So does Marco's mum get fixed up or do they like replace her damaged limb with a robot arm like the crazy torturer from Tobias' book?
Visser 3 really disappointed to learn that the Blade Ship was made to withstand between 0 and 1 atmospheres of pressure.
this stretch of 36-44 is where the "lol animorphs gets bad once the ghostwriting starts" trope comes from but man I read this one so much. yes partially because I owned it but also because it gets weird
I actually like some of the books in the 36-44 stretch.
I actually like some of the books in the 36-44 stretch.
this stretch of 36-44 is where the "lol animorphs gets bad once the ghostwriting starts" trope comes from but man I read this one so much. yes partially because I owned it but also because it gets weird
I actually like some of the books in the 36-44 stretch.
Someone at scholastic- someone being paid to think! - concluded that:
a) kids don't wanna read books from the perspective of a samurai alien horse teen, and won't want to empathise with the dreamy misfit loner who can fly and doesn't feel at ease in his own skin and also has a super amazing gf;
b) every book of this gigantic series needs a near-identical opening chapter
It was after school the next day and we were in Cassie's barn. Where only hours earlier a mutated Hork-Bajir lay dying.
"We have to go after the Sea Blade, period," Rachel said angrily. "We definitely can't let the Yeerks get hold of the Pemalite ship. Or Pemalite technology."
"A plan would be nice," Marco said.
<We don't know enough to make any plans,> Tobias argued from his usual perch and lookout in the rafters.
Tobias is a nothlit. Someone who stayed in morph for longer than the two hour limit. Now he's a red-tailed hawk first, all other creatures second.
Rachel gives him a hard time about staying hawk and not going back to being a regular human boy twenty-four seven. But the explanation is there if you want to see it. If Tobias gives up his ability to morph by trapping himself in human form, he's out of the fight. And he can't walk away from this war. He can't - or won't - abandon us.
Tobias is Elfangor's son. Long story. Weird story.
<Yes, though we can make use of the additional information we received from Toby's spies this morning,> Ax pointed out.
Right after dawn I'd sent Ax and Tobias to the secret community the free Hork-Bajir had established. Their information was sketchy. Hork-Bajir, with the exception of Toby, are not the brightest species around. It's a little like asking a four-year-old to describe a movie.
But we'd also tapped into the Chee network. The Chee are a whole different story. Androids are very good at description. The Chee didn't know much, but what they knew was different. They had seen different pieces of the puzzle.
"What do we know? That's the question," Marco said.
I nodded at Ax. "Ax-man? Give us a rundown."
<We know very little. We can extrapolate and guess a bit more,> Ax said.
I smiled. "So include the guesses and the extrapolation."
<The Sea Blade is a new type of vessel. It can travel in the air and in the water. Most spacecraft can travel under water for a short distance, and with limited effect. But in order for the Yeerks to travel to Earth's deepest oceans they would need something radically different,> Ax said. <It seems likely that both in the air, and in the water, this vessel will be able to cloak itself from normal human
sensors.>
"It would have to," Marco interjected. "Too many subs out there in the deep, blue sea. There are still sensors all over the ocean floor from the Cold War."
<Exactly,> Ax agreed.
"Echolocation?" Cassie suggested.
"Echolocation is a lot like what they call 'active sonar,'" Marco said. "You bounce sound waves off an object and listen to the echoes. But subs don't use active sonar, usually, because if you're 'pinging' someone with active sonar, they can hear you. Subs usually stick with passive listening."
"Marco, are you just pulling all this out of the air? How do you know all this?" Rachel demanded.
"Tom Clancy."
I nodded, "Tom Clancy. The Hunt for Red October."
"You should read something besides Glamour, Rachel."
"So would echolocation work, or not?" Cassie demanded.
We all looked at Ax. <Maybe. Maybe not. But it is all we have to work with.>
Cassie chewed her lip. "I'm thinking giant squid, if we're going real deep. Or dolphins or whales," Cassie said.
<The Chee have revealed the location of the Pemalite ship to us. It is deep, but not terribly deep. However, it is in an area designated as a Navy firing range. There are large numbers of exploded ... and unexploded ... weapons. Humans would be unlikely to frequent the area.>
Tobias said, <Why don't the Chee just get to the Pemalite ship and move it before the Yeerks show up?>
"The Yeerks will just keep looking," I said. "The Chee can't get into a game of hide-and-seek.\ Sooner or later they'd lose. And if the Pemalite ship is moving it's easier to detect."
"We have to sink the Sea Blade," Cassie said quietly. "We have to sink it, destroy it. Make them regret ever thinking about invading the ocean."
I shot her a look. It wasn't like Cassie to be bloodthirsty.
She met my gaze, unflinching. "What they did to the Hork-Bajir was evil," she said. "Over the line. Way over the line. We need to teach them a lesson."
I nodded. I understood her feelings. But this mission couldn't be about feelings.
Marco said what I was thinking. "Hey, we don't teach lessons. And we don't do revenge. Besides, everything the Yeerks do is over the line. We stop them. That's what we do."
Cassie looked unconvinced. Rachel was smirking in cocky agreement with Cassie. Rachel liked the idea of delivering a harsh lesson. I expected that from Rachel. But from Cassie it worried me.
There were problems here for me, as the leader of this bunch of tired, stressed-out misfits.
Tobias hated going into the water. Marco wasn't convinced it was necessary. Cassie was taking it all personally.
Rachel and Ax were their usual selves. I sighed. Fairly typical: At any given point, on any given mission, maybe half the team was going to be difficult in one way or another. Including me, of course. Maybe especially me.
"Echolocation," Cassie mused. "We've all got dolphin morphs."
<Rachel and I have sperm whale morphs,> Tobias reminded us.
"And we all do giant squid," Rachel said.
"Not sure we want to deal with those guys again," Marco mumbled. "Creepy."
"Whales are good. We need a morph we can control. Something intelligent. That can dive deep and do some serious damage to the Sea Blade," I said. "But let's face it. The chances of another sperm whale beaching itself just for the rest of us to acquire are pretty slim."
"Of course!" Cassie snapped her fingers. "There's an orca - a killer whale - at The Gardens' SeaTown. They're calling him Swoosh."
"Swoosh?" Marco repeated incredulously. "Who names these animals?"
Cassie looked embarrassed. "Nike. They sponsored the exhibit. So they got to name the whale."
"Okay," I said. "We need to get going. A) I contact the Chee and alert them to be ready to take our places. B) we carry out round-the-clock surveillance on the vicinity of the Yeerk pool. Try and spot any sign of this Sea Blade launching. C) we acquire the killer whale."
"Easy," Marco mocked. "ABC. Just don't mention, D) we chase a super sub into the ocean, and E) try to destroy it before, F) they reach an alien spacecraft in the middle of, G) a bunch of unexploded bombs and shells that may get set off when the Yeerks try to, H) fry us with their Dracon beams."
Rachel laughed and gave Marco a playful shove. "You're always so negative. Look on the bright side: Maybe the unexploded shells will, I) blow up the Yeerks, not us."
Cassie wasn't joining in the graveyard humor. "Fifty Hork-Bajir subjected to horrible medical experiments," she said. "That's what this is about."
<We've got a math test on Friday, Big Jake.>
<Since when are you so concerned about school?> I asked. It didn't matter. We were just making conversation. Killing the boring two hours of our shift.
