May 17, 2022 21:18
To be fair, the entire series is "It was aliens all along".
I like this book because it's so damn weird.
amazed at the ability of the writer to not once in 20 some chapters say "New Yeerk City"
It's a strange one, and I don't know if it's a good one, but I don't think it's a terrible one. What do you all think?
The next book is a Rachel book
My name is Rachel.
And I was facing down a Controller in a purple-and-pink Dunkin' Donuts uniform. He was holding a Dracon beam. Smirking. The little jerk.
Tseeew! Tseeew!
He fired at point-blank range. Hit me right between my three-foot-long tusks.
"HhhhREEEEEuuuhhh!" I roared in pain and anger. Mostly anger. Like a couple of Dracon beam blasts are enough to take down a thirteen-hundred-pound African elephant.
Yeah, an elephant. I can morph into animals whenever I want. I can also morph a cat and a cockroach and lots of other animals and bugs. Sounds like fun, right?
Wrong. Like, about one percent of the time it's not seriously unpleasant. Mostly morphing is a weapon. A weapon in the most desperate battle ever fought by human beings.
Here's the deal. Earth is under attack. The planet has been invaded by aliens called Yeerks. These guys aren't into exploring strange new worlds. They're into exploring strange new bodies. They're parasites. Like lice or ringworm. Only intensely worse. In their natural state, Yeerks are nothing but gray slugs. Until they infest a host body, enter the brain, sink down into the little crevices, and take complete control.
Once they have you, you can't focus your own eyes, or draw your own breath, or decide when to pee. You are powerless. A slave of the most complete and hopeless kind.
You can still do one thing. Just one terrible thing: You can watch in horror as the Yeerk in your head lies to your family, betrays your friends, plots to take over your planet.
Frightening?
Oh, yeah. And it gets worse.
Me and my friends are all that actively stand between the Yeerks and their evil conquest of humanity. Just a group of five kids and a young alien.
We're trying to hold on until help gets here from a few billion light-years away. See, the Yeerks have enemies. A race of amazingly advanced aliens called Andalites.
Andalites look like deer. If deer had blue-and-tan fur, humanoid arms, and scorpionlike tails tipped with wickedly sharp blades. Andalites also have two main eyes, on their face, and two on swiveling stalks that sprout from the top of their head. Beautiful and intelligent and cunning.
Not too long ago - who am I kidding, what seems like a lifetime ago - an Andalite ship got fried right above Earth. Torn out of the sky while battling the Yeerks. My friends and I saw it fall. Saw the dying Andalite war prince named Elfangor crawl from the wreckage. Listened, stunned and just a little freaked out, as he gave us the technology that allows us to morph. To acquire the DNA of any animal we touch and then to become that animal. But there was one rule we had to follow: Stay in morph for more than two hours and you stay there forever. Become what the Andalites call a nothlit. Stuck in your morph for the rest of your life. Someone who means a lot to me knows about this firsthand. He'd stayed in morph too long and now he lives his life as a red-tailed hawk. He did regain his morphing ability, but when he demorphs he's not a human. He's a bird. The sad part - at least for me - is that he seems to like his life the way it is now.
But even though it seems futile, we've been fighting ever since.
Trying to hold on even though we've just about given up waiting for any more help out of the sky.
So here we are: Jake, our leader and my cousin; Cassie, my best friend; Marco, Jake's best friend and a totally annoying - never mind; Tobias, a lost soul with the body of a bird; and Elfangor's younger brother, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. We call him Ax.
Oh, there's one important thing I forgot to mention: Yeerks feed on something called Kandrona rays.
The Yeerks' need for Kandrona is the one flaw in their strategy. A weakness, an opening we can exploit. Every three days, thousands of Yeerks gather together at the enormous Yeerk pool complex built under our town.
Destroy the pool and the Yeerks will starve.
We just found out from our android allies, the Chee, that the Yeerks were beginning mass production of portable Kandronas. The heads of the Yeerk organization have had access to these for a while now. But mass production? That meant each and every Yeerk, no matter how low down on the corporate ladder, would be able to feed in the privacy of his or her own home as easily as you nuke a frozen pizza. The Yeerk pool would be obsolete. Our enemies would be rid of their only flaw.
We just couldn't let it happen.
So we'd attacked their factory, a dingy old industrial building on the edge of town, windows painted black. The Yeerks had disguised it as a Dunkin' Donuts bakery. The human-Controllers were even dressed in the ever-so-stylish polyester fast-food uniforms.
The Pepto-Bismol pink poly did not help my mood. Neither did the fact that we were way outnumbered.
Thirty human-Controllers were working on a crude assembly line in the back of the building. Four more were pretending to make donuts up front. There were at least a dozen guards.
I wrapped my trunk around a Controller's waist, tossed my massive head, and let go. "Ahhhhhhhh!" he yelled, as he went flying. Then -
THUMP!
I didn't see where he landed.
"HhhhREEEEEuuuuhhh!" I trumpeted.
Jake, Cassie, Ax, and Tobias were back by the assembly line, on the other side of a false wall. I couldn't see them but the elephant's ears were picking up moans and roars and cries and Dracon beam blasts. Also, something that sounded like equipment smashing to the floor.
Marco was on my side of the wall, in gorilla morph. Three Controllers surrounded him. He lashed out with his ham-sized hands but the Controllers were slowly backing him against one of the three commercial ovens.
<Marco! I'm on my way!> I shouted.
<Just when I'm having so much fun.>
The Controllers had their backs to me. Didn't see me coming. I grabbed the middle one. Tossed.
"Aaaahhhhhhh!" he yelled.
Now they knew I was there.
The right one turned his handheld Dracon beam at me.
Too slow.
I grabbed him. Tossed.
"Nnnnnoooooo!" he shouted.
Marco moved forward. Knocked the Dracon beam out of the third Controller's hand. Whacked him a solid gorilla punch to the jaw. The guy went down. And stayed there.
Marco and I looked around. Our part of the factory was littered with downed human-Controllers. Yeerks who wouldn't be causing us any headaches for a long, long time.
<Let's bail!> Jake shouted. <Ax says we've got three minutes left to stay in morph!>
I powered through the main entrance, taking most of the door frame with me. Three minutes to demorph or be stuck as an elephant for the rest of my life.
The others were right behind me. Ax in his own Andalite body. Jake moving fluidly in his tiger morph. Cassie as a wolf, fast and low. Tobias, the red-tailed hawk. And Marco, a gorilla, bringing up the rear.
We ran. Down the deserted alleyway where we'd left our outer clothing. The pavement was damp. Strange misty halos ringed the sodium-vapor lights way overhead. Not a minute to spare. Crowded in around the stinking Dumpsters and piles of oily, wet rags, we stopped.
<Nice work, guys,> Jake said. <Let's get out of here.>
I focused on my own body, and felt the changes begin.
My tusks went flaccid, like two overgrown pieces of spaghetti. They slurped up into my face, slapping side to side as they retracted.
Morphing is not attractive. Actually, it's pretty much a freak show.
My eyes sort of moved up and down as they traveled from the sides of my shrinking head to the front. Things went blurry for a second until human sight blinked on. And then -
"Hahooo wwwas that?" Cassie demanded with a mouth that was half-wolf and half-human.
<A small explosion of light,> Ax said. <I believe it is part of a primitive visual recording device called a camera.>
"WHAT?" Marco exploded. "Someone took a picture of me? Not cool. Do you see what I'm wearing? I'm Spandex-boy. Totally not cool."
I heard a garbage can tumbling over. Squeaky footsteps on the wet pavement. Someone was running away!
"Everyone stay put," Jake said. "W can't let anyone see us. Tobias?"
<I'm on it.> Tobias flapped his wings and rose up over Marco's head.
"Well, this is great, isn't it?" Marco said. "We close down a Yeerk-run operation only to let some tabloid photographer sneak up on us. I bet we're on the cover of the National Enquirer tomorrow."
"You don't know it was a professional photographer," Cassie argued.
"A kid can hope, can't he?"
"Not funny." Jake, his mouth pressed into a grim line.
One of the reasons we've survived as long as we have is that the Yeerks don't know who we are. They think we're a group of "Andalite bandits."
If they found out we were a bunch of human kids we'd be dead or infested within hours. No doubt our entire families, too.
