The Attack

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#1 The Invasion #2 The Visitor #3 The Encounter #4 The Message #5 The
Predator #6 The Capture #7 The Stranger #8 The Alien #9 The Secret #10
The Android #1 1 The Forgotten #12 The Reaction #13 The Change #14 The
Unknown #15 The Escape #16 The Warning #1 7 The Underground #18 The
Decision #19 The Departure #20 The Discovery #21 The Threat #22 The
Solution #23 The Pretender #24 The Suspicion #25 The Extreme

Applegate:

<MEGAMORPHS> #1 The Andalite's Gift #2 In the Time of Dinosaurs

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The Hork-Bajir Chronicles

Width1Width3Width2659Width3Width3331 ii ANIMORPHS

THE ATTACK

K.A. Applegate

AN APPLE

PAPERBACK

SCHOLASTIC INC.

New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

iii For Michael and Jake

Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly

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

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding
permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department,
555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

ISBN 0-590-76259-1

Copyright © 1999 by Katherine Applegate. All rights reserved. Published
by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, ANIMORPHS and
associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
Scholastic Inc.

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 19/901234/0Printed in the U.S.A. 40First
Scholastic printing, February 1999

iv PROLOGUE

The dream came again. As real as it always

was.

The Yeerk was in my head once more. He was starved of Kandrona rays,
weakening, failing. I was watching him die.

The Yeerk cried in pain again and again. And the memory visions came
floating up as clear as if they had all just happened.

They were visions of the Yeerk's life. And the lingering memories he had
stolen from his hosts. One of those hosts had been my own brother, Tom.

I felt each of those minds in my own as the Yeerk gave up his life. I
was the caretaker of those memories of despair.

v At the end, the Yeerk was no longer in pain. He was beyond pain.

I opened my eyes and looked at Cassie. It happened so naturally. I
opened my eyes by my own will for the first time since I'd been infested.

And then, for the first time in more than an hour, the Yeerk spoke. <So.
You win . . . human.>

The Yeerk shuddered. I could feel it as a physical spasm. My vision
changed. And I felt something impossible 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 everything all at once.

It was as if I had slipped out of the normal world. Out of the real
universe. I was in a different reality. I was peeking through a tear in
a movie screen. On the surface, the three-dimensional movie - my world -
played. Beyond it... something my mind could not comprehend.

In my dream, my dream of memory, I felt the terror grow. I knew what was
coming next. I writhed in my sleep, twisting my sheets around me. Wake
up! Wake up!

But I could not wake up. I never could, not till the dream was complete.

And so I saw it again.

A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It
sat still, as if it were

vi bolted down, on a throne that was miles high. It could not move, and
yet the power that flowed from it was like a hurricane of energy.

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.

Through me.

It saw me.

It SAW me!

No! NO! I cried in silent terror. I tried to look away, but my eyelids
were transparent, my head would not twist far enough to avoid its gaze.

It spoke the single word it spoke only in my dreams.

And now, at last, I could awaken, shaking in a sweat-soaked bed.

Why? Why would this dream not go away? I'd had other nightmares, other
awful memories of fear and violence that needed to be exorcized in my
dreams.

But they had each faded. While this dream came again and again.

I got up and staggered into the bathroom. I snapped on the glaring
fluorescent light. Then I stepped to the sink and looked at my face, my
head.

vii Yes, the Yeerk had died there, in that head, my head. It had been
right then as the Yeerk disengaged and began to crawl out of me, right
then as death closed its jaws around the Yeerk, that the eye had found me.

It had seen me.

And I had seen it. Then, and again in my nightmares. Again and again.
And each time it spoke that single, voiceless word.

"Soon."

1

My name is Jake.

Who am I? Sometimes I wonder.

I'm a kid, a middle-school kid, a kid with classes to attend and
homework to do and friends to hang with and parents. I am just an
average kid, at least on the surface. Normal. Boring, even.

I'm not especially good at school. I do okay. I'm no great athlete. I'm
not some kind of genius. Just a kid. If you saw me at the mall you
wouldn't think there was anything remarkable about me.

But there is.

Swimming around in my blood is the DNA of

2 dozens of animals. Birds, insects, mammals. The DNA floats there,
encapsulated, waiting for my own mind to call it up.

And when I do - when I ask the DNA to go to work - it does, in the most
amazing and impossible way. It transforms me. It changes me into the
animal. Into the bird or insect.

I shrink or grow. I lose or gain strength. My limbs, my organs, my face,
my eyes, all change. I become that creature.

My own mind continues to function. I am still me, but the animal mind is
in there with me, too. And it functions, too.

So, anyway, about now you're thinking, Oh, he's psychotic. He's
delusional. He should be in a rubber room with an IV dripping tranquilizers.

I'm not crazy. It's real. It happens. Not just to me, but to my friends:
Marco, my main man; Rachel, my cousin, the war goddess; Cassie, the girl
I care about more than I do myself; Tobias, the friend I couldn't save
from his own bizarre fate; and Ax, an Andalite, an alien.

It's the Andalites who invented the morphing technology. Only they have
it. Only they can take an otherwise normal creature and give him the
power to become any creature.

Yeah, now I'm talking about aliens. Crazy and crazier, right?

But that part's true, too. Earth is being

3 invaded. Not openly, not with Dracon beams blazing and quantum
explosives going off. That would be counterproductive. That's how humans
might do it: fast and hard and obvious.

But the Yeerks aren't like us. They don't want our land or our
resources. They don't want our pitiful, backward technology.

They want us. Us. Or at least our bodies.

They want our legs and hands. They want our ears and mouths. They want
our eyes.

In their natural state, Yeerks are slugs who live in a liquid pool and
absorb Kandrona rays for food. But evolution played an interesting trick
with the Yeerks. Slowly, over the course of millennia, they grew to be a
parasite species.

They found the Gedds, another species on the Yeerk home world. And over
time they learned to penetrate into the very brain of the Gedds.

Gross? Weird? There's a species of wasp that lays its eggs in the living
body of a caterpillar. When the wasps are born, they feed on the
caterpillar. They eat the living caterpillar alive from the inside.

That's on good old Earth. So what's weird?

Anyway, the Yeerks expanded. From Gedds to Hork-BajirtoTaxxons to ... us.

Now they are here. And now they are taking over human hosts, entering
their brains, controlling them, rendering them utterly helpless.

4 I know. I was a Controller. I'd still be a Controller, except that my
friends saved me and starved the Yeerk to death.

Not the first Yeerk death on my hands. Not the last.

We fight this war almost alone, me and my friends. We've learned of a
race of androids called the Chee who help us from time to time. We've
learned that not all Yeerks agree with the policy of expansion
throughout the universe. And we know that off in space, outnumbered,
outgunned, are the Andalites, fighting to push back the Yeerk tide.

But most days and nights, we are alone. Even with other people all
around us, we are alone.

Assembly. Not a pep rally, not a drug lecture, not a ceremony honoring
anyone. This was different, and actually, fairly cool.

The Lion King, the stage show, was in town. Some of the performers were
there on the stage of our little auditorium to give a minishow.

A lot of kids had groaned when it was announced. You know: It was a lot
of "be quiet, sit still" time. Not to mention the fact that it seemed a
little "young" for us.

Me, I like quiet and still. Didn't used to. But now I guess any time I
get to sit quietly, no running, no morphing, no terror, no screams, no
horrible decisions and horrible aftermath ... I can

5 handle sitting still and listening to music and watching big giraffes
gallop around onstage.

I was about fifteen rows back. Marco was in the row ahead of me to the
left. I could see the side of his head, and he knew it, so he was
amusing himself by twitching ears in time to the music.

I didn't want to smile, but it was just so idiotic it was funny. Marco,
naturally, was hoping I'd snort or giggle so he could turn around and
shush me, full of righteous indignation.

Cassie and Rachel were four rows behind me and to the right. I was
pretty sure Cassie was asleep. Cassie lives an amazing life: school, the
Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic where she works helping injured animals,
and of course, being one of us, which is a full-time job.

Rachel had a kind of dreamy look on her face. You'd have thought she was
enjoying the show. Only I noticed the guy sitting next to her was trying
to hold her hand. And that dreamy look was Rachel wondering which of the
guy's fingers she should break.

I looked back at the show. It was a pretty good show. I heard a stifled
yelp of pain coming from four rows back and to the right.

That familiar "Circle of Life" song started up and Disney animals were
cavorting and singing and the music was swelling and Marco's ears

6 were going nuts and a wounded male voice was saying, "Jeez, you almost
broke my finger!" and then it all stopped.

All of it.

Every sound. Silence.

The music. Silence.

The actors in their incredible costumes. Frozen.

The auditorium full of kids. Dead still.

The only things moving were Marco's ears.

The only sound was Rachel saying, "Almost? Reach back over here again
and I'll -"

Frozen. Still. Motionless. Everything and everyone.

Except the four of us.

7

Slowly, cautiously, I stood up.

I looked at Rachel. "Wake Cassie up," I whispered.

Rachel stood up and shoved Cassie's shoulder.

"I'm awake, I'm awake," Cassie said, eyes snapping open. She yawned,
then stopped in mid-yawn and forgot to close her mouth.

"Well, this is unusual," Marco said. "Did someone hit the 'pause' button?"

I was looking at the eerie spectacle of the stage players, frozen, some
in mid-leap, just hanging in the air, when a blur of feathers simply
appeared.

The red-tailed hawk flared its wings, yelled

8 <Aaah!>, banked hard right, saw me, saw all of us, and landed at the
edge of the stage.

<Is he here yet?> Tobias demanded, wrapping talons around the lip of the
stage.

I shook my head, confused. Who? Was who here yet?

One of the "animals" onstage moved. Only it was not a Disney animal. It
had the body of a blue deer, the upper torso of a boy, a mouthless face
topped by two extra eyes on moveable stalks, and a tail that could snap
and leave you counting in base five.

Ax froze. Then he darted forward, moving away from the fake animals.
Stalk eyes swiveling, tail arched, ready to strike.

"It's okay, Ax," I said. "I think."

<The Ellimist,> Tobias said.

Marco nodded. "I don't know anyone else who can just stop time whenever
he wants. Unless it's that new math teacher."

"So where is he?" Rachel demanded.

"Wherever he wants to be," Marco muttered darkly.

We had encountered the creature - or creatures, who could tell? -called
"the Ellimist" several times. He (she, it, they) was to humans and
Andalites and Yeerks what humans were to ants.

9 I felt like an ant right about then. Small and powerless, with a
couple hundred kids frozen around me. It was like they'd been videotape
one minute, a still photograph the next. It felt wrong to look at them.
Like I was some kind of peeping Tom.

I met Cassie's gaze. Her dark eyes were cautious, but not scared. The
Ellimist had never hurt us. He'd helped us, always while pretending to
do nothing. Or at least by living within his own incomprehensible set of
rules.

One of the kids stood up. I jumped about two feet in the air.

It was this girl named Beth. No one else moved. Just Beth. She smiled at
me, at us, and I knew right away.

"Yes, it is I," Beth said.

"The Ellimist?" Cassie asked.

Beth nodded.

"Where's the big voice and the quick-change bodies and all?" Rachel
demanded.

"I have chosen this form for a reason," the Ellimist said in the girl's
voice. "I come today on a humble mission. I wanted a humble form. One
that would not evoke feelings of dread or awe or reverence from you."

He spread Beth's hands wide, palms up. He moved away, and I saw that the
real Beth was

10 still frozen in her seat. The Ellimist had not taken her body, just
her image.

After all, he wasn't a Yeerk.

The Ellimist calmly walked through several rows of chairs and the bodies
in them. Simply passed through them like they were air. He stood in the
space between the front row and the stage. Down by Tobias. Ax came up
behind him, moving with the unnatural, liquid grace Andalites have when
they are preparing to fight.

Andalites don't like the Ellimist. He's a figure from the scary stories
they tell around camp-fires - or wherever.

I gave Ax a little look, just a "take it easy" look. He relaxed about
three hairs.

"Okay, so you're just a regular girl," Rachel said sarcastically. "No
big show, aside from the fact that you froze time and all."

"This is as humble as I know how to be," the Ellimist said. "I come to-"
he hesitated, "I come to tell you a story, and to see how you will
choose to react."

"Oh, good, a story," Marco said. "Is it a musical, too? Will there be
any hakuna matata involved?"

You have to understand: It's not that we weren't scared. We were scared.
But we'd been scared by people who wanted to kill us. This was

11 just "creeped out" scared. We ate "creeped out" for breakfast now.

Beth's face smiled. She had braces.

"I will tell you a story. You will tell me the ending."

12

The Ellimist looked down at the girl's hands. "Once we had hands. Not
much different from these." He smiled. "But that was a long time ago.
Almost a billion of your years.

"We evolved as all living things do, some faster, some slower. We were
among the first sentient species, but we evolved slowly. Still, given
enough time, even slow change can become profound. Back when all Earth
could boast were a few simple single-celled animals, we were beginning
to watch the night sky and understand the movements of our own planet.
We learned and we grew powerful. By the time worms first crawled in the
mud of Earth, we were traveling in faster-than-light ships. And when the
first dinosaurs

13 walked we ... we had become much as I am today."

"You'd become a girl with braces?" Marco said.

The Ellimist looked surprised. He showed the braces in a grin.

"The Andalites could do with some of the human sense of humor," the
Ellimist said.

Ax scuffed a front hoof against the stage floor, a gesture of annoyance.

"And if the Yeerks had any sense of humor at all they wouldn't be the
scourge they are," the Ellimist added.

Marco looked more abashed than proud. The smart remark had just popped
out of him. I don't think he'd consciously planned to poke fun at a
being who could not only annihilate Marco, but all memory of him, his
family, and his ancestors, going back through a thousand generations.

The Ellimist continued. "We watched the rise of other species throughout
the galaxy. Helped at times, when we could. We wanted companions. We
wanted to learn. We imagined a galaxy filled with millions of sentient
species, each with its own science and art, its own beauty.

"But it wasn't to be that simple. Approximately a hundred million Earth
years ago, we became aware of a new force in the galaxy. Not a species,
an individual. He was a fugitive from

14 another galaxy, chased out of that galaxy by a power even greater
than he. Greater than me."

"I thought you were all-powerful," Rachel said.

The Ellimist smiled. "No. I seem so only from your limited perspective."

I looked around the room. Time was stopped. Leaping dancers hung in
midair. The dust particles in the air were standing still. A kid named
Joey had been sneaking a Ho-Ho. Someone must have made him laugh because
his mouth was open, smiling, and a piece of Ho-Ho was dangling off his
lower lip. Dangling and never falling.

Powerful enough, I thought. I don't want to meet the guy who can kick
the Ellimist's butt.

"This new force, this individual, began to make his presence known in
our galaxy. And he had different ideas from ours. He sees a universe of
conflict, pain, and terror. He craves fear. Not his own, of course, but
the fear of others. He is a strange perfectionist, in a way."

The Ellimist had grown thoughtful. Perplexed, almost. Hard to picture
when you were looking at Beth's bangs and the zit on her chin, but I
knew who he was and what he was, and I guess I've had to get past
judging anyone by looks. In a world where anyone could be a Controller,
you begin to realize just how irrelevant looks are.

15 "He wants a galaxy cleansed of creation. His goal, I soon realized,
is to destroy life. His method is to use one species against another,
strong destroying weak, and then strong in turn being destroyed by the
stronger still. He believes that there should be only one species. A
single sentient race, which would be subjugated by him."

"What is this guy, a Nazi?" Cassie said.

Beth's curls shook as the Ellimist nodded. "In the moral sense, yes. But
he has different visions of what constitutes total power. He wants to be
able to control the strands of space-time itself. Not merely to see them
and understand them, but to hold them in his fist and dictate the very
laws of physics and nature, to recreate the galaxy in his own image, and
someday to spread his power throughout all galaxies and destroy the one
power greater than himself."

"Great," Marco said grimly. "Can we go back to The Lion King now?"

"He is called Crayak," the Ellimist said. And then he looked right at
me, and I knew before he spoke the words. "You have seen him. And he has
seen you."

The eye. The armless half-creature, half-machine.

One by one my friends looked at me, challenging, questioning, neutral,
skeptical, compassionate.

16 "When the Yeerk died in your brain, you peered across the line
between life and death; you broke the dimensional hold that blinds
humans to things beyond themselves," the Ellimist said. "And in that
moment, Crayak saw you. He saw that I had made myself known to you. That
I had touched you. And he knew that you must, therefore, play some part
in my plans."

