Текст книги "Animorphs - 05 - The Predator"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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We got to him just in time to hear him say, "I'll have . . . I-yull, lie, have a double latte, too.

Double. Bull. Bull. Latayayay."

"He must have heard someone else say it," I whispered to Jake.

"Caff or decaf?" the clerk asked.

Ax stared. "Caff? Caff caff caff?"

"That will be two ninety-five."

Ax stared some more. "Fi-ive."

Jake reached into his pocket and yanked out the money he'd brought to pay for things at Radio Shack. "Here you go," he said, peeling off three dollars.

I took Ax's arm and guided him to the pickup window. "Ax, don't go off on your own, okay?

We almost lost you."

"Lost? I am here. Hee-yar."

"Yeah, look, just stay close, okay?" I gave Jake a look. "See? It's your fault. You said, 'so far, so good.'"

The Starbucks guy handed Ax a paper cup.

Ax took it. He looked around to see what other people were doing. Like them, he put a lid on his cup.

Then, still mimicking the others, he attempted to drink.

"Um, Ax?" I said. "You have to drink where the little hole is in the lid."

"A hole! In the lid! No spills! Ills!"

This was the coolest thing Ax had ever seen. I guess coffee cup technology hasn't advanced very far on the Andalite home world. Probably be cause they don't have mouths, and so drinking is not a big concern. But whatever the reason, Ax wouldn't shut up about it.

"So simple! Imple. And yet so effective!"

"Yeah, it's a real miracle of human technology," I said.

18 "I have wanted to try other mouth uses. Drink ing. Eating." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Eeee-ting. Ting."

"Just line the little hole up with your mouth," I said. "Come on, there's Radio Shack. We've already lost like ten minutes."

The two of us hemmed Ax in and herded him toward Radio Shack.

Then he drank the coffee.

"Ahhh! Ohhh! Oh, oh, oh, what? What? What is that?!"

"What?" I asked, alarmed. I swiveled my head back and forth, looking for some danger.

"A new sense. It ... I cannot explain it. It is ... it comes from this mouth." He pointed at his mouth. "It happened when I drank this liquid. It was pleasant. Very pleasant."

It took a few seconds for Jake and I to realize what he was talking about. "Oh. Taste! He's tasting it," Jake said. "He doesn't normally have the sense of taste."

"At least he stopped repeating sounds," I muttered.

"Taste," Ax said, contradicting me. "Aste. Tuh-aste."

He drank his coffee and we rushed him to Radio Shack. "Okay, look, Ax, we have very little time. See if the stuff you need is here."

I'll say this for Ax. He may have been a little weird by human standards, but the boy knows his technology. I mean, he went down the pegboards in the back of the store and just started lifting off different components.

"This must be a primitive gairtmof," he said, inspecting a small switch. "And this could be a sort of fleer. Very primitive, but it will work."

In ten minutes' time he'd accumulated a dozen components, ranging from coaxial cable to batteries to things I didn't even recognize.

"Good," he said at last. "All I lack is a Z– Space transponder. Transponder. PONder."

"A what?"

"A Z-Space transponder. It translates the signal into zero space."

I looked at Jake. "Zero space?"

Jake looked back at me and shrugged. "Never heard of it."

Ax looked doubtful. "Zero space," he repeated. "Zeeeero. The opposite of true space. Anti-reality." He looked patiently from one of us to the other. "Zero space, the nondimension where faster-than-light travel is possible. Bull. Possi-bull-uh."

19 "Oh," I said sarcastically. "That zero space. Um, Ax? Sorry to be so primitive and all, but we don't have faster-than-light travel. And I've never heard of zero space."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

"Let's get this stuff and worry about the other thing later," Jake said calmly. But I could tell he was getting slightly hacked off. "I'll go pay for this stuff."

Ax drained the last of his coffee. "Taste," he said. "I would like more taste." He cocked his head. "I smell things. I believe . . . buh-leeve . . . blee . . . bleeve . . . there is a connection between smell and taste."