I was at about fifty feet. Marco was another twenty-five feet or so higher, and two or three blocks to the east. We were two birds of prey, a falcon and an osprey, riding the thermals, floating on the cushions of warm air.
<Since the math teacher married my dad. It's a crime, that's what it is. Had to be math. Couldn't have been some subject I can fake my way through. No. Has to be math. The answer is either the square root of pi or it isn't, dude, there's no bull factor. I can't say, "Well, I felt what the writer really meant was ...">
<The Chee who plays you will take the test.>
<Exactly. And he'll get the grade I would have gotten. I don't want the grade I would have gotten. I want an A. But not a perfect A. A just barely there, A. She'd buy that. Maybe.>
<You're assuming you won't be there for the test,> I said. <Way things are going ... I mean, we got nothing.>
Marco and I had been on patrol for an hour and a half. Our third day of floating in bird-of-prey morph, high above the area that concealed the Yeerk pool.
The Yeerk pool is a huge, underground complex. A central dome bigger than a football stadium, plus tunnels and satellite areas. It stretches beneath part of the mall, and all the way over to the school, with a bunch of fast-food restaurants and car lots and streets in between.
We knew the Sea Blade was in the Yeerk pool complex. Which meant, sooner or later, that it would emerge. How? When? Where? We didn't have a clue. And I was awfully sick and tired of getting a peregrine falcon's up close and incredibly personal view of roofs and trash and people in cars.
In a few minutes Ax and Tobias would show up so Marco and I could demorph, remorph, and fly home. I was counting the minutes. I wanted to veg out and watch some TV. With weak human eyes.
Let's see. What night was it? Was there anything on? I couldn't even remember what day of the -
<Marco! I'm seeing something!>
<You mean that girl in the bathing suit driving that Mazda?>
<The vacant lot next to the Walgreen's, man!>
I glanced up and saw Marco wheel around to come closer. I focused back on the empty lot. There was a fence around it. A fairly new chainlink fence armed with razor wire at the top.
I cursed my own stupidity. Why hadn't I thought about that? Who would protect an empty lot with a new fence? It made no sense. Unless the lot wasn't so empty.
<Shimmering? Is that what you mean?> Marco asked.
<It's a hologram,> I yelled. <The sides are maintaining, but the top is breaking up.>
It was the kind of thing that would have seemed so weird to me a while back. Before. Back when I lived a normal life. Now Marco yelled <hologram!> and I thought, Well, duh. Of course it's a hologram.
The hologram showed the field. The empty field. Seen from any angle you'd see an empty, scruffy-looking rectangle of weeds and bare, tan dirt, rusty soda cans, and shredded McDonald's trash.
But looking straight down from above, something else began to appear.
Enormous! Two scimitar-shaped wings. A sleek body, built for speed. Not the elongated teardrop shape of a human sub. More like a Yeerk Blade ship, but with pustulelike pods extruding here and there around the hull.
It was blacker than black. Like something carved out of anthracite. In the brief moments it was visible it seemed to drain the light from the sky. To absorb all color into its endless black depths.
It rested on a rising platform. Like one of those hydraulic car lifts at a gas station. It was being lifted up through the roof of the Yeerk pool, up through an oblong tunnel cut through packed dirt and rock.
And then it began to shimmer and fade, just as the hologram had done. A hum grew into a low roar that even passersby would have heard, except that the only traffic was cars rushing past.
<It's going, man!>
<Yeah. It'll head for the water.>
<I'm on it,> I said.
Marco didn't argue. Ospreys are fast. Peregrines are faster.
<Get the others. Ax and Tobias should be here soon, you'll probably pass them. Send them after me. You get Rachel and Cassie.>
I took off, heading for the sea. I'd need all the head start I could get.
<How are we going to find you?> Marco said, his voice tense. He was already banking away toward home.
<I don't know. Just get to the ocean as fast as you can. I'll ...> SWOOOOZZSH!
Straight up! The Sea Blade lifted up off the ground, rose like it was a Styrofoam stage prop being lifted by cables and strings. And all the while it was fading. It was an outline. A watercolor in faded colors.
And then it was gone! Cloaked, invisible to the naked human eye.
But not entirely hidden from the keen eyesight of the falcon. I couldn't see the ship itself. But I could make out a disturbance of the air.
Like the waves rising off hot concrete on a brutally hot day. A caloric wave or something. And then the shimmering began to move off.
I was already moving at full speed.
<Jake! Remember. Less than a half hour in this morph!>
No time to answer. I strained to gain a lead. But then it blew past, swirling me around, tumbling me through the air. I righted myself and followed in the wake of the Sea Blade. Followed the blasts of hot air being expelled by the engines. Followed the occasional shimmering waves of air. The brief glances of - something.
I flapped harder. Faster. Still I was falling behind. We had calculated that a seaborne craft wouldn't be very fast through the air. It wasn't. But it was fast enough.
Already I was fading. Stupid! I should have gotten more altitude. I should have stayed as high up as I could be. How many times had Tobias told me: Altitude equals speed. I could have been using gravity to speed me. Instead gravity was my enemy.
A falcon struggling through the cool evening air was no match for the Sea Blade. The engines would not tire.
But as long as I could keep it in sight ...
It traveled in a straight line. No tricks. No evasions. It flew straight for the beach. Suddenly it was over the sand and dunes. I was still flying hard and fast and way too low over beach bungalows and cheap motels.
I wasn't going to make it. I was exhausted. My muscles screamed in pain.
How many minutes did I have left in morph?
I didn't know. Almost didn't care.
I had to keep the Sea Blade in sight. Had to see which way it went once it went in. Had to at least know the general direction.
Then ... where was the heat? Had I lost the trail? Had the Sea Blade turned away at the last minute?
No. It was powering down its air-breathing engines. Preparing to submerge. So close to shore?
The ship suddenly stopped. The shimmering wave was all in one place. No longer moving. The ship was still cloaked, invisible, as it hovered over the evening ocean.
Hit the water! I prayed.
I was minutes from being a falcon forever. It might already be too late.
For a split second a vague outline of the dark ship was visible on the ocean's surface. And then it was gone.
Exhausted, I fell to the icy water and concentrated.
And began to demorph.
Morphing is never pretty. And when you're exhausted and freezing and wet, it's seriously less than fun. Strange sounds. Disturbing sensations. Not pain exactly - but not pleasure either. You know things are happening to your body that would not happen in the normal world. That should not happen.
The demorph was fast. The falcon's natural buoyancy was suddenly replaced by my very human mass. Twenty, thirty, forty pounds of torso, legs and arms.
Still growing!
I slipped under the water. Kicked back to the surface. Choked and spluttered and breathed.
I was Jake. But not for long.
Rachel gives him a hard time about staying hawk and not going back to being a regular human boy twenty-four seven. But the explanation is there if you want to see it. If Tobias gives up his ability to morph by trapping himself in human form, he's out of the fight. And he can't walk away from this war. He can't - or won't - abandon us.
quote:
I nodded at Ax. "Ax-man? Give us a rundown."
The contours of my body stretched! Shot out in every direction - up, down, forward and back, right and left.
My forehead poured out in front of me like gravel from a dump truck. My eyes migrated to the sides of my head. My ears were swallowed up in blubber.
Couldn't breathe! For a moment my throat closed. Then I felt cool, clean air again. Sucked in through the blowhole in the back of my neck.
