The Bacrat;...
Even the book morphs
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  3* titles
  by K.a. Applegate:
1 The Invasion
2 The Visitor
3 The Encounter
4 The Message
5 The Predator
6 The Capture
  7
The Stranger
8 The Alien
  less-than MEGAMORPHS greater-than
1 The Andalite's Gift
The Secret
AN
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Text copyright
[*copy]
1997 by Katherine Applegate.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic
Inc.
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ANIMORPHS is a trademark of Scholastic
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12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Printed in the U.s.a. First Scholastic
printing, August 1997
For Alexander and Maxx Leach And always, for
Michael
I
m
y name is Cassie.
  I can't tell you my last name. I wish I could.
It's kind of a nice last name.
  And I can't tell you where I live or the true
names of my friends. Why? Because the enemy never
stops looking for us.
  The enemy. The Yeerks. They're everywhere.
  The Yeerks: a parasitic species from a
far-distant planet. All they are is little gray
slugs, really. I've seen them in their natural
state. They look like big snails without the shell.
You could squash one under your foot and it would be
helpless to stop you.
  But the Yeerks don't live out their lives as
slugs. Like I said, they are parasites. See,
they
enter the head of another species, flatten themselves
out, and wrap themselves around the brain. And then they take
control.
  That's what we call a Controller. A human
who isn't exactly human anymore. Or a
member of any species that is controlled by the
Yeerk in its head.
  Maybe you think what I've just told you sounds
crazy. I guess if I were you, I'd think it was
pretty insane. But sometimes even the craziest things
happen to be true.
  The Yeerks are here. Everywhere. If you think you
don't know someone who is a Controller, you're
probably wrong.
  The school bus driver, the police officer in the
patrol car, the minister in the pulpit, the newsman
on TV, the rock star in the music video, the
person who smiles at you when you ride by on your
bike -- any one of them might be a Controller.
Your teacher, your friend, your sister, your mother and father.
Any of them. All of them. And you'll never know.
Until it's too late.
  Until it is too late for planet Earth.
  We fight them. But we're just a handful of kids
-- Jake, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, Ax, and
me. We have some special powers, but we know we
can't win this alone. We fight in the hope that someday
-- someday soon -- the Andalites will return and
help us.
  It was an Andalite prince named Elfangor who
gave us our powers. He was dying. He was
desperate. He wanted to do something to help doomed
humanity.
  He gave us the power to morph. To absorb the
DNA of any animal we could touch. To
become
that animal.
  So we fight the Yeerks and all their
Controllers. The human-Controllers who
may once have been our friends and relations. The evil,
cannibalistic Taxxon-Controllers, those huge
centipedes with their open, gnashing mouths and foul
smell. And the deadly, dangerous, but formerly good
creatures called Hork-Bajir -- the enslaved
foot soldiers of the Yeerk empire.
  And we fight Visser Three. Leader of the
Yeerk invasion of Earth. The only
Andalite-Controller in existence. The only Yeerk
who, like us, has the power to morph.
  The murderer of Elfangor. A killer. A
destroyer. The creature who would make slaves of
all humans and destroy our planet.
  Unless someone stops him. Unless we stop him.
  Five ordinary kids and a young Andalite we
call Ax, against all the might of the Yeerk
empire.
  We call ourselves Animorphs.
  We're only supposed to use our power for
fighting the Yeerks. But there are times when it comes in
handy for other things.
My best friend Rachel and I were at school, in the
dark and gloomy science lab. The final bell had
rung and kids were tearing out of there at top speed,
running for the buses or their parents' cars.
  You know how it is -- when the school day is over
you just want
out
of there. But I had been messing up in school
lately. See, I have kind of a busy life. My
dad runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic
in our barn. I help out there, taking care of injured
or sick animals. Plus the whole Animorph
thing takes up a lot of time.
  Anyway, I had to do a makeup project for
science class. I built a maze for a rat I'd
named Courtney. I mean, I figured an
animal project would be easy for me. I've
been
more animals than a lot of kids have seen.
  Courtney was supposed to find her way through the
cardboard maze to the end, where I had placed some
tasty seeds and nuts. Then I would make notes
on her progress. How hard could that be?
  Rachel stared at me. She tapped her foot
impatiently. She looked down at her watch.
Then she looked up at the clock on the wall.
"You know, school's been out for ten minutes, and here
I am, still at school. This can't be right. It's
unnatural."
"Why can't she figure out the maze?" I wondered
out loud. "What's the problem?"
  "A stupid rat? Er, I mean, maybe you have a
not very smart rat. That could be the subject of your
paper -- "My Dumb Rat.""
  "What is the problem with you?" I demanded,
ignoring Rachel and talking directly to the rat.
I took Courtney from her cage and stuck her in the
high-walled maze. "Smell the nuts. Smell the
nuts and then find your way through the maze."
  Courtney looked up at me and twitched her
nose.
  "That's not an answer," I said. "I
need
this grade. I am not going to try and explain a
D
to my parents just because you can't get it together."
  "A D!" Rachel echoed. "You're looking at
a D? No way."
  "Rachel, why do you think I'm here? Because I'm
trying to go from an
A
to an
A plus his
Yes. I am looking at a
D.
And I can't bring my parents a
D.
That would mean weeks of them going, "Where did we go
wrong? We must be failing as parents. We have
to spend more time with Cassie, helping her every night with
her homework.""
  Rachel shuddered at the absolute horror of that
scenario.
  "Hey," Rachel said. "Morph the rat.
Maybe you can see what his ... her... its problem
is."
"I could do that," I said slowly. "But see, if
Jake found out... You know the rule-. No
mor-phing except when necessary."
  Rachel shrugged. "It's necessary that I get out of
here. It's necessary that you don't get a bad grade.
Look at that -- two necessities at once!"
  I probably shouldn't have let her talk me
into it. Except, actually, I'd already been
considering it. That's the great thing about Rachel --
she's always willing to help talk you into doing something you
probably shouldn't do.
  "You have to do it, too," I said.
  "Why? Why do I have to morph a rat?"
  "Remember the time you wanted to scare that guy with the
elephants? Wasn't I there for you then? Besides,
we can't leave till I try to figure this out."
  Rachel rolled her eyes. "Ooookay. That
made absolutely
no
sense, but I'll do it anyway. Let's just get it
over with."
  Acquiring an animal's DNA isn't very
complicated. All you do is touch it, and focus your
mind on the animal. The animal gets kind of
sleepy, kind of dopey. In a minute it's all
over, and a new DNA pattern is swimming around
inside you.
  "I have the feeling this is a stupid idea,"
Rachel said.
  I was piling up books to make steps so we
could climb into the maze once we morphed.
"Well, it was your idea, Rachel."
  "Oh, yeah. My idea. Like I'm the one who
cares how the rat handles a maze. Let's get this
over with before someone decides to check in on us," she
said. Already, she was beginning to change.
  I focused my thoughts, forming a mental picture
of the rat. And then ... I felt the change
begin.
  I was shrinking. Shrinking very fast. For a human,
I'm not very big. In fact, I'm kind of short.
But I was a lot bigger than a rat, so it was a
pretty big change in size.
  My T-shirt and my jeans were suddenly very
loose.
  I looked at Rachel. Huge long whiskers were
growing out of her still-human mouth.
  The side of the cabinets beside me grew higher and
higher. They had originally been maybe three feet
high. Soon they seemed as tall as a three-story
building. The grain in the wood looked like huge
swirling patterns, like strange paintings the size of
murals.
  The one-foot squares of tan and green linoleum
seemed to double and triple and quadruple in size,
until each was as big as a parking space.
As I shrank, my clothes folded and billowed down
over me like a collapsed circus tent.
  My skin turned a sort of pinkish-gray, then
suddenly sprouted white fur. My legs were
shriveling. My arms were shriveling. My face
bulged like a zit about to pop. My nose poked way
out, farther and farther. My face became
pointed.
  And then, the rat's senses replaced my own.
  On came the ears, like someone had thrown a
switch. On came the nose.
  And on came the rat's instincts, bubbling up in
my human mind and carrying their messages of fear and
hunger and more fear.
  less-than Yikesffgreater-than Rachel commented.
less-than Nervous little things, aren't they8greater-than
CHAP
TER

T
he rat's eyes weren't any better than my own.
In fact, they weren't quite as good. Like lots of
animals I've been, the eyes were better at
seeing movement than at seeing colors and shapes.
Nothing was moving, so my vision was kind of, I
don't know . . . kind of dull.
  I could see Rachel well enough, though. We were
made from the same rat's DNA, so were basically the
same rat. I could see her long, naked pink
tail. That tail is the reason people hate rats, but
think squirrels are cute.
  That, plus the fact that rats have been known
to nibble on humans from time to time.
  The rat's hearing was excellent, but it was its
sense of smell that was really amazing. I
twitched my little rat nose and the whole world sent me
messages.
  I smelled the chemicals in the cabinets. I
smelled the lingering aromas of hundreds of different
kids who had passed through the room that day. I even
smelled the seeds and nuts in the maze, up on the
table.
  I felt the rat's brain beginning to surge more
strongly up beneath my own. The rat instincts were coming
out. Fear. Not the sharp sudden fear a human might
feel. It was the eternal fear of a small animal
in a world of great big predators.
  And the hunger. The hunger of a tiny animal who will
spend its entire life, every single minute of its
life, searching for its next meal.
  But there was also the intelligence.
  When you morph an animal, its instincts come
through. You don't get its memories, usually, but you
do get its instincts. Its basic abilities are
there.
  This rat was very nervous. It was afraid of being out in
the open. It wanted to be next to the wall so
that enemies would have a harder time attacking it. I
decided that wasn't a bad instinct.
  less-than Maybe we should get somewhere
safer8greater-than I asked Rachel in thought-speak.
  less-than Oh, yes, definitelyeagreater-than
she agreed.
  The little rat legs powered up and we took off.
Not fast, really, but it seemed fast because I was so low
to the ground. My nose was just a quarter of an inch
above the linoleum. As I waddle-walked along I
saw huge walls looming over me -- the sides
of the lab tables. And I saw sparse forests of
trees -- actually the legs of chairs.
  I scooted along the corner of the wall with
Rachel right behind me.
  less-than That is not an attractive
taileagreater-than Rachel said. less-than like mean,
I'm a rat and I still think it looks bad.
greater-than
  Then I saw the table where my maze was set up.
The real Courtney was up there. I checked out the
area.
  less-than like think we can climb up my
backpack onto the chair. Then onto my sweater,
then jump to the tabletop. greater-than
  less-than l'm following yeagreater-than Rachel
said. less-than Lead the way, Rat-girl.
greater-than
  The rat body was amazingly good at climbing and
scampering up to the tabletop. You wouldn't think that
squat body and those stubby little legs would be good for
climbing, but I really do believe that rat could have
gone just about anywhere it wanted to go.
  I saw the pile of books I'd left as a
sort of stairway up the outer wall of the maze. And
now that I was rat-sized, that wall really was a
wall. It looked about nine feet high.
less-than You go do the mazeeagreater-than Rachel
said. less-than l'll wait out here.greater-than
  I scampered quickly up over the books. The
pictures on the front of my science book
looked like huge mosaics made of colored
tiles.
  I reached the top and gazed down into the maze. I
knew I could jump down in there, down into those long
hallways, but at that moment I was afraid. It was
odd, but the idea of running into the real Courtney
made me nervous. I've always felt a little funny
about using animals' bodies. It makes me feel
a little guilty somehow.
  But I had a job to do. I had to figure out why
Courtney couldn't find the nuts. She should be able
to smell them . . .
  less-than Hey. Wait a minute. I can't
smell them, either. Not at all. greater-than
  less-than Can't smell what8greater-than
Rachel asked.
  less-than The nuts. I can't smell them.
greater-than
  less-than Do I care8greater-than
  less-than lt's the whole pointeagreater-than I
said.
  I looked around, puzzled. Then I noticed the
breeze. I aimed my rat eyes upward. There,
a million miles up, as far away as the moon,
was a ceiling fan.
  If I'd had lips, I would have smiled.
  less-than Hey. It's the fan. It's blowing the
scent of the nuts away. greater-than
  less-than Great. Now can we get out of
here8greater-than
I was feeling pretty satisfied with my insight when
two things happened at once. First, Courtney --
the real Courtney -- came zooming around the corner
of the maze.
  The second thing was that I heard a loud crash, a
roar of loud laughter, and the rushing approach of
footsteps.
  Courtney froze and stared at me. I stared at
her. Then I looked back at Rachel. Rachel
was frozen, same as me.
  "HEY, LOOK! RATS!" an impossibly
loud voice shouted. A boy, I was sure of that.
I didn't recognize the specific voice, but
I recognized the tone. He was looking for trouble.
  "GROSS!" another voice shouted. "SOMEONE
SHOULD EXTERMINATE "EM. I HATE
RATS!"
  Two of them. Two guys playing around. Two
jerks looking for something to break or destroy.
  Two very, very big creatures compared to us tiny
rats.
  Sudden shadows! Vibrations. Huge movements!
  WHAM!
  The table shook like it was hit by a massive
earthquake!
  WHAM! THUD!
  A shadow, moving fast, descending on me. I
jumped!
THUD!
  The tabletop jumped from the impact of the boy's hand
slamming down near me.
  I felt the maze being lifted. It tilted
wildly up on its side. I could see the entire
maze, now a wall instead of a floor.
  Courtney fell out of the maze onto the table.
Now there were three of us, trapped on the tabletop.
  "HERE! A BROOM!"
  less-than Bailffgreater-than Rachel yelled.
  less-than Runffgreater-than I cried.
  THWACK!
  Something the size of a pine tree slapped the
surface of the table. It was a broom handle. The
handle swept across the table, coming right at us, a
wooden log half my own height.
  I jumped. Rats don't look like jumpers, but
when they have to, they can.
  Up! Over the broom handle, Rachel right beside
me. I saw Courtney haul in the other
direction.
  Run! Run! Run! Rachel and I moved out
at top rat speed.
  The edge of the table!
  It was like standing on the edge of a four-story
building. It looked like a very, very long way
down.
  Then, a shadow! A disturbance in the airflow!
No time to look! No time to think!
  less-than Aaaaahhhhffgreater-than
less-than Aaaaahhhhffgreater-than
  We leaped from the edge of the table just as the broom
handle slammed down in the very spot where we'd been
standing.
  The fall seemed to take forever. It was like
skydiving. The linoleum tiles looked like some
strange farmlands far beneath me.
  I hit the floor hard. My legs didn't
catch the impact. They were too short. My big
furry belly took the blow. But it knocked the
wind out of me.
  As my mind cleared, I realized the guys were no
longer after me and Rachel. They had Courtney in a
corner. They were jabbing at her with the broom handle.
  less-than Oh, maneagreater-than I said.
less-than lf we survive, Jake is going
to kill me for this. greater-than
  less-than l'm tired of runnings Rachel said.
less-than Let's kick some butt greater-than
  That, of course, is classic Rachel. We were
each about a foot long, counting our tail.
So naturally, she thought we should attack some guys
the size of Godzilla.
  But you know what? I was tired of running, too.
And I couldn't let poor Courtney get killed.
She was more than just a science project. Now she was
sort of a sister rat.
  I aimed right for the leg of the nearest guy. It was the
size of a redwood, except that this redwood was
blue. Baggy blue denim.
less-than Are you thinking what I'm
thinking8greater-than I asked Rachel.
  less-than l'm with yeagreater-than she said.
  We motored our tiny rat feet and shot forward.
Faster, faster, as fast as we could go. Which,
happily, turned out to be fairly fast.
  Up the pants leg! I saw a flash of skin
above the socks. I went for it. My tiny clawed
feet grabbed onto that white gym sock and went
straight up.
  It was like going into a tunnel. The rough denim of the
jeans scraped along my head and back. The pink
flesh curved away beneath me. I dug my claws,
front and back, into the skin and hairs of that huge
leg, and shot wildly up the back of his leg.
  "AAAAAAHHHHHH!"
  Suddenly, the boy was no longer interested in
Courtney.
  "AAAAAAHHHHHH! IT'S ON ME!
IT'S ON ME! GET IT OFF! GET
IT OFF MEEEEE!"
  "NOOOO! OH! OH! OH!" the other boy
screamed, as Rachel attacked.
  less-than Yaaahhhhffgreater-than I cried, as
the leg was thrown wildly back and forth. I slammed
against the denim wall. I was slammed back against the
curved pink skin. I scrambled wildly to hold
on as the boy screamed and ran and shook his leg like a
lunatic.
"AAAAAHHH! AAAAAAHHH! AAAAAHHHH!"
  Out of the science lab we tore. Out into the
hallway, with the two guys screaming the whole way.
  I turned myself around, with great difficulty, and
aimed downward. Out I shot. Out of the pants leg
to freedom.
  The last I saw of the two guys, they were still
running in sheer panic.
  I never did see Courtney again. I guess
she found a place to live in the school walls.
At least I'd figured out why she wouldn't go through the
maze.
  Rachel and I found a safe place to demorph.
Then we went to her house and gave her little sister a
home perm. Business as usual.

C
HAPTE
R

  That evening, everyone came over. We usually
hook up at the Wildlife Rehabilitation
Clinic. Also known as my barn.
  I guess we all get together once or twice
a week. More often when there's a "mission" of some
kind. I was surprised when Jake called to say
we should get together because it had only been a couple of
days since the last meeting. And as far as I knew,
nothing serious had been planned.
  I hoped this was
only
a meeting and nothing else. I had like zero spare
time. School. Life. That stuff takes time, you
know?
  I was cleaning the cages when the others started
to arrive. It was a raccoon cage, to be
specific. This raccoon had been hit a
glancing blow by a car on the highway. A lot of the
highway patrol guys know to call us if they see
an injured animal by the road.
  The raccoon would be okay, thanks to my dad. But
in the meantime, it had to be fed and watered and medicated
and its cage had to be kept clean. And all of that was
my job.
  I was wearing dirty overalls and big tall
rubber boots. My arms were deep inside rubber
gloves when Rachel showed up.
  "Hey, Cassie."
  "Hi, Rachel." I was bent over, concentrating
on wiping out the raccoon's cage. I could tell the
raccoon was seriously considering leaping on my face
and chewing my nose.
  "S. Cassie. You get that outfit at
Banana Republic? Or is that the new
Express line?"
  Rachel and I are best friends, but we are very
different people. If you just saw Rachel walking by you'd
probably think typical airhead mall-crawler.
If you took a closer look you'd start to think,
No, she's actually very beautiful, not typi
cal at all.
  And if you took a third look, she'd
probably come over, get in your face, and say,
"What are you staring at? Hello? You have some kind
of a problem?"
  Rachel is tall and blond and beautiful and
fearless. She's
Xena: Warrior Princess
- only without the leather.
  We must be the most mismatched best friends in
history. Rachel could walk through the mosh pit at
Lollapalooza on a rainy day and come out the other
side looking like one of those models in
Glamour.
I, on the other hand, will show up for my own wedding
someday dressed in jeans and boots and socks that
don't match.
