PHS
The Visitor
K.a. Applegate
AN APPLE
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First Scholastic printing, June 1996
For Michael
  M y name is Rachel. I won't tell you
my last name. None of us will ever tell you our last
names. Whenever I do use a last name, it's a
fake. Sorry, but that's the way it has to be. And
we won't tell you the name of our town, or our
school, or even what state we are in. If I
told you my last name, the Yeerks would be able to find
my friends and me. And if they ever find us, it will be the
end.
  They might kill us. Or worse.
  Yes, there really is something worse than death.
I've seen it. I've heard the cries of
despair from those doomed to be slaves of the Yeerks.
I've watched as the evil gray slugs writhe and
squeeze in through the ear and take over what was a
free human being.
  There are five of us. Just five: Jake,
Cassie, Marco, Tobias, and me. Marco
came up with a name for us, for what we are now. He
called us
Animorphs.
I guess that's as good a name as any for what we
are. Mostly, I still just feel like a nor mal kid,
you know? But I guess normal kids don't turn
into elephants or bald eagles. And normal
kids don't spend their free time fighting to save the
world from the nightmares called Yeerks.
  That day, the sun was bright. It warmed the earth
below us. Warm air rose in an invisible bub ble,
a thermal. The thermal pushed up beneath our wings and we
circled higher and higher and higher, till it almost
seemed we could touch space.
  Somewhere up there in cold space, up in orbit,
was the Yeerk mother ship. Perhaps right over our heads.
  The Yeerks were parasites. In their natural
state they were just big slugs who lived in a sludgy
pond called a Yeerk pool. But the Yeerks have the
power to take over other bodies. They have enslaved
many races throughout the galaxy -- the Taxxons, the
Hork-Bajir, and others. And now they had come
to Earth, looking for more bodies to control.
  Who was there to try and stop them? Well, off
in space, there were the Andalites. But the An
dalites were far away, and it would take them a long
time to come to rescue the people of Earth.
  On Earth, no one knew of the Yeerks. No one
but five kids who were having fun being birds and
riding the thermals.
  I looked over at my friends. Some were a little way
below, some were higher up. Jake was flap ping his wings
a little more than the rest of us. He had adopted a
falcon morph. Falcons don't soar quite as
well as hawks or eagles.
  Tobias was the smoothest flyer. That was partly because
red-tailed hawks are natural acrobats.
Partly it was because Tobias had much more practice
flying than the rest of us.
  Too much practice.
  less-than 0kay, Tobias, you were right. This
is the coolest thing in the worldeagreater-than I said.
  less-than Want to try a dive? It's
amazingeagreater-than he said.
  I wasn't exactly sure that I wanted
to dive, but what could I say? I don't usually
turn down a challenge. So I said, less-than
Sure. greater-than
  less-than Follow me. greater-than
  Tobias bent his wings back and plummeted toward
the ground like a bullet.
  I tucked my wings back and went after him.
  The ground came rushing up at me.
  I was falling! Falling, with nothing at all to stop
me from splatting right into the ground!
It was like a nightmare.
  We were going like sixty miles an hour, as fast
as a speeding car. Sixty miles an hour, aiming
right for the ground.
  But even though it was scary, it was also way
cool.
  Forget surfing. Forget skateboarding. Forget
snowboarding. You haven't had a thrill till you've
ridden the thermals a mile into the air and then gone
hurtling straight down at maximum speed.
  Air streamed past, just like when you open the car window
and you're going really fast. It was like being in the middle
of a hurricane. The leading edge of my wings was
battered and vi brating. I felt my tail making
dozens of tiny adjustments, moving a single feather
one way or the other to keep me pointed straight.
But one wrong move and I could have tumbled end over
end. At this speed, if I suddenly tumbled I
feared I could break a wing. A broken wing this high
up was a death sentence.
  less-than Tobias! I just realized something.
greater-than
  less-than What8greater-than
  less-than This isn't like being an elephant.
If I got in trouble as an elephant I could
morph back to my human body. But I'm a long
way up. If I morphed back to my human
body . . . greater-than I didn't finish the
sentence. But I suddenly had this vision of me,

real me,
Rachel, dropping like a stone toward the hard ground
below.
  I guess Tobias could sense the fear that was
building in me.
  less-than Let the eagle do the
flyingeagreater-than Tobias advised. less-than
Relax and let the eagle's mind do the thinking. She
knows what she's doing. greater-than
  less-than I'm glad one of us
doeseagreater-than I said nervously. It's strange
when you're in a morph. You have the animal's brain
in with your own. Usually you can control that animal
intelligence. But not always. And sometimes you have to learn
to let go, to let the animal take charge.
  I relaxed. Instantly the vibration lessened.
I felt more stable. The eagle was in charge and
Tobias was right: The eagle knew how to fly.
  Then, to my amazement, I saw something go zipping
right past us, faster than either me or To bias. It was
Jake. His peregrine falcon's smaller wings
made it harder for him to float on the thermals . But
those same wings made him unbelievably fast in
diving. It was almost like Tobias and I were standing still.
less-than Yaaaaaah ha haffgreater-than
Jake yelled in our heads.
  I would have smiled, if I'd had a mouth. Jake
is like me. He loves excitement and adventure and
being a little crazy. Maybe we're so alike because
we're cousins.
Also, we're both a little competitive, I guess.
It bothered me that he was a faster diver than I
was. Just like it bothered him that I could soar better.
I guess that sounds ridiculous, huh?
Zzzziiinnnngggg!
  Something went right by my head.
  less-than You hear t8greater-than Tobias
asked.
  less-than Yeah, I sure dideagreater-than I
said. less-than What was x8greater-than
  less-than like don't know. greater-than
  Instinctively, I pulled up out of the dive,
strain ing every muscle in my wings as I opened them,
and felt the shock of wind resistance. It was like opening
a parachute.
  The rest followed my lead. We were still a few
thousand feet up, but much closer to the ground than we
had been.
Zziiiinnnnngggg!
  I felt something go right through my tail
feathers.
  less-than Hey, someone down there is shooting at
uffgreater-than I said.
  less-than like can see themeagreater-than Cassie
said. She and Marco had joined up with us. They had
both morphed the same osprey. It was hard to tell
them apart because you can't really tell
where
thought-speech comes from. less-than Two guys, over
in the woods. They have a rifle. greater-than
  less-than like can't believe thffgreater-than I was
really mad. less-than I'm
an endangered species. I'm a bald eagle!
What's the matter with those creeps8greater-than
  less-than He's getting ready to shoot
ageagreater-than Marco reported. less-than like can
see him taking aim. greater-than
  less-than As soon as you see the flash of the
rifle, dodge hard rightffgreater-than I yelled.
  A normal eagle or hawk or falcon would not
have been able to figure that out. But we weren't just
raptors. We still had our human intelligence.
There are times to let the animal take over. There
are other times when that superior human intelli gence
comes in handy.
  less-than There! They firedffgreater-than Jake
yelled.
  Instantly I turned a sharp right. The bullet
went whizzing by harmlessly.
  less-than You know what? I don't think I like
those guyseagreater-than Tobias said.
  Tobias has special reasons for disliking
anyone who would shoot at a bird.
  less-than Me neieagreater-than I agreed.
less-than like have an idea. greater-than
  I explained what I wanted to do and the five of us
flew off, out of range of the shooters. When we were
far enough away, we went into a steep dive, down,
down, faster and faster toward the trees.
  I thought I was scared, diving from high up. Now
I was diving at lower altitude, aiming di
rectly at the trees. This was a whole new level
of terror. With my eagle's eyes I could see the
bark on the trees. I could see
ants
on the bark of the trees. It was like those trees were right
in front of us.
  I hoped the eagle knew when to pull out of the
dive. If I slammed into one of those trees at
sixty miles an hour, I was Spam.
  Then, at just the right split second, like a
perfectly trained squadron of fighter jets, we
opened our wings and swooshed into the trees.
  Unbelievable!
less-than Ah haaaahffgreater-than
I heard Marco yell. less-than like don't know
if that was fun or just insaneffgreater-than
  It was like some video-game nightmare. We kept
most of the speed from the dive and now we were zooming through
the trees so fast that tree trunks were just a brown
blur all around us.
Tree! Bank left.
Tree! Bank right.
Tree!
Dozens of feathers made the slightest individual
adjustments. Muscles in my wings trimmed the
angle of attack a millimeter one way, a
millimeter back.
Tree! Tree! Treetreetreetreetree!
less-than Yaaaaaaaaahffgreater-than
I yelled, half from terror and half from the total,
out-of-control thrill of it.
  In and out. Around and through. Zoom.
ZOOM!
  Suddenly, there they were, just ahead in a
clearing. Two teenage creeps sitting in the back
of a pickup truck. One guy had a blond
ponytail.
The other one wore a baseball cap. They were a
hundred yards away, like being all the way down a
football field, but my eagle eyes were so good
I could count their eyelashes.
  The guy with the ponytail had the rifle. The other
guy was drinking a beer. They were still scanning the
skies, looking for us.
  Guess what, morons? I thought as we raced
at them. We're not up
there
anymore. We're right here . . .
  In ...
  Your. . .
  FACE!
This
ey didn't even have enough time to look surprised before
we struck.
As a bald eagle, I was the biggest of the five of
us. I could carry the heaviest load.
I raked my talons forward.
I opened them wide.
"Tsseeeeeer!"
Tobias's hawk let loose an intimidating
shriek.
My talons hit the gun barrel and closed on it.
Tobias slashed the ponytail guy's head with his
own talons. Ponytail shouted in pain and
surprise and loosened his grip on the rifle.
"Hey!" the second guy yelled.
Zoom!
I was out of there with the rifle in my
talons.
With the additional weight of the rifle, it was a struggle
getting any altitude.
  "That bird has your gun, Chester! And that other
one stole my beer!"
  I glanced over and saw Marco. At least I
think it was Marco. He had the beer can in his
talons, half-crumpled.
  less-than They're way too young to be
drinkingeagreater-than Marco said in his most parent-like
voice.
  I heard the ponytail guy complaining down below.
"That ain't right. It ain't right that no bird should
take my rifle like that."
  I caught a little breeze and gained just enough
altitude to get above the trees. But I was
having a hard time. My wings were beating the still, dead
air of the woods and not getting very much lift. I
scraped the top of a tall pine tree and emerged from
the woods. Still flapping hard to carry the weight of the
rifle, I made it out to ward the beach, over the low
cliffs at the water's edge.
  The blessed thermals were there. They lifted me up,
up and out over the water. I relaxed, letting the
warm wind carry me higher.
  I dropped the rifle about a mile out in the
ocean. I figured any jerk who would shoot at a
bald eagle didn't need a gun. Marco
dropped the beer with amazing precision right into a trash
barrel. He looked as proud as he would have if
he'd just thrown the winning basket in the NBA
championship.
  less-than lt's been almost two
hourseagreater-than Cassie warned us as we lazily
drifted back toward shore.
  Two hours is the time limit. If you stay in a
morph for more than two hours, you're trapped.
  Forever.
  There's an old, run-down church no one uses
anymore not far from the beach. It has a bell tower,
although the bell is gone. We flew there.
That's where we had started from. Our clothes and shoes were
still piled there.
  Four pairs of shoes for the five of us.
  Cassie, still in her osprey body, peered down
at her watch lying on the floor. less-than
Good. An hour and a half. We should try never
to go over an hour and a half. greater-than
  We began to morph back into our human
bodies.
  Morphing takes concentration. When you're going from
human to animal, it's harder. You really have
to focus. But going back to human is easier.
  I focused on my human self. I formed a
pic ture of myself in my mind -- tall, thin, with
blonde shoulder-length hair. I focused
especially on the hair, because I didn't like my
last haircut. It was uneven at the bottom. Not
that it
mat tered. I just wished I could do something about the
hair when I morphed. Unfortunately, morph
ing doesn't work that way.
  The changes began quickly. The feathers that covered
me began to melt. They ran together like hot wax. In
some places when my skin reap peared, it would have this
beautiful feather pattern for a few
seconds.
  My yellow bill sucked back into my mouth
to become white teeth. That part sort of itched. It
made me want to grind my teeth a few times.
  My lips grew out around my teeth. My eyes
went from pale gold to my normal blue. My
legs grew quite a bit, from about three inches to nor
mal size.
  I looked over at Jake and saw the same things
happening to him. Let me just tell you -- watch ing
someone morph is not a pretty sight. It's the
kind of thing that would give you screaming nightmares if
you didn't know it was going to be all right.
  When Cassie morphs, she always does it kind
of artistically. Like when she changes into a horse,
she does it so it doesn't look totally
creepazoid -- she has a natural talent for
morph ing. If there is such a thing. The rest of us
just let it happen however it happens. The results
can be disturbing.
I happened to see Marco at the moment where his
hairy boy legs came shooting out of this little bird
body and I yelped. "Yahh! Gross."
  "Ay, nyew donk luk so good yourself, Rachel."
  His mouth was morphing even as he spoke.
So the first few words were garbled and the last were normal.
I think what he said was "Hey, you don't look so
good yourself, Rachel." He was probably right. I was
glad I didn't have a mirror.
  My tongue grew fat in my mouth. My
eyesight became faded and dim. The eagle's mind
evaporated, leaving me all alone in my head.
My wings became arms. My talons became
toes. The scaly yellow eagle legs became my
own legs, only they were still all scaly at first.
  "Nice look, chicken legs," Marco said.
"Do those come in extra crispy, too?"
  I smiled at him. "You're not one to talk,
Marco." I pointed down at the floor. See, his
legs had changed back, but he still had huge
osprey talons instead of feet.
  As my skin began to appear, so did my morph
ing outfit. Fortunately, after a few tries, we
had all learned to morph some very minimal clothing.
Usually nothing more than skintight workout clothes or
leotards. Not enough to go walking around in, but enough to keep
us all from dying
of embarrassment when we morphed in front of each
other.
  I checked out my friends. They were mostly
normal again, with just a few remaining hints that they'd
been birds a minute earlier.
  Jake is kind of a big guy, strong-looking, with
brown hair and serious, dark eyes -- although at the
moment, his eyes were shining with excitement. Sometimes being
in a morph just totally breaks you out. Jake was a
lizard once, and he still hasn't gotten over the
fact that he ate a live spider. But I guess
he enjoyed being a falcon, be cause he was babbling
on and on about how great it was.
  "That was so absolute!" he said. "It's like now,
being back in a human body, I feel like I'm
handicapped or something. I feel like I'm glued to the
ground."
  "And blind," Cassie agreed. "Human eyes
are so lame for seeing things far away."
  She grinned and spread her wings. She had
managed to keep her wings till the very end. Now she
looked like some strange angel. Oddly, the look
worked for her. The osprey's five-foot, gray-
and-white wings were incredibly cool.
  "Do you think you could fly?" Jake asked her.
He looked a little awestruck.
  Cassie laughed. "No, Jake. This body
weighs
about eighty pounds. These wings aren't built for that
kind of weight."
  She morphed her wings into arms in about three
seconds and laughed gaily.
  Marco shook his head. "Great. When
we
morph we look like some mad scientist's genetic
experiment gone totally crazy. And Cassie gets
to look like an angel."
  Cassie and I have been friends for a long time, although
to look at us, you wouldn't think we'd hang out together.
Cassie is casual to the extreme. The girl just
doesn't care about clothing or style. I swear she
would wear overalls to a wed ding if someone didn't
stop her.
  Cassie lives on a farm and her whole
family is massively into animals. Her dad
used the barn to run the Wildlife Rehabilitation
Clinic, which is a kind of hospital for injured
animals. It's always full of birds and skunks
and opossums and coyotes and every other animal you can
think of.
  Cassie's mom is a vet, too. She works
at The Gardens, this huge zoo and amusement park.
So maybe Cassie was just born with an
instinct for understanding animals. All I know is
she's always finished morphing while the rest of us are
still looking like creepy half-human, half-animal
mon sters.
  As for me, well, it's not that I'm Miss
Fashion or whatever, but I do like nice clothes.
I guess
that, plus the way I look, makes a lot of people
think I'm stuck-up or something. People do think I'm
pretty. But to me that's just an accident, you know?
Looks are not the important thing. It's what's in
your head that counts, and that's what I concentrate on.
  Of course that's another area where Cassie and I
are a little different. I guess she would say,
"No, it's what's in your heart that counts." She's
a natural peacemaker. If there's ever a hassle
within the group, it's usually me and Marco that caused
it, and Cassie who got us all calmed down.
  "Personally, I'm glad to be back to my
regular body," Marco said. "The flying part is
great, but it's not a good idea to be able to see that
well."
  "Why?" Jake asked.
  "Look, Jake, how many times have you been walking
around the mall or whatever, and you'll see a
girl who seems good-looking from far off, but when you
get closer it turns out she's a skank? I
mean, if you could see this well all the time -- his
  "Excuse me?" I interrupted. "I'm sure
I didn't hear you say what I thought you just said."
  "I wasn't being sexist," Marco protested.
"It goes both ways. See, from far off, I
look taller than I am."
  Marco is a little self-conscious about being
short. He has long brown hair and a dark com
plexion, and most girls think he's really cute.
But being small bothers him.
  "Your problem isn't with people seeing you too well,"
I said. "It's with people hearing you too well. You
look
like a fairly smart guy. Then you open your mouth. .
. ."
  Marco just grinned. Marco lives to annoy people.
He really is extremely smart and basically
nice, underneath it all. It's just that the boy loves
to provoke people.
  Marco and Jake are best friends, even though
Jake is serious and thoughtful and always trying to do
what's right, while Marco is sarcastic and
temperamental and is the most reluctant of the
Animorphs. Marco still thinks we should just give up
the battle against the Yeerks and try to stay alive.
But with Marco you never know if he
really
believes that, or is just saying it to be contrary.
  "Well, let's get out of here," Jake
suggested. "I have homework to do."
  "Me too," I said. "And I have gymnastics
class this afternoon and I'm totally unprepared."
  Cassie sighed. "It's such a drag. The
chores and the homework all come rushing back as soon
as we change back into our boring human selves."
  As soon as she said it, Cassie bit her
tongue. She cast a regretful look to Tobias.
  See, while all of us had changed back,
Tobias
had not. Tobias was still a hawk. Tobias, who had
once had unruly blond hair and eyes that seemed
hurt and tender and hopeful all at once.
  Tobias had been trapped while trying to es
cape from the hellish nightmare of the Yeerk pool.
He had stayed more than two hours in that morph.
  We had all returned to our human forms, but
Tobias was still a hawk.
  Tobias will always be a hawk.

  Chapter 3
  We all walked most of the way home to gether,
feeling worn out. The flying was a little tiring. And
morphing always takes a lot out of you.
  Tobias flew high overhead. He didn't
really participate in the conversation. It's hard for
him. See, he can think-speak to us and we can understand
him, but when we're in human shape we can only
talk in the normal way. He can't hear us unless
he's close by, and he can't be close and still fly.
  "This morphing thing would be so excellent if it
weren't for the whole thing with the Yeerks," Marco was
saying. "I mean, if it were just normal, we could
really use these powers."
"To do what? Fight crime?" Jake asked.
  Marco looked at him with a mixture of pity and
amusement. "Fight crime? Who are you,
Spiderman his I'm talking show business.
Movies! TV shows! I could go on Letterman.
I could be an entire episode of Stupid Pet
Tricks all by myself."
  "You're right," I said, batting my eyes so he
would know I was kidding, "you already have the stupid part
down."
  "We'd be hot in horror movies," Cassie
said.
  "Or how about as stuntmen?" Jake suggested.
"One of us could jump off the tallest building and it
would be totally realistic. Then we just morph into a
bird on the way down and fly away."
  "Now I'm
really
mad at the Yeerks," Marco said. "They're
getting in the way of my showbiz career. I could be a
millionaire. I could be trad ing funny lines
with Dave. I could have beautiful Hollywood
supermodels all over me."
  "Uh-huh," I said, with a wink at Cassie.
"Lots of women love animals. But sooner or
later you'd have to change back into your actual self,
Marco. And then, boom, they'd be outta there."
  We walked along the boulevard that goes by the
construction site. It's this huge area of half-
finished buildings with rusted earthmovers and cranes and
backhoes scattered around. I guess it was
originally going to be a shopping center, but for some
reason they never finished it.
We didn't take the shortcut
through
the con struction site, like we would have in the old
days, though. See, it was at this construction site that
we saw the Andalite prince's damaged fighter
land. It was here that the Andalite warned us of the Yeerk
conspiracy and gave us our special powers.
  It was also here that we saw the Yeerk com mander,
Visser Three, murder the Andalite prince.
Visser Three is the only one of the Yeerks who
has our same power to morph. Visser Three is
an Andalite-Controller, meaning he has an An
dalite body. A human-Controller is a
Yeerk with a human body. A Taxxon-Controller
is a Yeerk with a Taxxon body. You get the
idea.
  Visser Three is the only Yeerk to ever
capture an Andalite body. So he's also the
only Yeerk who can morph.
  That night at the construction site, he morphed
into some creature from a far-off planet, a huge,
horrible monster. And then he took the Andalite and
. . .
  You know what? I really don't want to talk about
that. . . . You'll have to ask Jake.