My legs twisted around each other like a fat stick of raspberry licorice. A twenty-five-foot-long stick of licorice!
Just behind my blowhole a dorsal fin grew out of my spine and shot six and a half feet into the air. An enormous jet-black triangle, taller than my human self.
My belly was a vast expanse of smooth white. My back was as black as a wet tire. My mouth filled with teeth the size of a hammer's claw head.
I was sure I was going to fill the entire ocean before the morph was complete. For a panicked second my human brain wondered how something this big could float.
And then I felt the stirrings of the orca's mind. Instincts were activated. Senses alerted brain centers.
Threats? No. There were no threats. Threats could not exist. They were an impossibility. What could challenge my power?
But prey? Ah, yes, prey could exist. Anything in the vast, endless, unmeasured ocean could be my prey. Anything bathed in seawater was my meat.
I was bigger, faster, smarter, more dangerous than anything in the ocean. I was deadly, but not with the random, malevolent violence of the shark. I could plan. I could cooperate. I could think.
In my mind were the templates, like schematics drawn with echo images. I saw the patterns of a pod of orcas moving together, communicating, working together to snare the swift sea lions, to shove the seals off their ice floes, to leap clear up onto the beach to drag a walrus to its doom.
I saw all this, I the human. And I felt the shock of seeing the familiar in a strange place. Wolves work together, like the orcas. But the closest analogy to orca behavior was found much closer to home, among my own species.
There was something very human about the killer whale's mind. Individualized, yet capable of becoming a part of a group. Capable, unlike so many creatures, of remembering a past, imagining a future.
I sensed, deep within the orca mind, the images of my prey. The rubbery, swift-moving penguins and sea otters and sea lions and walruses. Even the dolphins. And, when they grew weak, when they had lost their force and their speed, the great whales themselves.
I have inhabited many animal minds. The prey animals want to stay alive, to hide, to run, to find food, to find mates. The predators look for prey, for the weak and vulnerable. They mark and defend territories. They seek mates.
Always they are simple, compared to humans. Almost always their minds are black and white, coded with simple behaviors for simple situations.
In only a few have I encountered that strange mutation: intelligence. The capacity to see beyond fight or flee, yes or no, run or stand, kill or be killed. Only a very few species can think "If ... then?"
The orca was one. As smart as a dolphin. As smart as a chimpanzee. It occupied that highest, most narrow rung, just below Homo sapiens.
I had encountered intelligence in a morph before. But there was something new here. New for me, at least. The orca was aware. Of me. Of something, someone directing its behavior.
It knew, in some incomplete, simplistic way, that it was being controlled.
<Let's go, big boy,> I said.
No answer from the orca, of course. But that cool, appraising intelligence, though it was devoid of memory of learning, empty of all knowledge except the knowledge encoded as instinct, that intelligence watched me.
I felt a shiver of fear. Ludicrous, of course. I was the orca, the orca could not hurt me. And yet, I felt the fear of any prey animal who finds himself under the gaze of the killer whale.
I had a mission. I fired an echolocating burst of clicks.
And suddenly there was a picture in my brain. Almost like an X ray. More like an Etch-A-Sketch drawing.
Lines and contours representing the underwater world around me. The ocean floor, smooth, sloping away. A school of fish, too small to interest me.
Then the picture was gone.
I clicked again and it was back. But now the picture included the Sea Blade.
Beneath me and further out to sea. Motionless. Almost as if it were waiting for me.
I filled my massive lungs and dove. Deeper. Deeper.
I clicked again.
The Sea Blade had to know I was here. Its sensors would have heard the echolocating clicks. Its version of sonar would have painted me. And, unlike any human crew, the Yeerks knew enough to pay attention to strange animals.
I could go after the Sea Blade myself. It was no more than a quarter mile away. But I doubted I could do much damage to the ship by myself. Let alone destroy it. If Marco and the others didn't catch up, though, I'd have no choice.
We had no plan beyond trying to keep up with the ship, try and damage it. The hardest part had seemed to be merely keeping up. But the Sea Blade just sat there. Sat, unmoving, almost silent.
How long till the others could catch up?
I surfaced for a breath. And then I saw a swift shadow moving across the water. I rolled onto my side and looked up at the sky. There was a plane, a four-engine prop plane flying low, parallel to the beach. Flat gray. A military plane.
As I watched, a cylinder slid out of the back of the plane and parachuted into the sea. Seconds later I heard the splash. And then a loud pinging.
Of course! This was the Sea Blade's maiden voyage. The Yeerks were testing their new toy. The plane was a navy submarine surveillance plane dropping sonar buoys and relaying what they found down to the commander of the Sea Blade.
Depressing to realize that the Yeerks could control a navy plane. But it had worked out well for me. The test had delayed the Sea Blade.
I submerged and fired another round of echolocating clicks.
I saw the outline of the Sea Blade. Clear and unmistakable. I fired another round, looking for ...Wait! Something wrong. A whale?
The Sea Blade was gone, and in its place the Etch-A-Sketch diagram of a large whale. It was huge. A humpback. Maybe even a blue whale. Precisely where the Sea Blade should have been.
What was going on?
A low hum. The sound of engines. The ship was moving away. But then, as I listened intently the engine sound became the slow whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of a whale's flukes, driving the beast through the sea.
Then ... behind me!
Something big, fast! More than one.
Something my orca brain recognized at once: a pod of killer whales.
<Hey, Shamu! It's me.>
Marco.
<Is everyone here?> I said.
<Yeah. Can't believe we found you.>
<Where's the Sea Blade?> Rachel asked.
<If you echolocate you'll sense a large whale moving away from us. You'll hear it, too. That, boys and girls, is the visser's new ship.>
<Yes, that would be sensible,> Ax said. <They not only hide, they create a false picture for anyone who does happen to notice them. They have adjusted the energy absorption field to reflect the picture of a whale. Generating the sound signature is easy, of course.>
<Perfect time for a surprise attack,> Rachel said. <We're like serious tonnage of battering ram here. And they're probably feeling pretty cocky.>
<More tonnage on the way. Look who's joined us,> Tobias said.
Two orcas. Not humans in morph. The real thing.
I laughed. <I appreciate their support but I don't want them getting killed for our sake.>
So far we were easily keeping pace with the Sea Blade. But sooner or later it would accelerate.
Rachel was right. Now was as good a time as any.
<Okay, we go for the stern. What seems to be the tail in your echolocation picture. Tobias, Rachel, Marco go left. Cassie and Ax with me.>
We spread wide, seemingly a pod of orca going in two separate directions. We surfaced, Cassie, Ax, and me. We breathed deeply.
<Let's go,> I said.
It sounded so matter-of-fact. I'd begun to get used to giving orders. Probably not a good thing.
We submerged and suddenly veered for the Sea Blade. Six whales hopefully hitting the engines. That had to hurt. Had to shake something loose. Had to bust a seam and spring a few leaks.
Full power into our flukes, full speed, all that mass, had to hurt, had to do damage. Had to.
A thousand yards. Five hundred yards.
Only two hundred yards!
I fired a burst of clicks. The Sea Blade/whale was different. Picture different. Like ...
<It's turning!>
<He sees us!>
The sub was coming straight for us. And it had dropped all pretense of moving at whale speed.
The sub was coming for us at a sudden and accelerating fifty knots.
TSEEEWWW!
Dracon beam!