Crayak. The nightmare presence had a name. Crayak. The bloodred eye that
watched me in my dreams.

"Soon," it had said. "Soon."

I felt a chill crawl through my body. Fear. The Ellimist said Crayak
enjoyed fear. Did he feel mine now?

"A hundred million years ago, we fought, Crayak and I," the Ellimist said.

And suddenly the auditorium was gone. We stood in black, empty space,
and the Ellimist was no longer a little girl but a brilliant light.

17

Stars, stars everywhere! Bright white points that burned with a steady
light, and closer, so much closer, huge, sky-filling cauldrons of
blazing hot gases.

His voice was in our heads now, reverberating through our bodies, huge
and sad.

<l wanted to stop him, to stop his destruction. He wanted to eliminate me.>

As I stood on nothing, floating on nothing, stars began to dim and die.
It was like watching a charcoal fire go from blaze to hot coals to
crumbling, gray dust.

<The result was something neither of us could tolerate. The battle we
fought destroyed a

18 tenth of the galaxy, millions of suns, millions of planets, a dozen
sentient races.>

Before our eyes - or was it straight through our brains? - ran images,
flashes of creatures in amazing shapes, in sizes and colors that made me
want to laugh in sheer wonder. I saw monstrous mammals and tiny insects,
species that lived in the sea and others that floated on air.

And one by one, they went as dark as their suns.

<A dozen sentient species, and more who would have achieved sentience,
all destroyed, destroyed for nothing! But Crayak was damaged as well.
The fabric of space-time, the software, as you humans would say, the
software that runs the galaxy was damaged, twisted by the sudden
explosion of our power.>

Once again I floated in that eerie n-dimensional space, the space beyond
space where inside and outside were meaningless terms, where I saw the
back as easily as the front, the heart of things as easily as the
surface, the core of planets as easily as the crust.

I saw what seemed like threads, threads that could curl back inside
themselves, disappear and reappear, twist and ravel and braid in insane
complication.

<AII Crayak's knowledge of space-time was now shattered. The few threads
he had gathered

19 to him were yanked from his grasp. Millions of years of effort
wasted. We fell back, back from our test of wills, our war.>

I was in normal space again. With guts and cores and threads all back
where they should be, twisted up and hidden beneath the surface of things.

<We knew then, Crayak and I, that we could never make war again. Not
open war, at least. The conflict would have to be carried on by
different means. No longer a savage battle. Now it must be a chess game.
There would be rules. Limits.>

Floating across our field of vision, like distorted TV pictures, were
flickering images of our own interactions with the Ellimist. The times
he had played a role, though never a controlling one. When he had shown
us that we could escape Earth and live on a sort of game preserve for
endangered humans. And when he had used Tobias to help some Hork-Bajir
escape to found a free colony.

And when he had twisted time to return Elfangor from his happy life,
hiding as a human, to a world of struggle, pain, and ultimately death as
an Andalite warrior.

Elfangor, who was Tobias's true father, and the one who had given us our
powers.

Each time, we saw the Ellimist limiting his involvement,

20 refusing to do a billionth of what he could do.

<Earth is part of our game, Crayak's and mine. He would have the Yeerks
absorb humans and later be absorbed by some still more vicious species.
But Earth is not the reason I have come to you now.>

The show was over. We were back in the auditorium, not that we'd ever
really left, I suppose. And the Ellimist was a girl with braces again.

"For millions of years we have played our game," the Ellimist said. "And
we have lived within the rules, more or less. But now war threatens
again. There is an impasse. A species I will not let Crayak take. A
species he will not let me save. This species occupies a unique location
in space-time. It is a turning point, and if Crayak can annihilate them,
his power will grow, his goal become much closer, his forces become more
deadly than ever."

"Including the Yeerks?" I asked.

"Yes, including the Yeerks, who will benefit from changes I cannot
explain to humans - or even to mighty Andalites," he added with a
gentle, steel smile for Ax.

<So what happens? Irresistible force and immovable object?> Tobias
asked. <Who gives? You or him?>

21 The Ellimist said, "I will finish the story. And you will decide."

"Us?" Cassie blurted.

"Crayak and I have reached an agreement on a way to decide the issue. To
decide the fate of the Iskoort race. If Crayak wins, they will be
attacked, subjugated, and annihilated by another species."

<What species?> Ax asked.

"The Howlers," the Ellimist said. "You have heard of them before."

I nodded slowly. Yeah, we'd heard of the Howlers.

"Crayak and I have agreed to decide the issue by a contest of champions.
His against mine. He has named the Howlers themselves, a group of seven.
I am to pit my seven champions against his."

"What is this, a football game?" Cassie demanded.

"No, that would be eleven guys on the field, not seven," Marco said.

"Seven Howlers against my seven," the Ellimist said. "The winners - the
survivors - will determine the outcome."

"And this has what to do with us?" Rachel asked belligerently.

"Oh, come on, Rachel," Marco said. "One . . ."

22 he pointed at me. "Two ..." he pointed at Rachel. "Three, four, five,
six," he pointed at Ax, Cassie, Tobias, and himself.

"That's six," Cassie said. "He needs seven. We're just six. That's not
what he means. Is it?"

The Ellimist said nothing.

Cassie said a word I've never heard her use before. Then, "You want us,
us to be your champions? To save these Iskrats?"

"Iskoort," the Ellimist corrected gently.

"I'm either honored or ticked off, I don't know which," Marco said
hotly. Then, "Oh, wait, I do know which, and it's not 'honored.'"

"This must be your choice," the Ellimist said. "Yours alone."

He disappeared. Ax disappeared. Tobias disappeared. The four of us who
remained were all back in our seats.

And time started up again, with dancers landing after the longest leaps
of their careers.

23

We sat through the rest of The Lion King. Seemed kind of dull after the
special effects show the Ellimist had put on for us.

As soon as it was over, we were out the door. There was supposed to be a
final partial period, but half the school was blowing that off, so we
did, too.

We met at Cassie's barn, also known as the Wildlife Rehabilitation
Clinic. It was a slow week at the clinic, I guess. Many cages were
empty, which is rare. It made the place seem kind of forlorn.

Tobias was there waiting for us. So was Ax, in his weirdly attractive
human morph. He

24 demorphed back to his own self. It didn't take any time at all for
the conversation to start.

"This is nuts!" Marco said as soon as Tobias assured us that no one was
lurking within earshot. "The most powerful creature in the galaxy, a guy
who could make Earth disappear by just thinking about it, needs us to
fight his battles for him?"

"Like we don't have enough to deal with?" Rachel agreed.

<The only possible reason for doing this is if it helps us in some way,>
Ax said. <Enlightened self-interest.>

<l think we have that,> Tobias said. <The Ellimist has helped us before.>

Rachel shot him a dark, angry look. "He's tricked us before, too. Told
us one thing and done another. We know nothing about him. We don't know
if the Ellimist is one guy, or more than one. Half the time he says
'we,' then he says 'I.' So why is he the Ellimist? He jerks us around
whenever it suits him, and he tells us squat."

I knew what she was talking about. Tobias had thought the Ellimist would
return him to normal. Instead he merely gave Tobias back his morphing
powers.

But that had not been a lie or a trick. Not really. He'd promised to
give Tobias what he

25 wanted. He had. It was Rachel who couldn't accept that Tobias had
chosen, and still chose, to remain a hawk.

"Why does 'Howlers' sound so familiar?" Cassie wondered. "I know I've
heard it before."

"It was the Howlers who destroyed the Pemalites, creators of the Chee,"
I said. "That's who we'd be going up against. Seven of them against
seven of us."

"Seven? I count six," Marco pointed out.

"I think I know who our seventh would be," I said.

Marco rolled his eyes. "Erek?"

"Payback," I explained. "Who else would care as much about hurting the
Howlers?"

Marco barked out a laugh. "He can't fight! He's an android programmed
never to hurt anyone. He'd be dead weight. And why are we talking about
this like it's time to choose up teams?"

<We hurt this Crayak, we hurt the Yeerks,> Tobias said. <The Ellimist
loses, we lose.>

"Wait a minute, Tobias," Rachel said. "You know I don't run from a fight -"

'To a fight, maybe," Marco interjected.

"- but are we supposed to believe we're the Ellimist's only choice here?
There's no one else in the entire galaxy who can go pound on these
Howlers? Why us?"

26 <Yes,> Ax agreed. <Why us? Why not seven battle-trained Andalite
warriors?>

This, of course, turned Marco around. "Excuse me? Like Andalites are
badder than we are? What are we, wimps? Me in gorilla morph, you as you,
let's go. We'll see who kicks whose butt."

"Yeah, that would be the sensible thing to do. You two fight," Cassie
said dryly.

"Okay then," Marco said with a leer, "forget me and Ax. You and Rachel,
both wearing bikinis."

Rachel calmly stuck out her arm and grabbed a handful of Marco's hair.
"What was that you said? I must not have heard correctly."

"I refuse to answer on the grounds that you may tend to snatch me bald."

Rachel let him go.

<I'm starting to see Rachel's point,> Tobias said. <Why would the
Ellimist ask for help from this clown college?>

"Could we win?" Cassie asked.

That stopped everyone.

She stepped into the center of the group. "Could we win? Could we save
an entire sentient species? And maybe help ourselves, too? Maybe weaken
the Yeerks in some way only the Ellimist understands? Seems to me that's
the question. I mean, you know, I'm not Rachel. I hate fighting.

27 But the Ellimist put an entire race on the scale. An entire race.
Maybe millions, maybe billions. And we're even asking ourselves if we
should? How do you not at least try?"

"Iskoort?" Marco jeered. "Now it's our job to save Iskoort? What the . .
. what is an Iskoort?" He looked at Ax, hands apart, questioning.

Ax shook his head. It's a habit he's picked up from us. Of course, he
does it while holding his stalk eyes still, so it's a bit different.

<l have never heard of the lskoort.>

Normally, on big issues like this I don't push my opinions out there.
I'm supposedly the leader, but to me there are times when the best thing
a leader can do is let others work things out for themselves. But I had
to say something.

"I think ... I think there may be something else going on here, with the
Ellimist choosing us."

Everyone stared at me. Marco narrowed his eyes. "The Ellimist said
something about you seeing this Crayak."

"I saw him. When the Yeerk died in my head, I saw him. And he saw me.
And since then . . . since then I've had dreams."

Dead silence.

I wished I'd kept my mouth shut. "Look, I ... you know, dreams are
weird. Like who knows if they're ever real? But these feel real. And in the

28 dreams I see him. Crayak." I shook my head. "I know this sounds crazy."

"Uh, Jake?" Marco said. "We've been over the line into crazy since
Elfangor said, 'Hey, kids, wanna turn into animals?'"

I smiled. That was not exactly what Elfangor had said. "I just feel like
these dreams aren't totally just dreams. I see him. And he sees me. And
he says the same thing each time."

"What?" Cassie put a soft hand on my arm. "What does he say?"

"'Soon.' He just says 'soon.'"

29

?Ooookay," Marco said. "I felt that chill go up my spine."

"So what does all this tell us?" Rachel demanded. "This Crayak already
doesn't like us, so we go and fight his handpicked team? Maybe win? Then
he loves us? I don't think so."

<Side bets,> Tobias said.

I nodded. No one else got it.

<The Ellimist and Crayak have their main event: Do the Iskoort live or
die? But maybe there's some action on the side. Us. Maybe that's why he
chose us. Maybe there's another level.>

"What other level?" Rachel demanded, frustrated.

30 <l don't know,> Tobias admitted. <But here's the thing: It's down to
Crayak versus Ellimist. Crayak already has it in for Jake, at the very
least. Not to mention he backs the Yeerks. Not to mention we know the
Howlers are just as bad. The Ellimist wouldn't pick us if he didn't
think we had a chance.>

Cassie was nodding. She was for it. That made two.

I looked to Ax. He made the strange, mouth-less Andalite smile. <lf we
can hurt the Yeerks . . .>

That made three. I looked at Rachel.

"Oh, come on, you have to ask? No Crayak space monster is gonna beat up
on my cousin," she said, flashing her Cover Girl smile.

Down to Marco. He looked doubtful. I've learned to trust Marco's doubts.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"First of all, I'm in," Marco said. "But I just want to point out one
thing: The Ellimist didn't force us, he asked us. Our choice. And maybe
he's right that we can do this. But part of the reason we're saying yes
is that this Crayak thing has been taking pokes at Jake. And Crayak
plays the same long, patient games the Ellimist does."

"So what are you saying?" Cassie asked.

"I'm saying maybe Crayak wants us there.

31 Maybe he wants us to say yes. And you know what? That's not because
he thinks we'll win."

"Let's vote," Rachel said. "Go."

"Go," Cassie agreed.

It was six out of six for going.

"Unanimous," Marco said.

I shook my head. "No. We're going to be seven. It's not unanimous till
Erek votes."

"Go," a new voice said.

He appeared, standing in the middle of us. A normal-looking boy. Or
that's what you'd think. The "boy" was a holographic projection. Inside
the illusion was an android. An android who'd helped build the pyramids,
who had taken on a hundred different human forms, letting each one seem
to age, letting each one seem to die, then reappearing as some new
holographic projection.

"You know what this is all about?" I asked Erek. Somewhere in the back
of my mind I realized I had gotten used to the weirdness of people
simply appearing out of nowhere. When the Ellimist was involved, things
like that were normal.

"I know what it's about," Erek said with a nod.

His face was rigid, lips pressed tight together. It was impossible - I
knew it was impossible - but still, I felt suppressed rage coming from
the android. Barely contained violence.

"The Ellimist has brought me up to date,"

32 Erek confirmed. "If you'll have me, I'll go. I want to go. I ... I
have to go."

"You can't fight," Rachel said bluntly. "No offense, but I'd rather go
get Jara Hamee or one of the other free Hork-Bajir. Or like Ax said, an
Andalite warrior. We need firepower."

"Yes, but that won't be enough." Erek shook his head. "You won't defeat
the Howlers in one-on-one combat. They are too deadly. You'll need more
than your morphs. You'll have to outthink them. And I know them. I know
the Howlers."

The argument hit home with Rachel. "Fair enough."

have you chosen? a huge voice asked.

I sighed. "Yeah, but can you give us a few days to -"

<Strangers! Strangers! Sell me your memories, strangers! Sell them to
me, I beg of you.>

I was staring into a face not even a mother could love.

"Howler?" I asked shakily.

no, iskoort, the Ellimist said. your families

WILL NOT KNOW YOU HAVE GONE. BUT IF YOU DIE ...

He let that hang. He didn't have to explain further.

"When does this fight start?" I cried, recoiling from the Iskoort face
thrusting toward me.

IT HAS BEGUN.

33

?Who invented this place, Dr. Seuss?" Marco demanded.

We were miles in the air. Miles from the ground, which we could see just
over the edge of the platform. The platform with no railing, no warning.
The platform that just stopped suddenly.

Below us was a twisting, leaning, propped-up-on-gigantic-support-beams
structure of other platforms. Floors, I guess, all stuck here and there,
sticking far out and not so far.

Above us was more of the same, till you'd swear the monstrous
construction would reach the moon, assuming the Iskoort had a moon.

34 All of this was built of brilliantly colored blocks or bricks or
segments.

Imagine that someone starts with all the Legos in the world. Add in all
the Duplos and cheap bargain Duplos and let some humongous kid assemble
them all into a tower a hundred miles tall.

Assume that no sensible adult ever becomes involved, except to come
along occasionally and wedge in what looks like crutches the size of
skyscrapers.

The floors could have been five feet apart, five hundred feet apart, or
five miles apart. It was like no one figured it out till they built it.

I jumped back from the edge, feeling my stomach lurch and my heart stop.
I had to push the Iskoort away to get safe, but I wasn't worried about
politeness. I was trying not to take a fall that would last a couple of
hours.

"Back up!" I yelled.

But now a whole gaggle of Iskoort were rushing us, honking with the
diaphragm in their bellies and yammering in thought-speak, pushing us,
shoving us by sheer mad exuberance toward the edge.

"Rachel!" Cassie cried.

I spun left just in time to see Rachel wind-milling, her heels back over
the edge of the platform.

35 "No!" I yelled as she lost the fight and toppled backward.

