Текст книги "Animorphs - 11 - The Forgotten"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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"Do you know if there is any water near here?" I asked Tobias.

"There's a stream. But it's too far, Jake, she weighs hundreds of pounds. What are you going to do, carry her to the water?"

I could see Rachel's bear chest rising and falling. She was breathing. Still alive. I kicked her. I kicked her hard. "Wake up!" I hissed. "'Come on, Rachel, wake up!"

The ants were getting at her ears now. They swarmed across her closed eyes. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry.

I don't think I've ever felt so totally helpless.

Rachel was out cold. The thousands of swarming ants would make sure she never woke up. They would kill the bear before Rachel could morph out. They would eat out her eyes and crawl into her head, and there was nothing I could do.

"Tobias! More ants! Find more ants!"

"Are you nuts?"

"Do it!" I yelled, not even caring if someone heard me. "I need another colony of ants!"

Tobias clicked. I could see his fierce eyes grow wider. He flapped away, staying as low to the ground as he could. He circled tightly, and then flared to kill his speed.

"Here! Here!" he yelled.

At that moment I heard movement in the bushes. I looked and saw two wolves.

Two very out-of-place wolves.

Their intelligent faces were sticking out of the brush.

"Cassie! Marco! That is you two, right?"

Looking closer, I could see that they had been in a fight.

There were cuts. There was blood. They began to demorph.

"0h, my God."

Cassie moaned as she saw Rachel and realized what was happening. I didn't have time to explain. I bent down and began yanking out tufts of bloody grizzly bear fur.

"What are you doing? Leave her alone!"

Marco yelled.

I yanked several handfuls of bloody fur. Then I raced toward the spot where Tobias waited. He was resting on a strong fern, looking down at a swarming mound of ants. I took a small sample of the grizzly fur and laid it right beside the mouth of the ant mound. The reaction was instantaneous. Hundreds of ants swarmed across the bloody fur. I used another tuft of fur to lift a handful of ants, then I walked a few feet toward Rachel and dropped the tuft. I repeated the process, getting closer and closer to Rachel. I was worried the ants might lose the scent. But they were keeping up with me, and even racing ahead. Slowly, surely, I led the ants to Rachel. Cassie and Marco were human once more. They looked like I probably looked: scared, horrified, vulnerable.

"We have to get them off her!" Cassie cried when she saw me.

"They're inside her ears! They're in her mouth! They'll kill her!"

"I know." I dropped my last blood-soaked tuft of fur. If this didn't work, Rachel was finished. I stepped aside and put my arm around Cassie.

The new colony of ants followed the trail I'd left them. There was a moment's hesitation, almost as if the whole rampaging colony paused upon seeing the bear. But then, like the well– trained army they were, they attacked. Ten thousand new ants swarmed onto Rachel's unconscious body. They slammed into a wall of ants from the first colony. I've been an ant. I've seen how different colonies of ants get along. I hoped they would act the same way here. They did. It was like some old Civil War battle. The two armies charged at each other.

Perfect, obedient automatons responding only to smell and instinct.

They attacked each other. The ants swarmed back out of Rachel's ears and mouth, ready for the battle.

"That was good thinking, Jake," Cassie said. "But sooner or later, one colony will win."

"We have to hope Rachel regains consciousness before then," I said.

The enemy armies of ants battled ferociously. It wouldn't look like much to most people. But having been an ant, I had some idea of the awesome slaughter that was going on in the fur of the grizzly.

Down there, ants were being torn apart by other ants.

Literally torn apart. Legs ripped out. Heads bitten off.

Stinging poisons being sprayed.

The battle was turning. The challengers" mound was too far away. They weren't able to call up enough reinforcements. In a few minutes the desperate ant war would be over.

But while they fought, they did not tear into Rachel's flesh.

And then . . .

"Unh . . . wha ... oh! Oh!Oh! I'm covered in ants!"