A horrible shrieking! An inhuman scream of pain, silenced too abruptly. I fired clicks. Weird, impossible picture. Not six orca. Not eight. Nine.
Nine.
What?
<Oh, God!> I cried.
One of the orcas had been split lengthwise. There were two echo pictures where there should have been one.
Sliced in half! Like a loaf of Italian bread cut open to make a sandwich.
The two enormous halves of the whale began to sink toward the ocean floor. The water darkened, thickened with blood.
Engulfed us! Billowed out from the torn halves of the massive creature.
<Who was hit?> I cried.
<Demorph!> Tobias yelled.
<It's not me!> Cassie answered. <Ax! Marco!>
<I am unharmed,> Ax answered.
<I'm mentally destroyed. Tell me that didn't happen.> Marco. Relief. One of the real orca.
Simple, dumb luck.
Fear. One more shot and next time ... No chance even to avoid the beam. No time to be afraid. Act! Do something, Jake!
<Prince Jake!>
TSEEEWWW!! TSEEEWWW!
Another yellow beam lanced the murk, missing me by millimeters.
<Jake! You've been hit!>
Impossible! I hadn't felt ...
Another billowing red cloud surrounded me.
And then I felt the pain. I clicked and saw a piece of the whale's body, my body, spiraling down, down. The top three feet of my dorsal fin! Shaved off.
Clickclickclickclick.
A different angle. I needed eyes not clicks! I needed to see!
No. No, the orca chased down sea lions with its senses. It was enough. Calm down. Get a gr -
TSEEEEEW!
The Sea Blade moved again. It was over us now, a dark cloud raining killer beams.
TSEEEWW! TSEEEWWW!
<Prince Jake, you are losing too much blood! You must swim out of range and ->
TSEEEWWW!
Another foot-long slice of me was gone!
Blood. More blood.
What should I do?
<What ...>
I was confused. Couldn't think straight.
Thunk! Thunk!
Two of us slammed into the sub. And for a moment the sub was visible to my blurred eyes. I saw the black wings, the engines, the blister pods.
The firing stopped.
<Good hit, Rachel.> Marco. His voice was far away.
And from an even greater distance, Ax. <A very impressive dent, Tobias.>
<Jake! You have to demorph! We have to get to the surface!>
I clicked weakly.
Was vaguely aware of a huge black-and-white body beneath mine, nudging.
Cassie?
<NOW Jake!>
TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!
Deadly Dracon beams tore past us. I didn't care.
Cassie lifted me ten, twenty, thirty feet. then was replaced by Ax.
<Prince Jake, you must start your demorph immediately.>
My shredded body rose. Slowly. Too slowly.
Another twenty, fifty, one hundred feet.
More than ten stories of water!
Cassie spoke. <Jake, listen. Try to morph your upper body last. If your lungs go human at this depth you'll die.>
<Cassie is correct. You must avoid decompression sickness. Start your demorph from your lower body.>
Yes. Must avoid ...
Impossible! I wasn't Cassie. I didn't have the skill, the talent.
<I'll get you through this,> Cassie said. <You have to hold two pictures in your head. See your legs. See the whale's head.>
I concentrated. Willed myself to change.
I am Jake. Human. Human.
Then it began.
Eight tons of killer whale began sucking in on itself. My giant girth contracted.
I thought of feet. Legs. And felt my damaged tail go human. Becoming human feet, legs and - A torso!
No! Not yet!
<Form the pictures in your mind, Jake,> Cassie said, her thought-speak voice supehumanly calm.
Still so deep! So far from the blessed surface.
Fifty feet. Forty-five feet ...
Human lungs bursting. Straining!
<See the pictures and hold on to them. Add details, see the slick black and white, see your own flesh, the little hairs, everything. The detail will hold the picture.>
The pain - it would kill me!
I felt Ax's orca body leave and once again, Cassie beneath me. Lifting the bizarre half-morphed body.
Up. Up.
Only seconds of life left ...
<Just a few more yards, Jake.>
But i couldn't.
I was fully human. Desperately struggling for breath!
Flailing ridiculously on the back of a killer whale.
I couldn't ...
Cassie's voice. Desperate now.
<Jake! Roll over onto your belly. You're just back from my blowhole. I'm going to let my air out slowly for you to take in. Listen to me, Jake. It's your only chance!>
I had encountered intelligence in a morph before. But there was something new here. New for me, at least. The orca was aware. Of me. Of something, someone directing its behavior.
It knew, in some incomplete, simplistic way, that it was being controlled.
On an unrelated note, I do wonder how Hork Bajir spies work in practice. I suppose most people won't bother a Hork Bajir that's clearly standing guard, but that seems like a really big risk for them.
Whales and dolphins having near human, or even above human, intelligence and wisdom was a very 90s trope. Cassie talked to a whale in one of the early books.
Whales and dolphins having near human, or even above human, intelligence and wisdom was a very 90s trope. Cassie talked to a whale in one of the early books.
Has Jake not morphed a human before - the Secret Service agent in the David trilogy? Or maybe he just acquired him? Either way at least four of them have morphed humans and all six have morphed chimps. Never got the impression before that they're anything other than DNA shells. It's not like every time Tobias morphs human he has to placate his own self-aware body.
It's funny that of all the pop culture references, this is what dates the series the most.
I woke from a gray dream.
Sprawled on the back of a killer whale.
Breathing air from its blowhole.
Carefully, weakly sucking a small mouthful of air at a time.
But this was no dream. This was my nightmarelike reality.
We breached.
Cassie blew out the last of her air along with a froth of seawater.
I started to slide off her slippery back. Grabbed onto her dorsal fin. Coughed and retched and spit out the water that had collected in my lungs.
<Jake?>
"I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm going to morph back to orca. You get back to the fight."
<Take a minute. Rest,> Cassie said. <Please.>
I shook my head.
"Impossible. Tell everyone to take them in the belly. Hear me? From beneath! Now go!"
I rolled off Cassie's great curved back and treaded water in the calm sea.
I watched as she descended. As she dove back into the thick of the battle. And I wondered for about two seconds if I were doing the right thing.
Then I looked up at the darkening sky and thought: killer whale.
And within minutes I became an orca for the second time that night. Eight tons and twenty feet of oceangoing, deep-diving mammal.
Below me I heard a panic of thought-speak. The confused, agitated babble you hear in old recordings of fighter planes in dogfights.
I dove and clicked. And saw the Sea Blade. Saw my friends diving beneath it.
Whoever was driving the Sea Blade knew who and what we were. He was diving, too. It was a race to the bottom. And by now we were far out to sea and the bottom was a mile below us.
TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!
What had been random artillery practice was now a determined plan to eliminate the Andalite bandits.
TSEEEWWW!
Ax! His dorsal fin had been lanced clean off. There was a chunk missing from his side, like a fishmonger had sliced out a fillet.
I felt something brush my side. A floating mass of black-skinned blubber. Whose? Watched as what seemed like gallons of blood poured from the ten-foot wound.
<Ax! Get to the surface!>
<No, Prince Jake. Forgive me for disobeying your orders. I will stay as long as I am able to be of service.>
<Don't do something stupid, Ax,> I commanded. <Get out when you have to. That's an order.>
<Jake, we can't get another clear shot!> Cassie cried. <The ship's too fast. We can't get under him!>
<Yeah and this underwater Dracon beam thing is a slight prob ... !>
TSEEEWWW!