I caught a blur of movement. When the blur stopped it was Erek, his hand
holding Rachel by the arm as if she weighed no more than a candy bar.

Erek pulled her back up onto the platform.

"Did I mention I've always wanted you along on this mission, Erek?"
Rachel said shakily. "Get back, you stupid jerks!"

This was directed at the press of a dozen Iskoort, all yammering
incessantly.

<l will buy your memories!>

<Come visit my execution parlor!>

<Give me your clothing and I will give you credit!>

<Here! Eat this larva! Let it gestate and we'll split the proceeds
between your heirs!>

<You stink horribly! I will cleanse you!>

And to Ax: <Become my partner and we will sell your fur as a gachak poison!>

"What is this, Planet of the Salesmen?" Marco demanded. "Back off! All
of you, back off!"

"Man, I thought there were a lot of salespeople at Nordstrom's, but this
is nuts. I'll take care of this. I know how to get rid of pushy
salespeople." Rachel stepped out front, hands on her

36 hips. "We're just here to use the bathroom. Can you tell me where the
ladies' room is?"

The Iskoort stared, goggle-eyed. Several of them wandered away. The
others continued staring at us, waiting to see if we'd loosen up and do
some business.

I looked at Cassie and we both sighed at the same time.

"Now what?" she wondered. "What do we do? Stand around till someone
tries to kill us?"

I looked around, trying to get a grip on this bizarre place. There was
no making sense of the structure itself. Our floor was a roomy one. At
least a hundred feet separated our floor from the floor above. Back from
the edge the small buildings began. They looked like clusters of igloos:
blue and gold and white and green and red. Some were jumbled into piles
several layers tall. Others were freestanding.

The Iskoort themselves came and went, in and out of the colored igloos,
up and down the twisted, arched stairways connecting floors. They all
looked busy. All in a hurry.

They were not the most frightening-looking race we'd ever encountered,
but they were definitely not even slightly human.

They had heads like vultures, thrust forward on long necks. The necks
protruded from shoulders that were a sort of oval platform, flat across.

37 From the shoulders dropped two arms, one on each side, each arm
jointed three times, ending in a hand made up of one very long,
tentacle-like finger, and two smaller, hooked, sharp-clawed fingers.

They walked in a way that made it seem they were crawling on their
knees. Backward. Not that they went backward. They went forward. They
had two thick legs, maybe two and a half feet long. Then came what
looked like knees, followed by calves that extended forward, lying flat
against the ground. Those ended in feet, each with a single long
prehensile toe and two smaller claws jutting from the sides of thick pads.

Their midsection was bare of clothing and looked weirdly like an
accordion - an accordion made of veined, pink flesh. It moved, wheezing
out a sort of running commentary on their thought-speak.

It was the sound of a whine. A grating, annoying whine that rose or
fell, depending, evidently, on how excited or mad or agitated they were.

"The Nanny," Cassie observed.

"The what?"

"That sound. It sounds like Fran Drescher, the woman who plays the lead
in The Nanny. No offense to her."

<l don't think Fran's probably around here to overhear you being rude,>
Tobias pointed out.

38 Iskoort faces were, like I said, not attractive. They were roughly
triangular with the point toward the top, which left no room for a pair
of eyes to fit. So their eyes, pink as a rabbit's, were stuck on short
stalks. They had mouths, but didn't use them to communicate. They pretty
much stayed shut, opening only every few minutes to suck in air and
reveal a fat, blue tongue and tiny, blue-tinged teeth.

Rachel said, "You know how you meet some people and right away, before
they even say anything, before you have any idea what they're like, you
don't like them? I mean, on sight you can't stand them? And it's not
that they're ugly or anything, it's just something about them that sets
you off?"

"No," Cassie said. "At least, I didn't know. Now I do."

A new assault team of Iskoort was quick-crawling toward us, heads thrust
forward, eyes goggling.

<Forgive us, strangers!> the leader of this crowd said. <We did not
expect off-worlders today. Welcome to the City of Beauty! Do you require
a guide? Do you wish to sell your memories, or perhaps any unnecessary
body parts?>

His diaphragm whined as he thought-spoke, a low, grating sound that rose
and fell like a bagpipe blown by a man with too little wind.

39 I sighed. I was on the verge of suggesting that Rachel morph to
grizzly bear and get rid of them, but Cassie said, "You know, if they're
serious about a guide . . ."

"Yeah, you're right," I said, but I wasn't enthusiastic. "Um, well, we
could use a guide. You know, to show us around. Show us where to stay."

<And what will you pay?> the Iskoort demanded, to the sound of eager
whining.

"Well ... we don't exactly have any money," I said.

<l will give you an excellent guide. My own grub! In exchange for her hair.>

He pointed one of his wormy tentacle fingers at Rachel. Or, more
precisely, at her hair.

40

The negotiation was not pretty.

The Iskoort wanted to shave Rachel's head. She explained very calmly
that she would remove his head and use it for a soccer ball before that
ever happened.

In the end, Rachel lost six inches of blond hair. What was left came to
just below her ears.

"You know, it looks good," Cassie said.

"This from the girl who buys all her clothes from L.L. Bean," Rachel
grumbled.

But the truth was, it did look good. Possibly because Erek did the
cutting. "I used to cut Catherine the Great's hair," he explained,
sounding apologetic, like it was embarrassing to admit

41 that he'd been alive since Moses was wandering around in the desert.

In exchange, we got Guide. That was his name: Guide. His full name was
Guide, Grub of Skin-seller, brother of Memory Wholesaler.

He was a young Iskoort. Which did not make him any less annoying. The
first thing he did was try to improve the deal by getting Ax to let him
have the last foot and a half of his tail.

Ax said no.

Marco said, "You know what? You jerk us around, Guide, and Ax will give
you the last foot and a half of his tail."

Guide understood the threat. He became easier to deal with after that.
He only asked for memories, clothing, hair, and various body parts every
hour or so, rather than constantly.

"One question, right up front: Have you seen any other off-world
strangers?" I asked him.

<0ff-worlders? Of course! The City of Beauty is temporary home to many,
many off-worlders.>

"Probably drawn here by the charm of the residents," Cassie said dryly.

It made me smile. I thought Cassie could like anyone. Evidently, even
she had limits.

<We're looking for members of a species called Howlers,> Tobias said.

Guide's chest whined in a lower key. His

42 mouth gaped open. <This species is not known to me.>

I nodded and looked down at the bright red floor under my feet. "Don't
lie to us, Guide. Have you ever met an Andalite before?"

Guide shot a nervous glance at Ax. <No.>

"Well, Andalites have the power to mind-meld with people. They can look
right inside their thoughts and know if they're lying, and if you are
lying, they make your head explode."

No one cracked a smile. Although Marco had to struggle.

<Now Ax is a Vulcan?> Tobias asked me in private thought-speak.

Guide's whine rose and fell. It probably meant something, but I didn't
know what. Then, <Howlers? Did you say Howlers? There may be one or two
Howlers around.>

"Try seven," I said. "Where are they? And do you know why they're here?"

<They come to trade, like all who visit our world. They trade memories
for boda salts. Howler memories are very valuables

"What's this memory stuff?" Cassie asked. "You guys keep talking about
buying memories. What's that all about?"

Guide looked surprised. I think. <You have never seen a memory show?
Then that must be

43 our first stop! It is the greatest of entertainments^

"Obviously, you don't get the Super Bowl here," Marco said.

"We always suspected the Howlers might have collective memory," Erek
said. He surprised me. He'd been so quiet I'd practically forgotten he
was with us. "The Howlers may pass memory along, generation to generation."

<Yes, yes,> Guide agreed. <This is why they command such a price. Their
memories are long and very clear.>

I was feeling frustrated. We weren't getting anywhere. We'd just dropped
in on this planet and so far we knew nothing. The Howlers could be
watching us, ready to attack at any moment.

"Guide, have you seen these Howler memories?" Cassie asked him.

He laughed. <No. Not me. I am a Trader, a probationary member of the
Guild of Traders. I am not interested in violence and killing and
slaughter. No, it is the members of the Criminal Guild and the Warmaker
Guild who buy Howler memories.>

I was getting that nervous, jumpy feeling I get when I feel like I'm
being delayed from doing something vital. I felt we were wasting our
time talking to the Iskoort.

44 "We aren't here to write a paper on the Iskoort," I said, more rudely
than I'd intended. "We're here to take down the seven Howlers so we can
go home."

Cassie looked a little hurt. But in a very calm voice she said, "It just
seemed to me that if we have to have a battle, we'd be better off if we
knew where we were and what was going on."

She was right, of course. But the edginess I felt wouldn't let me admit
it. "We need a place. A base of operations. We can't just stand out here
in the open."

<Then come, follow me!> Guide said. <l know the right place.>

He started off, moving in his weird backward crawling way, whining from
his chest the whole way. We went down a set of steps, something the
Iskoort did literally backward, but with surprising agility and speed.

We came out on a new level, mostly dark blue, and utterly different from
the previous level. Here we saw none of the igloos, only a vast field of
small cylinders, maybe two feet tall.

<Energy storage,> Guide explained, and led us down another stairway,
this one much longer. We stuck rigidly to the center of the stairs -
from the top it was perhaps a half-mile drop to the mustard-colored
floor below. Only Tobias was

45 comfortable, flying around and beneath the stairway.

I suppose Erek felt safe enough, too. It was hard to imagine the android
ever missing a step. This level, this mustard-yellow level, was teeming
with Iskoort, moving slowly along narrow avenues between open-front
buildings.

It was easy to recognize what this level was.

"It's the mall," Rachel said. "A bazaar."

<Yes, this is the level seventy-eight marketplace^ Guide confirmed. <We
must move quickly here.>

"What? No shopping?" Rachel, of course.

We reached the floor and were instantly surrounded by jabbering, poking,
pushing, whining Iskoort, all desperate to buy whatever we had and sell
us whatever we didn't.

"I see what you mean by moving quickly, Guide," I said.

<What? No, no, not for these honest Traders. But this market is a
favorite gathering place for members of the Warmaker Guild.>

I had about three seconds to think what? before something slammed me
violently to the floor.

46

I was down, flat on my back, a weight on my chest. A bony head, stubby
horns protruding from the top, was just above mine.

"Howlers!" I yelled.

I twisted and tried to roll away. But the bony-headed creature wouldn't
let me go. He slammed his head down at me. I jerked my head to the side,
hard. The blunt horns struck the floor.

I did something I haven't had to do much, despite being in more battles
than I can remember: I drew back my fist and punched.

I caught the Howler in his gaping mouth. He jerked back. I drew my legs
up, thighs against my chest, and I kicked.

Thump!

47 I caught the Howler flat in his chest diaphragm. He fell back,
flailing but unbalanced. I was up in a flash.

My friends were all under attack. No one had had time to morph. Tobias
was ripping at the short stalk eyes of a Howler. I saw Ax snap his tail
and remove an arm that had been around Cassie's throat.

Rachel kicked another in a place that humans don't like to have kicked.
One of the Howlers was flailing away at Erek, head-butting him and
having no effect as Erek stood there calmly.

Rachel was halfway into her grizzly bear morph and already growling with
a voice that was still mostly her own.

Something was not right. Not right at all. We weren't even morphed and
we were beating these guys. And Erek was way too calm. Then it occurred
to me. I had kicked my guy in his diaphragm. His whining, Iskoort diaphragm.

"Erek! Are these Howlers?"

"No. Of course not," he said calmly.

Our assailants backed up. There were five of them. One looked bleakly at
the stub of his arm. The others gaped at us and whined through their chests.

They were Iskoort. Not like Guide, at least not exactly. The bodies were
mostly the same, but the heads and hands were different. Their heads

48 were wider at the top, with the two little nubs of horn. Their hands
were less delicate, the claws larger than the tentacle. Their legs were
flexed, not as flat, allowing them to move faster, in leaps, not crawls.

<These are Iskoort of the Warmaker Guild,> Guide said, like he was
introducing a bunch of guys from a different school. <This is why we
must hurry. They don't like off-worlders.>

<They're going to like us a lot less if they try that again!> Rachel said.

"Let's get out of here," I said. "Rachel? Stay in morph. Ax, you stay
ready, too. That should be enough to handle these guys."

We were attacked twice more by two different gangs of Warmaker Iskoort
before we could reach the next stairway. They were easy enough to deal
with, but I still managed to get bruised up. And by the time we were
safely out of the marketplace, Rachel said what we were all starting to
feel.

"Just tell me this: Why, exactly, does the Ellimist want to save these
guys? I'm starting to think maybe Crayak is on the right track."

We headed down the stairway, finally starting to laugh at the bizarre
experience with the War-maker Iskoort. Feeling relaxed and a little
cocky after so easily beating the local tough guys.

49 The stairway we were on was wider, though still without rails, but we
were getting used to that. It was wider to make room for two-way
traffic, and several Iskoort, many like Guide, but others subtly
different, passed us by.

The next level was maybe two hundred feet down. Guide was out front. I
was laughing at some joke Marco made.

"Howler!" Erek yelled.

"Yeah, right," Marco said. But he looked. And I looked.

"Erek," I said as calmly as I could, "are you joking?"

His projected face was white. I wondered how much of projecting an
emotion was automatic with him after so long as a human.

"I am not joking, Jake," he said. "That is a Howler."

50

The Howler was moving up the stairway. We were moving down. We froze.
The Howler kept coming.

He was not huge. Smaller than a Hork-Bajir. As big as a large man. He
walked on two bowed legs with a swinging, almost comic gait. He had two
arms, longer than his legs. The hands were almost human, five fingers
and an opposable thumb. But from the wrists projected a sort of second
hand, a claw that could be lowered to cover the back of the hand, or
kept up out of the way. This claw had four hooked, steel-tipped claws.

It looked like there was a bearing halfway up

51 his body, as if the top half of the torso was on a living lazy Susan,
allowing the body to turn all the way around and keep the fighting claws
in the game.

The head was ugly, a slag heap of melted-looking, black pebbled skin.
The entire creature looked like he had been formed out of still-cooling
lava. Beneath the black, in the cracks and creases of his flesh, were
lines of bright red.

Within this face were eyes of a startlingly beautiful blue. Robin's egg
blue, they call it. The entire eye was blue, with the cat's iris a paler
shade.

The Howler seemed indifferent to us. Didn't care. Wasn't concerned.

He wore a series of loose belts around his torso, and each of these
featured a different weapon. Or at least they looked like weapons.
Something similar to a Dracon beam, what might almost have been an
automatic pistol, knives, small metallic boomerangs, a gun that seemed
loaded with darts.

He was a walking arsenal.

I looked back at Erek, above me on the stairs. His face was flickering.
In and out. Not with emotion. With simple loss of control. The android
under the hologram kept peeking out.

52 The Howler's empty blue eyes locked on Erek.

"Erek, get a grip," I said with forced calm.

He shook himself and the hologram stabilized, but the Howler kept
watching him.

"Six against one, Jake," Rachel said. "We won't get better odds."

I felt my stomach clench. Sheer drop on both sides. Unknown terrain
below. Not the place for a fight. But Rachel was right: It was the time.

"Morph," I said quietly. "Ax? You take the lead. Tobias? Get some
altitude. Guide? Back off, this isn't your fight. Erek? Stay out of the
way."

That sounded harsher than I'd intended. But my heart was hammering and I
was feeling the fear-sweat down my back. It had happened too soon. We
weren't ready. We were tired from the run-ins with the Warmaker Iskoort.

But mostly, mostly I was seeing pictures in my head. The eye. Crayak.
The image from my dream. I could almost hear him laughing. Just a
figment of my imagination, but it felt real enough.

Six against one. It wasn't going to get any better.

I began to morph, to call on the tiger DNA that swam through my blood.
The tiger would be bigger than the Howler. The six of us together in
morph can take on anything, I told myself. We can take on anything.

53 The Howler's blue eyes narrowed as we shifted positions. He knew a
fight when he saw one coming. But he was fascinated by the morphing.
Fascinated and almost jealous, if it's possible to read an expression on
a face made of tar with eyes as empty as sky.

I felt the morph working on my body. The orange fur grew from my hands
and arms. I had no time to get out of my clothes. They'd be torn apart
by the morphing. Fur spread across my body. My fingers swelled, dark
leather on the palms, orange and white on the back. Claws that could
leave slash marks in a car door grew to replace my useless human
fingernails.

I heard the organs inside me shifting, squishing, relocating,
configuring themselves for the tiger body.