  I stood back from the raccoon cage. I smiled
and gave a little twirl so Rachel could admire the
outfit. "You like it? It's part of the Ralph Lauren
Animal Poop collection."
  "Someday I am going to knock you over the head,
stuff you in a big bag, drag you to the mall, and
force you to buy a dress. You can keep the big rubber
boots, if you insist, but we're getting you a
dress."
  "You're kidding, right?" I asked
Rachel. You can never be totally sure with Rachel.
  She just smiled with her ten thousand bright white
teeth.
  I heard the sound of bikes being leaned up against the
outside of the barn. Then I heard male voices.
  "Batman could beat Spiderman? You expect
me to take that seriously? Are you insane? I thought
I knew you, Jake, but you're obviously an

  idiot. No offense. Spiderman would
annihilate Batman."
  Marco. Marco, sounding as serious as Marco is
capable of sounding.
  "Two words.- body armor. Spiderman's
webs would not stick to Batman's body armor.
Homer, stay out here, boy. You can't go in."
  That would be Jake. And Homer, his dog. Homer
is not allowed in the barn. Being a dog, Homer
believes small animals are meant to be chased.
  Jake and Marco came through the small side
door of the barn. Jake was in the lead, as usual.
If we Animorphs have a leader, it's Jake.
He's strong, inside and out. And really good-looking.
Also inside and out. I mean, he's just an amazingly
cool guy.
  Jake has had to grow up a lot in a very short
time. It's weird to be a kid, and yet act like some
kind of a general or something. We all decide the
big stuff together. But when we're in a fight, it's
Jake who has to make the little decisions a lot of
times. The little decisions that could leave one of his friends
dead.
  It made me smile to realize that Jake could still
enjoy absurd arguments with Marco. I sort of
worry about the pressure on Jake.
  Jake and I are kind of... you know. We like each
other. As in
like.
Marco was just behind Jake. He's smaller than
Jake, with longer, darker hair, laughing, dark
eyes, and an attitude.
  Marco thinks the whole world is just a setup for a
joke. Marco will tell a joke while he's
bleeding and terrified and in pain. But there are times when
his eyes lose their skeptical expression and grow
glittery and dangerous.
  "Cassie," Marco said, "you look beautiful,
as always. Your use of manure as a fashion
statement is so tasteful." Then he gazed at
Rachel and winced. "Yikes! Everytime I
see you, you're taller. Stop it. Stop growing."
  Rachel patted Marco on his head. "Don't
worry. I don't look down on you for being short,
Marco. I look down on you just for being you."
  Marco grabbed his chest in pain. "Aargh! And
Xena puts another spear in me."
  "Hi, Jake," I said, ignoring the usual
Marco-versus-Rachel stuff.
  "Hi, Cassie," he said. He gave me one
of his rare, slow smiles. "Hey, I heard this
weird story. These two guys at school claim
they were attacked by a pair of lab rats."
  "Really? I didn't hear about that," I said,
trying not to make the fakey, shrill sound I always
make when I'm lying.
  Jake raised one eyebrow and I quickly went
back to cleaning out the cage.
"What are we here for?" Rachel asked bluntly.
  Jake shrugged. "Tobias told me to get
everyone together. He and Ax have something."
  Right on cue, we heard a flutter of wings. A
hawk shot in through the open hayloft above. It turned
sharply, killed its speed, swept its talons
forward, and landed neatly on a rafter.
  It was a red-tailed hawk. Mostly
brown on its back, a lighter, mottled brown and
tan beneath. The bird took its name from its tail
feathers, which were the color of rust.
  The hawk glared down at us with unbelievably
intense brown and gold eyes.
  less-than Hieagreater-than the hawk said, a
silent voice that we heard only in our heads.
  "Hi, Tobias," I answered.
  Tobias is the fifth human member of our
group. Although he's not entirely human anymore.
See, if you stay more than two hours in a morph,
you stay forever.
  In his mind and heart, Tobias is still a human
being -- mostly. But he has the body of a hawk.
He lives as a hawk.
  "Hi, Tobias," Rachel said. "I thought
maybe you'd stop by last night."
  Tobias sometimes hangs out with Rachel. He
flies into her upstairs room and watches TV,
or reads. Things he can't do in the wild. Human
things.
less-than Um, well, I was going toeagreater-than
he said in thought-speak. less-than But there was this
thing with Ax . . . greater-than
  Ax is
AximiIi-Esgarrouth-Isthill. He's the
sixth person in our group. He's even less
human than Tobias. Ax is an Andalite.
  "Speaking of which, is Ax coming?" Jake asked.
  less-than No. He's still out keeping an eye
on things. Or four eyes, actually. greater-than
  "What things?" Marco asked, beginning to sound
impatient.
  Tobias swooped down to be closer. He landed
on the top edge of a stall door. He checked out the
many cages. At the moment we had, in addition to the
raccoon, a fox, two wolves, a handful of
various bats, a really cool porcupine, a pair
of jackrabbits, a deer that had been mauled by a
bear, several doves, a goose, a swan
cygnet, a whole group of assorted gulls, a
beautiful red-winged blackbird, and a bam owl.
  less-than What happened to the golden
eagle8greater-than Tobias asked.
  "He's all better so we released him," I
admitted. See, golden eagles occasionally kill
and eat hawks. "We released him way back in the
hills, though. Nowhere near your territory,
Tobias."
  Tobias didn't look too happy.
But then, Tobias has a hawk's face, so he
never looks anything but
fierce. Once he was a very sweet, slightly
dopey kid. Jake and he met when Jake stopped
some bullies from sticking Tobias's head in the
toilet.
  less-than Anyway. I have something to report.
It looks like someone is getting ready to start logging
in the forest. greater-than
  "Noway!" I cried.
  The others were less upset.
  "So what?" Marco asked.
  "So habitat will be destroyed! So animals will
be made homeless! So old-growth trees will be
chopped down to make plywood!" I cried. "That's
so what."
  Marco frowned. "And I care about this . . .
why?"
  I started to answer, but Tobias cut me off.
less-than You don't care, Marco. But you might
care about
who
is doing the logging. greater-than
  "I'm guessing a logging company," Marco
suggested.
  less-than Yeah. You're righteagreater-than
Tobias said. less-than Only this logging company
has built a command center deep in the forest. A
log building, actually, like you'd expect.
Except for one little thing. greater-than
  "What one little thing?" Jake asked.
  less-than The building is protected by a force
field. A force field that seems to stop anything that
gets near. I tried to fly closer, and it was like
hitting a wall. Also, there are armed guards walking
the
perimeter around the building, and patrolling up and
down the access road. greater-than
  "Oh," Jake said.
  less-than Guards armed with automatic
rifles. greater-than
  "Yeerks?" Rachel wondered. "But why would the
Yeerks want to be logging in the forest?"
  I knew the answer to that question. The Yeerks"
plan was all too obvious. "They want to destroy
habitat," I said.
  "What? Now the Yeerks are out to destroy the deer
and the owls?" Marco said with a dismissive laugh.
  "No," I said. "It's not owl habitat they
want to destroy. They're after a different
species."
  less-than Yeaheagreater-than Tobias agreed.
less-than They're going to wipe out the habitat of the
very,
very
endangered Animorph. greater-than
CHAPTE
R

  taJo. The Yeerks are right there in our forest.
Fine," Rachel said with her usual enthusiasm for
anything dangerous. "Let's go take a look."
  "If this is a Yeerk operation, we have to be
careful," Marco said. "They're expecting us."
  less-than Expecting u8greater-than Tobias
said.
  Marco nodded. "Look, the Yeerks believe
we're a band of Andalites, right? They think only
Andalites can morph. They've figured out that the
forest is the only place a group of Andalites could
be hiding. Let's face it -- if we
were
Andalites, we wouldn't exactly be able to rent an
apartment."
  "So we'd be in the forest. Just like Ax is
right
now." Jake nodded. "They want to use the logging
operation as a way to go Andalite-hunting."
  "Right. Which means they think we're out in the forest.
So they have to be prepared for an attack. They are
going to be totally ready for any strange group of
animals that show up."
  I agreed with Marco. But there was another question that was
bothering me. "How did they ever get permission
to cut trees in a national forest?"
  Marco rolled his eyes, like I was being an
idiot. "Who cares? The fact is, they did."
  "If we're going to take a look at this
place, we can't show up there in a big group,"
Jake said. "We split up, go in two groups.
In different morphs. We see what we see, but
we do nothing. Agreed?"
  Everyone nodded.
  "S. If it's okay with everyone, I'll go in with
Rachel. I'll morph the peregrine falcon.
Rachel, you can morph your bald eagle. Tobias
will show us the way. That's a lot of excellent eyes
to look things over. Cassie, you go in with Marco.
Get a different perspective."
  "Why can't I go with Rachel?" I
asked. It's not that I don't like Marco. He just
grinds my nerves sometimes.
  "Because you and Rachel just egg each other on,"
Jake said.
  He knew about the rat thing. He definitely
knew. Still, it kind of bothered me. "Oh, you mean
like you and Marco egg each other on?"
  Jake nodded and gave me a wink. "You could say
that. Yep. Exactly."
  Ten minutes later, Marco and I were walking
across the far fields of my farm, wading through tall
grass toward the edge of the forest.
  The forest is huge. It reaches all the way
back up into the mountains. Thousands, maybe
millions of square miles of pines and oaks and a
scattering of birch trees sweep down from the
mountains all the way to the edges of town. Our farm
is right on the edge. Lots of farms are. And some
new housing developments and so on.
  It was a clear evening, so the mountains showed up
pink and lavender in the setting sun. There was a cool
breeze, loaded with the smell of wildflowers. Two
of our horses were grazing off across the field by the
fence. It was a safe area, so we let the horses
run free at night in nice weather.
  Of course, now that wolves were being reintro-duced
into the forest, we might have to change that. A wolf
pack can bring down even a healthy, strong horse.
I know. I've been a wolf.
  And I was getting ready to be one again.
  We reached the edge of the forest. It began very
suddenly. One step was on grass, the next step was
on pine needles and fallen leaves.
It was darker under the trees. And as we walked into the
forest it grew darker still. I craned my neck
back. Looking up, I could still see blue sky
overhead. But the sun was going down, and night was
growing near. Creatures of the day were winding down their
activities, and creatures of the night were opening their
eyes.
  "Might as well morph now," Marco said.
  "Yes. We'll move faster in wolf morph,"
I agreed.
  He grinned at me. "Does it ever creep you
out? All this morphing, I mean? I still remember the
first time. It was so bizarre."
  "It's still bizarre," I said.
  "Even for you?"
  "Why not for me?" I asked.
  Marco shrugged. "You're the morphing
queen."
  I laughed. "Oh please. We all morph."
  "Yeah, but even Ax says you have some kind of
special talent. Like you have more control or whatever.
He says you're even better than he is."
  "That doesn't make it any less creepy for
me," I said. "I mean, we're in the forest, the
sun is going down, and I'm getting ready to turn
into a wolf. This could be a horror movie."
"Wolfman."
"Wolfwoman,"
I corrected.
"The Wolf Couple."
We shoved our outer clothing under some brush, and I
began to morph. I focused my mind on the wolf
whose DNA was a part of me. Marco and I were
actually the identical wolf. We had both
absorbed the DNA of the same female.
  I felt my jaw stretching and stretching outward.
The bones made a slight grinding sound as my
small, weak human mouth became the powerful,
crushing jaw of the wolf. My human mouth and teeth
could barely cut through a tough steak. The wolf jaw and
teeth could tear the throat out of a living, struggling
deer.
  My gums itched as my teeth grew longer.
  "See? Thrat's whuk I mearrrn," Marco
said, trying to make sounds even as his human tongue
and lips disappeared. In a few more seconds he was
able to switch to thought-speak.
  less-than See? That's what I mean. Look
at how much better you are at morphing than I am.
That looks very creepy, by the way. greater-than
  I had controlled the morphing so that the wolf's
head appeared completely formed before anything else
happened. I was a completely normal girl with just
the downiest growth of fur and a massive, shaggy
wolf's head atop my shoulders.
  less-than like didn't really think much about
xeagreater-than I said. less-than Sometimes my
brain just seems to have its own ideas about morphing.
greater-than
The rest of the morph continued. My knees reversed
direction. My legs grew smaller. Rough pads
replaced my feet. The fur on my body grew
long and rough and grayish in color.
  I fell forward onto my front legs, no
longer able to stand.
  The wolf's instincts began to surface, but I
had done this morph before, so I could handle them
easily.
  Then the wolf's senses came on, replacing my
human perception.
  The forest was an entirely different experience to the
wolf. It was as if I had been transported
instantly to some totally different place.
  My human ears had noticed almost nothing -- a
bit of wind, a few chirps, the rustling of leaves.
But the wolf's ears heard everything. They heard some
large, four-footed animal about a hundred yards
to the right. They heard squirrels gnawing acorns in
their high nests. They heard insects crawling beneath the
pine-needle floor. They heard cars on the
far-distant road.
  And the ears were nothing, compared to the sense of smell.
  Let me just put it this way -- in terms of
smell, all humans are blind. We smell nothing.
Maybe we smell a flower if it's right under our
nose, or a chocolate cake baking in the oven.
But we are the morons of smell.
Wolves are the geniuses of smell. You have no
idea. No idea at all what it is like to have that
wolf nose.
  less-than Ahhhffgreater-than I cried in
shock.
  less-than Yeaheagreater-than Marco agreed.
less-than l'd forgotten. Wow.
Helloffgreater-than
  It is exactly like being blind and then, all of a
sudden, being able to see.
  The wolf smelled the horses in our field. The
wolf didn't just smell that they were horses, it
smelled that they were fully grown and healthy. The
wolf smelled every flower, every tree, every leaf, every
mushroom. It smelled water in three different
locations and knew which stream was sweetest.
  The wolf smelled a chipmunk, a dozen
squirrels, voles, rats, mice, deer, a dead
sparrow, a raccoon, no ... two raccoons.
  And it smelled
me.
I mean, it smelled my scent from the clothing I had
just morphed out of. It smelled the scent of all the
birds and animals in my barn that I had touched or
even walked near.
  It smelled things that were three days old. The
human who had walked through these woods days before. The
other wolf, an old male, who had passed by.
The smell of dogs and cats and trash.
  And one very strange smell that I realized
had to be the scent of an Andalite -- Ax.
When you put it all together in your head -- the sense of
smell and the hearing -- it was as if the entire world around
you was crawling and seething and exploding with life.
  less-than Cooleagreater-than Marco said.
  less-than Way cooleagreater-than I agreed.
less-than Let's go. Let's run. greater-than
  Wolves like to run.
CHAPTE
R

  LJJ-OLVES can run. Wolves can run all
through the night, without stopping or slowing or taking a
break.
  We ran, Marco and I, jumping fallen logs,
swerving through trees, and skirting patches of thorns.
Across sunset-lit meadows, and through dark stands of
tall pines. We splashed happily through streams and
skittered across rocks.
  We were running on sensation, our heads swimming with
smell and sound and sight. There was nothing within a thousand
yards that we didn't know about. We were plugged into the
data stream of nature itself.
  We smelled the logging camp long before we reached
it. Then we heard the sounds of ma-
chines. And we heard the murmurs of conversation.
Human voices.
  Then we got a reminder that we were not the only
hyper-alert predators in the forest.
  less-than ls that you guys8greater-than a
thought-speak voice asked. Jake's voice.
  less-than Yes. Where are y8greater-than I
asked.
  less-than Way up above yeagreater-than Jake
said with a laugh. I stopped running and craned my
head back like I was going to howl at the moon. Through
a break in the trees I saw a patch of sky. And
way, way up in that sky, I saw three tiny
black dots.
  Tobias and Jake, floating a quarter-mile
up. Even in the weakening light they had seen us from
clear up in the bellies of the clouds.
  less-than The place is just ahead. Lots of
heavy equipment. Guards. But go take a look.
Just be careful. greater-than
  less-than We'd hang out, but the sun's going
down and we won't be able to see much more
anywayeagreater-than Tobias remarked.
  less-than You saw ueagreater-than I said, a
bit grumpily.
  Tobias laughed. less-than Yeah, but you're a
pair of great big wolves. That's not much of a
challenge. Now, that flea crawling by your ear. . .
greater-than
  less-than You can't see a fleaeagreater-than
I said.
  less-than Heh, heh, heheagreater-than
Tobias answered. less-than Can't
l8greater-than
  Marco and I started moving forward again, but slower
than before. More cautiously.
Through the trees we began to see light.
Artificial light.
  We crept slowly nearer, shoulders hunched,
heads low, ears aimed forward, sniffing the wind for
clues.
  The command center building was bigger than it had
looked at first. It was made of logs, like some kind
of rustic ranger station. It was two stories tall,
with a porch on the front.
  On the back-and-side ground levels there were no
windows. None at all. There were windows on the
upper level, but they were dark. Too dark for me
to see into.
  There were blindingly bright spotlights mounted
atop the building. The forest had been cut back a
hundred feet or so on all sides of the building,
and the bare, scarred earth all around was lit as bright as
the sunniest day.
  A dozen or so huge pieces of equipment were
parked neatly side by side. Earthmovers, oddly
shaped cranes, trucks, and some monstrous thing that
looked like a huge kid's toy. I guessed that it
was used to cut trees.
  My heightened wolf senses noticed several men
walking around the perimeter of the clearing. They were
spaced about fifty yards apart and seemed very alert.
  The nearest one was walking just in front of
us. Marco and I crouched low behind tree trunks "and
stood perfectly still.
  The man wore a tan uniform. The legs of his
pants were tucked into high leather boots. He was
carrying an automatic rifle.
  less-than Okay, this
does
look just slightly extreme for a logging camp. That
guy is no lumberjackeagreater-than I said.
  I aimed my ears at the building, but no sounds
came from inside. Either there was no one in there or they
had soundproofed the place really well.
  less-than Are you getting anything8greater-than
Marco asked me.
  less-than Not from inside the building. But
I'm smelling stuff that I can't recognize.
Weird smells. greater-than
  less-than Yeah. Me, too. Animal
smells, but weird, you know8greater-than
  less-than Hork-Bajir8greater-than
  less-than Could beeagreater-than Marco said.
  less-than The guards are all
humaneagreater-than I pointed out. less-than You
know, this may have nothing to do with the Yeerks. Maybe
whoever these guys are, they're up to something totally
different. I mean, normal humans do act
strange sometimes. Not every weird person is a
Controllers
  less-than No. But don't forget -- the force
field. Even if these guys were like drug dealers or
something, I don't think they'd have a force field.
greater-than
less-than Good point. greater-than I fell
silent. I had heard a noise. Several
noises. Movement. Careful, stealthy movement.
  I glanced at Marco. I saw that his ears were
pricked up, too. less-than Yeah, I
heard teagreater-than Marco said. less-than
Behind us. Someone circling around. greater-than
  I felt the knife edge of fear. The human part
of me was afraid. The wolf me was not. But I
trusted the human instinct more on this.
  less-than Where are the guards8greater-than I
asked.
  less-than Uh-oheagreater-than Marco said.
  Blinding light!
  Light everywhere. Everywhere! The whole world was a
brilliant white.
