
Andalite moons. To think of that filthy Yeerk scum on our own moon!
Acquir ing our animals!>

<Ax, look, what is a mardrut?> I asked him.

<lt is a very large creature that swims by shooting water out of three
large chambers. It makes a sound - >

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

<A sound like that?> Marco asked.

<Yes,> Ax said. <l guess so. I did not recognize it. I have only heard
it once, and that was in school, and I wasn't paying attentions

It almost made me laugh, the image of an Andalite classroom where
Andalite students zoned out on the lesson just like we did. But it
really wasn't a good time for laughing.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

<But this is no true mardrut,> Ax said.

<No,> Jake agreed.

<Then you know who and what is chasing us?> Ax seemed surprised. <You
understand that this is Visser Three in morph?>

132 <We've met before,> Rachel said tersely.

<You have fought Visser Three? And you still live?> That definitely
surprised the Andalite. <l honor you.>

<Yeah, swell, thanks,> Marco said dryly. <But I'd trade the honor for a
good outboard engine so I could outrun that evil creep.>

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

133

T he creature Visser Three had become did not tire.

We did.

I felt like I had been swimming forever. Half an hour into the chase, I
was exhausted. We had been powering through the water at panic speed.
Fighting every current. Fighting the terrible urge to rest as our tails
weakened. Fighting the grow ing hunger.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

The mardrut never tired. It never weakened. It gained on us a foot at a
time, bit by bit.

I could see it now. A huge purple-and-red mottled bag that undulated and
oozed through the water. It was propelled by the three huge wa-

134 ter sacs, firing one after another. Between those loud bursts, the
hundreds of tiny tails that cov ered its entire surface thrashed and
kept up mo mentum.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

Then he spoke. We had all heard that silent voice in our heads before.
It was like hearing the most terrible curses. It was pure malice and ha
tred poured directly into our brains.

<l am coming fo r you, brave Andalite warriors,> Visser Three sneered.
<l am coming for you.>

That voice churned my insides. I felt my own hatred flaring up to match
his. The images Ax had painted - an Earth brown and empty and filled
with nothing but the slaves of the Yeerks. . . .

I had lived my entire life without feeling hatred. It is a sickening
feeling. It burns and burns, and sometimes you think it's a fire that
will never go out.

<l am coming for you. You will be mine. Shall I make you Controllers? Or
shall I simply eat you? The time for me to decide draws near. You
weaken. Your time runs short.>

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

We had all been exposed to Visser Three. Ax had not. He seemed to
shudder, even in his shark

135 body. The dead shark eyes showed no emotion, but his swimming became
erratic.

<Ax,> I said to him. He did not answer. <Ax, we have heard his voice
before. We've heard his threats. And we are still alive.>

<He will kill us,> Ax said. <He will kill us! He killed Elfangor!>

<Ax, hang in there. Don't answer him. Don't think about him. Just swim!>

But Ax's fear was catching. He was right. We didn't have enough time to
make it to land without being trapped in our dolphin bodies. And we
would never escape him, anyway. I glanced back.

He was only five body lengths away!

I demanded still more from my burning muscles, but there was nothing
more to ask.

This is the end, Cassie, I told myself. This is the end.

I felt the terrible hatred surge in me again. But I didn't want to end
my life that way. I would not die with hate in my heart. That would be
one victory I could deny Visser Three.

I let my mind drift, even as my shattered body struggled to go on. I
felt my mind floating back. To the barn, and all the animals there. To
my fa ther, my mother. To Jake.

I remembered good things. Riding the high thermals with Tobias and the
others with wings

136 spread wide. Good days. Sitting at my grand mother's feet as she
told me the story of our fam ily, of all the generations who had lived
on and worked the farm.

And then a more recent memory surfaced. The whale. I remembered his
huge, gentle si lence filling my mind.

I could even hear his song.

Wait! I could hear his song. That wasn't mem ory. I was hearing his
plaintive, haunting song, reverberating through the water.

He was not far away.

I opened my mind and let my human con sciousness slip away. I let go. I
invited the dolphin mind - the mind that loved to play and loved to
fight and loved the feeling of soaring out of the water right up into
the air like a bird - to surface in my head.

I fired echolocating bursts, a thousand quick clicks compressed into a
few seconds. And more than that, I cried for help.

It was foolish. It was ridiculous. But I cried out in a silent plea,
like a child with a nightmare calling for her mother.

The monster is after me! The destroyer! The evil one!

Help me.

<We have used eighty percent of our time,> Ax managed to say.

137 <Twenty-four minutes left,> Marco gasped.

