The fugue.
The final hours of the Yeerk's life. I was watching him die.
A lot has happened to me since I first saw the Andalite prince land in that construction site. More strange things than happen to most people in their entire lives. But the strangest was this. And the saddest.
The Yeerk cried in pain, again and again. And the visions came floating up, crystal clear, as if they had just happened.
Visions of the good times in the Yeerk's life. And of bad times. The emotions were strange. Alien. I guess that's the word for them. There was no memory of love. I guess Yeerks don't do love.
But there was affection. Pride. Fear. Regret. Those I could understand.
And along with the Yeerk's own memories, I began to see the minds of his hosts. The Gedd who had a name no human could hope to pronounce. The Hork-Bajir warrior who had fought the Yeerk in his head every day of his life.
The Hork-Bajir, who had been forced to attack his own kind, to destroy his own friends, as an unwilling slave of the Yeerks.
But it was more than just memories. It was more. The Yeerk had carried with him some small part of that Hork-Bajir warrior's being.
Like a computer transferring a document onto a floppy disk, I realized. Part of the Gedd and part of the Hork-Bajir had been transferred permanently to the Yeerk.
And to my shock, I knew that those parts were now being transferred to me.
And then ... the memories I feared most.
Tom.
He had joined The Sharing for a simple, silly reason. A pretty girl he liked was a member. He had wanted to get close to her. He had gone to meetings. He'd played along with them, never guessing the truth. All he had cared about was the girl. He had stumbled, accidentally, into a secret leadership meeting. He thought the girl was seeing another boy. But she was one of them.
He had followed her, wandered into the meeting and seen Visser Three. Visser Three in his Andalite body.
I saw the Controllers grab a yelling, punching, kicking Tom. I saw as they tied him up. Carried him through secret passageways to the great, underground Yeerk pool.
I saw him scream as he realized what was happening. I felt his fear. I felt his rage as the Yeerk slug crawled into his ear and wrapped itself around his brain. I felt every ounce of his despair.
And like the Gedd and the Hork-Bajir, this human, my brother, became a part of me.
The Yeerk was no longer in pain. It was beyond pain.
I opened my eyes and looked at Cassie. It happened so naturally. I opened my eyes. By my own will.
I don't know how she knew, but I guess she did. She nodded slightly and met my gaze.
For the first time in more than an hour, the Yeerk spoke. <So. You win . . . human.>
The Yeerk shuddered. I could feel it. A physical spasm. My vision changed. I felt. . . it's hard to describe. I felt as if I were seeing through things, into things. Like I could see the front and back and top and bottom and inside of every thing all at once.
And then I saw it.
A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to move, on a throne that was miles high.
Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly . . . left. . . right . . .
I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way.
And then it saw me.
The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me.
It saw me.
It SAW me!
No! NO! I cried in silent terror. I looked away.
And when I opened my eyes again, all I saw was a weird glow.
The glow faded, little by little.
I was trembling.
"It's over, Jake," Cassie said.
I rose slowly to my feet. I moved my own legs. I was in control of myself again.
I looked down on the wooden floor of the shack.
A gray slug, not six inches long, lay there . . . still.
As we watched, it withered and shriveled and became nothing
Jake? Are you all right, sweetheart?" my mom asked me that night at dinner. I looked up. I'd been staring at my food, I realized. Something with pasta and tuna fish.\
"What?" I asked.
My mom and dad exchanged one of their "worried parent" looks. "Well, you're not eating. Don't you like it?"
I shrugged. "Sorry. It's fine. I was just . . . distracted."
My dad nodded. "It's just a change from the last two nights. You've been eating like you were trying to eat everything in the house."
"I was?"
Tom cocked an eyebrow at me. "What, now you're going to pretend it didn't happen? Last night you sat here and ate six pieces of chicken and kept yapping about how great it was. Then you ate a pie. A pie which was supposed to be for the four of us."
I hid a smile. Of course. Ax. The Andalite had played me for three days - two hours at a time. Ax was dangerous around food. The sense of taste was still totally amazing to him. When he was in human morph you didn't want to get between him and a bar of chocolate. Or a pie, I guess.
"You were a total pig," Tom said. "Chicken. Corn. Potatoes. Or, as you kept saying, 'Potatoes. Toes. Tay-toes.' I thought you'd gone nuts."
The next day I did something stupid. At least, Marco kept telling me it was stupid. But he didn't object very much. He understood.