"Rachel! Rachel! It's me, Jake. Morph out. Morph out and be ready to run!"

Rachel didn't have to be told twice. She started demorphing.

She shrank. Pink flesh re-placed fur. Massive shoulders and huge paws became smaller, human features.

"Oh!" Rachel cried as soon as she had a human mouth.

"Arrrrggghhi"

"Rachel, get up! Follow me!" I said to her. "Tobias? Where's that stream?"

Tobias rose up and flew swiftly through the trees. I followed, crashing through the bushes, my bare feet torn, tripping. It was no more than a hundred feet. It felt like a mile.

Rachel was screaming now. Rachel is the bravest person I know.

But the thousands of vicious ants were beginning to attack her, now that they were done attacking each other. No one can stand that.

No one can stand that.

"Get off me! Oh, no! Oh! They're in my -"

Suddenly there was no more green. A muddy stream ... I leaped for the water. Pah-Loosh!

I heard Rachel hit the water beside me.

Pah-Loosh!

I swam toward her. She was still underwater. The water was too murky for me to be able to see her well. All I saw was flailing limbs.

Ants were floating to the surface of the water and being carried away by the current.

Then . . .

SPLOOSH!

Rachel came up, gasping for air.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

She looked around, confused for a moment. Then she recognized me. And she spotted Marco and Cassie on the bank of the stream.

"Get out of the water!" Cassie screamed.

I grabbed Rachel's arm and dragged her toward the bank. I pushed her ahead of me, slipping and sliding up through the muddy grass. I was just pulling my feet up out of the water when I saw the churning, frothing commotion Cassie had seen first.

I yanked my feet away, inches ahead of a school of flesh– eating piranha.

"This is the rain forest?" Rachel demanded angrily, spitting water and combing through her hair for any remaining ants.

"This is the rain forest everyone wants to save? Ants and piranha and snakes and bugs the size of rats? Well, as far as I'm concerned they can burn it down, pave it over, and put up malls and convenience stores!"

I sat staring at the piranha. They say a school of piranha can strip a cow down to nothing but bones in a few minutes.

Right then, thinking about what almost happened, shaking and panting and wanting to cry, I agreed with Rachel.

3:09 P.m.

Now we need to find Ax," I said. "But we need to be careful.

This jungle alone is enough to mess us up bad. And we have the Yeerks to deal with as well."

"I am not lost, Prince Jake." a thought-speak voice said.

"Ax!" I cried.

"Yes, it's me." Ax said.

"But I am in a morph. Don't be startled." With that, he dropped from the tree above us and landed on the ground.

"Well," Marco commented with great satisfaction. "Someone finally made a monkey out of Ax."

He was small, covered in brown fur, and definitely a monkey.

But he was alive.

I don't think I've ever felt so relieved in my life. I had been screwing up plenty. First by deciding to go into the stupid Safeway to begin with, then by endangering Tobias, then by endangering Ax, then by leaving Rachel alone to almost get killed. But at least no one had gotten killed.

Yet.

"I'm thinking spider monkey," Cassie said, frowning. "But I'm not sure. I'm not all that strong on rain forest animals."

The monkey – Ax – was holding something in his paw. It was bright yellow and about the size of a computer diskette, only round and a little thicker.

"What is that?" I asked.

"I did what you told me to do." Ax said. "This is a vital part of the Bug fighter – the computer core. No one can fly the Bug fighter without it."

"That thing is the computer?" Tobias asked.

"Yes, the Yeerks are still somewhat primitive. An Andalite version would be a third this size."

"Well, I'm relieved you're okay, Ax," I said. "We haven't been doing very well."

"I barely made it." Ax said simply. "There are several dozen Hork-Bajir out combing the forest, looking for us. I think they are divided now into platoons of five, each accompanied by a human-Controller, I haven't seen the Visser, but he will be around as well. And as you know, Visser Three can morph, so he could be any of the animals we see."