  We all fell silent as we passed by the site.
Then I noticed that Cassie had stopped
walking and was just standing there. I went back to her and
realized that she was crying.
  "Are you okay?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No. Are you?"
  I sighed. Flying around in the sky had been a
wonderful distraction. But my head was still full of
awful memories. "I guess not," I admitted.
"Last night I had a terrible nightmare about the
Yeerk pool. I was back down there. Down there in
that vast open cave. And I was hearing the screams and
cries of the people being dragged to the pool."
  Cassie nodded. "You know what's worse than the
screams? The way they stop screaming once the
Yeerk is in their heads. Once they've become
Controllers. Then you know they are slaves again.
Lost."
  "Like Tom."
  We both turned. It was Jake. He and Marco
had seen us stop and had come back.
  Tom is Jake's brother. Tom is a
human-Controller -- a human being enslaved by a
Yeerk in his head. We'd found the Yeerk pool and
gone down into that hell to get Tom. We'd failed.
We'd barely escaped with our lives.
  Cassie put her arm around Jake's
waist. "Someday we'll save Tom," she said.
  Jake kind of stroked Cassie's head. I
guess he got embarrassed, because he instantly
pulled away. Cassie didn't mind. She knows
how guys are about showing their true feelings.
  I looked across the construction site and saw
Tobias come fluttering down out of the sky. I
couldn't see where he landed, because that part of the site is
hidden from the road, but I knew right where he was --
on the spot where the Andalite had died. Somehow, in
those brief moments when the Andalite had been with us,
Tobias had formed some kind of special bond with
him.
  We started walking again.
  "We need to find another way to get at them,"
I said angrily. It bothered me, imagining
Tobias back in that maze of never-finished
buildings mourning for the Andalite.
  "Get at who?" Marco asked suspiciously.
  "The French, Marco," I said sarcastically.
"Who do you think? The Yeerks, duh."
  "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Marco said. "We tried
that, remember? We went down into the Yeerk pool
after them and got our butts kicked. Yeerks ten,
humans zero."
  "So you figure you should just give up?" I de
manded.
  "We lost one game," Jake said. "You don't
quit the sport just because you lose one game."
  "Some game," Marco said bitterly. "Some
sport."
  "We didn't lose, anyway," I said. The
others looked at me like I was crazy. "Look,"
I explained, "I know we didn't save Tom,
and we sure
didn't stop the Yeerks. But we gave them a rea
son to be afraid, at least."
  "Yeah, they're terrified of us. Visser Three
probably can't sleep at night, he's so
worried about five kids," Marco said
sarcastically. "Look, Visser Three doesn't
think we're a threat. He thinks we're lunch."
  "He doesn't know who -- or what -- we
are," I pointed out. "The Yeerks are convinced that
we're Andalite warriors because they know that we can
morph. And they know that we found the Yeerk pool, and
infiltrated it, and took out a few of their
Taxxons and Hork-Bajir while we were at it.
I think they're probably a little nervous, at
least."
  Jake nodded. "Rachel's right. But just the same,
I don't think we want to try to go back to the
Yeerk pool. Besides . . . the door is gone."
  We all stopped and stared at him.
  He shrugged. "Look, I just wanted to see if
the door still worked, okay? Just in case. But it's not
there anymore."
  The door leading down to the Yeerk pool had been
hidden in the janitor's closet of our school.
There were dozens of doors to the underground Yeerk
pool, spread all over the city, but this was the only
one we knew about.
  "So we find another way to get at them," I
said. "We can follow Tom again, when it's time
for his Yeerk to return to the Yeerk pool." Yeerks
have to go to the pool every three days. They drain out of their
hosts" heads and soak up Kan drona rays.
  "No. We leave Tom out of it," Jake said
firmly. "If we call attention to him in any
way, the Yeerks may decide he's trouble for them.
They may de cide to kill him."
  Marco gave me a sour look. "This is what you
want to keep doing? Risking our lives and the lives
of everyone we know? For what?"
  "For freedom," Cassie said simply.
  Marco didn't have a smart answer to that.
  "There's still Chapman," Jake said.
  Chapman is our assistant principal. He's
also one of the most important human-Controllers.
He runs The Sharing, the club that helps recruit
un suspecting kids into being hosts for the Yeerks.
  "If there were some way for us to get close
to Chapman . . ." Jake let the words hang in the
air. He carefully didn't look at me. But
I knew what he meant. He'd obviously been
thinking about this for a while.
  "Melissa?" I asked.
  He nodded. "It's a possibility."
  See, Melissa Chapman, Assistant
Principal Chapman's daughter, is one of my
closest friends. Or at least she used to be. The
last few months, she'd been acting very strange
toward me. Like
she didn't care anymore. We take
gymnastics together. Actually, we got into it at the
same time. You know -- something to do together.
  "I don't like using a friend that way," I said.
  "Oh, suddenly the mighty Rachel is
weaseling," Marco crowed. "You don't like using your
friends? You're pretty willing to risk my
life."
  "Sure, Marco, but who said you were my friend?"
  "Very funny," Marco said. But at the same time
he looked a little hurt.
  "Kidding, Marco," I said. "Just kidding. Of
course you're my friend. But you're an Animorph.
Melissa is just an innocent bystander."
  "I wish I had never come up with that word," Marco
said. "Animorph. Gimme a break."
  "Rachel, Melissa's father is one of the main
Controllers," Jake said gently, ignoring
Marco. "She's in this whether she likes it or not."
  I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. Jake was
right, of course. Chapman was the logical lead
to follow. And Melissa was our way to get close.
It made sense. It made sense for me to betray
an old friend.
  It also made me feel like dirt.
C
  This e next day after school I headed for my
gymnastics class at the YMCA, which is just across
from the mall. They have a big indoor pool, so the
entire building always smells of chlo rine.
Except for the weight room, which just smells like
sweat.
  My class is taught in a smaller room, with
blue mats covering the floor. We have balance
beams and uneven parallel bars and a vaulting horse
with a springboard.
  I'm okay at vaulting and the parallel bars, but
I'm pretty lame at the balance beam. To be
hon est with you, it kind of scares me. It takes
such total concentration.
It's not one of those real serious gymnastics
classes. I mean, none of us is going to be going
to the Olympics. When I started out, I had dreams
of being the next Shannon Miller. But then I
started to grow. I'm pretty tall now, for my
age. People look at me now and say, "Oh, you're
going to be a model," not "Oh, you could be a gym
nast."
  Most of us in the class are too tall or too
heavy to ever be serious gymnasts. We do it for fun
and for exercise. I do it because I've always thought of
myself as kind of clumsy. My mom says I'm not,
but that's how I feel anyway.
  Besides, it's just cool, hitting the little spring board
and flipping through the air to bounce off the vaulting
horse and stick the landing. Not as cool as flying,
maybe, but fun just the same.
  Melissa Chapman was in the locker room
changing into her leotard when I came in. She's the
exception to the rule in our class. She
does
look like a gymnast. She's small and thin, even
though she doesn't starve herself like some fools who
want to get into gymnastics. She has pale gray
eyes and pale blonde hair and pale skin. She
looks like one of those solemn elves in a Tolkien
book. At first glance she looks delicate, but
when you look a little closer, you see strength there,
too.
  Melissa gave me the kind of not-very-warm
smile she always gives me lately. Like she was
distracted, or thinking about something more im portant.
  "Hey, Melissa," I said. "How's it
going?"
  "Fine. How about you?"
  "Oh, pretty much the same old thing." That was a
lie, of course. But what was I going to say?
Yeah, Melissa, same old same old. Been
turning into animals and fighting aliens. You know, the
usual.
  Melissa didn't say anything else. She just
adjusted her leotard and started to do a few
little stretches. That's the way it was. We said hi,
but not much more. It used to be we were very close. She was
my second best friend, after Cassie.
  "Melissa, I was thinking . . . maybe you'd like
to walk over to the mall with me after class? I have
to buy a new pair of sneaks."
  "The mall?" She stammered a little, and then started
blushing. "You mean, go shopping?"
  "Yeah. You know -- walk around and look at
stuff and check out the cute guys and diss the snotty
women at the perfume counters."
  I tried to sound casual, like it was no big deal.
In the old days, it would have been totally nothing. But
now Melissa looked like a trapped animal.
  When had Melissa and I gotten to be such
strangers?
  "I'm, um, kind of busy," Melissa said.
"Oh. That's cool. I understand."
But I didn't understand. Not at all. She started
to
walk
away. I was going to let it go, but then I
remembered: This wasn't just about a friend who
had drifted away. This was about her father, one of the
leaders of the Controllers. One of our most
dangerous enemies.
I grabbed her arm. "Melissa, look
...
I feel like we've kind of gone in different ways,
you
know? And I miss you."
She shrugged. "Okay, well, maybe we could
get together sometime."
"Not
sometime,
Melissa, that's just you blow
ing me off. What's going on with you?"
"What's going on with me?" she echoed. For a moment
a look of extraordinary sadness dark
ened her eyes and tugged downward at the cor
ners of her mouth. "Nothing is going on with me," she
said. "We'd better get out there or
Coach Ellway will have a fit."
She pulled her arm away.
I just watched her go. I felt like a complete
and total jerk. Something had happened to Melissa.
And I hadn't even noticed. She was my
friend and something had changed in her, and I hadn't seen
it. I'd just gone my own way.
And now I was only
acting
like a concerned
friend. The truth was, I was only paying attention
for my own reasons.
I wasn't able to concentrate on the lesson. Not
concentrating when you're doing gymnastics can be
painful. I slipped on the balance beam and banged
my knee so badly I cried.
  Melissa was the first one to rush over. And for about ten
seconds she was the old Melissa. But by the time
I'd gotten back up, she was off across the room in
her own little world again.
  It was right then that the terrible suspicion started.
  Melissa had been acting very strangely. Her
father was a Controller.
  I looked at her from across the room and felt a
chill.
  Was she one, too? Was my old friend Melissa a
Controller?
  I didn't go shopping after my lesson. I
didn't really feel like it. Melissa's eyes, the
way she had looked at me, kind of killed my
urge to shop.
  I was supposed to head over to the mall, then call
my mom when I was done to come pick me up.
That was the plan. But since I didn't feel like
mall-crawling I just headed home. Alone. With the
sky growing dark as rain clouds moved in.
  It was stupid and careless of me. But I guess
I was preoccupied with other things. Although at least I
had the sense to stay out of the construc tion site.
I was walking down the sidewalk that runs along the
boulevard when suddenly I realized that a car had
pulled up just a little way down the sidewalk from me.
A guy got out. He looked like he was in high
school or even college. He also looked like
trouble.
  I should have turned around and run back to ward the
mall. But sometimes I don't always do the sensible
thing. Sometimes I regret not doing the sensible thing.
This was one of those times.
  "Hey, baby," he said. "Want to go for a little
ride?"
  I shook my head and clutched my gym bag
close. What an idiot I was to be so careless!
  "Now, don't be stuck-up, sweet thing," he
said. "I think you'd better get in the car."
  The way he said it didn't sound like an invitation.
It sounded like an order. Now I was really afraid.
  I clutched my gym bag close as I
passed him.
  "Don't ignore me," he hissed.
  He reached for me and missed. I walked faster.
He was behind me.
  I broke into a run.
  He ran after me.
  "Hey. Hey, there! Come back here."
  I had been stupid going out alone. But fortu
nately, unlike most people, I wasn't helpless.
  As I ran, I focused on something completely
different. I concentrated on an image in my
mind.
  Then I felt the change begin. My legs grew
thick. My arms grew big, bigger. I could feel
myself growing large. Large and solid. I felt the
squirmy sensation of my ears becoming thin and leathery.
  But it wasn't enough to just look creepy. This guy
had made me mad. I wanted to scare him half
to death.
  My nose suddenly began to sprout. Then, from my
mouth, like two huge spears, the tusks began
to appear.
  I figured that was about enough. I broke my
concentration, which stopped the morph.
  I stopped suddenly. The creep barreled
right into me.
  He was not going to like what he was about to see.
C
  I wanted to tell the jerk to step off. What I
wanted to say to him was, "So, you still want to go for that
ride?"
  What I really said was
"HhhohhHEEEEERRR.

his
  The guy stopped dead. He just stared.
  What he saw was me, halfway through morph ing
into an African elephant. I had about a third
of a trunk and most of my huge fanlike
elephant ears. My legs were like stumps. My
arms looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger's, only
gray. And my tusks stuck about a foot out of my
mouth. Just to make things extra weird, I still had
my normal hair and my normal eyes.
  Suddenly, the guy wasn't interested in has sling
me.
"AAAAAHHHH!"
  He turned. He ran. For a minute he forgot
he even had a car. Then he turned around and jumped
in through an open window.
  He started the car and took off.
  He was definitely breaking the speed limit as
he tore out of there.
  I concentrated again and began to reverse the morphing
process, going back to human shape. I had been
wearing a loose sweater and leggings, which was good. They
had both stretched. But my shoes had been split
open by the sudden growth of my elephant feet.
  It had started raining, so the trip home was going
to be very unpleasant. "Oh, great!" I muttered.
"I have got to remember to kick off my shoes before
I morph into an elephant."
  Just then, a second car pulled up and came to a
stop. The window rolled down.
  "Hey, Rachel." It was Melissa. I
recognized the voice. "Do you want a ride
home?" She didn't sound very excited by the idea.
I looked through the car window, past her.
  Chapman was behind the wheel.
  A wave of sick fear swept over me. Had
he seen what I'd just done? If he had, then I
was dead. My friends were dead.
  "I'm ... I'm fine," I said. "I could use
the exercise."
"Nonsense, young lady," Chapman said,
sounding like his usual assistant-principal self.
"It's beginning to rain. Get in."
  What was I supposed to do? I forced a smile.
It wasn't easy. "Thanks," I said.
  Melissa was in the front with her father. I sat in
the back. I tried not to shiver. I tried not to stare
at the back of Chapman's head. That's how it is
when you're around a Controller. You know that evil
slug is right there in the Controller's head, attached
to all his nerve endings. Control ling the human
brain. Dominating it.
  It's hard not to stare when you think of what is
squeezed inside that skull.
  "When we were stuck back at the red light it
looked like some guy was bothering you," Melissa said.
"Then he ran off. Was he bothering you?"
  "Urn . . . no," I lied. "He was . . .
he was just picking up something he dropped by the side
of the road."
  Pathetic! I was such a lame liar.
  I saw Chapman's eyes watching me in the
rearview mirror. He looked like normal old
Chap man. That's the problem with Controllers. There
is no outward clue. They look so normal.
  "He went running off like the hounds of
Hades were after him," Chapman said.
  "Did he?" I said in a squeaky voice. "I
wasn't
looking. I guess it was the rain. That's probably
why he was running. There. You can turn left there."
  "I know where you live," Chapman said.
  I almost swallowed my tongue. Was that a threat?
Did he suspect? Did he guess? Was he
looking at me strangely?
  Or was I just being paranoid?
  He pulled up in front of my house. My
heart was hammering, but I was determined to act ca
sual. "Thanks for the ride, Mr. Chapman," I
said. "Hey, Melissa, I was totally serious about
us get ting together, okay?"
  She nodded. "Sure, Rachel.
Absolutely."
  I closed the car door behind me. I had es
caped. I was alive. I'd probably just been
imagin ing things.
  Then I heard Melissa call out to me.
"Hey. What happened to your shoes?"
  I looked down. My shoes were in tatters, the
result of my feet growing from a size six to a
size three hundred in about five seconds
flat.
  "See?" I said, as lightly as I could. "I
told you I needed to go shopping."
  Melissa just looked puzzled. Her father stared at
me with an expression I could not read.
  I was shaking like a leaf when I walked into my
house. I headed upstairs to my room and stuffed my
ripped shoes into the trash. Only then
did I go back downstairs and say hi to my mom.
She was at the kitchen table, half hidden by a pile
of buff-colored books. My mother's a lawyer, and
she brings work home a lot so she can be around me and
my two little sisters. She and my dad are
divorced. I only get to see my dad a few
days a month, so mom feels guilty when she
isn't there for us.
  "Hi, honey," she said. Then she got her "sus
picious mother" look. "How did you get home? You
didn't walk, did you? You were supposed to call
me."
  "Melissa and her dad gave me a ride," I
said. Well, it was the truth. Sort of.
  She relaxed and made a point of closing her
book. "Sorry. You know I worry about you."
  "Where are Jordan and Sara?"
  "They're in the family room watching another one
of those scary shows. Of course, tonight Jordan will be
sleeping with her night-light on and Sara will end up
in my bed, no doubt. I don't know why they like
things that frighten them. You were never that way."
  It almost made me laugh. I felt like saying,
well, Mom, I don't have to watch things that are
scary, I
am
scary. Should have seen me a little while ago with tusks
sticking out of my mouth and a three-foot-long nose.
  What I really said was, "So, what's for
dinner?"
My mother winced. "Pizza? Chinese? Any thing
else you can order over the phone? I'm sorry, but
I have this brief and I have court in the morning."
  "Mom," I told her for maybe the thousandth time,
"I don't mind pizza. Sorry, but your cooking
isn't all that great, so it's no big deal ordering
pizza."
  "Well, at least get some veggies on it," she
said.
  After dinner I called Jake.
  "Do you want to come over?" I said. "I got that
new CD, if you want to listen to it."
  There was no CD, of course. It's just that we
always have to be careful. Like I said, Jake's
brother, Tom, is a Controller. He could be
listen ing on the extension. Then I called
Cassie and Marco and told them the same cover
story.
  When they arrived I told them about Melissa, and
then I told them about my little run-in with the creep.
I did not tell them about Chapman driving me
home. I don't know why. But when I saw the way
Marco exploded, I was glad I hadn't told
them the whole story.
  "Oh, that was dumb! Dumb! DUMB!" Marco
said. "What if that guy is a Controller?"
  "He wasn't a Controller," I said
scornfully. "Why would the Yeerks want to make a
Controller
out of a punk? They want people in positions of power."
  "We don't know that for sure," Jake said.
"Tom isn't in a position of power."
  "And how about people driving by in their cars, or looking
out of the windows of their homes?" Marco asked. "And
what if he runs and tells someone about this girl who
suddenly sprouted a trunk and tusks?"
  "No one is going to believe a lowlife
like that," I said.
  "His friends won't believe him," Marco said
poisonously, "but a Controller
would
believe him. A Controller would know what it
meant."
  Yes. A Controller would know what it meant. A
Controller like Chapman. Or even Melissa, if
she was one of them.
  I felt sick. It was like my whole life was
nothing but lies. Lies to Melissa. Lies to my
mother. Now I was lying by not telling the others the whole
truth.
  "Okay, I screwed up," I muttered.
  "You sure did!" Marco crowed. "You screwed
up so -- his
  "Marco, let it drop," Jake said. "Rachel
knows she made a mistake. We all make
mistakes."
  Marco rolled his eyes.
  Cassie gave me an encouraging smile. "It
was
dumb putting yourself in that position, Rachel. You
need to be more careful. But still, I'd have paid my next
ten allowances to see the look on that guy's
face."
  "The important thing is that it doesn't sound like
Rachel can use Melissa to get close to Chap
man," Jake said. "Not if she's a Controller
herself. And not if she's going to continue being weird
to Rachel."
  "I guess we'll have to find another way," I
said quickly. "I mean, we know where Chapman's
office is. We know where his house is. Maybe we
could just morph into some small animals and hide out."
  "Small animals like what?" Marco asked.
"When Jake turned into a lizard he got stepped
on. He lost his tail. Besides, what are you going
to morph into? A cockroach?"
  We all shuddered at the thought. The small est,
strangest thing anyone had morphed so far was when
Jake had done the lizard. It creeped him out big
time. A roach would be even worse.
  "The problem with being a cockroach," I said,
"aside from the fact that it is too gross
to believe, is that roach senses might not even be
useful to us. Can a roach "hear" in a way that would
make it possible for us to understand
what
we're hearing?"
We all looked at Cassie. She's sort of
our ex pert on animals.
  Cassie held up her hands. "Oh, come on.
Like I know how a cockroach sees and hears? We
don't take care of roaches at the rehab
clinic."
  We all sat there feeling glum for a few
minutes. But I wasn't going to let it drop. This
was about more than just striking a blow at the Yeerks. I
had to find out if Chapman suspected me. If he
did, we were all in terrible danger.
  I happened to glance over at my desk. There was
my math homework, still not done. That didn't make
me feel any better. But then I looked at the
photos I had mounted in one of those big frames with
six different holes. One was of me with my mom and
dad on a whitewater rafting trip we took.
One was of me visiting my dad at his job --
he's a weatherman on TV. We were grinning in
front of a map of storms. Another picture was of
Cassie and me riding horses side by side, with
Cassie, as usual, looking like she'd spent her
entire life in the saddle, and me looking like a
total dweeb.
  But the picture that got my attention was
one taken a couple of years ago of Melissa and
me.
  I got up and went over to take the frame down.
I stared hard at the picture.
  "What?" Jake asked. "What is it?"
"It's me and Melissa," I said. "It was like her
twelfth birthday, or some birthday, anyway, and
we were out on her lawn playing with the present her dad
gave her."