"Yeah, you're right," I said. "We can't travel faster than light, but we can make a sticky bun that smells pretty good."

"Sticky," Ax said. "Must I carry this?" he asked, indicating his empty coffee cup.

"No, you can just throw it away."

Bad choice of words. Ax threw the coffee cup. He threw it hard. It hit one of the cashiers in the head.

"Hey!"

"Sorry, it was an accident, man," I yelped, rushing to the cashier. "He's . . . he's sick. He, um, has this condition. You know, like out-of-control spasms."

Jake said, "Yeah, it's not his fault. It's like a seizure!"

The clerk rubbed his head. "Okay, forget it. Besides, he's out of here and that's all I care about."

"He's what?"

Jake and I turned fast. But Ax was gone.

Jake grabbed the bag of stuff and raced after me out into the stream of people.

Ax was nowhere to be seen.

But then I looked down at the lower level. There was a crowd of people kind of surging. All moving in the same direction. Like they were running to see something.

"They're heading toward the food court," Jake said.

"Oh, I have a very bad feeling about this," I said.

We ran for the escalator. We shoved down it, yelling "excuse me" every two seconds.

20 We got to the food court. We wormed our way through a crowd of laughing, giggling, pointing people.

And there, all alone – because all the sane people had pulled away – was Ax.

He was racing like some lunatic from table to table, snatching up leftover food and shoving it in his mouth.

As I watched he grabbed a half-eaten slice of pizza.

"Taste!" he yelled as he scarfed a huge bite. He threw the rest of the pizza through the air. It just missed the mall cop who was closing in on him.

Ax couldn't care less. He had found a piece of Cinnabun. "This was the smell!" he cried. He jammed the roll in his mouth. "Ahhh! Ahhh! Taste! Taste! Wonderful! Ful. Ful."

"They do make a good sticky bun," I muttered to Jake.

"We have to get him out of here," Jake hissed.

"Too late. Look! Three more mall cops."

The cops jumped at Ax.

Ax decided it was a good time to throw the rest of the bun away. It hit the nearest cop in the face.

"Ax! Run! Run!" I yelled.

I guess I got through, because Ax ran.

Unfortunately, he couldn't run very well in his two-legged human morph.

So as he ran and stumbled, chased by huffing, puffing mall police, he began to change.

21 Chapter 5

Stop!" a cop yelled. "I am ordering you to halt!"

But Ax wasn't interested in halting. He was panicked.

A woman stepped out of the Body Shop holding a bag full of colorful jars. Ax plowed into her. The bag went flying.

The stalks began to grow out of the top of his head. The extra eyes appeared on the ends and turned backward to watch the people chasing him.

Jake and I were two of those people. We were ahead of the cops, but not by much.

Fortunately, I guess the cops assumed we were just idiots running along for fun.

I could hear one of the cops yelling into his walkie-talkie. "Cut him off at the east entrance!"

Legs began to grow from the chest of Ax's human morph. His own front legs, small at first, but growing rapidly.

He was slowing down as his human legs began to change. The knees were reversing direction. His spine elongated into the beginnings of a tail.

That's when the screaming started.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!"

"What is it? What IS it?"

People were screaming and running and dropping their bags as they caught a glimpse of the nightmare creature Ax had become. Half-human, half-Andalite. A fluid, shifting mess of half-formed features.

I couldn't blame them. I felt like screaming myself.

We were getting near the exit, racing past the shoe repair place.

Suddenly, Ax fell forward, tangled up in his own mutating legs. He skidded down the polished marble floor.

Most of the crowd had been left behind, but the mall police were still with us.

"You kids get out of the way!" one of them yelled at us. "This guy could be dangerous."

Ax sprang up. He was much more sure of himself, now that he was on his four Andalite hooves. The morph was almost entirely complete. His mouth was gone. His extra eyes were in place. His two arms and four legs were fully formed.

Then, at the very last, the tail appeared.

It was then that I heard the nearest mall cop, in an awed, frightened whisper, say, "Andalite!"

