Текст книги "Animorphs - 10 - The Android"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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"Total darkness, can't touch walls, floor, or ceiling, and you have to travel through a room strung with sensitive wires you can't even see."

She held up the cage. "Meet the animal that can do all that."

It was no larger than a small rat with its leathery wings folded back.

"Cool," I said. "First I'm Spiderman, now I get to be Batman."

I thought for once we'd get a chance to practice with the bat morph. We were planning to go after the Pemalite crystal the next weekend.

Plenty of time to plan and prepare.

Yeah, right.

"Marco?" My dad yelled up the stairs to my room, where I was desperately trying to figure out some math homework.

"Yeah?"

"Phone."

""X" equals point oh-three-nine," I reminded myself so I wouldn't lose my place. I went out into the hall to grab the upstairs phone.

"Point oh-three-nine. Yeah, who is it?"

"Hi, Marco. It's me, Erek."

"Oh, hi, Erek, what's up?" I hoped he would remember our phones could be bugged.

"Not much," he said, sounding very convincingly human.

"I was just thinking, though, you know that thing we were going to do next weekend? Why don't we just do it tonight instead?"

I knew what the "thing" was. And I knew Erek wasn't calling on a whim. Something had gone wrong. I swallowed my heart, which had jumped up into my throat. "Okay. Maybe I'll call Jake and see if he wants to do it, too."

"That'd be excellent," Erek said. "Later, man."

I hung up the phone and thought seriously about pretending I hadn't gotten the call. I mean, I wanted to do this. It was important, life and death. But it was like something out of Mis sion: Impossible.

And without planning or practice, it was beyond impossible.

Plus, I had homework to do.

I picked up the phone and called Jake. Four hours later, with all of our parents asleep in their beds, we met at Cassie's barn. All of us, including Ax. Erek arrived last.

He didn't waste time with small talk.

"There's a problem. The Yeerks are putting in a brand new security system on top of the existing systems. I don't think it's active yet, but I can't find out what it is."

"Fine. We can wait a few weeks till you can get the details." Tobias said.

"The crystal is already so well protected that any new system may put it beyond our grasp for good," Erek said. "And don't forget – the Yeerks are racing to use this crystal to create a computer system so powerful it can take over every computer on Earth. They're not there yet. But the longer we wait. . ."

"Oh, man, this sucks," I said. "No planning? No preparation? Just go in and hope for the best?"

"I'll tell you everything I know," Erek said.

"Listen carefully. It's not too complicated."

For a few seconds we sort of teetered on the edge. We weren't sure what to do. Erek wanted us to go in, obviously. But he had his own interests, which might not be the same as ours.

It was the worst possible situation. Any one of our parents could wake up and discover we were not at home. That would mean frantic phone calls back and forth from our folks to our friends' parents, calls to the cops, probably search teams out beating the woods.

"Go or don't go?" Jake asked.

"Go," Rachel said, but with less enthusiasm than usual. A lot less.

"Go," I said. "But personally, I can't blame anyone who wants to sit this one out."

Cassie gave me a dirty look. I guess she took it personally. "I say go," she said. "I don't sit anything out, Marco."

"l'm not in th." Tobias said.

"l'm useless on this mission, so I don't vote."

"I go where Prince Jake goes." Ax said.

"Don't call me "prince,"" Jake said wearily for the thousandth time. "Okay, we go."

Erek immediately began telling us all he knew about Matcom and the security for the Pemalite crystal.

After about two minutes I was ready to change my vote.

But by then it was too late. We'd made our decision, and it was as if we were being swept toward a waterfall – like a bunch of canoeists who'd lost their last paddle. We'd survive ...

or not ...

but one thing was sure. We were definitely going over the edge.

"Q rek was not going with us. But he would be waiting outside Matcom when we came out.

Assuming we came out.

We flew from Cassie's barn to the Matcom building. It was one of those boring-looking, three-story glass and cement buildings you see in industrial parks everywhere. Just a bunch of blue glass rectangles with a big parking lot in back.