  I felt like the whole universe could see me.
  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
  The sound of sharp, cracking explosions in the
trees above us. I glanced up. Something falling.
A net!
  Big steel nets were exploding from the trees above
us, falling toward us. There were heavy weights at the
edges.
  less-than RUNFFGREATER-THAN
  We bolted. The net above me fell. I was
racing the falling edge, racing, racing . . .
  Free!
  The net scraped my back. But I was out from under!
  TSEWWW! TSEWWW!
A brilliant stab of red light shot from the dark
upper windows of the log building. The beam hit the
base of a tree not six inches from me. The wood was
vaporized. A six-inch hole was blown right through its
trunk.
  Dracon beams!
  I started to run. But something felt wrong.
Marco! Where was he?
  I turned and looked back. He was under the net!
He was weighed down and crawling on his belly to get
free of it.
  I ran back.
  TSEWWW! TSEWWW!
  The Dracon beams, almost pale in the
brilliant floodlit woods, fired again and again.
  I grabbed the edge of the net in my jaws and
lifted it up. It was shockingly heavy. No wonder
Marco was crawling.
  less-than Get out of hereffgreater-than Marco
yelled. less-than Don't get killed for me.
greater-than
  less-than Shut up and come onffgreater-than I
cried.
  TSEWWW! TSEWWW!
  I couldn't hold the net. My jaws were
aching. My neck was dragging down. Marco was barely
inching forward. The Dracon beams were getting more and more
accurate.
  And now I saw where the guards had disappeared to.
They were running through the woods
toward us. Half a dozen men carrying automatic
weapons. It was an eerie and terrifying sight, as the
men cast gigantic shadows up into the tree-tops.
  Then . . . something fast. Faster than a wolf.
Faster than a human.
  Like a deer. Like a horse. A mouthless face,
eyes on stalks, a tail like a scorpion. A
creature like nothing that lived on Earth. It raced
straight for us.
  less-than Axffgreater-than I cried.
  His tail struck, faster than a human eye could
follow.
  The tail blade made sparks as it sliced through
the net, leaving a long gash just in front of
Marco's nose.
  less-than Yikes! That was a little
closeffgreater-than Marco said. But he surged through
the hole in the net and took off. I was right behind him.
Wolves are already fast. But when you get a scared
wolf with a scared human mind inside it,
you'd be amazed how that animal can move.
  We hauled our butts out of there, with Ax right beside
us.
  BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!
  Gunfire! Good, old-fashioned, human, very
deadly gunfire.
  It's much louder in reality than it is in
movies.
And it's much scarier to have it aimed at you than it is
to see it in a movie. Basically, getting shot at
is absolutely
nothing
like a movie.
  less-than Aaaaahhhffgreater-than I yelled.
  less-than Aaaaahhhffgreater-than Marco
yelled.
  less-than Aaaaahhhffgreater-than Ax agreed.
  Two wolves and an Andalite set a new
record speeding away from that place.
C
HAPTE
R

  LJ-KAY, I think we've answered the question about
whether that's just an ordinary logging camp,"
Marco said.
  We had reached the far edge of the forest, back
close to my farm. Marco and I had de-morphed.
Rachel and Jake flew down and joined us.
Tobias took up a perch on a low branch.
  Ax stood nearby. His two stalk eyes moved
continuously, side to side, peering into the dark woods
around us. His two main eyes met my gaze.
  "By the way, thanks, Ax," I said.
  "Yeah, no kidding," Marco added. "I was
Spam back there. That tail blade of yours is
something."
less-than like should have spotted the nets up in the
treetopseagreater-than Ax berated himself.
less-than like had detected the force field and I
suspected there were Dracon beams in the upper
windows. But the nets were so primitive I
overlooked them. greater-than
  Ax, like all Andalites, has no spoken
speech. Probably because they have no mouths.
Thought-speak is his natural language.
  Up close he looks like a cross between a deer
or a horse, and a human and a scorpion. Sort
of like a mythical centaur. His upper body is like
a boy's. He has weak-looking arms and a
head with two movable stalks on top, kind of like
antlers. Each stalk has an eye. The eyes are
constantly looking left and right and back.
  Andalites are very hard to sneak up on.
  His body is covered in blue and tan fur, very
short on his humanoid torso, a bit longer on
his deerlike body. His four hooves are sharp and
black.
  But it's the tail that grabs your attention. It's
long enough that he can whip it up over his head and hit
someone standing in front of him. It ends in a curved
blade.
  "None of us saw the nets," Jake pointed out.
"They must have been well-concealed."
  "The point is, they were waiting for us," Marco
said. "This is definitely a Yeerk operation. I
don't think they really want to go into the lum-
berjack business, which means this whole thing is about
getting us."
  "Agreed," Rachel said tersely. "They think
we're Andalites. They know we've been hurting
them all around this area. They've decided we must be
hiding in these woods."
  "They're almost right," Jake pointed out. "Ax and
Tobias both do live in the forest. And we
do use the forest."
  "You know, we're not the only thing going on here,"
I said.
  They all looked puzzled.
  I took a deep breath. "I mean, you know, this
forest is important even if Tobias and Ax
weren't here. It makes me sick to think of people
chopping down all these trees."
  "Oh, puh-leeze, not the Earth-Mother thing,
okay?" Marco said. "I almost got myself fried by a
Dracon beam. That wasn't to save Bambi, all
right?"
  "Look, Marco, we are not the only animals
around. We, of all people, ought to understand that."
  "Cassie, who cares? We're fighting to save
the world from the Yeerks. Who cares about some ecology,
tree-hugging, recycle-your-cans stuff?"
  "I do," I said.
  "Well, that's you," Marco said. "Personally,
what I care about is the fact that a bunch of
Yeerks have that, that fortress back there, and they're
going to use it to tear up these woods looking for us."
  I started to say something back, when Jake held
up his hand. "It seems to me it doesn't matter
whether we have slightly different ideas about
why we
care. I mean, either way, we want to stop this from
going on. Right?"
  He looked at Marco, then at me. I was
annoyed with Jake right then. I mean, I understand that
he has to consider everyone's ideas equally. But still,
it was like he was agreeing with Marco that it didn't
matter if the forest was wiped out, as long as we
survived.
  I turned to Rachel for support, but she found
something to look at down on the ground.
Oh, great,
I thought.
Even Rachel thinks I'm
wrong.
  less-than The important thing is we have to stop
themeagreater-than Tobias said.
  "And how exactly do we do that?" Marco asked.
"That place is the Fortress of Doom."
  "Knock it down? Blow it up?" Rachel
mused.
  "Grab some of that heavy equipment they have and run
it into the place?" Marco suggested. "We don't have
the benefit of surprise. They know we're coming.
They know sooner or later we're gonna go
after them."
less-than The heavy equipment would be
uselesseagreater-than Ax said. less-than That
building is surrounded by a force field. The
equipment would not penetrate it. Neither would we. We
would be stopped by the force field and then cut to pieces
by the Dracon beams. greater-than
  Rachel's lips pressed into a thin line. "So
we just give up? That's the plan? We let them go
chopping through the woods till they find you, Ax, or
Tobias?"
  Ax didn't have an answer.
  "You know, I wouldn't want to sound like some stupid
ecology nut or anything," I said sarcastically.
"But the question is: How did the Yeerks ever get
permission to start logging in a national forest?"
  "Why is that helpful?" Marco asked, even more
sarcastically.
  "Because sometimes, Marco, there are more subtle ways
of doing things. The Yeerks don't control the entire
government. Not yet, anyway. So they had to get
legal permission. If they didn't have permission
they'd have cops and fedeKal agents and TV
newspeople all over them. They don't want
that."
  Marco looked like he had some smart reply
to make. Then he said, "Oh."
  Jake cocked an eyebrow at his best friend.
"See, Marco, this is why Cassie is a nicer
person than you. She could have said, "They don't
want
that,
duh.""
  Marco grinned, despite himself.
  Jake winked at me, and I forgave him for acting
like Marco was right before. "What do you think we should do?"
  I shrugged. I hate having to think of things that
might end up getting people hurt or killed. "I
guess ... I mean, okay, urn ... Okay,
look, the Yeerks must have gotten to someone. They must
have one of their Controllers in some kind of high
position. We need to find out who."
  less-than And how do we do t8greater-than
Tobias asked.
  "I guess ..." I looked at Jake for
help. I knew the answer. I just didn't want
to say it. See, when we make plans, we tend
to end up in terrible danger later on.
  "We have to get inside that building," Jake said
for me.
  I nodded. The least I could do was agree.
  Rachel shook her head. "I don't know any
animal big enough to force a way inside that place."
  "Not big," I said. "Small. Vesty
small."
W
here have you been?" my dad asked me when I finally
got back home later that evening. He was in the
kitchen, searching the refrigerator.
  It kind of took me by surprise. My parents
don't usually ask me a lot of questions. Mostly
they trust me. And it used to be they
could
trust me. I don't think I'd lied to my parents
before becoming an Animorph. Now it's like I'm
lying all the time. It's a rotten feeling.
  "Oh . . . urn, I was just out walking," I
said. "Why? Did you need me for something?"
  "Oh, yes," my dad said. He was sounding way
too solemn, so I knew he wasn't actually
serious. That's the way he is. I guess he has
a dry sense of
humor. That's what Jake says, anyway. He
thinks my dad is the funniest man on the
planet.
  "What is it?"
  "Just got a call from the highway patrol. They
said this . . . this certain animal ... is out by the
side of the highway, where it cuts through the forest. They
say this certain animal seems to have a bad burn."
  I didn't like the way he kept saying "certain
animal."
  "We have to drive out and get it," my dad said.
Then he grinned. "Actually, I'll drive.
You
have to get it."
  I groaned. There was only one animal in all
the world my dad was afraid of. He handled foxes and
wolves and even bears. But he would not handle this
"certain animal."
  "Are you telling me it's a skunk?" I asked.
  He nodded. "You have such a way with skunks," he
said. "They like you. Besides, I have to go meet with the board
of the Dudette Cat Food Corporation tomorrow. I
can't show up smelling like skunk."
  My mom appeared, climbing up from the basement.
She was carrying a six-pack of V-8 juice.
"This is all I could find in the pantry," she said.
  You see, tomato juice is one of the few things
that helps get rid of skunk smell.
"Mom, shouldn't you be the one to help dad with this? I
... I have very important homework to do."
  "Yeah, right," my mom said.
  "This is pathetic. You guys are both highly
trained veterinarians," I pointed out. "How can you
be scared of skunks?"
  "I didn't used to be," my father said darkly.
"Back before . . . before the
incident."
  "Just because one skunk sprayed you -"
  "In the face," he said.
  "Just because you had one bad experience -"
  "He sprayed me six times in about three
seconds," he said. "I smelled for a week. Your
mother made me sleep in the barn. Except the other
animals there all became agitated, so I had
to set up a tent in the yard."
  "Then we had to burn the tent," my mother added.
She giggled.
  "You do have a way with skunks," my father said.
"Actually, you have a way with all animals. Come
on, you know skunks love you."
  "A burned skunk by the side of a highway
loves no one," I said.
  Ten minutes later, we were on the
highway. We were driving in our new pickup
truck. My father's old, beloved pickup truck
had been stolen and totally destroyed.
  At least that's what my dad believed. Actu-
ally, we'd sort of had to borrow it in this terrible
battle. Marco had been driving, and Marco cannot
drive. The truck had ended up a total wreck
in a ditch.
  On the way, we listened to the CD player. That
was the only thing my dad liked about the new truck.
He was playing some old jazz or something.
  We reached the spot the highway patrol had
told my dad about. We pulled over and put on the
hazard lights.
  "Careful. People drive like maniacs through here," he
warned me as we climbed out.
  Cars were blowing past at seventy miles an hour
with their high beams on. The black forest pressed in
around the road on both sides. I shone a
flashlight around the edge of the trees.
  Normally, the forest doesn't bother me. But I
knew that we were actually within a quarter mile of the
Yeerk logging camp. It was beyond strange to be
practically going back to the place where, just an hour
before, I'd nearly been killed.
  It took us at least twenty minutes, walking
up and down the grassy shoulder of the road, before my
flashlight beam landed on a shock of black and
white.
  "Dad! Here!"
  He came trotting over and added his light to mine.
"Yep," he commented. "I'll get the cage.
Don't forget your gloves. You know skunks are a
major vector for rabies."
  "Dad, I have had the shot."
  "No vaccine is a hundred percent," he said.
  I walked toward the skunk. It saw me and
turned tiny, glittering black eyes on me.
  "Don't be afraid," I said, pitching my
voice high. "It's okay. We're here to help
you. It's going to be just fine."
  Here's the thing about skunks: They are the sweetest
animals alive. They don't have a mean bone in
their bodies. But that's because they don't have to be mean.
They possess the ultimate weapon.
  Even so, they will always warn you. If they turn their
backs on you, that's a warning. If they raise their
tails with the tips down, that's a very
serious
warning. If they raise the tips of their
tails ... you are in a very bad situation.
  If you're dealing with a skunk who has turned
buttward and raised its tail all the way, you would
want to freeze. Trust me. Every wild animal
knows this. Dogs, unfortunately, don't understand about
skunks, but bears, raccoons, wolves, and most
birds of prey know that you just don't mess with that
skunk tail.
  Maybe you think you know how bad skunk musk is
because you've driven by skunk roadkill. That's
nothing. Up close and personal, it's a
whole different level of stench. If you imagine the
most horrible smell possible, then multiply it
by a thousand, you still won't be close.
  "It's okay, sweetie," I cooed. "Don't
spray me. I'm your friend, so please don't
spray me."
  I moved closer and crouched lower, making myself
small. I wanted to look nonthreatening. I moved
very slowly, a step at a time, always cooing and
baby-talking like I was going to grab a little kid armed
with a shotgun.
  The skunk moved! I froze.
  The skunk settled back down. I breathed again.
  "Please don't spray me," I said.
I reached into my pocket and took out a bit of
mouse meat. We keep frozen mice for the raptors
we handle. Skunks also enjoy a nice mouse or
grasshopper as part of their diets.
  "Here you go. Dinner."
  I held the meat out for the skunk. The skunk
didn't seem to be hungry, but it did accept the
fact that I must be okay if I was offering dinner.
  I crouched beside the skunk and set my flashlight
on the ground. Carefully, with my gloved hand, I
reached out to touch the animal.
  It was shaking. Shivering. And, at that very moment, I
could see why.
  There was a burn right across the skunk's
back. A perfectly semicircular burn, as if
someone had simply sliced a scoop out of it.
  "Dracon beam," I whispered. "You were there,
weren't you? Poor baby."
  Aiming at me and Marco, the Yeerks had hit this
skunk instead. A completely innocent animal
caught in the cross fire of the war between Yeerks and
humans.
  The Yeerks would destroy all the forest and all its
animals to get at us.
  "Sorry," I whispered to the skunk.
  I lifted it slowly, carefully, up into my
arms.
CHAPTE
R

  LjJe met at the mall. It was a Saturday,
so it was a normal place we might be.
  When you live in a world where you're surrounded
by possible enemies, it's important not to do anything
too unusual. You don't want to draw attention.
  Not even from your own family and school friends. You
just never know who can be trusted and who can't.
  The Yeerks believed we were Andalites. We
wanted them to go on believing that. If they ever
figured out we were humans, let alone kids, we
were toast.
  So we left no clues. We tried not to act like
we were a group. We didn't want some Controller
teacher or whatever thinking, "Hey, you know what? Those
same kids are always hanging out together, acting like
they're planning something."
  We had to look and act and seem normal.
Rachel still went to gymnastics classes and shopped.
Jake and Marco still shot hoops in Jake's
driveway or played video games. I
took care of animals at the Wildlife
Rehabilitation Clinic.
  There was nothing we could do to make Tobias seem
normal. He was way past being normal. But
Tobias came from a terrible, messed-up
background, shuttling from one indifferent aunt or
uncle to another. He'd never really been part of a
family or a structure, and sadly, no one
seemed to notice when he simply disappeared.
  I spent an hour wandering along behind Rachel as
she moved like a professional through the racks at The
Limited and Banana Republic and The Gap
and the
various department stores.
  Rachel has some bizarre, supernatural
instinct for when and where sales will happen. She
doesn't need the advertising. She just "knows."
  We were cruising through a series of tables piled with
sweaters at Express. Rachel was looking for a
particular shade of green that probably didn't
exist.
  "What do you think we're going to do?" I asked
her.
She looked up from fondling a sweater. "What?
Oh. I guess we'll probably go in.
If we can find a way."
  "That's what I was wondering. What way? How do
we get inside that place? I mean, I know
we're thinking insect morph. But if anyone is
planning on doing ants again, I'll tell you right
now, I'm not doing it."
  Rachel gave a little shudder. "I'm sure no
one wants to do ants again."
  We'd had some really bad experiences morph-+.
But morphing ants was the worst. We ended up being the
wrong species and tribe of ants in the middle of
enemy ant territory.
  You would not believe the nightmares that came out of that
one. The tunnels pressing in all around, and then
hundreds of vicious ant soldiers exploded all
around us, attacking, attacking ...
  "No ants," I said. I looked at Rachel,
trying to catch her eye. "Right?"
  Rachel shrugged. Then she glanced at her watch.
"It's time. Ax is coming with them, so let's not keep
them waiting."
  "Ax? Uh-oh."
  Jake, Marco, and a strikingly handsome boy were
all sitting in the food court. They seemed to be
arguing loudly about who had won some video
game in the arcade.
"Hey! Rachel!" Marco called out as we passed
by. "What are you guys doing here?"
  I really didn't like this kind of acting. It
seemed silly to me. But it had to look like an
accident that we all ended up together in the same
place at the same time.
  "We're shopping," I muttered. "You know how
I love shopping."
  "Why don't you guys hang out with us. Have some of
our nachos," Jake said, smiling brightly.
  I looked at the paper plate of nachos. They
were completely gone. There was nothing left but a paper
plate with a slight orange stain from the cheese. There
was a matching orange stain on the chin of the very handsome
boy between Marco and Jake.
  Jake saw what I was looking at and rolled his
eyes. "At least he didn't eat the plate this
time."
  "Hello," Ax said to me. "I am Jake's
cousin, Phillip. Jake's cousin. Scousin.
Scuzzin. I am from out of town."
  I couldn't help but laugh. Ax had long ago
created a human morph out of DNA he'd
acquired from the four of us. He was a weird
blending of each of us. He was male, but sort of
pretty in a weird way.
  He looked like a human. He basically
was
a human. But he still had a lot of problems
adjust-
ing to the human morph. For one thing, since
An-dalites have no mouth, he found his human mouth
utterly fascinating. He couldn't help but play
with the sounds of words.
  And the boy was dangerous around food.
  "Were the nachos good?" I asked him.
  "They tasted of grease and salt. Plus, there was
another flavor that reminds me of some delicious
engine oil I tried once. Oil. Oil-luh."
  "Engine oil?" Jake asked. "Ax ... I
mean, Phillip . . . You know how I mentioned you
can't eat cigarette butts or dryer lint? Add
engine oil to the list."
