Текст книги "Animorphs - 04 - The Message"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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"I have a more important question," Rachel said. "How do we know when we're there? You know, our destination."

Jake made a "who knows?" face. "I figure this ship is going like, what, twenty miles per hour? Figure an hour, and that puts us twenty miles out, right?"

Rachel pointed a finger at her forehead and said, "Jake's a total mathematical genius. One hour at twenty miles per hour. Right away he figures out that's twenty miles."

Jake laughed. "That's about all the math I can do."

"Actually, we're moving about eighteen miles per hour," Tobias said.

We all just stared at him.

"I fly along the roads sometimes and watch the car speedometers. So I have a pretty good idea how fast I'm flying. When we were flying alongside the ship, I clocked it."

"Okay, eighteen miles an hour, more or less, straight south," Marco considered. "That would put us within a couple of miles of where Cassie thinks we should go."

I winced. Every time anyone said something about me deciding where to go or what to do, it made me nervous.

"I'd better head back," Tobias said regret fully. "l don't want to try and fly eighteen miles back without a rest. And if I stay on this ship I'll end up in Singapore."

"Singapore?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah. I read the captain's log as we were flying alongside. That's where they're heading." Tobias flew off, leaving us the little watch.

It was extremely dull waiting for an hour, with nothing to do but try and guess what was in the big containers all around us. On the other hand, we knew what we had to do next would definitely not be boring.

So basically, we were happy to just be bored for a while, huddling together to stay warm in the whipping ocean breeze.

51 Chapter 16

After a long time, Jake checked the watch. "It's been about an hour. Cassie? What do you think?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I ... I guess I was hoping that when I was back in dolphin morph I would be able to make sense of more of the details the whale communicated to me. It was mostly images. And some of the images were about sounds and currents and water temperatures, and stuff you can't see from the surface."

Jake thought for a moment. "Oh, well, now is as good as any time, I guess. Let's head for the side."

We stood up, uncramping our cold, stiff legs and arms. We moved along the row of containers toward the left side of the ship. The port side, as they say.

We reached the side. There was a solid steel railing that ran all around, about waist high. Jake checked to see if we would be in view of the bridge, and we headed forward a little more to a blind spot where no one should see us.

The four of us leaned over the rail and looked down at the water. It looked like it was a million miles below.

Marco whistled. "Man. That is some high dive."

"No big deal for a seagull or a dolphin, but a mighty long way for a human," I agreed.

"We can't morph up here. We'd never get our dolphin bodies over the side," Rachel pointed out.

"Nope," Jake agreed. "We have to jump in with our human bodies. All except Marco. He can't swim. I thought he could morph up here, and then we could all shove him over the side.

"

Rachel looked skeptical. "Jake? When Marco is in dolphin morph, he'll weigh like four hundred pounds."

Jake looked worried. "I kind of didn't think about this when I was planning."

I had a sinking feeling. The plan was falling apart before it had even begun.

"I'll lean against the railing," Marco suggested. "I'll start morphing, then, before I lose my legs, you guys help shove me over. I'll finish morphing within a few seconds of hitting the water."

"Unless the water knocks you out and you just sink," I said flatly. "Forget it. Forget it. Let's just morph back to seagulls and fly back home. This is insane."

"Insane?" Marco echoed. "Hey, that's my word. Look, we came this far."

52 "I don't care!" I yelled, surprised at my own passion. "I'm not going to be responsible for any one dying! This isn't going to work. I don't know where I am. I don't know where we're going. I don't know what to do!"

Marco laughed. "Excellent pep talk, Cassie. Now I'm really looking forward to this."

I was going to yell at him, something like, "Look, Marco, this is not a joke." But when I looked at him, I saw that his face was bulging way out, forming a long, grinning beak.

He had already started to morph.

"I'm nock koink to ..." he started to say. But his mouth no longer worked.

He was growing larger, straining his weak human legs with his weight. His arms were flattening into flippers.

"Now!" Jake said. He grabbed Marco's flipper arm. Rachel and I jumped forward and seized his legs just as they began to shrivel.

"Heave!" Jake yelled.

Marco, half human, half dolphin, tumbled backward over the railing and fell into the sea.

"Let's go," Jake said.

"Yee-hah!" Rachel said with a wild grin. She jumped up on the railing, balanced for a moment like the gymnast she was, then launched herself off in a neat swan dive.

Jake and I exchanged a glance.

"Rachel," he said, and rolled his eyes.

"She's yourcousin," I pointed out.