A long tail sprouted from the base of my spine and immediately began to
snap back and forth, twitching in agitation and anticipation.

I fell forward onto all fours. This made my head several steps lower
than my hindquarters. Teeth filled my mouth, too big, so big they grew
out like a saber-toothed cat's teeth.

Then my mouth caught up and my face grew sensitive whiskers. My eyes,
made for seeing through darkness like it was day. My nose, sensitive to
every smell of animal life. My ears, pricked forward, quivering at
attention.

54 The Howler looked a little less intimidating now. The tiger was not
worried. The tiger knew it was the fastest, deadliest creature in the
jungle. The tiger did not fear the strange-smelling creature.

Ax was just in front of me, tail bowed and ready, three eyes forward,
the remaining stalk eye watching the rest of us. Rachel had morphed to
grizzly bear. She stood up, a massive pillar of rough brown fur with
power to uproot small trees. Marco had morphed to gorilla. He swung his
pile driver arms back and forth almost casually, like he was waiting on
the street corner for the bus to come. Cassie had morphed to wolf. The
thick armor of fur on the back of her neck stood on end, and she'd drawn
back her muzzle, revealing wet, glistening teeth.

We were more than a ton of muscle and claw and tooth, all directed by
human intelligence that could draw on animal instinct.

Facing us, a single, man-sized alien.

I realized Erek was talking. That he had been for several seconds and
I'd been too distracted to hear him.

"... will paralyze you and numb your senses. If he gets close he'll use
the needle teeth retracted into his upper and lower jaw. He's not as
fast as -"

55 <Erek. What did you say about paralyzing?> I interrupted.

"It's the reason they're called Howlers, Jake. The voice. Be ready to -"

The Howler's hand moved. Reaching for the beam weapon!

56

?Hhhhhrrroooowwwwrrrr!" I roared, a sound that made brave men fall down
trembling.

I gathered myself for a leap. But Ax was faster. His tail snapped, crack!

The Howler's hand dropped. The weapon clattered down the stairs. But
before the weapon had stopped rolling, the hand was growing back!

<Attack!> I yelled.

I leaped. Ax whipped his tail again, faster than the eye could follow.

I roared again, bellowing a sound that had never been heard on planet
Iskoort. The others surged behind me. Down we went, a ton of animal power.

57 Then the Howler replied.

"KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-row."

It was a blast of sound like nothing I'd ever heard before. Compared to
it, my tiger's roar was the mewling of a kitten.

"KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-row."

I missed my leap and fell in a tangle on the steps. I saw Rachel trip
and fall, landing on top of me. It was like having a safe dropped on my
stomach.

The wind exploded from my lungs. I scrambled to get up, but I couldn't
make sense of up or down. I clawed feebly. Rachel rolled off and I saw
that Ax was reeling, running! Running away, back up the stairs, weak
Andalite hands clapped against his ears, blood seeping between the fingers.

Cassie was howling, all wolf in her pain.

Marco seemed the least affected. He swung a cement-block fist that hit
the Howler on his arm and spun the creature sideways.

I got to my feet, hoping to attack while the Howler was off-balance.
Except the Howler wasn't off-balance. The ball-bearing waist twirled him
all the way around, using the force of Marco's blow to spin and bring
the now-regenerated hand up to a weapon.

F-t-t-t-t-t-t!

58 He had fired! A dozen steel darts, tiny triangles, ripped a messy
hole through my left front leg. I stumbled. The pain was intense.

Marco swung another fist, missed! The Howler turned the flechette gun on
him. A bloody hole you could have pushed a Coke can through appeared in
Marco's back.

He dropped like a load of bricks.

Cassie had recovered enough to bound into action, using Marco's fallen
mass as a springboard. The Howler raised the gun, but too slowly. Wolf
jaws clamped down on the arm and Cassie held on like a bulldog, ripping,
tearing.

I was up and moving on three legs. A lame leap! I clamped my teeth on
Howler leg. Rachel was up, too, and charging on all fours, looking to
knock the creature down.

Tobias came swooping down at full-stoop speed, talons out for the
Howler's eyes. We were getting the upper hand!

"KEEEEEEEEEE-row!"

Someone exploded a hand grenade in my head. I clamped my jaws tight, but
all else was a blur, a swirling, mad blur.

Blue-and-tan fur leaped over me, rust-red feathers shot past. What? What
was happening? I couldn't think . . . couldn't make sense . . .

A searing sharp pain. My eyes cleared just

59 long enough to see the ornate dagger handle that protruded from my neck.

I'd been stabbed! In the neck. The tiger's blood ... my blood . . .

"Jake! Demorph!" Erek said in a voice loud enough to penetrate the death
fog creeping through my brain.

Then there came other orders, all rapped out in a loud, clear voice. No,
not orders. Just information.

"Cassie, he's trying to stab you. Ax, you are too close to the edge,
stop moving! Rachel, the Howler is within two feet of the edge, to your
right."

I was demorphing. Or at least I thought I was. I couldn't be sure. The
tiger was dying, blood pumping out of his severed neck arteries.
"Demorph, Jake! Demorph!" Erek's loud voice urged. "Do it now!"

I heard a bear's roar. I heard an impact: body against body. I saw
nothing but shapes, meaningless shapes.

"Cassie, demorph!" Erek ordered. "He's gutted you, demorph! Do it now."

From far off, a hawk's cry. A bear's bellow. The bullwhip crack of an
Andalite tail.

All far, faraway.

60

Crayak turned his bloodred eye on me, watching as I lay helpless.
Watching as the Howlers stood around Cassie in a circle, watching as
they lowered their claw hands into place, watching and laughing as she
stood, eyes closed, helpless, seconds away from -

"Cassie! Lookout!"

I jerked up, eyes wide, hands flailing, fending off an attack.

"Chill, chill," Marco said. He grabbed one hand and Rachel grabbed the
other. "It's okay, dude, fight's over."

I looked around, still wild. A room. Walls of solid colors, one red, the
others yellow. Still in Lego Land.

61 I slapped my legs. Human. My arms. Human. All me, with no ragged holes.

I'd made it out of morph. I looked around the room. Rachel and Marco.
Tobias sitting on the back of a strangely shaped chair. Erek standing
alone, head down in thought. Ax as far from me as he could get, all four
eyes turned away.

"Cassie?" I asked.

"I'm here," she said. I realized she was behind me. I felt her palm on
my cheek. Then she put her arms around me and hugged me from behind. It
made me want to cry.

"It's taken you a while to wake up," Cassie said. "You barely demorphed
in time. Then it was like you were in a coma, like you weren't going to
wake up at all."

I remembered dreams. They were dreams, weren't they? Hard to be sure.
Reality itself was weird enough to be a dream.

"The Howler?" I asked Rachel.

Her mouth was an angry line. "We hurt him. But he walked away."

"Six against one and we got a draw," Marco said angrily.

"Not six," Rachel corrected. "Seven. Erek saved our butts. He was the
only one who could handle the howls."

"Yeah, right, thanks a huge load, Erek," Marco said angrily. "He gave us
directions. Not

62 to hurt the Howler, you understand, 'cause that would violate his
programming. But directions on how to crawl out of there."

I held on to Cassie's hand. I didn't want to get into this. I wanted to
hold on to a moment of feeling glad to be alive, glad to feel Cassie's
concern.

Then I sighed, squeezed her fingers, and pushed her hand away. "Erek did
what he could, Marco. You know that as well as I do. My brain was
scrambled. I'd be dead without him. That's enough for me."

Marco looked like he wanted to say something else, but then his anger
collapsed. "Yeah. We all did what we could."

I spotted Guide back against a wall, uncharacteristically quiet. "You
stick with us after that?" I asked him.

His eyes glowed. <0h, yes, yes, yes. I will be able to sell the memory
of that battle for a small fortune! And if each of you would sell me
your own unique perspectives, I could buy my own corner with the profits!>

I drew Cassie around to where I could see her. I nodded at Ax. "What's
with him?" I asked.

She shook her head. "He ran away. He came back, but I guess that's not
enough. He won't talk to anyone."

63 "Let him be for a while," I said. "Then I'll talk to him."

I felt weary. Bruised and beaten, although my human body reconstructed
from DNA was un-scarred by the battle. It was my brain that was worn
out. I could see similar feelings on the faces around me.

We'd been beaten in a fair fight. No, not a fair fight. It had been six
of us plus Erek against one Howler. We'd fought to a draw. A tie. Seven
against one. A tie.

If there had been two Howlers, let alone all seven, we'd have been
killed in ten seconds.

We weren't scared, not the way we might be, facing a battle. We were
worse than scared: We were beaten.

"What is this place?" I asked.

Rachel shrugged. "Some place Guide got for us. This room and a bathroom
- well, I think it's a bathroom. Hope it's a bathroom."

A pile of rags lay in one corner. Our clothing. What was left of it
after we'd morphed while still wearing it. We were in our morphing
outfits now. But I guessed we didn't look any more out of place than we
would have, anyway. The Iskoort probably didn't care much about human
fashion.

<What do we do?> Tobias asked.

"I'm for dialing up the Ellimist and telling

64 him to go jump off whatever super-dimensional bridge he can find,"
Marco said.

<He wouldn't have put us here if we weren't at least theoretically
capable of winning,> Tobias said.

"Unless there's some other, deeper game the Ellimist is playing," Cassie
said. "He's fighting a battle for entire species, entire planets. We're
just pawns."

That was more cynicism than I was used to hearing from Cassie. But she
wasn't wrong. The Ellimist and Crayak were both way over our heads. And
I was haunted by the suggestion that maybe this was all a setup. That
maybe Crayak wanted us here. Not because we were important by ourselves,
but because eliminating us would help the Yeerks.

Why had the Ellimist brought us here? He had to know how powerful the
Howlers were. Had to.

"This is a rotten, stinking deal," Rachel said, expressing the thoughts
in my own head. "We're leaving our own planet defenseless to save these
Iskoort." She said "Iskoort" like a curse word.

I found myself looking at Erek. I could only imagine what was going on
inside his head. He had the power to fight Howlers and win. But wasn't
able to fight.

Erek said, "Maybe the Ellimist would repro-

65 gram me. Remove the prohibition against violence."

Marco groaned. "Well, it's official: The situation is hopeless. When
Erek starts talking that way it's because we're beat."

"Beat this," Rachel said rudely.

It made me smile. Rachel felt as down as anyone, but she refused to
admit she couldn't just go out and nail the next Howler she saw.

"They're faster than we are, stronger than we are, better armed than we
are," Cassie said glumly. Then she lifted her face, eyes wary. "But are
they smarter than we are?"

"Erek?" I asked him.

He sighed, a very human reaction. "They had faster-than-light ships at a
time when humans still thought the wheel was a radical new invention."

<Doesn't make them smarter,> Tobias said. <The Ellimist said some
species evolve quickly, others slowly. If you get a billion years' head
start, of course you have better weapons and technology than a species
that started later. Doesn't mean you're smarter. Maybe it just means you
started earlier.>

It was a weak thread to hang by. But it was all we had.

"Erek? Tell us all you know about the Howlers," I said.

66

?I only saw them from the point of view of the victims," Erek said. "I
can use my holographic systems to recreate what I saw. But there may be
a way to get even more information."

<Yes!> Guide said, picking up on it right away. <Yes, of course. You
could purchase Howler memories!> He walked over to the wall and touched
a panel. The panel opened. A shelf popped out, an array of buttons and
colored touch pads.

<l can load memories directly into your android friend, here. But they
will be expensive.>

"You're not getting any more of my hair," Rachel warned. "Not a kidney
or an arm, either."

Guide whined from the diaphragm in his

67 chest. It may have been a laugh of some kind. <l will pay for you to
view the Howler memories. In exchange for harvesting your own memories^

I sucked in a breath. "What is this memory-selling? Does it mean we lose
our memories?"

Guide looked perplexed. <0f course not. Why would it? We simply make a
copy.>

"They Xerox our memories?"

<Can't do it,> Tobias said. <Those memories could end up reaching the
Yeerks.>

He was right. Maybe. "Ax?"

No answer. Ax was swaying slightly, back and forth. His tail was low,
curved forward. He was way deep in private thoughts.

"Ax!" I said louder. "Ax, we need you."

He looked up, startled. <Yes, Prince Jake.>

I didn't tell him not to call me Prince. This wasn't going to be handled
with a little joshing. The Andalites are an essentially peaceful race,
but with a long warrior tradition, too. Ax was an aristh. A military
cadet. And he'd spent his entire life in the shadow of his brother,
Elfangor, who was considered a great war hero.

"How far are we from the closest Yeerk outpost?" I asked him.

<!...! don't know where we are. I don't have a star chart.>

Guide touched a wall panel. A small, flat

68 screen appeared. Muttering and whining to himself, Guide called up a
star chart. It was meaningless to me, of course.

Ax looked at it with no visible interest. He touched the screen, pulling
the perspective back, widening the view. He did this twice more, till
even I could recognize the spiral arms of our own Milky Way galaxy.

<We are more than five hundred million light years from Earth,> Ax said.
<Before the Yeerks could spread a tenth of this distance they would have
had to swallow not only Earth, but my planet as well.>

I nodded. "Thanks. Okay, then. It's a deal, Guide. But if I understand
what you've told me, our memories would make you very, very rich. So
this is it. If we live, you get to copy our memories. And you don't ask
for anything else, and you advance us whatever we need."

I thought Guide was going to fall over. I had the feeling we'd just
turned him into the Bill Gates of the Iskoort.

<l will transfer all archived Howler memories to the android.>

"The android has a name: Erek," Rachel snapped.

<He can call himself the Grand Guildmaster as far as I am concerned!>
Guide said happily.

Guide tapped into the panel. Then he called

69 Erek over. He pointed to a slot like a keyhole. <Can you interface?>

Erek dropped his hologram, revealing his true android body. From one
steel finger a prong telescoped out and pressed into the keyhole. The
steel finger changed shape to conform to the keyhole shape.

Erek's almost canine face was blank. Then his eyes flew open and he
pulled back. It was impossible to read emotion on the android face. But
I could guess. He had just absorbed the memories of the creatures who
had wiped out his creators, the Pemalites, and made interstellar
fugitives of the Chee.

"How are you doing, Erek?" Cassie asked.

"I have absorbed the available Howler memories. They are not ... not
pleasant viewing."

"Can you show us?"

"Yes." He hesitated. "Memories of the attack on my creators is included.
I would not like to show you that. I would not like to have to . . ." He
fell silent, embarrassed.

Cassie put a hand on his steel and ivory arm. "Then don't. Show us what
you can. Show us what we need to know."

Erek nodded. "The planet I'll show you has no name. The people call
themselves Graffen's Children. What I will show you happened
approximately twenty Earth years ago."

70 The bare room disappeared as Erek's hologram filled the room with a
forest in shades of purple, blue-green, and mustard-ye I low. We saw
enormous leaves, as big as bedsheets. Vines wound'along the ground,
dipped in and out of the dark soil, then shot up to form strange trees.

Birds in long, random shapes like pink feather boas swooped and wove
through the leaves and branches. Below them, orange-and-yellow
centipedes crept along. Bristly combs rose from their backs, making them
look like a comic cross between worms and stegosauruses. Animals like
two-headed prairie dogs popped up out of subterranean lairs, spit out
mouthfuls of dirt and disappeared again.

It was a rain forest. But someone else's. With wonders no more magical
than those of Earth, but wonders just the same.

Through the forest came a column of creatures that made me laugh.
"Gumby," I said.

They looked like Gumby. Not green, but dark blue, and not smooth, but as
rough-textured as an old tree. But still they moved with the jerky grace
of Gumby, walking on two legs, eyes raised to the treetops above them.

I saw a hand move into view and I jerked in surprise. A Howler's hand! I
was seeing this forest, these plants and animals and Graffen's Children,
through Howler eyes.

71 The Howler was lying in wait, hidden from view.

Then the nearest of the Graffen's Children spotted him. His eyes went
wide. A smile twisted his strange mouth. He extended a hand toward the
Howler, welcoming, curious.

The column of Graffen's Children walked toward the Howler like so many
toddlers. Like kids who wanted to pet a dog or something.

The Howler moved, a blur of speed. Other Howlers came into view. They
howled. To us the sound was softened by Erek's filtering. But it hit the
Graffen's Children full force. They began to blow apart. They stood
there, helpless, confused, not knowing why anyone would hurt them, and
they simply -

"Erek, stop it!" I snapped.