  Ax nodded. "Yes. There are many rules for
eating."
  Marco pushed out a chair for me to sit in.
"Okay, if we're done with the little side trip into the
bizarre-o zone, let's deal with business."
  "Tobias came by this morning," Jake
said, keeping his voice low. "He watched the place
from high up. He thinks the Controllers at the site
have little transponders on their belts that let them
pass through the force field."
  "So we just have to grab a transponder," Rachel
said.
  "No," Ax said. "The transponder would be
keyed to the biochemical signature of the wearer. The
Yeerks are not as -"
  "Don't say that word," Jake hissed.

  I saw Marco's eyes dart quickly, looking
to see if anyone was close enough to have overheard.
  "Sorry. Ree. Saw-ree," Ax said.
"Rachel's plan would not work."
  Jake sighed. "Tobias also saw something else.
Inside the force field. There are tiny holes in the
wood foundation of the building. He thinks it's
termites at work."
  "Termites?" I asked.
  Jake nodded. "Yep."
  I swallowed. "Jake, termites are awfully
close to being ants."
  "They aren't as vicious," Jake said. "I
looked up some information on the Internet.
Besides, if we make sure we morph a termite
from that very colony, we'd fit right in."
  I was having trouble breathing. I noticed
Marco's face turning gray. Even Ax looked
grim.
  "You're not serious, right?" I asked Jake.
"I mean, termites? Termites?"
  I probably sounded slightly hysterical. I
know I
felt
slightly hysterical.
  "I don't know how else to do it," Jake said.
He was looking down at the table and biting his lip.
"Cassie, you were right when you said the real question is how
these guys got permission to start logging. That's their
weakness. We
have
to know how they pulled this off. To know that we
have
to get inside that building."
"Through termite tunnels?" Marco asked.
"Look, how do we even get a termite
to acquire? They're all inside that force field,
right?"
  I wanted that to be the truth. But when I
looked at Jake, he just shook his head a little.
"Tobias says they were working on the building a little
today. Putting in extra Dracon beams. They had
to cut away some of the logs."
  Jake reached into the pocket of his jacket. He
pulled out a small, glass vial. The top had
tiny holes in it to let air through.
  Inside the vial was a tiny, tan-and-white bug.
It was about the size of an ant. It had an enlarged
brown head.
  "Same colony," Jake said. "From the same
building."
  I stared at the termite. It tried to climb up
the side of the glass, but it slipped back down.
  It was helpless. It was trapped in what must have
seemed like a huge glass cell held by a
creature so gigantic that the termite could never even
begin to imagine it.
  Jake took the top off the vial.
  "We don't do this unless everyone agrees," he
said. "But we can't let the ...
them . .
. start tearing through the forest."
  Rachel held out her hand. Jake tapped the
vial till the insect landed in her palm.
  I saw it crawl across Rachel's lifeline.
And I
saw it become still, as Rachel acquired the termite
DNA.
  I imagined being that termite. Crawling across the
gigantic hand. Thinking every crease in Rachel's
palm was as deep as a ditch.
  When Rachel was done, I held out my own hand.
It was shaking. It was shaking and I couldn't stop it from
shaking.
  The brightly lit mall food court suddenly
seemed dark.
  Lord, that tiny insect scared me.
  Deep down inside, it truly scared me.
C
HAPTE
R

  LJJ-EVERY would go that night. That very night.
  We were supposed to use the afternoon to deal with chores
and family stuff and homework.
  Try it sometime. Try doing homework when you think
you may be going to your doom in a few hours. Try
concentrating on math when you're thinking you have to turn
into a termite and sneak into a heavily
defended building.
  Good luck.
  I went out to the barn. My dad was out there, making
his rounds. He didn't need my help, but he
didn't say no, either.
  "Did you finish your homework?"
  "Mostly." I added another lie to the pile
I'd already had to tell.
"I was going to take a closer look at your skunk
from last night. She was very agitated so I had
to give her a mild sedative."
  "It's a female?"
  "Yep."
  My father carried the cage into the little side room
he uses to examine the patients. I eased the
skunk from her cage and cradled her out to the examination
table. She seemed very calm now, but it was an
unnatural, drugged calm.
  The night before, my dad had bandaged the wound and now
he carefully removed the gauze. The sight of the
burn made me wince, even though I've seen
hundreds of injured animals.
  "Hmm. Hmm. Pah. Pah. Pah. Hmmm."
  That's the sound my dad makes when he's examining
something interesting. "Pah." I don't know
why, he just does.
  "Weird. Very unusual. I cannot for the life of
me guess what caused this burn. It's too neat.
Too clean. The only good thing is, whatever caused
it was so hot it partially cauterized the tissue."
  "Muscle damage, or is it just
superficial?" I asked.
  My dad glanced at me and smiled. "It's
mostly fur and skin that were burned. But I see some
moderately severe damage in the shoulder here. Much
deeper and the spine would have
been burned. But she'll live. I wish I could
say as much for her kits."
  "Her what? She has babies?"
  "Yeah. I'd say probably about six, seven
weeks old."
  "She has babies? Out there somewhere in the
woods?"
  My dad started applying a new bandage.
"Cassie, you know nature plays rough."
  "But they're too young to survive on their own,
aren't they?"
  "I can't be sure," he said, not looking at me.
  It occurred to me then that sometimes maybe he lied
to me, too. For my own good. Or because of
what he thought was my own good.
  "They're sitting in some den wondering where their mother
is," I said. "They'll starve to death. Or be
eaten by predators."
  "Hand me the scissors," my father said.
  "Yeah. Okay. Urn, look. I meant to ask
you, is it okay if I spend the night at
Rachel's tonight?"
  "Sure, honey. You know, if your mom says
it's okay. Hey. You never asked how my meeting
went with the cat food people this morning. We got some
additional funding!"
  We talked for a while as we made rounds together.
But my heart wasn't in it. I was thinking about some
baby skunks somewhere, mewing and crying for their mother.
And I was thinking I wished my dad wasn't so quick
to let me go to Rachel's. Because, of course, we
weren't really having a sleepover. Rachel was going
to tell her mom she was spending the night at my
house. And Jake would tell his parents a lie, and
Marco would tell his father a lie, and we'd all be
going into a situation that none of us wanted to be in.
  I was going to face death, that very night. And the last
thing I would have said to my father was a lie.
  I remembered the tunnels of the ants.
I remembered them the way I saw them in my
nightmares. I never had seen them in reality.
Ants don't see very well, and there's no light
underground.
  But in my dreams I saw everything. I saw the
huge, metallic-looking heads of the enemy ants as
they crashed through sand walls and locked their massive
pincers on me and tried to slice me into pieces.
  Do you know what it's like to think that you're going
to die, and never even get back to human form?
To believe that you're going to die as an
ant,
trapped in a hell that no human had ever been to?
  And now I also saw those little skunk kits.
Starving. Crying out, and with each cry, signaling to some
predator.
"Sweetheart, are you okay?"
  I realized my dad was staring at me. I had
been breathing hard, almost crying. There were beads of
sweat on my forehead.
  "Yeah. Fine. Fine," I said quietly.
  He finished his rounds and left.
  I stayed behind. I went back to the skunk in her
cage.
  I opened the cage door and put my hand
in. I was not wearing a glove.
  See, you can't acquire DNA if you're wearing
gloves.
  LjJell, what a surprise seeing you all
here," Marco said in a low whisper.
  "Everyone still up for this?" Jake asked.
  "Sure," Marco answered. "We're looking
forward to it. Who needs sleep when you can run off on
a suicide mission instead?"
  It was pitch-black. It was three in the morning.
We were at the edge of the forest. Jake, Rachel,
Marco, and me. Tobias was in the tree above us.
  The same five kids who had wandered stupidly
through a construction site at night on our way home
from the mall. The same kids who had seen the
Andalite fighter land. The same five kids whose
lives had been changed forever.
We had been made into soldiers that night.
Soldiers in a terrible war we could not really hope
to win.
  Tobias had paid a terrible price. But so had the
rest of us. There we were, in the dark, ready to do
things that would make us scream if we ever stopped
to think about them for too long.
  Ax was there, too. Poor Ax, who was
even more alone than the rest of us. He was in his own
body, his stalk eyes restlessly peering in every
direction.
  "I thought we'd morph owls," Jake suggested.
"They're fast, and they fly well at night.
Till we get close."
  I was relieved. Owl was a good choice for what
1 had in mind. Owls are the only natural
predators of adult skunks. See, some
species of owls don't have a sense of smell.
If you're going to eat skunks, that's a good thing.
  I wasn't going to eat adult skunks, of
course. I was going to try to find some skunk
babies.
  less-than Wish I could go with you
guyseagreater-than Tobias said. less-than But
I'm not much use at night. greater-than
  "You found us the way to get into this place," Jake
said. "And you got us the termite to morph."
  "And we're just so amazingly grateful," Marco
said sarcastically.
We all laughed nervously. It was good to know that the
others were all as scared as I was.
  We all started to remove our outer clothing. We
wore our morphing suits underneath -- a
collection of bike shorts, leotards, and
T-shirts. We can morph skintight clothing, but
not things like sweaters or shoes or watches.
  Jake wore a pair of bike shorts and a sort
of spandex top. Marco snickered.
  "What?" Jake demanded.
  Marco put on an innocent face. "Nothing.
Nothing. I'm just saying if we're going to be
su-perheroes we need to do something about these stupid
outfits. We look like refugees from a
Bulgarian gymnastics competition. That's all
I'm saying."
  "Except for Rachel, of course," I pointed
out. Naturally, Rachel had found a way
to coordinate her outfit. She looked great.
  "Here's the plan," Jake said. "We morph
owls to get close. We demorph at least two
hundred yards away from the compound. Then we crawl
close, morph termites, dig under the force
field, and enter the termite holes in the outside
of the building."
  "As long as it's nice and simple," Rachel
said darkly. She looked at me, and I realized that
even fearless Rachel was afraid.
That scared me.
  I tried to focus entirely on assuming the owl
morph. But my brain was buzzing away. You know how
sometimes you can't stop your brain from just racing around?
It's like a computer that's playing a dozen programs
at once.
  I was worrying about too many things comab my science
project, lying to my parentseawhether Ax really
tried drinking engine oileawhether the baby skunks
had already beenkilled
  Maybe it was self-defense. I didn't want
to start worrying about the thing that
really
worried me.
  Somehow my life had turned very, very weird.
  I saw Ax was morphing quickly. His tail went
limp, like an empty sock. Feathers were growing
to replace his fur.
  I looked down at my own arm and saw the feather
patterns being drawn on my skin. They were
beautiful, really, if you didn't stop to think about
them being on you. You could see the quill, a gently
curved shaft. From it the thousands of individual
vanes spread.
  Then, quite suddenly, the feather-drawing became
three-dimensional. They seemed to simply
pop out of my skin. It itched a little as the feathers
grew out, all across my body.
  I was shrinking all the while. Getting smaller
and smaller. The dirt and pine needles and leaves and
twigs all came rushing up at me.
  My bare feet grew rough, as if they were one
big callous. Toes melted together, then formed
into talons. Long, curved, sharp, tearing claws
grew.
  The talons were the main killing weapon of the great
horned owl. An owl would fly along, silent in the
night. Then it would strike, grabbing the prey -- a
rabbit, a squirrel, a rat, a skunk -- by the
head. . . .
  The bones all through my body were rearranging
themselves. Many disappeared altogether. Others became twisted
and misshapen. My breast bone grew deeper. My
various finger bones grew longer first, then shorter.
All of this made a grinding noise that resonated
up through my body.
  My internal organs were radically redesigned.
And my eyes seemed to swell and swell till they
filled my entire head. My eyes were so huge
compared to my body that they practically rubbed together
inside my skull.
  Suddenly, it was no longer night. It was as bright
as day.
  The amount of light that was a dim, flickering candle
to my human eyes was a spotlight to my owl's
eyes.
  less-than Whoaffgreater-than I heard Rachel
cry.
less-than like enjoy these eyes very mucheagreater-than
Ax commented. less-than They are wonderful.
greater-than
  I spread my arms wide and opened my wings. The
change was complete. I felt the cold edge of the
owl's instincts. The instincts of a predator.
  I had morphed the owl before, so I knew what
to expect. I had used the eyes and the wings and felt
the brain. It wasn't exactly second nature,
but at least it wasn't a surprise.
  less-than Ready8greater-than Jake asked.
  I flapped my wings and drew up my feet and
rose easily into the tree branches that, in the
darkness, were invisible to humans, but clear as blazing
neon to me.
  I saw Tobias sitting perched on his branch.
I felt his instinctive hawk's caution as a
flight of five horned owls flew past.
  The day belonged to the hawks. But night was ours.
  less-than Good luckeagreater-than Tobias
said. less-than Don't eat anything I wouldn't
eat. greater-than
  less-than Hah-haheagreater-than Marco
laughed. He was high on the thrill of a good morph.
So was I, I guess. There is a rush of power that
comes from being an animal in its natural element.
Particularly a predator.
  In the air at night, nothing could touch us. We
reigned supreme in the forest.
  We flew in a loose formation, not soaring
above the trees, but flitting through them. Our wings
didn't make a sound. An owl's wings are as
carefully designed as the wings of the most advanced
stealth fighter. More, really. The feathers are
designed not to flutter or ruffle as the owl glides
through the still night air.
  Frightened mice, listening for any possible danger,
hear nothing at all as the owl swoops down for the
kill.
  As well as I could see, I could also hear
everything. I could hear as well as the wolves.
  As we flew to what might be our destruction, I
tried to focus on my other goal --
listening for the cries of skunk kits. Watching the
ground below for the waddling, shuffling walk of a lost baby
skunk.
  less-than This is so weirdeagreater-than
Marco said. less-than like love this part. It's the
next part I'm not looking forward to at all.
greater-than
  less-than lt'll be okayeagreater-than Jake
said.
  less-than Yeah, I mean, what could possibly
go wrong8greater-than Rachel asked dryly.
  I swooped and zoomed through the trees. All the
while I watched the ground below me and focused my
hearing, and in that way I reached the Yeerk compound without
having to think too much about what was coming next.
CHAPTE
R 11
  less-than TTI-MOST thereeagreater-than Jake
said. less-than Another couple of minutes.
greater-than
  Even in thought-speak I could hear the tension in his
voice. I felt something like a cold hand squeezing
my heart.
  Then . . .
  A noise. A noise against a
background of noises. But this noise was one that the
owl's brain
wanted
to hear. A noise the owl's brain had evolved
to notice. The sound of helplessness. The sound of a
weak creature. Weak, tiny, helpless babies.
  There! It was coming from a hole that no other animal
would have seen in the pitch-black
of night. A hole dug beneath the roots of a
thorn-bush.
  Four... no, five separate voices. were they
the skunk kits? Maybe. I couldn't be sure.
But it was night, and they sounded like they were alone. It
could be.
  I looked around, swiveling my owl's neck. I
tried to form a picture of the place. The trees.
The outcropping of rocks just twenty feet away.
I wanted to be able to find the place again.
  If I was still around to find anything.
  The mewling sound of the babies reached something inside
me. Inside the human Cassie. But to the owl it was
the sound of a meal.
  It's strange to have those two feelings in your head
at the same time -- human compassion and the cold
ruthlessness of the predator. Strange.
  less-than Okayeagreater-than Jake said, a
few seconds later. less-than Here. greater-than
  We swooped low and landed. I started to de-morph
quickly. I didn't want to feel that predator in
my mind anymore. Not right then.
  The world went dark as my human eyes reemerged.
The forest was a darker, quieter place to Homo
sapiens.
  I looked around and couldn't see any of the landmarks
I'd tried to spot. I would never find
those skunk kits in the dark. Not with human eyes,
anyway. Maybe by the light of day. I could come
back in the morning.
  If. . .
  "Okay, we have to get as close to the edge of that
compound as we can," Jake whispered. "We can't be
spotted as humans. But we can't morph termites
too far from the building. Termites don't
exactly move fast."
  less-than like have a suggestion, Prince
Jakeeagreater-than Ax said.
  Ax is under the impression that Jake is the
equivalent of an Andalite prince.
  less-than A distractioneagreater-than he continued.
less-than We could give the Yeerks something
to chase. greater-than
  I knew instantly what he had in mind. "An
Andalite?" I asked him.
  less-than The Yeerks would not be able
to resisteagreater-than he said.
  "You could end up very dead that way," Marco said.
  "No, Ax," Jake said. "We need you
inside. There may be Yeerk computers in there. We
need you. But a distraction isn't a bad idea."
Jake looked at me. "Anyone want
to volunteer? It would probably be safer than going
inside."
  He was offering me a way out. A way to avoid
having to become a termite. I should have said yes. I
wanted to say yes.
But I couldn't do it. I couldn't take the easier
way out.
  "Okay, we draw straws. All except
Ax. He goes in, regardless."
  Jake pulled up four strands of tall grass.
He shortened them all to about six inches. Then, he
took one and shortened it further. "Short straw
plays tag with the Yeerks."
  He concealed the bottoms of the straws in his fist.
  "Next time let's play some other
game," Marco said as he drew a straw.
"Yahtzee, maybe. I don't like games that
involve life and death."
  One after the other, we each drew a straw. A
long straw. I looked carefully at the straw in
my hand. Yes, it was a long one.
  Jake looked shocked. He held the short
straw.
  We were all shocked. Somehow it just seemed
automatic that Jake would be there with us.
  Marco grinned. "Sooner or later we had
to try a mission without you, oh great and fearless
leader."
  Marco could joke about it. But none of us felt right
going in without Jake. Now it was too late to change
that.
  "Okay," Jake said briskly. "You guys know
what to do. I'll use the wolf morph. The
Yeerks will be on the lookout for wolves."
He started to walk away. Then he stopped and
looked back. "Be careful, all right?"
  "Go ahead,
Mom,"
Rachel said. "We can handle this."
  "At least we hope we can," I
muttered.
  Jake walked away and was quickly out of sight.
  "Okay, we have to be ready as soon as Jake
starts making trouble," Rachel said. "We hear
something go down, we run toward the perimeter of the
compound, staying just back in the trees, morph, and
hope we can find the way to the building."
  less-than What do you know about these termites we
are morph ing8greater-than Ax wondered.
  "They're like ants," Marco said.
  "Actually, they're related to cockroaches,"
I said. "I looked them up in one of my mom's
books. They have a society like ants, but roaches
are closer relatives. They eat cellulose --
the stuff in wood. Bacteria in their guts digest
the wood. The worker termites . . . they, urn, they
eliminate their waste. And the soldier termites kind
of eat it. I think, judging from the termite
Tobias brought us, that we are going to be mor-phing
soldier termites."
  The three of them were staring at me, looking a little
sick.
  "Well, Ax wanted to know," I said.
A light!
  "Look!" I hissed. "Way off through the
woods. That must be on the far side of the compound. The
spotlights just went on."
  We could hear the sounds of human voices
yelling. And then, the wild, defiant howl of a
wolf.
  "That's it. Let's rock," Rachel said.
  We ran toward the compound. We ran, hunched
low, scurrying from tree to bush. Then, as we got still
closer, we dropped down and crawled on all
fours.