<Aaaahhh! Aaaahhh!> Marco screamed.
TSEEEWWW!
Beneath us!
And now, slowly, in shimmers and fades, the ship appeared. The cloaking devices were turned off and we could see it clearly. Or as clearly as the whale's eyes could see through dark water.
It was a velvety black mass. Like some huge, dark predator animal. Hunkering down, ready to pounce. Dracon beams poised.
Why had it appeared?
No time to wonder. No choice. If we turned and ran we'd be cut up one by one. My plan was a disaster. Foolish. I'd led us all into a trap.
No time for regrets. Better to do down fighting than to sit around and wait for death.
<Okay,> I said grimly. <We'll give them what they want. All of us. We hit at the same time. Top speed.>
Marco said an extremely rude word. I couldn't blame him.
<It's what we came for,> Rachel said.
<On the count of three,> I ordered. <One. Two. Three!>
<AAAHHH!>
We dove!
Six big orca at top speed!
Like a rushing, runaway train we powered down on the Sea Blade! Until none of us could have stopped if we'd tried.
TSEEEWWW!
<Aaahhhh!>
TSEEEWWW!
Staggering pain. No time. Move! Keep moving!
Twenty feet. Ten. Inches.
B-B-BOOOOMMMM!
We hit!
Pain seared through my head.
I clicked and saw five mammoth whale bodies rolling away and off the ship, stunned.
I rolled away. Couldn't see for a moment. My own blood clouded the water. Where was I? Where was the air?
Then the blood cleared. I could see the Sea Blade, improbably above me. No, I was turned around. And the ship was on its side.
The tail section of the Sea Blade was a mangled mess. The ship listed badly to the left. Black liquid poured from its fuselage.
<We did it!> Cassie cried. <We destroyed the Sea - !>
TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!
Yellow Dracon beams shot crazily out of the torn-up vessel! As if the ship itself was furious.
Wounded and out of control.
TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!
<UGGGHHH!>
<AAAGGGHHH!>
A hideous pain in my side!
I clicked and saw an orca, belly sliced open. Guts spilling into the dark water.
Another orca, both flippers gone!
Suddenly, the water was opaque with blood and gore.
<Up! Surface! Now!> I cried.
I dove under a bleeding orca and pushed.
Felt another body under mine.
Slowly, up. Up.
<Demorph!> I commanded. <Start now! Everybody. We make smaller targets as humans.>
<Jake ... I can't ...>
Who was it who spoke? One or all of us? <You have to. That's an order.>
I clicked and saw the Sea Blade below us. rumbling. Sinking! Disappearing behind the coral reef.
We had defeated the Sea Blade. But had I condemned my friends to death in the process?
Had I been so bent on avenging Hahn's death I'd taken foolish risks? Failed to make the right calls? Blundered in like a fool without a clue?
Failed ...
Frantic thought-speak, all around me. But for some reason I couldn't make out the words.
I tried to say something ... and couldn't do that, either.
I was losing consciousness. Had I been hit that badly? Had I begun my own demorph? I clicked and saw - nothing.
Demorph! I told myself. Demorph!
Vaguely I felt the changes begin. Or did I?
Vaguely I felt a body beneath mine.
And suddenly, I was being lifted with tremendous force toward the surface. Toward the beautiful night sky. Toward the heavens.
<Jake! My blowhole!>
Too late! I felt my small human body slipping, sliding. Into the water.
Where I began to drown.
SCHLUUP!
What - !
Suddenly I was imprisoned in a white-ribbed cage!
Water rushed through the bars of the cage and over my drowsy body.
And then - AIR!
Glorious air!
The cold, clean air woke me.
Startled me back to bizarre reality.
I lay curled in the massive jaw of an orca. A whale that was breaching, soaring fifteen feet above the surface of the ocean.
And then -"AAAGGGHHH!"
I was flying through that glorious air! Alone!
The whale had let me go!
Pah-LOOOSH! The father of all belly flops!
Wind knocked out of me. Bruised. Disoriented, gagging on salt water. I thrashed wildly. A spindly human in an endless sea.
There was no choice if I were going to make it.
Brutally conscious, teeth chattering, body aching, I forced myself to morph the orca. A third me.
<Jake? Are you okay?> It was Rachel. <Sorry I had to toss you around like that but you were drowning.>
I clicked. Counted two sperm whales and three orca.
<That's okay. Is ... is everyone here?> I asked.
<Yeah,> Tobias said. <Our real orca buddy took off a while back. We're here. We're remorphed. And we're ready.>
Marco groaned. <I knew this night wasn't over.>
<Rachel? A very sweet save,> I said. <Thanks. We have to make sure the Sea Blade is really out of commission. The last I saw it was still sinking. We locate it, assess the situation, take it from there. Everybody? Dive.>
Again, into the darkness. Beyond the reach of the moonlight. Echolocation our only guide.
<I don't see any sign of it,> Cassie said.
<Maybe it drifted off?> Rachel mused. <I don't know. Is the current this far down strong enough to ...> <Look!> I cried. <To the right. About three o'clock.>
It was the Sea Blade. Still listing. Still leaking fuel. Hovering before what seemed to be a cave.
We moved closer. As cautiously as the huge beasts could. Completely conspicuous.
When we were still about a hundred yards away from the ship, we stopped.
<The opening of that cave is far too narrow for the Sea Blade to get through,> Cassie observed.
<They can't be hoping to hide, can they?>
<Then what're they doing?> Marco said. <Taking a donut break? If Visser Three was on that sub he'd have bailed. There's got to be an escape sub or something on board, right?>
<One would assume so,> Ax replied. <But none of us has seen another vessel ...>
<Ax-man,> I said suddenly. <Everyone? Straight ahead.>
Through the waving underwater plants that grew around the mouth of the cave came three, four, five - creatures. Vaguely human in shape. Vaguely aquatic.
<Okay a rescue crew?> Marco wondered.
<From where?> I said.
The five creatures surrounded the Sea Blade. Attached ropes or pulleys of some sort to the ship.
WHHHOOOSSSHHH!
The cave opened wide, simply spread apart.
And then, with an impossibly swift motion, the creatures, whatever they were, drew the Sea Blade through the narrow opening of the sea cave!
<Well, that was weird,> Rachel said.
<Not to mention impossible. How'd they do that?> Marco.
<I think the bigger question is who did that?> Tobias said. <They definitely weren't human.>
<Whoever they are, what do they want with the Sea Blade?> Cassie added.
<Prince Jake?> Ax said, questioning, prodding me to decide.
I was feeling like I'd made too many decisions in the last hour or so. Too many bad ones. And yet ...
<We follow,> I said. <Whatever those were, they could have been some new Yeerk host body or whatever. That may be some kind of Yeerk facility.>
<Yeah, either that or Atlantis,> Marco said with a laugh.
<We're too big in this morph,> Cassie said. <We might get in, but maneuvering inside a cave as an orca? Could end up being sardines.>
<Suggestions, Cassie?>
<Not the dolphin. Nothing that breathes air. Not in a cave. I think we need the hammerheads. Their electromagnetic capabilities might prove useful in an underground environment.>
<Okay. Everybody to the surface and demorph.> We did.
Four human kids, a hawk, and an Andalite.
I looked at us, bobbing in the midnight ocean.
My best friend. My cousin. My girlfriend.
