Текст книги "Animorphs - 14 - The Unknown"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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I didn't know what that other stallion thought he was doing on myturf, but I was ready to go hoof-to-hoof with him and show him who was boss!

"HrrrEEEE-hee-hee-heeHRRRR-EEEEE-heee-heee-he!" I whinnied at ear-splitting volume, screaming my challenge to combat.

"Hey, boy. You know you're in the next race so you decided to come on out? Save that energy, big guy. That's my champion! That's my Min– neapolis Max."

That's when it hit me. I'm no racing fan. But the name penetrated my slightly deranged consciousness. I recognized that name.

I had just morphed the horse who was expected to go on to win the Kentucky Derby.

"Come on, boy, we have a race to run."

That was fine with me. I wanted to run.

Chapter 16

"Cassie. It's me, Tobias. I don't know if you can hear me, but you're the only one I haven't found. If you can, give me some kind of sign, anything.

Where are you?"

"l'm down on the track," I said.

"Hey! You must be in morph if you're thought-speaking!"

"Yes, I am definitely in morph."

"Well, where are you? Whatare you?"

"l'm in horse morph, Tobias."

"Cool. So where are you?"

I sighed. "Look at the track. See the horses being led into the starting gates? See the horse whose jockey is wearing red-and-green silks?

Number twenty-four?"

"You're kidding."

"No, Tobias. I am not kidding."

"How did this happen?"

"lt's a long story. And I don't have time to tell it. I have a race to run." My jockey was barely a feather on my back. That didn't bother me. But I really did not like the bit in my mouth. It was infuriating! Almost as in– furiating as the dark brown stallion one stall over.

I snorted defiantly at the brown stallion.

"Easy. Easy," the jockey said.

Out of my right eye I spotted Marco pushing his way through the crowd.

He waved frantically.

"l see you, Marco. It's okay, don't worry."

Obviously, Tobias had told the others of my predicament.

"Who's worried?" Marco yelled. "I just want to know if you're going to win.

I have five bucks I could bet on you!"

"Very funny. Oh, very, very funny."

My jockey yanked my bridle and dug his toe into my side. And the dumb thing was, I didn't really know what he wanted me to do. See, I had the instincts of the horse I had morphed. But I did not have the lifetime training of the professional racehorse named Minneapolis Max.

So I had to actually think about it. With my human brain. I was pretty sure he wanted me to move toward the starting gates. So I did.

A trainer was standing by the gate. Cigar-man. The cigar was even more disintegrated by slobber now.

"He's always balky at the gate," Cigar-man said to the jockey.

Oh, really? Well, I would show them. I tossed my head proudly and I walked calmly into the narrow gate.

But once inside, I realized why Minneapolis Max was balky. There was zero room. The wooden slat walls pressed in on me from both sides. It was a trap! A trap!

Run!

I reared up, flailing my front legs wildly. I kicked the gate with my forehooves and yelled at the top of my horse lungs.

WHAM! ' "HreEEE-heee-he!"

"Take it easy, Max, easy," the jockey said.

I was scared. Or at least my horse brain was scared. And I still had the obnoxious scent of that other big stallion in my nose. So I was mad, too.

That's my excuse. I just wasn't thinking. Because when the jockey once again told me to take it easy, I did something I shouldn't have done.

Something I wouldn't have done if I hadn't been distracted.

"Youtake it easy. I'm crammed into a little box here!" I said in thought-speak.

Thought-speak is like E-mail: It only goes to the person you address it to.

So he did hear me. I know for a fact he did because he said, "Huh?

Wah? What the?"

BRRRRIIINNNNNG!

WHAP!

A massively loud bell rang, the gate slammed open, and I started running.

I kicked out with the big, bunched muscles of my back legs. I threw my front legs out to catch myself with each stride. I exploded from the gate.

Exploded!

I felt the adrenaline flood my system. To my left, horses! To my right, horses! We were running all out. Running ike mad, hooves flashing, mus– cles firing and releasing, manes streaming, tails bobbing, our nostrils flared wide to suck in gasping breaths.