  "So what?" Marco asked.
  "So ..." I passed him the photograph. It
showed me and Melissa in shorts. And between us a
small black-and-white kitten. "So her pres ent
was a cat."
  L ook! A kitty door!" Jake pointed.
  "Where?" Marco asked.
  "See the lines of light? At the bottom of the
regular door?"
  "Oh, yeah," Marco said. "I wish the moon were
out. I can't see a thing."
  The four of us were cowering behind a hedge that bordered the
Chapmans' lawn. They lived in a pretty
normal-looking suburban home. You know: two
stories, a garage, a lawn. Nothing to make you
think that the person who lived there was part of a
huge alien conspiracy to take over the world.
  "Let me just ask you this," Marco whispered.
"Why did it have to be Chapman? I was afraid of
Chapman even before we found out he was a
Controller."
  "You're not still upset over that detention he gave
you?" I asked. "Look, if you're going to lis ten
to your CD player in math class with an earphone
hidden under your hair, you have to remember not to start singing
along."
  "Yeah, that was only slightly stupid, Marco,"
Jake agreed.
  "I still say Chapman never would have given me a
whole week's detention if he was totally hu
man."
  "I have a question," Cassie said. "How do we get
Melissa's cat to come outside?"
  We all looked at her.
  "Good question," I admitted.
  "I mean, we could hide here in the bushes for a
long time. But sooner or later the neighbors are
going to notice."
  less-than What does the cat look
l8greater-than
  Tobias was sitting perched on a nearby
tree branch. He was close enough to hear us.
  I tried to remember. "It's name is Fluffer,
I re member that much. Fluffer Me Kitty."
  "You've got to be kidding." Marco, of course.
  I tried to remember back to when I used to hang
out with Melissa. "It's black and white. You know,
in patches."
less-than l'll look around. Maybe it's already
outside. greater-than
  Tobias spread his wings, swooped silently
down over our heads, and flapped away into the night.
  "You know what we need?" I said. "We need
another kitty. We should have thought of that. Then we could
have the second cat call out to Fluffer."
  Marco turned to stare at me. "Meowfluffer,
comeoutmeow, meow come and play meow?"
  "Tobias morphed a cat very early on,
didn't he?" I asked.
  "Yeah," Jake said. "His first morph. The
first morph any of us did."
  "Rachel, you need to remember if you go in there tonight
that you have to stay in cat charac ter," Cassie said.
"Most people would just think it was weird if a cat acted
strangely. But Chapman may be able to guess
what's going on if Fluffer suddenly starts
acting un-catlike."
  "So you're saying I shouldn't try eating with a fork
or changing the channels on the TV?"
  Everyone laughed -- quietly and nervously, but it
was laughter just the same.
  Suddenly Tobias dropped out of the sky, then
drifted over us in a lazy circle and called
down, less-than Got him. greater-than
  He settled back on the branch. He was really
an amazing animal, when you just looked at him as a
bird and didn't think about him being a boy trapped
in there. I mean, the gaze of a hawk when it is
looking right at you is incredibly intim idating.
Gentle Tobias now had an expression that looked
totally ferocious.
  "You're kidding. You found Fluffer?" I asked.
  less-than Hey, it's easy. Spotting prey
is what I do. Or what a hawk does,
anyway. Actually, there are maybe six or eight
cats running around the neighborhood. Also, three
dogs and an amazing amount of rats and mice.
greater-than
  "Rats?" That got Marco's attention.
"Rats? Here? This is suburbia. I mean, it's
a lot better than where I live. They have
rats?"
  less-than There are rats everywhereeagreater-than
Tobias said. less-than Rats and mice and all
kinds of plump, juicy . . disgreater-than He
fell silent, embarrassed.
  "Get a grip, Tobias," Marco said.
"Don't start eating rats, all right? I don't
know if I can have someone who eats rats for a friend."
  Sometimes Marco is funny. Sometimes he goes
too far. This was one of those times. "Shut up,
Marco," I growled.
  "I ate a live spider," Jake pointed out.
"Does that mean you and I can't be friends?" From his tone
of voice I could tell he was angry, too.
  None of us knew what Tobias was going through.
None of us had ever been in morph for
more than two hours. Tobias had been a hawk for
more than a week.
  Marco realized he'd been a jerk. "Well,
yeah, I guess you're right," he muttered.
"Besides, I've been known to eat eggplant. So I
guess I can't criticize."
  That was an apology, or as close as Marco could
get to an actual apology.
  less-than The cat we're looking for is
just a half block awayeagreater-than Tobias said.
less-than Follow me. greater-than
  He flew off, but kept low. We took off after
him. Even flying at minimum speed, Tobias was
too fast for us to keep up with, so he had to circle
back again and again. We had a hard time keep ing him
in sight.
  "This doesn't look too strange," Cassie
joked. "The four of us running down the street
looking up in the sky."
  less-than Thereeagreater-than Tobias called
down. less-than See that yard with the two
trees8greater-than
  "Yeah. Just to our left?"
  less-than That's the one. The cat you're
looking for is stalking a mouse, right behind the trunk
of the nearest tree. greater-than
  "Okay, we can't all go traipsing over some
stranger's yard," I pointed out. "I'll go with
Cassie."
  Marco held up the kitty carrier we had brought
along. "Don't you need this?"
"Not yet. I'll grab Flutter and bring him
back over here. You two guys just stand here, looking
casual."
  Cassie and I stepped onto the lawn. The
house was dark. Maybe no one was home. That would be
good.
  "Go left," I suggested to Cassie. We
circled the tree.
  "Hey, Flutter," I said in a high,
talking-to- animals voice. "Here, kitty
kitty. Remember me?"
  "There he is."
  "I see him." I squatted down and held my
hand out toward the cat. "Hey, Flutter Flutter.
It's me, Rachel."
  Flutter flattened his ears back along his
skull. He looked from me to Cassie and back
again.
  "Come on, Flutter, it's me. Come on,
boy."
  "He's a male? He's a tomcat?"
Cassie asked.
  "Yeah, I think so."
  "Oh, wonderful," Cassie moaned. "Please
tell me he's been fixed, at least."
  "Have you been fixed, Flutter McKitty?" I
cooed. "Why do we care?" I asked Cassie.
  "Because pound for pound, a tomcat is like one
of the toughest, most dangerous little things around."
  "Who, Flutter? My little kitty friend
Flutter?"
  "Even if he is fixed, a male cat, out at
night in
hunting mode?" Cassie shook her head. "We
should have worn gloves."
  "Oh, come on. He's a sweet kitty cat."
To demonstrate just how sweet Flutter was, I
reached a hand for him.
"Hhhhhhssssss!"
  In a movement too fast for my human eyes
to see, Fluffer swiped out with one paw. Three
bloody scratches appeared on the back of my hand
and Fluffer shot straight up the tree.
  "Owww!" I stuck my injured hand to my mouth.
  "Gloves would definitely have been a good
idea," Cassie said.
  "How are you guys doing?" Jake whispered, just
loudly enough for me to hear him.
  "Wonderful," I said through gritted teeth.
"I'm bleeding and Fluffer is up the tree."
  I heard Marco giggle. I expected that. But
then I heard Jake giggling, too.
  I looked up and saw two glittering
yellow- green eyes glaring down from the dark tree.
  "This was supposed to be the easy part," I said.
"I figured, okay, we go and acquire
Flutter's DNA, and
then
the
hard stuff begins."
  "We have a cat up a tree," Cassie said
dolefully. "You know how hard it is to get a cat
down out of a tree?"

  "I have a plan," I said. "Tobias, are you
up there?"
  less-than Right above you. But I'm
not
going to try and snatch an angry tomcat down out
of a tree. greater-than
  "That's not what I was going to ask," I said. I
took a deep breath. This night was turning weird
real fast. "What I need is a mouse."
  less-than Go ot something for you. A baby mouse.
A
mean
baby mouse. It keeps trying to bite me.
greater-than Tobias flew in a low, tight
circle overhead, disappearing behind the tree
branches, then reappear ing. less-than Are you
ready8greater-than
  I took a deep breath. I gave him a
wave. Sure, I was ready. Why wouldn't I be
ready to have a hawk hand me a mouse? Just your
normal kind of thing to deal with.
  Tobias flew low and slow. I held out my
hands, cupped together. With amazing precision and
perfect timing, he deposited the mouse in my
hands.
  "Don't let it bite you!" Cassie warned.
"Rabies."
"Wonderful," I muttered. "Just one more fun
aspect of this night." Actually, I was glad for the
warning. The mouse was squirming in terror, try ing
to get away. I could feel its tiny little mouse
legs scrabbling against my palms.
  "You should all get rabies shots," Cassie
said. "Seriously. I already have mine. But if we're
going to be handling wild animals ... In the mean
time, be careful to keep his teeth away from you."
  "I wasn't planning on feeding him my finger,"
I said.
  "Hey, wait." Cassie pried open
my hands to get a better look. "That's not a
mouse. That's a shrew. See the eyes? They're
too small. And the tail is wrong. That's not a
baby mouse, Tobias, it's a full-grown
shrew."
  less-than Sorry. Is that bad8greater-than
  Cassie shrugged. "I don't know. I just know it
isn't a mouse."
  "Wait a minute," Marco said, beginning to grin.
"Rachel is going to become a
shrew?
How will we know when she's changed? How do you
become
what you already are?"
  Everyone was too nervous to find the joke very
funny. We felt kind of stupid, standing around on
some stranger's lawn playing with rodents. I mean,
there are times when the whole thing just seems so utterly
insane, you know?
"Okay, I have to concentrate on acquiring, so
everyone shut up," I said.
  Acquiring is what we call it when we absorb
a sample of the animal's DNA. The DNA is
the stuff inside the cells that sort of serves like a
how-to manual for making the animal.
  When you acquire, you have to think hard about the
animal, focusing on it and blocking everything else
out. Then the animal kind of goes limp, like it's in
a trance. It takes just about a minute.
  It was easy to focus on the shrew, what with it
squealing in terror and squirming to get out of my hand.
But it was gross, definitely gross. I know
there's nothing really wrong with shrews, but still. They
freak me out a little.
  When I was done, I opened my eyes. "Okay,
little shrew, thanks for your help. You can go now."
  "I'm not sure this is a good idea," Jake said
doubtfully.
  "Really?" Marco was sarcastic. "You're not
sure it's a good idea for Rachel to turn into a
shrew in order to lure a vicious cat down from a
tree so she can morph into that cat and sneak into the
assistant principal's house? What worries you
about that plan?"
  Cassie looked worried, too. "You know,
Rachel, usually a cat will play with a mouse a little
bit.
But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they go right for the
neck bite. The mouse -- or the shrew -- dies
instantly."
  less-than Be careful, Racheleagreater-than
Tobias said. less-than l'll be watching, but be
careful. I don't want anything to happen to you.
greater-than
  He "said" it so only I could hear. I could
tell, because nobody else reacted.
  I looked up at Tobias and winked. I knew
he would see it. I rubbed my hands together. "Okay,
let's do this."
  I concentrated once more on the shrew. The shrew
was now a part of me. I don't know how it works, but
it does. Somehow, thanks to the Andalite
technology, the DNA of that shrew was stored away
inside me. It was like having a map to guide me as
I transformed. Not that I had a clue how I was
able to do it.
  The first sensation was of shrinking. It's a long, long
trip down from being five feet tall to being less
than an inch tall. It's like falling. Ex cept that
you can feel the ground under your feet the whole time.
  One minute I was looking Jake and Marco and
Cassie in the face. The next minute their faces
seemed to be zooming high up above me. I was
falling down the length of their bodies. It was like they
were huge skyscrapers and I had jumped off
the roof or something.
My outer clothing fell around me like a big,
collapsing circus tent.
  It made a slight grinding noise as my
backbone collapsed into a size smaller than my
little finger. There was the disturbing, not-quite-pain sensation that
goes along with some morphs. Like you knew it should
hurt, but it didn't quite.
  I could feel the tail sprout from my tailbone.
A long, hairless tail. Not at all
attractive.
  My legs practically disappeared, they were so
small. I was a chubby little ball of fur no more
than two inches long, with four tiny feet.
  Then the fear kicked in. The shrew's fear.
  It hit me so hard I began to shake. I
rattled with terror. I quaked with terror.
  I was surrounded! Predators everywhere! I could
smell them. I could see them -- huge, looming,
slow-moving creatures standing over me.
  "Rachel? You okay down there?" It was Cas
sie . She lifted the folds of my clothing off of
me.
  I heard the voice and sort of understood it, but it
was more like distant thunder. It didn't re ally
mean anything. At least not to the shrew.
  It was looking for a way out. Its brain might have
been terrified, but it was also amazingly smart. It was
evaluating every possible escape route. It was
measuring the distance between the three sets of legs. One
set of legs moved slightly.
I was off like a shot.
Running! Running!
Blades of grass seemed six feet tall.
Twigs were like fallen trees that I had to scramble
over. My little feet moved with incredible speed. I
scooted past a beetle that seemed to me to be as
big as a dog.
  "Rachel, you have to get control!"
  I knew they were right. I even sort of understood
what they meant. But the terror was so strong. The
urge to survive was so powerful.
  And at the same time there were other feelings.
Hunger. I smelled nuts. I smelled dead
flesh. I even smelled the maggots squirming on
the dead flesh.
  And I wanted them. I know it's too gross, but
I wanted to eat those maggots.
  Heavy pounding footsteps behind me! I turned
sharply and ducked under a bush. The steps
went barreling by before stopping and turning back toward
me.
  They were faster than I was, but not as agile. I
could get away. I could get away and find that dead
smell and gorge!
  less-than Rachel, it's Tobias. The shrew
is in control. You have to assert yourself! Tell it
to stop run nings
Fear! Hunger!
  less-than Rachel, listen to me. You're getting
away from us. You have to take charge. greater-than
Fear! Hunger! Run!
  Grass and twigs and dirt. Low scratchy
branches over my head. The smell of food. The
smell of a dog that had urinated on this bush.
  More loud footsteps and far-off rumbling voices
yelling. They were trying to catch me. But I was fast!
I was clever!
  But not clever enough. I ran out from under the bush.
  Like a shadow inside of a shadow, I felt it
descend on me. Terror like nothing I'd felt before
swept over me. Something deep, deep inside my
shrew brain cried out.
  It was the ultimate fear! The ultimate
horror! It was the enemy I could not defeat!
  And it was coming for me!
C
  I dodged, but too slowly. Huge talons
closed around me and suddenly my little feet were run
ning in air.
  less-than 0kay, Rachel. It's okay.
It's just me. I have you. greater-than
  The voice was in my head. I understood the words.
It cut through the terror at last. I held onto that
voice.
  less-than Relax, Rachel. greater-than
  I looked down and with my dim shrew eyesight
saw the shadows shooting past down below.
  less-than like have you, Rachel. Try to be calm.
Think about something human. Think about school.
Remember school8greater-than
School? Yes. I remembered school.
  Quite suddenly the shrew mind lost the battle for
control. It was like a switch had been flipped. I
was in charge. I knew what I was. I knew
who
I was.
  less-than I'm okay, Tobiaseagreater-than
I said. less-than You can set me down.
greater-than
  He circled around and landed with perfect gentleness
on the ground.
  less-than Did my talons hurt
y8greater-than
  less-than No. I don't think so. I'm
fine. greater-than
  "You okay, Rachel?" Jake's voice.
  less-than Yes. Boy, that was totally different
than the elephant brain. Or the eagle. They're
both so calm and mellow compared to this mind. greater-than
  "It's like Jake's lizard," Cassie
suggested. "He had a panic reaction, too. The
other animals we morphed were all kind of big,
dominant animals -- gorilla, tiger. My
horse was skittish, though."
  less-than Look, let's just do this and get it
over with, okay8greater-than I said. less-than
I'm not enjoying the shrew expe riences That was the
understatement of all time. I could still smell death and
hear the thou sands of feasting maggots. And to me those
things still meant dinner. I was horribly hungry.
  "Are you sure you're going to be able to maintain
down there?" Marco asked. I saw him
peer ing down at me from a million miles up.
"You still look a little nervous. Your tail is
twitching and your little nose is sniffing like crazy."
  less-than Yeah, I know. I'm still nervous.
Let's just do this. You'll have to take me back to the
tree where Fluffer is. I don't know what
direction it is. greater-than
  Before I could object, Marco reached down and
scooped me into his hands. He held me up and
looked into my eyes. "I've never seen you look
lovelier, Rachel. Very cover girl."
  We walked down the block. Marco set me
down at the bottom of the tree where Fluffer was still
hiding out on a high branch.
  less-than You guys had better back off a
lleagreater-than I said.
  "Not
too
far," Jake said. "We have to be able to get between you and
Fluffer fast."
  less-than 0h, I can kick Flutter's
butteagreater-than I said, joking. I guess I
felt a little embarrassed about having let the shrew
take control of me.
  "Uh-huh," Marco said dryly. "Cat versus
mouse. Who would you bet on?"
  "Haven't you ever seen
Itchy and Scratchy?"
Cassie asked. "Mouse, definitely. Besides,
she's not a mouse."
  Let me tell you something: It is no fun
sitting around in a shrew's tiny body, waiting
to see whether a huge cat is going to decide
to climb down and kill you. It is one of the least fun
things I've ever done. I had the shrew brain under
con t rol, but that didn't change the fact that the
shrew was about as scared as a shrew can be. Between being
snatched up by a hawk and now waiting to see if the
shrew's other deadly enemy was going to attack ...
I mean, the shrew was definitely in a state of
panic.
  She was not a happy shrew.
  I was so preoccupied thinking about the shrew's
hunger that I missed what happened next. I
didn't even notice until I heard the sound of
scraping tree bark just an inch over my head.
Fluffer was dropping through the air right on top of me!
  I froze!
  Jake and Marco did not freeze.
  Marco grabbed Fluffer in mid-pounce. Fluffer
rewarded him with a nasty slash of his claws. Marco
yelled and almost dropped the cat. Jake
grabbed Fluffer by the nape of the neck and Cassie
ran up with the animal carrier.
  The three of them managed to stuff the squalling,
hissing, slashing Fluffer into the carrier and close the
door.
  I was already morphing out of the shrew body as fast as
I could.
  "I'm bleeding!" Marco cried.
  "We're all bleeding," Cassie said
matter-of- factly. "I told you guys:
Kitties can be nasty when you get on their nerves."
I was shooting up from the ground, regaining my normal
body.
  "Ugh! Ugh! I'm never doing that morph again,"
I said, as soon as I had a normal tongue and
lips. I looked over my shoulder to make sure
I didn't still have that creepy tail. Nothing. I was
me again. I was in my morphing outfit and with no shoes
on, but I was human again.
  I shuddered. The memory of the shrew's brain and
its fear and hunger made my flesh creep. I was
fighting a powerful urge to throw up. I felt sick
in a way that is mostly in your head.
  Jake looked at me and shook his head. "I should
have done it. I should have used my lizard
morph to lure the cat down from the tree."
  I shook my head. "No. That freaked you out."
  "And now you're the one who's freaked out," Jake
said. "But don't worry, you'll get over it.
Mostly. At least
you
didn't eat a spider."
  "Yeah. Look, I'm just tired, okay? Let
me ac quire this pain-in-the-butt cat and get
on with this."
  "Are you still up for it?" Cassie asked.
"Acquiring two new morphs in one night?"
  "I shouldn't have let you do the mouse. Shrew.
Whatever," Jake said. He was still looking guilty.
  "Look, it was my idea, right? Besides, since when
do you
let
me do things? What are you, my master? I don't
think so. Come on." I squared my
shoulders and put on a brave smile. "Let me
see how Flutter likes me, now that I'm bigger
than he is."
  I guess Flutter was tired of causing trouble.
He was actually asleep in the cat carrier.
Sleep ing like nothing at all was going on.
A typical cat. He even purred as I
acquired him.
  When I was done, I noticed Cassie smiling
at me.
  "What?" I asked her.
  "I was just thinking how you look like the same old
Rachel, but now you also have an ele phant, a
shrew, an eagle, and a cat inside you. That's four
morphs. That's more than any of us." She looked
thoughtful. "We don't really know very much about this
morphing thing still. I won der if there is a limit
to how many morphs you can do."
  "I guess we'll find out," Marco said
darkly. "Probably at the worst possible time."
  I wondered if they were right. It was definitely a
strange, powerful feeling, knowing that I could become
four very different animals. Strange and powerful and
disturbing. Inside of me I had ani mals that ate
each other. It wasn't a good image.
  Suddenly I felt exhausted. "Look, guys
. . . I've acquired Flutter now. But maybe
we should do the rest of this tomorrow night. I'm ... I
don't know if I'm at my best right now."
"Another night," Jake agreed. He looked
relieved. I think he was worried about me.
That's the way Jake is.
  "I guess we can let Flutter go now,"
Cassie said. She opened the carrier and the cat
climbed out cautiously.
  I watched him run off into the night.
  "Probably going off to kill your shrew,"
Marco speculated.
  The idea made me shudder all over again.
A
aaaaaaaahhh! Aaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaah!"
  "Wake up. Rachel, wake up!"
"Aaah!