"I'm going with Tobias," I said grimly.
I concentrated on the bald eagle DNA buried somewhere deep inside me. Demorphing and morphing - especially after battle - is exhausting. But I couldn't just stand around and wait. So much easier to do something. Anything.
The first thing to change was my mouth. My lips bulged out. Grew hard and stiff and turned yellow.
THUD! I fell forward as my legs rapidly shrank. The slimy bricks of the alleyway rushed up at me.
A feather tattoo started at my fingertips and covered my arms in a few seconds. Suddenly, the pattern sprang up and my arms and legs were covered with actual feathers. The feathers were dark brown, except for the snowy-white ones that replaced my blond hair and the skin of my face and neck. My feet split open and formed yellow talons, each of which ended in a hooked claw. Claws that could grab a swimming fish out of a rushing river. My human bones became hollow and light.
Moments later, I was airborne, cruising soundlessly over the deserted streets. I could see the "Dunkin' Donuts" bakery a few blocks away. Rubble spilled out the door. Nobody was stirring. The whole neighborhood was quiet. Which was good. No commando force of Controllers. Not yet, anyway.
There! I spotted Tobias maybe two hundred yards ahead and to my right, flying over some midrise buildings.
<Tobias!> I called. <Who was it?>
<Some kid,> he said. <About our age. He had one of those disposable cameras.>
<Where is he?> I asked.
<I lost him,> Tobias said grimly. <He ran into that building with the pigeon cages on the roof.>
<Let's go after him,> I said.
<No sign of him through any of the windows. But it's getting dark and I don't have the best vision for this job at night.>
Neither did the bald eagle. But by then I knew the others were on their way. When Jake felt it was safe they'd gone owl and followed us. The six of us circled the building, waiting for the kid to come back out or appear in a window. Nothing happened except that the strange mist turned into a steady downpour.
Jake made the call. <We need to keep an eye on this kid,> he said. <But there's no need for all of us to be here. Ax, Tobias, take the first watch.>
We arranged a quick schedule then split up.
I didn't sleep well that night. I spent two hours dreaming I was on the cover of Time magazine as a half-human, half-elephant freak. Not exactly the kind of fame that makes Mom and Dad proud.
At three o'clock, I morphed owl and flew back to the apartment building. Tobias and Ax reported that they hadn't seen anything. Cassie and I spent the next two hours flying in endless circles.
Jake and Marco relieved us at five.
I went back to my bed and my nightmares of exposure and infestation.
By eight-thirty Saturday morning, I was awake and heading to Cassie's barn for a meeting. I was tired and grumpy. The weather was rainy and cold. I wanted a nap. Maybe after we got the film.
Tobias was in his usual spot in the rafters. Cassie was mucking out a stall. Marco was sitting on a stool, looking all conditioned and blown-dry. Jake kept yawning. He looked rumpled, like he'd just crawled out of bed. Which he probably had.
Ax was back on watch at the kid's apartment building.
"Let's try to keep this meeting short," Jake said. "I don't want Ax on surveillance alone."
"I don't get it," Marco said. "What was that kid doing all night?"
"Probably sleeping," I grumbled.
<We need a plan,> Tobias said.
"Easy. We steal the film," I suggested.
"That's not a plan, O reckless one," Marco said snidely. "That's obvious. But I'm ready."
Jake nodded. "I spotted the kid around dawn. His apartment is on the fifth floor. The bedroom faces an empty lot in back."
"Did you see the camera?" Rachel asked.
"I think so," Jake said. "On his desk."
"We get it now," I said. "Before he hands it over to someone or takes it to Photos 'R' Us."
Cassie leaned against her rake. "Probably a hundred people live in that apartment building," she pointed out. "Some of them could be Controllers."
"Yeah," Marco said. "So maybe the kid is in the elevator with a neighbor and he just happens to mention these weird creatures he saw in a dark alleyway last night. Before you know it, there's a knock on your door. And it isn't someone with a check for a million dollars."
<He could be a Controller himself,> Tobias said.
"We've got to go in," Jake said with another yawn. "We could try -"
ZZZZZiiiiipppppp!
"What the -?" Marco jumped to his feet.
A radio-controlled toy car blew into the barn. More precisely, a slightly damp, pink-and-aqua Barbie 4x4. Only instead of Barbie, a very small spaceship sat in the driver's seat. The ship was three or four inches long, shaped like a baton with two big "engines" at the back and a death's-head bridge in the front.
The ship looked way too familiar.
Insignificant creatures! Give us the power source and learn to accept your fate as our eternal slaves! We will not crush and annihilate you as we will crush and annihilate all the inferior species of this planet!>
"Oh, man," I said. "You've got to be kidding. Not these guys again."
what
WHAT
This is an outrage.
This one is distinctly less funny and interesting than the first Helmacron book
Ax fluttered down from the rafters.
Jake nodded. "Tobias?"
<No problem.>
Tobias would keep watch. Let us know if anyone got close enough to the bam to see Ax do his thing.
Ax began to change. His sharp raptor head ballooned up. His bright yellow harrier eyes migrated to the top of his head, turned blue, and sprouted stalks.
Total freak show.
"Why did the Helmacrons have to show up today?" Marco whined. "I already used my Honey, I Shrunk the Animorphs joke the last time they were around. I just can't get a break."
Cassie went to the freezer and started digging for the morphing cube. I followed her. Mostly because the sick look on Marco's face was making me uneasy.
"Why does your dad keep a freezer out here?" I asked her.
'We store stuff in it," Cassie said. She handed me an unidentifiable lump of something. It was frozen solid, so cold my fingers started to ache.
"Like what?"
"Frozen grubs," Cassie said, leaning back down into the freezer. "Certain, um, bodily fluids from the animals. Oh, and Popsicles. Dad likes grape."
"Sorry I asked." I considered the frozen lump in my hand. Decided I didn't want to know.
"I figured nobody in their right mind would go pawing through this freezer," Cassie said. "Besides, I needed a place where no living creature could accidentally come into contact with the cube."
"I'm with you on that one," I agreed.
Ax went to work on the Helmacron ship.
I watched for a while. He used some of the surgical equipment Cassie's dad kept in the bam. Held the precise instruments in his delicate Andalite fingers and carefully manipulated control rods the size of human hairs. Squinting at the procedure for ten minutes was enough to give me a headache.
My eyes kept drifting to Marco. Still sitting on the hay, looking miserable. I wandered over to him. Sat next to him. Considered giving him a hug, but couldn't quite bring myself to actually do it.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Great. I always wanted to grow up to be a Helmacron Holiday Inn."
It wasn't funny, but I smiled anyway. "We're going to get them," I told Marco.
An hour later Ax was finished.
<This device is very simple to operate,> Ax told us. <The target size has been set. All we have to do is touch this panel and it should engage the shrinking ray.>
I felt wired. Nervous energy. I was anxious to get moving. The Helmacrons had been in Marco's body for over an hour. Plenty of time to do plenty of damage.
"Just show me which button to push," Marco told Ax eagerly.
Jake looked at Marco. "You're going to shrink us?"
"Who else?"
"I thought Ax would do it."
"Isn't he going, you know, on the mission?" Marco asked.
"Well, we know there are at least twelve Helmacrons," I said. "Five of us. Even with Ax they outnumber us more than two to one. I say he comes."
<Operating the device is not difficulty Ax repeated. <I may be more useful up Marco's nose.>
Marco giggled nervously. "That didn't sound too weird."
Jake looked troubled. "Marco, don't you want to have someone here with you?" he asked.
"You mean, in case I collapse?" Marco asked. "Pass out? Or, to make things crystal clear, drop dead?"
Jake rubbed his eyes. "Right," he said wearily.
"No." Marco shook his head. "If you don't mind, I'd rather have the maximum firepower working to make sure none of those things happen. What's Ax going to do for me here? Hold my hand?"
"We still have the camera to deal with," Jake pointed out.
"I'll handle the kid," Marco said. "One homey shutterbug is nothing compared to a tiny bunch of squabbling psychopaths from outer space."
Jake's expression got serious. "Look, you can't take unnecessary risks while this mission is going on. Don't play hero. Just keep in touch with Erek or whoever he's got on surveillance."
