Elfangor's Journey Read online

  Elfangor's Journey

  andalite

  chronicles

  i Look for other titles by K.A. Applegate:

  #1 The Invasion

  #2 The Visitor

  #3 The Encounter

  #4 The Message

  #5 The Predator

  #6 The Capture

  #7 The Stranger #8 The Alien

  #9 The Secret

  #10 The Android #11 The Forgotten

  #12 The Reaction

  #13 The Change

  «MEGAMORPHS» #1 The Andalite's Gift

  THE ANDALITE CHRONICLES #2 Alloran's Choice

  ii

  andalite

  chronicles

  K.A. Applegate

  AN APPLE

  PAPERBACK

  SCHOLASTIC INC. New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney

  iii If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  ISBN 0-590-10879-4

  Copyright ©1997 by Katherine Applegate. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. APPLE PAPERBACKS and the APPLE PAPERBACKS logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. ANIMORPHS and the ANIMORPHS logo are trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

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  Printed in the U.S.A. First Scholastic printing, September 1997

  iv For Jean Feiwel And, as always, for Michael

  v

  andalite

  chronicles

  vi My name is Elfangor.

  I am an Andalite prince. And I am about to die.

  My fighter is damaged. I have crash-landed on the surface of the planet called Earth. I believe that my great Dome ship has been destroyed. I fear that my little brother Aximili is already dead.

  We did not expect the Yeerks to be here in such force. We made a mistake. We underestimated the Yeerks. Not for the first time. We would have defeated their Pool ship and its fighters. But there was a Blade ship in orbit as well.

  The Blade ship of Visser Three.

  Two Yeerk Bug fighters are landing on either side of me now. The abomination Visser Three is here as well. I can feel him. I can sense his evil.

  I cannot defeat the visser in one-on-one combat. I am weak from my injuries. Too weak to morph. Too weak to fight.

  This is my hirac delest - my final statement. I have formed the mental link to the thought-speak transponder in my fighter's computer. I will record

  IX

  vii my memories before the Yeerks annihilate all trace of me.

  If this message someday reaches the Andalite world, I want the truth to be known. I am called a great warrior. A hero. But there is a great deal that no Andalite knows about me. I have not lied, but I have kept the truth a secret.

  This is not my first visit to Earth. I spent many years on Earth . . . and yet, no time at all.

  I landed here now in this construction site because I was looking for a great weapon: the Time Matrix. The existence of this weapon is also a secret.

  So many secrets in my life . . . mistakes. Things I should have done. All the strands of my strange life seem to be coming together. It all seems inevitable now. Of course my death would come on Earth. Of course the child would be here. Of course it would be Visser Three who would take my life.

  I am too weak to locate the Time ship now. I will die here. But I have left a legacy. Visser Three thinks he has won our long, private war. But I've left a little surprise behind.

  I have given the morphing power to five human youths.

  I know that in doing this I have broken Andalite law. I know that this action will be condemned by all my people. But the Yeerks are here on Earth. Visser Three is here. The humans must be given a chance

  viii to resist. The human race cannot fall to the Yeerks the way the Hork-Bajir race did.

  I have given the morphing power to five young humans. Children, really. But sometimes children can accomplish amazing things.

  I have no choice but to hope. Because it was I who created Visser Three. I who caused the abomination. I cannot go peacefully to my death, knowing that I created the creature who will enslave the human race.

  I came to this place, this empty construction site, looking for the weapon I know is hidden here. But there is no time now. No time . . .

  The visser is here. He is laughing at my weakness. He is savoring his victory over me.

  This is the hirac delest of Elfangor-Sirinial-Sham-tul, Andalite prince. I open my mind in the ritual of death. I open my mind and let all my memories - all my secrets - go to be recorded by the computer.

  This is not just a message to my own people. I hope that someday humans will read it as well. Because humans are also my people. Loren . . . and the boy I have just met, but not for the first time. . . .

  XI

  1 Twentv-one years before . . .

  The Yeerks were loose. Like some terrifying disease, they spread their evil from planet to planet. They took species after species. They crushed all resistance.

  Their spiderlike Pool ships roamed throughout the galaxy. Their armies of Taxxons and Hork-Bajir, all under the control of Yeerk slugs, rampaged - killing, butchering, enslaving.

  They were annihilating entire planets.