  I heard shouting and the eerie zap of Dracon
beams being fired.
  "i hope he's okay," I whispered. I
didn't think anyone could hear me.
  But Ax said, less-than Prince Jake is very
smart. He will be fine. greater-than
  "Do you guys think we're close enough now?"
Marco wondered.
  We were closer than we had been the day before. Just
a few feet from the edge of the clearing. All of us
hunched down behind one large tree trunk. Even
Ax, which, in his normal state, is awkward for him.
  We huddled close, like some big group hug.
When we morphed we would become tiny. And even a
few feet between us would seem like a mile.
"Time to go termite," Rachel said. She had her arm
around my back.
  I was already sick with fear. Afraid for Jake.
Afraid for my friends. Afraid of the very thing I was
about to become.
  "Can I just say that this sucks?" I muttered.
  "Amen," Marco agreed. We were shoulder
to shoulder. My head touched his.
  And then, as my very bones rattled and my teeth
chattered from fear, I began the process that would
dissolve my bones, and melt away my teeth.
  Down, down, down.
  Falling . . . falling forever. It was like I had
jumped off the Empire State Building and was
falling. Yet even though I fell, I never quite
hit the ground.
  I was going from a girl of less than five feet
to an insect less than a quarter of an inch long.
I was becoming something that could have crawled inside my
own ear.
  Already the others who had been so close seemed
to be a long way off. With my eyes still mostly
human, I could see Rachel's face lose its
features, and bulge out. I saw the monstrously
big mandibles spring like black, sideways
tusks from her mouth.
  And then, my eyes went dark.
  I was blind.
  And I was glad.
andbrvbarbbFT
  J. couldn't see, but I could
feel
the antennae as they extruded from my forehead.
  I couldn't see, but I could
feel the
extra set of legs growing from my sides.
  I could sense, rather than see, that my head was huge
compared to the rest of my body.
  I could sense that I had a swollen abdomen.
  I could feel the massive pincers where my mouth
had been.
  I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream so
badly, but I no longer had a voice. I no
longer had a tongue.
  I was less than a quarter of an inch long. I
was as long as any two or three letters on this page.
Grains of sand were the size of bowling
balls to me. With my wildly waving feelers I
could sense a huge, long shaft, like a fallen log.
It was over my head. I slowly realized that
it was a single pine needle.
  I waited for the termite's instincts and mind
to suddenly surge within my own. But the termite brain
-- such as it was -- wasn't saying anything. It was
totally silent.
  My senses brought me almost nothing. I was blind.
I could feel vibrations from sound, but they were vague.
The termite's sense of "hearing" was not as good as its
relative, the cockroach. I knew. I had been
a cockroach.
  All I had was a sense of smell. Or something
like smell that came from my antennae waving in the
air.
  less-than Everyone okay8greater-than I asked
shakily. I desperately wanted to talk to someone.
Anyone. I needed to know the others were alive.
  less-than Yeaheagreater-than Rachel answered.
less-than like guess I am okay. It's just that I
can't see anything. greater-than
  less-than Termites are blind, except for the
queens and kingseagreater-than I said. I must have sounded
much calmer than I felt.
  less-than These are very strange
creatureseagreater-than Ax commented. less-than like
feel no instincts. It's as if they are just
a body. A machines
  less-than Weli, let's get these bodies
outta hereeagreater-than
Marco said. less-than Sooner or later the
Yeerks are going to get tired of chasing Jake around
the woods. greater-than
  less-than Which way8greater-than Rachel
asked. less-than Slight problem -- we're
totally blind. greater-than
  less-than like . . . maybe I'm crazy, but
I get this sense . . . this feeling . . . like something
is calling to meeagreater-than I explained.
  less-than Okay, maybeeagreater-than Marco
said. less-than like have the same feeling. Like someone
yelling from a long way off. greater-than
  less-than Let's follow that. Whatever it
iseagreater-than Rachel said. less-than lt's as
good a direction as any. greater-than
  I set out toward the vague, distant voice. I
had no idea if the others were going in the same
direction. I guess they were all within a few inches
of me, but I couldn't tell.
  The termite legs were not very strong or very fast. Not
as fast as an ant's. I could feel the rocks I
was climbing over. Or the grains of dirt,
I guess they were. They felt like rocks,
anyway. Jagged, sharp-edged crystals, seemingly
as big as a human head.
  I motored on all six legs, trying hard not
to think about anything but moving forward.
Just
keep moving,
I told myself.
Don't think about
how small and defenseless you are.
  less-than Hey. I feel somethingeagreater-than
Rachel said. less-than lt's ... I guess it
must be the edge of the force field. greater-than
At the same time I reached the force field myself.
I felt it as a tingling hum that vibrated my tiny
body. I could feel the rocks around me vibrating.
I could feel the very air around me dancing.
  less-than At least we're going in the right
directions Marco pointed out.
  I moved closer to the invisible wall of snapping,
humming power. Suddenly I realized my legs were just
motoring away but I wasn't going anywhere.
  less-than We will have to dig under xeagreater-than
Ax said. less-than lt will stop at the top layer
of dirt. greater-than
  less-than Does someone know how to make these
pathetic bodies dig8greater-than Rachel asked
snappishly.
  I flattened myself down and tried wiggling between two
big grains of dirt. It didn't work. Then I
sensed one of those hugely long logs suspended in the
air not far away. A pine needle.
  I shuffled over toward it. The pine needle was
close to the ground, but there was still plenty of room for
me beneath it.
  less-than Heyffgreater-than I yelled,
genuinely excited. less-than Find a pine
needle or something that crosses the line. I think
maybe there's no force field directly beneath them.
greater-than
  less-than Yeseagreater-than Ax agreed.
less-than The pine needle may cast a shadow in the
force field. greater-than
  I reached up for the pine needle with my an-
tennae and felt my way along beneath it. I could
feel the tingly edges of the force field on either side
of me. But the pine needle did cast a sort of
shadow. And within that shadow, I could squeeze through.
  less-than l'm throughffgreater-than I said. At the
same time, I became aware that the vague,
far-off "voice" I'd heard calling to me was much
stronger.
  For a weird moment I actually thought it was my
mother's voice. And I wanted to go toward it.
  I moved my six legs and headed across the
landscape of dirt boulders. I was sure where I was
going now. I could hear the voice in my head. I
could hear the call.
  My termite body seemed to be moving on its
own now. It was like I was a passenger in a car that
someone else was driving.
  less-than ls everyone through8greater-than I asked.
  less-than Yeseagreater-than Rachel said.
  She sounded distracted to me. Like she was listening
to someone else and didn't want me interrupting. But
that was okay, because I didn't really want to talk
to her, either.
  I quickly covered the ground to the building. I
didn't see that it was the building, you understand. I just
knew. And the terrible thing is, I never even paused
to wonder
how
I knew.
  less-than What are we . . . greater-than
Marco's voice. He didn't finish his
thought. I didn't care.
less-than Guys8greater-than Rachel asked.
less-than Um . . . greater-than
  The opening was just ahead. I knew it was there. I
knew that other soldier termites would be guarding the
entrance.
  I felt no fear.
  I clambered up from the dirt into the tunnel
opening. Familiar smells. Smells I knew.
Home. Home. My place. Where I was from, and
where I belonged.
  I smelled the other soldiers with my antennae.
They touched me with their antennae, as I did to them.
We were of the colony.
The colony.
  I raced swiftly down the tunnel. It headed
upward at a sharp angle, but the angle meant little
to me. I weighed practically nothing. A worker was
ahead of me. It extruded a pellet of digested
cellulose. Wood pulp. I quickly gobbled it
up.
  Within the wood pulp food there were messages.
Hormones passing through the colony, containing information.
Vague orders. Indistinct yet powerful
instructions.
  I was now caught up in a rush of workers off
to obey the voiceless voice in their heads. Some were
off to chew a new tunnel. Others were off to the egg
chamber to rotate the eggs.
  And I had my orders, too.
  I raced along tunnels lined with chewed and
digested wood pulp. Tunnels cut through the dried
wood that supported the building.
  I felt side tunnels open on one side,
then the next. A tunnel above. Air flowed faint
-- but fresh -- actually creating a tiny breeze.
  There was no light. None. But it didn't matter
because I was blind. I was blind, but I was not lost.
What am I doing?
an alien voice asked.
  I ignored it.
NO!
the voice cried.
  I had heard the voice before. But it came from far
away and it spoke a language I didn't
understand.
NO! NO! NO! Let me go!
  I felt a queasy, sickening feeling inside
me.
  But still I powered down the tunnel,
turning here, turning there. Always moving toward a
goal. There was a powerful smell. It was growing
stronger and stronger.
  I went to it. I
had
to go to it.
NO! Let me go! Let me go!
  Down the black tunnels. Over and through the
packed rush-hour streams of workers. To the center.
To the core. To the heart.
Help me! Help me!
the voice screamed.
  The voice ... my voice.
  The faint, failing voice of the human named
Cassie.
Me.
Me!
Ahhhhhhhhh!
  Suddenly, I was Cassie again. I knew my
name. I knew who I was.
  But it no longer mattered. The termite body was
out of my control. A stronger will than mine was guiding
it.
  The termite suddenly emerged into a vast, open
space. A space that in reality was no more
than two or three inches across. And yet it felt
like an auditorium to me.
  Suddenly I knew who had seized control of the
termite brain.
  I knew who had brushed my human mind
aside.
  She was vast. Huge beyond belief. At one end
I sensed the termite head and useless, waving
termite arms. From that small head and body there
extended a monstrous, pulsating sack. As big as
a blimp.
  At the far end was a double row of sticky, slimy
eggs, to be picked up and carried away by worker
termites.
  The queen.
  I was in the chamber of the termite queen.
  I he queen!
  I could feel her power. This was
her
world. These were all
her
slaves. More than slaves -- they had no will of their
own.
  I knew who I was again. But I felt weak and
pathetic. I was unable to control the termite
body I was in. That body belonged to
her.
  She had orders for me -- protect the
egg-carrying worker termites. The orders came in
smells and vague feelings, but they were impossible
to refuse.
  less-than Racheleagreater-than I called.
less-than Marco. Ax. greater-than
  less-than like . . . greater-than It was
Rachel's thought-speak voice. less-than like ...
I ... Oh, no. No! Noffgreater-than
less-than Rachel! It's the queen. She's
controlling ueagreater-than I said.
  less-than like can't... my body ... it just. . .
greater-than
  less-than Marco! Marco can you hear me?
Marcoffgreater-than
  less-than She's got me. I can't say no.
I can't stopffgreater-than he cried in anguished
response.
  My own body motored away on its six
legs. I fell in step behind two workers. Each was
carrying one of the gooey, precious eggs. I had
to protect them. There might be enemies. We
walked along the grotesque length of the
queen. Toward her head.
  Ants. They were the enemy. Sometimes they came.
Sometimes they poured down the tunnels, looking for the
eggs, to carry them off for food.
  Sometimes they attacked the queen herself. The
soldiers fought them. The soldiers sometimes died
fighting them.
  less-than The queenffgreater-than Rachel's
voice said. less-than The only way . . .
destroy the queen. greater-than
  It was like an electric jolt in my mind! Get
rid of the queen! Yes. The only way. They
wouldn't be expecting that. There would be no one to stop
me!
  But my body was not my own. I could not make
it...
  The two workers plodded along before me. I could
feel their hind ends with my feelers. And I knew
the queen's head was just to my right. Just a half inch.
Less.
The queen's head . . . feelers . . . eyes .
. . like an ant!
  One chance . . . focus . . . focus ... I
had to trick the termite mind. I had to draw on every
ounce of my strength.
  If I failed, I would live out the rest of my
life as a mindless slave of the termite queen.
Now! Do it now!
  I swerved right. It was like moving through molasses.
The queen had ordered me to go after the workers, and I was
disobeying.
Ant! Ant!
I screamed the word in my own head.
Ant! Destroy! Destroy! Destroy the ant!
  I clambered over a half dozen termites who
were tending the queen.
backslash
could feel my will weakening. I couldn't get rid of the
queen. I had to kill an
ant.
That was my purpose -- to keep ants away from the
queen.
  I scampered toward the queen's head. I felt
my antennae touch her. I opened my massive
pincerjaws. . . .
  Termites ran around insanely. They were racing,
out of control, lost, confused. For a moment I did the
same. The queen was gone.
  I think in some way I wanted to forget who I
was. What I had done. I wanted
to become one of the lost, panicked termites.
  less-than We're free! We're out!
Cassie, where are
you? Get out of thereffgreater-than I heard a far-off
voice cry. Was it Ax? Marco? Rachel?
  less-than Demorphffgreater-than I cried with
my last shred of control.
  less-than No! Cassie, noffgreater-than a
voice screamed in my head. less-than You're
inside a piece of woodffgreater-than
  less-than Demorphffgreater-than I screamed
again. Human. I wanted to be human again. Let
me be human! Let me out of this place. Out of this
body.
  I grew. Walls pressed in around me. I
filled the tunnel. I couldn't grow anymore!
  Trapped! Pain. Nothing but pain! I was a
swollen, vast termite. Larger than any queen.
Huge.
  I couldn't grow anymore. And I couldn't stop.
I was trying to become human again, to fit a human
body into a space no bigger than the inside of a
walnut.
  Then . . . explosion!
  The walls opened up. Splinters!
Fresh air rushed across my hard termite skin.
My head was free of the wood and growing. But my
body was still trapped. Squeezing with terrible pain.
  I had eyes now. They could see, but only
dimly. I was still tiny, and in the air above me a
huge blade as long as a passenger jet slashed
downward. The wood splintered again and my body was
free.
I grew and grew. Arms . . . legs ... my
own head.
  I was on my knees on a wooden floor.
Marco and Rachel stood over me. Ax had used his
tail to slice open the wood. They had all
escaped the colony. They had demorphed.
  It was dark in the room, but there were glowing
red-and-green indicator lights. And there was a
computer monitor showing neat screen-saver
triangles floating and reforming.
  "Are you okay?" Rachel asked. She bent down
and put her hand on my shoulder.
  I gave her a hug. Then, just as suddenly, I
pushed her away. "Let me go! Don't touch me!
Don't touch me! DON'T TOUCH ME!"
  Rachel was on me in a flash. She clamped her
hand over my mouth. Marco grabbed my
ankles and held them still.
  "Cassie!" Rachel hissed. "Shut up.
We're inside the Yeerk building. We're in a
side room, but we can hear people in the next room!"
  I was beyond caring. I struggled and fought and tried
to scream.
  "Ax, whatever you can do with that computer, do it!"
Marco whispered urgently.
  Rachel and Marco held me pinned against the
floor. And slowly . . . very slowly ... my
bunched muscles relaxed. I stopped fighting.
"Are you okay now?" Rachel asked.
  Okay? I would never be okay again. But I nodded
my head anyway. Rachel took her hand away from
my mouth.
  "It's over, Cassie," Marco said. "You
saved us. It's over. And we have other problems
now."
  "I'm good," I said. "I'm fine." But my
skin was crawling. Evil, terrible memories were
crowding in on me.
  less-than like have accesseagreater-than Ax said.
less-than Accessing. Urn ... Marco or
Rachel, I need a human to help me understand the
meaning of what I am seeing here.greater-than
  Marco climbed up off the floor. Rachel
stayed with me. She was stroking my hair, like my mom
would have done if I'd had a nightmare.
  It was hard to think of Rachel as being nurturing.
But she did the right thing.
  I heard sounds in the next room. Human
voices. And Hork-Bajir, speaking their weird
mix of their own native tongue and human speech
they'd learned for duty on Earth.
  "Some kind of commission," Marco mused, looking
at the computer screen. "Three members. They
vote on what happens to the forest. They decide if
the logging can go forward."
  less-than Dapsen Lumber Companyeagreater-than
Ax said. less-than That's what the Yeerks
call this logging company. Very funny. greater-than
  "What's funny?" Marco asked.
less-than Dapsen. It's a Yeerkish word that
means . . . well. Never mind what it means. It
isn't polite. greater-than
  "Look at this document," Marco whispered.
""Preliminary permission to examine feasibility
of. . . " Hey. The Yeerks don't have final
permission to begin logging. There's this commission that still
has to decide. Three people. One has already
said yes. Probably a Controller. One has
voted definitely no. There's one guy left.
Some guy named Farrand. Yikes!"
  "What yikes?" Rachel asked.
  "Yikes, as in he's coming for a visit to check the
scene," Marco said. "End of the week. Then he'll
vote. If that guy votes yes, the Yeerks are in
business and we're in trouble."
  "He'll vote yes," Rachel said darkly.
  less-than l'm afraid that is trueeagreater-than
Ax agreed. less-than The Yeerks will make him
a Controllers
  "Not if we stop them," Marco said.
  "One thing at a time. We need to get out of here,"
Rachel said. "And we're not going back out the way
we came in."
  No one argued with that.
  less-than like am making a slight change in the
programming that may let me access this computer from
Marco's home computer. And I can temporarily
shut down the defenses from this computers Ax said.
less-than But there are still guards outside. And
Hork-Bajir in the next room. greater-than
"Yeah. We'll have to move fast," Rachel said.
"Cassie, can you morph? Can you morph the
wolf? I'll stay right beside you the whole time."
  Could I morph? The very idea made me sick.
But even in my quaking fear I knew anything was
better than going back down into that termite
colony.
  Five minutes later, Ax turned off the outer
defenses, and we ran from that building.
  I guess the Yeerks counted on their high-tech
defenses too much. Without them, no one even shouted
an alarm. By sheer, dumb luck we raced between the
paths of two Controller guards.
  No one yelled. No one fired a shot. We
ran into the woods where Jake joined up with us.
  No one said much on the way home.
C plus plus -B-P T -E -R
1H
  ly parents expected me to be at Rachel's
house. Her parents expected her to sleep over at
my house. My house was easier to sneak into, so
that's where we went.
  It was almost dawn by the time we de-morphed. We
crept through my dark living room and up to my room,
trying not to make the stairs squeak.
  I loaned Rachel a big flannel shirt.
She grabbed a blanket and a pillow and
simply fell down on the floor beside my bed. I
think she was asleep before she landed.
  I crawled into my bed. My own, familiar bed.
The sheets were cool. The comforter was
my
comforter. I belonged here. This was
my
place.
And yet nothing seemed familiar. The shadows cast
by dim starlight on the walls . . . the shapes of
shirts and overalls hung from big hooks on the
walls ... the bindings of books I'd read, right
here in this room . . . none of it seemed real.
  I closed my eyes, then opened them quickly.
  How could it be? How could I remember what that
chamber looked like, what the termite queen looked like
when I'd had no eyes? But still, I remembered it
all. I saw the chamber dug from the rotted wood
by hundreds of workers. And I saw the huge queen.
  I felt my pincers.
  I hadn't just destroyed her. I had destroyed the
entire colony. I had done it to save myself and my
friends.
  I wanted to throw up. But I would have had to get out
of bed to run to the bathroom. And I felt
like I never wanted to leave that bed again.
  I love animals. I've been raised all
my life around them. I love nature. But what
did I really know about it?