"On the count of three. One, two . . ."

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" I climbed over the rail ing and launched myself as far from the steel wall of the ship as I could.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhhh!"

I fell for what seemed like a very long time.

PAH-LOOOOSH!

I hit the water feet first and plowed beneath the surface in a pillar of bubbles.

The cold shocked me. The water was like ice. And just a few feet away was the intimidating steel wall of the tanker, sliding past at what felt like incredible speed.

53 I kicked my feet and began to rise to the sur face. I've been a swimmer since I was little, but it frightened me, being this far out in water this deep. This wasn't a pool or a pond. This was the ocean. Twenty miles from land.

I broke the surface and gasped a lungful of air and a mouthful of saltwater. What had looked like a little choppiness from up in the ship felt like towering waves down here. I couldn't see any of the others. All I could see was the side of the ship.

Come on, Cassie, I told myself, morph. Do it. This is no place for a person.

There is just about nothing as helpless as a human being in the ocean. Without my ability to morph I would not have lasted an hour.

I felt the change begin as I focused on morphing. At first, I thought it would kill me. I soon had most of the weight of a dolphin, with nothing but my human feet paddling to keep my head above water. My arms had already become flippers.

A wave washed over me, leaving me sputtering from my mouth and my blowhole at the same time.

I realized I could no longer keep my head above water. I took a deep lungful and let myself sink.

As my eyes went from human to dolphin, my underwater vision improved. I could see other figures kicking and writhing in the water around me. Jake, half-changed. Rachel, almost cornplete. Marco, with a dolphin grin, looking amused.

Then, with a kick of my newly completed tail, I knew I was safe. I had made the change. I was a dolphin in a dolphin's world. The human clumsiness, the human cold, the human fear of an alien environment, all evaporated.

I was warm and in control and right where I should be.

"Everyone okay?"

One by one they answered. We had made it. Too bad this was just the easy part of the mission.

"Well, that was fun," Marco said sardonically. "Let's never, ever do it again."

"Cassie?" Jake prodded me.

I tried to relax, to let my human mind recede just a little. I needed to listen to the dolphin instincts. I needed to understand the whale's in structions. Something no human could ever do.

"Not far," I said. "We're just a few . . . urn . . . Forget it, there's no word for it. Just believe me, we're close."

"After you, Cassie," Jake said.

54 It felt strange, taking the lead. But only I knew the way. We traveled near the surface for a while. This made it confusing for me, because whales go deeper, and the world the whale saw and knew was a deeper world than I, as a dolphin, experienced.

And yet, I knew I was going in the right direction. My echolocating clicks painted murky, half– understood pictures in my mind of underwater hills and valleys and rifts. I felt currents tugging at me. I sensed changes in water temperature.

In the end, I just knew.

" Okay , everyone, get a good lungful," I said.

We surfaced, blew out the stale air, and filled our lungs with the good clean ocean air.

"Hey. What's that?" It was Rachel.

"What?" I asked her.

"Over there. It's a helicopter."

We all watched as a helicopter flew low and very slowly over the water. It was just a few hundred yards away, and with our dolphin vision, we couldn't see it as well as we might have with our human eyes.

But as it flew closer, I could see that it was dragging a cable through the water.

"Some sort of sensor," Jake speculated.

"They're looking for something in the water," Marco agreed.

" It's them," I said.

No one argued. We all knew it was true. Controllers were flying that helicopter.

The Yeerks were here.

55 Chapter 17

"Everyone take in as much air as you can," I said again. "We're going deep." We dove and swam almost straight down. Down, down, leaving the bright barrier behind.

Away from the sun. Away from the light. Away from the air that we needed just as much as humans did.

I echolocated a school of fish ahead, just below us. But we weren't there to eat lunch. We swam through the fish and still we headed down. Down until we could see the ocean floor beneath us.

We leveled off and skimmed across the ocean floor, like low-flying jets racing at treetop level. Over waving fields of seaweed. Through darting schools of fish. Over jutting extrusions, of rock, encrusted by barnacles and home to a thousand bizarre crabs and lobsters and urchins and worms and snails.

Ahead was a ridge, a sort of long, low hill. We sailed over it.

" I'm starting to feel like maybe taking a breath would be a good thing," Rachel said. "How much farther – "

We all saw it at the same time.

Saw it, yes, but could hardly believe it.

I've become used to seeing impossible things – aliens, spaceships, my own friends turning into animals. But this was just plain mind-boggling.