<Prince Jake,> Ax said, <I would also strongly advise Marco not to morph while we are inside his body. As far as I know, this is an unprecedented event in the history of morphing technology. There is no way to predict what the redistribution of his mass into Z-space and the substitution of a foreign
DNA will do to our miniaturized bodies.>
Jake pushed his hair off his forehead. "Got that, Marco?"
"Uh, not really. Ax, try English."
"Look," Jake said. "No morphing, under any circumstances."
"Don't worry," Marco snorted. "The thought sort of makes me sick."
"Okay, Ax, you're with us," Jake said. "I'm hoping we won't be gone long. But Marco ..."
"Yeah, yeah, Erek's phone number is on the fridge. Listen, is it okay if I help myself to a snack after the kids go to bed?"
"All of this strategic planning is fun and all," I said loudly. "But we're giving the Helmacrons a big honkin' head start."
"Okay," Jake said. "In the words of my gung-ho cousin, 'Let's do it.'"
"We should hold hands," Cassie said. "That way we won't get separated when we shrink. Maybe."
The five of us huddled together. I took Cassie's hand and gently held Tobias's wing. We watched as Marco hovered over the Helmacron ship, looking too big and clumsy.
<Simply place your hand on the panel and pull down the left rod,> Ax said.
"Yeah, I got it," Marco said. "Ready, set -"
<Make sure it is the left rod,> Ax said. <You do not want to touch the right one.>
"I got it," Marco said, sounding annoyed.
"Ready -"
FLASH!
A flashbulb brilliance. The light was green and shockingly bright, like looking into an emerald sun. Then, with surprising speed, we all started to get very small.
Down.
Down, and down, and down.
We were shrinking. Fast.
The Helmacron ship and the blue box were growing larger. Marco was positively enormous.
"Hey, Marco," I said. "From this angle, you actually look tall."
"Hey - cool!"
"Too bad you can't shrink the whole school," I said.
"Ha-ha. And, free this month only, a bonus ha!" Shrinking is something like morphing an insect. But different, too. When I've been in fly morph the fly instincts feel that being tiny is natural.
Being a teeny-weeny human is just plain weird.
I'd started out at five-foot-something. Now I was roughly the size of an American Girl doll. And getting tinier rapidly.
We were the Littles. The Borrowers. Thumbelina and friends.
Marco was peering down on us. His face was the size of a billboard on Times Square. If he'd been wearing Calvin Klein briefs - and nothing else - the illusion would have been complete. Almost.
"Remember, Marco," Jake called. "No morphing."
"What did you say?" Marco asked. "Small people are hard to hear."
"I said, no morphing!" But at that point it probably sounded like, "I said, no morphing."
"I can't HEAR you!" Marco was starting to sound like a cheerleader at one of those televised competitions.
"Tell him," Jake said to Ax.
<No morphing!> Ax yelled in thought-speak.
"Okay!" Marco boomed. "Your puny lives depend on my following orders."
That was when the first wave of fear rippled through me.
Okay, morphing is creepy. But, in a strange way, you're in control.
Concentrate hard enough and you can control the morph, at least to some extent.
Concentrate hard enough and even when you think you're about to take your dying breath, you can get your own body back.
But shrinking ...
I couldn't undo this on my own. In a very real and spooky way, my life was in Marco's hands.
And, of course, Marco was infested with microscopic lunatics that wanted him - and us - out of their way.
Now we were flea-sized, and still shrinking.
The workbench loomed overhead like a windowless skyscraper.
The treads on Marco's running shoes were like enormous purple sculptures.
Down.
Down, and down, and down.
Down until rake marks in the dirt looked like hills.
Down until bits of hay were huge, felled trees and grains of dirt were the size of soccer balls. And we were still shrinking.
Marco's mammoth form was entirely filling my view. "I just thought of some -"
His voice just blinked out mid-sentence. Like a radio suddenly switched off. But I knew Marco was still talking. I could sense his words as sound waves breaking around me.
Cassie gripped my hand a bit tighter. "What just happened?"
<We are too small to hear sounds,> Ax said.
"That didn't happen before," Cassie said.
<Right,> Tobias agreed. <When the Helmacrons shrunk me and Cassie and Marco, we could still hear. You couldn't hear us. But we could hear you.>
Cassie looked at me. "Something's wrong."
Hi, Marco here.
You're expecting some sort of glib remark. A joke, a witty comment. Well, I wasn't in a Jim Carrey kind of space.
The Helmacrons hadn't exactly charmed me the first time around. Basically, I'd decided they were insane. Now they were inside my body.
In there with little unimportant things like my heart and my lungs.
And my friends.
The truth: I was thinking about scribbling out a little note. Telling Jake to take my stereo after I was gone. Explaining to Dad what really happened to Mom. Telling Rachel about the dream where she begged me to marry her.
Adding to the general creepiness factor was the fact that my friends weren't talking to me.
I heard Ax say, <No morphing!> Then ... nothing.
Nothing for at least a minute.
Then -
<Marco, this is Ax. We have a problem. You will not be able to hear the others. Just Tobias and me in thought-speak.>
"But you can hear me, right?"
Another long pause. Then -
<Cassie said I should explain that none of us can hear you, either.> Ax, of course.
"Well, how annoying!" I said. "I mean, how am I supposed to keep up troop morale when nobody can even hear my comic genius?"
Nothing.
Oh. Right. They couldn't hear me.
<You need to pick us up and put us in your nose,> Ax said.
Sure. Except - big problem: How was I supposed to pick them up without squishing them? I had to squint just to see them. They were, like, the size of dandruff flakes.
I leaned over and stared at the ground. Okay, second big problem: I'd lost them. Frantically, I scanned the dirt and hay. Nothing.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I was ticked. We hadn't thought of this. We should have arranged for everyone to hop on my hand when they got to about an inch high. Because finding my friends seemed totally impossible.
Major feeling of dread.
I'd faced death before. Each one of us had had at least one major close call. But this was different. This was everyone. As in, I would be the only Animorph left alive. Little me against all the bad guys.
I felt like puking.
Stress.
Or ... something else? Some strange little aliens marching through my ... what? Nose? Lungs? Brain? Doing who knows what kind of damage.
No time to freak out.
Time to find my friends and stick them up my nose.
<Ahhhhhhhhh!> Tobias suddenly screamed in my head.
My stomach took a lurch.
Definitely stress.
<Marco, now would be an excellent time to remove us from the floor,> Ax said.
"Fine, fine," I muttered. "Just tell me where you are!"
Of course, they couldn't hear me.
Then I saw it. A black bug with a hard shell. Weird pincers in the front. Scary. Considering how panicked Tobias sounded, my friends were somewhere near that big, bad beetle.
I dropped to my knees. At first nothing but dirt. Then -
There!
A few too-colorful grains of sand. I tried to count them. I couldn't smash the beetle if he had one of my friends.
One. Two. Three. Four ... Five. Okay. I reached out and snatched up the beetle by a back leg. Flung him toward the freezer.
<Thanks,> Tobias said shakily.
"You're welcome," I muttered, even though he wouldn't hear me.
Okay, I could see the colorful specks. But I still had no idea how to pick them up. And I was afraid to look away.
Our little vacation in the hay forest was nice but I was ready to leave. Especially after the beetle episode.
We could see Marco hovering overhead. His face was an entire landscape. Nose mountain. Cheek plains.
He was a giant.
"Why doesn't he pick us up?" Cassie asked. Marco wasn't doing anything except staring at us.
"Maybe he's waiting for Jake to tell him what to do," I said nastily. Tiny is definitely not my thing.
Ax looked at Jake. <Prince Jake, it is possible Marco is afraid of hurting us.>
"Right," Jake said. "Let's tell him how to pick us up. Er - how should he pick us up?"
"Easy," I said. "We grab a piece of hay. He sticks it up his nose and we're off."
Jake nodded. "That piece there." He pointed to a piece of hay a few paces away.
Climbing it was easy. At our size the hay looked rough, like someone had taken a cheese grater to its sides. I grabbed a couple of handholds and pulled myself up. No problem.
"I feel like I could take on Schwarzenegger," I said.
Cassie nodded as she scrambled up beside me. "Something about being small makes you stronger." We noticed it before. "Like ants lifting a thousand times their weight."