In fact, it looked so much like every other bor ing square building in the industrial park, we had trouble finding it. We flew around, a lost gang of owls, for a good fifteen minutes before Rachel spotted the Matcom sign.

We landed on the roof of the building. Erek had assured us there were no cameras or guards up there.

"Let's find that pipe," Jake whispered as soon as we were all human again. Or, in Ax's case, An– dalite.

"Erek said southwest corner, right?" I said.

"Astost8st8west," Cassie said.

She sounded sure, so I decided to agree.

"Yeah, that was it. Which way is northwest?"

Ax laughed in thought-speak, till he realized I was serious. "You can't find directions?" He sounded shocked. Like he'd just discovered we had hidden tail blades.

"lt's that corner over there."

The pipe was about three inches in diameter.

"I hope this works," I said. "I don't even know if my Spiderman can make silk."

"Spiderwoman," Cassie said. "Your spider morph is female. Wolf spiders don't make webs, but they do make silk. It should work."

"Easy for you say. I don't even know how to turn on the silk thing."

But Ax was already morphing into the wolf spider, so I hurried to catch up. By the time Ax and I were in spider morph, the others had all be come cockroaches.

"Man, you two are ugly at this scale." Rachel said. "Jeez, I don't ever need to see another spi der my own size again."

"We're ugly? You want to know what you look like right now? You look like dinner." I said, laughing evilly.

"Juicy cockroach. This spider morph is hungry, and you look tasty."

"Marco, get a grip."

Jake said patiently. "lancet's do this."

"l'll demorph and step on your ugly butt." Rachel growled.

From where I was standing in the gravel of the rooftop, the pipe looked like a round skyscraper. It extended above the roof by about a foot, which is quite a distance when you're half an inch high.

I scampered around the pipe. One side had been splashed with tar. It would be easy to grip. I raced easily up the pipe to stand precariously on the lip.

I could feel a breeze blowing up from the blackness beneath me. It was like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The pipe went down through all three stories and an extra underground story. Four floors. Bad enough when you're human size. A million miles when you're a spider.

Ax came crawling up to teeter alongside me.

"0ooookay." I said.

"Now comes the fun part."

I tried to search the spider brain, looking for the subtle, secret signals that would start me spinning silk.

Fortunately, the spider wasn't exactly Albert Einstein. It only knew how to do about four things, one of which was spin silk.

The spider body sort of... well ... pushed out a strand of gooey white filament. It stuck to the edge of the pipe.

Ax did the same.

"Well, this is certainly disgusting." I said. "Ready, Ax?"

"Yes."

"Then . . .

Yeeeeee-Haaaaahhh!"

I sprang from the lip of the pipe into the darkness.

It was so totally Spiderman.

I fell slowly down, down, down, twisting and turning my way down the pipe. Behind me a long white string grew. It braked my fall, so that I was dropping in slow motion. The spider eyes were not bad at seeing in the relative dark. A bit of moonlight followed us down part of the way as we dropped.

And then it started being fun. I kicked away from the side of the pipe and cartwheeled through the air. My web looped around Ax's, and soon we were weaving a weird silk rope.

It was cool in a way . . . till I felt a certain emptiness.

"Ax! I'm running out of web."

"Yes, me, too."

"How far do you think we've dropped?"

"I don't know."

"You know which way is northwest but you don't know how far we've dropped? We could still have two stories to g." I said.

"I think our plan has a minor flaw." Ax said with his usual understatement.

"But we are very light, small creatures. We should survive a fall. So should the others in cockroach morph."

"Maybe. See, the problem is, there's only one way to find out if we'll survive. By dropping."

Ax didn't say anything.

"0h, man." I groaned.

I cut the strand of web.

And I fell. Down through the darkness, toward a landing I could only hope wouldn't kill me.

It was a long drop.

"Aaaaahhhhhhh!"