Oh. Oh. Oh." I sat up. I was gasping for
air. It was dark, but I could just make out Jor
dan's face. She was shaking me awake.
  I felt my face. Lips. Eyes. Nose.
  I patted myself down frantically. Human. I
was human. No fur. No tail. Human.
  The details of the dream came rushing up to my
consciousness.
  "Oh, no," I moaned. I threw back the
covers and stumbled to my feet. I staggered toward the
bathroom door. The bathroom connects my room
and the room Jordan and Sara share. I tried to
turn on the light but missed the switch. I
dropped to my knees in front of the toilet and
threw up.
  Jordan kept saying, "Are you all right,
Rachel? Are you all right? I better get
Mom."
  "No," I said, as soon as I could talk.
"No, I'm fine. Don't wake Mom up."
Fortunately, little Sara can sleep through anything.
  I brushed my teeth and drank some water. I
looked sheepishly at Jordan. She looks
nothing like me. I guess I look more like my dad,
and Jor dan is like this smaller version of my mom,
dark hair and dark eyes. She looked pretty
scared.
  "I'm okay," I said again. "Just a bad dream.
I guess it made me kind of sick, is all.
But I'm fine now."
  Jordan relaxed a little. "Must have been some
dream."
  "I guess so. I can't even remember it now.
You know how it is. Dreams fade away so you can't
even remember them."
  "I can't believe you would just forget a dream that
made you scream

hurl."
  I shrugged. "I've never been very good at
remembering dreams. You better get back to bed."
  She looked at me solemnly. "I know I'm
just your little sister by two years, but you would tell me
if something bad was happening to you, right? I mean, I
wouldn't tell Mom or anyone. You could trust
me."
I smiled and drew her into a hug. "I know I can
trust you. If anything bad was going on, I'd
tell you." It was a lie, of course, and the lie
made me feel even worse. I trusted
Jordan. I knew in my heart that she was not a
Controller.
  Of course, that's just what Jake had said about
Tom.
  I hugged my sister a little closer. I hated the
way suspicion had crept into every part of my mind.
I hated the way I wasn't sure, not really,
to tally sure, that I could trust her.
  "Good night," I said. "Thanks for rescuing me
from that nightmare. Whatever it was."
  She started to walk away. Then she turned, lit
from behind by the garish bathroom light. "Before you started
screaming, you were yelling something."
  "What?" I asked, afraid of the answer.
  She looked puzzled. "I think it was
"maggots." Something like that."
  I forced a shaky smile. "Good night,
Jordan."
  I crawled back into my bed. The pillow was
soaked with sweat. The sheets were clammy.
  Maggots. Squirming, crawling, busy little
white maggots. They were all over a piece of
rotting meat and fur. In my dream it was a dead
cat. A dead cat covered with vermin eating the
decayed flesh.
  A shrew was getting in on the feast, eating the
dead flesh and the living maggots with equal en
joyment.
  In my dream I knew: I was that shrew.
  "You look tired," Jake said the next morning.
We took the same bus to school.
  "Thanks," I said grumpily.
  "Didn't get enough sleep last night?"
  "I guess not, if I look as bad as you
say."
  "I didn't say you looked bad, I just said you
looked tired." He hesitated. He glanced over
his shoulder, checking to see whether anyone was
listening. Fortunately, the noise level was
pretty high in the bus. Jake lowered his voice and
leaned close to my ear. "You didn't get creeped
out by the shrew, did you?"
  "Why? Just because I'm a girl, you think the shrew
bothered me more than it would have bothered you or Marco?"
  "No, that's not it at all," he said earnestly.
"It's just . . . see, when I did the lizard
morph, that bothered me. I had nightmares -- his
  "Nightmares?" I said it too loudly. Then I
lowered my voice back to a whisper.
"Nightmares?"
  "Oh, yeah. Definitely. When I morphed the
tiger I had dreams, too, but not nightmares."
  "What kind of dreams?"
  He smiled. "Kind of cool, really. Stalking
through a dark forest at night. I was hunting
something. It was like I wanted to catch it, but at the
same time it was like if I didn't catch it that would be
okay, too. Because just running and creeping and then
running some more through the woods was the best thing in the
world."
  I nodded. "I felt like that after the elephant
morph. It was this incredible feeling of being huge and
invincible. Like I could never even pos sibly
be afraid of anything."
  "But the shrew was different, wasn't it? Same
with the lizard."
  "I guess it's the different characters of the animals.
Maybe some are good matches for our human brains.
Maybe others aren't." I looked out the window for a
while. Then I said, "You know what scares me?"
  To my surprise, Jake nodded. "Yeah.
You're afraid that someday we might have to morph
into bugs."
  I shuddered. "I don't think I'll be willing
to do that. I think that may be too much."
  "Well, your next assignment is a cat.
Tobias was a cat. He said it was amazingly
cool. He liked it. Just like I really enjoy being a
dog. Sometimes when I'm feeling depressed, I
really wish I could just morph. Dogs know how to have
fun."
  The bus pulled up in front of the school. "An
other day of school. Normal life." I looked
over
the crowd of kids milling around on the lawn and
  on the steps. I spotted Melissa.
  "See you later, Jake," I said. "Thanks."
  "No problem. We're all in this together."
  I made my way down the bus aisle and ran
to
  catch up to Melissa. But when I got close
I saw
  that her eyes were red and swollen. She'd been
  crying.
  I didn't know what to do. In the old days I
  would have just run right up to her and asked
  what was the matter.
  "Hey, Melissa, how's it going?"
  She looked at me, confused. "What?"
  "I said, how's it going?"
  She shook her head slowly, like she couldn't
  believe I was even talking to her. "What do you
  care?"
  "Melissa. Of course I care. What's
wrong?" Her eyes went kind of blank. She
seemed to
  be looking at nothing but the air right in front of
  her face. "What's wrong? Everything is wrong.
  And nothing is wrong. But just the same, every thing is
wrong."
  "Melissa, what are you talking about?" "Forget
it," she said. She started to walk
  away.
  I grabbed her arm. "Look, you can talk to me.
  I'm still your friend. Nothing has changed." "Leave
me alone," she said grimly. "Every-
thing has changed. Everyone has changed. You stopped
being my friend. And my mom and dad ... his
  "What?" I pressed her.
  The bell rang loud and shrill.
  "I have to go." She pulled her arm away.
  What could I do? I let her go. I wondered
what she had started to say about her father. Had she
discovered what her father was? What her father had
become?
  I walked up the steps of the school with my head
lowered in thought. As I opened the school door, I
ran right into someone.
  "Hey, hey, watch where you're going, young
lady."
  "Mr. Chapman!" I recoiled in fear.
  See, you have to realize that this was the man who had
once directed a Hork-Bajir soldier to kill
us all if he caught us. Kill us and only save
our heads for identification.
  That kind of thing sticks in your mind.
  He peered at me. "What's the matter with you,
Rachel? A little jumpy this morning?"
  I nodded. "Yes, sir. I guess I
didn't sleep too well."
  "Bad dreams?" he asked.
  My mouth was dry. "I guess so, Mr. Chap-
  man.
  He smiled. A normal, human smile. His
eyes
even crinkled up a little as he grinned down at me.
"Well, shake it off. Nightmares aren't real, you
know."
  "At least not most of the time," I said to my self.
  W e couldn't go to the Chapmans' the next
night because Marco and I both had papers we had
to write. And the night after that was Cassie's dad's
birthday.
  But finally, there we were again on the street outside
the Chapmans' house. It was a little be fore eight.
  Fluffer was out of the house, smelling a fence post
four blocks over, where another cat had left his
scent. At least, that's what Tobias reported.
  "Are you ready?" Jake asked me.
  I nodded.
  "Are you sure?" Cassie asked. "You can put
this off if you want. We don't have to do this tonight."
"The sooner the better," I said. "We
all know something is wrong in that house. Melissa
is still my friend. Maybe somehow I can help her."
  "Your job is not to help Melissa Chapman,"
Marco pointed out. "You're supposed to be spying
on Chapman. You're supposed to be finding some
way for us to get at the Yeerks, so that we can all
turn into wild animals and get ourselves killed."
  "I know why I'm doing this, Marco," I said.
  He nodded. "Okay. Well, take care of
yourself in there. That's an assistant principal you're
dealing with. He finds out you've turned into a cat and
gone sneaking around his house, that will be after-school
detention for like a year."
  We all laughed. As if detention were the thing I
had to fear. Marco can be obnoxious, but on the other
hand, he can make you laugh right when you really need
to.
  "I'm ready," I said. I waved my arms at
the dark sky above. Tobias swooped down, opened
his wings to slow his speed, and settled on the fence beside
us.
  "How does it look up there, Tobias?"
Jake asked.
  less-than Looks fine. The cat is nowhere
near the house. There's no one out walking
around, except way over on Loughlin Street.
There are a couple of cars, but not coming toward you.
greater-than
  "You know, you have quite a future in bur-
glary," Marco said to Tobias. "You and I can
burglarize places, and Jake can be Spiderman
and catch us."
  "Okay, I'm ready to do this," I announced.
"As ready as I'm going to get, anyway."
  Tobias sent me a private message.
less-than Rachel, if you get into any trouble, just
try and make it out side. I can lift you out of any
danger. greater-than
  I prepared to morph. I concentrated on
Fluffer. It was easy to do. I had a very clear
mental image of Fluffer dropping down out of that
tree, ready to kill me when I was a shrew.
  Inside my own body, Fluffer's DNA was
stored, ready to be used. All I had to do was concen
trate . . . concentrate. . . .
  Each morphing is different. Especially the first
time, when you can't even think about con trolling how it
happens. Even Cassie can't con trol the first
morph.
  In the case of Fluffer, it started with
fur. Black fur came first, and then the white fur
be gan to grow. The fur had almost completely grown
in while I was still mostly human. I had
luxurious fur on my arms. On my legs. On
my face. Fur and whiskers, with everything else
pretty much the same.
  "Oh, that is cool!" Cassie said. She was star
ing at me and grinning this huge grin. "That is way
cool. You look great."
Marco and Jake nodded agreement.
  "It's kind of weird, but also kind of pretty,"
Marco said. "I'm thinking you could do commercials for
cat food. You sing a little song, maybe dance a
little. Forget Morris the cat. You would rule."
  I began to shrink. But it was strange, because as I
shrank and my outer clothing slithered off me, I
didn't feel like I was getting smaller. I felt
more like I was getting stronger.
  It was like I was shedding all this unnecessary stuff, these
clumsy long legs, these ridiculous weak arms.
I felt like I'd been boiled down to my
absolute essentials. Like I wasn't even
made out of plain old flesh and bones anymore.
  I felt like liquid steel.
  I didn't feel the fear of the shrew. I
didn't feel the total confidence of the elephant,
either, or of the eagle.
  This was different. There was fear, sure. But underneath
the fear was confidence. The cat knew there were enemies
out there, but he also knew he could handle it.
  I felt . . . tough. That was it -- tough.
  Then the cat's senses started sending messages
to my brain.
  less-than Whoaffgreater-than I yelled in
surprise. less-than Suddenly it isn't
nighttime anymore! I mean, wow. Talk about
night visionffgreater-than
"A cat's vision at night is about eight times
stronger than a human's," Cassie said
helpfully. "I looked it up."
"Eight
times?" Marco repeated. "Not seven, or nine?
How do they measure that?"
  But it wasn't just how
well
I saw that was strange. It was
what
I noticed.
  A human being will notice colors, for exam
ple. Now, a cat can see colors, more or
less. He just isn't interested in colors. It's
like, okay, that thing is red. Who cares?
  What cats really notice is movement. If
anything moves, even the tiniest bit, the cat sees
it. I was standing there on the grass, looking around with
my big cat eyes, and I saw nothing but movement.
  I saw every blade of grass that moved in the
breeze. I saw every bug that crawled across those
blades of grass. I saw every bird in every tree as
it fluffed its wings. And boy, did I see the
mice and the squirrels and the rats.
  There was a mouse no more than twenty feet away.
I could see the individual whiskers on his little
snout when they twitched.
  Things that were not moving were boring to me. If the mouse
just stayed completely still, I would forget he was even
there.
  "How are you doing?" Jake asked me.
  I had no trouble at all hearing his voice. But
it
was irrelevant. It had no meaning. The mouse was
making a tiny little scritching sound as it worked its little
teeth around a nut, trying to chew it open.
  I cared about that sound. I cared about that sound a
lot.
  "Rachel, can you hear us? It's me, Cassie."
  less-than Yes, I can hear you. I just can't
seem to concentrate very well on you. There are so many
other things to hear and see and smell. greater-than
  "Well, at least she's not running around out of
control," Marco said.
  Suddenly I sensed something over my head, a
shape, a shadow, a figure. Lightning quick, I
turned my head. My ears flattened back against
my skull. The hair on my back stood up and
my tail puffed out to three times its normal size.
My claws extended. I drew back my mouth and
showed my teeth.
  It all happened in a split second. I was
ready for battle.
  And whatever this was attacking me, I wanted it
to know it would be sorry it messed with Fluff er
McKitty.
"Hhhhhiisssss!"
  I was ready to fight. I was
pumped.
Kill or be killed.
  It is so cool when you feel the razor-sharp
claws sliding out of your delicate-looking pink
pads.
  "Rachel, take a pill, girl, it's just
Tobias," Cassie said soothingly. "Tobias?
I think maybe you'd better stay away," she
called up to the sky. "Cats are genetically
programmed to be afraid of large birds."
  She was right. The shadow of Tobias scared me
pretty good. It was strange, because it was a fear I
shared with the shrew.
  But it was a different type of fear than the
shrew's. This was more like I was angry, too. Only
that wasn't quite it, either. I guess it wasn't a
real emotion at all. Basically, when I'd
hissed I was just trying to communicate. And the
message I was trying to communicate was,
"Don't mess with me. You may be bigger than me,
you may scare me, you may make me run away, but
if I have to I am ready to fight."
  That was my whole cat message to the world: Don't
mess with me. Don't get in my way, don't
try to touch me if I don't want to be touched,
don't try to keep me from getting what I want.
  I was self-contained. I was complete. I
didn't need anything but myself. It seemed lonely
to my human self, but at the same time, it was all
very calm somehow.
  less-than I'm okayeagreater-than I said.
less-than like think I "m pretty much in
control. greater-than
  "What's it like?" Cassie asked.
  less-than lt's like . . . You know those old
cowboy movies with Clint Eastwood? He's a
gunslinger and he walks into the saloon and everyone
kind of gets out of his way? And how he's not really
looking for trouble, but you'd better not make him mad?
That's what it's like. It's like I'm Clint
Eastwood. greater-than
  "Can you do this, do you think?" Jake asked me.
  less-than 0h, yeah. I can do
anything. greater-than
  "Don't let the cat's arrogance get you in
trou ble," Marco advised. "Keep a little of your
good old human fear." He paused. "Oh, I
forgot, mighty Rachel doesn't have any good old
human fear. So here's what you do: Borrow some of
my good old human fear. I have plenty to spare."
  "He's right, Rachel," Cassie agreed.
"Keep focused. Between your own natural
attitude and the cat's 'tude, you could get
cocky."
  I cast a glance back toward the mouse.
He had broken into the nut at last. I could kill
him. I was sure of that. He was a plump little
mouse, and I would catch him easily. But I
wasn't hun gry. So he'd get to live a while
longer.
  less-than No problemeagreater-than I said.
  "We're here if you get into a mess," Cassie
re assured me.
  less-than l'll meow if I need help.
Don't worry. I'm in control now. It'll be
fine. greater-than
  But the truth is, I was lying, just a little. See,
I wasn't completely in control of the cat. For some
reason I didn't
want
to completely control the cat. I kind of liked his
arrogance. It made me feel more sure of myself. And
despite what the others thought about me, I needed
all the confidence I could get.
  "The morph clock is ticking," Cassie said.
"It's quarter of eight. Remember that."
  I headed at an easy trot down the sidewalk
toward the Chapman home. As soon as I started
moving I thought,
Oh, man, if I could just keep
some of this for my next gymnastics class.
  It was like grace beyond any grace you can imagine as
a human. I passed a wooden fence. There was a
railing up high, maybe three feet up. I
looked up at it and then, before I could even think about
it, I leaped. My powerful hind legs coiled up
and released.
  I sailed through the air. Three feet straight
up, and I was an animal that stood only about
twelve or thirteen inches tall. It was the same
as a human being just leaping to the top of a two- story
building.
  And it was totally
nothing.
It was just auto matic. I wanted to jump, so I
did. I wanted to stick the landing on a narrow
two-inch-wide rail, and of course, no problem.
  Compared to a cat, the best gymnast who ever lived
is like a big staggering cow or something.
  "Urn, Rachel, what exactly are you doing?"
Jake asked.
  They were all standing there looking at me. I had
totally forgotten they were still around.
  less-than Just practicingeagreater-than I said.
I jumped back down to the grass. Okay,
get the job done first, I or dered myself sternly.
You can worry about the Kitty Olympics later.
  I started again toward the house, but this time something
forced me to stop. It was a
tele phone pole. The smell that emanated from it was
overpowering. I went over to it. I sniffed it again and
again in short snorts of air. The air was trapped
in a series of chambers above my palette. It would
be held there even while I went on breathing. That
way I could get every possible bit of information from that
smell.
  It was definitely a tom's scent. A tomcat
had marked this pole by peeing on it. He was a
dominant cat. Very dominant. His smell made
me ner vous. Not afraid, just a little less
arrogant than I had been. If this cat appeared,
I would have to submit. I would have to make myself
smaller and less threatening and accept his dominance.
  Or I could fight him and get my butt kicked.
  It was just the way things were. It was all there in the
smell of his urine, where any cat could read it.
  I resumed trotting toward the Chapman home.
  less-than Rachel, are you sure you're in
control8greater-than To bias's voice was in my
head. less-than Why did you stop to sniff
that pole8greater-than
  less-than like figured I should look like a real
cateagreater-than I said. less-than like was just playing
the part. greater-than
  less-than lf you say seagreater-than he said
doubtfully. less-than Just re member: It's
fun being an animal for a while. Not so fun when
it's permanent. The two-hour clock is ticking.
Tick tock. greater-than
  That got my attention. It was like a dash of
cold water in my face. I focused my human
mind and took greater control over the cat's mind.
But it wasn't easy. The cat's mind did not even
un derstand the notion of obeying.
  So I used something the cat would respond to. I
conjured up the memory of the big tom's smell. That
triggered the cat's submissiveness. I felt my
part of the collective mind grow larger.
  less-than You're almost thereeagreater-than
Tobias said. less-than This is the right yard.
greater-than
  less-than Yes, I know. My scent is
everywhere,-This whole area smells of me. This is
home. This is all mine. greater-than
  less-than Rachel, this is all
Chapman's.
And Chapman belongs to Visser Three. Don't
forget that. greater-than
  I trotted to the cat door. Chapman. Visser
Three. Big deal. I was a combination of Rachel and
Fluffer. What did I care about Chapman and
Visser Three?
  The light inside the house was bright. My eyes
adjusted instantly. My nose picked up the
smell of cat food, too dry and old to interest
me. I also smelled the humans: Melissa,
Mr. Chapman, and Ms. Chapman. Don't ask
me how I knew that what I smelled were those three
peo ple. I just knew.
  I spotted a cockroach in the dust balls in the
dark beneath the refrigerator. No interest to me.
Roaches made interesting scritchy noises some-
times, and they were fun to watch run. But they smelled
wrong. They were not prey.
  Swift movements!
  Feet. Human feet. I didn't bother
looking up. It was Ms. Chapman.
  High-pitched sounds coming from the motor of the
refrigerator. They were annoying. There were also the
sounds of birds outside. They had a nest
up under the eaves.
  Then the sound of Melissa's voice.
  Where was she? I didn't see her anywhere. The
sound was muffled.
  I tried to focus. My ears moved to point
to ward the sound. It came from above me. Above and far
away.
  She was in her bedroom, that's where. I couldn't
hear the words clearly, but I knew that she was
muttering to herself.
  I trotted across the kitchen floor. I knew
-- as
Rachel-
I knew I
should be
afraid. But I couldn't be afraid. Everything here
smelled like me. My scent glands had left their
marks all over -- on that door, on that cupboard,
on that chair. It re assured me.
  The big dominant tomcat's smell was not in
here. No, there were no other cats in here at all.
Only human smells, and those were not very im
portant.
  I left the kitchen and paused at the corner
be tween the hallway and the family room.
Chap man was there, in the living room. I could
smell him. He was just sitting on the couch. I
glanced at him and walked on.
  But then I stopped. My human brain sensed
something wrong with the picture. Chapman was just sitting
on the couch. No TV. No music. He
wasn't reading a book or a newspaper. Just sit
ting.
  I turned back to the kitchen. I looked up at
Ms. Chapman. She was doing something at the sink.
Maybe washing dishes. No, she was cut ting
vegetables. But again, no TV. No music. She
wasn't humming to herself. She wasn't talking to herself
the way my mom does when she's working in the kitchen.
  Not right. Something was not right with either of the Chapmans.