Once we were all aboard, Ax told Marco to pick up the hay. Two fingers the size of sequoia trunks lowered, pinched, and lifted.
"Ahhhhh!" Cassie screamed.
"Ahhhhh!" I yelled.
We were being blasted into space! The G-force knocked me on my butt. I just managed to hang on. The wind was whipping. I could barely breath. I saw something flash by. Could have been Marco's knee.
<Slow down!> Tobias shouted.
The wind died down. The landscape beneath us shifted from jeans-color to T-shirt-color to chincolor."
Fantastic Voyage," I said. "The voyage inside Marco."
<That was an old sci-fi movie. This is a horror flick.> Tobias said.
We passed into shadow.
Apparently into - can I just say EWWW - Marco's nose.
When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw a widely spaced forest of rough, textured black hairs, sprouting out of what looked like a waxy, pink granite wall. The hairs were sapling-sized, long, crisscrossing high overhead. A shifting intermittent wind tossed them.
"Okay, everybody off," Jake said. He reached for a nearby hair.
Tobias fluttered above my head.
<Prince Jake, I should morph first,> Ax said. <I think my hooves will slow me down in this "terrain.">
"Do it."
I reached out for a hair and pulled myself onto it. The hair sagged under my weight. Below ... the void. I could see a bright oval spot of light. I was looking straight out of Marco's nostril. The ground was miles and miles away. I quickly scrambled toward the overhang.
Ugh. The wall was oddly warm. Body temperature. There was something really weird about pressing myself into Marco's skin. Gave me a massive case of the heebie-jeebies.
"You know," Jake said thoughtfully. "I think this is the most disgusting mission we've ever done. Something about being inside Marco makes me feel like a Yeerk."
"Check it out," Cassie whispered. You can feel Marco's breath. In -"
A cool breeze blew up from the opening below us.
"And out -"
Now a warmer moist breeze blew in the opposite direction.
I clung, staring up. The wall arched over my head at a forty-five-degree angle. I couldn't see the end of the overhang, but it went way, way up, disappearing into darkness.
There was no sign of the Helmacrons. No footprints to tell us which way to go.
"Now what?" I asked.
"Climb?" Cassie suggested.
I watched as Ax completed his morph to northern harrier. As his stalk eyes withered and vanished.
SLURP! His tail violently disappeared into his body like an electric cord into a vacuum. Tail feathers shot out.
"Let's all get wings," I suggested. "Flying will be easier than trying to rock climb."
Hanging onto delicate nose hairs and the slick wall, we morphed. Tricky, but I felt much, much better as a bald eagle. Touching Marco's insides was wigging me out.
Morphs complete, we put our backs to Marco's nostril and flew. A red-tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, a northern harrier, a bald eagle, an owl.
On and on. Like flying into a cave. Darker and darker the deeper we got.
Flying was easier than climbing, but it was still hard work. Each time Marco exhaled, we lost ground. A bald eagle can hover for hours on a nice updraft. But there were no updrafts here. Soon I was exhausted from flapping my wings, up and down.
Before long, a flat plain opened up beneath us. My raptor ears started to pick up sounds.
<Helmacrons,> Tobias said. <Farther in.>
They sounded angry. As if they were arguing.
Finally, I could make out their forms.
<Do you guys see what I see?> I asked.
<The Helmacrons,> Jake said.
<Yes, but -> I hesitated, uncertain. Bald eagles see well during the day. They can spot a salmon swimming upstream from a mile up. But it was dark now, and I was practically blind. <Isn't something wrong?>
<The Helmacrons look kind of ... big,> Tobias said.
Kind of big. As in - enormous. Huge. Gargantuan. They were the size of giraffes. No - bigger. Twice as big. As big as air traffic control towers. I could morph elephant and still only come up to their calves.
Another thing. These were some seriously ugly aliens. Heads: wide and perfectly flat on top. Eyes rolled around up there like big green marbles. Faces: upside-down pyramids. Chins: barbed.
Teeth gnashed in from either side of their mouths. And an extra set of legs made them look like walking tables.
<They appear to be exactly a hundred times our size,> Ax said calmly.
<How?> Jake wondered.
<It is possible - perhaps I made a miscalculation when I calibrated the shrinking device.>
Ax? Make a simple mathematical error? No.
<More likely, the Helmacrons guessed we'd try to use the shrinking ray,> I said.
<Guessed - and sabotaged it before they bailed out of their ship,> Jake said.
<The little stinkers,> Cassie said.
O Great One, Most Courageous of all Leaders, we have bravely marched into a breathing hole of the giant alien! Triumph was within our grasp until one of the treasonable females wallowed into a sticky body excretion! But we, the noble knights of Helmacron, shall overcome this hardship and find the strength to silence the giant forever!
- From the log of the Helmacron Males
The Helmacrons didn't seem to notice us as we flapped overhead. They were absorbed in themselves. As usual.
<What are they doing?> Tobias said. The Helmacrons were standing in a circle like Boy Scouts around a fire. Only there was a Helmacron where the fire belonged.
<Consulting a map?> Cassie suggested.
<Making dinner reservations?>
<Quiet down, guys!> Jake ordered. <I can't hear them!>
<Why must we delay our glorious mission?> one of the Helmacrons demanded of the others. <A warrior who is stuck and cannot move dies a hero! Should we deprive her of a valiant death?>
I heard what sounded like the rattle of swords. <March on! March on!> several Helmacron voices chanted.
<I care not for our goo-encrusted knight!> another voice said. <But we know not what lies ahead. Perhaps the muck extends through the entire alien!>
<Excuse me,> Jake said. <But what?>
<Goo and muck,> Tobias said. <What little boys are made of.>
<Coward!> one of the Helmacrons shouted.
<Fool!>said the other.
More rattling of swords. I was beginning to think the Helmacrons were going to take each other out and save us a lot of trouble.
Which kind of annoyed me. I mean, I was big-time bugged with the Helmacrons for doublecrossing us. It was their fault I was no bigger than a gnat. I wanted revenge! I wanted to launch an attack before there was no one left to attack.
<Eavesdropping is rude,> I said. <Let's figure out how we're going to capture them.>
<I think I've got it!> Cassie said.
<Great!> Jake said. Then, <What?>
<The human nose is lined with mucus,> Cassie said. <Mucus traps dust that floats into the nose. Marco's mucus must have trapped one of the Helmacrons!>
I don't know why she sounded so happy. This whole thing was just so far beyond gross. <Most animals with lungs have mucus,> Ax said loudly. You wouldn't expect it, but trying to hear thought-speak over the huge debating Helmacrons and the wind was becoming difficult. <Andalites have it, too.>
<Isn't that special?> I said. <Guys, could you focus here? We need to talk attack.>
<Look. It's everywhere,> Tobias pointed out. He was right. Now that I focused my dim eyesight on the walls and floors and ceilings ahead of us, I could see the snot. Oozing. Dripping. Pooling. Collecting like wax under a candle. Must not have been as thick as wax, though. The wind was blowing up whitecaps on the surface of the pools.
Whitecaps?
<Hey - why is it getting so windy?> I shouted.
It happened suddenly. Gusts of cool, incoming wind. In a totally different rhythm than before. With my excellent eagle hearing I heard a distant roar. My eagle brain panicked. Wanted to fly. Wanted out of the way of whatever was coming.
Louder!
Now the Helmacrons had noticed.
They were all shouting at once.
<This sudden storm will not defeat the mighty warriors of the Helmacron empire, just rulers of the universe!>
LOUDER!
The human part of me felt a bit jittery, too. The sound was like a freight train closing in on us.
<Get in the snot!> Jake yelled.
<What? No way!>
Jake was already flapping toward the deepest pool. <Do it. Now!> he hollered.
I flew. But it was practically impossible to make progress in the rushing wind. Like flying into the eye of a hurricane. I used all of my strength, pressed my wing muscles to the bone-popping point.
THUMP! And landed in a snot puddle. Stuck.
THUMP! Tobias came in for a wet landing on my right. Stuck.
THUMP! Cassie, farther up on the wall.
THUMP! Ax.
The wind hit me like a brick wall. Knocked me off my talons. I landed beak-first in the sticky sea and then started to slide toward Marco's nostril.