The hologram disappeared as quickly as a TV picture that had been turned
off.

"I shouldn't have let you do this, Erek. Can you erase this stuff from
your memory?"

"No, Jake."

"I'm sorry," I said. "How much more did you absorb?"

Erek powered up his human hologram. His face was human again. Now I
could see the emotions Erek was feeling. "I have memories of seventeen
Howler attacks. All successful. They have never been defeated. They have
attacked

72 highly advanced civilizations and simple people like Graffen's
Children. They have never taken a prisoner. They simply kill and kill
and kill until there is no one left to kill. Then they go and find
something else to kill."

"That's insane!" Cassie yelled. "No species does that. It doesn't make
sense. There's no logic to it. You're not talking about predators who
kill to eat, or prey animals who kill in self-defense. Even humans have
reasons, no matter how sick. Even humans have limits. Why would
evolution result in a species that kills for no reason?"

"It wouldn't. It didn't," Erek said. "The Howlers didn't evolve. They
were created."

"Crayak?"

He nodded. "Graffen's Children and dozens of species were annihilated by
Crayak's Children."

73

We slept in shifts. Two of us on guard at all times. A futile gesture.
If the Howlers found us, we would die.

Guide assured us we were safe. Apartments were built strong enough to
resist the often rambunctious Warmaker Iskoort. And with our bargain to
give him our memories, I felt like he had an interest in keeping us alive.

But so far, the Iskoort generally didn't impress me. I was sure that
others, with less at stake, would sell us out.

It was a long night. It was a very long night. Maybe some of us slept. I
didn't. I didn't want to dream.

I tried to make sense of it all. Tried to figure

74 out what the Ellimist thought he was doing. How he expected us to win
a fight we had no hope of winning.

But nothing made sense. Whatever game the Ellimist was playing was over
our heads. I felt like an ant wandering around a chessboard, trying to
figure out the rules when all I could see was colossal figures moving
around me in inexplicable patterns.

All we had learned was that the Howlers were violent beyond belief.
Destructive. That they were, in fact, designed and built to be pure evil.

"What's it like to be one of them?" Cassie whispered in the darkness.
She was close by. Obviously not sleeping, either.

"Who? An Iskoort?"

"No. A Howler. They know they were created by Crayak. They're bright
enough to fly spacecraft, so they can't be entirely without minds. What
do they think of themselves?"

I didn't really care. But Cassie's voice was a comforting distraction.
"I don't know. I guess they're happy being what they are. Aren't most
species happy being themselves?"

Long silence, as she considered that. "Maybe I would have believed that
back in the old days. But you know, I've been a termite, an ant.
Mindless creatures of instinct. They weren't happy. Not unhappy, either.
They just do what they're

75 programmed to do, and they don't have minds, really, so what else can
they do? But Howlers must have minds."

"Just because a person or whatever is intelligent, that doesn't mean
they can't be brutal and rotten and evil. I mean, there must have been
some smart Nazis and some smart slave owners."

"Yeah, but the Howlers aren't just individuals. We're talking about an
entire species, an entire race, being evil. That isn't possible. We know
that. Even the Yeerks aren't all one way."

"And maybe the Howlers are. All one way, I mean. Maybe you just have a
race that is pure evil."

"Can't be," Cassie said confidently.

"Why not?"

"Because that's what Nazis and slave owners and people like that
believed. That you can just take a whole race or whatever and say
'they're all this or all that.' That's never going to be true."

"Maybe," I said, not wanting to stomp on her idealism. "Maybe so. But
what are the odds that these seven Howlers handpicked by Crayak are
going to be all soft and cuddly?"

She fell silent. So I guess I'd stomped on her idealism, anyway. At some
level I thought, Good. We don't need a bunch of happy talk when we're up
against Howlers. But at another level I was just mad at the world and
confused and scared.

76 I started to say "Cassie ..." when something hit the door with the
impact of a small comet.

WHAM!

We were up and awake in a billionth of a second.

WHAM!

The door held, amazingly. Guide started to whine. <See! I told you ->

TSEEEEEEW!

A red circle appeared in the door and began to smoke and burn.

"It's them!" I yelled. "Howlers!"

I felt like I was choking on my own heart, like it was beating so hard,
so fast, that it filled me up, leaving no room for any but small,
gasping breaths.

We were going to die!

I heard moans of terror. Some were coming from me, just these subhuman,
animal moans of fear.

"Morph!" I yelled, choking out the word.

"They're going to kill us!" Marco cried.

In the glow of the Dracon beam, I saw Ax walking steadily toward the
door. Rough, shaggy hair was sprouting from Rachel's face.

"NO!" I blurted, realizing the mistake. "Not combat morphs! Go small!
Flies!"

I tried to focus my jangled, shattered-glass brain on the image of a
fly. It was the only way out. Not to fight, but to run.

77 <l will attempt to slow them down,> Ax said calmly.

"No, Ax. Morph! We have to get out of here!" Rachel yelled at him.

<l ran once,> Ax said. <Not again.>

<Not the time, Ax-man!> Tobias said.

<l am an Andalite warrior!> he said harshly.

TSEEEEEEEEW!

The beam suddenly burned through into the room and hit the far wall.

Erek ran to the hole in the door as a Howler stuck his head though, eyes
greedy. Erek's hologram was gone. He was now a Chee.

"Chee!" the Howler said in surprise.

Erek took one steel hand and calmly rammed his fingers into the metal of
the door. They went through like he was sticking his hand in a loaf of
bread. He did the same with the other hand, curling his fingers and
gripping the handholds he had created.

He blocked the entrance with his body. The Howler sneered and shoved at
him. Erek did not move by so much as an atom's width.

The Howler backed up and leveled his flechette gun at Erek's metallic
face. He fired. Flechettes ricocheted around the room, but Erek was
unharmed.

"Jake, this will not last," Erek warned me.

We were all morphing at top speed. All but

78 Ax. I already had huge, bulging fly eyes and six legs.

<Ax! Do it! Morph, right now!>

<No, I can't run again!>

<Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill, you call me "prince" and you act like you
mean it and I am giving you a direct order. Morph. Do. It. NOW!>

79

Now the Howlers tried their ultimate weapon. The howl was earsplitting.
The walls around Erek began to shiver and crack. Guide fell to the
ground, rolling in agony.

Ax's eyes were bleeding, even in midmorph. But the rest of us were more
fly than human, and the waves of vibration from the Howlers did not
cause us pain. Not pain, just an overwhelming instinct to fly. Vibration
could be sound or it could be movement. The fly brains felt the howl as
sudden, massive, threatening movements from every direction at once.

Still seven or eight pounds, with a twisting, morphing human mouth, I
was beating my

80 growing wings frantically, kicking in panic, trying to fly.

"Fight me, Chee," the Howler taunted, when he realized his howl would
not shake Erek's grip.

I was shocked to recognize the language. He was speaking English! Crayak
must have programmed it into this bunch of Howlers. Programmed them to
understand our language and to be able to taunt and question us, if
necessary.

Erek ignored him. The Howlers began to fire Dracon beams. Not at Erek.
They must have known from their collective memory that Chee cannot be
easily destroyed by beam weapons.

Instead, they were using the Dracon beams to slice around Erek's handholds.

We had all morphed. All panicked, but all morphed. Except Ax, who was
still partly Andalite. And Guide, who was sitting in a corner now,
gazing raptly at the madness, creating valuable memories for later sale.

Suddenly, Erek's handhold was gone, burned away. The Howlers pushed past
him, contemptuous. They knew he could not fight. But they found nothing.
Nothing that looked like the creatures one of them had fought on the stairs.

Nothing except a weak, defenseless Ax, still morphing. A hideously
misshapen, melting, twisting monstrosity.

81 The Howlers piled into the room. With my compound eyes they seemed to
be made of glowing purple and blue with pulsating black veins. The
facets in my fun-house-mirror eyes broke them into pieces. They were
everywhere around me as I flew unnoticed.

"Target?" one Howler asked another. This second Howler was slightly
larger and carrying even more weapons.

"Yes. Kill it!" the leader bellowed in rage.

Seven flechette guns rose and took aim at Ax. He had no chance. None.

Erek leaped to put himself between the guns and Ax, but the Howlers
calmly blocked his path. And Erek's programming would not allow him to
shove them aside.

In a split second, Ax would be annihilated.

<Crayak is a huge, walking, talking pimple,> a thought-speak voice said.

Marco!

The Howlers' heads snapped around, left, right, their bodies swiveling
as they searched for the one who taunted them. They aimed at Guide, who
was crawling out through the hole they'd burned.

<Not me! Not me! I'm just an Iskoort trader! And by the way, I'd love to
buy your memories of all this!>

82 <And Howlers are the cowards of the galaxy. Brainless, ugly,
bad-smelling, sniveling, gutless worms,> Marco added.

"Forget it," the leader ordered. "Voices are meaningless."

I zipped through the air, flying in the wild, wobbly fly way. I aimed
for the face of the Howler leader. I landed just beneath his left eye.

<Not just a voice, you walking dirtball. I'm right here. Think you're
tough? Try killing me.>

The hand snapped up with shocking speed. I felt it coming, felt the
disturbances in the air, and I responded with the RIGHT NOW speed of the
fly.

Alien fingers slapped toward me. I fired my wings. The Howler was so
fast his fingers missed me by millimeters.

<How are you going to kill us?> Marco taunted. <Better go back to Crayak
and explain that you've failed.>

"Forget them! Kill that-"

<Too late,> Ax said.

Ax had made the transition to fly.

<0kay, stay airborne. No one land, no one set down,> I said. I was
beginning to feel just the smallest bit of optimism. Even relief. The
Howlers were mystified.

"The android!" the Howler leader roared.

83 I looked. I could see Erek, or at least a shimmering, distorted
version of him. But the Howlers no longer could. Erek had created a
hologram of one of the walls. He was standing calmly behind it. Out of
sight, though not out of reach.

<Let's bail before these guys start thinking of ways to swat flies,>
Cassie suggested.

<You got that right,> Marco agreed.

<0ut the door,> I said. <But stay close.>

We zipped, unnoticed, through the burned-out doorway.

Not a victory. All we had managed to do was run away. But we were all
still alive. And that was more than I would have thought possible.

Too bad just staying alive was not an option. We had to win. We had to
destroy seven creatures, any one of whom could fight all of us to a draw.

84

<Guide. Can you hear me?>

<Yes, of course, lam not far away.>

<We know,> Rachel said. <We're just above

your head. No, don't look!>

<They'll watch Guide,> Tobias said. <lf we

hook up with him and demorph, they'll have us.> The seven Howlers had
emerged from the

wrecked apartment. We'd lost track of them after

that. Fly eyes are useless at any distance beyond

a foot or two. Were they tracking us? Or Guide?

No way to know. But you couldn't get careless

with Howlers.

<Erek. I know you can't answer, but if you can

hear me, try to find Guide. Hide him from the

Howlers.>

85 As we watched Guide, another "Iskoort" sidled up next to him. The
second Iskoort suddenly became a small group of Warmaker Iskoort who
simply absorbed Guide.

This group of Warmaker Iskoort would have been revealed as a hologram if
anyone had touched them. But no one did.

We flew into the hologram and landed on Erek's head.

<Are we clear?> I asked Erek.

"We were being watched, but I believe we have lost the Howlers, at least
for now."

<Great,> Rachel said unenthusiastically. <We can stay alive as long as
we're flies hiding inside a hologram.>

<l will take you to a new place where you can hide,> Guide said.
<Incidentally, this ability you have to change shapes is very
interesting. Is it perhaps a technology you can sell? I would pay top
price.>

I didn't bother answering. We demorphed back to human and hawk and
Andalite, still hidden, bunched up within the hologram.

We were crossing a sort of large square or plaza. The floor was green in
this area and almost made you think you were on a vast lawn. In the
center of the square was yet another stairway, and we took it, heading
down. It was busy, with lots of Iskoort coming and

86 going and what I assumed to be a few aliens, as well.

Erek made the hologram growl and threaten repeatedly, to keep anyone
from bumping into us and penetrating our illusion.

We came at last to the next level down. And this was definitely
different. Instead of the bare openness of previous levels, this one was
almost a jungle. But a unique one. The plants, trees, and flowers were
all in planter boxes packed together, leaving only narrow, circuitous
walkways. If you looked out and up, you'd think you were in a genuine
jungle. If you looked down, you felt more like you were walking through
a greenhouse.

Iskoort were packed in tight on the walkways. Too tight for our extended
hologram.

"Tobias," I said. "Think you could get up and see if we're being followed?"

Tobias flew out of the top of the hologram, took a couple of turns, and
came back. <Looks clear.>

"I can't imagine the Howlers creeping along like spies, anyway," Rachel
said. "They're a little more direct. If they see us, they'll come after
us, and too bad for anyone who gets in the way."

Erek turned off the extended hologram and resumed his human appearance.
We were exposed again. Aliens walking in what passed for a park. My skin
tingled.

87 "Ax, keep an eye out in all directions," I said. He was the only one
of us who could look backward as easily as forward.

"Yeah, let us know if you see any Howlers so we can have a few seconds
to cry before they get us," Marco said darkly.

Through the maze of false forest, we shuffled along with Iskoort in
various permutations, none of whom seemed to be having an especially
good time.

My brain was buzzing. Going a mile a minute, but going nowhere. Like a
car with the pedal all the way down but up on blocks, wheels spinning
but staying still.

What was I missing? Something. Something. Some way to defeat the
Howlers. Had to be some way. The Ellimist didn't send us into this
battle to lose.

Did he?

I tried calling to him with my mind. I wondered if he was listening.
Probably. But he and Crayak had their rules. The rules of engagement, as
the military guys say.

What were the rules? Might as well have that ant look up at the chess
grandmaster and demand an explanation for why he'd moved a particular pawn.

Why the Iskoort? Why did they have to be saved? Why had we known we were
going after

88 the Howlers, but the Howlers hadn't seemed to know they were going
after us till we met on the stairs?

Why didn't the Howlers go after the Iskoort? That was easy: the rules of
engagement. If they beat us, they could annihilate the Iskoort. Not until.

The one person we figured could fight and win against the Howlers was
Erek. Only Erek had the power. And only Erek was unable to fight. He
could put himself between us and the Howlers. He could give us
information, but not directly help us.

The Howlers had never lost a battle. That's what the Howler memories and
Erek had said. Never.

What did it all mean? I pressed my hands hard against my head, like I
wanted to squeeze the answer out of my brain.

<We are there,> Guide announced.

I looked up, startled to realize I'd been walking along the whole time.
I felt a surge of guilt. I'd been so preoccupied, I hadn't been on guard.

We were standing outside a building shaped like a pyramid, maybe ten
stories high in Earth terms. It was white, the gleaming, artificial
white of plastic, and featured a wide, arched door outlined in rows of
neon, like a rainbow. Something that must have been music was blaring.

89 "Yeah, this'll be a good place to hide," Marco said sardonically. "No
one would ever notice this."

"Where are we, Guide?"

<We have reached the temple of the Servant Guild. They will take you in.
I have paid for it. They will care for you until I return.>

"What do you mean, return?" Rachel snapped. "Where are you going?"

<l must feed. You see, we Iskoort are not precisely what we seem at
first. The body you see is of our symbiote. We are a symbiotic species -
a large outer body, the Isk, and the inner self, the much smaller
portion, called the Yoort.>

<A symbiote?> Ax demanded, speaking for the first time. <Do you mean
that you are parasites?>

<Long ago, yes,> Guide acknowledged. <But what began as a parasitic
relationship has become a truly symbiotic one. We function as a single
creature. The two parts, halves, only separate every three days, when
the Yoort must feed by swimming in the Yoort pool and absorbing ->

Ax's tail was at the Iskoort's throat before he could form the next word.

<Yeerks. They're all Yeerks!>

90

The Servant Guild was just what it sounded like. Slavishly obedient,
fawning, groveling Iskoort, fanatically obsessed with obeying your every
order, catering to your every whim.

It took a long time for us to convey that all we wanted was a room. A
room with none of them in it. They weren't happy about it, but in the
end they obeyed.

The room was as gaudy as the exterior of the Servant Guild Temple. The
walls were so glaringly white they seemed to make your eyeballs vibrate.
What wasn't white was neon, or something like neon, in bold primary
colors swirled here and there, up walls and across ceilings and inset in

91 the floor. But the colored light did not seem to touch the whiteness.