It was round. As round as a plate. A very large plate. From one side to the other, the diameter must have been half a mile.

It was covered by a transparent dome. Clear glass, or whatever it is the Andalites use for glass.

And within the dome, protected from the crushing force of the water, was what looked very much like a park.

A park, in a plastic dome, at the bottom of the ocean.

There was grass, more blue than green, but it still looked like grass. There were trees like huge stems of broccoli. And other trees like orange and blue asparagus spears. At the center was a small lake, crystal-clear blue water. From the water grew fantastic, transparent green crystals in shapes like eccentric snowflakes.

"Whoa," Marco said.

"Man," Jake commented.

"I s this what you expected, Cassie?" Rachel asked me.

"I ... I had dreams ... I saw flashes of something . . . but this! This is unbelievable." 56 "l think that may be a hatch down there," Marco said. "You see the part that sticks out?"

"Let's try it," Jake said. "l can't hold my breath much longer." We arced down toward a part of the glass dome that seemed different from the rest. As we got closer, we could really begin to feel the size of the dome. It was like approaching one of those huge stadiums where they play football. But even bigger, if you can imagine that.

"It is a hatch," Rachel reported. She was a little ahead of the rest of us. " It's some kind of a glass door. On the other side there's a little room, then another door that leads into the dome.

There's a little red panel beside the outer door."

"Let's either try it or surface," Marco said urgently.

"That red panel. That's got to be the door-knob," Jake said. "Here goes. Let's hope this works." He pressed his beak against the panel.

Instantly the outer door opened.

"We should try this one at a time, see if it's safe," Marco said.

"Not enough time," I said. My lungs were burning. I needed air.

The four of us swam in through the outer door. There was a second red panel. I punched it with my beak and the door closed, sealing us into a small, glass room. We could see out and up into the ocean all around. But the side leading into the dome was opaque.

"l knew we'd end up in an aquarium sooner or later," Marco said.

The water began to drain from the room, slowly, a little at a time. This opened an area of air at the top of the enclosure. I raised my blow hole and sucked in blessed oxygen.

" Okay , let's morph," Jake said.

I had already started. By the time the enclosure was half drained, I could stand on my own human feet.

"We made it," Marco said after his human mouth reformed. "I don't know where we made it to, but we made it."

The enclosure was empty now. The four of us stood there barefoot, dressed only in our soggy morphing outfits. There was one last red panel beside the door leading into the dome.

"Ready?" Jake asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Marco said.

Jake pressed it with his hand.

The door slid open. I felt a wave of warm, incredibly fragrant air rush in.

57 I caught a glimpse of. . .

Then a brilliant flash of light. . .

And suddenly I was unconscious.

58 Chapter 18

I opened my eyes. I was staring straight up. I was on my back. Above me I could see the ocean all around. High overhead, fish swam by, sparkling. Higher still I could see the bright bar rier between sea and sky. But it was very far away.

I rolled my head to the side. Jake was beside me, still unconscious. There was blue grass under my head. I looked the other way.

"Yaaaahh!"

"Do not move. I stunned you to see what you are. But if you move, I will destroy you." He stood on four delicate hooves, looking, at first glance, like a pale blue and tan deer or antelope. But he had a strong upper body, like a mythical centaur, with two small arms and many-fingered hands. His face was almost triangular, built around two huge, almond-shaped eyes. There was a small vertical slit where his nose should have been, and nothing where his mouth should have been.

From atop his head rose twin horns. Only they were not horns. They each ended in an eye and turned this way and that, independent of his main eyes.

He seemed gentle, quizzical, almost delicate. Until you noticed the tail. The tail was like a scorpion's. It was thick, powerful, and ended in a wicked scythe blade that literally glittered along its razor-sharp edges.

I knew what he was. There is no mistaking an Andalite when you see one.

And there was no question about what he was holding in his hand, either. It looked a lot like a Yeerk Dracon beam.

He was pointing it at me.

The others were waking up all around me.

"What the ... Oh," Marco said. "Please tell me that's a real Andalite and not Visser Three."

Suddenly, without warning, the Andalite's tail arched forward. The blade stopped inches from Marco's face.

"Visser Three! Do not speak that name!" the Andalite thought-spoke.

"O -o-o-o-kay," Marco said slowly. "Whatever you want."

"We are friends," I said.

"l don't know you," the Andalite said. But he withdrew his tail and Marco started breathing again.

"You called me," I said. "We've come to help you."