Tobias grabbed my talon with his beak. I stopped just in time for me to see something tumbling toward us. Something big.
A Helmacron!
He, she, it - whatever - was bouncing head over foot like a tumbleweed.
<I shall return!> the Helmacron shouted as the wind tossed him/her into somersaults. <I shall return to force your surrender, vile air-breathing aliens!>
Then he/she was gone.
And so was the wind.
I stood in Cassie's barn holding a piece of hay up my nose for about five minutes. Naturally, I felt like a complete idiot. As soon as Ax said it was okay to lose the hay, I dropped it, hid the Helmacron ship, and hauled butt out of there.
I'd ridden my bike over to Cassie's earlier, so I grabbed it and started to pedal toward home.
The weather was depressing, gray and overcast and misty. I knew I should probably just go home and hang out in my room. Wait for a message from Ax or Tobias. Mission accomplished. We're heading out.
If Jake and the others didn't show up by dinnertime, I'd slip out and contact the Chee. Check on the camera situation. Arrange for some of them to play my friends while my friends were ... away.
I felt strangely abandoned. Weird when you consider three people, a Bird-boy, an Andalite, and a bunch of Helmacrons were holding a convention in my sinuses.
I peddled on. My mind wandered.
Have you ever seen Fantastic Voyage?
Dad and I caught it on the late-night movie once. Raquel Welch. Very hot. Anyway, in the flick
this team travels into the bloodstream of some old dude. The doctors have him knocked out on drugs and lying perfectly still. Supposedly to make Raquel and her posse safer.
Maybe, I thought, I should go home and lie perfectly still.
On the other hand, I thought, if I'm going to kick, I don't want to go staring at the ceiling of my bedroom.
I changed directions. Headed toward the industrial outskirts of town, toward the photographer kid's apartment. I had no idea how I was going to get the film. I couldn't morph. Jake and Ax had made that perfectly clear. No unnecessary risks. But I had promised Jake I'd keep tabs on the kid.
I decided a direct approach would be best. Nothing was stopping me from climbing the fire escape, crawling in the kid's window, and taking what I wanted. Burglars do it all the time. How hard could it be?
I dropped my bike against the wall of an adjacent building, crumbling and abandoned. Spoke quietly to the filthy homeless man - a Chee - who was watching the front door of the building. Made my way around to the back.
The kid's apartment building was kind of seedy. Peeling paint on the door. Dirty windows. Graffiti. Nobody lived in that part of town because they wanted to. I knew that firsthand.
Maybe the kid was just a kid. Some bored guy who wanted to be a photographer. Well, if that was true it was time someone taught him to stay out of alleyways late at night.
The fire escape descended into an abandoned lot full of broken concrete, weeds, and blowing trash. A chain-link fence surrounded the lot, but someone had knocked down one of the poles. Maybe hit it with a car. Anyway, the fence was sagging. I walked right over it and stood staring up at the
building.
I kept expecting someone to ask what I was doing. To challenge me. But the whole block was deserted. Deserted at 11:00 on a Saturday morning. The windows on the next building were bricked over.
I picked my way over the crumbling concrete to the fire escape. It had a handle, maybe four feet above my head. I jumped up six or seven times. Finally caught it. Pulled it down.
CLANKclickCLANKCLANKCLANK!
The rusty fire escape made an incredible noise as it unfolded toward the ground. Okay, maybe breaking and entering in broad daylight wasn't the brightest idea.
I got ready to run. Thought I saw a curtain on the third floor move. But nobody stuck a head out a window. Nobody yelled.
Maybe they thought I was the fire escape repairman.
Yeah, right.
For a moment I considered abandoning this plan. Going home and sitting tight.
I was worried about more than just the local tenement rent-a-cop. The kid could be a Controller. This could be a trap. Yeerks could be watching from the roof, or from the abandoned gas station across the street. Waiting for the Andalite bandits to make a move for the camera.
I was also worried about police, the ones that weren't Controllers. They don't exactly encourage breaking and entering. Get caught, and I'd be doing time in juvie hall.
On the bright side, I might be dead before anyone could actually catch me.
And, like Rachel, sitting tight is not my thing.
Unfolded, the fire escape was a wobbly black metal ladder with an even wobblier railing. I put my foot on the bottom rung and started to climb.
Jake had said the kid lived on the fifth floor. I went up, passing a bedroom on each floor.
Floor one: bare futon on the floor. Floor two: empty. Floor three: flickering TV, empty beer cans. Floor four: stacks and stacks of books. Floor five -
The room was furnished with a metal frame bed. Tossed sheets. A desk. Empty bag of sourcream- and-onion chips. Some notebooks and pens. And ... a disposable camera.
Bingo.
The window itself was cracked, the frame splintered. I easily hauled the window open with one
hand. Stopped. Listened. All was quiet. Bent my head, stepped through, lowered myself into the room.
Then -
Click, click, click, click, click.
A sound that was all too familiar. The sound of Euclid, my stepmom's annoying poodle, trying to run on linoleum. The door to the hallway was open. I lunged for it.
"ARF! ARF! ARFARFARFARF!"
CLICKETY CLICKETY CLICKETY CLICKETY!
This didn't sound like a poodle.
Okay. I've been a dog. They are basically happy animals. Anxious to make friends. Even the annoying ones like Euclid.
"Nice doggie," I said shakily.
Just then Fido poked his head into the room. He was short and stocky. All shoulders, head, neck.
Small eyes. Evil, laughing mouth set with a row of serious teeth. Every one of which was on display. A pit bull.
An angry pit bull.
"Rrrrrrr," he growled low. A string of drool spilled out of his mouth.
Too far to make a dive for the camera, so ...
Morph! But I couldn't. Couldn't without the possibility of hurting my friends. Not happening.
That left one choice: Run.
I started to back toward the window.
Fido lunged. Jumped.
"Ahhhhh!" I screamed.
Snarling, snapping teeth - an inch from my nose! I heard Fido's teeth clank together. Smelted his hot doggy breath.
I put up a hand. "Get away, Cujo!"
Fido sank his teeth into my wrist. He shook his head, sending incredible waves of pain up my arm.
"Get off! Get off!"
Fido shook again.
"Ahhhhhh!" I screamed.
A baseball bat was leaning against a wall. A Louisville slugger. I slid toward it, Fido hanging from my arm like a very ugly charm bracelet. Picked it up with the hand that wasn't being eaten.
Whacked Fido across his haunches. Just hard enough to get his attention - not enough to really hurt him. Okay, so I'd broken into his home but he didn't have to amputate my arm.
"Arm: ..." Fido growled quietly, released, and dropped.
I held up my mangled arm.
Fido backed off about two feet, watching me hungrily.
A neat semicircle of puncture holes marked my wrist. A little blood dripped toward my elbow. Bat under my injured arm, I grabbed an old T-shirt off the bed. Wrapped it around my wrist.
Crap. Yeah, I could morph and demorph to heal the injury - except for the fact that I couldn't! Wasn't allowed to. But the pain was pretty intense.
Fido hunkered down and growled low.
Nobody had come running. The apartment must have been empty. Unless Fido's owners were off somewhere calling the police.
I backed toward the window, still gripping the bat. No time to reach for the camera. I had just climbed out when the sirens started. I pounded down the slippery rungs of the fire escape, feeling light-headed.
How did burglars do this? I wondered absently.
I was running across the empty lot when I felt something tickling my nose. I put up my good hand and brought it away bloody.
We pulled ourselves out of the snot.
My right wing was throbbing, hanging loose and broken. I was missing handfuls of feathers.
Tobias hadn't been seriously injured. But Jake's beak was broken, Cassie's neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, and Ax was missing half his feathers. We started to morph back to our own bodies.
The Helmacrons were only a few yards away, shouting and screaming like maniacs. They didn't seem too worried about their sneezed-out friend.
<This mission may be more difficult than we thought,> Ax suggested. <We should try to deal with the Helmacrons as quickly as possible.>
<Do you think?> I snapped.
<How exactly can we deal with them?> Jake asked. <They're bigger than us.>
<A hundred times bigger,> Cassie added.
<We have the element of surprise,> I said.