We all met at Cassie's barn. And I used her dad's cellular phone to call Tom at home. I went partly into a wolf morph before I did. Just enough to make the smallest changes.
Enough to change the shape of my mouth and tongue and throat. So that my voice would sound very different.
He picked it up on the third ring. "Yeah?"
"I have a message," I said in a thick, twisted voice that did not sound at all like me.
"What?" Tom asked.
"Don't give up, Tom. Don't ever give up."
I hung up before he could say anything.
"Do you think Tom ... the real Tom . . . heard it?" Rachel asked.
"He heard," I answered.
I wondered if he would have the strength to hold on.
But I knew the answer. See, a part of my brother was in my own mind now. Along with echoes of a long-dead Hork-Bajir and a simple Gedd. And yes, even a bit of a Yeerk with dreams of glory.
Marco smiled his sardonic smile. "And is it true? Will we win?"
"This is a very complicated planet, Marco. That's what I hear, anyway. And it's a very strange universe. Anything could happen."
Is there a touch of Sauron to the enormous all-seeing eye? (And the elvish word for "orc" is "yrc" isn't it?)
Is there a touch of Sauron to the enormous all-seeing eye? (And the elvish word for "orc" is "yrc" isn't it?)
Also the Yeerk Pool backwards is "Rain Plus", make of that what you will.
Wait a minute, was that who I think it was? Even this early, he's here? Hah!
Book 6 is excellent, but I'm really psyched for book 7. BIG debut, their first real, big victory, which is the setup for them discovering that even real, big victories can have big consequences... I read this one so many times as a kid.
Now that they know you can starve a yeerk out they should just kidnap Tom and do that.
Now that they know you can starve a yeerk out they should just kidnap Tom and do that.
Also "nothlit" is an anagram of "Hilton", because when Applegate was writing the first book she was staying a Hilton hotel and started playing with the letters on the hotel room stationary pads they give you, or something to that effect.
Now that they know you can starve a yeerk out they should just kidnap Tom and do that.
Man Tom's new Yeerk is dumb. It may not have the memories of Jake not normally being a total food obsessed weirdo, but Tom does.
If you do that you are effectively killing Tom because he'd need to go on the run because the Yeerks know who he is and would notice if he hasn't show up to the pool in X amount of days for his Controller's regular feedings. And the kids don't know how widespread the invasion is at this point and how big of a surveillance net they have over the planet that can be used to track escaped hosts. If Tom gets recaptured and re-infested, then he at the very least will out the kids as active resistance members, if not fully morph-capable humans, unless they took steps to cover up their identities throughout the whole process of freeing him. Or the Yeerks could just out and out kill him once they get their hands on him again. Either way Jake will never see his brother alive again, and that's an outcome he's fighting like hell to try and avoid.
Basically, Tom is stuck with his new Yeerk for the duration, because literally every other option ends in disaster for him, Jake, and the other Animorphs too. Same thing goes with Eva.
what they need to pull that off is some kind of locally-grown guerilla network. like an actual resistance cell.
This is it, my first Animorphs. My mother took me and my sister shopping to pick out our Christmas presents, and this was among mine. I had been fascinated by those covers. I got into the bags on the car ride home and started reading and couldn't put it down. Of course it was supposed to be for Christmas, and so went in an almighty sulk when she took it off me to hide away. She eventually gave up and let me have it when I kept breaking into the cupboard where the presents were hidden.
Like others, I'm surprised at how short the actual Yeerk infestation actually is when it left such a mark. And look at these kids being sneaky and competent. That didn't mean all that much reading the first time, but doing it in order and seeing them just escaping with their lives to completing a goal here, and even if it did almost go horribly pear shaped they came up with a plan then and followed it through. Next book spoilers It's a nice progression to next book where they finally get their first big win
Man Tom's new Yeerk is dumb. It may not have the memories of Jake not normally being a total food obsessed weirdo, but Tom does.
I've just thought of something. This book is the first we see Visser Three in a human morph. Do you think he has ever succumbed to the forbidden pleasures of the cinnamon bun?
what they need to pull that off is some kind of locally-grown guerilla network. like an actual resistance cell.
My name is Rachel.
And you know the drill. I'm not going to tell you my last name. I'm not going to tell you where I live. I'll tell you all I can, because you need to know what's going on. You need to know what's happening.