"Must be the Iskoort idea of interior decorating," Rachel said. "Like a
hospital bathroom decorated by kids with those light wand things."

Guide stood in the middle of the room. Ax had drawn his tail blade back,
but Guide was not under any illusions: That tail would snap in a split
second if we heard the wrong answers.

"You'd better talk, and talk fast," I told Guide.

He was whining continuously from his diaphragm. <What do you want from me?>

Marco said, "We're a bazillion miles from home, clear across the galaxy,
and all of a sudden we find out you Iskoort are Yeerks. Excuse us for
being suspicious."

<We are not Yeerks. We are Iskoort.>

<Yoort, Yeerk, that's pretty close,> Tobias said, flaring his wings
angrily. <And you both live off Kandrona rays.>

<Yes, we feed on Kandrona rays. But we are Iskoort, not these Yeerks you
despise.>

Rachel glared at the cringing Iskoort. "I knew there was something I
didn't like about these creeps. If they're not trying to buy something
from you, they're trying to kick your butt or kiss your feet. Yeerks!"
She turned to me, expression hard.

92 "That's it. We tell the Ellimist to find someone else to play his
games with. We're not helping save a bunch of Yeerks. The Howlers can
have them."

I was inclined to agree. It was the easy way out, anyway. We weren't
going to die to help Yeerks.

Cassie moved between Guide and Ax. "Guide, tell me something. What do
you know about the history of your people? Going way back to the beginning?"

Guide looked bewildered, but Cassie was staying between him and the
Andalite's tail, so he knew she was his best hope.

<We ... we Iskoort... I mean, back many, many generations, the Yoort
were parasites, as you said. They infested other species. But that was
long ago. Since we formed our symbiotes, the combination of Isk and
Yoort, we have been as we are now.>

Rachel snorted. "They conquered these Isk things and now it's like okay,
we're best buddies. Big deal."

Marco nodded agreement. "Some stranger shows up on Earth a thousand
years after the Yeerks conquer Earth, the Yeerks will be saying, 'Hey,
us and the humans are symbiotes.'"

I looked at Cassie. Rachel and Marco were right. Cassie nodded,
accepting the fact.

93 But Guide said, <No, no. I have not made myself clear. The Isk were
not conquered by the Yoort. They were created.>

"Say what?"

<Parasitism is a limiting choice. The Yoort moved violently to conquer
other species and infest them, but this was not profitable, not in the
long haul. So the Yoort used biological engineering techniques to design
and create a species specifically to be a symbiote.>

<Who cares how you did it?> Tobias argued. <So you build the Isk and
then enslave them.>

<No, no,> Guide pleaded, whining away through his diaphragm. <The Isk
were true symbiotes. The Isk cannot live without the Yoort. And to
ensure that this symbiosis would be real, the Yoort, too, were modified.
Now Yoort cannot live without Isk and Isk cannot live without Yoort.
They are one creature with two parts.>

Dead silence. No one said a thing. The reality of it was sinking slowly
into our suspicious brains.

"Oh, my God," Cassie said at last. "Of course. It's the way. The only
way. Parasite becomes symbiote. No more infestation. They create the
next step in their own evolution and become true symbiotes."

"No more war," Erek said quietly. "No more

94 need to conquer new species, to infest and enslave."

"The Yeerks don't know about this," Cassie said. "Even the Yeerks who
want peace cannot imagine a way out, a way to end the cycle of conquest."

<These Yoort could be related to the Yeerks,> Ax said. <They may be the
same species, somehow separated long ago, perhaps carried from the Yeerk
home world by some forgotten race.>

<lf the Yeerks knew ... if the Iskoort ever made contact with the Yeerks
. . .> Tobias said.

This was why Crayak had to destroy the Iskoort. And why the Ellimist
couldn't allow it. Someday, maybe far in the future, Iskoort would meet
Yeerk. And the Yeerks would see that there was another way.

I smiled. The first time in a long time. The ant had just figured out
part of the chess game.

95

A smell like oil and mothballs and . . .

"It's poison!" Rachel said. "Like bug poison."

<Howlers!> Tobias yelled.

What to do? The Howlers were pumping poison into the building. They had
learned fast. Too fast. Insect morphs were no longer available.

"Guide! Windows?"

<Yes, there are windows concealed. I can open them by ->

"Not yet. We go airborne," I told everyone. "Stay calm. Morph to bird.
Guide, when I say, open the windows. Not before. The Howlers won't come
in till they're sure they've spread enough poison."

I tried to sound confident. I hoped I was right.

96 The stench of poison was growing stronger by the second, but I was
already on my way to morphing a peregrine falcon.

Why bug poison? Why not nerve gas? Why not some odorless, invisible gas
that would kill us before we knew what hit us?

Too easy? Not enough fear factor for the Howlers? Or was no deadly gas
one of the rules of engagement?

We were melting, all but Erek and Guide. Morphing. Flesh oozing and
shifting like mud sliding down a hill. Flesh turned gray. Arms and legs
broke out in feather patterns. Faces crumpled, then extruded hard beaks.
Toes became talons.

<Guide, how high up are we?>

<Perhaps five times your own height.>

<0kay. Erek, we don't know if any Howler is sitting outside that window.
Maybe yes, maybe no. Can you jump through it, push whoever's there out
of the way?>

Erek looked sick. "No, Jake. I can hear the Howlers. I know they're out
there. If I go through that window I might harm -"

<Wouldn't want that,> Marco sneered. <We wouldn't want ->

<Shut up, Marco,> I rapped. My mind was racing. Some answer. There had
to be. We needed a distraction, otherwise, the instant we appeared,

97 the Howlers would . . . <Erek! Can you project a hologram through
another window? A hologram of us?>

"Absolutely. There would be no harm to the Howlers, and it might save
you. That would be well within my parameters."

<Guide, open a window on the far side of the room, count to three, and
open this one over here. Guide, Erek? We hook up two levels down, near
the stairs. Everyone ready?>

<Two levels down?> Guide said, looking startled.

Just then a pair of Servant Iskoort came bustling into the room. <Is
there a problem? Are those guests clinging to the outside of the
building disturbing your rest?>

<Make it fast,> Tobias said, ignoring the intrusion. <Birds don't
tolerate poison much better than bugs do.>

<Point taken. On three. One, two, NOW!>

The far window slid open. Instantly a flight of six birds flew toward
it. Dracon beams burned and flechette guns rattled.

<Yes, let us open the windows,> one of the Servant Iskoort offered.

<Perhaps a delightful meal?>

The near window opened and I spread my wings and flapped with all my
panicky strength.

The hologram broke down after extending a

98 couple of dozen feet from the window. But by then all seven Howlers
were firing like idiots on the wrong side of the building.

We blew out of the window, flapping like mad, desperate for every foot
of distance. But we were not far when the first Dracon beam singed
Rachel's eagle wing.

<Down, down, down!> I yelled.

We dove. Down into the maze of trees and bushes and flowers. We were a
weird squadron. A bald eagle, a pair of ospreys, a northern harrier, a
red-tailed hawk, and a peregrine falcon.

We blazed along the lane, inches above the heads of walking Iskoort.
They'd feel our wind and look up as we passed.

B-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-t-t!

A line of flechettes tore a tree apart inches ahead of me.

I turned left and saw the Howler. He was racing after us, knocking
Iskoort down like they were so many bowling pins.

We turned a sharp left, banking around a line of fuzzy orange trees. A
Howler burst from the vegetation ahead of us! He had torn through the
planters to cut us off.

<Pull up!> Tobias yelled.

TSEEEEW! TSEEEEEW!

Cassie's right wing was gone, a burning rag falling to the ground!
Cassie tumbled, out of control,

99 falling like a stone. She hit the ground amidst a gaggle of Warmaker
Iskoort.

I dived after her.

A Howler jumped from an overhanging tree. He aimed his beam weapon even
as he plummeted toward Cassie's still, crumpled form.

TSEEEEW! TSEEEEW!

He fired, missed! Landed. I was on him, talons forward. I raked bloody
lines across his head. He twisted his turntable body and aimed at me.

I carried through, lost momentum, and slammed into one of the Warmaker
Iskoort. The Iskoort stared blankly at me. I was in his arms. Helpless.

The Howler grinned and took careful aim. Right at me. No chance to
escape. Point-blank range. Inches away. I could see every detail of the
weapon that would end my life.

Then ... the Dracon beam wavered. It rose. I saw the Howler's face,
furious, enraged. But he did not fire.

I flapped my wings. The Warmaker Iskoort reacted by shoving me away
angrily, and then he and his fellows attacked the Howler.

It should have been over in an instant. The Warmaker Iskoort were not
exactly formidable. The Howler should have laid them out in five
seconds. Instead, the Howler shielded himself from

100 attack, pushing back the thrusting, butting heads, and ran.

Rules of engagement!

<They can't kill the lskoort!> I yelled to the others. <Use the Iskoort
for cover!> Then, <Cassie! Cassie, if you can hear me, demorph! Demorph!>

But I could already see her flesh growing from the missing, burned scar
where her wing had been. <Yeah, yeah, I know,> she said, sounding stunned.

<Ax! Behind you!>

<Here comes another one!>

The others were running for their lives. I had to get to them. <Cassie.
Are you okay?>

<I'll . . . you know ... uh ... demorph,> she said, dazed, lost.

<Cassie, demorph! And stay close to the lskoort!>

<Yeah. Yeah.>

<l can't leave you like this!>

<No. Yes. Go. You have to ->

A Howler was bounding toward me, his dead blue eyes focused on me. If I
stayed, I'd lead him to Cassie. If I left ... I couldn't leave her! She
was too dazed, losing too much blood, sinking too fast to finish demorphing.

No choice, Jake, I told myself harshly. You can't help. You can only hurt.

101 I flapped away, feeling like my heart was being ripped from my body.
I gained enough altitude to get above the trees, where I saw a bizarre
battle underway.

Have to help the others, I told myself. That's your duty. Help them. You
can't help Cassie anymore.

The Howlers were leaping from tree to tree, like monkeys on steroids.
They were simply leaping across the walkways, vine to bush to branch,
like people crossing a stream by jumping from rock to rock.

I saw three birds in the air. One missing besides Cassie. The edge of
the platform, the void, was only a mile away.

<0kay,> I said. <I've had enough of this. They want to chase someone?
Let's see just how fast they are.>

102

The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth. Faster than the
cheetah or gazelle. Faster than the fastest dolphin or shark. Faster
than any bird. In a dive it can break two hundred miles an hour.

I flapped, up, up, up, burning energy like I didn't care, and I didn't.
I wouldn't be needing energy for later. There wasn't going to be a
later. Cassie down. Rachel down. I felt sick inside.

But I was going to take a Howler with me.

I flew hard and fast and caught a little help from a headwind that I
rode like a skateboarder going up the side of a pipe.

Then I took careful aim, judged the distance, and dived.

103 I didn't reach two hundred miles an hour, but I was breaking a
hundred by the time I slashed the top of a Howler who was ripping after
Tobias.

The Howler grabbed his head, howling a more emotional and less dangerous
howl than the one he was named for. He fired wildly at me, but I was out
of there.

I kept most of my momentum and banked right, flapping hard, then raked a
Howler who had just dropped Marco with a burst of flechettes.

<Marco!> I cried. <Demorph! Demorph!>

I couldn't tell if he was still alive. But I could see his assailant. He
got a face full of razor-sharp talon. I aimed for his eyes.

The Howlers had never been beaten. I wondered how they liked what I was
doing to them.

I got my answer immediately. Three of them converged, racing toward me,
flinging themselves forward in mad, heedless pursuit of the little
creature who had dared to hurt them.

Not too fast, Jake, I told myself. I flew, but not at full speed.
Rather, I used my speed to dodge and weave and frustrate the Howlers who
fired everything they had at me.

Close enough, I thought. Now, down! I dropped below tree-level, down to
the walkway. But here the walkway was almost devoid of Iskoort.

104 I stuck to the path, fighting exhaustion, flapping, turning,
flapping, turning. And the Howlers were after me. They ripped through
the hedges, blew trees apart with flechettes, burned flowers and bushes
out of their path.

I was going up and down a circuitous path. They were cutting straight
through. In seconds they would cut me off. I couldn't outrun them when I
had to travel ten feet for every one foot of theirs.

But I had to stay down. Had to stay on the path. Had to hope I was right
about direction and distance. Had to hope the Howlers' arrogance, the
cockiness of the never-defeated, would help me.

Turn, turn, turn!

Around I came. A Howler burst through the hedge just in front of me!
Trapped!

Was I right? Was I there?

I went straight at the Howler. He aimed. I jerked suddenly upward and
dropped slowly, like a wounded bird, like a slow, loopy volleyball, over
the hedge to the far side.

The Howler ripped through the hedge, smelling victory.

He ripped through and clawed at the air.

The Iskoort were crazy not to put guardrails around the edges of their
platforms.

But it was a kind of crazy I could get to like.

105 The Howler fell. Fell, clawing the air, screaming in rage and
frustration. Miles above the ground. He had a long way to fall.

And then it hit me. Now was the time.

I was in the right place and in the right morph.

Down he fell, quickly achieving maximum falling velocity. Which in the
gravity of the Iskoort world, as it turned out, was less than two
hundred miles an hour.

106

Down, down, down.

The Howler was facedown, yelling and grabbing air. Helpless.

I flew straight down, flapping hard, helping gravity work. The Howler
was right below me, oblivious.

He had other things on his mind.

I folded my wings back, brought my talons forward, and latched on to his
leg. If he felt my sharp talons, he didn't show it.

I looked past him at the ground so far below. How long would it take us
to fall? Long enough? No way to know. Had to try.

I began to demorph. We were falling at the same speed now, the Howler
and I. I tried to hold

107 on to him as my talons became fingers, as my body grew and grew
almost as large as his. I tried to hold on to that half-cooled lava
skin. But my talons slipped as the claws became fingernails. I lost my grip.

I grabbed again with a stubby hand and an arm eight inches long. Missed.
We fell. My eyes lost their falcon focus. I could no longer see every
detail of the ground far below me. It was a blur. It made it seem
further away. A small comfort.

Human, I fell, my face just inches from the Howler's left leg. He had
stopped clawing the air. He was no longer moving. He had a long time to
contemplate his fate. I didn't feel sorry for him. Maybe I should have.
Maybe Cassie would have.

But this Howler, or one just like him, had burned her wing off. Had shot
Marco. At least one of the others. Maybe all of them by now.

I wanted him to have a nice, long time to think about that as he fell.

I grabbed, this time with human fingers.

He swiveled suddenly, turned his body all the way around, and stared
down at me, his blank blue eyes wide with shock.

He reached for his Dracon beam. I snatched it first and threw it away.
It fell, twirling beside us, five feet away and a million miles out of
reach.

108 I knew what was coming next. But the Howler didn't. He started his
howl, the first notes ear-splitting, brain-numbing.

KEEEE -

But he was too late. I had begun to acquire him. And he felt the torpor,
the lethargy that creatures usually feel when acquired. He stared, eyes
full of hate, unable to raise his deadly howl.

While I kept my grip on him, while I drained his DNA into me, I used my
free hand to strip away his weapons. One by one. They made a small
arsenal falling around us.

I pushed away. The air caught me and spun me end over end. I windmilled
my arms, trying to stabilize, but it was a foolish instinct. I calmed
down and began to morph.

The ground was close now. Close, so close. It was as if at the end we
were moving faster and faster, as if the last half of the fall took only
a tenth as long as the first half.

Fear distorts reality. Reality was plenty distorted.

I tumbled wildly, seeing the ground sweep by beneath me one minute, then
the Howler above me. My shove had set him tumbling, too. It was all that
saved me, because he began to howl.

KEEEEEEEEEEE-row!

But the blasts of sound only hit me glancing

109 blows as we spun like a pair of suicidal sky divers.

I felt the itchiness of feathers growing from my skin.

The ground, so close!

Hard beak pushed out from my lips.

The ground! Rushing up now. Grim, scruffy trees and drifting,
ground-hugging fog.

My arms were shriveling, the bones thinning, hollowing.

Too late!

KEEEEEEEEEEE-row!

A thousand feet!

Five hundred!

One hundred feet!

Treetops rising around me!

I opened my wings. I felt them fill and strain, the muscles almost
tearing with the effort.