  I went back to the hallway. There were stairs
leading up to the bedrooms. From the hallway I could
hear Melissa more clearly. I concentrated, trying
to ignore the fascinating sounds of the birds under the
eaves. I focused on the human sounds of
Melissa's voice.
  "dis . . divided by the square root ... no,
wait. No, square root times ... Is that right?"
  She was doing her homework. Her math home work,
obviously.
  Like I
should
be doing, I thought. I had a
pang of guilt. Instead of doing my homework, I
was creeping around my friend's house spying on her and
her parents.
  I tried to find a clock. I had to watch the
time. At nine forty-five my two hours would be
up. I wanted to be out of morph and back in my
nor mal body long before then. Hopefully, I could
still get home and do my math homework and at least do
some of the reading for social studies class.
  I spotted a clock. It was over the mantel,
be tween pictures of the Chapmans and Melissa.
The clock said three minutes until eight. I
had plenty of time.
  Sudden movement!
  Oh, just Chapman standing up.
  The cat part of me wasn't interested in Chap
man one way or the other. But I forced myself to pay
attention. It was important to watch him. That was why
I was here.
  Is he prey? The cat brain seemed to be
asking.
Yes. Yes,
I told the cat brain.
Chapman is our prey.
  I followed Chapman as he headed down the
hallway. Either he didn't notice me, or
else he didn't care.
  He opened a door that let loose a flood of
smells. Dampness. Mildew. Bugs.
  less-than Rachel? How are you doing in
there8greater-than
  I jerked in surprise. A very un-catlike
move ment.
  It was Tobias. He had to be fairly close
for me to be able to hear his thought-speech. He must be
on the roof or perched on a nearby tree branch.
I strained my sensitive cat hearing. The birds
under the eaves were silent. They were afraid of the big
hawk.
less-than I'm fineeagreater-than I said.
less-than But you scared me half
to deathffgreater-than
  less-than Sorry. I was just worried.
greater-than
  less-than Well, don't worry. I'm
following Chapman down to the basement. greater-than
  less-than Why8greater-than
  less-than Because that's where he's going.
Duheagreater-than I said. Somehow, Tobias's
human words were annoying me. He wanted me to pay
attention to him and it was hard to do. The cat didn't
care about his words. The cat just wanted to go down and
look around the basement. Fortunately, that's what
I wanted to do, too.
  I trotted down the rough wooden stairs after
Chapman. Very weird, by the way. Going downstairs
as a cat gave me a feeling of vertigo. I
mean, I was going down head first. It's strange.
  less-than Look, Tobias, I appreciate
you looking out for me. But I'm kind of busy right
now. greater-than
  less-than like understand. I can't hear you very well,
anyway. You're getting farther away. greater-than
  less-than Yeah, I'm going down. greater-than
I waited. He said nothing. less-than
Tobias8greater-than I called. But there was no an
swer. We're still learning about thought-speech. We know
there are limits on how far it can be "heard." But
we aren't sure what the limits are.
  The basement had paneling all around. The ceiling
was bare wood and full of spiders and
other interesting things. No mice, though.
Noth ing that could be considered actual prey. But many
things that might be fun to chase.
Chapman is the prey,
I reminded myself.
We
are hunting Chapman.
  There was a sort of TV room with a pool table and
some old chairs and a couch. But it was obvious that no
one had used them for a long time. There were no human
scents on them. There was dust everywhere and I could hear
that there were spiders inside the TV set.
  The only part of the basement that appeared to have been
used was a path right across the floor. I smelted the
scents that Chapman had tracked there with his shoes.
  He walked in a straight line across the base
ment to a door. It was a simple white-painted
door. Chapman pulled a set of keys out of his
pocket. He unlocked the white door.
  He opened it and stepped through. Five feet beyond the
white door was a second door. This one was made
of gleaming steel. It looked like the door to a bank
vault.
  Beside the steel door, there was a small, square
white panel of light. Chapman pressed his hand
against it.
  The steel door opened. It slid into the wall like
the doors on
Star Trek.
  I knew I had to go after him. But my human
mind was afraid. And my cat mind didn't see
any reason why I should walk into that dark place.
To both of us, it felt like a trap. Like a place
we couldn't get out of.
  But I
had to.
I had to go in there . That was the whole point of this
spying trip.
  And Chapman was my prey.
  At the last second, just as the door swooshed
shut, I bounded into the room.
  It was dark at first, not that it bothered me. Then
Chapman turned on a low light. It was strange,
because I could actually see better in the dark than I
could with the low light.
  There was a sort of desk set into the wall. It was
gray steel and very unusual-looking. There were more little
light panels in various cheerful colors. And there
was something that looked like a small but complicated
spotlight hanging down from the ceiling. In front
of the desk was a chair. A totally normal
office-type chair. Chapman sat in it.
  He ran his hands over a blue panel. Then he
looked at his watch. He sat patiently,
waiting.
  For about a minute, nothing happened. I tried
to look nonchalant, like I had just happened to wander
in. But at the same time I was careful to stay behind
Chapman so he wouldn't see me.
  I remembered Jake's warning. About how any
one else would just assume I was a plain old cat.
But Chapman knew about morphing. The Yeerks
knew about the Andalite morphing technology. So
if Chapman or any Controller ever saw an ani
mal acting the wrong way, they could suspect the
truth.
  Suddenly a brilliant light snapped on.
  My cat eyes adjusted instantly, but even so,
the light was painfully bright. It came from the little
spotlight thing. Chapman turned around in his chair
to face the light.
  The light began to change. It took shape. It
turned different colors.
  The four hooves appeared. The bluish fur. The
many-fingered hands. The flat, intelligent face with
no mouth and only slits for a nose. The
penetrating, almond-shaped main eyes.
  Then the strange extra eyes, mounted on stalks
that turned this way and that, looking around the room.
Last came the tail, the wicked, curved,
scorpionlike tail.
  An Andalite. Just like the Andalite prince who
had given us our powers.
  But I knew this was no true Andalite. Dread
washed over me. Dread too strong for even my cat
brain to ignore.
  This was no true Andalite. This was the only
Andalite body ever seized and taken over by the
Yeerks. The only Andalite-Controller in all the
galaxy.
This was Visser Three. Leader of the Yeerk in vasion
force. The evil creature who could morph
into monsters acquired from all over the uni verse.
  This was Visser Three, the creature who had
murdered the Andalite prince while we cowered in
terror.
  This was Visser Three, who had nearly killed us
all in the hell of the Yeerk pool.
  "Welcome, Visser," Chapman said in a very
humble voice. was Iniss two two six of the Sulp
Niaar pool submits to you. May the
Kandrona shine and strengthen you."
  "And you, Iniss two two six," Visser
Three said.
  I was shocked to hear the Visser's voice. In his
Andalite body he had no mouth. Andalites
communicate telepathically, just the way I do when
I'm in a morph.
  The second shock came from what they had said
to each other. "Iniss two two six." That had to be
the name of the Yeerk slug who controlled Chapman.
  The cat part of my brain was busy with a different
question. Was this apparition real? No. There was no
scent. No scent at all. Only light and
shadows.
  It was a hologram, I knew. But it was a very
convincing hologram. Visser Three seemed al-
most solid. He looked around as though he could see
from his holographic eyes.
  I prayed he wouldn't look at me.
  "Report, Iniss ."
  "Yes, Visser."
  Part of me just wanted to run. Even a hologram
of Visser Three makes your skin crawl. But now
that he had figured out it wasn't real, the cat part
of me was just bored.
  I realized why I could hear Visser Three --
the hologram projector must not be able to trans
mit thought-speech. It translated it into regular
speech.
  "Is there progress on locating the Andalite
bandits?"
  "No, Visser. Nothing yet."
  I knew who he meant by "Andalite bandits."
That was us, the Animorphs.
  "I want them found. I want them found NOW!"
  Chapman jumped back in surprise at the
Visser's command. I could smell fear on him.
  In a calmer tone, Visser Three went on.
"This cannot go on, Iniss two two six, it cannot go
on. The Council of Thirteen will hear of it. They
will wonder why I reported to them that all Andalite
ships near this planet had been destroyed and all the
Andalites killed. They will be suspicious.
They will be angry. And when the Council of Thir
teen is angry with me, I am angry with you."
  Chapman was literally quivering. I smelled
human sweat. And I smelled something else.
Something not totally human. It was very faint . . . was
that the Yeerk itself I was smelling? Was I smelling the
Yeerk slug in Chapman's head?
  It seemed impossible. But there was some strange
smell. Something . . . something ... I concentrated
all my cat mind on analyzing the smell.
  "What is
that?"
  Chapman swiveled in his chair.
  I looked up and froze. Chapman was staring right
at me. And worse, much worse, Visser
Three's stalk eyes were focused on me, too.
  "It's called a cat," Chapman said
nervously. "An Earth species used as a pet.
The humans keep them close and find comfort in them."
  "Why is it in here?"
  "It belongs to the girl. My ... the host's
daughter."
  "I see," Visser Three said. "Well,
kill it. Kill it immediately."
C
Kill
it. Kill it immediately.
  I wanted to run. I wanted to panic.
  But some strange combination of the cat's cunning and my
own intelligence came together and saved me.
  I didn't so much as flick a whisker. If I
had, I would have been dead. I knew that for a
fact. If I'd reacted like I'd understood, they
would have known for sure that I was no normal cat.
  Visser Three's hologram watched me
closely. All four of his Andalite eyes were
focused on me now. And behind that gentle Andalite
expression, I could feel the razor-sharp focus
of the powerful, evil Yeerk.
Chapman, too, was staring at me. He had the same
look in his eyes that he had when he caught someone
trying to skip out of school.
  I was terrified. Or at least the Rachel part of
me was terrified. Fluffer couldn't have cared less.
He sensed my concern, but he had none of his own.
There were no birds of prey here. There were no dogs.
There were no smells of dominant cats. There was
only a sort of three-dimensional picture that had
no scent. And Chapman. Chapman might be
prey, or he might not, but he was certainly no
threat.
  "It could be an Andalite," Visser Three said.
"Destroy it."
  In response I said, "Meow."
  Visser Three glared at me. "What is that?"
  "It's . . . it's ... the s-s-sound a cat
makes, Visser. I b-b-believe it
wishes to eat."
SAWWWAPP!
  Suddenly, without warning, Visser Three whipped
his tail at me. A dangerous, foot-long,
scythe-shaped blade arced toward me at a speed no
human could hope to evade.
  But I wasn't just a human.
  In a tenth of the time it took to blink, I had seen
the sudden motion and I was crouched down, ears back,
teeth bared. My paw, claws out stretched, swiped
at the tail blade.
My paw went straight through the hologram. And the
blade, nothing but a projection, swept through me.
  "Ha, ha, ha."
  It took me a second to make sense of the sound.
It was Visser Three laughing.
  Chapman seemed amazed, too. Like he had never
heard the Visser laugh. Like it wasn't even
possible to imagine the Visser laughing.
  "What a ferocious little beast," Visser Three
said approvingly. "See how he did not back
away or run? I am many times his size and yet
he struck at me. A pity that the species is
too small to serve as a host."
  "Yes, a pity," Chapman said
warily.
  "Kill it," Visser Three said. "What
better form for an Andalite to use? Better kill
it, just to be safe."
  "Yes, Visser," Chapman said.
"0-o-only . . ."
  "Only what?" the Visser snapped.
  "It belongs to the girl. If I kill the
animal she will be angry. She may draw
attention. Killing a cat is seen as a bad deed.
It would violate my cover."
  Visser Three did not look happy to be
disobeyed. But he was not a creature who made im
petuous decisions. He considered for a moment while
my future just hung there, balancing be tween life
and death.
"Do not violate your cover or draw attention," the
Visser said at last.
  I figured it was time for me to do something in my own
defense. I walked over and rubbed my flank against
Chapman's leg.
  "What is it doing?" Visser Three demanded.
  "It is signaling that it wishes to be fed."
  "Interesting. Claws and teeth and ferocity mixed
with the subtlety to manipulate creatures
larger than itself. A worthy creature. Yes, let
it live, for now. Let it live until we have
resolved the matter of the girl."
  Chapman's face actually seemed to twitch. It
was the only emotion he had shown, other than fear.
"The girl? But . . . Visser . . . the
agreement with the human Chapman . . ."
  Visser Three sneered. "Agreements. Don't
be a fool. We make agreements to gain
voluntary hosts. Agreements are a tool. Just as
you are my tool. If you had brought me the Andalite
bandits, I would not have to concern myself with a cat or a
girl."
  Chapman bowed his head. "I will bring them to you."
  "Do that," Visser Three said coldly. And then
the solid-seeming image began to change. The
gentle Andalite body melted away and in its
place grew a monster like nothing ever seen on
Earth.
Where the Andalite head had been, there was now a long,
thick tube. There was an opening like some horrible mouth
at the end of the tube. The thing was purple, but
translucent. You could al most see through it, although
I wasn't sure if that was because it was a hologram,
or if the animal itself was that way.
  The hologram Visser lowered the tube-mouth
toward Chapman's head. The mouth opened, revealing
hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny suck ers, each
dripping slime.
  It seemed as if the tube mouth closed over
Chapman's head.
  Chapman shook and quivered in terror.
  Visser Three's artificial voice said,
"Don't for get, Iniss two two six, I
gave you this Chapman body. I placed you in his
head because I trusted you. I fed you his brain and made
you my lieutenant. But I can suck you back out again
if you fail me. Would you like to see what happened to the
last fool who failed me?"
  Suddenly an image appeared in the air, like a
little movie. It was a second hologram. It showed
a human woman, pain-wracked, screaming, with the
purple creature sucking on her head.
  The real Chapman began to moan. "Oh, oh,
no, Visser. I beg you."
  In the little movie the translucent purple thing
suddenly went into a spasm. From the
woman's ear there came the slug . It was sucked,
dripping, gray, slimy, right out of her head.
  The purple creature swallowed the
Yeerk slug.
  Then the little movie ended.
  "Not a very pretty picture, is it, Iniss
two two six?"
  Chapman just shook his head. His eyes were still staring
at the empty air where the image had appeared.
  Visser Three began to resume the Andalite
form.
  "Don't fail me," Visser Three said.
  Suddenly Visser Three vanished. The room was
dark again. Chapman sat hunched over the desk, with
his head in his hands. It was a while before he opened the
door and we both went back up the stairs.
  Ms. Chapman was there, waiting. "What are the
Visser's orders?" she asked in a whisper.
  Chapman looked at her like he'd just seen a
ghost. "He wants the Andalite bandits. He ...
he morphed into a Vanarx. A
Yeerkbane."
He kept his voice low, too. He glanced toward
the stairs. I guess he was checking to see if
Melissa was around.
  Ms. Chapman shuddered. "I'd heard that he
acquired a Vanarx. I always thought it was just another
story to frighten his underlings."
  "He showed me ... he showed how he de stroyed
Iniss one seven four."
  Ms. Chapman looked shocked. "He used a
Vanarx on an Iniss of the second century?"
  "That Andalite-Controlling scum," Chapman said
viciously. "I wish the Council of Thirteen
would
find out what kind of a mess he's making on this
planet. Let them take that Andalite body from him
and throw him back in some distant pool on the home
world."
  "Don't wish for that," Ms. Chapman said
grimly. "Long before Visser Three loses power,
he will surely have destroyed you for failing him."
  My cat ears noticed the sound before either of the
Chapmans. Movement. Human feet pounding. I
cocked my ears toward the stairs.
  "Hey, Mom? Dad? Can one of you help me with
this math problem?"
  It was Melissa. She was halfway down the
stairs. She stopped and glanced hopefully at her
parents. Or at least at the people who had once been
her parents.
  "We're busy right now, Melissa," Chapman
snapped.
  "Besides, dear, you should do your own work. That's how you
learn," Ms. Chapman said. "If
you still can't
figure
it out later, your father will help you."
Melissa's face fell. She forced a smile, but
there was no happiness there at all. "I guess
you're right, Mom. It's just this square root
stuff."
She hesitated, like she was hoping her par
ents might change their minds and go back upstairs
with her.
Ms. Chapman smiled. It was a smile as empty
as Melissa's. "Square roots are hard
to understand, aren't they? But I know you can do it."
"I'll come up and check on you before you
turn in, sweetheart," Mr. Chapman said.
The words were normal enough. I guess my own mom
or dad could have said exactly the
same things to me. "Dear." "Sweetheart." But
the way they were said . . . There was something missing.
Humanity. Love. Call it whatever you
want. The words were right, but they were corn
pletely wrong.
It was horrible. Horrible in a totally
different
way than the monsters we had fought in the Yeerk
pool. This was the kind of horrible that made you want
to cry instead of scream.
And suddenly I found myself running after
Melissa as she headed back up the stairs. When
I reached her room, Melissa sat down on the
bed and began sobbing.
less-than Rachel? Can you hear me8greater-than
  less-than Yes, Tobias. I'm up out of the
basement. I'm upstairs in Melissa's room.
greater-than
  less-than Thank goodness. I've been trying you
every minute or so. I was worried that you were trapped
downstairs. greater-than
  less-than No, I'm out. greater-than
  less-than Good. You have more than an hour
left, but Fluffer is trying to head home.
Cassie and Jake and Marco are trying to capture
him again, but you know better than anyone how wily he
can be. greater-than
  Melissa flopped on her face on the bed.
She pulled a pillow over the back of her head and
just cried.
  less-than like can't leave just
yeteagreater-than I said.
  less-than Rachel, if the real Fluffer walks
in while you're still there . . disgreater-than
  less-than Yeah, I know. But I still can't leave
right now. I have something I have to do. greater-than
  I went over to the bed. As small as I was, the
side of the bed looked like a wall. It could have been the
side of a two-story building. I settled back
on my haunches, gathering energy in my leg
muscles. Then I sprang up, effortlessly, to land
with perfect grace on the bed.
  I walked over to Melissa and sniffed her hair
sticking out from under the pillow. I heard a sound coming from
somewhere. It was a sound that reminded me of my mother.
It reminded me of
both
my mothers, the hu man woman, and the cat who had
licked my fur and carried me around in her mouth.
  I recognized the sound. It was purring.
  I was purring.
  Melissa put her arm around me and drew me
close. The physical contact made me a little
anxious. It made the cat in me want to leave.
But then she started scratching my neck and behind my
ears. I purred a little louder and decided
to stay for a while.
  "I don't know what I've done," Melissa
said.
  It startled me to realize she was talking to me.
Did she guess the truth? Did she know I was
human?
  No. She was just a girl talking to her cat.
  "I don't know what I did," Melissa
repeated. "Tell me, Fluffer McKitty.
What did I do?"
  less-than Rachel, what are you doing in
there8greater-than
  less-than Tobias, I have plenty of time.
greater-than
  less-than You have less than an hour. Don't
push your luck. Jake is practically having a
fit out here. He's telling me to tell you to get out
greater-than
  less-than Not yet . Melissa needs me.
greater-than
  I had stopped purring. Probably because I was
preoccupied, arguing with Tobias. I started purring
again. I felt Melissa needed me to purr.
  She was still crying. Still scratching slowly behind my
ears.
"What did I do, Flutter?" she asked again.
"Why don't they love me anymore?"
  I felt like my own heart would break right then.
Because I knew now why Melissa had stopped
hanging out with me. I knew why she had become more
withdrawn. And I knew how little hope there was for her.
  My stomach turned and twisted.
  Next time Marco asked why we were fighting the
Yeerks, I knew I would have a whole new an
swer. Because they destroy the love of parents for their
daughter. Because they made Melissa Chapman cry
in her bed with no one to comfort her but a cat.
  It was a small answer, I guess. I mean,
it wasn't some high-sounding answer about the en tire
human race. It was just about this one girl. My friend.
Whose heart was broken because her parents were no longer
really her parents.
  less-than Look, Rachel, I told Jake
what you said. He said to remind you that you have a job to do
in there. You're not in there to comgreater-than
  less-than Tell Jake to shut up,
Tobiaseagreater-than I said angrily. less-than
l'll come out. I'll come out. Just not yet.
greater-than
  I purred as loud as I could.
Melissa cried. And it came to me, like a vision:
All the children all over, whose parents had been made
into Con trollers. And the parents whose children had been
taken from them to be turned into Con-
trailers. It was a terrible image. I wondered
how it must feel to see your parents stop loving you.
  After a while, Melissa fell asleep. I
got up and padded down the stairs to the pet door.
  It was chilly outside. My friends were all wait
ing. They were also a little mad at me for making them
wait and worry.
  "You only have ten minutes to spare, Rachel,"
Jake said. "I hope it was worth scaring us all
half to death. Did you at least discover something
useful?"
  less-than Yes. I discovered plenty. I
discovered that Chapman has a way to communicate
directly with Visser Three. I discovered that
Visser Three is pretty hot to catch us, although
he still thinks we're Andalites. And I
decided
something, too. greater-than
  "What?" Cassie asked me.
  less-than like decided that I don't care what it
takes, or how many risks I have to run.
I don't care what happens to me. I hate these
Yeerks. I hate them. I hate them. And I will
find a way to stop them. greater-than
  T hat night and the next morning, I barely
got any homework done. In math class that day I
got the first C I'd gotten in a long time. My
grades were starting to fall because I was busy trying
to save the world. Or at least to save my old friend.