"Aaaaahhhhhhh!"

WHAP! WHAP! We hit something hard. We bounced. We hit again.

WHAP! WHAP! "You okay?" Jake called down.

"0h, yeah, I'm great."

I said. "I fell about a billion feet and landed on a steel trampoline. Couldn't be better."

"Sarcasm." Rachel commented coolly. "He must be okay."

"Laugh now, Rachel. We'll see how much you laugh when it's your turn."

The plan was for Ax and me to create a silk cable the others in cockroach morph would be able to climb down. That way, they wouldn't all have to go spider. Not that it would have helped, anyway.

"We're coming down." Jake said. "When we reach the end of the silk we'll jump. If you two survived, we will.

Nothing kills a cockroach."

"Why don't you stand right beneath me, Marco?" Rachel suggested. "You can break my Ax and I scurried out of the way. A few seconds later, after they had clambered down to the end of our silk . . .

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! Three cockroaches landed nearby.

"Where are we?" Jake asked.

"lt's pretty dark. Who knows?" I answered. "lt's a heatingstair-conditioning vent, I guess. Erek said it would be part of the furnace system. Supposedly we go west a hundred feet or so, then drop down, then go across the furnace, then down again, then right.

Then we're at the edge of the High Security Room, where the real trouble starts."

"Excuse me? Did someone say furnace?" Cassie asked.

"Yeah. I said furnace."

"Does it occur to any of you that the furnace might actually come on?"

Cassie said.

"Not till right this minute."

I said.

"lt's not very cold ou."

Rachel pointed out.

"0kay, I've seriously changed my mind." I said. "Let's go home."

Of course, no one listened to me. We scrabbled along the steel floor, two spiders and three cockroaches. Our rough claws seemed to make a horrible din on the metal, scuffing and scratching.

But it probably wouldn't have sounded like anything to a human.

As we ran, there was more and more dust on the floor of the vent. It was weird, like walking through dried leaves. My eight legs kicked through it, and it swirled behind me as I passed. Eventually the dust became as thick as a carpet, although in reality it was probably no more than a few millimeters thick.

Every ten feet or so there would be a grilled opening.

Through the massive upright bars I could see offices.

The light in the offices was very dim, just the glow of computer screen savers and red or green function lights. But it helped us to find our way through the darkness of the vent.

Then . . .

"What's t?" Rachel yelled. She was the farthest back. "Uh-oh. Something coming! I feel the vibrations! Something big!"

She took off. I took off. We all took off.

Now I could feel the vibrations, too. Quick, confused-sounding footsteps. And a dragging sound, like something was being hauled.

I ran. To my left, another spider. Ax.

Ahead of me, two roaches, almost as big as I was.

Rachel was just back to my right.

I couldn't exactly turn and glance over my shoulder. I had no shoulder. And I had no actual head to turn. So I paused, spun around, and in the dim light from a vent, I saw it.

Huge. Twenty times my size! A vast, horrible menace.

"Arat!"

I yelled. "lt's a RAT!"

The thing I'd heard dragging was its naked tail and furred abdomen. It was hungry, and it was after us.

And, unfortunately, it was faster than me.

"Go! Go! Go! lt's gaining!" I yelled.

We blew at top spider and cockroach speed.

Which seems really fast when you're an inch long, but isn't really that many miles per hour. A rat can do maybe five or six miles per hour.

A spider is lucky to break one mph.

"We'll have to morph back!"

Jake said.

"Not in here!" Cassie cried. "Not enough room."

"Next vent." Jake said.

"We go out through the next vent."

The next vent was about ten feet away. I couldn't turn around to look at the rat, but every hair on my spider body told me it was just inches behind me.

Yet there was something else making my hair tingle, too. Something about the breeze . . .

"YAAHHH!" I heard Jake yell.

A split second later, my spider legs were clawing air. It was like a Roadrunner cartoon.

I zoomed out into space, seemed to hang there with my little feet motoring away, and then I fell.