A nothlit and an alien.
My friends.
Bedraggled. Wet. Cold. Incredibly tired.
Hair plastered to their heads. Lips blue. Bodies shivering.
And I was asking them to do it again. Again!
For the third or fourth time in less than an hour.
To morph and dive deep, deep into the chilling dark ocean. To hunt down the Sea Blade.
Sometimes I hate my life.
"Let's go, boys and girls."
Again my body shot out behind me. Sleekened. My legs melted together into a V-shaped tail. An elegant dorsal fin rose from my back.
My skin became tough, rough. Sandpapery.
My face ... my face was not pretty.
It flattened. Widened as rows and rows of teeth marched back toward my throat.
My forehead spread to either side to form two tough fleshy wings.
POP! POP!
An eye appeared at the end of each wing.
My head measured over two feet across!
I could sense food. Prey.
I wanted to kill it. Eat it.
Not bother to swallow it first. Not consider what was sliding down my throat. Not care if it was another hammerhead ...
<Jake!> Tobias ordered. <Get a grip!>
The human part of me shuddered. I'd grazed Tobias with my teeth. A thin red line appeared on his eleven-foot-long body.
<Sorry, man. I must be tired. Let's go.>
We dove back down to the sea cave. There was no trace of the Sea Blade.
For one small moment I hesitated. And then I thought of Hahn. Anger's a pretty good motivator. Pride's a pretty good motivator, too. I was going to win this battle. The Yeerks weren't going to escape. Get them now and we wouldn't have to come back.
I had all kinds of good reasons to go forward. No reason for turning back, except fear. And another feeling, like fear, but subtly different.
That cave, those creatures, something about it all gave me the unholy creeps.
<Here we go,> I said.
I led the way through the narrow passageway. Inside the cave, through the giant undulating fronds of ocean plants that obscured, then revealed the opening.
Darkness. Total and complete.
Do you know what that means? Total and complete darkness?
It's a darkness almost unimaginable to a bunch of kids used to seeing the night sky illuminated by neon and streetlights and stars.
It's a darkness that swallows you. A darkness that makes you wonder if you're even alive. A darkness that deprives you of sight and - once you get over the freakiness of being totally and completely blind - makes all your other senses somehow more acute.
<Whew! What is that - smell? Taste?> Marco said.
<Fuel?>
<Great. We're following the equivalent of a fleet of Greyhound buses down here.>
<At least it means we're on the right trail,> I said. <The fuel's got to be from the Sea Blade.>
<Probably not fuel,> Ax said. <This is not a human submarine. It is very unlikely to be powered by the incomplete combustion of the liquid remnant of decayed vegetation. That smell/taste is most likely coolant.>
<Ah.>
<Or possibly the waste from the onboard sanitary facilities.>
<I vote for coolant,> Marco said.
The tubular passageway seemed to be about nine feet in diameter. Tight. Too tight for the Sea Blade to have come through. But then the cave seemed to be adjustable.
BONK!
<Uh, guys,> I said. <We've got a dead end.>
No more tunnel. Just a wall of rock.
And five other hammerhead sharks coming to an abrupt, bumping halt in the dark.
<Great,> Marco said brightly. <Okay. Party's over. Closing time. Everybody out. Just turn right around and ...>
<Marco?>
<Yeah, I know, Rachel. "Shut up.">
<Jake?>
<We're going through that wall,> I said. <Just don't ask me how.>
<Now - any suggestions?> I asked.
BBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
<Yaaahh!> Marco cried. <What is that!>
<I would venture to say there is an electrical field behind this wall,> Ax said.
<Ugh. It feels like biting tinfoil with a mouth full of fillings!>
<Rachel? How would you know what that feels like?> Marco said. <I always assumed you were a perfect specimen of oral hygiene.>
<Never mind,> she snapped. <What do we do now?>
I moved forward and nudged the wall with my nose.
<That, I guess.>.
Amazing.
A thin horizontal line of light appeared in the center of the wall. In that profound gloom the light was almost blinding.
<Ooookay. We are so not in Kansas anymore,> Marco said.
The line grew to a rectangle. Then to a square. About four feet by four feet. And then the square rounded to form a perfect circle.
Brighter greenish squiggles of light pushed out from the flat surface of the circle and formed rotating coils.
<Psychedelic,> Tobias muttered.
<I do not recognize this technology,> Ax observed. <Not Andalite. Not Yeerk.>
<Not human,> I said. <What next?>
Suddenly the coils of green light began to migrate toward the center of the circular panel. When they'd gathered in a bunch, they split. Opened like a mouth to reveal a tunnel beyond the wall.
<Amazing,> Cassie said.
<Disturbing,> Marco added.
<Single file,> I said. <On me.>
We swam through the opening in the wall. The mouth shut behind us. Sealed up as if it had never been there.
<Well, that's not comforting,> Marco said.
The water on the other side was marginally brighter. At least there was enough light for me to make out a right and left bank of muddy land along the "river" of water.
I surfaced cautiously. And yes, there was a surface.
<I'm going to demorph. See if this air is actually air.>
I demorphed. The air was cool and humid but definitely breathable. The others joined me. We scrambled onto the puddled left bank of the watery passage.
After a minute my human eyes began to adjust to the twilight atmosphere. There was a sense of impossible vastness about this space. Far larger than the Yeerk pool complex. Huge. Endless. A cavern that could have contained Manhattan.
I blinked and squinted. The light, such as it was, didn't seem to have a source. No sun, no stars, no lamps, or stadium lights. It was more like a watery background glow.
I could barely make out the faces of my friends at first. But then my eyes adjusted. They looked tired, scared, but definitely not beaten.
I looked around and saw images appear, slowly becoming visible as my eyes adjusted. But what I saw was impossible.
A few dozen yards away was a ship, A wooden ship. It had three tall masts. A single deck of gunports, eighteen in all, all open, all revealing the blunt snouts of old brass or iron cannon. The sails hung limp from most of the yards. The ropes and cables sagged. But nothing was as rotted as it should be. After all, no ship of this type had sailed in almost two hundred years. It rested in dry dock, on a massive cradle made of carved coral. "Coral?" Cassie said. "There's no coral near here."
Marco gave her a look. "That's what bothers you? The coral? There's a whole three-masted frigate sitting there like it just floated in from the War of 1812."
<And a crew,> Tobias said.
"Say what?"
<My night vision's not great, but I see men in the shrouds. And up on the yards.>
"What do you mean, men?" I snapped.
<I mean men. Dead men. Not moving. Not breathing. Just frozen in place.>
"Okay, we're leaving," Marco said.
"Weird," Rachel said.
"Weird?!" Marco shrilled. "Weird?! There's a whole ship with a bunch of dead guys getting ready to raise sail and sing, 'yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me,' in an underwater cave the size of Lake Erie, and your feeling is that's weird?"
"Look down there," Rachel said, pointing downstream, past the frigate.
Another shadow loomed. We walked toward it, under the lee of the frigate, oppressed by the sense of those tall masts and the shadowed, unseen dead who tended them.
We moved on toward a ship different yet similar to the first. This, too, was a sailing ship. But older. It was rounder, the masts shorter. There was a sort of ornate castle built up on the stern.
<Spanish galleon?> Tobias speculated.
Here, too, the ropes were slack, the sails hung like sheets on a clothesline on a dead calm day.
And here, too, Tobias reported on bearded faces, empty eyes.