  I knew now what had happened. Why Melissa
and I weren't friends anymore, at least not close
friends. Something had gone terribly wrong in her
life. Her parents no longer loved her. They
pretended to, they sounded like they did, but Melissa
knew it was all wrong.
  Every time I thought of it, I felt like my
in-sides were burning up from the anger. I guess
I knew a little bit about what she was feeling.
Ill
When my parents got divorced, I worried that
maybe that meant they didn't love me anymore.
  I was wrong. They still did. I don't see my
dad as much as I would like to, but he does love
me. My mom loves me. Even my sisters love
me. Love is pretty important. It's like
wearing a suit of ar mor. It makes you
strong.
  On my way out of math class, Jake came
sidling up next to me. "Meeting later, okay?"
  "Yeah. Whatever. Whereat?"
  "The church tower, where we were the other day."
  "Okay. But it's a long walk."
  He turned around to face me, walking back ward
and grinning. "So, don't
walk,"
he said. He waved and headed off down the hall.
  Two hours later I was in the air. Let me
tell you something: Getting that big eagle body off
the ground isn't easy. It is definitely work.
I won dered if my human body got any of the
aerobic benefits of the exercise.
  Once I got clear of the ground, I was able
to catch little gusts of wind to climb higher. But it
wasn't till I made it above the trees and the
school buildings that I started getting a good,
solid breeze that helped lift me up.
  When I finally got high enough, I spotted
Tobias. His reddish tail feathers were like a
beacon.
less-than Man, that was a workouteagreater-than I said
when I got close enough.
  less-than Tell me about it. Follow me. The
mall is an excellent place for thermals.
greater-than
  less-than The mall? Why the mall8greater-than
  less-than lt's all that parking space. See,
the concrete gets hot in the sun. The concrete, the
cars, the buildings themselves, they're all hot. So
there's almost always a nice warm updraft.
greater-than
  less-than Flying is like the nicest thing in the
worldeagreater-than I said dreamily.
  less-than Yes, it iseagreater-than Tobias
agreed. less-than One of the nicest things. But there
are things you miss, too. Sitting back on the couch
with a can of pop and a bag of chips and no school the
next day and something good on TV. That's a good
feeling, too. greater-than
  He didn't sound like he was feeling sorry for
himself. Just like he was mentioning something that happened to be
true.
  less-than There's the church tower. I see
another bird heading toward it. And I think I see
Cassie com ing out of her morph. greater-than
  less-than Down we geagreater-than Tobias
said.
  Ten minutes later I had morphed back into my
human body.
  "You know what we need?" Marco said. "We need
to coordinate these morphing outfits. I mean,
Cassie's wearing green patterned leggings
and a purple stretch top, and Jake's got on those
awful bike shorts, and Rachel is stylish, as
always, in her black tights. Put it all together and
we look pretty scruffy."
  "What do you want?" Jake asked him. "You
want us all to wear blue with a big number four on
our chests? Become the Fantastic Four?"
  less-than The Fantastic Four
plus
the amazing Bird Boyeagreater-than Tobias added.
  "No way," Marco said. "Not Fantastic
Four. I'm thinking more an X-Men kind of thing.
It's not about being identical, it's just about having some
style.
Right now, if anyone saw us, they wouldn't think
'Oh, cool, superheroes," they'd think
"Man, those people do not know how to dress.""
  "Marco," I said, "I think it's time to get
over this fantasy of yours. We are not superheroes.
This is not a comic book."
  "Yes, but I really, really want it to be a
comic book. See, in a comic book the heroes
don't get killed. I mean, okay, they killed
Superman that time, but it was only temporary."
  "Can we deal with reality here?" Jake asked.
"We have business to discuss."
  "What's the matter with combining green and purple?"
Cassie asked Marco.
  "It's a major fashion no-no," Marco said.
"Been reading
Vogue
again, Marco?" I teased.
  Jake put his hand over Marco's mouth. "Peo
ple? And I use the term loosely. We need
to de cide what we're doing next."
  Marco pried Jake's hand away. "I want
to de cide what we're
not
doing next. I should be spending more time with my dad.
You know, he's still messed up over my mom. . .
."
  Marco's voice always cracked whenever he mentioned
his mom. He'd start out sounding tough and all, but his
voice would end up with that little break, that little wobble.
It had been two years since his mother
disappeared. They said she drowned, although they never found
her body. His father had fallen apart. It was the main
reason Marco was so reluctant to be an Ani
morph. He was worried that if anything ever happened
to him, his dad would just give up totally.
  I could see that Jake was about to say some thing
impatient. And I was feeling the same way, like
Marco just needed to deal with reality.
  But Cassie put her hand on Marco's arm.
"Don't ever let any of this get in the way of
spending time with your dad," she said earnestly. "He
needs you. We need you, too, Marco, but your dad
comes first." She looked at Jake, then at me.
"There isn't much point in doing any of this if we
forget
why
we're doing it."
I thought about Melissa. And I thought about my mom
and dad and how great it was to have them, even when they got
on my nerves.
  "Cassie's right. When you get h ome, tell
your dad you love him, Marco." I blurted it out
with out thinking about it. It wasn't the kind of thing I
normally say.
  "Thank you, Doctor Rachel,"
Marco said.
  He said it snidely, but I could see he knew
what I was talking about. Then he was suddenly all
business. He rubbed his hands together. "Okay,
let's get serious here. How are we going to go about
getting ourselves killed next? Turn into flies at
a frog convention? Morph into turkeys at
Thanksgiving?"
  "I want to go back in," I said. "Back
into Chapman's."
  "Why?" Jake asked. "We learned a lot
already. We -"
  "We didn't learn the location of the Kandrona,"
I pointed out. "That's what we need to do, sooner
or later. The Andalite made it pretty clear
to Tobias that the Kandrona is the weak point for the
Yeerks. The Kandrona sends out the rays that are
concentrated in the Yeerk pools. If we destroy
the Kandrona, we hurt them bad."
  Marco raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Excuse me, Rachel, but what
is a
Kandrona? I mean, we know what it does, but what
does it look like?
How big is it? For all we know, the
Kandrona could be the size of a lighter and be in
Visser Three's pocket."
  less-than That's not the impression I got from
the An daliteeagreater-than Tobias said.
  "Whatever," Marco said impatiently. "The
point is: How do we destroy something when we
don't even know what it is?"
  "That's why we have to follow the one lead we have,"
I said. "Chapman. Chapman communi cates with
Visser Three. The two of them know where the
Kandrona is. If I can spy on them, maybe I
can figure it out."
  They were all staring at me. Marco looked at me
like I was crazy. Jake looked thoughtful. Cassie
looked worried, like she wasn't sure about what I
was saying.
  Tobias turned his fierce, intimidating
hawk's stare on me. less-than Are you sure
you're just going back to spy on Chapman8greater-than
he asked me privately.
  "I don't think you should go back in there alone,"
Jake said.
  "How is anyone else going to go in with me?" I
asked. "We can't have
two
cats running around. I mean, as Fluffer I can go
anywhere without any of them being suspicious."
  See ... I hadn't told anyone about Visser
Three telling Chapman to kill me. I knew it
was wrong to keep secrets like that from the group.
But if I'd told them, they would have never let me go
back in.
  Unfortunately, although Jake may not be all that
perceptive, Cassie is.
  "Are you
sure
nothing went wrong while you were in there, Rachel?"
Cassie asked me. She was looking at me with this
kind of sideways look Cas sie gets when
she's trying to figure someone out.
  "It was scary," I said. "But nothing hap pened."
It wasn't exactly a lie. Kind of a lie, but
not exactly.
  Cassie thought for a moment. Her eyes went
blank. Suddenly I knew what was going on:
Tobias was talking to her privately. He was
telling her something. She nodded like she was agreeing.
  Tobias didn't know what happened with Visser
Three. But he did know that I was pretty freaky
when I came up out of that basement.
  "I think we should find a way for someone to go along
with Rachel," Cassie suggested.
  "What are you going to do, turn into a flea and
ride on my back?" I asked her.
  She smiled and gave a little shrug. "I'm just
saying we should think about it."
  "Okay then," Jake said. "Rachel goes in
one more time. Maybe we'll get lucky."
  "We haven't gotten lucky since we walked
through that construction site and met our first alien,"
Marco said.
"Maybe that's going to change," I said. "I'm
going in and I'm finding a way to hurt those
creeps."
  less-than That's not the only reason you're
going back in thereeagreater-than Tobias said in my
head. less-than You're not just doing it to hurt the
Yeerks, you're going back in there because you want
to help Melissa. greater-than
  "Same thing," I said. I guess the others won
dered who I was talking to.
C
  I t was a dark and stormy night.
  Sorry, I've always wanted to write that. But it
really
was a
dark and stormy night.
  "Where is Jake?" I asked as we all got
to gether down the street from Chapman's house.
Everyone else was there. Cassie and Marco were wearing
raincoats, although it hadn't started raining yet.
Tobias was overhead, trying to hold onto a
branch in a tree while the wind tried to knock him
off.
  "Jake had to stay home," Marco said. "Some
thing about his dad grounding him."
  "Why would his dad ground him?"
  "How do I know?" Marco said, sounding
grouchy. "You know how parents are. Don't ask me
to explain them."
  I bit my lip. Somehow I felt more nervous with
Jake being absent. The crazy wind whistling through the
branches wasn't helping my confi dence, either.
  less-than I've spotted Fluffereagreater-than
Tobias said so all could hear. less-than He's
kind of torturing a little rat he's found. But at
least it's not a shrew. greater-than
  "Look, I'm not a big fan of shrews just be
cause I sort of was one." I took a deep
breath. "Okay, look, we can't always
count on all of us being together, I guess. So we go
without Jake."
  I glanced at Cassie. She smiled blandly.
Something was going on with her, but I didn't have time
to find out what.
  less-than l'll scope out the areaeagreater-than
Tobias volunteered. He opened his wings a little and
was immediately propelled out of the tree by the wind. I
watched as he rode it expertly, swooping quickly
up into the air beyond the range of my weak human
eyes.
  After a while we saw something shooting over our
heads at about fifty miles an hour. less-than
All cleareagreater-than Tobias called down as
he shot past.
  I felt strange. A little nauseous. A little
scared. Everything seemed strange tonight. The weird
thing was, I knew I'd feel better as soon as
I morphed.
I concentrated. The first raindrop fell just as I
felt my tail grow out behind me. By the time I had
fallen to the ground, surrounded by the tent of my
clothing, the rain had started for real.
  "Oh, perfect," Marco said. "This just gets more
and more fun."
  less-than At least
you
have a raincoateagreater-than I said. less-than like have
nothing but fur. And this rain makes it impossible
to smell anything out here.greater-than
  Cassie squatted next to me. She's just a
normal-sized girl, but when you're a ten-pound cat
any human being looks like Godzilla.
  "Be careful, Rachel," Cassie said. And then
she stroked my back. I started to move away, but
she kept her hand on my back for a few seconds.
Then, smiling mysteriously, she stood up.
  I found I soon lost interest in Cassie's
expres sion. Cats really don't have much interest
in humans at all, unless food is involved.
  less-than I'm out of hereeagreater-than I said.
I took off at a medium run. Cats don't like
rain. I could feel the cat brain's distaste. I'd
always thought cats hated all water. But that wasn't
Flutter's attitude. See, to him it was all about
the smells and the sounds. Rain washes away scents.
Without scents, a cat feels cut off and lost.
  Almost as bad as losing smells is the fact that
rain plopping all around you makes it hard to lis ten
for the important sounds: the tiny high-
pitched squeaks and the little furtive scritching
noises.
  Rain to cats is like being in the dark is to human
beings. It just makes the whole world kind of boring.
  So I ran toward the kitty door, actually
looking forward to the friendly smells and sounds of home.
At least, that's what Fluffer was thinking. I was still
wondering why Jake hadn't come. And I was wondering
if it was some kind of bad omen. There was a bad
feeling over this whole mission.
  I knew my way around the Chapman home, both
as a cat and as a human. And I was pretty sure
I knew the routine. Last time Visser Three had
made contact right at eight o'clock. If Visser
Three communicated with Chapman at the same time every
night, then I had arrived right on schedule.
  Chapman was sitting on the couch, same as last
time. And just as I'd hoped, at three minutes
till eight he stood up and headed down toward the
basement.
  My whole plan was to go down there with him. I
remembered the layout of the little secret room. I
remembered the desk. I knew if I could somehow
follow him down without him seeing me and then get under
the desk, I would be invisible to him, and to the
Visser Three hologram.
The problem was that the whole plan counted on Chapman
not noticing me.
  He headed for the basement door. I fell into step
right behind him. The trick was to stay just inches behind his
feet. From there he couldn't see me. But I had
to watch his feet closely. If he hesitated,
I could plow right into him. That would be a very
un-catlike thing to do.
  He walked. I kept pace perfectly, just
behind.
  He headed down the stairs. I figured this part
would be easier. When people walk down stairs they
usually look where they are going. They don't turn
around and look behind them.
  But one sound, one clumsy move, and I was
finished.
  We reached the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly
Chapman stopped dead.
  I leaped behind the couch.
  He looked around, like he'd heard a noise.
Or maybe he just sensed something.
  I froze. I didn't move a muscle.
  He started on toward the door. I fell into step
behind him again.
  less-than So, what's happening8greater-than
  I nearly had a heart attack.
  My tail puffed up. My back fur went
straight up. I almost bolted.
  Chapman stopped and I nearly got entangled
in his legs. His left foot moved. I dodged.
He backed up a little. I squirmed out of the way.
  less-than lt's me, Jake. What's going
on, Rachel8greater-than
Jake?
  Chapman opened the door of the secret room.
He stepped through. I was right between his monstrously big
feet. If he happened to glance down . . .
  But he didn't. He didn't, and when he
turned around to shut the door behind him, I bolted for the
desk. I jammed my body as far back in the dark
corner as I could.
  I'd made it ... barely. I was alive ...
so far.
  less-than Rachel? Can you hear me8greater-than
  less-than Jake! Where are you? You scared me
half to death. greater-than
  less-than Are we okay8greater-than He sounded
concerned.
  Me, I was just angry.
  less-than What do you MEAN are WE
okay8greater-than I yelled silently. less-than
Where are y8greater-than
  less-than Well ... I'm kind of on you.
greater-than
less-than 0n
me? Jake, this is not the time to be play ing
jokes. greater-than
  Chapman sat down at the desk. His feet
pushed beneath the desk, just narrowly missing me as I
once again dodged nimbly out of the way.
  less-than Sorry. I can't exactly see.
greater-than
  I kept my eyes focused on Chapman's
feet.
Cats have incredible powers of concentration. I focused
hard on those big feet, each almost as big as I
was. I had to stay out of their way. That was the key
to staying alive.
  less-than Jake, we're in kind of a situation
here. In like ten words or less, where are
y8greater-than
  less-than In ten words or less, I
morphedeagreater-than Jake said. less-than I'm
a flea. greater-than
  less-than Every xcuse me8greater-than It would have
been funny if I hadn't been so terrified.
less-than Are you telling me you morphed into a
flea? A
flea8greater-than
  less-than Yeah. I'm on your back. Or your
head. I can't tell. I don't really have eyes.
At least not eyes that see anything I can understand. I
mean, all I know is warm or not warm. I ...
I think I can sense blood. That's about it. And I
can kind of sense motion. Like when your hair stood
up, I knew there was something going on around me.
greater-than
  less-than Jake, this is sick. This is beyond
sick. What is the matter with you? A flea? Are
you insane? Just being a lizard made you sick. This
is way worse. greater-than
  less-than Actually, it's kind of
okayeagreater-than he said. less-than like
mean, I don't know how to explain it, but the flea
mind is so limited it's not hard at all to control.
All it knows is to move toward the sense of warm
blood, and eat. It's like ... I don't know, like
in a way I'm not even really in the flea because I
can't see much or sense much. I expected
it to be horrible, but when Cassie and Marco and I
tested it out -"
  less-than They're in on this with y8greater-than Of
course! That's why Cassie had made such a point
of pat ting my head. She was depositing Jake on
me.
  less-than Rachel, we were worried about you. We
fig ured someone should go along with you. Tobias said
comgreater-than
  less-than Ah, so Tobias is in on this,
too. greater-than
  less-than Tobias said you were not telling us every
thing. He wasn't sure why, or what it was you
weren't telling. greater-than
  I sighed inwardly. I guess it's good to have friends
who care about you. But on the other hand, Jake had
practically made me run into Chapman. Besides, the
idea of Jake morphing into a flea and crawling
around in my fur just gave me the worst creeps you can
imagine.
  Suddenly the brilliant light went on.
Visser Three appeared in the room.
  less-than Jake. The Visser is here in
hologram. So don't distract me, okay?
We're hiding under the
desk about half an inch away from Chapman's
foot. greater-than
  less-than 0h. But it doesn't matter if
he sees you, right? I mean, he'll just figure
you're the cat. No biggie. So you shouldn't be acting
suspicious. greater-than
  I hesitated. Oh, well, it would have to come out
sooner or later. less-than Um, Jake? That
thing I didn't tell you? It's that Visser Three
saw me in here last time. He told Chapman he
should probably just . . . you know . . . kill me.
He was worried I might be an Andalite in
morph. greater-than
  For a while Jake didn't say anything. I had
the feeling he was trying to keep himself from yelling at
me. He failed.
  less-than Rachel, are you CRAZY? You came
back down here after that? Are you INSANE8GREATER-THAN
  But just then Chapman began to speak. "Welcome,
Visser. Iniss two two six of the Sulp Niaar
pool submits to you. May the Kandrona shine and
strengthen you."
  "And you," Visser Three said curtly.
"Report."
  "I have four new voluntary hosts,
Visser," Chapman said. "Two are children
recruited through The Sharing, the front organization.
Of the two adults one is an agent for the FBI, a
sort of policeman. He may be very -"
  "FOOL!" Visser Three's artificial
voice was flat, but still carried a load of anger.
"Do I care
about a handful of hosts? What have you learned of the
Andalite bandits?"
  "Visser, what can I do ... unless they show
themselves?"
  "They used Earth animals in the attack on the
pool," Visser Three said. "They used powerful,
dangerous Earth animals. Find out how they
obtained such morphs. My experts here tell me
such animals are rare on this part of the planet."
  "Yes, Visser. I will do- his
  "Yes. You
will.
And we have another matter. We need six more
human-Controllers, suitable for work as guards.
They will be used to increase the guard around the
Kandrona."
  less-than What's happening8greater-than Jake
asked.
  less-than Chapman is getting reamed by Visser
Three. greater-than
  less-than Too bad Marco isn't here.
He'd enjoy seeing Chapman get chewed out.
greater-than
  less-than He wants us badeagreater-than I
said. less-than 0r at least he wants the
Andalites he thinks we are. He's put ting
extra guards around the Kandrona. Human-
Controllers caret
  less-than That's interesting, maybe he'll
comgreater-than
  The foot moved too quickly. The point of the shoe
hit me in the ribs.
  "Mrrrraaaoowwww!"
  Chapman pushed back from the desk. He
passed right through the Visser Three hologram. For a
second I saw them united, as if they were one
horrible creature.
  "What's happening?" Visser Three de manded.
  Chapman stared at me, horror and fury in his
eyes.
  I flattened my ears back against my skull.
My claws came out. My teeth were bared.
  "It's the animal, Visser. The
cat," Chapman said in a voice full of loathing
and fear.
  Visser Three seemed to make a seething,
half-hissing noise.
  "You should have killed it when I told you to,
Iniss two two six."
  "But Visser -" Chapman protested.
  "And yet it all works out to my advantage,"
Visser Three said. "Now there can be no doubt that this
cat is one of the Andalite bandits."
  less-than Jake? We're bustedeagreater-than
I said. less-than We're busted really bad.
greater-than
  "We will no longer have to search for the An
dalites," Visser Three said. "We have one right
here with us."
  "Shall I kill it?" Chapman asked.
  "No. Don't kill it. Seize it. Seize
it now, be fore it can morph back into Andalite
shape. By the time I am done with this one, we will have
them all! It has been a long time since I
tortured a proud Andalite warrior. But I know
how to break them. Seize it and bring it to me!"
Chapman knew better than to argue.
132
  Child apman dived. His hands were open wide,
grabbing for me.
  I was trapped! No way out. No way to open that
door and escape.
  Trapped!
  No sensible choice but to surrender.
  But the cat and I were in agreement on this: You never
surrender.
  I felt my claws extend. My pupils were
wide, ready to see every tiny movement. My ears were
flattened back against my skull. My needle-sharp
teeth were bared. My liquid steel muscles were
coiled.
  Chapman's hand seemed to slow down. It was like he
was moving in slow motion. Everything
seemed slower to my heightened cat senses. Only
I was moving at normal speed.
  My paw lashed out. My claws bit flesh. I
saw three bright red tracks on the back of
Chapman's hand.
  I could smell the blood that flowed.
  "Ahhhhh!" Chapman howled. He backed
away.
  "Get it!" Visser Three shouted.
  less-than What's going on8greater-than
Jake wondered. less-than like feel like we're
bouncing around a lot. greater-than
  Chapman got a determined look on his face.