22 I quickly turned and looked at him. Only a Controller would recognize an Andalite.

The Controller cop drew his gun from his holster.

"RUN!" I yelled at Ax.

The Controller stood between Ax and the door. Big mistake. The Andalite tail flashed, faster than my eyes could follow. The cop's gun went flying through the air. He clutched at a hand that was red with blood.

Out the door we blew, running for our lives.

Sirens!

"Those are real cops coming," I said. "Not mall rent-a-cops!"

"Where should we go?" Ax demanded, reverting to thought-speak.

"Oh, now he wants advice?!" I looked around frantically. The bus was not going to be an option. The mall cops poured from the glass doors. The city police screamed toward us in their black– and-whites.

All we could do was run. So we ran. Up rows of parked cars. Two kids and a guy who did not belong on this planet.

"The grocery store!" Jake yelled.

"What?" I gasped. I was getting tired.

"In there!" he pointed. It was the grocery store across the parking lot. It was the only way we could go.

Police cars screeched to a halt all around us.

"Freeze!"

"I don't think so," I said.

We jetted through the big glass doors of the supermarket at a full, panicked run. I halfway expected to hear guns firing and bullets whizzing.

"Jake!" I yelled. "Help me here!" I had an idea for slowing down our pursuers. I grabbed a big row of parked grocery carts and shoved them back toward the doors. Jake grabbed on and helped.

Then we were off and running again, with Ax skittering shakily on the slippery floor and banging into groceries. Cans of olives and tomatoes crashed behind him.

Customers screamed and crashed their carts into each other.

"It's a monster! Mommy, it's a monster!" some little kid yelled.

23 "It's just a pretend monster," his mother said.

Yeah. A pretend monster. Right.

Then I saw our way out. It was at the end of the aisle. But I needed some time. I needed to get everyone out of our way. We couldn't have witnesses.

"There's a bomb!" I screamed, at the top of my lungs. "BOMB!"

"What?" Jake demanded.

"There's a bomb! A bomb in the store! Run! Run! Everyone out! A BOMB!"

"What are you doing?!" Jake yelled.

"The cops have the place surrounded. There's only one way out," I snapped. I pointed.

I pointed at the live lobster tank at the end of the aisle by the seafood counter.

"Oh, no," Jake groaned.

"Oh, yes." I grinned.

The shoppers were running in panic, either from the supposed bomb or just from Ax. But the baskets in the doorway and the people shoving to escape slowed the cops down for a precious few moments.

I had a feeling the Controller cops were making sure that no real cops came in after us. They wanted us for themselves. With no human witnesses.

"Let's go for a swim," I said.

It was a big lobster tank, fortunately. I hoisted myself up the side and climbed in. Jake was right behind me. We each grabbed a lobster and threw one to Ax.

It was not easy "acquiring" the lobster. It took concentration. And all I could think was that there were an awful lot of cops outside the store, probably getting ready to rush in. And they would all have guns.

The lobster went limp and passive, the way animals do when you acquire them.

I dropped him back in the water. We stripped off our outer clothes and shoes and stuffed them, along with the Radio Shack bag, in a trash can.

Ax had already begun to morph. Jake and I waited till he had shrunk a little and then hauled him into the tank with us.

He was already hard, like armor, and his arms had begun to split open and swell.

Then I began the morph.

24 I've been afraid a lot since we became Animorphs. But I have not gotten used to it. And I can tell you, I was so scared my bones were rattling.

At any second they were going to rush in.

At any moment they were going to catch us half-morphed.

I looked over at Jake. His eyes were gone, re placed by little black BBs.

"Ewww."

As I watched, eight spindly, blue, insectlike legs erupted from his chest.

"Aaaaahhh!" I yelped in shock.

Jake's face seemed to open up, to split open into a complex mess of valves. I think I would have thrown up, seeing that. Except that I, also, no longer had a mouth.

At that very moment, I felt antennae explode from my forehead like impossibly long spears.

I was shrinking as I morphed, falling, falling, falling down into the water which had been around my thighs and was now around my neck.