I ran. I ran, and the other horses faded from my thoughts. I ran, and it was like I was the only horse on Earth. I saw the track ahead of me, and that's all I cared about. I just wanted to run and run for as long as there was open ground ahead of me.

I was doing what I had been designed to do. I was fulfilling millions of years of horse evolution.

I was running. And running was what I did. Running was what I was.

The jockey tried to rein me in. He was conserving my strength and stamina for the end of the race.

"Forget winnings I told him. "The point is not to win. The point is just to run."

To his credit, he didn't fall off in shock. And also to his credit, he gave me control, and I did what horses do:l hauled hoof.

Around the turn, digging my hooves in to keep from slipping. I moved in toward the whitewashed rail, cutting straight across the path of another horse. But I didn't care. Hah! I was running! Everyone else could just get out of the way!

Down the backstretch. No sound but my own gasping breath and the pounding, pounding, pounding of dozens of hooves on dirt.

The far turn! I was tiring now. My lungs ached. My muscles burned. I felt each new impact of my hooves on the dirt. It was time to slow down.

Rest a little.

But then I saw him. The dark brown stallion. I saw him sneak up, getting between me and the rail. And I saw him pull ahead of me.

"Don't fade on me now, talking horse!" the jockey said.

I saw the wild, triumphant look in the stallion's eye. It made my blood boil.

"Hang on, Mr. Jockey. We're gonna win this race!"

Easier said than done. The other horse was fast. Very fast. But I had something he didn't have: a human brain. See, I knew the finish line was not far off. I knew that I could pour every last ounce of energy into running. I could override my horse instincts that told me to slow down.

I stretched out my stride and powered down the track.

I was ahead!

He was ahead!

I was ahead!

He was ahead!

The crowd was screaming deliriously. I saw thousands of faces flash by, all with their mouths wide open. The roar just gave me more energy still.

The finish line!

FLASH! FLASH! The cameras went off.

ZOOM! I blew across the line. Exactly two feet ahead of the other stallion.

I had won!

I think it was the first time in my entire life I'd ever won any kind of athletic contest. Sure, I was a horse, but hey, a victory is a victory.

Chapter 17

Fortunately, in between running from stable hands and trying to find me, everyone in the group had managed to acquire a horse morph.

We flew out to the Dry Lands. It was a long trip, made even longer by the fact that the entire time we had the same conversation, over and over.

"AII I'm saying is think of how cool it would be," Marco pleaded. "We morph racehorses—"

"l don't think so, Marco," Jake said.

"– then, using our human abilities we figure out if we think we can win, and the others put money down."

"Not happening, Marco," Rachel said.

"We start out betting whatever we have saved. Like I have about twenty dollars. But if we bet that at say, three-to-one odds, before you know it – "

"Marco, forget it, okay?" I said. "lt wouldn't be right."

"– we'd have sixty dollars. Bet that at three-to-one odds you have a hundred and eighty. Then bet that and you have five forty! Then sixteen hundred twenty! Then four thousand eight hundred and sixty!"

"How is it you can multiply in your head like that?" Rachel asked. "You barely scrape by in your math classes."

"lt's a whole different thing when you're multiplying money," Marco said.

"A whole different thing." .

We repeated this conversation with small variations all the way to the Dry Lands.

"Hey," Tobias said. "l think we're in luck. Isn't that the same bunch of horses we saw be-fore?"

"The modest horses?" Jake asked.

"Yep. That is them," Tobias confirmed. "l remember the markings. Look at the way they move."

Down below, my osprey eyes spied the horses. They were walking almost in a line. Like soldiers.

Not like wild horses. But alongside the disciplined group were other horses. These other horses were moving normally.

"l think our main group of horse-Controllers has picked up a few tagalongs. It would make sense. The real horses don't know these are Yeerk-infested horses. So they hook up, figuring to be part of the same herd."

"And look where they're headings Marco said. "Right toward the base.