"That's a good point," Rachel said. "We have to be on the lookout for animals as well as Hork-Bajir and the natives."

"The human-Controllers," Marco said thoughtfully. "I think I know why they're traveling with the Hork-Bajir. See, the human-Controllers would know which animals belong here in the rain forest, and which don't. If they see a grizzly bear or a tiger or a wolf, they'll know that it doesn't belong. They'll know it's us."

"Good thinking, Marco. We need local morphs," I said.

"I can take you to the monkeys." Ax suggested. "I believe they are close relatives of yours."

"Marco is second cousin to a monkey," Rachel said.

I was glad to see she was teasing Marco again. It meant she was back. Still, there was a darkness in her eyes. Not even Rachel could just shake off what she'd been through. And knowing Rachel, she would react by being more aggressive.

Maybe too aggressive.

"Monkeys would be good," Cassie said. "It would get us up off the ground and into the trees."

"Okay, Ax, lead on. Tobias? I hate to ask, but we could use some air cover."

"No problem." Tobias said.

He flew up into the trees. I knew he was tired. And I knew he was hungry. Flying is hard work, and a bird's metabolism is fast. They can't endure long periods of hunger as well as a human. But what else could I do?

Ax did not lead us very far. Within ten minutes we were standing beneath a group of monkeys chittering and yipping in the trees high above us. It isn't possible to acquire a morph from a person who's morphed. In other words, we couldn't just copy Ax's monkey morph. We had to go to an actual monkey.

"I believe I can get one of them to come down." Ax said.

"How?" Marco asked.

Ax hesitated. It's hard to tell if a monkey is embarrassed, let alone a monkey with an Andalite mind. But I could have sworn Ax was embarrassed.

"I ...! believe that I am that is to say my morph is an attractive female.

One of the males seemed interested earlier."

"Well, that does it," Marco said flatly. "We have moved permanently to bizarre-o world. We've traveled in time, we're in a jungle fighting brain-stealing aliens and ten thousand annoying species of bugs, and our resident space cadet is a hot-looking monkey. Somebody wake me up when we get back to reality."

Wake me up when we get back to reality." Marco and I said it at the same moment. He stared at me. I stared at him. Everyone else stared at us.

I sighed. "I guess I have something to tell you guys. I should have said something earlier, probably. But I thought I was just going nuts or something. See, I've been having these flashes. Really intense. It's like, I'd be in school and then suddenly I was here. And since we got here, I've been having flashes that I'm back home."

Rachel rolled her eyes as if to say, "What next?" Cassie looked concerned. Marco looked like he was trying to find a joke in the situation, but was too tired to come up with anything.

"I knew what Marco was going to say just now because that was one of the flashes," I said.

Ax stared at me with large monkey eyes.

"Prince Jake, how long ago did you start having these flashbacks?"

I shrugged. "It was just this afternoon. Yesterday, or today, whatever you'd call it. I was square dancing when the first one happened. Why?"

"You were square dancing?" Marco said. "I'd have paid to see that."

Ax scratched his neck vigorously, then looked intently at what he'd scratched up. He popped whatever it was into his mouth.

Obviously, he was letting the monkey mind have some control.

"Prince Jake, as I said, I'm not an expert on Sario Rips. But I think what's happening is that the flashbacks are fluctuations where two simultaneous identical states of consciousness intersect outside of space-time."

"That would have been my guess," Marco said. "Simultaneous . .

. whatevers."

"I have a theory . . ." Ax began.

"A theory is more than I have. What is it?"

"I suspect we have moved backward in time. But not far. We are existing simultaneously both here and back home. There are now two Marcos, two Cassies, two of each of us. One here, one there.

At the same time. The flashbacks only started today. So I suspect we have gone back one day in time, a little less."

"That's good," Marco said.

"No." Ax said solemnly."It's not good. We are in two places at the same time. That is impossible. It's a time-space anomaly.

It's an unstable conditions"

"Meaning . . . ?" I pressed.