I had the terrifying sensation of knowing that all the bones inside my body were dissolving, as a hard, fingernail-like crust covered me all over.

My human body was melting away.

My human vision was fading. I could no longer see the way a human sees.

Which was a good thing. Because I really did not want to see what I was becoming.

I think I might have just started screaming and never stopped. But I no longer had a mouth, or throat, or vocal cords capable of making sounds.

I had four sets of legs. I had two huge pincers. I could see them, kind of. They were a fractured image in my lobster eyes. I couldn't see much of the rest of me. But I could see other lobsters in the water.

I was very frightened.

Eat.

Eat.

Kill and eat.

The lobster brain surfaced suddenly, bubbling up within my human awareness. It had two thoughts.

25 Eat.

Eat.

Kill and eat.

I was getting input from senses I couldn't begin to understand. My extraordinarily long anten nae felt water temperature, and water current, and vibration. But I didn't know what any of it meant.

My eyes were almost useless at first. They showed fractured, incredible images, with none of the colors I knew.

I could see my pincers out in front of me. I could see my antennae. And behind me I could see a curved, brownish-blue surface, with humps and bumps on it.

My body! I realized with a sickening sensa tion. That was my back. My hard shell.

I could not look down and see my belly, or the hairy swimmerets scurrying away, back beneath my tail. I could not see my eight spiderlike legs, but I could feel as they propelled me suddenly, scrabbling along the glass bottom of the tank.

"Jake?" I called out.

"Yeah. I'm here," he said. He sounded shaky. Which was fine, because I was on the verge of crying. If lobsters could cry.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. This is not my favorite morph, though."

"No," I agreed. It was good being able to talk to him. I mean, you'd think you were losing your mind otherwise.

"Ax?" Jake called.

"I...I feel. ... I am hungry. This animal wants to eat," Ax answered.

"Yeah, well, that's pretty normal for morphs," I said. "Most animals care about food and not much else. I don't think lobsters are exactly geniuses^ "It wants to find prey," Ax said wonderingly.

"I know. Who'd have figured lobsters were predators?" I said.

"It's easier to deal with a predator brain than with prey. That prey fear can be overwhelming," Jake said.

I saw a lobster close by. "Is that you, Jake? Wiggle your left pincer." 26 The left pincer did not move. I realized this lobster had a rubber band around his pincer.

None of us had rubber bands. Rubber bands were not a part of the lobster DNA.

I saw a lobster to my left, unbanded. And another behind him. That was the three of us. There were half a dozen rubber-banded lobsters floating or just sitting.

"Speaking of fear," I said. "Can anyone see out of the tank ?"

"Just shadows," Jake said. "These are pathetic eyes."

"Yes, even worse than your human eyes," Ax commented.

"This is really creepy," I said. "I've never had an exoskeleton before."

"These pincers are most excellent, though," Ax said.

I saw him opening and closing them.

"Ax?" Jake said. "You say you can keep track of time accurately? Start tracking."

"Yes, Prince Jake," Ax said. "So far, ten of your minutes have passed."

"That much?" I was surprised. "Ten minutes? The cops must have come in by now."

"l was thinking the same thing," Jake said.

"We better wait as long as we can. Close to the full two hours," I said. "Although I really don't want to spend any more time than I have to in this creepy morph." 27 Chapter 6

According to Ax, an hour had passed when it happened.

I felt a strange disturbance in the water. Something large had splashed in. I sensed something above me.

Before I could think or react, I felt pressure on my shell.

I was rising rapidly through the water, being lifted.

"Jake! Something has me!"

Sudden shock!

I was out of the water.

Dryness. Heat. My antennae waved wildly as I tried to understand. My eyes registered nothing but bright light and huge, indistinct shadows.

Something large closed my right pincer forcibly. I could not open it. Then my left.

Rubber bands! I couldn't see them in this waterless environment. I was nearly blind. But I knew what had happened.

Someone had picked me up and rubber-banded my pincers.