He came at me again. I was cornered. No way
out.
  I slashed. Chapman cried out.
  My claws were lacerating him, tearing furrows in
his arms and hands.
  He grabbed me around the middle. The cat in me
hated being grabbed that way.
  Hated it a lot.
  I brought my teeth into it. I was a ten-pound
bundle of lightning-fast claws and teeth. Chap
man's hands looked like raw hamburger.
  "A magnificent animal!" Visser Three
com mented. "Twist it around. Hold it with your fore
arm. That's right."
  I did a lot of damage. Believe me,
Chapman got hurt.
  But in the end, no matter how tough I was, I
was just ten pounds of killer. Chapman was about eighteen
times bigger.
  He got his forearm around my chest. He had me
pressed back against his chest. My front legs were
pinned. With his other arm he managed to grab
my hind legs.
  All I could do was bite.
  I bit. I bit again and again. But although I could
hurt him, I couldn't kill him. I couldn't stop
him. His fear of Visser Three was greater than the
pain I was causing.
  "Bring it to me," Visser Three said enthusias
tically. "Bring it to me. I will come to collect it
at the nearest landing site."
  "Visser, what if it ... Owww! . . . What
if it resumes its Andalite shape?"
  "You have weapons. If it tries to remorph,
kill it."
  "Yes . . . Ahhhh! . . . Rotten little
beast! Yes, Visser. I will go directly."
  "We will deal with this Andalite bandit. And bring the
girl, too."
  "The girl . . . Melissa?" Chapman
asked.
  "I have been indulgent too long. This Andalite
spy has penetrated your home. It is because of the
girl. I have already chosen the Yeerk for her. Bring
her with the Andalite. Obey me, Iniss two two
six. Or prepare to face the Vanarx."
Visser Three's hologram disappeared.
Chapman suddenly threw me across the room. I
twisted in midair and brought my legs around for the
landing. I hit the floor and skidded.
  less-than 0kay, something is definitely going
on out there. greater-than
  By the time I was up, Chapman had reached his desk
and opened a drawer. His bloody hand came out with a
small pistollike device I had seen before. It
was a handheld Dracon beam.
  Chapman leveled the weapon at me. He was
shaking. His face seemed to be twitching. The weapon
jerked a little with each spasm. But I knew he would
still have gotten me if I had tried to move.
  less-than Are you going to tell me what's going
on8greater-than Jake demanded. less-than A few
seconds ago I felt an other warm body
close by. And I think I'm sens ing blood.
greater-than
  less-than We're in kind of a messeagreater-than
I said.
  less-than What kind of a mess8greater-than
Jake asked.
  less-than Chapman has a Dracon beam
pointed at me. He knows I'm not exactly a
cat. He thinks I'm an Andalite.
He's taking me to Visser Three. greater-than
  less-than 0h. This is bad. greater-than
  less-than It gets worse. Visser Three
wants Melissa, too. greater-than
  Chapman opened the door a crack. "Get down
here! Now!" he yelled upstairs.
I guess he saw my eyes flick toward the
door. He made a fierce, vicious grin.
"Try it, Andalite. Go ahead and try it. I'd
love the excuse to fry you."
  I decided not to head for the door.
  "You've made life very difficult for me,"
Chapman said. "Very difficult. If I have to let
Visser Three take the girl, my host will make
life annoying for me. Do you know how tiring it is
to have an uncooperative host? No, of course you
don't. But trust me, Andalite: I will gladly
kill you."
  Ms. Chapman appeared at the door. "What
is it?"
  "This cat is one of the Andalite bandits in a
morph. Visser Three wants him. Get me the
cage we use to take him to the vet."
  Ms. Chapman nodded and disappeared.
  less-than What's going on
now8greater-than Jake asked.
  less-than Ms. Chapman is getting a
cageeagreater-than I said. I was feeling utterly
defeated. Because of me, the Yeerks were going to take
Melissa. I had failed. I had made a mess
of things.
  Ms. Chapman brought the cage. She opened the
little barred door.
  "In," Chapman snapped.
  I didn't move.
  "In," he said in a cruel whisper. "In or
I'll fin ish you right here."
  He looked like he meant it. I walked into the
cage. Ms. Chapman closed the door and made
sure it was locked.
  Chapman snatched up the cage and carried me to the
top of the stairs. "Now," he snapped at his
wife, "go get . . . ungh!"
  Peering through the slats in the side of the cage, I
saw him stagger. His face was twitching like he was a
crazy man. He seemed to be having a hard time
getting control of his mouth. "Go . . . get ... the
... girl," he said through gritted teeth.
  Ms. Chapman started to obey, but then Chap man
cried out.
  "Oh! Ungh!" He fell to his knees. "He
is ... urgh ... he is ... fighting me. . .
."
  "Host rebellion," Ms. Chapman muttered
un der her breath. She seemed horrified and
fasci nated all at once. Then, suddenly, her
left hand slapped her own face.
  "Ahhhhh! Mine . . . mine . . . too."
  "Stop it, Chapman," Chapman said. "Stop it
or I'll break you! I'll leave you nothing but a
shell! You cannot win. No host has ever suc ceeded
in rebelling!"
  But the Chapman host wasn't giving up.
  It was terrible. Terrible in a way that made you
want to watch. To anyone else it would have just looked
as if our assistant principal and his
wife were nuts. Chapman was talking to himself and
twitching and contorting, still unable to get to his feet.
  less-than The hosts are fighting the
Yeerksffgreater-than I told Jake. less-than
The human brains are resisting. Chapman is out of
control. Ms. Chapman is trying to choke herself with
her own hand. The Yeerk is trying to regain control.
It's incredibleffgreater-than
  less-than like can't believe it! I can't
believe the hosts can fight back this hard.
greater-than
  less-than lt's because of Melissa. They're
fighting for their daughters
  "Aaaarrrr)h!" Chapman cried. Suddenly he
lurched to his feet. "I will win, Chapman. You
cannot resist!"
  And it was true. The Chapman host was los ing.
Iniss two two six was regaining control.
  The same was happening with Ms. Chapman. The
Yeerk in her head was forcing the rebellious hand away
from her throat.
  But neither of the Chapmans looked good.
  less-than They're exhaustedeagreater-than I
reported to Jake. less-than They're regaining
control, but they're both a mess. Sweating.
Pale. Still trembling and jerk ing caret
  Chapman looked at his wife. Or at least the
Yeerk slug in Chapman's brain ordered his eyes
to look toward the body that was controlled by a
different Yeerk. It was harder now to think of
Chapman as just being Chapman. I had seen proof that
there were two creatures inside him.
  I even knew what that was like. There were two people in
my head as well. I had fought to control the
shrew, just as the Chapman Yeerk now fought to control
Chapman's brain.
  Chapman said, "I have control again."
  Ms. Chapman nodded. "Yes. But just barely.
They fight fiercely for their children, these hu mans."
  "And they will not stop fighting. I can't main tain
my cover with this host waiting to attack at every
opportunity. I have to be at the school every day. The
host is beaten and exhausted for now, but in a few
days he will strike again." Chapman sounded angry and
frustrated. "He's not a fool. He knows he
can't win ... he knows each battle will leave him
weaker and that eventually I will triumph."
  Ms. Chapman kicked my cage, like it was all
my fault. "He doesn't have to win. All he
has to do is wait until you are in a meeting with
parents or members of the school board, then strike.
They'll think you've lost your mind."
  Chapman looked haunted. He checked his
watch. "I'll take the Andalite to Visser
Three. Maybe . . . maybe I can make him
understand."
"Go, quickly," Ms. Chapman told her hus band.
  Chapman snatched up the cage I was in. He
barreled through the door. He slammed me
into the doorjamb on the way.
  "Daddy? Daddy? What are you doing?"
  It was Melissa. She was across the living room.
I hadn't seen her arrive. Where had she been? I
could only pray that she had not heard everything. If
she'd heard it all, there was no hope for her.
  Chapman kept walking. Out into the wet night.
  "Daddy? Do you have Fluffer in there?"
  less-than lt's Melissaeagreater-than I
told Jake. less-than lf she doesn't back
off, she's going to force them to take herffgreater-than
  "Daddy?" Melissa sounded frightened now. She
came running. Chapman moved quicker. The real
Chapman was helping. He knew his daughter would
only make things worse if she tried to intervene.
  "Fluffer!" Melissa cried.
  There was only one hope. less-than
Tobias8greater-than I cried out, making my
thought-speech as loud as I could. less-than
Tobias, can you hear me8greater-than
  His answer was faint, but it was Tobias.
less-than Yes, Rachel. greater-than
less-than The real Fluffer! We need him. We
need him right nowffgreater-than
  less-than Rachel, what is going on
out there8greater-than Jake demanded.
  "Fluffer! Why are you taking Fluffer? Daddy,
stop!"
  Out the front door we went. Out into the night.
Melissa, sobbing pitifully. Jake, demand ing
to know what was happening. Chapman, walking as fast as
he could.
  Melissa grabbed her father's arm. The cage
wobbled wildly.
  "Daddy, you can't take Fluffer. Don't take
him away! What are you doing?"
  The car. I could see it in the driveway. We were
almost there.
  Suddenly, I heard a yowling, yammering,
high-pitched sound that started as a hiss and ended as a
shriek.
  Like a bullet he came, racing across the lawn.
The
real
Flutter.
  He was running like every monster in the world was right behind
him.
  In the darkness the humans couldn't see what was
scaring Flutter so badly. But with my cat eyes
I could see perfectly. Just a few feet
off the ground, like some dark shadow of death, came
Tobias.
  Flutter must have recognized his cage. He must
have figured that if he just got inside he'd be safe
from the talons of the raptor that pursued him.
  Flutter leaped toward the cage. He glommed
onto it and tried to dig his claws into the plastic.
  For one frozen instant Flutter McKitty
saw something he never expected to see. Flutter
saw himself.
  It was almost as weird for me. The cat in my head
was totally baffled. This new cat smelled exactly
like himself. This did not make any sense at all. It
meant nothing. It wasn't even a part of any cat
reality. The human part of me noticed a small
cut on Flutter's head. Tobias had taken a
good swipe at him to get him moving in the right
direction.
  "Flutter?" Melissa said. "But . . ." She
tried to peer inside the cage.
  Chapman was quick. "No, sweetheart," he said.
"This isn't Flutter at all. It's some other
cat
that sneaked into the basement. He's different. I'm
taking him to the shelter so his owners can pick
him up."
  "But why didn't you just tell me that?"
  Chapman looked confused. "I ... I didn't
no tice you."
  Melissa stepped back like she'd been slapped.
"But Daddy, I was crying."
  "Sorry." Chapman shrugged. He shoved the
cage into the backseat.
  We drove off. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I knew Melissa wasn't safe yet, but she was
safe for now, at least.
  less-than Good work, Tobiaseagreater-than I
said. But I don't think he could hear me. And I
couldn't see out of the windows, so I didn't know if
he or Marco or Cassie were anywhere close.
  less-than Jake? You still with me8greater-than
  less-than Yes. Do you have a minute to fill me
in? This flea existence is fine for hiding, but I
can't tell anything about what's going on. greater-than
  less-than I'm in a cat carrier. Chapman's
in the front seat. He watches me through the
rearview mirror. He still has the Dracon beam.
I think maybe I'm in pretty big trouble
here.greater-than
  less-than We're not beaten
yeteagreater-than Jake said.
  less-than Jake, time must be getting short.
It's been at least an hour. You must have morphed
before me. You need to get away and morph back.
greater-than
less-than We still have timeeagreater-than Jake said.
  less-than You have a watch, Jake8greater-than
I asked. less-than like don't think so. You're
what, about twice the size of a period on the page
of a book? You can't risk be ing trapped in a
flea morph. Besides, there's nothing you can do.
greater-than
  We hadn't traveled far before the car started
bouncing and rattling over rough road.
  less-than As soon as we get outside you
need to jump off, Jakeeagreater-than I said.
less-than Just make yourself jump
away
from warmth and away from the smell of blood. You can do
that greater-than
  The car came to a stop.
  less-than Rachel, there is no way I'm going
to leave you alone. greater-than
  I knew he was trying to be brave, but he was
making me mad. less-than Jake,
we're trapped. He's got a Dracon beam and
I'm in a cage. Visser Three is coming to get
me. I can't morph back or they'll see I'm
human. Chapman will recognize me. How long do
you think it will take them to figure out who the rest of us
are? It would be the end of us all. The end of the
Animorphs. The end of the only hope for stopping
these guys. Come on, Jake, you know it's true.
greater-than
  less-than We're not beaten yeteagreater-than
Jake repeated stub bornly.
  less-than The only hope is for me to stay in
cat morpheagreater-than I said. less-than
They'll probably. . . you
know . . . but at least they'll never find out about the
rest of you. Now jump off me. greater-than
  Chapman got out of the car. He came around and
opened the back door.
  "Time to meet the Visser, Andalite. He'll have
a wonderful time with you."
  Chapman lifted me out of the backseat. I
looked out through the bars.
  less-than We're at the construction
siteeagreater-than I told Jake. less-than
Now get off me. greater-than
  less-than I'm not comgreater-than
  I couldn't argue with Jake anymore. I was
afraid now. Afraid. I could picture what
Visser Three might do to me.
  less-than Sorry, Jake, but this time I'm the
bosseagreater-than I said. I cocked my rear leg
and started scratching in that rapid catlike way.
  less-than What the ... what are you
doing8greater-than
  less-than I'm scratching. I want you off
me. greater-than
  less-than 0kay, okayeagreater-than Jake
said. less-than Just stop it. It's like an
earthquake here. Okay, Rachel. You're right.
We've lost this battle. greater-than
  Chapman carried the cage into the construction site.
I could see the ground go by beneath me. I could see through
the bars all the half-built cinderblock
buildings. I could see the very spot where the five of
us had cowered in terror while Visser Three had
morphed into a monster and swallowed the Andalite
prince.
The Andalite's last despairing cry came back
to me. He had lost his fight. Now I was losing
mine.
  Maybe there was no hope. Maybe we were fools
to even try and resist the Yeerks.
  less-than Get out of here, Jakeeagreater-than
I said.
  less-than 0kay, Rachel. Here I go.
Look ... be strong, Rachel. greater-than
  less-than Yeah, Jake. You too. greater-than
  less-than Jumping . . disgreater-than
  A few seconds later, Chapman put me
down on the ground. He waited beside the cage. The
two of us stared off into the darkness.
  I decided to make sure Jake was gone.
less-than Jake? Jake8greater-than
  No answer.
  less-than Jake, answer me. I've changed
my mind. I want you to stay with me. greater-than
If he had lied to me, he would answer now.
less-than Come on, Jake, I've changed my
mind. I need you. greater-than
  No answer. He was truly gone. That fact
filled me with grim satisfaction. If Jake and the
others survived, there would still be some hope.
  But the feeling of loneliness was awful.
  Then I heard the sound of something large, moving
swiftly in the air. I pressed my head
against the door and looked up. Three craft were
descending toward the construction site.
  Two of them were smaller, about the size of
one of those recreational vehicles, maybe a little
larger. They had a cowled, insectlike look. They
looked like beetles with twin long, serrated spears
pointed forward on each side. The An dalite had
called them Bug fighters.
  The third craft was much larger, shaped like an
angular battle-ax. It was black on black,
sharp, and deadly looking. As it sank slowly to ward
us I felt my fear grow.
  It was not the cat that was afraid. It was me, the
human. The cat didn't know what this ship was.
I did. I had seen it before. The Andalite had
called it a Blade ship.
  It was the personal ship of Visser Three. And
terror seemed to flow from it. I could smell the fear
sweat on Chapman.
  I guess I was glad he was scared, too.
Maybe Visser Three would become the Vanarx and
suck the Chapman Yeerk out of Chapman's head.
Maybe the true Chapman would experience a few
seconds of freedom before he was killed. Maybe
the Chapman Yeerk would suffer before Visser
Three finished him off.
  Maybe.
  Fear is like a worm inside you. It eats you.
It chews your guts. It bores holes in your
heart. It makes you feel hollow. Empty.
Alone.
  Fear.
  The Blade ship landed between two half-
finished buildings. The Bug fighters came to rest
on either side. They looked so strange, parked between
the yellow-painted earthmovers and graders in the
construction site.
  The earthmovers looked like toys. The alien
craft looked like deadly weapons.
  I was afraid. I tried to borrow the cat's
courage, his indifference. But then the door of the
Blade ship opened. I had no courage.
  Only fear.
Vi
sser
Three in person is worse than Visser Three
as a hologram. There's nothing horrible about him.
Not when he's in his normal Andalite body, at
least. Andalites are strange-looking, that's for
sure. But they aren't frightening.
  But I had met a real Andalite. You could feel
the difference between a real Andalite and the evil beast that
was Visser Three. It was like he glowed with some dark
light. A light that cast a shadow over your mind.
  Visser Three. Even Chapman feared him.
  Around the Visser, two Hork-Bajir guards
de ployed. Each was holding a Dracon beam, not
that Hork-Bajir ever looked like they needed
weapons. They
were
weapons. Marco had called

  them walking Salad Shooters. They were living
razor blades. Wickedly curved blades raked
for ward from their foreheads. More blades were at their
elbows and wrists. Their feet were like Tobias's
talons, only much bigger, like Tyrannosaur
feet.
  They were seven feet tall, maybe a little more, with a
spiked tail. The Andalite had told us that the
Hork-Bajir were a good people, enslaved by the Yeerks,
just the same way the Yeerks wanted to enslave
humans. But it was hard to look at a
Hork-Bajir and think they had ever been anything but
killing machines.
  Behind the Hork-Bajir came four Taxxons.
  Imagine a centipede. Now imagine a
centipede twice the length of a man and just as big
around. Imagine that the centipede holds the upper
third of its body erect. Imagine pointed legs
like steel pins below, and smaller legs with little claws
as you get closer to the head. Not that it has a real
head. There are four separate globs that look like
chopped-up red Jell-O that are the Taxxon's
eyes. And at the very top , a mouth. The mouth is
perfectly round an lined with row after row of small,
needle teeth.
  The Andalite told us that the Taxxons are all
voluntary hosts. They are allies of the Yeerks.
  And yet, as horrible as the Hork-Bajir and the


Taxxons were, it was Visser Three who made
your skin crawl.
  Without the hologram communicator, the Visser
communicated in the usual Andalite fashion. He
thought-spoke, much like we all did when we were in
morph.
  less-than That is the Andalite
bandit8greater-than he asked Chapman.
  "Yes, Visser.?
  Visser Three advanced toward me, almost mincing
on his delicate Andalite legs, looking like a
cross between a deer, a human, and a scorpion.
He aimed his main eyes at me. His stalk eyes
canned the area, always watchful. He brought his face
close to the cage.
  I was staring right into his face. I could see the
nose slits open and close as he breathed. I could
see the large, almond-shaped eyes narrow as he
peered inside to get a better look at me.
  He was only inches away. I should have tried
to reach through the bars and at least bloody him a little.
  But the fear was all over me. I was sick with
terror. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I couldn't
stand his eyes watching me. I turned away,
afraid to look.
  less-than Not so brave now, my Andalite
fr8greater-than Visser Three asked.
It was the first time any of us had ever been spoken
to directly by the Visser. His voice was in my
head, threatening and cruel and foul beyond description.
It was a voice full of power -- and hate. When
he called me an Andalite, I almost burst out,
"No, no, Visser, not an Andalite.
A hu man. A human!"
  It was like I could feel the terrible force of his will
battering me. In an instant I knew: I would
never survive his questioning. I would tell him everything.
His power was a million times greater than mine. His
will was a vast, huge, irresistible thing. And what was
I? Just some foolish little girl. A foolish, lost
girl. Lost.
  And yet, even as I felt my own mind wither before
the black terror of Visser Three, another mind
came forward.
  I was not alone. There was another in my head with
me. Someone whose species memory had no images
of Visser Three. Fluffer. Fluffer's mind
contained fears, but they were different from my fears.
Fluffer feared big predator birds. Fluffer
feared loud aggressive dogs. Fluffer feared
dominant male cats.
  But Fluffer was not at all impressed by Visser
Three.
  On the edge of absolute panic, I let the
cat in my mind take over. I sank back,
hiding behind the calm cat brain.
Visser Three took the cage from Chapman. He
lifted it up so he could see inside
better.
  And what did I do? What did Fluffer do?
He stuck his little pink nose up against the bars and
sniffed the air.
  Fluffer wanted to find out what this creature was,
and that meant getting a good smell of him.
  less-than This is similar to the
orange-and-black crea ture that invaded the
pooleagreater-than Visser Three said.
  It took me a second to track on this. Then
I realized: He meant Jake. Jake had been
in his tiger morph when we battled in the Yeerk
pool.
  "Yes, Visser," Chapman said. "They are a
family of animals. Felines. These are the
small est."
  less-than like see you damaged my servant
Iniss two two six, Andaliteeagreater-than
Visser Three said to me. less-than No one ever
accused you Andalites of lacking courage. You are a
race of fools, but brave. greater-than
  What was I supposed to say? Thank you?
  less-than Why not answer me, Andalite? I
know you hear my words. This charade is pointless. I
know what you are. greater-than
  I said nothing. I tried to think nothing. I was
afraid that if I said anything he would instantly know
I was not an Andalite. And if he re alized I
was human . . . the others would never be safe.