Right into Zone Ninety-one."

"l understand what a racetrack is now: a place where horses chase each other in circles as humans scream. But what exactly is this Zone Ninety– one?" Ax asked. "You were all talking about it before, but I am still confused."

"Youprobably already know what's going on at Zone Ninety-one," Marco said darkly.

Jake sighed. "lt's a secret base. They say it's a place where the government is hiding an alien spacecraft that supposedly crashed here about fifty years ago "Who is they?"Ax asked.

"Marco is they,"Rachel said. "Nuts. Wackos. Conspiracy freaks.

People who go on the Internet and call themselves DarkTruth or whatever."

"Ah," Ax said, like he understood.

Marco was right about one thing, however: The horses were heading directly into the base.

Of course, so were other horses. Horses not connected to the band of horse-Controllers.

"lf you want to infiltrate a heavily guarded base, what better way?" I admitted. "l saw horses wandering through the base when we were there."

"True," Jake said. "And if you want to watch a group of horse– Controllers, what better way than to join the herd, just like those others did? Let's fly up ahead. Morph to horse. And join up with this bunch. See where they go. What they do."

"Power those wings," Tobias said cheerfully. "We still have some flying to do."

"AII I'm saying is, think of how cool it would be," Marco began again.

It took ten minutes to get far enough ahead of the horse-Controller herd with its stray tagalongs. We hid behind some rocks and morphed into our horse bodies. This time we did it quickly. Before base security could begin to think someone was in the rocks.

Once we were morphed I realized we had a problem. "We look way too good to be scruffy old wild horses," I said. "We need to roll in the dirt a little. Run through some brambles. Look like we've been living out in the wild, not in pampered barns."

By the time the horse-Controllers passed by, we were six dirty, dusty, scruffy-looking beasts. But we were also the coolest-looking wild horses anyone would ever see. After all, one of us could be going on to win the Kentucky Derby.

"Here they come," Jake said. "Just try to act natural."

The horse herd came ambling by. A couple of the "real" horses raised their heads to give us a suspicious look and a sniff. But the horse-Controllers totally ignored us.

I resisted my idiot horse urge to challenge the other stallions to mortal combat. We fell into step, not close, but not too far from the others.

And we walked, with the slow CLOP-CLOP-CLOP of horses, right into the heart of the fabled Zone 91.

Chapter 18

The whole herd of us wandered onto the base. We wandered past even more intense warning signs. The last one actually said YOU MAY BE SHOT.

We wandered right past men and women armed with submachine guns.

No one suspected horses.

Of course, if anyone had heard what we heard next, they would definitely have been suspicious.

"Hullak fimul fallanta gehel. Call is feellos."

"Who said that?" I asked.

"Um . . . that horse said it," Rachel said.

"Yall hellem. Fimul chall killim fullat!"

"And that was another horse. We're trapped in a Mister Edrerun," Marco said. "We are in the Nick at Night zone."

"That's Galard!"Ax said. "They're speaking Galard! "

"Two questions," Jake said tersely. "What's Galard,and can they hear us thought-speak? And answer the second question first."

"No. They can't hear us. Galardis a sort of universal language spoken by different races throughout the galaxy. It's what people speak when they come from different species and don't share the same language.

These horses must have been fitted with speech synthesizers."

"Why wouldn't Yeerks be speaking Yeerk or whatever?" I asked.

"l don't know," Ax admitted. "But the standard speech synthesizers use Galard.Maybe they acquired less sophisticated speech synthesizers.

Sometimes it's easier to get older, less cutting-edge technology."

"You mean they bought speech synthesizers on sale?" Rachel asked.

"At the Pluto Wal-Mart," Marco said.

"Ax, can you understand what they said?" Jake asked.

"Yes, of course. They said to follow the plan. "If we do this right we'll be off this idiotic assignment, out of these idiotic stupid bodies, and back onboard ship where we belong." That's what the leader said."

"Uh-oh," Tobias said darkly. "They're splitting up."