"Called? You heard my call?" He fixed all four of his eyes on me. "What are you?" 59 "Human. A person of Earth."

"l have seen images of your kind. My call was to my cousins. How did you hear it?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I heard it in my dreams. So did a friend of mine. We guessed it was an Andalite. We wanted to help."

"What do you know of Andalites? My people are not known to humans. You do not travel the stars. You know only your own planet. My elder cousins have taught me this."

"We knew one Andalite. We were with him when . . . when he was killed."

The Andalite narrowed his main eyes. "Who was this Andalite you say was killed?" I searched my memory for his name. He had told us, but it was a strange, long name. "I can't remember all of his name. But part of it was Prince Elfangor."

The Andalite jerked as if he'd been hit. His entire body seemed to quiver. His deadly tail arched high in the air.

"Prince Elfangor? No one could kill Elfangor. He is the greatest warrior ever. No one could kill him!"

"Someone did," Jake said. "We were there."

"Who? Who do you claim killed Elfangor?"

"The one whose name you don't want us to speak," I said softly.

The Andalite held his head high, but his tail sagged and dragged down to the grass. He lowered his weapon. "He was my brother. Did . . . did he die well? In battle?" Jake answered. "He died protecting us, and defying the Yeerks to the end. At the very last moment he struck with every weapon he had."

The Andalite closed his main eyes for a brief moment. "My brother was a great warrior. His cousins loved him. His enemies feared him. No more can be said of any Andalite warrior." I was surprised by what Jake said next. "I've lost a brother, too. He's one of them. A Controller."

The Andalite opened his eyes. "And you, human. Do you serve the Yeerks or fight them?"

"I fight them. We fight them."

"With what weapons? Do you have powerful weapons?"

"Only the weapon your brother gave us," I said. "The power to morph."

60 "Elfangor gave you that? It is never done!" He seemed disturbed. "The situation would have to be very bad for him to give you morphing capability"

"The situation is worse than you think," Marco said. "The Yeerks seem to know you're here.

Some piece of Andalite wreckage washed up on shore. They are up on the surface right now."

For the first time the Andalite seemed uncertain. "What is your plan?"

"To get you out of here and hide you," I said.

"You came only to rescue me? This is true?"

"Yes."

He smiled with his eyes, just as Prince Elfangor had done. "You will be tired after this last morph. You will need to rest."

"A little while, yes," I agreed.

"What is this?" Rachel asked. "This dome, I mean. It's like a park or something."

"This is the main part of an Andalite dome ship. It is where we live. The engines and the war bridge are in a long section that sticks out from the bottom, with this dome perched on top."

"Like a mushroom. Or an umbrella," I suggested.

The Andalite just looked blank.

"Never mind," I said.

"During the great battle in orbit over your planet, the dome was separated from the rest of the ship."

"Why?"

The Andalite dug at the grass with his fore– hoof. " I...I was too young for battle, by the laws of our people. Besides, the rest of the ship maneuvers better without the dome."

"You're a kid? I mean, like a young person?" Marco asked.

"Yes."

"Are you the only one left? The only Andalite here?"

"Yes. I am alone. When the Blade ship appeared unexpectedly, they caught us off guard. I saw the main section burn. Dracon beams damaged the orbital stabilization of this dome. It fell. It splashed into the ocean and sank to the bottom. I have been here for these many weeks, hoping that my cousins would come for me. Hoping that some survived. Finally I risked sending out a mirrorwave call. It works by . . ." He stopped, and looked embarrassed.

"l am not supposed to explain Andalite technology. My brother will ... He would have been angry with me."

61 "Just you survived," I said sadly.

"Just me," he said. "No prince. No warriors."

I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach. I think the others felt the same way. I guess we'd all kind of been hoping this Andalite would be like the prince. A leader. Someone who could take over the battle. Someone who would know more than we did.

"We're young, too," I said. "Too young to fight, according to the laws of our people."

"But still you fight!"

"We feel like we don't have a choice. Look, we don't even know your name. This is Jake, Rachel, Marco. I'm Cassie. There's one more. His name is Tobias."

"l am Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthil."

We all just kind of stared.

"Ax," Marco said. "Pleased to meet you."

"Who is your prince?"

One by one we looked at Jake.

"Oh, give me a break," Jake said. "I am not anyone's prince."

But the Andalite had stepped forward. He bowed his head and lowered his tail. "I will fight for you, Prince Jake, until I can return to my cousins."

62 CHAPTE R 19 "This is a derrishoul tree," Ax said. He pointed to one of the asparagus-like spears that grew straight and tall. He was showing us around while we recuperated from the morphing.