"0h, yes." Ax said calmly. "Erek mentioned we had to go down again."

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! We hit steel again, and each impact sent dust clouds swirling.

"Keep running!" Cassie cried, and fortunately, for once, I didn't argue.

Buh-Booooom! The rat dropped behind us! It was still after us! Fortunately, it was a little stunned by the impact, whereas we were outta there! Suddenly, ahead of us, the steel floor opened up again. But instead of a drop into darkness, there was a weird, vast plain of jagged spires. Each of the spires was steel, three times as tall as my little spider body. Each metal spire opened at the top. There were hundreds of them, all arranged in perfect rows. A foul smell, something my spider mind knew nothing about, came from this field of spires.

A weird, flickering glow lit the landscape.

In the eerie light, it looked like some awful graveyard, with the spires like industrial-strength gravestones or something. I mean, it was creepy.

"What is th?" I asked.

"Let's just get going, all right?" Rachel suggested. "We can sightsee some other time."

I would never have walked into that "field" if the rat hadn't been just two feet back and gaining again. I didn't need spider senses to know there was danger here. It screamed danger.

I stuck out one spider leg and touched the top of the nearest spire. Then another and another. I walked from spire to spire, carefully, cautiously. The cockroaches crawled and squirmed through the valleys between spires. Unable to stand normally, they had to drag themselves inch by inch.

"What is th?" I asked again.

"You don't want to know."

Jake said grimly. "lancet's just get out of here, okay?"

Right then it hit me. From the tone of Jake's thought-speak voice.

"0h, man. This is the furnace, isn't it? These spires . . . the holes in the tops of them . . . it's where the gas comes ou!"

"Not if no one turns on the heat." Rachel said grimly.

Over my head now, I saw the source of the eerie glow. It was the pilot light. It was a jet of blue flame as long as my body. I could feel the heat from it, even though it seemed to be as far above my head as the ceiling of a cathedral.

The rat, smarter than we were, decided to stop at the edge of the furnace. But there was no going back.

We had to cross the furnace. We had to hope the Matcom Corporation was into energy conservation and didn't waste heat. We had to pray that no one had messed with the thermo stat.

Because if the heat came on ...

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! "Gas!"

The gas blew with hurricane force up through the tops of the spires. In seconds the gas would rise to the pilot light. In seconds the entire land scape would erupt in flame! I thought I'd been moving as fast as I could move.

I was wrong. I had a whole extra speed.

Ahead of me I saw Jake, Rachel, and Ax all reach safety. Only Cassie and I were still deadly inches away from safety.

"RUN! RUN! RUNRUNRUNRUN!"

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Then . . . WHOOOOOOSH! Fuh-Wwwuuuummmp! The whole world seemed to explode around me. A wall of flame ...

a hurricane of hot air.

I was blown head over heels, somersaulting through air as hot as an oven.

JL somersaulted backward, hit steel floor again, and screeched like a skidding car. I plowed straight into Jake, and a split second later, Cassie plowed straight into me.

"Cassie! Cassie! Are you okay?" Jake asked.

"Yes, yes. I think so. Who can tell with this roach body?"

"l'm okay, too." I said.

"You know, just in case anyone cares."

"I guess they like to keep this building nice and warm, eh?" Rachel said.

"That was very close to being a disaster." Ax said. "We should thank the rat. If he had not chased us, we would have been crossing those gas jets several seconds later."

That was not a nice picture to think of. We would have fried, sizzled, and popped open faster than we could even try to think about de-morphing.

"That would have left a big wad of Marco mass floating in Z-space."

I muttered. I could joke about it, but I was quivering inside.

The rest of the trip through the heating and air-conditioning system was calm. But that just gave me time to think about the close call. One second slower, and I'd have gone out as a roasted spider.

"There are walls up here."

Jake warned from the head of our little pack of singed bugs. "No, wait, not walls. Like a maze. Like Erek said."