The Howler fell away from me.

<Tell the Big Red Eye that Jake says "hi,"> I said.

My wings filled and I flew at impossible speed across the treetops.

110

I could see why the Iskoort had built their Dr. Seuss towers. The
surface of the planet was a reeking, swampy mess of a place. I gained
altitude to get above the sulfur smell, but then had to rest.

My falcon body was revived by remorphing, but it was a several-mile
ascent to get back to where I'd left the others. And how was I ever
going to find that level? The structure of the Iskoort city was
unimaginably complex.

Flying outside of it, I could see just what an awesome structure it was.
Nothing ever built on Earth even came close. The pyramids would not have
made the footing for the smallest pillar at

111 the base of this thing. The World Trade Center and the Sears Tower
were Tinkertoys.

The Iskoort may have been the most obnoxious species in the galaxy, but
they could definitely build.

What would I find when I did manage to retrace my fall? Had Cassie
demorphed? Had she survived? Was Marco still alive? Ax, Tobias, Rachel?

They'd been hopelessly outgunned. Part of me expected to find that the
score would be one Howler, and all five of my friends. I pictured
finding their crumpled bodies. The images drained the strength from my
muscles.

I had to get back. But I couldn't stand thinking about what I'd find. I
couldn't live without them. Couldn't.

I felt a surge of anger at Erek. Marco was right: What right did Erek
have to cling to his nonviolence in a universe where the Howlers
annihilated entire species on orders from an evil force? How do you
stand on the sidelines when evil is running amok?

Erek was the only one of us who could fight a Howler and win. He had the
power. He alone had the power. We'd freed him for one hour from his
peaceful programming. The result had been terrifying. He had annihilated
a Yeerk force that would have destroyed us all.

ill

112 Yes, the Pemalites had created him and all his kind to be peaceful.
To be physically incapable of violence. And it was irrational of me to
be angry. But with Cassie and Rachel and maybe everyone dead and me
alone, I didn't care.

The Pemalites were fools. They'd been wiped out by the Howlers while
their incredibly powerful androids had stood by and done nothing.

The Pemalites had not reprogrammed the Chee. Idiots! The Chee could have
saved them. The Chee could have been turned loose to destroy the Howlers
the way the Howlers destroyed everyone else. And then . . .

And then, when the Chee had destroyed the Howlers, what would they do
next? What do you do with a species devoted to war? What do you do, once
you've created an awesome weapon and turned it loose?

The Pemalites would have had to be sure they could rein in the Chee.
They would have had to be sure they could control them. Turn them off.

Just as Crayak would need a way to control the Howlers.

The Howlers weren't androids, so how did Crayak ensure that they would
never get out of control? And since their job was to murder and murder
and murder without pity, what would Crayak even think "out of control"
would mean?

113 Out of control for a Howler would be not killing.

An out-of-control Howler would be a Howler who felt remorse. Pity.
Kindness. That would be intolerable to Crayak.

I laughed bitterly. Nice speculation. But my friends were probably all
dead. And I was alone. And all I could hope for now was to live long
enough to get home again.

<Jake! Is that you, or some other peregrine falcon?>

<Tobias!>

<Yeah. I've been looking for you.>

<You're alive!>

<Same back at you, fearless leader,> he said with a laugh. <We figured
you were done for. Ax saw you go over the side with that Howler.>

<Is everyone ... is anyone . . .>

Tobias sounded less ebullient. <We're all still there, but it wasn't
pretty. Cassie, Rachel, and Marco all got nailed pretty bad. But they
all managed to demorph. Erek caught up with us and created a hologram of
Iskoort. Cassie said you told her the Howlers couldn't attack Iskoort.
Guess that's why they didn't howl.>

<But everyone's okay?> I pressed, unable to fully believe it.

Tobias laughed. <Yeah, big Jake, everyone's alive. Anyway, we got
everyone inside the

114 hologram and the Howlers seemed stumped. But I guess they figured
out we weren't really Iskoort, so it was okay to attack. By then we were
assorted bugs crawling around the trees. Guide found us another place.
Wait till you see. How about your Howler?>

<It's not teams of seven anymore. It's seven to six now,> I said.

Fortunately, Tobias had kept track of where he was. He easily led the
way back to a level three stories down from where we'd been.

This level was different than any we'd seen thus far. It seemed to be an
industrial district. The separation from the floor above was several
hundred feet. The predominating colors were gray and brown. And the
factories, if that's what they were, looked as drab and windowless and
shabby as any factories on Earth.

Here, as we flew above them, we met a new variation on the Iskoort.
These had longer, stronger arms, more massive shoulders, and their eyes
were hooded with thick, retractable lids.

There were very few out and about. Those I saw, though, seemed
boisterously happy and oblivious to the grimness around them. But their
whining diaphragms were so loud that a small group of them whining
together could make you long for earplugs.

We circled around a few times, looking for

115 Howlers. But they were not in sight. We landed. I demorphed and went
inside.

I thought I was past the emotion. I thought I was over that feeling of
hollowness I'd felt, imagining them all gone. But then there they were.

Rachel scowling. Marco looking down at the floor, withdrawn. Ax off by
himself, still no doubt blaming himself. Erek with his hologram turned
off, an unemotional android face.

And Cassie.

<Prince Jake!> Ax cried, the first to see me.

Cassie was on her feet and running toward me, and I was running to her,
and I wasn't past any emotion, I was exploding with emotion.

Cassie jumped into my arms and I wrapped her up tight and before I knew
it I was kissing her on her lips and she was kissing me back.

"It's about time," Rachel grumbled.

116

At least Cassie and I provided Marco with material. It took him
precisely three seconds after I parted from Cassie, embarrassed and amazed.

He held out his arms to me and said, "What, no kiss for me?"

I would not have believed I could feel like a dork in the middle of all
the other feelings I was dealing with, and in the middle of an abject
disaster of a battle, but I guess embarrassment and awkwardness are
always with us.

"No?" Marco said, looking puzzled. "I guess I'll have to turn to
Rachel." He went for her, arms out, lips puckered.

"Gee, Marco, what do you think the odds are

117 I'll kiss you? Slim, none, or I'll-break-both-your-arms?"

I looked around at our latest home. It was a large open space, maybe
three stories high, about the size of a basketball court. Crammed into
that gloomy cube were an amazing array of machines. Some like giant
jackhammers, some like steel octopi, others weirdly like merry-go-rounds
with elaborate, sharp-edged tools instead of brightly colored horses.

Nothing was working. There was dust everywhere.

"Abandoned factory?" I asked Guide.

<Not abandoned. The Worker Guild refuses to come back to work here until
the Superstition and Magic Guild certifies that the place is free of the
spirits of fictional characters.>

I sighed. I hesitated. I shot a look at Marco.

"Oh, you'll want to hear this," he said.

"What are the spirits of fictional characters?"

Guide whined in what I took to be a humorous way. <The simple folk
believe that fictional characters are at least partly real and thus have
spirits who wander the city, infesting buildings and engaging in various
destructive behaviors.>

"Fictional characters," I said. "Okay."

<So naturally, the Superstition and Magic Guild must be called upon to
control this problem.

118 But the Worker Guild cannot agree on a fair price, so . . .>

"Makes perfect sense," I said.

"In a loony bin," Rachel said.

We all fell silent for a while. The rush of being reunited was wearing
off. We were remembering reality.

<Jake says it's seven to six now,> Tobias said.

"Swell," Marco muttered. "Make it seven to two and I'd still bet on them."

There was muttered agreement.

"I have a new morph," I said.

<Yeah?> Tobias asked.

"Yeah. On the way ... on the way down, I acquired the Howler. It's not
enough, but it may give us an edge. If we have an overall plan."

"Do you have a plan?" Erek asked.

I considered. Did I? I had bits and pieces. Guesses. Speculation.
Intuitions.

I shrugged. "Yeah. I guess I do."

Marco grinned. "Kiss him again, Cassie. It seems to help."

They all waited expectantly. I bowed my head and tried to bring together
all that I had learned about the Howlers. I felt like I had a bunch of
jigsaw pieces and no picture to work from.

"Okay, jump in if you have anything to add. I could be totally wrong.
One: The Howlers must have some kind of collective memory. The memories

119 Erek absorbed were of events going back thousands of years and
covering dozens of invasions. No biological creature lives that long.
And we know the Howlers are biological because I acquired one. So
somehow, the Howlers are designed to share a single memory. What these
seven Howlers ... six ... learn here will be conveyed to all the rest of
the species. That way all battle experience is available to all warriors."

Rachel nodded. "No wonder they never lose."

"Yeah, but that brings up something else. See, no one wins all the time.
Not for thousands of years. It's not possible. Muhammad AN lost. Michael
Jordan lost. No one wins every time."

"But the Howler memories I absorbed show no memory of defeat," Erek
pointed out.

"Yeah. Exactly," I said. "Exactly. Guide?"

<Yes?>

"When you view memories - I mean in the normal way, not like Erek did
for us, turning it into a hologram - how is it done?"

Guide emitted a low diaphragm whine and said, <There is a small device
that attaches to the head. It ties in directly to brain waves and plays
the memories as if you yourself were recalling them.>

"And these memory headsets work on all species?"

<We are visited by many species,> Guide

120 said. <The headsets have always worked. Although not all species
choose to indulges

"I'm guessing the Howlers don't indulge," Cassie said.

Guide spread his hands and increased the grating noise from his
diaphragm. <We have only ever seen this one group of Howlers. They sold
their memories to pay for what they needed here, but they did not choose
to buy any other memories^

I nodded. "Good. Good. Okay. Now we need a volunteer for an extremely
dangerous mission. We're going to need a rabbit to draw the hounds to
us." I shot a look at Rachel and slowly shook my head no. Her mouth was
already open to volunteer. She closed it and looked puzzled.

<l will take on this mission,> Ax said from across the room.

Rachel made a little half-smile and nodded imperceptibly.

"Swell," Marco said impatiently. "So Ax is going to get himself killed
and we all agree the Howlers don't like to buy memories to watch on
their VCRs. How does any of this let us take out these six Howlers?"

"We don't take out the six Howlers," I said. "Crayak does."

121

The place we were in was all wrong for the trap. We needed Iskoort
around us. We had to make the rules of engagement work for us. I
explained it to Guide. He wanted to get paid more. We were running up a
big bill, and we might well get killed before we could sell him our
valuable memories.

"Don't worry," I said. "That's the next thing we do: make a complete
copy of our memories."

<l still feel I should be able to harvest an arm, at the least. Perhaps
some minor internal organs

"Not more hair?"

<l have the hair,> he said. <The point is to

122 possess what is absolutely unique. No one has a human body part or
organ.>

"Yeah, and it's going to stay that way," I said. "You can have Marco's
hair."

"Say what?"

<A stalk eye from the Andalite?>

"No. No body parts. We had a deal."

<What if you should be killed?> Guide asked, lowering his whine to an
annoying whimper.

"You want our bodies?" I demanded, shocked, despite the fact that I had
bigger problems to worry about. "If you were doing organ transplants to
save lives, yeah, but just so you can stick us in big pickle jars and
charge admission to see the human freaks? I don't think so."

"I have something to sell," Erek said. "I will create a schematic of my
holographic technology. You can build your own emitters."

This was apparently such a bonanza that Guide stopped whining for
several seconds. He barely managed to say, <Deal!>

Marco rolled his eyes. "You know, Guide is going to own this planet by
the time he's done."

Guide led us to a different level. This time we went up. And this time
we took an elevator.

"Elevators! You have elevators?" Marco raged. "We're traipsing up and
down stairs and you have elevators?"

<The elevators are much less scenic,> Guide

123 said. <What value are memories of the inside of an elevator?>

We emerged several floors above the one where we'd first appeared. It
was just what I needed: narrow walkways between tall residential
buildings with shops on the ground level. Iskoort crammed everywhere.
Iskoort mostly of a new type: Shopper Iskoort.

"My people!" Rachel cried in delight. "At last I have a true homeland!"

"They shop?" I asked Guide. "That's it? They shop?"

<Someone must buy what is created in the great factories and small
craftworks,> Guide said.

"Exactly," Rachel agreed.

<The economy cannot function without people to buy things.>

"Guide, you are finally making sense," Rachel said with great satisfaction.

We went to an empty store at the end of a long, narrow street. The
previous business had moved out, leaving nothing but empty shelves behind.

"Okay. This will do," I said. "Now. How do we get the word to the
Howlers that we're here?"

<l have only to mention it to a member of the News, Gossip, and
Speculation Guild,> Guide said.

124 <This is quite a little lunatic asylum the Ellimist wants us to
save,> Tobias said. <Lego Land meets Dr. Seuss with a population made up
of whining nutbags - no offense, Guide - who think shopping and
gossiping are careers.>

"Hey, don't diss my brothers and sisters of the Shopper Guild," Rachel
said with mock ferocity.

"Okay, let's get this in gear," I said. "Guide? We have the memory players?"

<Yes, of course.>

"Ax? You ready?"

<Yes, Prince Jake,> he said.

"Don't call me Prince. And come here for a minute." I went into an empty
corner with him. "Ax, maybe I'm wrong, but you still seem to be chafing
over that first battle."

<l ran away,> he said simply.

"You came back."

<l ran away,> he repeated harshly.

"You were the only one not in morph. You and Tobias. And he was in the
air, not close to that howling noise. Does it occur to you that maybe
the Howler's howl is specially designed to affect the brains of sentient
creatures? I mean, the physical brain, the gray matter - or whatever
color yours is?"

He shrugged impatiently, a gesture he'd picked up from humans.

125 "Listen, Ax, the Howlers are a biological weapon designed to kill
sentient species. When they were designed, when Crayak was coming up
with that howl, he'd have fine-tuned it to have an especially terrifying
effect on complex, sentient brains. I had a tiger brain and it nearly
destroyed me. You had your own, very smart, very aware, very complex
brain. Exactly what the howl was designed to attack."

Ax didn't accept what I was saying. But he didn't dismiss it totally,
either. He seemed to fidget, like he wished the conversation was over.

I sighed. I'd said all I could say. Ax needed to do something to wipe
away what he saw as a terrible stain.

"Okay, Ax. It's time to get set. But you better remember one thing: Your
job is to get out of this alive. If I'm really your prince, I'll give
you an order: You do not have permission to get yourself killed. No
matter how heroic you think it would be."

126

It took less than an hour.

Tobias, floating high above the narrow streets, saw them burst at a run
from the stairs. They looked around, knowing the floor we were on, but
not the building.

We didn't want them having time to plan. We wanted to use their
blood-lust and rage.

Down the street, seemingly oblivious, walked Ax. Tobias reported the
scene by thought-speak.

<He's almost there. The Howlers are sticking together. Not as cocky as
they were, though. They should spot him any second now. Any second now.>

Then, <What are they, blind? Ax is getting awfully close. The crowd is
blocking their view of

127 him. Too many Iskoort in the way. Oh, man! He's too ... They see
him! Ax-man, run! Run!>

I looked at Cassie and the others. "It's time. I have to do this."

I blocked images of Ax from my mind. Images of him racing, dodging,
weaving through the Iskoort crowds. Images of the Howlers bounding after
him.

Instead, I focused on a different image: the Howler I had acquired. I
formed the image in my mind and I felt the changes begin.

"Rachel," I said, while I was still human, "you know what to do. If I
get out of control, can't control the morph. If I start that howl . . .
you'll have to do it."

Rachel had morphed to grizzly bear. She stood directly behind me. Her
two massive front paws, with claws that could flay the bark off a tree,
lay on my shoulders.

If I lost control of the morph, Rachel would . . . would do what she had
to do. Quickly. Before I could hurt anyone.

As backup, Marco was in gorilla morph. His fist, as big as my head, and
powered by enough muscle to knock a hole in a wall, was cocked a foot
from my face.

<They're on him!> Tobias yelled. <AII six of them. Like hounds after a
rabbit. Man! That boy can run! Ax-man! Opening to your right!>

128 The Howlers could not shoot, not in a crowd of Iskoort. Rules of
engagement. Nor could they use their howls, not without possibly killing
Iskoort.

But if they got close enough to Ax, then would come the flechette guns,
the Dracon beams, and the knives.

I steadied my thoughts. Control. Control.

The morph continued. My skin began to erupt in pustules, blisters that
formed all over my body, then burst and oozed out black glue.