I had to stay in this body.
  I had to die in this body, and take my secret
with me.
  Visser Three put my cage back down.
less-than Now. Where is the girl? I have
promised her to Iniss four five five. Iniss
four five five is a spawn mate of yours, I
believe. We will do the infestation aboard the mother ship,
and I will have the girl returned tomorrow. Where is
she8greater-than
  "Visser ... I ..." Chapman said.
  The mask of politeness dropped from Visser
Three in a microsecond. Even my cat eyes
could barely follow his movements, they were so swift.
Visser Three grabbed Chapman around the neck.
His Andalite tail arched forward. The dagger point
of the tail was in Chapman's face.
  less-than Do you defy me8greater-than It was
like a hiss. The hiss of a snake.
  "n-n-n-o, no, Visser." Chapman was
shaking like a leaf. "I would never defy you.
It's only . . . the host. Chapman. He and the
woman rebelled."
  less-than Aren't you able to control your
host8greater-than Visser Three sneered.
less-than Do you think the Andalite mind that still
lives in this body never resists? Do you imagine that
your human host is more powerful than my own
Andalite host?"
  This wasn't going very well for Chapman. Either the
real, human Chapman, or the human- Controller
that called itself Chapman.
"Visser, I ... I only report the facts
to you. M-m-my host is under control. But I am
constantly in contact with humans. I occupy a
responsible position in their society. I cannot have
my host body causing me to twitch and shake.
Humans see such things as signs of mental
illness. I could lose my position. And I would no
longer be of any use to you."
  less-than You are barely of use to me
noweagreater-than Visser Three sneered.
  "Visser, my host begs leave to address you di
rectly," Chapman said.
  Visser Three hesitated. I saw his stalk
eyes scan around, checking for any signs
of threat. In stinctively I looked around, too.
I had no way of knowing how well Visser
Three's borrowed An dalite eyes could see in
the dark. But for me the darkness was no barrier.
  I looked. I didn't even know what I was
looking for. But all I saw were the Hork-Bajir
and the Taxxons, the Yeerk ships, silent and dark,
and the buildings and forlorn construction equipment of the
site.
  Then I caught a glimpse of movement. It was
in the woods that bordered the construction site. A
swift side-to-side movement, just the sort of thing
my cat eyes noticed best. But when I stared
closer, I saw no further movement. Probably
just another Hork-Bajir patroling.
less-than like will allow the host to address
meeagreater-than Visser Three said.
  I craned my head up as well as I could
to watch. For a moment, nothing changed. Then,
suddenly, Chapman sagged. It was like he was a
marionette and someone had cut his strings. He
collapsed, straight down. His legs just twisted up
under him.
  He tried to stand up. But it was as if he didn't
know how to make his legs work. They would jerk
and suddenly kick out, but he could not stand. Finally, he
gave up.
  "Fisher," he mumbled. "Fisher Hree. Sor
. . . I ... sorry. Visher. Visser.
Visser Three."
  The real, human Chapman had been out of control
of his own body for so long he no longer remembered
how to move or speak.
  "Visser Three," he said again. His voice was
slurry and strange.
  less-than Speak, you fooleagreater-than Visser
Three snapped. less-than Do you think I can
stay here forever8greater-than
  "Visser Three. You ... We had a deal. You
know I never wanted to join you. My wife did. But
I said no. But . . . but then my wife ... no
longer my wife by then, of course." Suddenly he
began to cry. I could see his tears very clearly.
"My wife who was no longer my wife ... my
wife who was one of your creatures . . . threatened
. . . threatened to give you my daughter."
Chapman managed to raise one clumsy hand to his
eyes. "I forgive her. She was weak. And you feed
on weakness."
  less-than Yes, yes, get to the
pointeagreater-than Visser Three said.
  A Hork-Bajir moved closer. He muttered
something to the Visser, then moved away. I couldn't
hear or understand what the Hork-Bajir had said, but
it looked as if he was reminding Visser Three that
they shouldn't hang around too long.
  "The point is," Chapman said, "that I agreed
to be made into a host. I agreed to ... to
..." He looked like he was about to throw up. "I
agreed to surrender my freedom. To become a
Controller. To accept this filthy thing in my head.
To accept your control. I agreed . . . but only
if you would spare my daughter."
  It felt like my heart had stopped beating.
Chapman had become a Controller to save
Melissa? He had given more than his life to save
his daughter?
  less-than The situation has changedeagreater-than
Visser Three said. less-than The Chapman
person is an important part of our work. We cannot
have him endangered by some uncontrollable human.
greater-than
  "The girl -- Melissa -- is no threat. But
. . ." Chapman struggled to lift himself up once
again with clumsy legs and awkward arms.
He rose to
his knees. Then slowly, slowly, he stood up.
He was wobbling and swaying, but he was standing. "The
girl is no threat," he repeated in a stronger, more
confident voice. "But I am."

C
  less-than You out? A threat8greater-than Visser
Three laughed. He reached out with one hand to push
lightly on Chapman's chest. Chapman fell
back, sprawled out on the dirt. His head was just
inches from the door of my cage. Tears were streaming
down the side of his face.
  "If you harm my daughter I will fight you. I will
fight you forever. Ask your Yeerk if he believes
me. He knows me better than anyone. Ask
Iniss two two six if I will fight for my
daughter."
  Chapman closed his eyes. The tears stopped.
Then his eyes opened again. He picked himself up
quickly from the ground and stood before Visser Three. The
Yeerk slug was in charge again. He was once again a
Controller.
Before he stood, I saw something that fright ened me all
over again. It was Chapman's watch. The
time was now nine twenty-eight. I had about seventeen
minutes before I hit the two-hour limit!
  less-than The host will attempt to disrupt
y8greater-than
  "Yes, Visser. And the woman as well. She
is not as strong as this one, but she was able to gain control
of one hand. Perhaps she has deeper strengths than we
knew." He hesitated before going on. I could still
smell the fear on him. "I am of more use with a
passive, voluntary host. But I am your tool,
Visser. I will do as you com mand."
  less-than Yes, you will certainly do as I
commandeagreater-than Visser Three said. less-than
But you have brought me the Andalite bandit.
greater-than He nodded down at me. less-than And
this will occupy my time for a little while. Leave the
girl, for now. Now get out. You tempt my
patience. greater-than
  Chapman didn't need a second invitation.
He jumped in the car and tore out of there.
  Melissa was safe. As safe as she would ever be
with Chapman as her father. That was some thing. Not much, but
something.
  less-than Move oueagreater-than Visser Three
yelled. I saw the Hork-Bajir
respond instantly to his command. The nearest one
snatched me up and suddenly we were moving fast toward
the Blade ship.
In seconds it would all be over. I would be aboard
the Visser's ship. I would leave Earth. The only
thing in my future was pain. Maybe I would die
before I betrayed my friends. A depressing kind of
thing to hope for.
  less-than So. What's happening
now8greater-than
"Mrrraaaoww!"
I jumped and spun around inside my cage.
less-than Jake? Is that y8greater-than
  less-than Who else would it be? You know anyone
else who would be a talking flea riding on your
back8greater-than
  less-than Jake, you were supposed to get away
and be safeffgreater-than
  less-than Yeah, right. Like I was going to abandon
you. Listen, I could hear Visser Three's
thought-speech, but I don't know where we are.
greater-than
  less-than We are about ten feet away from being
loaded into Visser Three's Blade ship. And I
have about fifteen minutes left before I'm
trapped in this morph. greater-than
  less-than Fifteen minutes? Great, if you have
fifteen, I have ten. I had to morph earlier than
you, re members
  less-than Jake, get out of here! You can't be
trapped as a fleaffgreater-than
  The door of the Blade ship slid open
silently. I could see dark red light inside. I
could see a handful of Taxxons that seemed to be standing
over control panels of some sort. Hork-Bajir
stood at attention.
less-than I'm not getting out of hereeagreater-than
Jake said. less-than None of us are. greater-than
  less-than None of ... You mean the rest are
fleas, too8greater-than
  less-than No, but they should be around somewhere.
Tobias was supposed to follow us and lead the others
to wherever we ended up. greater-than
  less-than They can't do anything. greater-than
  less-than 0h, really? Well, I bet
they'll try. greater-than
  Just at that moment I heard a strange sound. My
cat brain didn't recognize it. But the human
me did. It was an engine. A big engine. Like a
big truck. Or maybe a tractor.
Or -
  An earthmover.
  The Hork-Bajir carrying me saw it, too.
He ran into the Blade ship and tossed me down.
Then he ran back to the Visser, who waited in the
doorway.
  less-than like think they've started one of the
earth-movers caret I told Jake.
  less-than Then I guess it's time for me to get
into this fighteagreater-than Jake said. less-than
I'm going to try a quick double- morph. Hope it
works. Here goes nothing.
Yeeee-haaahffgreater-than
  All at once, through the open door of the Blade
ship, I spotted the earthmover. It lum bered at
a painfully slow speed. But it lumbered right toward
the Blade ship.
less-than Get us into the airffgreater-than Visser
Three shouted.
  The nearest Taxxon said something in their slithery
snake-speech. It sounded like "Sssree shway
snerp snerrrrup ssreet."
  less-than Two minutes to liftoff? Too
longffgreater-than Visser Three said. His tail
whipped forward. I saw a huge gash open
in the flesh of the Taxxon. Greenish- yellow goo
poured out.
  The other Taxxons all looked kind of
excited. They were waving their little upper arms and
snapping their little claws.
  less-than You and you. greater-than Visser
Three pointed at two of the Taxxons. less-than
Get us off the ground! The rest of you may feed on
this fool. greater-than
  The wounded Taxxon emitted a wailing, slith
ery scream. Three other Taxxons rushed at him.
Their circular mouths fastened onto their fellow
Taxxon's writhing flesh and began chewing and tearing
at him.
  The sound of the diesel engine grew louder.
Visser Three was rapping out orders.
Hork-Bajir ran through the door and back
outside.
  Then I saw something happening in the dark corner
of the cabin, over past the horrific Taxxon feeding
frenzy. Something was growing. A human being was growing
out of nothing.
  less-than Jakeffgreater-than
  less-than Can't talk. Don't distract
me. greater-than
Visser Three was in a rage. You could feel the
waves of his anger radiating around the small
space. less-than Destroy that machineffgreater-than
he ordered.
  Outside, two Hork-Bajir took aim at
the five tons of slow-moving steel.
  Jake was still cowering in the corner, but he had begun
to change once again. In the darkness my cat eyes
could see the beginning of a pattern of stripes.
Black and orange. The stripes of a tiger.
  It was time for me to do my part. I concentrated. I
felt the change begin. The cage grew small around
me.
  Rumble rumble rumble. The earthmover closed in.
  The near-dead Taxxon screamed as his fellow
Taxxons ate him alive.
  Suddenly I saw a brilliant red light.
There was a sizzling sound. I saw the earthmover
disinte grate. My heart was in my throat.
Marco! Cassie! Had they gotten away?
  I had to concentrate. I had to ignore the
Taxxon's screams. I had to stop wondering whether
Cassie and Marco had been on that earthmover when it
was hit. I had to control my morph. Not too far,
Rachel. Not too much. I could
not
become human. Not totally human. I looked
down at my paw. Short stubby fingers had
appeared. I stuck my stubby half-human
fin gers through the bars of the cage and found the lock.
  One of the feeding Taxxons looked away from his
meal just long enough. "Yeerss srenn ssseere!" It
waved its creepy front legs in my di rection.
  Visser Three snapped around and glared at me with
ferocious hatred.
  I opened the door of my cage.
  "Rrrrraaawwwrrr!" Jake leaped through the
air, his huge claws outstretched.
  I flew out of the cage, a clumsy mass of fur
and skin, a creature that was half-cat and
half-human.
  Jake hit Visser Three in the side.
less-than This time, you're
mine,
you jerkffgreater-than
  Visser Three fell over, tangled up in
tiger. His deadly tail flashed but missed. Jake
ripped the Visser's flesh with claws infinitely
bigger than mine.
  less-than Aaaaarrrgghhhffgreater-than
  It was a great pleasure hearing Visser Three
scream that way. But I had other things to worry about.
  I couldn't move in my half-morph. I concen
trated on regaining my cat form. I had only min
utes left before the two hours would be up.
  Jake rolled off Visser Three just as a handful
of Hork-Bajir rushed to the Visser's defense.
  less-than Runffgreater-than Jake yelled.
less-than Runffgreater-than I agreed.
  We ran. I was back fully in Flutter's
shape. I could do thirty miles an hour, as fast
as the fastest human being could run.
  Unfortunately, Hork-Bajir are faster.
  Jake was faster still, for short distances. Fast enough
to outrun the Hork-Bajir that were after us. But he
wasn't going to leave me behind.
  Jake turned and came for the closest Hork-
Bajir.
  I saw him flying over my head, a huge beast,
orange-and-black striped. The Hork-Bajir
went down hard. less-than Get outta here,
Rachel! You're too small to fight these guys.
greater-than
  But there was still another Hork-Bajir on my
tail. Faster than me. Too fast!
  I dodged left. The Hork-Bajir shot past
me. I turned back sharply, my little pads
scrabbling in the dirt. The Hork-Bajir grabbed
for me but missed.
  Something else was moving. Something big. The ground
was rumbling. . . .
  A second earthmover was grinding forward on its
tank treads. Marco and Cassie had started an
other earthmover!
  I raced toward the nearest half-finished build
ing. I had to get away. And I had to morph
back. Time was up. In minutes I would be
trapped!
  I saw a dark hole. I flew toward it in a
single
leap. The hole led under a wall. Then it opened
into a shallow basement. There was a concrete floor
about two feet over my head. I was safe!
Safe, and with room enough to morph back to human
shape.
  I tried to concentrate. Out beyond my little concrete
shelter I heard growls and alien cries. I
heard the rumble of the earthmover. I thought I heard the
sizzle of Dracon beams.
Human, I told myself. Return
to human. Only minutes left!
  Then I felt a shattering noise. Then another.
Another. It was like some giant was stomping around.
  The giant steps stopped. I was frozen, unable
to even think, let alone morph.
  Crash!
  All around me pillars of rock-hard, scaled
flesh, each as big around as a tree trunk,
ripped into the concrete.
  Grrrunch!
  The concrete was lifted off me. Torn away, like
it was paper.
  I was exposed. Trapped. And standing over me,
with the shattered concrete floor in its mighty hand, was
a beast that seemed to be made of living rock.
  less-than You won't get away so
easilyeagreater-than Visser Three said.
C
  I t was all over. I knew I was done for.
Nothing in the world could stop the beast Visser Three
had morphed into.
  He was twenty feet tall. As tall as a
telephone pole. He stood on three massive
legs, each as big around as a redwood tree. He
had a tiny head, not much bigger than a
human head. He would have looked funny, except
that there was nothing funny about what he was doing.
  With two long, mighty arms he was casually tearing
up the concrete. He slammed his fingers into the cement.
He ripped it up in slabs and tossed them over his
shoulder.
  One of the slabs hit a Hork-Bajir and
crushed
him. I don't think Visser Three even noticed
or cared.
  I ran.
Crash!
One of the Visser's huge hands slammed down in
front of me.
  I scampered back and turned.
Crash!
Another hand like living rock slammed in front of
me.
  Even the cat in me knew- it was hopeless.
  Visser Three glared down at me with tiny bright
eyes in that weirdly small head. He reached for
me with both hands, cupped together, forming a wall around
me.
C-R-R-R-U-ation-C-H!
  Visser Three hesitated.
B-0-O-O-O-M!
  I bolted.
  I leaped to the top of a wall. Six feet
straight up, and trust me, as scared as I was,
I could have jumped even higher.
  Out of the corner of my eye I saw what had
happened. The earthmover had ground forward and slammed
into one of the Bug fighters. The Bug fighter had
exploded.
less-than AAAAARRRRGGGHHHFFGREATER-THAN
Visser Three roared in fury. I did not envy the
Hork-Bajir and Taxxons who had let that
earthmover get through.
  I ran along the top of the wall. It was
cin derblock, full of holes and only a few
inches wide. It was a much tougher challenge than the
balance beam in gymnastics. But I was running as
fast as a very scared kitty can run.
  less-than l'll kill you ALL!
FOOLSFFGREATER-THAN Visser Three screamed.
  I hoped he would just forget about me. But then I
heard the thunder of his walk. In two steps he had
caught up to me.
  His huge hand swept toward me.
  It was ten feet to the ground, and the ground was
covered with rusted, twisted metal.
  I had no choice. I leaped.
  The sharp metal was rushing up at me. Visser
Three's hand was sweeping toward me.
  Something sharp bit into my back.
  The ground was no longer rushing up at me.
Instead, I was zooming through the air.
  less-than Jeez, Rachel. Next time you
want to morph into a kitty, pick one who
doesn't eat so muchffgreater-than
  Tobias!
  less-than like can get you as far as the trees, that's
xeagreater-than Tobias said.
  less-than like have to morph backeagreater-than I
said. less-than My time is upffgreater-than
  We flew toward the trees. Tobias strained
to keep us in the air. I knew he was at his limit
of endurance.
  less-than Drop me, nowffgreater-than
We were in the trees. Tobias dropped me. I
fell through the air. But my tail pivoted and kept
my balance perfect.
  A tree branch!
Slam!
My claws dug into the bark.
  I was already morphing back as I dropped to the
ground and landed on soft pine needles.
  Through the trees I could see the huge beast that was
Visser Three rampaging in a fury. The few
Hork-Bajir that were left were tossed around like
toys. Taxxons were crushed under his feet.
  less-than like think he's mad we got
awayeagreater-than Tobias said.
  "Jake? The others?" I demanded. "Did they
make it?"
  less-than They're fine. Jake had to morph
back into human shape before going into the tiger morph,
so he didn't have a problem with the time. Marco got his
feathers a little singed, but he's okay. Cassie,
too. greater-than
  I collapsed on the ground. I had escaped.
I had survived. I knew I should have been glad.
But all I felt was tired.
  M elissa was at our next gymnastics
class. She was still alive. Still free.
  I acted nonchalant as I changed into my leo
tard and stretched out. But I did watch when she
opened her locker and pulled out the envelope.
  She opened it and read the words I had put there.
  "Melissa, your father loves you more than
you will ever know. And more than he can ever show you.
Signed, someone who knows."
  I'd printed it out on my word processor, of
course, so she wouldn't recognize my handwriting.
  Maybe it was just my imagination, but she seemed more
into the practice that day.
  After my mom picked me up and drove me
home, I hooked up with the others. We hadn't
gotten together for a couple of days, since the battle
at the construction site. I guess I felt like I
had some things to think about.
  "How is Melissa?" Cassie asked.
  I shrugged. "I left her a note." I told
them what it had said. "I know it's bad for
security, Jake. And Marco, I know it was
sentimental. But I don't care. Chapman gave
up everything to save his daughter from being made into a
host. I had to do something."
  Jake nodded. "It's okay. Maybe it will
help."
  Cassie smiled at me, telling me she was
proud of what I'd done. Marco rolled his eyes,
but he didn't say anything.
  "Well, we destroyed a Yeerk Bug fighter.
We made Visser Three nervous. And
-"
  "com and we came out alive," Marco finished.
  "Yeah, that too," Jake agreed with a grin.
"That's a very important thing to do."
  "Next time we'll-was I began.
  "com
next
time?" Marco cried out in mock horror.
  less-than There
will
be a next timeeagreater-than Tobias said.
less-than There will be a next time until the
Andalites return. greater-than
Don't; miss
Animorphs
3 The Encounter
  T hey had missed the deadline! It was too
late. Too late, and they would all be trapped.
Like me. Forever.
  less-than MORPHFFGREATER-THAN I screamed as
I closed in on them. . . .
  less-than Morph back! Nowffgreater-than
Maybe the clock in the truck was off. Maybe
five minutes one way or the other wouldn't matter.
  There! I saw them. Four wolves
moving relent lessly toward the distant city.
  less-than Morph! Nowffgreater-than I
screamed as I shot like a bullet over their heads.
  less-than How much time do we h8greater-than
Marco de manded.
  less-than None. greater-than
  That got them going. I landed, exhausted, on a
branch.
  Cassie was the first to begin the change. Her fur
grew short. Her snout flattened into a nose.
Long, human legs swelled and burst from the thin
dog legs. . . .
  less-than Ahhhhffgreater-than I heard
Rachel cry in my mind. Her morph was going all
wrong. Her human hands appeared at the end of her
wolf legs. But nothing else seemed to be changing.
  I looked, horrified, at Marco. His
normal head emerged with startling suddenness from his wolf
body. But the rest of him had not changed. He
looked down at himself and cried out in terror.
"Helowl. Yipmeahhh!" It was an awful sound,
half human, half wolf.
  This was worse than I had feared. I figured
they could be trapped as wolves, like I had been
trapped as a hawk. But they were emerging as
half-human freaks of nature.
  They were living nightmares.
























 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