"I think it means that the two groups, the two Marcos, Rachels, and so ons, will annihilate each other. Like matter and antimatter, it is not possible for there to be two of us in the same time."

"So why haven't we annihilated ourselves yet?" Rachel asked.

"We are still within the Sario Rip effect." Ax said. "I think So ... so I think we're okay till we get back to the time when the rip occurred. At that time, the rip will end, and we'll have an impossible situation: two identical groups of people existing in two places at one time. I think my teacher said it would cause a mutual annihilation. We'd cease to exist. Both groups. Here and back home. The time when the Sario Rip occurred was eight fifty-four, exactly."

"In other words, if we're getting back to our own time, we have to do it before the Sario Rip occurs at eight fifty– four," I said.

"Yes. We'd have to go back and change the time line. So that none of this would happen. We have less than six hours."

"How do we do that?"

"I'm not sure."

I nodded. "Well, if we're trapped, so is Visser Three, right?

He must know about Sario Rips, too. If he's going back, we can go back with him.

All we have to do is get to the Blade ship, hide out on board, and let Visser Three take us home. I mean, that's the only way, right?"

"There could be -" Ax started to say. Then he stopped.

"What?" I asked him. "Is there some other way to get back?"

Ax gave me a long look. Like he wasn't quite sure what to say.

Or whether to say anything at all. He was in monkey morph, so I couldn't read his expression.

"As I said, Prince Jake, I wasn't paying attention the day they taught this in school."

I knew he was hiding something. I should have pressed him. But I didn't.

Just one more mistake from the "fearless leader" of the Animorphs.

It was easy to "acquire" the monkeys. Several of them swung down from the tree to sniff at Ax. And they didn't seem terribly frightened by any of us, since we were all standing very still and quiet.

I reached very slowly, very gently for one particular monkey.

He looked at my hand, considering it. Then he turned his back, as if asking me to scratch it.

"Okay," I said. "I'd be glad to."

I scratched the little monkey's back. And as I did, I closed my eyes and focused my thoughts on the monkey. He became quiet, like he was in a trance. That's how animals usually are when they're being acquired.

I absorbed the monkey DNA into me.

"This should be especially easy," Cassie commented as she finished acquiring a different monkey. "These monkeys aren't direct relatives of Homo sapiens, but still, most of our DNA will be identical. After all, a chimpanzee's DNA is like ninety-seven percent identical to human DNA."

"Or in Marco's case, ninety-nine point nine percent," Rachel interjected.

"Yes, it's like the fact that Rachel's DNA is actually ninety– nine percent identical to Malibu Barbie," Marco shot back.

"Could we concentrate here?" I said gruffly. Actually, I was relieved to see everyone behaving normally. It's when Cassie isn't talking about animals and Marco and Rachel aren't teasing each other that you have to worry.

"Ax? Did you have any problems with the monkey's mind when you morphed?" Cassie asked.

"No. Except . . . well, they are similar to morphing a human, but much more excitable. Also, they don't fall over as easily as humans do."

Ax is constantly amazed that humans walk around on just two legs, without even a tail to hold us up.

"Okay, let's do it," I said. "We're short on time, and we are exposed, sitting out here looking like dumb, barefoot kids from the suburbs. Tobias? Ax? Both of you keep an eye out for any trouble."

"This whole rain forest is nothing but trouble" Tobias said darkly. "Especially when you're a red-tailed hawk and you stick out like a sore thumb."

He was right, but I had to worry about one thing at a time.

And I knew from my "visions" that we could successfully morph into monkeys. Unfortunately, the visions didn't tell me whether we'd succeed or fail, end up alive ... or not.

I concentrated on a mental image of the monkey. And very, very quickly, I began to feel the changes.

The real monkeys began to see the changes, too.

SQUEEE SQUEEE! SQUEEE!

The real monkeys leaped onto the tree trunk and scampered up toward the high branches.