"Look, I don't know about anyone else, but I believe in listening to my instincts. And my instincts are saying, 'You've done enough, Marco. Go home. Play with the stupid poodle. Do some homework.'"
"I get the same feeling, Marco," I said. "But we almost got killed trying to take out the Sea Blade. I don't want a rematch. I want it sunk. I want to know it's sunk."
<And this is certainly a fascinating phenomenon> Ax added.
We walked past the galleon. And yet another ship waited for us. Smaller, sleeker.
<PT boat,> Tobias said.
And on we walked, feet thick with mud, hearts beating in slow, leaden rhythm.
"That's not a ship, that's a wall or something," Rachel said.
"It curves outward toward the top," Cassie pointed out. "But it's too big to be a ship, isn't it?"
"Tobias?" I said.
He flapped up and kept flapping. Out of my sight. I waited anxiously. Then he swooped back into view and settled on Rachel's outstretched arm.
<It's an aircraft carrier. It's an entire aircraft carrier. Japanese. There's a Japanese flag. That is an entire, World War Two, Japanese aircraft carrier. Impossible!>
"They'd have flares. We could use some light. Also weapons," I said. "Might be worth taking a look. Is there an easy way up?"
<Around the far side. There's an actual staircase. Weirdly proportioned steps, but definitely steps.>
"Let's go."
We crossed beneath the overhang of the bow, as tall as an office building. And there, as Tobias had said, was a staircase.
"Think we need to buy a ticket?" Cassie wondered idly.
I led the way up the steps. It was a long climb. But then, at last, I stepped out onto the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Two Japanese planes waited. Looking like they could take off for Pearl Harbor at any second.
The pilots grinned.
Dead.
The flight deck was as long as a football field. Almost as wide. I led the way to the superstructure. I didn't want to see what was inside. I felt vulnerable in human morph, but we were all exhausted from multiple morphing. And we had Ax. The reassuring, delicate clop clop clop of his hooves was loud in the dense silence. And though he was probably as exhausted as us, his tail could handle most threats.
I opened an oval hatchway. Swung it outward. Jumped back. There were lights on inside!
"Ax? Up front."
I felt cowardly putting Ax forward, but he did have four eyes. He could see in all directions and react faster than I could.
He stepped gingerly through. <It appears deserted.>
I followed him. Down a narrow hallway. Pipes clustered thickly on the ceiling and occasionally plunged down the walls. The floor was steel, the walls steel. Ax pushed open a second hatch and stopped. He said nothing. Just stared with all four eyes.
I leaned over him.
It was a fairly large room. At one end a low, raised platform. A map was on the wall. A chart of some sort.
Facing the platform were seats, like the seats of an old theater. Several rows. Perhaps two dozen seats in all. And in each seat, facing forward, dead men.
It seems like they really sacrificed everything else into order to get as much ghost pirate action as possible
Yeah, aside from the fight with the Sea Blade, most things have been pretty utilitarian.
"They're dead," I said unnecessarily.
"Are you sure?" Rachel said in an oddly small, thin voice.
<They'd have to be. How could they ...> Tobias's logic trailed off.
<If you like, I will examine the bodies, Prince Jake.>
"Good idea," I said. "You do that, Ax."
"Ax is the man," Marco mumbled.
His hooves ka-klunking on the painted metal deck, tail blade angled forward, poised for attack, Ax stepped through the narrow doorway.
Cassie went with him. I guess this was a medical situation, to her.
Ax leaned one of the bodies forward gently, respectfully. Cassie looked at what he was showing her and gasped. The two of them came back.
<They are dead humans,> Ax stated. <They have been preserved. Stuffed with a substance I cannot identify without further, more detailed examination, and sewn up the back with a stringy vegetative material.>
"I am so out of here," Marco said. "Jake, we have to go. Now."
"Marco? Shut up," Rachel said, but more like she was trying to quiet her own fears.
"Mummies? Like, what? Like Egyptian mummies?" I asked, feeling stupid.
"Sewn up the back," Marco muttered. "Who cares what style? Dead is dead."
"The bodies are in remarkable condition," Cassie said, sounding like she was talking from some other place, not connected to her own body.
<I am unable to identify the culture or people responsible for this, Prince Jake. This is so irrational and strange that I assume it must involve humans.>
Two dozen Japanese pilots gazed sightlessly at a briefing map. Ready for the attack. Where? Pearl Harbor? Midway? Some forgotten battle?
They'd been the enemy then. Didn't look or feel like the enemy now.
"Let's get out of here. Back out on deck."
I felt marginally better outside.
SCREEEEECCCHHH!
Instinctively, I ducked.
A seagull! The bird swooped only inches above our heads and landed on the metal railing bordering the deck.
"Look at the eyes on that thing!"
The creature I thought was a seagull was not a normal seagull.
Its eyes were enormous. They covered the entire sides of its head and touched over its beak. And unlike a normal seagull's eyes, this bird's eyes were bright blue.
<Eyes adapted to a perpetually dim environment?> Tobias guessed.
As if in response the bird squawked, spread its wings, and took off.
"Are we certain the Sea Blade came through this Museum of Lunacy?" Marco said. "Cause I, for one, am all for bailing."
I frowned. "No, we're not sure. But we have to assume it did. And our mission's still the same."
"Destroy the Sea Blade before Visser Three finds the Pemalite ship," Rachel said.
"And avenge Hahn's death," Cassie added softly.
"Let's go airborne," I said. "It's probably safer and we can cover more ground. Tobias, stay hawk. Everyone else, go owl."
Owl. A morph I hoped would allow us to see more clearly in the dim light.
To explore silently.
To defend ourselves if we had to against mutant seagulls and whatever other odd creatures we might find.
Whatever other live odd creatures.
A few minutes and we were off again. We followed the river further into this macabre underwater world.
Hundreds of ships for countless square miles!
German U-boats. A 1930s vintage tramp steamer. Pieces of junked motorboats. A Polynesian raft.
Rows of periscopes. Broken hulls. Propellers. Ships' wheels. Rudders and radar equipment.
Deck furniture from luxury ocean liners.
And bodies.
Preserved pilots and passengers. Eighteenth-century European crew and twentieth-century tourists. Whalers. Fishermen.
<It looks like a collection,> Cassie said. <Almost orderly. Deliberate.>
<Yeah. Mr. Psycho's Nautical Toy Box and Graveyard,> Marco added grimly.
<Or a sicko director's movie set,> Rachel said. <is anyone else expecting to run across, say, the Titanic?>
<These ships and boats are from everywhere,> Marco pointed out. <Atlantic, Pacific. Thousands of miles away. That galley has to be from the Mediterranean. This is impossible.>
With my keen owl's eyes I detected a slight glow a few hundred yards ahead. As we got closer to the light I saw that it was coming from the far end of a narrow tunnel.
A tunnel into which the nautical graveyard and the river was rapidly narrowing.
<What now, Jake?> Rachel asked.
I hesitated again. But only for a moment.
To go on was to lead my team - my friends - further into the unknown. And from what we'd just seen on the Japanese carrier, there was a good chance the unknown was seriously weird. And probably very dangerous.
Or go back. Turn around.
Forget the search for the Sea Blade. Leave it to chance whether Visser Three ever found the Pemalite ship. Stole its secrets. Used those secrets to further the Yeerk invasion of Earth.