Then I was tumbling, sliding, rubbing against things I could tell were other lobsters.

"Jake! Are you in this, too?"

"Yeah, but don't ask me what it means. I can't see or hear very well."

"Is it them? Is it Controllers?"

Something very cold dropped on me and slithered around my body.

Ice?

I felt a sensation of swinging back and forth for a while, like being on a swing.

"Ax?"

"Yes, Marco. I am here, too. What is happening?"

"You got me," I said. "Maybe the cops have us. Maybe the Controllers have us. I don't know."

"Let's stay in morph as long as we can," Jake said. "Maybe we'll figure it out. But if the Controllers have us, the last thing we want to do is demorph." The ice seemed to be making me sleepy. Or not exactly sleepy, just slow. Sluggish.

28 I guess I kind of zoned out for a while. I didn't know for how long, until I became suddenly alert and heard Ax's drowsy voice in my head saying, "We have only seven minutes left." That jolted me. I was not about to spend the rest of my life trapped as a lobster.

"Okay, I am out of this morph, I don't care who sees," I yelled.

"Agreed," Jake said. "Time's up. We have to take our chances."

"At least it's warmer now," I said. I tried to look around, but my antennae felt nothing in the air. And my eyes only saw meaningless, blurry gray forms.

I focused on demorphing. I wondered if I could close my human eyes when Jake started to reappear. I really did not want to watch Jake and Ax demorph. Once had been enough. I would already have nightmares for a month.

"Here goes," I said. I began the change.

But just then I again felt the sensation of pressure on my shell. My pincers came free.

Someone, or something, had removed the rubber bands.

And suddenly I felt a warmth billowing up around me.

Steam.

"Oh, no."

53 "MOOOOOO!" I screamed silently.

I knew where I was! I was in someone's hand, about to be dropped into a pot of boiling water.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

And maybe it was because I was so desperate to scream, or maybe it was just the luck of the morph, but my human mouth was one of the first things to emerge.

Small, open lips appeared in place of my lob ster mouth.

I didn't have normal lungs or vocal cords yet, so I couldn't make a sound.

But I guess I didn't have to.

I guess suddenly having lips appear on a lobster was enough to make the woman drop me.

I fell. My front pincers caught the edge of the pan. Sheer dumb luck. I hung onto the edge of the pan as my tail curled up, inches above the boiling water in the pot.

29 I grew rapidly, becoming a baby-sized creature half-covered with hard cuticle, half flesh.

Human eyes grew in place of the useless stalk eyes. The antennae sucked back into my forehead. I heard a grinding sound as my spine reappeared inside me.

With a desperate surge of energy, I tumbled over the side of the pan and landed flat on my shell back, atop the stove. I was looking up into a stove hood.

I rolled away from the heat and fell.

But the fall wasn't far, because I was now the size of a toddler, more human than lobster. I was one nasty-looking kid, though, with eight legs growing from my stomach and chest.

My human hearing returned with shocking effect.

"Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh!"

Someone was screaming uncontrollably.

My legs were back! I stood up. I looked around and saw a woman. Sort of pretty, except for the fact that her eyes were wide with terror and she was screaming.

"Ahhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhh!"

I glanced over and saw the plastic bag filled with ice. That's how she had carried us from the supermarket. Now we were in her kitchen. Jake was already mostly human, standing with one foot still in the grocery bag. The eight legs sucked into his chest. His human eyes appeared.

Ax was a truly disgusting combination of Andalite and lobster. But as I watched, he eliminated the last traces of crustacean.

Unfortunately, this did not make the woman feel any better.

"Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhh!"

"It's okay, ma'am," I said. "We're not going to hurt you."

"Calm down, ma'am," Jake said. "Please calm down."

Her eyes darted wildly from me to Jake to Ax. She kept screaming.

"Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh!"

"Look, it's okay," I said. "We're going to leave. No one is going to hurt you."

"You . . . you . . . you . . . you . . . lobsters!" she managed to say.

"Yeah, it is slightly weird, I'll admit," I said. "But it's okay. It's just a dream."