  I have been more animals than many people ever see in a
lifetime. I have flown with the wings of an osprey.
I've raced through the ocean in the body of a dolphin.
I've seen the world through the eyes of an owl at
night, and smelled the wind
with all the keen senses of a wolf. I've flown
upside down and backward in the body of a fly.
Sometimes I go out into the far fields at night and
become a horse and run through the grass.
  And everything I've been, every animal, is either
killer or killed.
  In a million, million battles all around
the world, on every continent, in every square inch of space,
there was killing. From the great cats in Africa that
cold-bloodedly search out the young and weak
gazelles, to the terrible wars that are fought out in
anthills and termite colonies.
  All of nature was at war.
  And, at the top of all that destruction, humans
killed each other as well as other species, and now
those same people have been enslaved and destroyed
by the Yeerks.
  Nature at its finest. Cute, cuddly
animals who slaughtered to live. The color of
nature wasn't green. It was red. Bloodred.
  I realized tears were running down my cheeks and
soaking my pillow. I would have cried out loud, but I
didn't want Rachel to wake up. I would have
screamed but my parents would have come running. And what
could I have told them? Lies. More lies. Because in
my world, I, too, was prey. The Yeerks were
hunting me.
I was scared. I was alone. I didn't know what was
going to happen to me.
  And then I thought of the lost skunk kits.
Unlovable little creatures, to most people. But they were
scared and alone, too. If they were still alive.
  andbrvbarbbL guess I fell asleep
eventually, because I dreamed. It wasn't a
nightmare, though. It wasn't even about the termite
world.
  I was a mother. In my dream I was a mother, looking
for her babies. I searched everywhere, even though I
was hurt and in pain.
  At last I found them. And, in my dream, they
snuggled next to me.
  When I woke up, the dream quickly evaporated.
But it left behind a feeling of peace.
  The sun was high in the sky. It was ten-fifteen in
the morning. Late. Rachel had already showered and
dressed.
  "I can't believe you slept so well," Rachel
grumbled. "I had a seriously bad nightmare.
Look, I gotta get home. Are you okay?"
  "Sure," I said, rubbing the sleep from my
eyes. "I mean . . . you know, last night and all
... it wasn't like I was having some kind of
breakdown or anything. It's just, you know. It
creeped me out."
  "Tell me about it," Rachel agreed. "But it's
really no big deal if you think about it, Cassie.
Termites get killed all the time. They were just
termites. Bugs."
  "Yeah."
  She left. I don't know if she just had to get
home, or if I made her uncomfortable. Rachel
isn't usually a huggy kind of person. Having
to treat me like a baby probably gave her the
willies.
  My mom was at work. My dad was off somewhere, I
guess, because his truck was gone. 1 made
some toast and drank some orange juice. Then I
ate a piece of leftover veggie pizza.
  I felt restless and weird. Like I was on the
edge of something. Like life had gotten unbalanced
since the day before.
  "Rachel's right," I said out loud, just to hear a
voice. "They're bugs. Termites. And besides,
I got away in the end."
  I walked outside to feel the sun on my skin.
My human skin.
Without really thinking much about it, I went into the barn
to the refrigerator we use to store perishable food
for the animals. I took out a frozen grasshopper
and stuck it in my pocket. And then I headed toward
the edge of the forest.
  less-than Hey, Cassieeagreater-than a
thought-speak voice said as I crunched noisily through
the woods. less-than What's going on8greater-than
  I looked up and saw Tobias go skimming by.
He flared, turned on a dime, and landed on a
branch. He dug his ripping talons into the soft
bark.
  "Not much," I said.
  less-than like heard it was pretty bad last
night. greater-than
  "Yeah? Who did you talk to?"
  less-than Ax. Who else? He was
definitely weirded out by the whole thing. greater-than
  I stopped walking. It was something in the way he
said "weirded out." "Tobias, who else did you
talk to?"
  less-than Maybe Marcoeagreater-than he said.
  "And Marco told you I went nuts, right?"
  less-than Actually, the word he used was
"insane." Also "Looney Tunes." And
"wacko." But he meant it all in the nicest
possible way. greater-than
  I laughed bitterly. "Well, I guess I
did go a bit wacko," I said.
  less-than Welcome to the clubeagreater-than
Tobias said. less-than None
of us is going to come through all this completely normal.
You know that. Too much fear. greater-than
  "Well, I'm pretty sick of it," I said.
"I had to destroy the termite queen. I know, she
was just a bug. But you know, who am I to decide that
it's okay to kill one animal and not another? Here
I am, the big Earth Mother, tree-hugger,
animal-lover, as Marco would say, and when it gets
down to it, I'm just like ..."
  less-than Just like me8greater-than Tobias
asked.
  "Just like any predator," I said lamely.
  less-than You feel bad because you had to kill the
queen in order to survive. greater-than
  "I shouldn't have been there. It's
their
world, not mine. Those little tunnels in a rotten
piece of wood -- that's their whole universe. I
invaded it. And when they got in my way, I
reacted. Who does that remind you of?"
  less-than Look, you are
not
a Yeerk, and termites are
not
human beingseagreater-than Tobias said. less-than
There's no comparisons
  I didn't bother arguing. "Look, I have
to morph. There's something I need to do."
  less-than What8greater-than
  I sighed. "It's something stupid, all right?
There's this mother skunk we have who's injured. She
has a litter of kits who are going to die. I
think I know where they are, more or less, but I can't
get there walking like a human."
For a moment Tobias said nothing. less-than
Skunk kits? Near the edge of the Yeerk logging
com-pound8greater-than
  "Yes."
  less-than like can show you where they are. greater-than
  For a frozen moment of time I refused to understand
what he'd just said. I didn't want to think of why
Tobias . . . why a red-tailed hawk would know the
exact location of a litter of skunk babies.
  I took a couple of deep breaths. I tried
to keep my voice level. "Are they still alive?"
  less-than There are four still aliveeagreater-than
Tobias said.
  I felt an emotion I don't feel very often.
I felt it boiling up inside me. I glared
furiously at him. At the ripping talons. At
the nastily curved beak.
  I could picture the scene in my mind. The way
he would have swooped down, raked those talons forward,
snatched the defenseless kit off the ground and . . .
  I was shaking. I laced my fingers together, just to stop
them from trembling.
  "I'm going to save what's
left of
them," I said. My voice didn't sound
like my voice.
  less-than l'll help yeagreater-than Tobias
said.
CHILD-R-Pt-E-R IB
andbrvbarbbL used my osprey morph and flew behind
Tobias as he led me directly to the spot I
had seen the night before. I carried the frozen
grasshopper in my talons. I didn't ask
Tobias any
questions, and he didn't say anything.
He pointed out the almost-invisible entrance
to the skunks' lair. And then he flew away. I
knew
he'd go to Jake and tell him what I was doing.
And I knew that I had hurt Tobias by treating
him
so coldly.
But, to tell you the truth, I didn't care right
then. I just wanted to find those baby skunks. I
don't know why, but somehow in my mind those
baby skunks had become very important.
When Tobias was out of sjght, I began to morph.
  It wasn't a difficult morph. I kept
eyes and ears and a mouth all the way through the change.
Not like becoming a bug.
  There was the now-familiar sensation of shrinking. And
there was the surprise of having a huge, bushy tail
growing from the base of my spine. But I had morphed
a squirrel before. This was pretty close.
  But the fur was a new experience. Oh, I'd
grown fur before, but never any so long and luxurious
and dramatic. This was a regular fur coat, so
to speak. Mostly black, but with an impressive
swipe of white down my back and into my tail.
  The senses of the skunk were nothing dramatic. The
hearing was a little better than human, maybe. The
sense of smell was good. The sight not as good as my
own human vision.
  And the skunk's body was not swift or strong. I
shuffled and sort of waddled when I tried to walk.
When I tried to run I just ended up waddling a little
more.
  My front paws could grasp and hold things, but
they were far inferior to my own human hands.
  It was the skunk's mind and instincts that seemed
strangest of all. I've been inside minds
that were all fear, or all hunger. Minds that were
keyed up, like they lived on adrenaline.
  But this mind, this package of instincts, was so ...
gentle. So unafraid. Not cocky and
swaggering like a big cat, just unafraid.
  I was an animal no bigger than a house cat.
No sharp teeth or talons. And yet just about nothing
in the forest messed with me. 1 felt the gentleness of
absolute confidence.
  I could hear the mewing sounds of the skunk kits within
the burrow.
  I waddled over to the opening and pushed my head
inside. It was dark, but I could make out four of
them. Tiny, helpless little things. No longer
infants, but not yet able to defend themselves or hunt like
skunks.
  I know some people think animals don't have emotions.
But those kits were happy to see me. And something in the
mind of the skunk was relieved and joyful to see them.
  I retrieved the frozen grasshopper, now
completely thawed. I crawled inside that little hole
in the dirt. I curled around, and the kits nuzzled
up against me. I fed them the grasshopper.
  I knew I only had two hours in morph.
But even though I had just gotten up a few hours
earlier, I suddenly felt sleepy. The meal was
done. The kits wouldn't starve. And I was sleepy
and very, very peaceful.
Even in my sleep I knew what was
happening to me. See, I had always loved
animals. Always. But now, I think was falling out of
love.
  Nature wasn't all cute and fuzzy. The
strong ate the weak. The weak ate the weaker. It's
what the Yeerks were doing: trying to make prey out of the
ultimate predator, Homo sapiens.
  WHUMP!
  "Hey! Hey! Are you in there? Cassie!"
  I woke up. Where was I? It was dark. Was I
in my bedroom? Was I ... oh, no, was I in the
termite colony?!
  The four kits still slept, curled up against me.
I was in the skunks' den. less-than
What8greater-than I said.
  "It's me, Jake, Cassie, get out of there.
Now! You've been in morph for almost two hours!"
  That woke me up all the way. I shot out of the
burrow and instantly began to demorph.
  Jake was standing there with Marco. Tobias was in the
tree overhead.
  I have seen Jake mad before. But I'd never seen
him this mad. "What did you think you were doing?!" he
yelled, without even waiting for me to become human.
"You were ten minutes away from spending the
rest of your life as a skunk!"
  less-than like fell asleepeagreater-than I said.
My mouth wasn't formed yet.
  "Are you out of your mind? What is the matter with
you?" I'd never noticed that Jake has this
vein that kind of pops out on his forehead when he's
furious.
  "Look, I'm sorry," I mumbled, as I
finished demorphing.
  He was a long way from forgiving me. "This is not
why we have this ability. We are not trying to save every
lost skunk in the world," Jake ranted. "We are
an army. A small, weak, pathetic, outnumbered
army. We have exactly six members. Tobias
has already been trapped in morph. But he was
trapped fighting the Yeerks. I can't believe you
would nearly get yourself trapped in morph over some
skunks!"
  Marco stepped in and put a hand on Jake's
shoulder and kind of pulled him back. "Look, it's
okay, Jake. She's okay."
  "Thanks to Tobias," Jake snapped. "No
thanks to her."
  I didn't know what to say. I was too shocked.
And to be honest, I was pretty horrified
by what I'd almost done.
  "Marco. Tobias. Take a walk, okay?"
Jake said. Then he turned and stood with his face just
inches from mine. "I know you had a
real
bad experience last night. I've been there.
I've had the nightmares. I know what's going on
in your head right now."
  "I'm fine," I muttered.
  "Just shut up and listen to me," he said. But
the anger was gone now. "I care about you, Cassie.
We all do. And we all need you."
  "To win?" I said. "You need me to fight
battles? What if I don't want to fight any
more battles? What if I've had enough? I've
done enough."
  "You've done far more than enough. A hundred times
more than enough. But the Yeerks are still here."
  I shrugged. "The strong eat the weak," I said.
"It's part of nature. Humans always win, other
animals always lose. Maybe it's our turn
to lose."
  Jake nodded. "This isn't about some race called
humans. It's about people we know. People we see every day.
My brother, Tom, is one of
them.
So why don't you go tell Tom it's okay that
he's a slave of the Yeerks because it's our turn
to get hammered?"
  He turned and walked away.
  "Jake?"
  He stopped.
  "Jake? Urn ... my dad will have the skunk mother
ready to be returned here in a day or so. I'm not
going to just abandon these kits."
  He put his hands on his hips and glared at me.
"You can't stay in morph that long, and you know it."
  "I know. But I have to make sure no predators
come around. I have to get them food. And I have
to morph at least some of the time, so they can
imprint on their mother here in the wild. Look ...
I know it seems stupid to you and Marco and
probably everyone. But I have to do this."
  less-than l'll watch themeagreater-than Tobias
said.
  I'd forgotten how good hawk hearing is.
  "Tobias will keep watch. We'll work something
out," Jake said. "We'll save the lousy
skunks. After all, it's not like we have anything else
to do. Aside from saving the world."
  "Thanks, Jake," I said. "And . . .
sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I'll be
okay now, I think."
  He smiled his slow smile. "I'll be okay,
too, Cassie. As long as you're around."
  From a little ways off to our left I heard Marco
make a loud gagging noise. It made me laugh.
I must have been feeling better, to be able to laugh.
  LJJ-ELL, this is more than slightly insane,"
Marco said. It was later that same day, Sunday
evening. We were all gathered around the skunks' den.
"We're going to raise little, stinky skunk
babies?"
  "What's so insane about that?" Rachel asked
sharply. Good old Rachel. She thought it was
ridiculous, too. But she's my best friend, and always
backs me up.
  "They're
skunks,"
Marco said, looking from Rachel to Jake to Ax, like
he was the only normal person in a mental ward.
  "They're cute," Rachel said, glaring at
Marco and generally looking like a girl who never used
the word "cute."
"Ah. I see. "Cute." Well that
certainly explains everything."
  Jake cut in. "Cassie can't take them to the
clinic or they may get used to humans. They're
young. They'll imprint. So we are taking care of
these . . . these skunks . . . until mommy
skunk can come back from the hospital."
  less-than Are skunks a sacred animal
to humans8greater-than Ax asked.
"All
animals are sacred to Cassie," Marco said.
"She's Doctor Doolittle and that animal guy
who comes on
Letterman
all rolled into one."
  less-than But you eat some
animalseagreater-than Ax pointed out. less-than
Cows, pigs, sheep, dogs. greater-than
  "We don't eat dogs!" I said.
  less-than ln some countries they do. I read it
in the
World Almanao
  We had given Ax a
World Almanac to
help him learn about Earth. Ever since then, he'd
become an expert on useless information.
He could tell you the per capita income of
Tanzania, or the long jump record at the
Olympics.
  "Well, we don't eat dogs in
this
country," Rachel said.
  less-than Do you eat cats8greater-than
  "Urn . . . excuse me?" Jake
interrupted. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
He was obviously getting a headache. I could
understand why. "Look, here's the deal: We are about
three hun-
dred yards from the edge of the Yeerk logging compound. They
have sensors, they have guards. Tobias is up top
keeping an eye out, so we're safe for now. But we
can't get careless. Cassie, tell them what we
want to do."
  "Okay, while we're in school tomorrow and the next
day, Ax and Tobias will protect the den. Ax will
morph the mother skunk from time to time. Tobias will
patrol from above. I'll bring Tobias frozen
food so he doesn't have to hunt during that time."
  "Oooh, Lean Cuisine Frozen Mouse
entrees," Marco teased.
  less-than like heard teagreater-than
Tobias said from somewhere up above the treetops.
  "I know," Marco said, grinning smugly.
  "Then, after school and through the night, the rest of us
will work shifts. I'll do most of the skunk morphing,
but in between times we'll have to have Jake and Rachel and
Marco to help keep up a patrol."
  Marco held up his hand.
  "Yes, Marco?" I asked.
  "Do we get some "Save the Skunks"
T-shirts and bumper stickers?"
  "No one
has
to do this," I said. "Look ... I know it seems
stupid."
  "Nah, it's not stupid," Marco said. "Let's
see, I'm behind in my homework. My dad thinks
I've
joined a gang because I'm never around. I don't
sleep much because every time I try I'm suddenly a
termite again and I wake up screaming. I never
get to just sit around and watch TV. And, in my
spare
time, I have to help figure out how we're going
to keep the Yeerks from turning some guy named Farrand
into a Controller so they can wipe out the forest
and hunt down the Bird-boy and the universe's only
almanac-reading An-dalite. I mean, I knew
the middle-school years would be tough, but this is a little
much."
  Jake gave Marco a long, skeptical
look. "So, in other words, you'll be glad
to help."
  For once, it was Jake who made everyone laugh.
Even Marco.
  Marco shrugged. "You know, actually it's kind of a
relief finding out Cassie is crazy. We
know
Rachel's nuts. We
know
I'm crazy. Cassie's been the only sane one
for so long. Welcome to the loony bin, Cassie.
Save the skunks! Hug the trees! Let dogs
vote!"
  The others all laughed. I laughed a little, too.
Marco always made fun of my being an
environmentalist. Usually it was okay, because I
knew what I believed in.
  But now his humor cut just a little deeper.
  I wasn't saving the whales or the panda or the
spotted owl. I was saving a handful of
skunks.
There were plenty of skunks in the world. They weren't
exactly endangered.
  It all went back to the termite queen. A
bug. I had killed a bug, and for some reason, that
had shaken my deepest faith.
  Maybe Marco was right. Maybe I was crazy.
IB
  Iver the next two days we protected and
nurtured a foursome of baby skunks. And as
impossible as it seems, it worked. More or less.
  Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I think the others
started enjoying it, too. Typically, it was Marco
who decided, after his first shift guarding the skunks,
that the kits needed names.
  "Joey, Johnny, Marky, and C.j.," he
announced, like it was obvious. "The Ramones. The
godfathers of punk rock. They would be honored. The
one with the white stripe that kind of goes really wide?
That's Joey. Now, Johnny ..."
  At first, I was the only one to morph the skunk
mother. Then Ax did it. Then the others, one by one.
I almost felt jealous.
Right after school three days later, I went to the
skunk burrow and found Tobias flying
cover above the burrow.
  less-than Hi, Cassie. greater-than
  "How's it going, Tobias?"
  less-than Well, we had a little excitement.
A hungry badger stopped by to check things out. But
I chased him off. greater-than
  "So the kits are all right?"
  less-than There are still four of them, if that's
what you meaneagreater-than Tobias answered.
less-than But they won't stay inside. They
keep coming out and looking around. Especially Marky.
This isn't good. Especially if they do it at
night. greater-than
  I morphed into the skunk mother and crawled inside
the den. Tobias was right -- the kits were restless.
They were growing fast, and they instinctively wanted to go
out into the great big world beyond the burrow.
  less-than like think I'm going to take them for a
walkeagreater-than I told Tobias.
  less-than ls that a good idea8greater-than
  less-than Sure. Why not? You should take a
break. Stretch your wings. greater-than
  Tobias was relieved to have an excuse to take
off. But as soon as he was gone I started to have
doubts about my brilliant idea of taking
the kits out for a stroll. How could I keep track
of them? What if they wandered off?
But then, while I was debating, Marky made a
wild dash outside and I had to scamper to catch up
to him.