The visser. The Abomination responsible for the sickening recent torture and murders of Hahn and forty-nine other innocent Hork-Bajir.
<Keep going,> I said.
Twenty-five feet from the light. Fifteen. Ten.
<What the - !>
<Whoa!>
WHHHOOOSSSHHH!
Sucked through to the other side!
<AAAHHH!>
Tumbling through the air, feet over head, flapping frantically to regain control!
Five owls and one hawk slapping each other with wings, scratching each other with outstretched talons, awkwardly bumping and twirling.
<AAAHHH!>
I righted myself. Blinked.
<Whoa. Everybody okay?>
<That was kinda fun.> Marco.
<Right,> Cassie said. <Like being caught in a clothes dryer. Or a tornado.>
<Yeah, we're fine, Jake,> Rachel answered.
<Okay. What fresh hell is this?> Tobias said dryly.
It took me a minute to focus. To see the differences between this place and the hideous ship museum we'd just left.
It was a city. Sort of. A series of interlocked buildings. Like one of those ancient Indian cliff dwellings made of adobe. Only this city was made from various parts of ships and boats. Massive prows jutted out, tankers, battleships, passenger ships, sailboats. Lifeboats were hoisted up the sides of ships to become terraces. Ships' propellers turned slowly, drawing air into monstrous steel fortresses.
The entire back half of an oil tanker had been planted vertically, so that the ship appeared to have sunk bow downward in the ground. There were gun barrels welded together to form pipes leading from this bizarre water tower into the city.
Several dozen World War I and II vintage submarines were stacked three high. The conning towers and sterns had been sliced off and now revealed only oversized doorways. Maybe they were some sort of storage. A warehouse made of dead subs.
From the center of the city rose a fantastic tower. It was a visual trip through the history of technology. At its base it was constructed of massive iron cannon, welded and bolted upright deck upon deck, rising perhaps thirty feet. All of it was covered in hammered gold and silver, a billion dollar skin. After that the building materials began to change. Heavy iron plate. Smoke stacks.
Massive guns. Steel pipe. Another twenty or thirty feet. And then lighter construction: aluminum sheathing, wire, computer consoles, the tubes of burned out missiles.
The city hummed with the sound of engines. Dim lights burned, here and there. And the air smelled of oil and smog.
<Just when we thought things couldn't get any weirder,> Rachel muttered.
<This is amazing,> Marco said.
<It's like a set for that movie, The Island of Lost Children,> Cassie said. <Or like - Peter Pan or something.>
<Yeah,> Marco said. <You know, I thought I was joking when I said we might find Atlantis.>
<Kind of skanky for Atlantis.>
<Prince Jake? Ahead. On that - corner. Creatures. Beings. Not,> he hastened to add, <any species with which I am familiar.>
<The people who stole the Sea Blade,> I said.
They were approximately human in size and shape. Two adults and one child. Wearing loose, simple garments. Kind of old-fashioned for Earth. Like togas. Like something the ancient Romans wore. And ...
<Their skin is blue - not that we haven't seen that before,> Rachel said, glancing at Ax. <Kind of cool, actually,> she added. <But I have to give a "thumbs-down" to the oily look.>
<Jake?> It was Cassie. <Look at their necks. They're ... they're gilled.>
<And webbed,> I said grimly. <Feet and hands.>
<And the eyes. They're oversized, like the ones on the seagull,> Tobias noted.
<Not a bad body on that one,> Marco said.
That earned him stares from all of us.
<What? What? I can't compliment a fish girl?>
<We come here chasing Yeerks and we end up with this?> Cassie wondered. <Is this good luck or bad luck?>
<It's our luck,> Rachel said dryly.
<Let's take a closer look,> I said. <I don't think the Sea Blade is ever leaving here. But let's be sure. And let's be careful.>
I opened my wings and flew, silent as only an owl is silent. My owl's eyes easily pierced the murk and gloom. It was noon on a sunny day to me.
Over the city walls. I had to force myself to focus. This was a find beyond imagining. A city, a species, all right here on earth. Here for a long time, judging by the collection of ships.
It was beyond belief. And yet real.
And dangerous, I reminded myself. These people, whoever they were, had stuffed and preserved Viking and Roman warriors, pirates and Royal Navy officers, Japanese carrier pilots and U.S. Marines.
Maybe all those bodies had been dead, drowned before these creatures got hold of them.
And maybe not.
We swept across the city, silent visitors from another world. A squadron of terrestrial predators.
The city was alive and active. There were men and women - if those terms applied - walking along narrow streets. There were workers trundling wheelbarrows or driving forklifts.
There was building going on. I had to look away from the painful blaze of arc welders. The "river" flowed by the city, then turned and flowed right beneath the walls, through the city, bisecting the weird jumble into two unequal halves.
And there, in the middle of the town, tied up at a dock, was the latest ship to be brought here. The Sea Blade.
<Let's land,> I said.
<There's a good perch over there, on the tower,> Tobias said. <Looks like a wooden mast. And a crow's nest.>
<Well, look what we have here,> Marco said. <The visser's new toy, tied up and ready to be stripped for parts.>
Just beside the Sea Blade stood a bulky pyramid-shaped structure, towering over every other structure in view.
Steam belched randomly from hundreds of turbines that somehow had been attached to small shelves of stone. Shelves that formed a sort of natural staircase to the flattened top of the structure.
<Uh, geography isn't my best subject,> Marco said. <History, either, for that matter. But is anyone thinking what I'm thinking? Aztec? Mayan? Inca? General South or Central American primitive style pyramid?>
<Except for the metal chimneys, yeah,> I replied.
<Because you two guys are experts on pyramids,> Rachel sniped.
I focused on the dock.
<Hork-Bajir,> I said. <Look.>
Emerging from the Sea Blade was a line of seven-foot-tall Hork-Bajir. Twenty-five or so. Being herded along by about ten of the blue, gilled creatures wielding a motley collection of primitive spears and new, automatic weapons.
Hork-Bajir. The visser's crew. Manacled to each other, ankle to ankle, shuffling along, heads bowed. Hands tied in front. Being led into the base of the stone pyramid structure.
<No Visser Three?> Tobias said.
<Not that I can see,> I answered grimly. <He may not have been aboard.>
<Or maybe he's already a prisoner,> Cassie suggested.
<Maybe he escaped capture,> Rachel countered. <Morphed to something small and slipped past the B.G.'s. We've done it often enough.>
<B.G.'s?> Ax wondered.
<Blue Gills. B.G.'s.>
<Weren't they a group, like a long time ago?> Tobias asked.
<Prince Jake? There are only twenty of your minutes remaining in this morph.>
It didn't take long to size up the situation. The Sea Blade had been captured. Its crew taken prisoner. Visser Three... . Well, it didn't look good for him, either.
No doubt the Sea Blade and its crew would become the latest exhibit in the gallery of ships.
And when the visser was captured, he'd become the city's most popular circus act. Night after night, until his traveling supply of Kandrona ran out, forced to morph, demorph, and remorph to crowds of hooting gilled creatures.
Maybe. I could dream, anyway.
Not my problem. The Sea Blade was down. Gone. Maybe Visser Three, too. This was a victory. A major one, no less because it was handed to us by the B.G.'s.
Time to be thankful and to get out fast.
<Okay. We've seen enough. We're out of here. Let's find someplace to demorph then remorph. Then we go home.>