I shrank. That was to be expected. But the more I shrank, the more vulnerable I felt. Brown fur sprouted from my arms and legs. My face remained furless, and my lips puffed out to form a rubbery muzzle. The largest single change was the tail. I felt it come shooting out from the base of my spine. But I'd had a tail before, so I didn't think much about it.

Then I realized something. The tail moved. Not just back and forth, like a dog's tail. It moved like a fifth arm.

"Hey, the tail is neat." Cassie said. "Try moving it. You can feel that there's a part of your brain that controls it. Just like an extra hand."

She was right. And Ax was right, too. There was very little that was new or strange inside the monkey's mind. Like a human, it had only a few basic instincts. Like a human, it depended on learning to guide its actions.

The eyes were similar to human eyes. The ears no better than our own. The sense of smell was a bit improved, though.

"That was an easy morph." Rachel said. "So. What can this monkey do?"

I shrugged my narrow monkey shoulders.

"I guess it climbs trees."

I turned to the tree trunk. Like almost all the rain forest trees, it was shockingly tall. And there were no low branches.

But there were strangling vines wrapped all around the trunk, like a nest of snakes.

"Let's try it out." I said. I reached for a vine and held it tentatively. I positioned one foot. Then I carefully reached for another handhold.

"Prince Jake." Ax said. "Let the creature do the climbing. It knows how. Like this."

He put the Bug fighter's computer in his mouth and leaped right through the air, snatched a handhold, and was fifty feet up the tree before I could blink three times.

I took a deep breath and relaxed my control. I allowed the monkey mind to come forward and just said, "Climb."

Ax was right. The monkey knew how to climb. You know the way Michael Jordan knows his way around a basketball court? Or the way Kristi Ya-maguchi knows her way around the ice rink?

That's how the monkey knew the trees. It knew the trees. It understood the trees. It was born to be in the trees.

Hands, toes, hands, toes, it found every little handhold, every foothold, never a hesitation, never a doubt, never a question. That monkey knew exactly, precisely what to do.

I felt like I had swallowed ten Mountain Dews and a box of Ring-Dings. I was tiny, but man, I had energy. I flew up that tree.

I met Cassie up in the high canopy.

"Yow! Ax was right. This monkey can climb trees!"

"That's not all it can do." she said. The others were just catching up to us. "Watch this."

She launched herself out into the air. We were fifty feet up, easy, as high as a five-story building, and Cassie just fired her hind legs and flew through the air.

She snatched a hanging vine with one hand, but never stopped swinging forward.

That was all I needed to see. It was a game of chase through the treetops. The monkey wanted to play, and so did I. I needed some fun. to needed some fun in the worst way.

I leaped. For about two seconds that felt like ten minutes, I hung in the air. Then, my left hand simply reached out, found a branch, swung me forward, launched me once again through the air, reached out again . . .

Swing and fly and grab and swing and fly and grab!

"0h, yes! Oh, definitely!" Marco exulted as he followed Cassie and me through the trees.

Swing! Flyyyyy! Catch! Swing! Flyyyyy! Catch!

The little monkey brain processed every move, prepared every action and reaction. The entire world was branches and vines to the monkey.

Swing! Fly through the air with the ground a deadly fifty feet down! Catch at the last possible second! Swing again, out into the void, catch just in time to save your life!

It was the scene from my flash. Me, zipping through the trees.

Ax paused to let us all catch up. He wrapped his tail around a branch and hung there, panting. I wrapped my own tail around the branch and let go with my hands and feet. I hung there, high above the forest floor, by my tail. I swayed gently in the breeze.

"This sounds weird, but there's something . . . familiar about this." I said to Cassie when she caught up to us. "I mean, not to the monkey, but to me. To me, the human."

"It's called brachiating, I think." Cassie said. "Swinging through the trees. It's what our distant ancestors did, millions of years ago. Maybe little bits of that memory are still stuck in the back of our human brains. Maybe all the stages of evolution are still a part of us."