<lt doesn't matter. I'm done for,> Rachel admitted. <l can't keep going.
And he's too close. It's time to turn and fight.>

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

<We cannot possibly win,> Ax said.

<We know,> Jake said. <But if I have to lose, I'd rather lose fighting
than let him catch us one by one.>

<That is a very Andalite thing to say,> Ax said. <We have a lot in
common. I wish it had ended differently.>

<O n the count of three,> Jake said.

<O ne.>

<Two.>

<Let's go.>

We stopped. We turned to face the mardrut.

<Jake?> I said. <l wanted to tell you . . .>

<Yes. Me, too, Cassie,> he said.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

The red-and-purple behemoth rushed at us.

I shook with terror. But I was too tired to swim away.

Help me! I cried one last time. But I knew there was no one to help.

And then I let it all go ...

. . . and said good-bye.

138

<I' ve made up my mind what to do with you,> Visser Three said. <After
this long chase I am really quite hungry.>

He rushed at us.

We rushed at him.

Something dark came hurtling up from the ocean floor.

Something dark and long and bigger even than the mardrut.

FWOOOMP!

Visser Three shuddered and stopped dead in the water.

A second dark shape, as fast as the first.

FWOOOMP!

139 <The great ones,> I whispered.

< It's the whales!> Marco yelled.

There were five of them in the water.

The two big males who had struck first had heads like sledgehammers.
Sperm whales. Sixty feet long. Sixty-five tons. The weight of fifty cars.

They had dived deep and come tearing up at awesome velocity to slam into
the creature from another world's ocean.

The mardrut was big. The mardrut was strong. But nothing living can
survive for long, being slammed by creatures weighing a hundred and
thirty thousand pounds.

Then, the whale - my whale, because that's how I thought of him - began
to lash the mardrut with his tail. Hammer blows. Hits that could have
knocked walls down. Again and again, as two smaller females joined in
and the two sperm whales circled back for another attack.

<Rrraaaggghhhh!> Visser Three's cry of pain and fury echoed in my brain.

<He's retreating!> Jake crowed.

<He's running!> Rachel said. <Hah-hah!>

<l don't think Visser Three likes whales very much,> Marco yelled. <l
don't think he likes them at all!>

The whales chased him for a while, but they let him go in the end.

140 Whales are not very good at killing. They don't really have much of
a talent for hating and de stroying.

My whale, the big humpback, returned in a few minutes and rested in the
water beside me.

I wanted to thank him, but, as I said, whales don't think in human words
or human thoughts. Still, I tried, anyway.

Thanks, big guy.

People who argue about how smart whales are, or whether they are as
smart as humans, kind of miss the point. Whales will never read books or
build rockets or do algebra. In all those areas, humans are smarter.
Humans are the great brains of planet Earth.

But it isn't necessary to believe whales are as smart as humans to
believe that they are great. They don't have to know words to sing
songs. They don't have to be anything but what they are to be
magnificent. And even though I don't really know what a soul is, I know
this - if humans have them, then so do whales.

I wanted to thank him for responding to my call for help. But I had a
strange feeling, as he opened his great heart to the dolphin mind that
was in my own, that he hadn't just come in re sponse to me.

I had the feeling - and that's all it was, a

141 feeling - that in some way the sea itself had called him to respond
to the presence of an abomination.

Of course I never told that to Jake or any of the others. They would
have laughed. At least, Marco would have.

<Morph time is almost up,> Ax said.

<l think if we morph, the whale will carry us until we are ready to
morph again,> I said.

So we morphed back to our human bodies, and Ax morphed to his Andalite
body, and we crawled up on the whale's huge back.

I fell asleep. I know that sounds pretty incred ible, but I did. I was
exhausted. Physically. Emo tionally. In every way you can be tired, I
was tired.

When I woke up, it was sunset. We were near shore. I could see the
beach, and just a little farther down the shore, the mouth of the river.

We were wet, of course, covered with splash ing water and the spray from
the whale's blow hole. It was a little cold, especially now that the sun
was going down.

But then again, I wasn't Visser Three's lunch, so I wasn't going to
complain.

Jake was sitting cross-legged on the whale's back, smiling at me.

"Some day, huh?" he said.

142 I smiled. "Yeah."

"We did it. We saved the Andalite. And we got out alive."

"Barely," I said.

"You know something? You were right. You trusted your feelings and we
followed you and we're all safe."

I nodded. "Yes, I guess so. Only ... as Marco would say, let's not do
this again any time soon, okay?"

Jake smiled his slow smile. "It's fun being a dolphin, though, isn't it?
I know you were worried about it. You know, thinking maybe it wasn't
right and all."