"And that we call enos ermarf."

"What?" I didn't see what he was pointing at.

"That. The way the lake curves forward into the grass, framed by derrishoul trees."

"You have a word for something like that?" I asked.

"There are names for all the many ways the water and sky and field interact," he explained.

"And for the way the suns and the moons hang in the sky of our planet, and cast their lights in one way or another on the different aspects of the world." Rachel caught my eye and silently mouthed the words, "He's cute." Then she winked.

I wasn't sure I agreed. Andalites are halfway between looking cute and looking scary. You can get past the weird stalk eyes and the fact that they don't have mouths (at least not that you can see), but that scorpion-like tail is far from cute. It reminded me of the sharks.

"You all live here?" Marco wondered. "I mean, just out in the open? Out on the grass?"

"Where else would we live? Here we have space to run. There must always be space to run."

"This is like actually being on another planet," Jake marveled. "This is all like part of the Andalite world."

"Yes. We take our home with us into space. It angers the Yeerks," he added grimly.

"Why do they care what you take into space?" Marco asked.

"lt is a part of everything they hate and would destroy if they could. The Yeerks would take our world and make it as barren as their own. As they will to your planet unless they are stopped."

I grabbed Ax's arm. "What . . . what are you saying? What do you mean about making the planet barren?"

He turned his big eyes on me. "The usual Yeerk pattern. Once a planet is under their control, they alter it to suit their own desires. They will leave enough plant and animal species to keep the host bodies fed – humans in the case of Earth – and the rest they eliminate." He said it like it was obvious. Like it was just something I should know.

He started to move on, but I held his arm tightly. "Wait, wait. I don't think I understand you.

What do you mean, they eliminate species?"

63 "They eliminate them. They will make Earth as much like the Yeerk home world as possible.

They will destroy most of the plants and all of the animal species except those they eat." I let go of his arm. I rocked back and grabbed at the air for balance. I felt like I'd been hit by a car. "No," I whispered. "That can't be. You're just saying that because you don't like Yeerks."

The others were staring. No one was moving.

Ax looked around at us. His eyes narrowed. "Don't you know? Don't you know whom you're fighting?"

"We know they take over people's minds," Rachel said weakly.

"Yes. And that is one of their great crimes. But the Yeerks are more than that. Yeerks are killers of worlds. Murderers of all life. Hated and feared throughout the galaxy. They are a plague that spreads from world to world, leaving nothing but desolation and slavery and misery in their wake."

I felt cold. Small and weak and cold and afraid. I looked around, but even the inviting, lush Andalite landscape did nothing to warm me. Up in the "sky" and all around us, I felt the im mense pressure of the ocean, waiting to rush in.

"There are only three races left in all the known galaxy that still fight the Yeerks," Ax said proudly. "And only the Andalites can stop them."

"How long until your people return to Earth?" I asked.

He hesitated. "One of your years. Maybe two."

"Two years!" Jake looked stricken. I went to his side and slipped my arm through his. "Five kids against an enemy that has destroyed half the galaxy? Five of us?"

Ax gave that smile, the one he did with his eyes. "Six, my Prince," he said.

"Six. Well then," Marco said with grim sarcasm, "with six it shouldn't be any problem."

"How did these Yeerks get this far?" Rachel demanded. "How did this happen? If you Andalites are so tough, why didn't you stop them a long time ago? How did a bunch of slugs who live in dirty ponds manage to become so powerful?"

Ax looked at her. "l am forbidden to tell certain things." Rachel's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You're telling us all of planet Earth may be scheduled for destruction and we are the only thing standing in the way, and you are going to keep secrets? I don't think so."

The Andalite looked angry, but no angrier than Rachel.

"Look, um, I feel ready to morph again," I said, interrupting the tension. Rachel was angry because she was afraid. What Ax had told us had shaken her. It had shaken all of us. I guess 64 we felt enough pressure already. We didn't really need to think that every living thing on the planet was depending on us.

It was kind of a lot to handle.

"Cassie's right," Jake said. "It's time. Let's get going before it's too late."

I followed him along with the others as we crossed alien land, heading for an environment just as alien – the ocean.

I wished I could forget what Ax told us. I wished I could stop seeing the pictures in my head of an Earth without birds and trees. An Earth where the ocean was empty and dead.

"Don't you know whom you're fighting?" the Andalite had asked.

Yes.

Now I knew.