But I need to stay alive. And if the Yeerks knew who I was, I would be dead.
Or worse.
The Yeerks are here. That's what you need to know.
People look up at the stars at night and wonder what it would be like if creatures from another planet ever landed on Earth.
Well, you can stop wondering. It's happened. The Yeerks are parasites. They live in the brains of other species - humans, for example. They turn human beings into mindless slaves - human-Controllers.
So when I say that the aliens are here, don't go looking around for some cute little thing like E.T. You won't see the Yeerks. They are parasitic worms, evil gray slugs that live in the heads of humans.
They can be in anyone. Your best friend. Your favorite teacher. The mayor of your town.
Your brother. Sister. Mother. Father.
Anyone might be a Controller.
You might be a Controller.
So I won't tell you my last name. Or where I live. But I will tell you the truth. The truth that only the Animorphs know.
Animorph. Animal morpher. A human capable of becoming any animal. It's our one weapon against the Yeerks. Our only power. Without it, we're just five regular kids. But with that power comes certain extra responsibilities...as I was trying to explain to my best friend, Cassie.
It was a Sunday night. It was late. The circus had finished its last show. Their trailers and tents were clustered around the back side of the big City Arena. The Arena is a place where they hold rock concerts and ice shows and play basketball games. And where they have circuses.
"Look, we both saw what we saw," I told Cassie. "Are you telling me it doesn't make you mad? That jerk using a cattle prod on an elephant doesn't make you mad?"
"Of course it does, Rachel," Cassie said. "I don't even like circuses."
"I don't, either. But my dad had tickets, and it was our big once-every-other-week, father and daughters thing. I had to come." My dad had taken my sisters and me to see the circus earlier in the evening. See, my mom and dad are divorced, so my dad does these little outings where
we all get together every second weekend. Sometimes it's just me and my dad. Like when we go hiking together, or go to ball games or gymnastics events. Those are all things my dad and I like, but Jordan and Sara, my sisters, don't.
My little sisters loved the circus, but it's not my kind of thing. I guess I'm too old. That's why I dragged Cassie along. So I'd have someone to talk to when my sisters were getting all excited over the clowns and stuff.
Still, it was an opportunity to spend time with my dad, which I enjoy. I don't get to see him as much as I wish I could. Everyone always says how much I'm like him. How he's kind of reckless, and so am I. He always seems so sure of himself, and I guess people think I'm that way, too. We're even both into gymnastics. My dad almost made the U.s. Olympic team when he was younger.
Of course, I've never told my father about my other life. I couldn't. But I wish I could. He would worry about me and all, but he would also think it was cool. My dad is very big on standing up for what's right. I think he would admire what I do. That would be nice, feeling like my dad admired me.
There wasn't much activity in the little tent and trailer city outside the Arena. I could hear dogs barking. I could hear raucous laughter coming from a brightly painted trailer. I could smell the usual circus smells - manure, hay, beer, cotton candy. There were security guards around the perimeter of the area, but I wasn't worried about them.
I've gone one-on-one with Hork-Bajir warriors. After you've fought one of those seven-foottall walking razor blades, regular old humans don't scare you much.
Cassie and I walked silently past the tiger cage. The three big cats just stared blankly. It was night. They wanted to be in the jungle. Instead they were in a too-small cage, trapped in a nightmare invented by humans.
Then I saw the elephant pen. There was a sturdy fence around four big Asian elephants. They were a little different from the African elephant I knew so well. But they were elephants, just the same.
I have sort of a special relationship with elephants.
Cassie and I had come to the elephant pen before the circus and seen the way their trainer treated them. He had used a cattle prod on them. It's a stick with a massive electrical shock. He used it to control the animals.
Later, during the show, he'd put on a big act of loving his elephants. But I'd seen the cattle prod. I just sat there, doing a slow boil all through the show. I knew I was going to have to take some action.
The elephant trainer's name was Josep some thing. Something hard to pronounce.
Well. He didn't know it yet, but Mr. Josep Something was about to have an eye-opening experience.
"See anyone around?" I asked Cassie.
"You know, Jake is going to read you the riot act over this," Cassie warned.
I laughed. "Read the riot act? That's like something my mother would say. What does it even mean?"
Cassie shrugged and smiled her shy smile. "I don't know. My dad says it all the time. I was trying to sound responsible and mature and parental."
"Look, I am going to do this," I said.