"We'll have to split up, too. Follow each group," Jake advised. "Me, Cassie, and Tobias go with one group, Ax, Rachel, and Marco go with the other. Ax? Listen to them if they talk anymore. And let us know by thought-speak."

"Yes, Prince Jake."

"Have I mentioned don't call me prince?"

"Yes, Prince Jake, you have."

I fell in step alongside Jake, trying to look like any old horse walking along, minding her own business.

"This is weird," I said. "These horses are definitely on a mission. I'm almost surprised no one has ever noticed how bizarre their behavior is."

"What sane person would ever even think that a horse would be a security risk?" Tobias said.

"How do you like horse morph, Tobias?" I asked, making conversation to ease my nervousness.

"Compared to flying? It's dull. Compared to the old days when I wouldn't have been able to morph with you guys at all? It's great!"

We were at the side of a road. This part of the base was densely built up with low, whitewashed clapboard buildings, each bearing stenciled numbers. Not far away was a large building with a half-filled parking lot. I couldn't see well enough with my dim horse eyes to read the sign above its door, but people were coming out, pushing loaded grocery carts.

"Base Exchanges Jake explained. "Kind of a shopping center for the people stationed here."

"Must be boring out here," Rachel said. "Not much to do but keep secrets."

A pair of Humvees loaded with uniformed troops came racing down the road. We stepped back out of the way. Totally unhorselike behavior. No one noticed. The guys in the Humvee never even glanced our way.

They'd seen wild horses hundreds of times.

The afternoon sun was intense. It was really hot. The horse part of me wanted to go find a nice shady patch and rest. I saw some trees and picnic tables off to one side of the Base Exchange. People were carrying slices of pizza and baskets of fried chicken and potatoes out to the tables.

It was so weird. I was a human in a horse morph. I was walking along with Yeerks inside horse bodies. And we were, all of us, trying to figure out what, if anything, was being kept secret on this base.

Was it true? Had a spaceship crashed here back in the fifties? Had the government hidden it all these years? Were the Yeerks determined to get it away from the humans in order to keep us from understanding its technology?

What could be hidden on this base? A Yeerk Bug fighter? An Andalite fighter? Some ship belonging to some other race?

"Hey, Jake? Tobias? Do you smell anything weird?" I asked.

"l smell those french fries over at the Base Exchanges Jake said.

"No, not that. Smell the horse-Controllers."

"Do I have to? Hey . . . wait... you mean thatsmell "

"Fear," Tobias said. "Nervousness. Great. If they're scared, we should be scared."

"l have that covered," I said dryly.

I looked around, trying to make sense of the emotions I was literally smelling. I saw the second group of horse-Controllers. I saw Rachel, and Marco, and Ax along with a couple of tagalong horses. They were converging with us. Converging on the same building.

It was one of the hangars. A very large hangar, maybe fifteen stories high, with doors you could walk a dinosaur through. And it was a very secure hangar. There were guards at the main doors. Guards at every corner of the building. Looking up, I thought I saw the outline of a man with a rifle up on top of the structure.

There was a sign on the side of the building. I squinted but could not read it with my dim horse eyes.

"l miss my realeyes," Tobias grumbled.

BRRRRRIINNNNGGGG! BRRRRRRIIIINNN-NNGGGG!

An insanely loud bell went off. I reared up before I could control the reaction. But the horse-Controllers showed no response at all. No response except to grow very still and very focused. They were expecting the bell.

The bell was a safety alarm. It was heralding the opening of the main doors of the hangar. I saw the guards move their automatic weapons down off their shoulders and into easy firing position.

KRRR-Chunk! Rrrrreeeeeeeeee!

The doors began to open, motors whining loudly in my horse ears.

And that's when the second group of horses started to run. Three horse– Controllers, followed, after a moment's hesitation, by Marco, Ax, and Rachel, suddenly broke into full-out gallop straight for the hangar door.

"Oh, man," Tobias groaned. "Why do I get the feeling there's going to be shooting soon?"