We traveled through a series of switchbacks, around a steel panel, then back around another. It was a light-blocking system. It would block out every last photon of light that might come through the vent.

Then we came to the edge of a drop. Beyond it, I knew, was the High Security Room itself – the location of the Pemalite crystal.

We were six feet up. We had to drop, and then stay within two feet of the wall. Any movement farther toward the center of the huge room, and we would set off pressure sensors in the floor.

By this time, we were used to falling.

"Next I want to try jumping out of a plane.

Without a parachute." I said as I stepped into the black void.

It is an eerie experience falling in total dark ness. You have no idea where the floor is. It's al most like you're not falling at all. Until you hit the bottom, that is.

"Stay close to the wall."

Jake reminded everyone. "Hug the wall and demorph."

I was relieved to be human again. But my human eyes were no better than spider eyes at pen etrating the darkness. It was darker than any night. Darker than hiding in a closet at midnight.

This was the darkness of being buried alive.

"There could be six Hork-Bajir standing three inches away, and we wouldn't know it," I said, in a whisper that seemed to be deadened by the darkness itself.

"That's a nice thought," Rachel said dryly.

"Even a single photon of light would set off the light sensors." Ax said. "This is complete darkness."

"And according to Erek, if we stepped two feet away from the wall, we'd run into a maze of ultrasensitive wires. Any contact and the alarm goes off. We have to travel forty feet without touching a wire. Without touching the floor or ceiling or walls," Jake reminded us.

"Let's morph. We'll be able to see then,"

Cassie said. "Or maybe not see, exactly, but you know what I mean."

What she meant was that we would be able to echolocate. Kinda like the dolphin morph. We would be able to make very fast, ultrahigh sounds that the human ear would not even hear.

Those sounds would vibrate off any solid object and send back a sort of sound picture.

At least, that's what we hoped. We had been planning to practice and find out if it was true.

Instead, we were morphing without any knowledge of what we were getting into.

"Someday we'll think all this is funny," I said. "You know, if we happen to live long enough."

I focused my mind on the bat morph we had each acquired. They aren't as creepy as people think. Certainly not as creepy as morphing a spider. This particular bat was very small, just a few inches long. It looked like a mouse, with huge ears and the face of a Pekinese dog. If you forgot about the leathery wings, it was just another basic mammal.

But this was one case where the weirdness wasn't something you saw. I couldn't see anything. Nothing.

I couldn't see myself shrinking, the ground rushing up at me. I couldn't see the way my legs shrank to almost nothing and brown fur sprouted from my body.

I couldn't see the way my fingers grew so long and a paper-thin leather web filled the spaces between them.

I saw none of it. I didn't even know I was a bat, until my bat brain sent an order for me to open my mouth and chirp out a pulse of sound.

I fired a string of superfast sound pulses. Like making a loud machine-gun sound, only a lot higher, and way, way faster.

And then . . .

"Whoa, ho!" I said.

The entire black, pitch-black, invisible room, had just lit up.

It wasn't like seeing, exactly. It was like . . . like feeling, almost. Except it was like you were feeling from a distance. I felt a vast room. I felt thousands of wires strung taut, up and down, left to right, at angles.

And, at the center of the room, beyond the maze of wires, I felt a raised, flat surface, and a sort of pedestal.

There were curling wires coming from the top of the pedestal.

All that came in a flash. Then it was gone. The others each fired off their own echolocating blasts, but I couldn't feel their sounds as clearly.

"0kay, that is cool." Rachel said. "That is way cool."

"The wires seem awfully close together." Cassie worried. "I wish we'd had time to try out these wings. I guess all we can do is hope for the best. Trust the bat to do the flying."

"Abandon yourself to the Force, Cassie Sky-walker." I said.

"Thanks, Darth. You first."

"Me first? Oh." Suddenly, I didn't feel at all like laughing. I licked my lips with my little bat tongue. Assuming I had lips. I wasn't sure.