Cassie sighed. "Why did I let you talk me into this!"
"Because you know I'm right."
Cassie rolled her eyes. "Just don't hurt the guy, okay?"
"Me? Ms. Peace, Love, and Understanding? He'd just better not show up carrying that cattle prod, or I swear, I'll -- "
I noticed Cassie had stopped walking. She was giving me her sorrowful look. Like she was ashamed of me.
I cringed. "Okay, okay. I'll just talk to the guy. Turn off the look. I hate that look. You're going to be a really good mother some day, with a look like that."
I found the gate in the elephant pen and opened it. I slipped inside while Cassie retreated into the shadows to watch my back. I moved slowly, not making any threatening moves that might alarm the elephants.
Elephants may be gentle, but they are big.
You don't want to be in the middle of four upset elephants.
I went to a far, dark corner of the pen and began the familiar ritual of focusing my mind. I concentrated on the elephant. My elephant. The elephant whose DNA was a part of me.
And then I began to change.
"People say I'm pretty, I don't know and I really don't care. But I'll tell you one thing - no one who has ever seen me morph into an elephant ever used the word "pretty" to describe it.
I felt the thickening of my legs and arms. I watched as my skin grew leathery and gray as mud.
I felt the sudden sprouting of my trunk as my nose and upper lip seemed to explode outward.
"Pinocchio, eat your heart out," Cassie whispered.
I felt the teeth in the front of my mouth run together, and then begin to grow and grow into long, spear-length tusks. It's a creepy sensation, by the way. Not painful, but definitely creepy.
I was growing big. More than big. I was gaining several thousand pounds.
Several thousand pounds.
I was about twelve or thirteen feet tall. I had ears like beach blankets. I had a little, ropy tail. I was a full-grown African elephant, and I was ready to have a little, um, talk with Mr. Josep Something.
"Hhhhuuuuhhhrrrooooooomm!" I threw up my trunk and let go of a trumpet blast. It was the sound of a very angry elephant.
"You could have warned me," I heard Cassie whisper. "I almost wet myself over here." It took about three minutes before the trainer came rushing into the pen. In the dark, all he saw were the gray shapes of his elephants. I wasn't exactly hiding, because, let's face it, when you're an elephant, you can't scrunch up and look small. But I was staying back until he was all the way inside the pen.
Then . . .
I lunged forward, pushing two of the other elephants aside.
The trainer gaped up at me. "What? What the...?"
In a sudden, fluid movement, as he stared in puzzlement, I wrapped my trunk around his waist.
"Hey! Hey! You're not one of my elephants!" Here's the thing about elephant trunks. They are so subtle that I can pick up an egg with my trunk and never crack it. Or I can pick up a tree and throw it across the yard.
Josep Something knew this.
I wrapped my trunk tightly around his waist and then I lifted him up off the ground. His feet kicked helplessly in the air. His arms pounded weakly on my trunk. I lifted him up till he was at my eye level.
<Hi, Josep.> I said, using thought-speak.
"What the . . . . Who? Who said that? I'm hearing voices!"
<Me.> I replied. <I said it. See, Josep, I am from the International Elephant Police. We have had some complaints about you. >
"This is crazy! This is crazy! What are you? Is this some sort of a joke?"
So I squeezed him a little tighter. Just enough so he couldn't really breathe very well.
<Now, listen to me. Because I could just as easily squeeze you out like a tube of toothpaste. So pay attention. You have been using cattle prods on your elephants. That is a no-no.>
"But..." he gasped. "They ... are ... my ... property!"
This man was just not getting the message.
So I extended my trunk a little and held him right over the tip of my left tusk. Like a worm about to be placed on fishing hook.
<With one twitch of my trunk I can make you a shish kebab. Now are you going to listen to me?>
"Yes! Yes! I'm listening," he said. "I am listening very closely."
<No more cattle prods. No more pain of any kind. Do you understand me?>
"Y-y-y-yes."
<Because I'll be watching. And if you ever, ever hurt an elephant again . . . ever. . . I'll come back for you. And I will squeeze you till you pop like an overcooked hot dog. Do you understand me?>
"Y-y-y-yes."
<Josep, can you fly?>
"What? Can I fly? No. No, of course not."
<I'll bet you can.> I said.
And with that, I lowered my trunk almost to the ground. Then, with a sudden toss of my head and a deft twist of my trunk, I sent Josep Something flying.