I shook my head slowly. "I'm still not sure it's right. But I guess we
don't have much of a choice. The Yeerks started this fight, not us. And
after what Ax said ... I guess it's not just about one species, human
beings. It's about all the an imals. It's about all of Earth."

Jake nodded. "I think if you could ask the dolphins, they would say it's
all right to use them. Since what you're trying to do is save them."

"Nah, they would just think it was all a big game. They would never
understand."

We both laughed. Even if they could talk, the dolphins would never
really understand what we

143 were so upset about. We knew that better than anyone.

"I guess that's true," Jake said. "But we do understand." He met my
gaze. "We do understand what's at stake. And we'll do whatever we have
to do to win."

I knew what he was trying to tell me. We'd used the dolphins to save
them. We'd used other animals to save them, too. And that made it okay.

144

W e morphed once more into our dolphin bodies and swam down the river to
the place where we had entered the water. We beached ourselves in
shallow water and returned to our human bodies.

"It feels good to be human again," Jake said.

Marco said, "Oh, Jake, you were never exactly human to begin with."

I guess it was funny, but we were all too tired to laugh.

We dug our clothes and shoes out of their hid ing place. I pulled jeans
and a sweatshirt on over my wet morphing suit. I shoved muddy feet into
my boots.

<Strange,> Ax said, watching us very closely.

145 <What is the meaning of the things you place on your bodies?>

"It's clothing," Rachel explained.

<Why do you wear it? Does it protect you from the environment?>

"Yes. That, plus the fact that people get very upset if you walk around
naked," Marco answered.

There was a fluttering overhead. One of the shadowed branches dipped
with a sudden weight.

"Is that you, Tobias?" I asked.

<Yes. You . . . you found an Andalite!>

"Yes. Tobias, meet Ax. That's his nickname, anyway. Ax, meet Tobias.
Tobias is one of us."

<Sort of, anyway,> Tobias said dryly. <l liked this morph so much I
moved in permanently.>

The Andalite was shocked. <You were trapped?>

<Yes.>

Ax turned his eyes on me, then looked from each one of us to the next.
He seemed very solemn. <You have paid a price for the gift of my
brother, Elfangor.>

<Prince Elfangor was your brother?> Tobias demanded. His hawk's eyes
glittered. <l was with him at the end.>

"This is all fine," Jake interrupted, "but we have to get out of here.
And we have to decide what to do with Ax. He can't exactly just go walk
ing through town with us."

146 "I think he should come to my farm," I said. "It's not so different
from the dome ship. Fields, meadows, woods, all the way into the
national forest land. He'd have to be careful, but it's the only place
we have to hide him."

"That still doesn't deal with how we're going to get him there," Marco
pointed out. "It's a long walk. People are gonna notice a big blue deer
with extra eyes and a scorpion tail."

<l must morph,> Ax said.

"Yeah, but into what?" Rachel wondered.

Then, to my surprise, Ax walked over to me. He placed one delicate,
many-fingered hand on my face.

<With your permission^ he said.

I felt myself getting spacey. Not sleepy, exactly, but sort of like I
was in a trance.

I realized what he was doing. He was "acquir ing" me. He was absorbing
my DNA.

"Urn . . . excuse me, but you're going to morph Cassie?" Marco asked.
"Can you do that?"

Ax went to Marco and touched his face. One by one, Ax acquired each of us.

And then he began to morph.

I've seen a lot of strange morph ings. But nothing was ever like this.
Ax wasn't becoming an animal. He was becoming a human being.

But a human being we all knew, in some ways. A melding of the four human
Animorphs.

147 His front legs began to shrivel away. His back legs thickened and
strengthened. Suddenly a mouth appeared in his Andalite face.

The scorpion tail shrank and disappeared.

He reared up and stood erect.

"Urn, you know, I think we better give Ax some privacy," I suggested.

"Is he going to be a boy or a girl?" Marco won dered.

"Either way, let's turn our heads," I said.

We did. Probably just in time.

"Hey, Ax? In the pile of clothes there is an extra pair of boxers and a
T-shirt," Jake said. "Put them on, okay?"

A few minutes later we turned around. We all stared.

Ax had the T-shirt pulled up like a baggy pair of shorts. The boxers
were on his head.

" O -o-o-o-kay," Jake said. "A few small adjust ments needed. Ax, are
you male or female?"

"I chose to be-be-be-be-be male." He stopped suddenly, eyes wide. He was
surprised by his mouth. It was not something Andalites un derstood.