My lips softened as my yellow eagle beak turned into human lips. Talons turned into fingers. I felt a distant itching as my feathers flattened out, and the patterns they made on my skin faded like a bad bruise. I was getting bigger, much bigger. Five of me would have been a whole millimeter long. My broken wing snapped as it twisted and started to grow into a human arm. My insides sloshed and gurgled and turned back into human heart, kidney, liver, lungs.
Suddenly, it was as if someone had turned out the lights. My bird-of-prey vision blinked out.
"Hey," I said. "It's really dark in here."
<That may be -> Cassie's thought-speech stopped as her head became more human than bird.
"Another advantage," she continued. "We can morph animals that see well in the dark."
<How do we know Helmacrons don't see well in the dark?> Tobias asked.
"We don't," Jake said grimly.
"I think I do," Cassie said. "Marco and I were inside a Helmacron ship. It was very brightly lit."
<So, we can assume Helmacrons need bright light to see,> Ax said. <Or, at least, that they do not like the dark.>
Jake made the call: half battle morphs, half creatures that see well at night.
We morphed.
SPROOOT!
Big leathery ears popped from the side of my head.
SPRONG!
My nose stretched until it was longer than my entire body had been. About a whole half a millimeter. My legs grew massive. Two teeth twisted and grew into curved tusks. I was at least three times taller than I had been.
A hundred and fifty times heavier.
To the Helmacrons, I was a kitty-sized elephant. Ax, in his own Andalite body, was smaller still. Tobias was a Hork-Bajir at Helmacron mouse scale. Jake and Cassie were fly-sized owls.
<Maybe we should try to channel the Helmacron personality,> Tobias suggested. <They aren't afraid of being small.>
<Maybe they think small is scary,> Cassie said.
<Then they're going to be terrified of us.>
<Now what?>
<Let's try to reason with them first,> Jake said.
<Oh, yeah.> I laughed. <That will work.>
<We don't want them shooting Dracon beams if we can avoid it,> Jake said. <And Tobias, watch those blades.>
We marched forward until we were standing right beneath the Helmacrons. They paid us zero attention.
Jake addressed them. <Surrender now! Surrender, and we'll let you live as our defiled beasts of burden. Resist us and - and we'll sneeze in your general direction.>
<Very original,> Tobias whispered.
<You call that reasoning?>
<Reasoning Helmacron-style,> Jake explained.
<What are they doing?> I asked, elephant eyes useless in the dim light.
<Looking for us,> Jake reported. <Uh-oh. One of them spotted Rachel. He's pointing his sword at her.>
"Neep! Neep! Neep!" the Helmacrons cheered.
<What's that?> I demanded.
Cassie sighed. <I'm pretty sure they're cheering.>
<Hah-HAH!> one of the Helmacrons crowed. <The insipid aliens fell into our crafty trap! Now they are the ones lacking great size. Victory is before us!>
<Congratulations,> I said.
<Respect us,> Jake bellowed, <or we will tell our friend to bring the wind!>
The Helmacrons started laughing or cheering or whatever that "Neep neeping" was. One of them took the flat of his sword and knocked me off my feet.
"Neep! Neep! Neep!"
Now, I was getting angry. Really angry.
<Jake, this negotiation is going nowhere,> Tobias said.
<Okay, go for it,> Jake said. <Minimal damage to Marco, please!>
<Neep this!>
I stumbled to my feet. Ran forward. So did Tobias and Ax.
An ugly black Helmacron boot was right in front of us. Ax slashed at it with his tail. Tobias carved with his wrist and knee blades. I stood right on top of the boot.
No reaction.
<Hah-HAH! You think to crush the toe of a brave Helmacron warrior?> the foot's owner hollered in my head. <Your weight is not enough to bruise the hilna of a mighty Helmacron!>
I had no clue what a hilna was. But I wanted to pulverize some!
I stepped off the boot. Then rammed my tusks straight into it. The Helmacron didn't flinch. He didn't bleed. He was, however, annoyed.
<I will annihilate you, human!> He drew his Dracon beam. His very, very large Dracon beam.
<Uh-oh!> Jake said.
Tseeew!
I dodged.
The beam barely missed me.
Hit the ground.
And then something awful started to happen. Blood began oozing up under my elephant feet.
Marco was bleeding.
<Stop!> Jake yelled. <Desist or you will be blown to your doom!>
<Hah-HAH! Helmacrons never surrender! Give us the power source and we will spare your lives. Refuse and we will stop the heart of your comrade!>
<What will that get you?> I demanded. <If you make us mad, you'll never get the blue box.>
<The human in the morph with the elongated nose tries to bluff! She is obviously unaware of our superior intelligence. Perhaps we shall destroy her next!>
<Can they really stop Marco's heart?> Jake asked Ax in private thought-speak that included us and not the Helmacrons.
<Of course. A few well-timed blasts from their Dracon beams could interrupt the heart's rhythm and stop it.>
<From here?>
<No,> Ax said. <They would have to be closer to the heart.>
<How are they going to ->
<Prince Jake,> Ax interrupted. <Perhaps we should offer them what they want.>
<We can't give them the blue box!> I said.
<I agree,> Ax said. <Andalite technology would be particularly dangerous in the hands of these beings. However, I am suggesting we deploy Helmacron tactics. What you humans call a double cross.>
Ax, suggesting something underhanded? That made me nervous. Andalites are big on honor and honesty. If Ax was suggesting subterfuge, the situation was even worse than it appeared.
<What's your idea, Ax?> Jake asked.
<Tell them we will give them the blue box,> Ax said. <Get them out of Marco's body. Then do not give them the box.>
<As simple as that?>
<Yes.>
<Okay, you win!> Jake told the Helmacrons. <We'll give you the box. Let's go get it.>
The Helmacrons' marble eyes began to roll around madly. <Hah-HAH!> one of them exulted.
<This time you bend before the majesty of the Helmacron superiority! Now you will grovel before your new masters.>
<That's right, we're bending,> Jake said. <Now let's go.>
<Half of us will follow you out of this body,> the Helmacron said. <The other half will stay to guard the hostage and assure that you do not renege on your end of the bargain.>
<No deal,> Jake said. <All of you come with us or we don't play.>
<You think us fools?> The Helmacron sounded miffed. As if we'd insulted her - his? -intelligence. <The time for debate is finished! The time for action is upon us. Brave Helmacron females, follow me to glory!>
With a clanging of swords, the biggest, nastiest-looking Helmacrons began to run away from us.
Well, not away from us, but in the direction we weren't.
<Would these jackanapes outrun us to victory?> came another Helmacron voice. Courageous Helmacron males, follow me!>
More clanging. More running. The smaller, gentler-looking males took off after the females.
<Stop them!> Jake hollered from overhead. <They're heading for some sort of precipice.>
I ran.
Tried to wrap my trunk around a Helmacron's leg and hold him back. But it was like a bunny trying to stop an eighteen-wheeler. Not happening.
<Rachel! Let go!> Cassie hollered. <They're going to drag you over!>
Over ... what?
I let go.
Too late!
One of my massive front legs tipped into an abyss. Momentum dragged my other front leg over. I slipped. Fell.
<Aggggghhhhhh!>
I tumbled wildly.
Down, down, down into absolute darkness.
are they going to morph something tiny and fly up a helmacrons nose, do you think
<Aaaaahhhhhhhh!> I yelled.
Flipping trunk to tail. Over and over. Couldn't sense the bottom. Couldn't sense the shape of the tunnel through which I fell.
<Rachel, it's okay!> Cassie's voice in my head. <You're falling down Marco's esophagus ->
<Oh, gross !>
<You should hit in a few seconds,> Cassie continued. <Don't panic, we're coming after you.>
Above, beneath, beyond Cassie's voice - a deep, resonating -
Thump thump.
Thump thump.
The slow rhythm vibrated through me the way the bass guitar does at a loud concert.
Disconcerting. At the same time, something about the rhythm was comforting, like the hum of the fridge in a darkened kitchen.
Also ... I smelled something. Something that wasn't pleasant. Something sour. Like rotting food.
No, not exactly. More like -
Puke!
Oh, man. What else would be in your stomach? Half-digested food mixed with some sort of stomach juice. I didn't even like thinking about the stuff much less -
KER-PLASH!
I went under!
Submerged into a pitch-black sea.
My elephant body started to sink. And then I realized the fluid surrounding me was strangely hot.