I opened my wings. I spread them wide and thought, Well, this should be interesting.

I tested the wings cautiously. They moved differently than bird wings. More like I was reaching out with each stroke to grab the air and push it behind me.

"0kay. Here goes."

I fired an echolocating burst and took off.

Fired again! There were tight strings all around me! Left! Left again! Down! No, up! Right, left, right, right, straight up! Again and again the high-pitched sound machine gun fired. Again and again I dodged, millimeters from a wire.

It was insane! It was so fast my human brain was three steps behind. It was instantaneous. It was impossible! The speed, the agility, the instant translation of the echolocating blasts.

And suddenly, I was through! I was through the wires.

I landed on the table in the center of the room. It was all over in ten seconds of lunatic flight.

"0kay, now that is a roller-coaster ride! Yes!" I said, incredibly jazzed from having made it.

"Yes!"

The others came, one by one. I could watch them fly, seeing them in my echolocating flashes.

Everyone made it. And we were feeling pretty good about it, too. It was a rush.

"We did x!" I said.

"These bats can fly!"

Rachel added.

"ls that the crystal?"

Cassie asked.

Ax fired a burst and said, "That must be it."

It was no bigger than a grape. It rested on a small pedestal. Wires – not the sensor wires, but curling electrical-type wires, edged in all around it. But the crystal itself was not attached to anything.

It just lay there, where anyone could grab it.

It made a low sort of humming noise. I know it makes no sense, but it was almost like that crystal was alive.

"Um ... I have a stupid question." I said. "How do we grab this thing?"

For about ten seconds, no one said a word.

"We don't have hands."

Cassie said, pointing out the obvious.

"We can grab it in our mouths." Rachel said. "Right? Bats eat moths and stuff. They must have pretty strong jaws. Strong enough to get that crystal back to the air vent."

"0h, duh. Of course."

Jake said, sounding relieved. "l'll do it."

"I believe that may not work."

Ax said.

"Jake?" Cassie said. "Jake? If you have a crystal in your mouth, how do you fire the echolo-cating burst?"

At which point we were suddenly no longer fee I ing so good.

"I believe our plan now has somewhat of a flaw." Ax said quietly.

"See? We should never get cocky." Cassie said. "lt's tempting the irony gods."

"Irony gods?" Ax asked.

"Yeah." Cassie said.

"The bitter spirits who wait around till you get cocky, then hammer you."

"These are real?"

"No, of course n."

Cassie said impatiently. "How do we get out of here with that crystal?"

"We power our way ou."

Rachel said.

Ax said, "Erek's opinion was that there were many guards here in this building."

"We didn't see any on our way through the shafts." Jake remarked.

"But Erek's been pretty accurate so far. I have a feeling if he says there are guards here, there are guards here."

"No choice." Rachel said.

"We morph whatever we have that's big, mean, and nasty, then slam our way out of this place."

"Speaking of irony gods."

I muttered.

"What do you mean?" Rachel asked.

"I mean, we came here to get this Pemalite crystal so the Chee could be free to be violent. And now, despite all our clever planning, all our sneakiness and subtlety, we're stuck in the end going for total Schwarzenegger."

"Rachel's right." Jake said. He sighed. "We're looking at a fighting retreat."

Cassie said, "I think there's a door over there. Try echolocating. You'll see a raised rectangular outline. I think it's a door."

"Yep." Jake agreed.

"Morph out, keep that direction in mind.

Remorph, and be ready to haul butt for that door.

Head for any way out of this building. Don't stand and fight, just try to force your way past anyone who comes after us."

It was times like this I was glad Jake was our so-called leader. We all knew what we had to do, but someone had to actually say it. And boy, was I glad it wasn't me.

"I have such a bad feeling about th." I muttered.

Have you ever watched those old war movies where the Americans would be heading for some enemy beach? You know, they'd be in a little boat, riding through the surf, getting ready to jump out on a beach that was going to be chewed up by machine-gun bullets and mortars? That's what this felt like. Like we were pretty calm now, but in a few seconds it was going to be life and death. Things would happen very fast. And none of it was going to be good.