"Why are they doing that?" I asked. "lt makes no sense. Why hide in horse bodies so you can come and go without anyone noticing, and then suddenly do this?"

"Because the subtle approach isn't working," Jake said grimly.

"Remember what they said earlier: Do this and they're out of here. It's a final desperation move."

"So what do we do?"

"We play follow-the-leader," Jake said grimly. "And we hope these Yeerks have a good plan."

Suddenly, our group of horse-Controllers surged forward. I was startled, but I quickly ran after them, followed by Jake and Tobias.

The first group was racing full tilt toward the hangar. They were almost there. The armed guards were watching them in bemusement. But you could see the bemusement turning to puzzlement. And finally ... too late .

. . fear.

WHAM!

The lead horse slammed bodily into one guard, knocking him into a second guard. Hooves flashed as the horse ran over the guard. I could see it, even with my weak horse eyes, because we were close now.

Running straight for the door of the hangar.

We were there!

A madhouse! Guards mingling with seemingly insane horses. Guards being knocked to the ground.

"Get these horses outta here!" someone bawled.

"Neigh-heh-heh-heh!" the horses screamed.

"Sarge, what do we do?"

"Ahhhh!"

"HrrrEEEE-heee-he-he!"

"Shoot 'em!"

"Negative, soldier, do not fire! We could hit what's inside!"

Our group jumped into the melee of frantic soldiers and madly dancing, rearing, screaming horses. But our group stayed close together and plowed straight through.

Straight through and into the Most Secret Place On Earth.

Chapter 19

Into the hangar we thundered!

My hooves scrabbled on smooth, painted concrete. Through the eyes on the side of my head, I saw flashes of heavy equipment, banks of com– puter consoles, and flashing numerical readouts.

There were men and women in white lab coats running as if we were a pack of wolves or something. There were uniformed airmen running after us, waving their guns in the air. There were stuffy old officers with medals on their chests, standing with hands on hips and outraged expressions on their faces.

And everyone was yelling.

"What the blazing Hades is going on here?"

"Stop those horses!"

"Shoot!"

"Don't shoot!"

"Help! I'm allergic to horses!"

It was nuts. But the truth is, in a weird way, it was fun, too. Minneapolis Max was running. And when he was running, he felt fine.

Every nerve in my big horse body was tingling. I was incredibly alive with fear and excitement and the lust for competition. I wasn't some plow horse! I was a running fool. I was a born and bred champion! A big, tough, dominant stallion!

Yee hah!

"HREEE-HEEE-He-he!" I screamed for no reason, scaring a woman in a lab coat into dropping her open yogurt on the floor.

We thundered by, our weird herd of real horses, Yeerk-infested horses, and Animorphs in horse morphs.

And then we came to the room. You could tell it was the center, the nexus, the reason for all the security.

"lt's gonna work," Marco exulted. "We're in! We're in!"

It was glass on all sides. Glass that looked like it could be a foot thick.

Through that glass we saw a pedestal of shining steel. And all around that pedestal were cameras, sensors, wires, lights, glowing screens, and rows of massive computers.

Bathed in the light, high on the pedestal, was something not from this planet.

It was about eight feet across. The shape was like a cube with the corners rounded off. The entire surface was covered with tubing and painted symbols.

At one end was an opening, large enough for a person to walk inside. I could just barely get a glimpse of the inside. It was smooth, a lovely green in color, with soft lighting. There was some sort of instrumentation on one wall.

"That's it! That's it! The most closely guarded secret in all of history!" I've never heard Marco sound happier.

Jake and Ax and Marco and I, along with three or four horse-Controllers, all stared transfixed at what Marco had called "the most closely guarded secret in all of history."

"Cullem fallat?"one of the horse-Controllers asked.

"He wants to know what it is," Ax translated.

"Jahalan fornella,"another horse-Controller said.

I didn't even need Ax's translation to understand: The Yeerks had no idea what it was.

They had succeeded. They had busted in.