"I chose male because I am male. Word. Male. Is that a good choice?
Ch-oy-ce? Chuh chuh choy-yuss?" He twisted his lips around and stuck out
his tongue. "Strange," he said.

"Male is fine," Jake said. "Rachel? Cassie?

148 Turn around. Marco and I will help Ax adjust his clothing."

When I looked again, Ax was dressed normally.

But he did not look normal. He was of medium height, a perfect balance
between Rachel and Marco. He was of medium build, somewhere between Jake
and Marco. His hair was brown, with just a little of Rachel's gold and a
little of my curl. His skin was the color of light brown sugar, a
blending of my brown and Marco's olive, and Jake and Rachel's pale white.

He was human and yet, somehow, strange.

He jerked his head this way and that. "How do you look? Lookuh. LooKUH.
KUH. How do you look around? Ound. Ow, ow, ownd behind?"

I grinned. It was exactly like every time I first morphed a new animal.
He was getting used to his new body. Or at least trying to. As I watched
him play with his lips and try out new sounds, he suddenly tumbled forward.

Jake grabbed him and held him.

"You only have two legs now, Ax," he said.

"Yes. Two. Oo. Very shaky."

"Yeah, we're a shaky species," Marco said.

"Well, let's get out of here," Jake said.

"Ax?" I said. "Don't talk to any strangers on the way home, okay?"

149

I t was a couple of days later. After we had recovered. After I had made
sure that Ax was safe in the far fields of our farm, away from curious
eyes.

I waited till dark, and changed again into the seagull morph.

I flew out of my barn and through the night to The Gardens.

It was closed and empty, aside from a few scattered security guards.
They would have stopped me if I had tried to enter normally. But no one
was looking out for seagulls.

I landed near the dolphin tank and became human again. There were no
lights on and just a sliver of moon, but I could hear the dolphins

150 swimming. One came over to me, curious about why a human would be
hanging around at night.

"Hi," I said. "Sorry, I don't have any food for you."

Then I climbed up on the side of the tank. I let myself go, slipping
into the cool water.

Three of the dolphins came over to take a look. This was definitely
something unusual. Some strange human was getting in the pool with them.
This was a new game.

I began to morph.

This definitely got their attention. All six dol phins swam around,
looking up at me, sideways at me, back at me as they passed.

And slowly I became one of them.

It was a dumb thing to do, really. I knew it was dumb. But it felt like
something I had to do.

I wanted to show them what I had done. I wanted their permission to
become one of them. I wanted to find some way to tell them . . . every
thing.

But you know, once I was in that dolphin body again, it was hard to
remember all my solemn worries. It was hard to remember why I had come.

Hard to remember fear and worry and guilt.

One of them came over, gave me a nudge, then shot toward the surface.
She exploded into

151 the air and fell back, as silent and smooth as an arrow.

They were asking me to play.

They were asking me to dance with them.

And so I did.

152 Don't miss

Animorphs

#5 The Predator

?S top!" a cop yelled. "I'm ordering you to halt!"

But Ax wasn't interested in halting. He was panicked.

A woman stepped out of the Body Shop holding a bag full of colorful
jars. Ax plowed into her. The bag went flying.

The stalks began to grow out of the top of his head. The extra eyes
appeared on the ends and turned backward to watch the people chasing him.

Jake and I were two of those people. We were ahead of the cops, but not
by much. Fortunately, I guess the cops assumed we were just idiots
running along for fun.

I could hear one of the cops yelling into his walkie-talkie. "Cut him
off at the east entrance!"

Legs began to grow from the chest of Ax's hu man morph. His own front
legs, small at first, but growing rapidly.

153 He was slowing down as his human legs began to change. The knees
were reversing direc tion. His spine elongated into the beginnings of a
tail.

Then's when the screaming started.

"Ahhhahhhhh!"

"What is it? What IS it?"

People were screaming and running and dropping their bags as they caught
sight of the nightmare creature Ax had become. Half-human,
half-Andalite. A fluid, shifting mess of half- formed features.

I couldn't blame them. I felt like screaming myself.

. . . Suddenly, Ax fell forward, tangled up in his own mutating legs. He
skidded down the polished marble floor. . . .

"You kids get out of the way!" one of them yelled at us. "This guy could
be dangerous."

Ax sprang up. He was much more sure of himself, now that he was on his
four Andalite hooves. . . .

It was then that I heard the nearest mall cop, in an awed frightened
whisper, say, "Andalite!"

I quickly turned and looked at him. Only a Controller would recognize an
Andalite. The Controller cop drew his gun from his holster.

"RUN!" I yelled at Ax. . . .