As soon as I appeared, though, the kit went
meekly to stand behind me. One by one, the
other three babies came out. And to my amaze
ment, they lined up like obedient first-graders.
less-than Okayeagreater-than I said, although of
course the kits couldn't understand me. less-than
Let's take a walk. greater-than
I waddled slowly away, took about ten steps,
then turned to look back over my shoulder. The
four of them were all lined up behind me. I was
their mother, as far as they knew. And they were
programmed to follow their mother.
I waddled off, feeling a little strange but
happy.
We walked that way for half an hour. We
paused to sniff things from time to time. Various
animal scents, mostly.
And then, I realized something. We weren't
supposed to just be going for a stroll. The kits
were hungry. I was their mother. And it was my
job to provide for them.
If I didn't teach them to catch bugs, they
wouldn't survive. Skunks eat some plants, but
they also eat crickets and mantises and grass
hoppers and even shrews and mice.
I stopped walking and looked back at "my"
kits. Four almost identical little balls of
black-
and-white fuzz. Four curious little faces watching
me. Waiting to see what I was doing. Eager
to learn.
  I'd been feeding them thawed frozen
grasshoppers and thawed mice I'd brought from the
clinic. Just as I'd been giving Tobias food
since he was too busy to hunt properly. But these
skunk kits couldn't be fed by humans all their
lives.
  Suddenly ... a crashing sound! Something rushing through
the woods, careless, wild, noisy. And coming right
toward us!
  I started to lead the kits back to the burrow, but the
noise was getting closer. It was coming too quick! I
tried to smell what it was, but the breeze was blowing
the wrong way.
Then . . . ROWR! ROWR!
ROWROWROWR!
A dog!
  A wolf would have known better. A wolf would have
seen the black-and-white fur and decided he had an
appointment somewhere else. A bear would have known. Just
about any wild animal knew better than to annoy
an adult skunk.
  But this big happy dog was not wild. He lived
with humans. He knew absolutely nothing about
skunks.
  Without even thinking, I turned my back to the
dog. I raised my tail in warning.
  The dog kept coming. Drool was dribbling from one
side of his mouth, and his tongue was
hanging out the other side, and he was having about as good
a time as a dog could have. He was in the woods, and he
had a bunch of little black animals to play with.
  The kits were still lined up. They were watching me
intently. It almost made me want to laugh -- if
I could have. It was a big moment for them -- they were about
to learn why no sensible animal picked on adult
skunks.
  I had no experience in spraying. But the skunk
mind within my own knew exactly what it was it had
to do.
  I aimed.
  I looked over my shoulder to judge the distance.
  I targeted that dog's face, and I fired.
  Just at the instant when I fired, I had the
strange sensation that I knew this dog from somewhere. But
it was too late by then. Way too late.
  At a distance of ten feet, the spray hit with the
accuracy of a laser-guided smart missile.
  ROWR? ROWR?
  The dog stopped dead in his tracks. The look in
his eyes was sheer horror. How could it be? How could
the little black-and-white creature have done this to him?
  And then, I heard something that made me feel
really bad.
"Homer? What's the matter, boy?" Jake
asked. "Oh. Ohhhhh,
Homer backslash
I told you not to follow me into the woods."
  "Rrrreww rrrreeewww rrreeewww," Homer
whined pitifully.
  Jake, Marco, Rachel, and Ax all came
up at a run. Marco was already laughing.
  "You hosed Homer!" Marco giggled. "Cassie
sprayed Homer! Wait, that
is
Cassie, right?"
  I seriously considered pretending to be some other
skunk.
  less-than Sorry, Jakeeagreater-than I said.
  "Man, that is nasty," Rachel commented. "No
offense, Cassie. But I mean . . . gag!
Oh. Ugh."
  less-than Fascinatingeagreater-than Ax said.
less-than That is possibly the worst thing I have
ever smelled. greater-than
  Homer tried to nuzzle up to Jake, but as much as
Jake loves his dog, he was not going for it. "I
don't think so, big guy. I told you to stay
home. But oh no, Homer, you had to come with me.
Now, go home. HOME, boy!"
  Homer decided home might be a better place
than the forest, after all. He trotted off, tail
between his legs.
  less-than like believe the smell is causing me
to become derangedeagreater-than Ax said calmly.
less-than like may have to run away in panic.
greater-than
  "Take me with you," Marco muttered.
"Well, this is perfect," Jake said.
"Wonderful. My parents are going to so
appreciate it when Homer gets back to the house
reeking of skunk. Man, let's move away from this
spot, okay? I mean, jeez, that's just awful."
  We moved away from the scene of the stink, back
toward the den. I led the kits inside, where they
seemed happy to curl up and sleep. It had been
an exciting outing for them.
  I went back outside and demorphed. "Homer
will be okay if you bathe him in tomato juice and
leave him outside for a few days," I said
to Jake. "Sorry."
  "Not as sorry as Homer is," Jake said. "But
we have bigger problems. Look, Cassie, we
came to find you and Tobias. That guy Farrand? Ax
and Marco tapped into the Yeerk computer at the logging
camp."
  "Yeah," Marco grinned. "The Ax-man knows his
way around computers."
  "Yeah, well, we found something out. Farrand
isn't arriving this weekend. He's coming early.
He's coming to cast the final vote on the logging in this
forest. In fact, he'll be here in about an hour."
  LjJe have an hour to make plans and get
ready," Jake said. "One hour. Less, since
we have to get into position."
  "Okay, what do we know?" Marco asked. "We
know this Farrand guy is the one who makes the final
decision on the Yeerks going forward. We know he's
not a Controller or he would have already voted to let the
logging begin."
  "We know the Yeerks won't leave it to chance,"
Rachel said. "He's coming here to the site. They'll
be ready to do an involuntary infestation. They have some
slug sitting in a vat right now, waiting to crawl in
the man's ear."
  less-than They may just try to persuade this
humaneagreater-than Ax suggested. less-than They
prefer voluntary infesta-
tions. And if they can get this human to give them his
vote, they may simply let him go. greater-than
  "So what do we do, attack?" Rachel asked.
"Just storm in and mess everything up?"
  less-than Hey. Shhheagreater-than Tobias
said.
  "What?" Rachel asked him.
  less-than Don't you guys hear that? Even
human ears should hear that. greater-than
  We all listened very intently. Then it came,
carried on the breeze -- the sound of diesel
engines.
  "Probably just our friends the Yeerks, moving their
heavy equipment around. Putting it in nice, neat
rows for the commissioner," Jake said. But then he thought
it over and added, "Tobias? You mind going up
to take a look?"
  Tobias flapped his wings and soared above the
treetops and out of sight.
  "Okay, back to business," Jake said. "One
way or the other, this Farrand guy is the key. If
he votes yes, the Yeerks can log in this forest.
If he votes no, they can't. Not without attracting
way too much attention."
  "Assuming they let Farrand live long enough to vote
no," Rachel said.
  "That's our job, then," I suggested. "We have
to keep Farrand alive, and keep them from making him a
Controller."
  Everyone nodded.
"Too bad I have no idea how to do that," I
admitted.
  Just then, Tobias came rocketing down out of the
sky. less-than They've already startedffgreater-than
he yelled as he shot past to land on a branch.
  "Started what?" I asked.
  less-than The Yeerks. They've started
cutting trees. And they are coming this wayffgreater-than
  "Well," Jake said. "I guess that settles
the question of whether the Yeerks are going to infest this
guy."
  "They don't care what this guy sees when he
gets here," Rachel said. "They don't care about
convincing him. This poor man already has a Yeerk
slug with his name on it."
  less-than You wouldn't believe how fast those
machines can rip through treesffgreater-than Tobias
said, obviously shaken up. less-than They're
cutting trees like a farmer cuts wheat. greater-than
  less-than And we have one of your hours to help this
commissioner caret Ax said. Then, he focused his
two stalk eyes on the skunk burrow. less-than
The small ones are right in the path of the loggers, if
Tobias is corrects
  I expected Marco to make some snide remark
about how no one cared about the skunks at a time like this.
But to my amazement he said, "Hey, no one
messes with the skunks. Those skunks are under
official Animorph protection."
He winked at me and gave me a mocking clenched
fist salute. "Save the skunks, Earth
Sister!"
  Marco is such a pain in the butt. But then, just
when you think he's going to drive you crazy, he'll
come through big time for you.
  "Yeah, these are our skunks," Rachel said.
"No one messes with our skunks."
  "Excuse me? Hello?" Jake interrupted.
"A plan? A plan, please?"
  "Well ..." I began.
  "What?" Jake asked me.
  I shrugged. "If Farrand is the key, we need
to grab the key. Right? Chances are they'll have to turn
the force field off in order to get him into the camp.
That's when we get him away from the Yeerks. No
matter what it takes."
  "Grab Farrand," Marco said. "Simple.
Elegant. And yet, given the Yeerk power in that
compound of theirs, completely suicidal. I'm
surprised at you, Cassie. Usually Rachel's
the one to come up with a totally suicidal plan."
  "You have a better idea?" Jake asked Marco.
  "We could go home and watch TV."
  "I'll take that as a no." Jake rubbed his
hands together. "Okay, then. We snatch this Farrand
guy as soon as he shows up. In the meantime, we have
to slow down those tree-cutting machines."
  Rachel grinned. "Cool."
  I felt sick.
ED
  here was only one way for a person to reach the Yeerk
logging camp by car. They had to drive down the long,
dirt road that the Yeerks had cut through the forest.
  Jake wanted me to go with Tobias and see if
we could spot Farrand coming in.
  Jake made some quick decisions. He, Marco,
Rachel, and Ax took off, leaving me with
Tobias.
  I looked up ruefully at Tobias. "You and
me, I guess."
  less-than l'm always glad to have you
alongeagreater-than Tobias said.
  I began to morph into an osprey. It was my
bird of prey morph, and the only thing I had that could
keep up with Tobias in the air.
"Look, Tobias? This has been bothering me. And
since . . . you know ... I want to get this off my
chest. I'm sorry I got mad at you over the
skunk kit. You were just doing what you had to do," I
said.
  I could feel my bones thinning and hollowing out.
Gray feathers began to paint their patterns
on my arms.
  less-than like could live off food you guys brought
meeagreater-than Tobias said. less-than like don't
haveto
hunt. greater-than
  "Okay, then why do you?" I asked, just before my
mouth mutated into a beak.
  less-than Because I'm not just a human.
I'm also a hawk. Hawks hunt live prey.
Would it be better if I let you do my killing for
me? Is it more moral if I eat a frozen mouse
you get from some supplier8greater-than
  less-than Look, Tobias, I know all about
how nature works. I know about predators and prey.
It's just. . . it's just confusing. I mean, where does
right and wrong come into x8greater-than
  Snowy-white feathers were growing all down my
front, replacing the fabric of my morphing
suit. My feet were becoming pale gray talons.
  less-than like don't know. I guess if I were
running around killing animals I didn't intend
to eat, that would be wrong. But hawks have a right
to live, just as much as a mouse or a skunk.
greater-than
  My human eyes were giving way to the
incredibly amazing hawk vision. There was some color
distortion because these eyes were adapted for seeing through
water. The osprey eats fish. Nature
designed them to see fish, even below the shimmering
surface of a lake or river.
  less-than Ready to fly8greater-than Tobias
asked.
  I flapped my wings a couple of times.
less-than Let's geagreater-than I said, trying
to sound like Rachel.
  Tobias flapped his wings, caught a headwind,
and suddenly shot almost straight up. I opened my
wings and contracted the tireless flying muscles.
Flap, flap, flap, and I also caught the
breeze. I flapped to get above the trees, then a
stronger breeze came up and I soared high.
  It's like stepping on a very fast escalator.
Zoom! I flapped hard, wanting the sensation of
speed.
  Tobias was ahead of me, and as I flew, I
watched him. I watched the incredibly subtle
movements of his wings. He almost seemed to be able
to move individual feathers. For him, the wind was not
invisible. It was a road, as clear as if it was
blacktop.
  As I followed him, I sensed the osprey brain
beneath my own, adjusting and reacting to the wind. My
eyes saw every small detail. They marked each
animal, each hole where an animal might be
hiding. I saw a bright stream, and saw the shadows of
fish flitting through the rocks.
  My osprey had been designed by nature for
this-, flying high and finding prey. Just like To
bias.
We flew up and up. The tops of trees were like
some bumpy lawn beneath us. I could see all of
the Yeerk logging camp. And I could see the mas
sive yellow machines that were slicing through
the trees like hot knives through butter. Already there was
an ugly scar of stumps. A scar that
spread like some terrible disease, eating the for
est away.
Tobias veered right, toward the long, winding
road through the trees. I banked my wings and
went after him.
The stream joined a small river, rushing and
bubbling alongside the road. Through the water, through the
foam and bubbles, I saw the schools
of fish darting. And I could feel the osprey's
brain
considering the situation. Measuring the dis
tances. Calculating the angles. Planning the way
it would skim low over the surface of the water,
then lower its ripping talons at just the perfect
moment to strike. To snatch a fish right out of the
water.
I knew that Tobias was making the same cal
culations as he flew over mice and rats and rab
bits . . . and skunks.
Tobias and I were two superb, beautiful
killers, riding the wind, while our prey cowered
beneath us.
But he was right. We had as much of a right to live as
any of our prey. And we had been designed
by millions of years of evolution to be predators.
  less-than Thereeagreater-than Tobias said.
less-than A Jeep. greater-than
  I looked and saw the vehicle coming down the
road. Then, with my amazingly acute hawk vision,
I saw right through the windows, as though the glass were the
surface of a stream. less-than Three guys.
One driving, and one beside him. There's one guy in the
backseat, and he looks older. greater-than
  less-than Yep. And on the side of the Jeep it
says Dapsen Lumber. My guess is
the driver and the other guy are Controllers. The guy
in the backseat is looking all around like he's very
interested in what's going on. greater-than
  less-than They'll reach the camp in a few
minutes. As soon as we see how this Farrand guy
reacts, we'll know if he's already been made
into a Controller caret I said.
  less-than How's t8greater-than
  less-than The Yeerks have gone ahead with
loggingeagreater-than I explained. less-than lf
Farrand is still a true human, he'll be
massively upset. If he's calm, he's already
one of them. greater-than
  less-than Good pointeagreater-than Tobias
said.
  less-than What do we do? I mean, if he's
a Controller alr8greater-than I asked.
less-than like don't know. I guess we focus
on attacking the logging operation itself. greater-than
  less-than Really? You know what we'd do if he
were a nonhuman Controller8greater-than I asked.
less-than We'd go after him and whatever happened,
happened. Right8greater-than
  less-than You mean, like a termite8greater-than
Tobias asked dryly.
  less-than Yeah. That's exactly what I
meaneagreater-than I said.
  less-than Look, Cassie, you're human.
Homo sapien. Your job is to keep yourself and your
species alive. That's all nature wants from
you. That's the whole point of evolution --
to survive. greater-than He sounded angry.
  We were following the Jeep now, heading back
toward the logging camp. It would happen in just a few
minutes. In just a few minutes Far-rand would see
what was going on, and we would know what he truly
was.
  One of us, or one of
them.
  less-than Surviveeagreater-than I said
flatly.
  less-than That's the law of nature. The
number one law. And humans are part of nature.
greater-than
  less-than Then so are the Yeerks, and we're no
better than them. greater-than
  less-than like guess we'll have to worry about that
one latereagreater-than Tobias said. less-than
Look. greater-than
  The Jeep pulled to a stop in front
of the Yeerk fortress.
  Farrand flung open his door and jumped out. I
could easily see him waving his arms. Even from where
I was I could see the anger on his face.
  Then from the building there came a man.
  And yet... this man felt wrong. Even from up in
the air, I felt a chill that seemed to emanate from
him.
less-than Himeagreater-than
Tobias said.
  I knew instantly what Tobias meant.
  less-than like only saw him once in a human
morph, but it's hmeagreater-than Tobias said.
  Visser Three.
  "isser Three.
  The leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. The only
Yeerk in all the universe to have taken control of an
Andalite body. The only Yeerk in all the
universe with the power to morph.
  It shouldn't have surprised me that he would use his
human morph. It made sense.
  And yet I felt a cold rage deep inside
me at the sight. It wasn't logical, but I
felt it just the same. He was a fake human. He
was using human DNA and human form as part
of his plan to enslave all of humanity.
  less-than Visser Threeeagreater-than I said
to Tobias.
  less-than Yeaheagreater-than he agreed.
less-than He looks so normal. Except for the
fact that he gives you the creeps. greater-than
less-than like have a bad feeling about theagreater-than
I said. less-than like don't think they're going
to wait long. I think they're going to take Farrand
right away. greater-than
  Farrand was walking toward Visser Three, still
waving his hands wildly toward the heavy machinery that was
chewing through the trees. Visser Three was smiling.
It was not a nice smile.
  less-than Where are Jake and the others8greater-than
Tobias wondered.
  less-than Oh, maneagreater-than I said.
less-than This is going to happen real --
greater-than
  All of a sudden, Visser Three lashed out and
slapped Farrand across the face. The commissioner
staggered back. He held a hand to his cheek.
  The two men from the Jeep rushed to grab Farrand's
arms. Farrand was an older man. He was helpless.
  less-than Cassie. Look. That's
either Jake, or there is some other tiger loose in
these woodsffgreater-than
  I looked toward the clearing. Now I could see it
-- a huge, orange-striped tiger was racing toward
Farrand. But he was too far away. It had all
happened too suddenly. Jake wasn't in
position. I didn't even know where the others were.
Probably still morphing.
  less-than lt's up to ueagreater-than I said.
  I adjusted my wings, aimed for Visser Three,
and dove. Down, down, down. Faster and faster,
till my wings were vibrating and my bones were rattling
from the speed.
  The target, Visser Three's human head,
grew larger. Larger. Larger!
  I raked my talons forward, I flared my wings
just enough to keep from overshooting, and I struck. I could
feel my talons bite into his scalp. And then
I was out of there, carried away by my own momentum.
  "Aaarrrgghh!" the Visser yelled.
  At the same instant, Tobias hit one of the
guys from the Jeep. Tobias has more experience
than I do. His aim is better. The guy he hit
would be wearing an eyepatch for the rest of his life.
  less-than Yeee hahffgreater-than
Tobias cried.
  Farrand broke free of his remaining captor and
ran.
  "Get him!" Visser Three yelled. "Full
alert!"
  The uninjured guard went after Farrand. He
caught him easily and knocked him facedown in the
dirt. I saw Jake closing in fast, a
black-and-orange streak.
  Looking past him, I saw that there was a second
battle out by the edge of the forest. Two wolves --
Rachel and Marco -- were on the Controllers
operating the machines. The perimeter guards had come
running, automatic weapons ready.
  Suddenly, fast as a gazelle, Ax ran
to help
Rachel. The nearest guard turned to take a shot.
Ax's tail flashed, and the Controller no longer had
a way to pull a trigger.
  Just beneath me, the other Controller from the Jeep
kicked Farrand, who was struggling to get up. That was
too much for me. I wheeled in the air and went back
for a second run.
  less-than Cassieffgreater-than Tobias cried
a warning.