They had laid eyes on the big secret. But they had no clue as to what it was.

"SERGEANT! GET those HORSES out of my facility! NOW!" a colonel bellowed.

"Yes, sir!" the sergeant yelled. "Horses! About face!"

It must have surprised the poor sergeant when, amazingly, we all complied. Animorphs and Yeerks, we turned and walked away.

Chapter 20

It was getting dark by the time we walked away, none the wiser, from the Most Secret Place On Earth.

The horse-Controllers walked glumly away into the Dry Lands. We shadowed them, keeping just a little distance. We'd been in morph for more than an hour. But Jake decided we should stay a while longer.

"l don't get this," Marco complained. "l don't get this at all. It was a success! The Yeerks did it. They broke into the hangar. They saw . . . we all saw what was in there. So why are they de-pressed?"

"Ax says they don't know what it is they saw," Jake pointed out.

"lt didn't look like a spaceships Rachel said. "But it was definitely something alien."

"Yeah, but what?" I said. "lf the Yeerks don't know, and we don't know, and probably the scientists back at the base don't know, then what's the point?"

""lt is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Shakespeare," Tobias said. "Every conspiracy nut in the world is obsessed by what's back there in that hangar. We saw it, and we don't even know what it is."

"Actually . . ." Ax began. Then he stopped.

"Actually, what?"Rachel pressed.

"Oh, well ... I sort of know what it is. It's kind of—"

"Look!" I yelled. Something was swooping in fast across the darkening desert. It flew along the ground, just inches above the scattered scruffy trees. It churned up the dust as it came. It was smallish, no bigger than a large human fighter plane. But it was shaped like a streamlined, headless beetle. There were long, serrated points aimed straight forward on either side.

"Bugfighter!"

I had to resist the urge to run. That was only natural. But what was strange was that once more I smelled fear from the horse-Controllers.

They were scared of that Bug fighter. More scared than they'd been in rushing the hangar.

Or, more likely, scared of who was inthat Bug fighter.

The Bug fighter swooped overhead, circled, and came to land in a pile of rocks.

"l can't believe the radar back at the base doesn't pick that up," Tobias said.

"Radar. Is that the human tool that bounces radio beams off objects? I don't mean to offend, but any Andalite child could build a radar-cloak from the pieces of his toys."

"Somehow you are grinding my nerves, Ax," Rachel said grumpily.

"And that's supposed to be Marco's job."

We followed the horse-Controllers around the back of the rocks. The Bug fighter was waiting there, already on the ground. But the door didn't open until the horse-Controllers were assembled before it. Fear was radiating from them.

So much fear. It gave me a pretty good idea who was in that Bug fighter.

The door of the Bug fighter opened.

Out stepped a Hork-Bajir warrior. Seven feet of razor-bladed death. The Hork-Bajir swung his horned snakehead left and right, all the while holding a portable Dracon beam weapon.

Then, when it looked safe, the other occupant of the Bug fighter stepped out into the rapidly cooling air.

He was an Andalite. At least, he had an Andalite body. But of course he was no true Andalite.

"Visser Three," I said. It was not a surprise.

"Yeah," Jake said grimly. "Suddenly all this just got more serious." Visser Three: leader of the Yeerk forces on Earth. Leader of the invasion.

The only Yeerk in all of history to successfully seize control of an Andalite body. The only Yeerk in all history to gain the Andalite morphing power and Andalite thought-speak abilities.

Our greatest enemy. The human race's greatest enemy.

"Report," he said in a tone of complete casual ness.

The lead horse-Controller began to reply in Galard."Visser, gahallum fillak—"

"Don't waste my time. Did you succeed? Or did you fail?"

"Visser, kir fillan—"

FWAPPPP!

The visser's Andalite tail moved so swiftly it cracked the air. The deadly blade stopped a millimeter from the horse-Controller's throat. A twitch would send his head rolling.

"Did you penetrate the facility, yes or no?"

According to Ax, the horse-Controller answered yes.