My leathery skin began to itch. To burn!
Air!
I flailed my big back legs. Rose higher.
I hit something soft with my head. Something that gave under the impact and sprang back.
The side of Marco's stomach? Or the top?
My lungs were burning!
Was there air inside a stomach? Good question. And not one I had an answer to. I had to find the opening I'd fallen through! Somehow get back up ...
Morph! I told myself.
No time!
I needed air now!
I tried to see above me. Too dark!
Air ...
I needed air ...
And then, through the panic, like a vision, came an image from the Discovery Channel. An elephant ... swimming.
I let the elephant brain bubble up. My massive legs kicked. Slowly, I started to rise, I reached my trunk high, up toward where I thought the air should be.
Yes!
I broke the surface. Sucked air in through my trunk, filling my lungs. Ahhh ...
Rotten, stinking air. Glorious.
Whoever says TV isn't worthwhile isn't watching the right shows.
I looked around, dazed and disoriented. My weak elephant eyes more useless than before. But the sounds! Overwhelming sounds. Sloshing. Bubbling. Far away, that low thump thump. Also - voices!
<Look! One of the aliens has followed us!>
Tseeew!
I jerked sideways.
The Dracon beam shot went wide.
The Helmacrons!
The beam had lit up the air pocket long enough for me to see I was sharing the cavernous space with eight or ten of them. They were huddled together, way off to my left side. To me in my subminiature state, they seemed about half a mile away.
More media imagery. Now it was the drowning scene in Titanic. Only instead of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, this nightmare flick starred a pachyderm and a handful of marble-eyed aliens. Tseeew!
That wild shot let me see that though the Helmacrons' legs were submerged, the rest of their bodies bobbed above the liquid. Treading water or floating? Couldn't tell. Couldn't see any effort to stay afloat.
I could, however, hear them arguing.
<We must blast through the left wall! That is the path to true glory!>
<Imbecile! Do you think us morons? Only the right wall can feel the sting of the Helmacrons' wrath!>
Tseeew!
Missed.
Tseeew!
Missed.
The Helmacrons' aim was way off.
But I almost didn't care because the pain in my skin was intensifying. Hundreds, thousands of raw nerve endings were screaming madly. The ironic part about all this was that it wasn't the first time I'd been nearly digested. But that's another story.
<Cassie!> I roared. <Where are you guys?>
<We're coming!> Cassie replied.
<What's taking so long?> I asked.
<We had to morph.>
<What's the big hurry?> Jake asked.
<Oh, no hurry. It's just that Marco is digesting me!> I shouted.
<Does it hurt?> Cassie asked.
<Remember in Batman when the Joker dropped his enemies into a vat of acid?>
Jake: <I'll take that as a yes.>
Most Omnipotent Leader! Catastrophe has stuck our ranks! The alien is full of bizarre lightless caverns and caustic fluids! Two of the weaker males have succumbed! But even though some of us are blinded, we are the boldest of the bold! We will march forward to the beating organ, stop it, and embark on our plan to conquer the universe!
- From the log of the Helmacron Females[/b]
I couldn't see my friends by the time they arrived. The acid had splashed into my eyes, eaten away at the vulnerable eyeball, painfully blinding me. But I heard a clumsy flap, flap way overhead. Wings. Bat wings. The perfect morph for "seeing" in the dark.
<Stay away from the acid!> I shouted to them.
Tseeew!
Tseeew!
<And the Helmacrons.>
<Hey, that was close!> Cassie complained. <We've got to figure out a way to take the Helmacrons' toys away.>
<What can you see?> I demanded.
<There's only one way out,> Cassie reported. <We're going to have to go back up the
esophagus. You too, Rachel.>
Great. That meant I had to morph a bird or bat. That meant passing through my human form - and hoping I wasn't burned alive in the process.
I braced myself for a new phase of pain.
<Okay, I'm going to morph out.>
<Rachel, try to do it as fast as you can,> Tobias said in private thought-speak.
I began to shrink. My trunk collapsed into my face with shocking, slamming force. I fought to keep my half-formed nose and mouth up in the air.
Vaguely, I was aware of the sound of Dracon beam blasts and my friends' thought-speak voices. I tried to focus on them. Anything to distract me from the blistering agony.
<Prince Jake, I believe we have a problem,> Ax was saying. <I'm not sure we can go back the way we came. Some sort of circular muscle has closed off the passageway.>
<A sphincter!> Cassie, of course.
<So, we'll tell Marco to open it,> Jake said.
<Think again. That muscle keeps food from traveling up the esophagus. It's involuntary. Like breathing. Marco can't control it.>
<We're trapped?> Jake said.
<Trapped above a sloshing pool of acid,> Cassie confirmed.
<Something else,> Tobias said. <A couple of the Helmacrons aren't moving.>
<Dead?> Jake asked.
<Digested.>
"Agggghhhh!" I yelled.
My leathery hide had smoothed, softened into human skin. Was I fully human? Must have been, because an intense agony hit me, made me gasp and swoon.
My skin was burning! And it felt like I was being rubbed with red-hot sandpaper. Eaten away by flame and acid. Tightening, as if it were shrinking away from the bone, shriveling into ash.
I gritted my teeth. Morph! I ordered myself. But my brain was foggy with pain. I couldn't ... concentrate. I was nauseous and sweaty and my heart was beating way too fast.
<Keep going, Rachel!> Cassie cried somewhere far, far away.
<I hear the humans over there!> one of the Helmacrons shouted.
Tseeew!
Tseeew!
Through the incredible pain seeped anger. I was starting to get incredibly ticked off. Marco slowly digesting me, Helmacrons shooting at me. No way was I dying here, like a piece of bacon in a frying pan. And that meant I couldn't pass out. Had to morph.
Bat, bat, bat, I thought.
<Go, Rachel!> Jake called.
Then -
Tseeew!
I mean, there's another way out. It's just not the most fun way.
Also, I may not be a meat expert but I'm fairly certain the frying pan is not where bacon usually dies.
<Agggghhhh!> Jake yelled.
KER-SPLASH!
<Watch out, they're shooting at us!> Cassie shouted.
Tseeew!
<I have been hit!> Ax.
KER-SPLASH!
Tseeew!
<Cassie, watch out!> Tobias called.
KER-SPLASH!
Tseeew!
KER-SPLASH!
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Cassie yelled.
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Jake yelled.
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Tobias yelled.
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Ax yelled.
"What is going on?" I asked foggily. But I could see. They were demorphing. Cassie quickly. The other three more slowly.
<Don't -> Cassie yelled as her human lips and teeth began to form. "Morph!"
"What!" I screamed wildly, kicking to keep my face above the acid, desperately chanting Bat, bat, bat in my head. "My skin is bubbling off!"
"Give me a second," Cassie grunted in a strange, pain-filled voice. "Then, climb on my back."
Cassie was growing. In the weird red half-light, it looked as if a rock were rising out of the churning liquid. And then the rock was twice my size. Then double that. Bigger and bigger.
Cassie was going humpback whale.
Our own personal aircraft carrier appearing out of the sea. Maybe not impervious to the acid, but tougher-skinned than a human.
Now fully human, Jake crawled onto Cassie's still growing back. Then he leaned down and pulled me up, my raw skin screaming at his touch. I lay back, gasping. Tobias was back in hawk form.
He took to the air, hovering over us. Ax's hooves and weak Andalite arms weren't much use on the slippery back of the whale, so Jake held on to him.
<I am beginning to think this mission was foolish,> Ax said, glancing with stalk eyes at the patch of burned fur on his hindquarters. <Marco's body seems to be doing an excellent job of defending itself.>
<Against us,> Cassie said.
"Two more of the Helmacrons are dead?" I asked, lips and teeth and tongue about the only part of me not fried. "And excuse me while I try to morph and demorph to get whole," I added.
"Yeah," Jake answered, still panting. "Two more down."
"Arrivederci and good-bye," I said bitterly. And then the changes began. Didn't matter what I became. So I chose grizzly. Just to feel like I hadn't been totally defeated.
<Well, not dead, exactly,> Ax said now. <Remember, Visser Three told us the Helmacrons are fungible. Kill one, and his mind is absorbed by the rest of the species.>
<Whatever,> Jake said. <The good thing is they're not shooting at us.>
Tseeew!