He landed safely atop a tent. About, oh, twenty feet away.
"Now can we go home?" Cassie asked.
I'm getting the impression that the yeerk operation is still small enough where just blowing the whole thing public would end it for the yeerks. The whole thing seems very local.
No comment really necessary regarding this chapter, other than that they're lucky Josep wasn't a Human-Controller.
I'm pretty sure Rachel's plan if Josep said or did anything that indicated he was a Controller was just to go "oh, OK" and tusk him.
No comment really necessary regarding this chapter, other than that they're lucky Josep wasn't a Human-Controller.
You threw the guy into the air?" Jake asked. "Wasn't that maybe just a little unnecessary?"
"No. He made me mad," I said.
It was the next day after school, a Monday. We were walking through the woods. Me, Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Tobias.
Of course, Tobias wasn't really walking. He was flying overhead in little hops from branch to branch.
He stayed close so he could hear us. Red-tailed hawks have excellent hearing, but he still had to stay fairly close.
"Well, Rachel, you know I sympathize," Jake said mildly, "but I don't think our job is really to right every wrong that's done to animals. That would be a full-time job, unfortunately."
I looked at Cassie. She gave me a wink.
We kind of didn't tell Jake that she had been there, too. Cassie and Jake like each other. She didn't want him to be mad at her.
With me, it's a different story. Everyone knows I'm going to do whatever I feel like doing.
"We have other stuff to deal with," Marco grumbled. "The Andalite didn't give us this power so we could turn into the Animorph Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals."
"Fine," I said. Which wasn't exactly like admitting I was wrong. "But what's got you so serious, Marco?"
"Let's wait till we find Ax. I don't want to have to tell the story twice."
So we tromped noisily on through the woods.
I felt a surge of excitement. You couldn't miss the tension in Marco's voice. Something was up. There was the smell of danger in the air, and that meant action.
I like action. I like doing things instead of just talking about them. Marco makes fun of me over it. He calls me Xena, Warrior Princess.
But I'm not one of those morons who is just into danger for its own sake. It's not about cheap thrills. It's about feeling like I am involved in something very important. I mean, let's face it - as corny as it sounds, we are trying to help save the world.
It began months ago. The five of us just happened to hook up together at the mall. It's not like we were a group, really. Not before that night.
Jake's my cousin, but we never hung out together much.
Jake's sort of in charge. It's not something he ever asked for; it's just that he's good at dealing with responsibility. He's the kind of person you automatically turn to if there's a crisis. And probably the best thing about him is that he can tell people what to do without ever sounding
bossy.
"Since when don't you want to tell the same story twice?" Jake teased Marco. "I've known you to tell the same tired jokes eighty or ninety times."
"It's your own fault," Marco said. "If you would just laugh the first time, I wouldn't have to keep telling them."
Marco is Jake's best friend. He's smaller than Jake, funnier, darker, more skeptical. But his suspicious nature makes him very good at seeing beneath the surface of things. And as much as he whines and complains about the dangerous situations we get into, he's still there in the worst of the fight, still making dumb jokes.
Marco has changed lately, at least a little. He doesn't resist being an Animorph like he used to. I don't know why. Maybe it's because his dad finally seems to have gotten over the death of Marco's mother. I don't know.
"Hey, look! Over by that tree. See? A baby skunk with its mother." Cassie, of course. No one else would notice, or get excited over skunks.
"Let's run right over and pet them," Marco said.
Cassie laughed. "I've handled skunks plenty of times and never.been sprayed."
"Yeah, well, that's you, Dr. Doolittle."
Cassie has been my best friend forever. I have no idea why. No one does, because we seem like we would never get along. Cassie lives on a farm. Both her parents are veterinarians. She spends all her free time in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic her dad runs in their barn. They save injured animals.
Cassie is very into animals, but she's not one of those animal lovers who can't stand people.
She just thinks of humans as a different species of animal.
Then there is Tobias. Back when all this started, Tobias was barely an acquaintance of Jake and Marco, although I kind of knew him. He was a sweet, poetic kind of guy. The kind bullies love to pick on. He used to have messy, out-of-control hair and dreamy eyes that always seemed to be looking at something no one else could see.
Used to...
Now he has fierce, angry eyes that look through you like laser beams. Now he has brownish feathers, and a white chest, and a reddish tail, and cruel-looking talons, and a wickedly curved beak.