65 Chapter 20

"Hey, I have a stupid question," Marco said.

"What?" Jake asked.

Marco jerked his thumb toward the Andalite, Ax. "How do we get him out of here?"

Jake looked blank. "Um , Ax, I don't suppose you can swim? Swim really well, I mean. We're a long, long way from land."

"I would not swim in this body. I would morph a sea creature."

"Like what?" Marco asked bluntly. "We have to travel far and fast."

"I have acquired a creature from this ocean. It was a large creature who swam close one day.

I stunned him and acquired him. I thought he would be useful if I was to escape."

"What kind of animal? What did he – " I stopped suddenly. I'd felt something. A shadow. I looked up. Through the air of the dome. Through the clear dome itself and up through the water.

It was on the surface. A cigar-shaped shadow riding the surface of the sea.

"That's a ship," I said. "Up there. I think it's stopped."

"Let's get out of here. Now," Jake snapped.

We ran for the hatch.

PING-NG-NG! PING-NG-NG!

The sound echoed through the dome.

"Sonar!" Marco hissed.

"How do you know?" Rachel asked.

"Didn't you ever see The Hunt for Red October? Great movie. Now let's leave. They've found us!"

PING-NG-NG! PING-NG-NG!

We crammed inside the small hatch enclosure, the four of us and Ax.

"Morph!" Jake yelled.

I had already started. I could feel the dolphin features emerging. My friends were beginning to mutate. Water rushed into the chamber, swirling up around our legs.

Ax was changing, too. It almost broke my concentration, watching him. In their normal forms Andalites are strange enough. When they morph it is totally bizarre. Instead of two legs 66 shriveling and disappearing, it was four. And then there were the stalk eyes. And the tail, which lost its scythe blade but split into a new kind of tail, with a long, raked, vertical blade and a shorter lower blade.

The water swept up to my neck, but by that point I was more dolphin than human.

BA-BOOOOM!

The explosion shuddered through the dome. It rattled my teeth. I felt like my eardrums would explode.

"Yeerks," Ax said. He said the word in our heads the way his brother had. With hatred and rage so deep it was impossible to comprehend it.

BA-BOOOOM!

A second explosion! Suddenly the exterior door opened and we swam out in a rush. Four dolphins and one . . .

Shark!

I'd been distracted by the explosions.

Ax had morphed a shark.

" Oh , good choice, Ax," Marco said. "You morphed a shark? "

"Is it wrong?" the Andalite wondered.

"Your species and ours are mortal enemies," I explained.

" Oh . I have a lot to learn about Earth."

"Here's the first lesson – let's get OUT OF HERE!" Marco screamed.

I soared up through the water, angling toward the distant surface. But as I rose I looked behind me. There were two jagged holes in the dome. Water was gushing in like Niagara Falls. As I watched, a third dark cylinder was falling slowly from the surface. Even I had seen enough sub marine movies to know it was a depth charge.

"What hosts have these Yeerks used?" Ax de manded urgently.

"Um . . . Hosts? You mean bodies? Controllers? They use Hork-Bajir and humans," I answered.

"Hork-Bajir do not swim," Ax said. "We may be safe. The Yeerks know little of deep waters. They have no oceans on their world, only shallow pools."

"Good," Jake said. "All they've had here are Hork-Bajir. And Taxxons, of course."

"Taxxons?"

67 "Yes, is that a problem?"

We were near the surface now, just a dozen feet from the bright barrier of sea and sky.

Just then a larger, darker shadow swept over us. A shadow that was dark inside of dark. A shadow that touched your soul. It skimmed just above the surface of the water.

It was shaped like a long battle-ax. Twin semi circular blades at the back, a long, diamond-headed point at the front.

The Blade ship of Visser Three.

Something was falling from it as it passed over us. There were a dozen splashes. I rolled over to get a better look.

What I saw made my flesh crawl.

Taxxons. In the water. Coming toward us.

"Those nasty worms can swim?" Marco yelled.

But the answer was obvious. The Taxxons, ten-foot-long centipedes bristling with dozens of pairs of sharp needle legs, were racing after us. And they were very fast in the water.

Very fast .

From this angle we couldn't see the several red-jelly eyes. But we could see the circular mouth at the top of each vile body.

I had seen Taxxons straining to catch bits of Prince Elfangor as Visser Three devoured him.

I had seen Taxxons, on orders from Visser Three, devour one of their own.

"Tell me," Ax said. "l have the feeling that this body I am in might be able to fight. Is this true?"