"A ... a ... a dream?"

30 "Yes, ma'am. Just a dream," Jake said reassuringly.

I looked at Ax. "Can you morph to human yet? We need to get out of here."

"I can morph again," he assured me. And he started right away.

"We're going to leave now," Jake said. "You can wake up later, okay? But I wouldn't tell any one about this dream."

The woman shook her head violently.

"See, it could get you in trouble with . . . with certain people. Besides, folks would just think you're crazy."

She nodded with extreme conviction.

Ax was almost human. We were all dressed in our slightly ridiculous morphing outfits, but they would have to do.

We headed for the door. Then I caught sight of three more lobsters, still in the bag of ice. I guess it was supposed to be a dinner for six.

"Ma'am?" I asked. "Do us a favor, would you, please? Take those other guys down to the beach and let them go. Okay?"

31 Chapter 7

Jake and I were playing video games at the mall. I was kicking his butt. He was distracted because he was eating.

He was eating a big red bug with huge pincers.

I told him not to eat it. It would upset his stomach. But he just ignored me.

Then, suddenly, his stomach exploded. It just exploded outward, guts flying everywhere.

Eight huge spider legs appeared, like something in him was trying to crawl out.

I tried to get away, but the steam was rising. I was burning up!

I tried to run, but my legs were gone, replaced by a tail that jerked and kicked.

I screamed.

And screamed.

"Marco, Marco, wake up!"

My eyes opened very suddenly. Darkness. Someone holding onto me. I was confused.

"Mom?" I asked.

Silence. Then, "No."

My brain snapped back into reality. I was in my room. In my own bed. My dad was sitting on the side of the bed. He looked concerned and sad.

"It's just me," he said. He let go of my shoulders.

I felt sweaty all over. Cold sweat.

"I guess you had a nightmare," my father said.

"Yeah," I said shakily. "Sorry I woke you up."

"I wasn't asleep," he said.

I glanced at my clock. The red numbers showed 3:18 a.m. I didn't have to ask why my dad was awake. He often sat awake late into the night. Sometimes watching TV. Sometimes just staring into space.

He'd been that way since my mom died.

My dad looks very different from me. For one thing, he's pretty tall. He's paler than me, too, and has light brown eyes. My mom was Hispanic, very dark hair and eyes. Everyone says I look like her. I know it's true, because sometimes when he's thinking about her, my dad will just glaze over and stare at me like I'm not even there. Like I'm a picture of someone else.

32 "I'm okay now," I said. "You should try to get some sleep."

He nodded. "Yeah. I'll do that. Look, Marco, you weren't dreaming about her, were you?"

"No, Dad. Why?"

"Because the first thing you said when you woke up was 'Mom.'"

"I guess I was confused."

"Do you ever? Dream about her, I mean?"

"Sometimes," I admitted. "But they aren't nightmares."

He almost smiled. "No. I guess they wouldn't be, would they?" He picked up the little framed picture of my mom that I keep on my nightstand. Then he got that twisted look of sick grief I had seen on his face every day for the last two years.

Part of me is mad when I see him that way. Part of me just wants to say, "Dad, get it together.

Let her go. She's dead. She doesn't want us spending the rest of our lives mourning."

But I never do say that.

After a few minutes, he got up. He made some last remark about how I shouldn't be worried about bogeymen, and left. I knew he would sit out in the living room alone, and eventually fall asleep in his chair.

I lay there in the dark and tried to get the dream out of my head. But it's hard to forget a nightmare that's true.

"There. It is finished." Ax held up a small mess of electronic components for all of us to see.

It looked sort of like an exploded remote control, but smaller.

It was the next day. We were out in the woods, grouped together beneath a huge old oak tree.

It was like a strange sort of picnic. Jake and Cassie had each brought hand tools for Ax to use – screwdrivers, a solder gun, a battery-powered drill, a hammer, wrenches, pliers and, of course we had the electronic parts we had stashed in the trash before the lobster incident.