Tseeew!
<Ouch!> Cassie said. <The bad thing is that you're wrong. And that I'm an awfully big target.>
<We've got to get out of here,> I said. Briefly bear and a little less horrified. <What's the plan?>
<Capture the Helmacrons and leave,> Tobias stated, coming to land on the whale.
"Great," Jake said. "How?"
<Attack,> I said.
"Attack with what?" Jake asked. "We tried. They're armed. We're not."
<Morph shark?> Ax suggested.
"Could work."
<Look out.> Tobias. <The Helmacrons are up to something.>
I squinted into the gloom. All I could see was a bright glow, like a welder's flame. Time to demorph, get some better eyesight.
Tobias took off again, disappearing into the black. A moment later, he was back. <Looks like they're trying to blast through the cavern with a Dracon beam.>
<You mean, blast through Marco's stomach,> Cassie said.
<What's on the other side of the stomach lining?> I asked, balancing precariously on her big, curved back through the demorph. <Where do they think they're going?>
<Should be -> Cassie hesitated. <Um. A blood vessel?>
"Good." Jake sounded relieved. "Then we have nothing to worry about. The Helmacrons wouldn't go into a blood vessel. They're not fish. They'd drown."
<So they're stuck.> Tobias. "Stuck unless we ask Marco to throw up," I said, gingerly running whole fingers up an intact arm.
Jake nodded. "Which means we'd be vomit, too. Maybe they'll surrender once they realize they're cornered."
<Surrender is better than drowning or frying.>
<Hang on!> Tobias shouted. <One just went into the blood vessel!>
"What? No way!" Jake exclaimed.
"We need to be closer!" I yelled.
Cassie powered her tail and flippers. The rest of us held on, fingers and talons anxiously gripping.
The Helmacrons were gathered around a long slice in Marco's stomach. The slice had closed, the way a cut automatically does. But I could half-see the skin oozing a red liquid.
Blood.
What was happening to Marco? Was he experiencing intense pain? Lying in bed, at home or in a hospital, groaning, expecting a gruesome death?
Whatever, he had to be lonely. And scared. And extremely angry.
"Marco must have the worst case of heartburn in history," Jake said. A joke. But Jake sounded worried, too.
The Helmacrons turned away from the opening to face us.
Tseeew!
<Agggghhhh!> Cassie shouted. <My eye!>
"Stop shooting!" Jake shouted at the Helmacrons. "We can get you out of here. Surrender now before any more of you die!"
<Brave and worthy Helmacrons do not surrender!> one of them yelled. <It is you who must capitulate to us! Grovel, humans!>
"Why?" Jake asked. "Without our help, you'll never get out of this stomach alive. If you refuse to cooperate, you're going to die here."
"Neep! Neep! Neep!" <We will be victorious!> one of them shouted. <And when we rule the universe, we will not spare your lives! Not even so you may scrape our boots!>
The Helmacron stepped forward. He pulled apart the slice in Marco's stomach. Began to wiggle in through the flaps of skin. Then -
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
With an awful sucking sound, he disappeared.
<To victory!> SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
Another Helmacron disappeared through the stomach lining.
<To glory !>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
Another, gone.
<To still the beating organ!>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
Another.
Now there were only five left. Four had already entered Marco's bloodstream as calmly as I would step onto an escalator at the mall.
It was horrifying.
<What are they doing?> Cassie asked, trancelike.
I couldn't look away. None of us could. We were exhausted, from the rapid-fire morphing, the acid bath painfest, the utter strangeness of being inside the human body.
We did nothing to stop the Helmacrons.
<Maybe it's a kamikaze mission,> Tobias suggested. <Maybe they don't care if they die as long as they kill Marco.>
"But they're going to drown before they get to Marco's heart!" I said.
"It's suicide," Jake agreed. "Pointless. Crazy. Doesn't make any sense."
<Nothing these beings do makes any sense,> Ax pointed out.
Two more Helmacrons wiggled through the cut. Only two were left in the stomach now.
<To the cowardly heart of the swollen alien!>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
That sound. I was going to hear it in my nightmares.
"Will it hurt Marco to have them in his bloodstream?" Jake asked suddenly.
<They should suffocate quickly,> Cassie said. <And then they should be broken down and washed out like any waste.>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
The last of the Helmacrons disappeared through the cut.
<Another possibility occurs to me> Ax said.
"What possibility?" Jake demanded.
<Perhaps our basic assumption is incorrect.>
<What assumption?> Tobias said. <You go into an airless environment, you suffocate. Where's the big debate?>
<The bloodstream isn't airless,> Cassie said. <Blood contains oxygen. The main purpose of blood is to carry oxygen around the body>
'Yeah, but you'd have to be a fish to breathe it," Jake argued.
<You'd need specialized lungs.>
"How do we know Helmacrons aren't fish?" I asked, knowing in a flash that we'd royally screwed up. 'The Helmacron home world could be an aquarium somewhere in Iowa for all we know."
<They walk on dry ground,> Tobias said.
"Maybe they're, you know, those animals that can live in water and on land," I suggested. "Like frogs. Or turtles."
<Amphibians,> Cassie said.
<Or maybe they do not breathe at all,> Ax said.
"How can you be alive and not breathe?" I argued.
Ax blinked his main eyes at me. <Trees are alive and they do not actually breathe>
"If Helmacrons don't breathe, why do they have noses?" Jake.
<It is possible the organ has another use,> Ax said. <Although it is hard to imagine what it would be.>
"This from a boy who eats with his feet," I said dryly.
Jake sighed. "Are you telling me the Helmacrons we just saw walk through a hole in Marco's stomach aren't dead?"
<They don't really die,> Cassie said miserably. <Fungible, remember?>
"Whatever!" Jake bellowed. "Are you telling me we have to go after them?"
<The Helmacrons' physiology is unusual,> Ax mused. <I observed that they were unusually buoyant in the stomach fluids. It is almost as if they are ->
"Cork," I interrupted.
"Or mushrooms," Cassie said.
Great. So, hew do we go after a bunch of mushrooms?"
"Dolphins?" I suggested.
<Dolphins have to surface to breathe,> Cassie said. <And we won't be able to surface in a vein. The only possible morph is shark.>
"Will we be able to breathe in blood?" Jake asked.
<I think so,> Cassie said uneasily. <I vaguely remember hearing some scientist interviewed on NPR once. She said plasma evolved from seawater. Plasma and seawater have the same basic properties.>
<The shark's gonna be hard to control,> Tobias said. <We're surrounded by blood, folks.>
"We have to try," I said. "If Marco dies, so do we. We've got to stop the Helmacrons."
Jake raised his eyebrows at me. "That didn't sound too self-serving."
"I don't care if it did," I said harshly. "We've got to survive. The Yeerks, remember? That whole save humanity bit? The Helmacrons aren't the baddest aliens on Earth. Just the most annoying. And remember," I added, "we have no proof the Helmacrons aren't working with the Yeerks this time. Or that they won't decide to in the very near future. In which case, we are very ancient history."
<Rachel is correct,> Ax said. <For all we know, Visser Three put the Helmacrons up to this foolish scheme. Perhaps it is simply a way of diverting our attention while something far more serious occurs in the outside world.>
Silence. If what Ax and I were saying was true, we were finished.
Okay, Rachel, block out the fear and deal with the Helmacrons. Now.
"Okay, we go shark," Jake said. "But I want everyone concentrating on controlling the morph."
One by one, we tumbled down off Cassie's back.
"Agh." I moaned as the acid hit my fresh, renewed skin.
I heard the others gasp and groan as they hit the liquid.
We began to morph, Cassie to demorph first. Almost immediately, my legs fused together right down the middle. I fought to stay afloat as my legs stretched out and out, forming a long, powerful tail. Half-girl. Half-fish. Mermaid Rachel.
Then the teeth began to grow. Row after row of small but very sharp teeth. My eyes migrated down to my cheeks. My cheeks exploded outward, forming a dumbbell-shaped head. The pain of the acid bath drained away as the rough sandpaper skin of the shark grew over my own tender human
flesh.
I was almost enjoying the morph. Liked the tough skin. Liked getting bigger.
Then the shark's mind infiltrated my own.
And I completely lost control.