Tobias was trapped in a morph. Now, he's a red-tailed hawk. A predator who lives on mice and rabbits and sometimes other birds.
I still see him as sweet, gentle Tobias. But he has been a hawk for a long time now.
The gift of the Andalite, the power to morph, is a wonderful weapon. But like any weapon, it can destroy those who use it.[//quote]
Rachel still crushing on Tobias there.
[quote]<Here he comes.> Tobias called down in the thought-speak we use when we are in a morph. <I think he sees us.>
I heard the sound of fallen leaves being stirred, a faint drumbeat of pounding hooves on pine needles.
Then, with a leap, he cleared a fallen tree trunk and landed a few feet away from us. AximiliEsgarrouth-Isthill. We call him "Ax" for short. The sole survivor of the destroyed Andalite Dome ship. The only living Andalite on planet Earth.
Ax is the brother of Prince Elfangor, the Andalite who warned us about the Yeerk invasion and gave us the power to morph. Prince Elfangor, who was destroyed by Visser Three, leader of the Yeerk forces on Earth.
<Hello, Prince Jake.>
Ax said. <Hello, all. >
As much as I know Ax, and even consider him a friend, it's always a little bit of a shock to see him.
He looks like some odd cross of a human, a deer, and a scorpion. But not really like any of those things. His upper body and head are more or less the human-looking parts. He has thin arms and many-fingered hands. His face is flat, with slits for a nose and two large almond eyes. He has no mouth at all, which is why thought-speak is the natural language of Andalites.
From atop his head rise two stalks, each with an eye on the end. He can turn these eyes in any direction he wants. They're completely independent of his main eyes. His body is that of a pale blue-and-tan deer, or a thin pony. He has four legs that end in hooves. But his back slopes down, so that you would never be tempted to think of riding him.
And he has a tail. A long, thick, powerful tail that ends in a deadly scythe-shaped blade. I've seen him use that tail. He can strike so fast that the human eye sees nothing but a blur.
"Hey, Ax," Marco said. "How's it going?"
<It is going wonderfully. I was up in the hills yesterday, and I was attacked by one of those very large cats. What do you call them? Cougars? It was very exciting. >
"Are you okay?" I asked.
<Certainly, Rachel. And I did not hurt the cougar, Cassie. Not fatally, anyway. But he won't try to eat me again, I think. > Ax gave his strange Andalite smile, an expression he managed even without a mouth.
Marco rolled his eyes. "I'm telling you, Ax and Rachel belong together. The two of you are sick. Someday you could get married while bungee-jumping into an active volcano."
I squirmed a little. Not because I minded Marco thinking I was bold. But because I really was not interested in Ax that way.
"Okay, now that we're all here, Marco, maybe you could tell us why we're all here," Jake said.
"I have some news," Marco began. "Actually, Tobias and I have some news."
I glanced up at Tobias, sitting in the tree.
Of course he showed no expression. He just fixed his piercing gaze on Marco.
Marco swaggered just a bit as we formed a circle around him.
"It's a tale of initiative and courage and, yes, brilliance," Marco began.
"No, no, no. Just tell us, Marco," I snapped. "Don't try to milk the suspense."
"Okay," he said with an easy laugh. "My fellow Animorphs . . . and visiting alien... we have found a way into the Yeerk pool."
he entrance to the Yeerk pool?" I echoed. "Where? How?"
I looked around at the others to see their reactions.
See, we had already invaded the Yeerk pool in an effort to save Jake's brother, Tom. Not a happy memory.
I saw Cassie shudder.
"Ax is the only one who wasn't there for our little vacation in the Yeerk pool," Marco said. "As the rest of you know, the Yeerk pool is in a huge underground cavern. It's practically a small city down there. It's under our school, but it's so big that it also runs beneath the fire station, a couple of gas stations, and most of the mall."
Ax nodded. <Yeerk pools are generally large and elaborate. They are an important part of Yeerk life. The centers of their lives, really. The pools are, for the Yeerks, what forests and meadows are to Andalites. >
"Tobias and I have been working out a pattern of surveillance," Marco went on. "For the last week, we've followed our very favorite human-Controller, Assistant Principal Chapman, everywhere we can. Tobias tracks him from the air. Then I follow him when he goes into a building."
"Why didn't you let the rest of us in on this?" I demanded.
Marco shrugged. "It was a two-person job, that's all."
Jake looked as annoyed as I felt.