Rachel had brought sandwiches. I'd brought a six-pack of Pepsi.

It was a nice day, sunny and warm. I needed a nice day. I needed sunlight. I'd had a bad night, with too little sleep.

"So, Ax," I said. "What is it?"

"It is a distress beacon that can broadcast on Yeerk frequencies," he said with satisfaction. "l know this is a Yeerk frequency. We have used it to trick them before. To send false instructions."

"All it needs is a Z-Space transponder," Jake said wearily, rolling his eyes at me.

33 I think Jake may have been a bit ragged out by the lobster incident, too. He seemed snappish and kind of unfocused. Not at all Jake-like.

"And since we can't get a Z-Space transponder, it's basically useless, right?" Rachel asked.

"Yes. Totally useless without the transponder."

Rachel threw up her hands. "Then what exactly are we doing?"

Jake just shrugged. Cassie sidled up next to him and gave him a small little sideways hug. No one was supposed to notice. But right away Jake's harsh look mellowed a little.

That wasn't doing anything for my bad mood, though. "Well, I'm guessing that in about two centuries or so, humans will discover zero space and make transponders. Whatever they are.

But in the meantime, I'm going to have a sandwich."

Tobias came drifting down through the branches and leaves of the tree, almost silent. He landed on a low branch of the oak. "No one anywhere near here," he reported. "Looks safe.

At least as far as you guys are concerned. But there's a golden eagle about a quarter-mile south. I think I'll stay out of sight for a while and hope he goes away." Not for the first time, I realized how tough Tobias's life is. He shares all the same dangers we do, but he also has all the dangers that come from being a red-tail hawk. Golden eagles sometimes prey on hawks. They are bigger and faster than he is.

"So. What's up?" Tobias asked.

"We have a completely useless distress beacon," Rachel said. "We need a transponder that probably won't be invented on this planet for a century or two."

"How about Chapman?" Tobias said.

"What about Chapman?" I asked. Chapman is the assistant principal at our school. He's also one of the most important Controllers.

I used to hate Chapman. I mean, once I knew that he was a Controller and all. But then we learned that he surrendered his freedom to the Yeerks as part of a deal to keep his daughter, Melissa, safe.

It's hard to hate someone for protecting their kid. Even if he or she ended up being a deadly enemy. That's one of the terrible things about fighting the Yeerks. The real enemy is just the evil slug in a person's brain. The host is often to tally innocent.

"We know that Chapman communicates with Visser Three," Tobias said. "He talks to Visser Three on the Yeerk mother ship, or on the Blade ship. Wherever Visser Three is. Doesn't that mean that Chapman's secret radio thing must have one of these Z-Space transponders?"

"Yes!" Ax said instantly. "If this Controller speaks to any Yeerk ship, he would have to have a Z-Space transponder. The Yeerk ships are all cloaked. Cloaking technology requires a Z-Space deflection."

34 Jake caught my eye. "That's pretty much what I figured."

I smiled, despite the fact that I had a bad feeling about the way this conversation was go ing.

"How big is a Z-Space thingie?" Cassie asked.

Ax held two of his fingers close together, indicating something the size of a pea. "There would be several redundant units in any transmitter. We could take one without it being noticed. At least not right away."

Rachel stood. "We are not going into Chapman's house again," she said firmly. "The last time we did, we almost got Melissa made into a Controller. We cannot morph her cat again.

Chapman is on guard now. It won't be easy this time." She realized what she'd said and added, "Not that it was exactly easy the first time."

"A historic first," I observed. "Rachel saying 'no' to a mission."

"Rachel's right," Jake said. "We do nothing that will endanger Melissa again. So the cat is out. Also any other plan that means major risk that Chapman will discover us."

For a while no one said anything.

Finally Ax spoke silently in our heads. "I can not ask anyone to take risks for me. You rescued me from the bottom of the ocean. You sheltered me. And my foolishness almost got Prince Jake and Marco killed yesterday."

What he said surprised me a little. I guess I'd expected him to argue that we should try and help him.