"0r maybe it just reminds me of playing on jungle gyms when I was a little kid."

"0h, sure, if you want the boring, obvious explanation" Cassie said with a laugh.

"It's like gymnastics." Rachel said. "0nly this monkey could totally destroy any human on the uneven parallel bars. If the monkey team could be in the Olympics, they'd win every medal."

"Can I ask a question?" Ax interrupted. "Where are we going?"

We all stared at him. Then we burst out laughing. The monkey bodies laughed, too, a wild, chittering sound. That just made us laugh all the more.

"I guess we did get kind of carried away." I said to Ax. "Now get serious. We have stuff to do. We have to find the Blade ship. And we have to get back to our own time before eight fifty-four."

"Can we play chase some more first?" Marco asked.

And I would have said yes, because I was as caught up as he was in the idiot joy of being a monkey.

But right then, I saw down below us a troop of Hork-Bajir.

Five of them, slashing their way through the undergrowth with a human-Controller following along behind.

"Let's follow them." I said. "Sooner or later they'll head back for the Blade ship, right?"

I don't think I ever realized how strong Hork-Bajir are till we followed them as they rampaged through the rain forest.

They used their arm blades to slash at the vegetation, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. They slashed and slashed and never seemed to tire.

There was a human-Controller with them. A guy who looked like he might be nineteen or twenty. He was in good shape, but he was gasping and sweating and struggling to keep up with the powerful, tireless Hork-Bajir. Far above them we swung and flew and caught and swung again.

"Are these guys going somewhere, or just wandering around?"

Rachel grumbled. "Tick-tock, ticktock. We're running out of time."

"There! There!" the human-Controller rasped weakly, pointing in the direction of the base of the tree we were in. "That animal! That piglike thing, I don't think it belongs here."

I think the guy was just tired. Looking for an excuse to sit down and rest. But without pausing even to consider, the lead Hork-Bajir drew his Dracon beam and fired.

TSEEEWWW!

The wild pig, or whatever it was, sizzled and disappeared. The Dracon beam kept traveling. It hit and sliced through the trunk of our tree.

"Move!" I yelled as the tree began to shudder and sway.

We leaped wildly for the next tree. I fired myself out into the air. The tree was falling too fast. No time to plan a landing!

I flew through the air for a very, very long two seconds. I dropped. The ground came rushing up. I could see the face of the human-Controller staring up at me, wondering . . .

A branch! I reached. Missed!

No, wait! Suddenly I was stopping, swinging in a crazy circle.

I almost laughed when I realized what had happened. My tail had grabbed the branch my hand had missed.

"I don't like that monkey," the human-Controller said.

The Hork-Bajir leader once again drew his Dracon beam and aimed for me.

But I was out of there. I raced back along the branch, holding on with my toes. And I swung around the back of the trunk a split second ahead of...

TSEEWWW!

ZZZZAAAPPP! The tree trunk exploded right in front of me as the Dracon beam turned its sap to steam. Heat scorched my face. I lost my hold and began to fail.

Then ... a hand grabbed me.

"Hold on!" Rachel said as she swung me toward a new branch.

"That does it! That's no real monkey," the human-Controller yelled. "The monkeys! Kill all the monkeys! Kill every monkey you see!"

Five Hork-Bajir drew their weapons.

"No!" Cassie cried. "Jake! We have to stop them!"

"Cassie, get out of here!Go!" I yelled.

TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!

Dracon beams fired their killing light. Tree branches fell away like someone was trimming a rosebush. And one of the beams hit a monkey.

"Cassie! Marco! Ax!" I yelled.

"It wasn't one of us." Marco answered.

Monkeys were destroyed. Birds in the trees were destroyed. A sloth and its baby, hanging from a branch, were destroyed. The Hork-Bajir were on a rampage. They were past just shooting at monkeys. They were shooting at anything that moved in the high branches.

"They're killing everything!" Cassie cried, outraged. "We have to stop them!"