Then I realized why Marco had kept this quiet. Jake had just been through the terrifying ordeal of being infested by a Yeerk. For three days he had been a human-Controller, a prisoner in his own body. Marco had been letting him rest.
"So?" I asked, a little more patiently.
"So what?" Marco answered.
"So where is this entrance to the Yeerk pool? Duh."
"Well, I was hoping to amaze and entertain you all with the whole story of our brilliant detective work, but the short answer is - in a dressing room at The Gap. In the mall. That's the entrance. People go in, looking like they're going to try on clothes, and they never come out."
<At least, they don't come out through The Gap.> Tobias added. <They come out through the movie theater. When the crowd leaves the movie at the end of the show, there are always more people leaving than went in. >
"In through The Gap, out through the multiplex." Marco laughed. "Are these Yeerks on top of popular American culture, or what?"
"Good job," Jake admitted grudgingly. "The question is, now what do we do?"
<Attack!> Ax said instantly.
"We tried that once," Cassie said quietly. "We didn't exactly win. There were dozens of Hork-Bajir and Taxxons down there. And human-Controllers. And he was there . . . Visser Three.That's when Tobias was trapped in a morph. Like I said, we didn't exactly win."
"We got hammered," I agreed. "Ax, you know I'm usually all for going on the attack, but the Yeerk pool is just too big."
<A warrior is judged by the power of his enemies,> Ax said stubbornly. But he didn't sound quite as enthusiastic anymore.
"Attacking the Yeerk pool is out," I muttered. But an idea was occurring to me. "Hey, Ax? What can you tell us about the Kandrona?"
He swiveled his head toward me, while his stalk eyes turned slowly this way and that, searching the woods for trouble. <The Kandrona is a miniature version of the Yeerks" home sun. It emits Kandrona rays, which concentrate in the Yeerk pools. It is what nourishes the
Yeerks. That is why the Yeerks must swim in their natural state in the Yeerk pool every three days - they need Kandrona rays. >
"So their real weakness is not the pool itself, but this Kandrona," I said. "This miniature sun."
<But the Kandrona may be many miles away from the Yeerk pool.> Ax explained. <The Kandrona rays may be beamed to the pool from almost anywhere. So, although I am in favor of attacking the Yeerk pool, we should not do it expecting to find the Kandrona there. >
"I agree," I said. "But what if we didn't attack the Yeerk pool? What if we just spied it out? We might find out where the Kandrona is."
Marco laughed. "That's more like the Rachel I know. You were starting to worry me there. You were sounding so sensible."
"How big is a Kandrona?" Jake wondered. <It would depend on how many pools it had to support. It might be as large as Cassie's barn. It might be the size of one of your human cars.>
"The size of a car? Surely a bunch of all-American kids like us could manage to wreck a car," Marco joked.
"How much would it hurt the Yeerks?" I asked. "That's the question. Is it worth running the risk of going down there again? Down to the Yeerk pool?"
We all looked at Ax.
<It would depend. If they have a spare Kandrona, it wouldn't hurt them very much. In any case, they have one aboard their mother ship, so we would not wipe them out entirely. >
We all sagged with disappointment.
<However, it would not be practical for the Yeerks to shuttle their human-Controllers back and forth to the mother ship to keep them alive. >
"So what would they do?" Marco wondered. "How would Visser Three react?"
"Visser Three is totally ruthless," I said. "He would save as many as he could. But he'd have to let the rest die."
<Yes.> Ax agreed.
<It would be a very serious blow. They would survive, but they would beweakened.>
"We'd have to find this Kandrona thing first," Cassie reminded everyone. "And wherever it is, it will be guarded."
Right then I guess we all realized we were going to do it. We were going back to the Yeerk pool.
Jake shook his head slowly. "Down to the Yeerk pool again. I still have nightmares about the first time."
"Yeah," Marco agreed. "Done that."
"The Yeerk pool," Cassie said grimly, and looked away.
I didn't say anything. I don't like talking about nightmares. But I'd had them, too. They were pretty bad.
<I am not very good at understanding human emotions.> Ax said. <But you all seem afraid. And your fear is beginning to scare me.>
"Good," I said. "I don't know if you Andalites believe in places like heaven and hell. But let me just tell you - the Yeerk pool is definitely not heaven."
I think Rachel sometimes gets stereotyped as all action, no thought, but she did figure that out.