  The front door of the building flew open and they
began spilling out -- a half dozen
human-Controllers, each armed. And worse ...
far worse, four big Hork-Bajir.
  But it was too late to back off. I was already
diving.
  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
  I heard the first two bullets go whizzing past
me.
  I felt the third bullet hit my wing. It
went straight through my right wing, and I tumbled from the
air, suddenly as ungainly as a chicken.
  I fell. Helpless, I fell.
  WHUMP!
  I slammed hard into the ground.
  Dizzy and confused, I thought I saw Jake
leap toward a Hork-Bajir warrior. But I
couldn't be sure. I was fading. Fading . . .
  My world grew small and dark. I could no longer
see anything far away. I could focus only on the
ground right before me.
An ant was marching by, carrying a dead bug.
Maybe I was just imagining things, as I sank
into unconsciousness. Maybe my brain was making up
things that weren't there. But I could almost have
sworn that the ant was carrying the dead, dried-out husk
of the termite queen.
  And then everything went black.
  L woke up in a sort of large box. It was
dark, but not totally without light. There were small round
holes drilled in the sides of the box.
Airholes. I could see the commissioner, Farrand,
unconscious on the floor beside me.
  He looked old. He was mostly bald and had
hair growing out of his ears. There was blood trickling
from a shallow cut on his forehead.
  "Turn on the perimeter defenses!" Visser
Three yelled.
  I could hear him clearly. I was still an osprey,
but ospreys have good hearing. It was strange, being able
to hear the Yeerk Visser's voice. We always
encountered him when he was in his own
stolen Andalite body. Then he communicated only
in thought-speak.
  "You! And you! Keep your eyes on that box,"
Visser Three snapped. "If anything . . .
anything,
no matter how small tries to get out of there,
destroy it! There's an Andalite bandit in that box,
and there had better be an Andalite bandit in
that box when this is over. Or I'll destroy you
both!"
  Andalite bandit. That was me. Of course, if I
didn't get out of the box, I would have to de-morph
eventually and Visser Three would see the truth --
that I was a human.
  And I would have to demorph soon. My wing felt
like it was on fire. The pain was terrible.
  "Visser! The Andalite bandits have turned the
heavy equipment toward us!" someone yelled.
  "Then turn on the force field!"
  "But ... but Visser... our own people will be trapped
outside of the force field."
  The Visser's voice suddenly became very
quiet. A very dangerous kind of quiet. "Did
I just hear you question my order?"
  "No! No Visser! I'm turning on the force
field!"
  Farrand moaned. He moved his head a little, but then
became quiet again.
Okay, Cassie, think. Think

.
  Obviously, my friends were still fighting. They
must be winning, or the Visser would not turn
on the force field.
  They had seized control of some of the machines and
turned them against this building. As soon as the force
field went up, the heavy equipment would be useless.
  And time was on the side of the Yeerks. Visser
Three would have called in more help. The Bug
fighters full of fresh Hork-Bajir could be landing
any minute. When that happened, all would be lost.
  We were done for.
No! Think, Cassie!
This was the game of predator and prey. This was war.
What was the Yeerks" weakness? What did they need
that I could take away?
  Farrand moaned again.
  Of course!
  I took a deep breath. I began to morph
quickly out of the pain-wracked osprey body, back
to my own human form. Morphing works on DNA, and
DNA is not affected by injuries. My
reconstructed human body would be normal.
  It was cramped in the box, with two humans in
there. I was hunched over Farrand when his eyes
fluttered open. I was already beginning my next
morph. What the man saw was the face of a girl.
But a face that was sprouting luxuriant
black-and-white fur.
His eyes closed again. He would think it was all a
dream. Hopefully.
  "Hah!" I heard Visser Three crow. "The
force field has stopped them!"
  "Visser! The first Bug fighters will land here in
fifteen minutes."
  less-than Got themffgreater-than Visser Three
said. less-than This time, I've got
themffgreater-than
  He was using thought-speak. The Visser had
demorphed.
  I focused all my thoughts. I knew what I
had to do. But it was dangerous. I had to communicate
with the Visser in thought-speak. And I had to do it without
giving him any hint that I was a human.
  No long conversation. Monotone voice. As few
words as possible. No images of any kind.
  less-than Vissereagreater-than I said.
less-than l'll kill the human. greater-than
  That was Visser Three's weakness -- he needed
Farrand alive. That was the pressure point.
By threatening to kill Farrand, I threatened the
Visser's plan.
  See, you can't make a Controller out
of a corpse.
  The Visser instantly understood.
  less-than Everyone in this room! Weapons on the
box! Be prepared on my command to shoot the
An-dalite without hitting the human! It may be in
any sort of wild, deadly animal morph! Do
not let it escape. greater-than
  I got into position. The human me was scared.
But the skunk me was perfectly calm. The skunk
knew it had the ultimate weapon.
  Suddenly, the door of the box flew open.
  Visser Three stood there in his Andalite body,
with his deadly Andalite tail cocked and ready
to strike.
  Beside him, on either side, stood half a dozen
armed human-Controllers. And in between the humans,
towering above them, five huge Hork-Bajir
warriors.
  The human-Controllers leveled their weapons.
  The Hork-Bajir had weapons, too, but they
didn't need them. Hork-Bajir are weapons,
seven feet of ankle blades, knee blades,
elbow blades, forehead spikes, and armored tail
-- like Stegosaurus meets Klingon.
  All this awesome deadly destructive
power stared down at me.
  Visser Three aimed his Andalite stalk eyes
at me. His main eyes were already staring in amusement.
  less-than This is the best you could do, Andalite
scum8greater-than He laughed. less-than Such a
terrifying beast you've morphedffgreater-than He
laughed again.
  He laughed at the chubby, cat-sized black-
and-white animal in the box. Laughed at the way
I stood with my back to him, tail raised, looking
over my shoulder.
  A skunk can fire its scent with amazing
accuracy up to about fourteen feet.
  The Visser was only six feet away.
  less-than Kill xeagreater-than Visser Three
ordered coldly.
  But I fired first.
  A skunk can fire its scent in five to seven
shots.
  I fired once and hit the Visser in the face.
  I fired again and hit the nearest Hork-Bajir
on the left. Again and hit two
human-Controllers. Again and again, all within about
three seconds.
  less-than Aaaarggghhffgreater-than
  "Oheaguheaguheaohhhhh.ohhhh!"
"Heruntgahal!
Stink! Arrrr!"
  The Visser staggered back, blinded and reeling from
the mighty stench. The human-Controllers covered their
mouths with their hands. Some even dropped their weapons.
  The Hork-Bajir I was worried about. I
didn't know if Hork-Bajir even had a sense
of smell.
  Turns out they do.
  Turns out they have an excellent sense of
smell. Too bad.
  The Hork-Bajir were the first to panic. One
fired his Dracon beam wildly.
less-than Don't shoot, you foolsffgreater-than
Visser Three screamed. less-than You'll hit
the human! Or meffgreater-than
  Actually, what they had hit was the floor. A
big, smoldering hole appeared in the wood.
  "Reeking
fernallgahall"
one Hork-Bajir kept bellowing in the odd mix
of English and their own tongue.
  Then the Hork-Bajir lost it completely. They
turned and ran for the door.
  Personally, I didn't see what they were so
excited about.
  It didn't smell bad to me.
  hey ran. The human-Controllers, the
Hork-Bajir, and Visser Three. They ran from
the horror of my skunk smell.
  I waddled as far as the doorway.
  I saw an amazing scene. The force field was still
on. Three massive tree-cutters, diesel
engines roaring and billowing smoke, were straining against the
force field like mad dogs on a leash.
  Inside the force field, the totally demoralized
Yeerk forces.
  Outside the force field, a bizarre zoo -- a
tiger, a grizzly bear, a gorilla. And something
no human zoo had ever held -- an Andalite.
  Jake, Rachel, Marco, and Ax.
  Around the clearing, a handful of human-
Controllers and Hork-Bajir warriors sat
nursing wounds. Some were just lying in the dirt.
  It was a weird and tense scene. If the force
field came down, the tractors and tree-cutters
would hit the building within seconds.
  On the other hand, even though they were reeking of
skunk smell, and staggering and half-blind, the
forces inside the field were stronger than Jake,
Rachel, Marco, and Ax.
  Of course, if the tree-cutters hit the
building, they would probably kill Farrand. The
Yeerks didn't want that. Neither did we, but
Visser Three didn't know that.
  less-than What happened8greater-than Jake
asked me in a private thought-speak whisper.
  less-than like sprayed themeagreater-than I said.
less-than They didn't like it. greater-than
  I'm pretty sure tigers can't normally
smile. But I could have sworn Jake did.
  Jake must have privately told Ax what
happened. Ax was the only one we could trust to speak
to Visser Three. He was the only true
An-dalite.
  less-than Vissereagreater-than Ax said.
less-than lt seems to me that we have a standoff.
greater-than
  less-than Don't try to bargain with me,
fooleagreater-than Visser Three sneered.
less-than like have forces on the way. greater-than
  Ax nodded. less-than like wonder how your
Blade ship will smell after you spread your newly
acquired stench through x8greater-than
less-than The smell ... it will go
awayeagreater-than the Visser said.
  "Visser, my human host has a memory of
-" one of the human-Controllers began to say.
  The Visser's tail blade snapped through the
air. It pressed against the human-Controller's
throat. A twitch would send the Controller's head
flying.
  less-than Do not interrupt meeagreater-than the
Visser said calmly. less-than You were
saying8greater-than he asked Ax.
  less-than The smell would go away in about seven
Earth days ... if you were in the open aireagreater-than
Ax said calmly. less-than ln a spacecraft?
Airtight, closed up, cramped? You'll never
lose the smell. Ever. However. . . thanks
to Andalite chemical technology there is a way
to remove the stench. Let the human Farrand go
free. He's unconscious and hasn't seen what
you are. Let him go, we'll give you the secret of
neutralizing the stench, and we all walkaway.
greater-than
  less-than l'll dispose of you myfffgreater-than the
Visser shrieked. less-than
Andalitefilthffgreater-than
  less-than Visser, we both know how impossible
it is to remove a smell once it gets into a
spacecraft. You would need a full refitting at
a major space dock. Your Blade ship would be
intolerable. greater-than
  Visser Three just stood there. Just stood there and
stared. His stalk eyes drooped a little.
less-than Get the humaneagreater-than he muttered
to his Hork-Bajir.
  "Visser..." one Hork-Bajir moaned,
clearly reluctant to go back where the smell was
even stronger.
  less-than This has not been a good day for
meeagreater-than Visser Three said. less-than
Would you really like to feel as bad as I d8greater-than
  The two Hork-Bajir went back inside and very
quickly reappeared, dragging Farrand. They dropped
him in the dirt.
  less-than Have one of your men drive him to the
nearest human hospital. When he is safe, we
will tell you the secret. And no tricks. We'll
be watching caret Ax rolled his stalk eyes
skyward. Visser Three followed the direction of
his gaze, and saw, high in the sky, a bird of
prey with a rust-red tail.
  less-than You do realize that one day I will have you
alleagreater-than Visser Three said. less-than
With all your clever tricks, I will still find you.
greater-than
  less-than No, I do not think seagreater-than
Ax said. less-than We are sure to smell you
coming. greater-than
T,
  he Yeerks drove Farrand to the hospital.
Once we knew he was safe, Ax told Visser
Three how a certain kind of juice would help get
rid of the skunk smell.
  The Visser was still screaming when we disappeared into the
woods.
  The next day, Jake, Marco, Rachel, Ax,
and I were able to bring the skunk mother back to her den.
She waddled inside, and a few minutes later,
waddled back out followed by Joey, Johnnie,
Marky, and C.j.
  They ignored the four humans and the An-dalite
completely. After all, mother skunk was back with her
kits. And mother skunk wasn't afraid of anything.
"They grow up so fast," Rachel said, as they
shuffled and snuffled and waddled past us in single
file.
  "I guess the real mother skunk will give them
different names," Marco said. He was joking. I
think.
  "Well, anyway, the forest is safe for baby
skunks now," Jake said.
  Jake had morphed a housefly to spy on
Far-rand in the hospital. The commissioner was fine.
The first thing he did when he regained full
consciousness was make a phone call to say that he was
voting against logging in the forest.
  In fact, according to Jake, Farrand swore he'd
never, ever even listen to another word from Dapsen
Lumber. And there was a good chance he'd press
charges.
  It also seemed, according to Farrand, that even the
animals of the forest had risen up against the loggers.
He claimed that he himself had been visited by the spirit
of a giant skunk with the eyes of a human girl.
  "Have a good life, little skunks," Marco said to the
skunk family. Tiny, furry little masters of the
forest.
  Everyone was smiling and looking pretty pleased with
themselves. But I was still confused.
  As we walked toward home back through the
forest, Jake hung back with me, letting
the others move ahead.
  "You don't seem all that happy," Jake said.
"You miss being a skunk mommy?"
  I smiled. "No. I mean, yes, a little. But
that's not it."
  "So? So what's bothering you?"
  I shrugged. "Nothing makes sense to me.
Tobias eats one of the skunk kits, then he
helps save the rest. I kill the termite queen
to save myself and my friends, then I feel bad about it.
But when it came down to it again, I went after Visser
Three without hesitation. One minute I was a rat
being chased by guys with sticks, the next minute I'm
bringing dead mice to Tobias, who's guarding
skunks he would normally have tried to eat. Somehow
it's part of the same big system. How does it all
make sense?"
  Jake looked like he was sorry he started the
conversation. "Urn ... boy, Cassie, I don't
know."
  "Okay, just tell me this. Am I a part of
nature, so I should just live by the laws of nature,
kill to eat, kill or be killed? Or am I
something different because I'm a human?"
  We walked in silence while Jake
thought it over. I felt sorry for him. I know
he'd rather have been discussing Spiderman versus
Batman with Marco.
  "Well, I guess you're both," Jake said
at last.
"I mean, you are the person who got rid of the
termite queen. You're also the person who went
out of her way to save a bunch of skunks. Just
like Tobias ate a skunk kit one day, then saved
them the next."
"That's not much help," I said. "That just
means humans are kind of in-between
-
still
partly wild animals, doing whatever it takes
to survive, and partly . . . partly I don't know
what.
Maybe something more than the other animals."
"Well, I know one thing. All the animals take
care of themselves. But only one animal has the
intelligence and the power to help save all the
other species."
I nodded. "You're pretty smart sometimes,
Jake," I said.
"Just sometimes?"
"You're right. Only one animal can help to
save all the other animals. Only humans can do
that. Of course, we have to save ourselves first." I
sighed. "It's still too complicated."
I saw a shadow flash overhead. I looked up
and saw Tobias. He dropped down into the trees
and reappeared on a branch just up the trail.
"Hi, Tobias," I called up to him.
less-than Hi, Cassie. Hello everyone.
Hello, hello,
hello
He was definitely feeling pretty smug about
something.
"What's up, Bird-boy?" Marco asked him.
  less-than l've just been checking on our friends at
the logging camp. They now have two entire
truck-loads of juice. They've made trip after
trip for juice. They dug out a big pit in the
ground and made a kind of swimming pool filled with the
stuff. Visser Three's been in it most of the night
and all this morning. Judging by the way everyone is
staying back, I'm guessing he still stinks.
Pluseagreater-than Tobias added with a slightly
evil laugh, less-than the Visser is now a very
lovely, attractive shade of purple.
greater-than
  "Gee, that's too bad," Rachel said. "I
feel so sorry for him."
  less-than Soon he may begin to suspect the
trutheagreater-than Ax said.
  "Think maybe we should have told him the truth? That
it's tomato juice, not
grape
juice that washes away skunk smell?" I
asked.
  We all looked at each other, and broke up
laughing at the same moment.
  "Nah, I didn't think so," I said.
Don't miss

The AndrQid
confHave
his
  larco. What are you doing8greater-than
  It was Ax. I scampered down off the beetle,
feeling like I'd been caught doing something wrong. The
beetle ran on, relieved to have escaped. If
beetles can feel relief.
  less-than Nothing. I was just letting the spider be
a spider. greater-than It was a pretty
good answer, I thought. less-than like guess its
instincts kind of carried me away. greater-than
  less-than Marco, I morphed the identical
spidereagreater-than Ax said.
  I felt a wave of guilt and shame suddenly
swell up inside me. less-than Ax, it was just a
cockroach. Who cares? Come on, we have a job
to do. greater-than
  less-than Sometimes humans worry
meeagreater-than Ax said. . . . less-than like think
it's this way. greater-than He took the lead and I
saw him moving in front of me, a big spider
scurrying effortlessly on his eight legs.
  I fell in behind him. I was calm now. The
incredible, insane rush of the chase was over. Now the
spider was just a tool I was using.
Suddenly, from the sky ... something fell toward me!
  It landed right between Ax and me. A grasshopper,
three, four times our size. It looked like an
elephant.
  Then . . . THWAP! It fired its huge hind
legs and shot into the air. It disappeared as quickly as
it had arrived.
  We raced on through the forest, covering the two
hundred feet between us and the edge of the party.
I sensed the nearness of humans. I "heard"
vibrations that might have been speech, but the voices were
too garbled to make any sense out of.
  less-than Hey, Marco, Ax, you guys
around8greater-than
  It was Jake's thought-speak voice.
  less-than Yes, Prince Jakeeagreater-than
Ax answered. less-than We are here.greater-than
  less-than We're not pretty, but we're
hereeagreater-than I added.
  less-than Cool. I'm not exactly handsome
myself. I'm a fly morph. Haven't found our
boy Erek yet, though. greater-than
  Something massive and slow appeared in the air above
me. I scampered sideways. It landed slowly with a
loud WHOOOMPHHH!
  A human foot. A shoe. Nike.
  less-than You know, I'd been worrying someone
might step on meeagreater-than I said. less-than
But humans are so slow. greater-than
less-than Be careful anywayeagreater-than Jake
said. less-than Let me know if you find Erek.
greater-than
  less-than like don't know how I'm supposed
to recognize hmeagreater-than I complained.
less-than These spider eyes aren't good at seeing
distances. And human heads seem to be way up in the
clouds, from where I'm crawling down here.greater-than
  But Ax and I went on, skittering swiftly through
a forest of huge, slow-moving legs and feet.
  Then, right in front of me, I saw it.
  It looked like a bare human foot. Except that
I could see through the skin. Through the toenails. With
my eight strange, distorted spider eyes I could
see right through the electronic haze of the hologram.
  I could see what was beneath the hologram.
  I saw what looked like interlocking plates of
steel and ivory. The "foot" had no toes. In
fact, it wasn't shaped like a human foot. More like
a paw.
  It was not human. And everything in my tingling,
buzzing, hyper spider's senses told me it was not
alive.
  less-than Ax8greater-than
  less-than Yes, I see it. greater-than
  less-than What is x8greater-than
  less-than like do not know. greater-than
less-than lt looks like a machine, almost. Like it's
made out of metal. greater-than
  less-than Yeseagreater-than Ax said.
less-than like think your old friend Erek may be an
android. greater-than
























 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