I morphed back to human. Then I focused my mind on the morph I liked for fighting.

It was still absolutely dark, so I didn't see my body grow big and hairy. But I could feel my shoulders bulk up beyond anything any bodybuilder ever even dreamed of. I could feel the strength. Strength like no human could ever possess.

It was comforting to think that I was stronger than three, four, maybe five strong men. But not even the gorilla is invincible.

"Everyone ready?" Jake asked.

There in the darkness, near enough to touch, but invisible, was enough power to shred a small army. Jake was in his tiger morph. Cassie had gone wolf. Rachel was one of the few animals mightier than my gorilla: She was a full-grown, massively powerful grizzly bear. And Ax ... well, Ax was Ax.

And trust me, when you've seen an Andalite in battle, you know that tail is all he needs.

"Ready? Why, I'm looking forward to it." I said, trying to sound like I wasn't scared silly.

"l'll go first."

Rachel said. And before anyone had time to object . .

.

HHHRRRRRAAAAWWWWRRR! Rachel barreled past me, hitting me and practically spinning me around like a top.

A microsecond later. . .

ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEEET! The alarm was deafening.

The others barreled after her. I hesitated for just a moment while I felt in the dark for the Pe– malite crystal. Aside from Ax, I was the only one with hands.

Then I went after them. I plunged wildly into total darkness with a tiny crystal in my massive fist.

Rachel tore a path through the alarm wires, and I could feel where she had gone. I slammed into Ax, then bounced into Jake, then sud denly – WHAM! – hit the wall.

ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEET! ScreeEEEET! Ka-Rrrrunch! A loud, screeching, tearing noise.

Sudden light! I could see.

Man, it was a relief to be able to see some thing at least.

Dim light came through the door. Or what was left of the door, after Rachel had given the door a thousand pounds or so of mad, ready-to-fight grizzly.

The door was splinters. It was steel, and it was still splinters.

I saw a flash of orange and black, moving fast but almost delicately – Jake, in tiger morph. Cassie the wolf followed him. Right behind her was the one animal that wasn't from anywhere on Earth.

There was a hallway outside. Jake said "Left!" and we went left.

Past doorways, past offices, past normal things like copiers and computers and fax machines and desks and cubicles, we ran. Rachel was in the lead, a huge, lumbering truck on four legs.

Her roars mixed with the endless scream of the alarms.

ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEEET! Suddenly, another door, a dead end. Rachel hit it with her shoulder, and the door was gone. There was a big room beyond. High ceilings, open space, a lobby sort of room. Windows! I could see faint stars through the tinted glass.

Escape was just a hundred feet away.

Freedom! Life! And all that stood in our way was twenty men: human-Controllers, armed with automatic rifles.

And behind them, two dozen or more Hork-Bajir warriors.

Rachel's bear had very poor vision, especially in this dim light. "Hork-Bajir?" she asked. "Yep." I said. "How many?" "Too many. Way too many."

DcreeEEEET! ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEET! The alarm was howling. And then, a far worse sound: Cha-Klick! The human-Controllers had cocked their rifles, chambering a round. If they fired, we'd be blown apart before we could twitch.

A human-Controller stepped out in front. She was a nice-looking, middle-aged woman wearing normal street clothes. She had bleached blond hair. She could have been someone's grandmother.

"S. The Andalite bandits," she said. Her face was twitching with tension, but she tried to sound calm. "You've done me a big favor. When I turn you over to Visser Three he'll promote me two grades. Maybe three!"

"0r he may decide to destroy you for letting us get this far." Ax said coolly.

"Surrender. You can't escape," the woman snapped. "I'd rather take you alive, but the Visser would still be happy to have your corpses."

We stared at her. And we stared at the muzzles of the twenty automatic rifles that were leveled at us.