"Did you see the object the humans are hiding in there? The object we know is constructed of nonhuman alloys?"

Again, he answered yes.

"And can you now tell me what it is?"

The horse-Controller hesitated. And that's when the visser twitched his Andalite tail.

"Fools! Idiots! lncompetents!" the visser screamed in enraged thought-speak. "Weeks have been wasted setting up this effort. First we lose that clumsy fool, Korin Five-Four-Seven, when he was bitten by a snake. And now we've lost poor Jillay Nine-Two-Six!"

The visser indicated the no-longer-in-one-piece horse-Controller, like it had been someone else's fault he'd been lost.

"And now you don't even know what you saw?"

He was enraged. And Visser Three mad is beyond dangerous. His horse-Controllers backed away as far as they dared.

"l will have the secret!" the visser said in a suddenly low, sinister, thought-speak voice. "l will have it!"

For a while no one moved or spoke or even breathed. No one, me included, wanted to take any chance of attracting the furious visser's at– tention.

Then, "AII right, I've punished the one responsible. Transport will come for the rest of you.

We still have the backup plan. It was always the better plan. We'll simply take control of a few of the humans working at this base. Have you idiots at least identified the right targets to infest?"

"Jihal,Visser!" one of the horse-Controllers said.

"Good. Then you can live. We'll target the right humans, and seize them tomorrow at . . ." Suddenly he stopped. "Those horses. What are they doing with you? They are not our people."

In Galard,the horse-Controller explained that it was normal for horses to herd together. It was good for real horses to be there. It provided camouflage of sorts.

This was not the answer the visser wanted to hear. He aimed his Andalite stalk eyes directly at me. "Fool, do you not realize that the Andalite bandits who plague us can morph any animal they like, including horses? I will have to kill these creatures, just to be sure."

"No one move. No one act like they heard anything," I hissed to the others. I lowered my big golden head and crunched up a mouthful of grass. And then I did what horses do. And I wasn't modest about it.

The visser laughed derisively. "l suppose they are real horses, after all." I took a relieved breath.

"Still, better kill them."

"Uh-oh," I said.

The Hork-Bajir warrior leveled his Dracon beam at us. A second Hork– Bajir came running from inside the Bug fighter.

I felt a thrill of terror. I ordered myself to run away. But I wasn't the only creature in my head right then. Minneapolis Max was in there, too. And he didn't feel like running away.

My hindquarters bunched up and fired every muscle fiber at once. And, before I knew what was happening, I was running. But not running away.

I ran straight for the first Hork-Bajir.

"HrrrEEEEE-HEEE-he-he!" I whinnied. I reared up, all the way back till I was standing on my hind legs, and I flailed madly with my forehooves.

I couldn't exactly aim my hooves, mind you. Horses aren't predators. But I flailed away and just as the Hork-Bajir was pressing the trigger...

BONK!

"Raaahhhh!" the Hork-Bajir bellowed. He dropped the Dracon beam from his hands. It clattered on the ground, and down I came. I landed directly with both hooves on the weapon.

. CRUNCH!

I'd like to say it was deliberate. But the truth is that with my side-vision horse eyes I could barely even see my hooves, let alone aim them. But sometimes luck is as good as skill.

"Haul butt!" Jake yelled.

NowMinneapolis Max was ready to run away. So I ran. We all ran.

The two Hork-Bajir took off in pursuit.

"lf they catch us, we're dog food," Rachel said. "Two Hork-Bajir versus six horses? Not a prayer."

She was right. And to be honest, if it had been a hundred horses versus two Hork-Bajir, the horses would have lost. "How fast are Hork-Ba-jir?" I asked Rachel. She had morphed a Hork-Bajir once.

"Fast," she said grimly.

We bolted. We hauled. But the two bounding Hork-Bajir were hot on our trail.

Then we saw spotlights bouncing wildly toward us. Humvees! The security troops from the base were coming out to investigate.

We ran and the Hork-Bajir hesitated. When I looked back next, they were gone.

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