I looked down and saw my stomach pinching, like I was being cut in two.
Like I was morphing an ant or some other segmented insect. Just as the
pinching looked as if it would go all the way and the top of my body
would topple like a chopped tree, long, flexible threads - elastic blood
veins - shot out, connecting the two halves of me, upper and lower.

For a horrible moment I could actually see the white bone of my human
spine. The interlocking vertebrae melted and reformed as thick,
steel-gray cylinders, each able to turn on its base.

Then my center filled in, hiding the spine and the elastic veins and
tendons.

I breathed a sigh of relief. No one needs to see that happening to their
body.

I saw my hands change color, the fingers covered by the black-on-red
pustules, the cooling

129 lava flesh thick and hard. I still had four fingers and a thumb. But
now, from my wrist, the claws grew. Retractable, like a cat's claws.

My legs creaked and groaned as bone thickened and twisted. My ears
melted into my head. My eyes widened, growing larger and flatter.

My senses began to change. The differences were not as severe as many
morphs I've been through. But more complete than I'd expected. I wasn't
seeing just shape and color anymore. I was seeing infrared heat. I was
seeing trails, like the ones your mouse cursor leaves on the cornputer
screen. It allowed me to follow movement and direction more closely.

And then, with a shock, I realized I could see through the outer layers
of skin. I could see faint outlines of Marco's gorilla heart.

Of course. All the better to target vital organs.

The robin's egg blue-in-blue eyes were far beyond human eyes. Beyond
even hawk's eyes. These were target-acquiring eyes.

Suddenly, I felt it bubble up from beneath my own consciousness. I had
expected rage. I had expected out-of-control violent urges. I felt
neither. Instead, I felt. . . indifference.

There was no Howler instinct to slaughter. It wasn't anger. That wasn't
how they were built.

Crayak had been more subtle than that. I had

130 expected the Howler morph to be like morphing some superpredator.
But the morph this reminded me of most was the dolphin.

Howlers were playful.

Howlers were having fun.

<You can let me go,> I told Rachel and Marco.

<Are you sure?>

<Yeah. This thing isn't out of control. It's like ...

And then I felt something I had never felt before. Some strange part of
the Howler brain, like an extra sense. My brain had tapped into a pool
of awareness, of knowledge.

Rapid, dizzying flashes of memory. Horrifying images of slaughter,
violence. Not just the Graf-fen's Children. But species after species.
Planet after planet. I was getting the full, horrific imagery that Erek
had absorbed in a different-way.

But this was worse. This wasn't someone else's memory. This was my own.
It was part of me.

And through it all, the massacre of Graffen's Children, the slaughter of
the Mashtimee, the Ron, the Nostnavay, and yes, the Pemalites, the
Howlers felt no anger, no rage.

But why should they?

<It's a game,> I said.

131 <What is?> Cassie asked. She had morphed to wolf.

<The Howlers. The killing. It's a game to them. They're having fun.
They're enjoying it. Like when dolphin leap into the air just for the
fun of it and play follow the leader, it's a game.>

<They're destroying entire races for fun?>

<Yes. They don't know what they're doing. Cassie . . . they aren't
adults. The Howlers are all children.>

132

<Here they come!> Tobias yelled. <Thirty seconds. If ->

<Children, my butt,> Rachel said. <They're murderers!>

<They're what Crayak made them,> I said. <They have a life span of three
years. They have no mature phase. They don't reproduce; they're grown in
a factory. There are no adult Howlers.>

I looked hard at Erek. <Did you know?>

"Before? No."

<When you absorbed Howler memories, did you realize they are children?>
I demanded.

"They slaughtered my creators," Erek said stonily.

133 <Crowd is thinning out, Ax-man!> Tobias yelled. <They're gonna have
a shot!>

<So what, we let them walk away, just because they're not adults?> Marco
demanded.

<It's not going to be up to us,> I said grimly. <lf the plan works,
Crayak will ->

<It's not just Crayak,> Cassie said. <We're the ones forcing the ->

The sound of flechette guns, in the street outside our door, only a
dozen feet from us.>

<Aaahhhh!> Ax cried in pain.

<He's hit!> Tobias yelled.

"Juveniles or adults, they massacred my creators, they made refugees of
the Chee, they murdered my world," Erek said through gritted teeth.

<No choice, man,> Marco said.

<They don't know,> I said. Was I pleading? What did I think we could do?
It was too late. Them or us. Them or the entire Iskoort race.

But they didn't know what they were doing! They didn't know! My head was
swimming. The Howlers were what someone else had made them. How do you
hate a creature for doing what it has been taught to do?

I had gloated when that Howler fell to its death.

And now no choice! No choice!

<Places,> I ordered. <Get ready.>

134 Marco, Cassie, and Rachel all moved swiftly into place. Erek, too.
Guide stayed close.

WHAM!

The door blew back on its hinges. Ax stumbled, bleeding, into the room.

The first Howler was two seconds behind him. He bounded into the room.

Rachel, Marco, and Cassie hit him, simply barreling into him.

Erek snatched up Guide like the Iskoort was made of feathers. He jumped
to the door. Guide clung to Erek's neck, terrified, as Erek filled the
doorway.

The first Howler kicked with shocking power and sent Rachel stumbling
back. A swipe of his arm, with retractable claws down, ripped red lines
in Cassie's side. She fell. He aimed his flechette gun. Marco hit him
from behind. His aim went wild, ripping a line across the wall and up
onto the ceiling.

The pursuing Howlers stopped abruptly at the doorway. All together they
might dislodge Erek. But Erek was holding Guide.

The rules of engagement! The Howlers could not kill an Iskoort!

The first Howler spun and nailed Marco with a fist. Not till he pulled
back did I realize that fist had held a knife. The handle now protruded
from Marco's stomach. He stared at it, disbelieving.

135 And now the Howler steadied his flechette gun, ready to finish
Rachel off.

"No!" I yelled.

The Howler looked at me and blinked.

"Forget them! This way!" I ordered.

The Howler was trying to clear his head. He recognized me. But he knew I
was dead. Wasn't I?

"Their leader, over here!" I said, desperately hoping against hope he'd
buy it. I took off at a trot.

The Howler followed. I almost collapsed from relief.

I stopped suddenly. The Howler stopped, too, wondering what -

I hit him. Once, twice, three times, each blow aimed with Howler eyes,
each blow directed at weak spots that only another Howler would recognize.

He was down. Barely.

The other Howlers were solving the Erek and Guide problem. They were
burning several new holes in the walls. Guide couldn't be in front of
all of them. In seconds, the Howlers would be inside.

<NOW!> I yelled in thought-speak. But Marco was unable to respond. He
was transfixed, looking at the knife in his stomach.

<Marco! The memory emitter! Now! He's getting up!>

136 It was Ax, bleeding and staggering, who suddenly thrust the small,
shiny device into my hand.

I gave him a nod, took a deep breath, and slapped the probe onto the
Howler's head.

<Time for an education,> I said.

The Howler glared at me with his dead blue eyes. He leaped up. He drew
his Dracon beam weapon. He aimed it... nowhere.

He shuddered. He started again to aim the weapon. Then he shuddered again.

His eyes closed.

I stopped breathing.

Into the Howler's head flowed all the memories of my life. From vague,
early images of my mother's face above my crib, to riding on my dad's
back at some amusement park, to school, to friends, to all that had
happened since we'd taken a shortcut through an abandoned construction site.

All that I remembered of my life was flowing into the Howler's brain.
And the lives of Cassie and Rachel and Marco and Ax and Tobias. And even
Guide. And the long, long memory of the android who called himself Erek.

All that we were emptied into that Howler's head. And from there would
flow into the endless pool of collective Howler memory.

<Is it working?> Cassie wondered.

137 Suddenly, the Howler disappeared. He was simply gone.

The Dracon beams no longer burned against the walls of the room.

Erek stuck his head out through the door. "They're gone," he said.

Marco yanked the knife out of his stomach and began to demorph.

In the time it took him to pull it out, we went from that small Iskoort
room to a very different place.

138

He was huge.

No arms. Arms were irrelevant to him.

He sat on what might have been a throne, or might have been a part of
him, I couldn't tell.

Machine? Creature? Both?

Or something that was neither.

He turned his single, huge, bloodred eye and looked down at me.

I was on my knees. Human again. Hard steel beneath me. Darkness all
around. But I felt a hand touching mine.

The others were with me, too. With me, cowering beneath the seething
evil creature called Crayak.

139 I met his gaze. I closed my eyes, but I could still see him looking
at me. As he had watched me, mocking, in my dreams.

"We meet at last, face-to-face," Crayak said, in a low voice that
vibrated uk through the floor, through the air, a voice so low that it
seemed it would shake my very atoms apart.

I kept my eyes turned away, though it did no good. I wanted to stand,
but I couldn't. I was shaking. My teeth were chattering.

"What? Not so brave now, little Jake?" he mocked. "Look at you, all of
you, cowering! Are you frightened?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I am," I admitted in a weak voice. "But we won."

And then there was a laugh. A laugh that was as powerful as the awesome
dread that flowed from Crayak.

The big red eye snapped up, away from me. I breathed again.

The laughter continued, gathering force, louder and louder and more and
more delighted.

I turned and saw the Ellimist. He was in human guise, looking like a
wise old man. No more his true face than Erek's face was true.

"Humans," the Ellimist said, as if he were introducing us. "Five humans,
an Andalite, a Chee."

140 "It was a mistake allowing the Chee to escape from the doom of their
Pemalite masters," Crayak said.

"The Iskoort will live," the Ellimist said.

The eye showed no expression. "The Iskoort will live."

Then he looked at me. "Sleep well, human," he sneered. "I'll still be
there in your dreams. And someday, when the time is right, you will
suffer for this."

I climbed to my feet, still holding Cassie's hand. I focused my mind on
the Howler. And I began to morph.

No one said anything till I was done. And when I was done, I opened my
Howler mind to the collective memory that linked them all.

I searched for the memories we had played for the Howler. I looked in
the great memory pool for some memory of what had occurred on the
Iskoort planet. Nothing. Some memory of us, of five humans and an
Andalite and a Chee and Guide. But there was nothing.

Crayak had destroyed the six remaining Howlers before those memories
could poison the minds of all Howlers. He'd done what I knew - what I
had hoped - he'd do.

The Howlers had never been defeated. So they believed, but I knew that
wasn't possible.

141 Somewhere, somehow, someone had to have beaten them, at least once.
Perfection was impossible.

So if the collective memory had no trace of defeat, it could only mean
that Crayak had destroyed his defeated Howlers before the memory of
failure could infect them all.

He might have done that many times over the millennia. Always keeping
the Howlers' collective memory from any taint that might weaken their
innocent evil.

He had no choice. A collective memory was very useful for spreading
battle tactics and experience. But it was a weakness, too. Crayak could
not allow his murderous children to learn one simple fact: that their
victims were not part of a game, but real people, with dreams and hopes
and loves.

Crayak had acted quickly. The memories of humans and Andalites, Chee,
and Iskoort had not been allowed to infect the Howler memory. Nothing
had gotten through . . .

No. Not nothing!

Sifting through the collective memory, through the unbroken chain of
horror, I caught a single fugitive image, like a few seconds of film.

Just the picture of Cassie running to me, and our arms and lips and . . .

142 I demorphed back to human. And when I had my own mouth again, I
said, "You were too late, Crayak. Something got through to the Howlers'
collective memory."

"What?" he demanded.

"Love."

143

We were no longer with Crayak. We were back in that weird, n-dimensional
space where inside was outside and nothing made any sense at all.

Still, it was good to be away from Crayak.

Good to be alive.

"You did well," the Ellimist said.

"Did well? Did well?" Marco echoed. "We kicked butt on the meanest gang
in the galaxy, whupped Crayak the Big Nasty, saved the Iskoort, which
I'm still not sure was a good thing, and planted a little sensitivity
time bomb in the Howlers, and that's it? 'Job well done,' and 'Oh, by
the way, here's your insides to look at again as we zip through
inside-out world'?"

144 "What would you like?" the Ellimist asked reasonably.

"I don't know. How about a reward or something?"

"How about telling us what we accomplished, if anything?" I said.

"Yeah," Rachel agreed. "How about that?"

Suddenly, without any warning, we were back in Cassie's barn. Right
where we'd been the instant before the Ellimist had whisked us off to
the Iskoort planet.

"What did you accomplish? No one knows the future. Not for certain. But
it is now more likely than it was before that three hundred years from
now the Yeerks will encounter the Iskoort. They will realize that they
are related. And the Yeerks will see that there is a better way."

<That's it?> Tobias asked. <Three centuries from now? How does that help
us?>

"It doesn't," the Ellimist said. "But within six months Crayak will send
a Howler force to annihilate a race called the Sharf Den. Instead of
slaughtering the Sharf Den, the Howlers will try something different."
The Ellimist winked. "They will attempt to kiss them. Crayak will have
lost his shock troops. And the Sharf Den will . . . well, no one knows
the future for certain. Oh, however, you may be sure that Guide is now a
very, very rich Iskoort."

145 With a laugh of pure pleasure, the Ellimist was gone.

<l really hate when he does that,> Tobias said.

"Okay, that does it, we're never inviting him over again," Marco said.

It was good winning one. A big one.

And that night, when I fell asleep, the eye of Crayak was no longer in
my dreams.

Instead I dreamed about Cassie. But in my dreams I also saw that Howler,
falling and falling beside me. Falling still, as I spread my wings and
split my fate from his.

Marco's always saying you choose how to see the world. That you can look
at what's funny and cool, or you can focus on all the things that aren't.

So I tried to follow Marco's advice. I tried to turn my dreams to Cassie.

But even looking into her eyes, I still saw that doomed Howler falling.

146 Don't miss

Animorphs

#27 The Exposed

I've mentioned that morphs get weird? That things don't happen in some
nice, neat, gradual way? Well, this morph was ridiculous.

I was growing, growing, growing! My skin had turned leathery
graphite-gray. There was a blowhole in the back of my neck. My head was
monstrous and out of proportion.

But the rest of me was still Rachel. I had a head the size of Iowa. And
about an acre of floating blonde hair.

<0h, man!> Marco groaned. <0h, I didn't need to see this! Rachel, you
have pores as big as potholes!>

<This is ridiculous,> Jake complained. <l am tangled in your hair!>

<She's sinking!> Ax said. <Her buoyancy has not adjusted. She has dense
human tissues.>

<l do not,> I said, vaguely offended. But he was right: I was sinking.

147 And if I didn't finish morphing, I was going to drown. Probably sink
to the bottom and float past the Pemalite ship. A big, drowned, female
Gulliver.

That got me back on track. . . .

I bobbed to the surface. My blowhole inhaled. My lungs filled.

I felt the water ripple as the dolphins surged and danced.

I sensed their joy and felt a deep, thousand-generation-old kinship with
my lithe, sleek brethren.

I drew a deep breath, expanding my lungs to their full capacity, and
dove, arching my dorsal hump and flipping my triangular fluke into the air.

I fired off a blast of pulsed clicks and received a "picture" of
everything around me. Like a black-and-white sketch that traced across
my mind and was erased like an Etch-A-Sketch.

I was echolocating. I had natural sonar.

I "saw" the dolphins and they "saw" me.

And then another large creature was moving toward me.

<Rachel, I sure hope that's you,> Tobias called.

Oh. Right.

The whale brain wasn't hard to control.

The thing was, I hadn't even tried.

148 I'd liked the calm confidence. The absence of fear.

<It's definitely me,> I said, rolling and powering my gigantic, muscled
body up, up, up toward dim light like a runaway train.

Another train rushed beside me. We raced to the barrier between sky and sea.

<Yah-HAH!> Tobias shouted as we exploded the barrier and erupted into
the sky. Our massive heads surged into the crisp air, water shimmering
down around us.

<0kay, that was cool,> Jake said.

<l wanna be a sperm whale,> Marco whined.

<l don't think so,> Jake said. <Tick-tock. We need to stay on track here.>

<Just need to suck some air,> I said.

I exhaled, spouting spray and drawing in enough air to last to maximum
dive capacity. Passages in my massive head filled with water and, all
automatically, the waxy deposits of spermaceti cooled the water and sent
me plunging.

Into giant squid territory. I hoped.

Where the atmospheric pressure could squeeze every last molecule of air
from a human body.

<Ready, Rachel?> Tobias asked.

<Ready,> I said, sighing and shivering deep in my soul. The whale might
not be scared. I was.