"This isn't time to play save-the-rain-forest, Cassie." Marco snapped. "This is time to play save your own butt!"

"Jake!" Tobias yelled down from above. "I see Dracon beams being fired!"

"Yeah, we kind of noticed." Rachel answered.

We had swung away from most of the slaughter. But we were still near enough to hear the wild, huffing laughter of the Hork-Bajir and the giddy, insane cries from the human– Controller.

I know there is a difference between human life and the lives of other animals. I mean, I guess there is. And I definitely know there is a difference between human life and the lives of trees. But still, that mindless, pointless massacre of trees and the animals in them made me sick.

The Hork-Bajir were just cutting everything down. Smoldering stumps stood where trees had been sliced up. The forest was screaming in anger and confusion.

HOO! HOOO! HOOHOOHOO!

Ke-Raw! Ke-Raw! Ke-Raw!

Then something strange happened.

As the Hork-Bajir stomped on through the rain forest, something fell from a tree. It was very long, and it wrapped itself around the lead Hork-Bajir.

"A snake!" Rachel yelled.

"Man, I didn't know snakes came that big!" Marco said.

The snake swiftly coiled around the Hork-Bajir and squeezed.

The other Hork-Bajir began to slash at it. Then . . .

"Get back, fools, and be glad I don't kill you all." a sneering, thought-speak voice said.

The Hork-Bajir stopped trying to free their trapped friend very suddenly. They stepped back. And just watched the struggling Hork-Bajir.

I knew that thought-speak voice. We all did. Somehow the sound of it in your brain made you feel afraid.

Once the Hork-Bajir stopped struggling, the snake began to change. From the impossibly long snake body, an Andalite grew.

An Andalite body, at least. But not a true Andalite. Because in that Andalite head lived the Yeerk slug who held the rank of Visser Three.

It's strange, how two almost identical things can be so totally different. See, Visser Three looked almost exactly like Ax, or any other Andalite. And yet, there was never a moment of doubt when you saw him that this was an evil creature.

The four remaining Hork-Bajir and the human-Controller were shaking with terror before the Visser.

"What are you fools doing?" the Visser asked in deceptively calm tones. He looked at the human-Controller.

Visser Three is never very careful about his thought-speak.

Thought-speak is like E-mail: You can decide who it goes to.

Or you can just blast it out for all to hear. I guess if you're as powerful as Visser Three, you just shout away.

The human-Controller turned several shades lighter than his natural color. "We... we... we we we were following your orders, Visser. To destroy any animals that don't belong here because they could be the Andalite bandits."

"And you thought perhaps the trees were Andalites, as well?"

"No ... it was . . . urn . . ."

The Visser raked his Andalite tail forward and pressed the blade against the man's throat.

"Did it occur to you that the Bug fighter is less than a hundred yards from here? Did it occur to you that Dracon beams travel a long way? Did it occur to you that we cannot get back to our own time without that Bug fighter? And did it occur to you that I MIGHT BE IN MORPH and that you might end up shooting me?"

The human-Controller sank to his knees. "I didn't... we never... it... it... was them!" He pointed a finger of blame at the Hork-Bajir.

I whispered to Ax. "What's that about needing the Bug fighter to get back to his own time?"

Ax shrugged his monkey shoulders.

"I don't know. I think . . . maybe we need to exactly recreate the intersection of the two Dracon beams to undo the Sario Rip. I remember something like that from school." He held up the little disk from the Bug fighter's computer. "But they can't fly the Bug fighter without this."

It came to me then, in a flash of insight: I had made a terrible mistake. I had risked Ax's life to get the computer, to make it impossible for the Yeerks to fly the Bug fighter.

But now, we knew they'd have to fly the Bug fighter to get us home.

You could say we had a bargaining chip. You'd think maybe we could trade Visser Three the computer for a ride home. But I knew better. Once he had the computer, the Visser would just kill us.