  Only we Andalites stood against them. But we had been caught off-guard. Our mighty Dome ships, each more than a match for anything the Yeerks had, were spread too thin. Our spies, even though they used top-secret Andalite morphing technology, were unable to penetrate Yeerk secrets. For five years our princes had fought the vissers of the Yeerk Empire. They said the war could go on for another fifty years . . . another hundred years.

  We were outnumbered. We had fought many battles and lost too many of them. But arrogant as I

  2 was, I was confident that if only I could get into the fight, I could make a difference.

  I, Elfangor, was going to become a great warrior, a prince, a hero.

  I was posted as an aristh, a cadet, to the Dome ship StarSword. But so far, after six months in space looking for an elusive Yeerk task force, I had not exactly proven myself to be a great hero.

  In fact, I had proven myself to be a clumsy, slow-witted, and quite possibly hopeless fool. At least, according to my instructors.

  «Aristh Elfangor! How many times do I have to tell you: The killing blow should be as graceful as it is fast!» Sofor yelled his thought-speak loudly enough that half the ship probably heard him.

  I stood facing him, trying to stand light and easy on my four hooves, just like I was supposed to. At the same time I had to think about where my weight was centered, and whether the tilt of my upper body signaled when I was going to strike, and whether the grass floor under my hooves was uneven, and whether my hands were out of the way, and about a million other things a warrior should know for tail-fighting.

  Sofor was bigger than me. He was a full warrior, while I was just a lowly aristh - a warrior-cadet. If this had been an actual battle, Sofor would have

  3 sliced me up twenty different ways in less than a second.

  Maybe. Sometimes I thought I'd be faster and better if it was a real battle, not just a lesson. I was sure if my life depended on it, I could win.

  In any case, Sofor was not my enemy. He was my teacher.<
br />
  «Watch my eyes, not my tail,» Sofor said. «My main eyes-, you nitwit, not my stalk eyes! Keep your main eyes on mine, your stalk eyes on my tail.»

  I watched his main eyes, but it wasn't easy. His left eye had a huge scar running right beneath it. I tried to focus all my thoughts down to nothingness, just like Sofor had taught me.

  «Your mind will never know when it is time to strike. Only your instinct can guide you,» he reminded me.

  Suddenly . . . FWAPPP!

  I fired the muscles in my tail! The bladed tip cracked the air, it moved so fast. I could barely see my own tail as it struck.

  The blade arched over my head toward Sofor's face, and I thought, Hey, maybe old Sofar will end up with a new scar. If I landed a blow on Sofor, I'd be a hero with every poor aristh who had ever suffered under him.

  Then . . . SWOOP! FWAPP! FWAPP! FWAPP!

  4 Sofor blocked my tail blade with his tail, turned it aside, and in about a tenth of a second delivered three lightning blows. One to each side of my head, and a third that left his razor-sharp tail blade pressed right up against my throat. The blows stopped just a hair from cutting my skin.

  If Sofor so much as twitched, he could remove my head from my shoulders.

  «Not bad, Aristh Elfangor,» Sofor said with a laugh. «Not bad at all. That strike of yours could almost have hit me ... if I were asleep!»

  He laughed again and pulled his tail away. «Re-member, don't think about it, do it. You're too intellectual. You think too much. You should be a scientist, not a warrior. There's no time for thought in a fight. There is only time for your training to join with your instinct»

  «l guess even you must have forgotten that once,» I muttered.

  I regretted the words the instant they were out of my head.

  Sofor turned his stalk eyes toward me. He had a dangerous expression. «What did you say, Aristh?»

  «Nothing . . . just. . . um, nothing,» I stammered. But I was staring at the scar below his eye the whole time.

  «Ah, I see. You've noticed my little scar. Yes, quite a nasty cut. Know how I got it?»

  5 I shook my head. What was I doing, getting smart with Sofor? What was the matter with me? Was I insane?

  «l got this scar from my own teacher. He wasn't as sweet and understanding as I am. He didn't like uppity arisths.»

  The old warrior laughed at his own wit, turned away, and went galloping off across the grass, holding his tail as high as an Andalite half his age would.

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I looked around the dome to see whether anyone else was watching me be humiliated. The dome of a Dome ship is a circular area about a third of a mile across. It is filled with grass, trees, ground rushes, and flowers. There is a lake in the middle and a stream that runs around the circumference.

  It's as much like home as it can be. You'd almost think you were running across any well-kept area on the home world. But when you look up, you see that you are in space, protected only by a clear plastic bubble, a dome.

  I saw other warriors off running across the grass, feeding and playing and practicing their skills. But none seemed to be watching me.

  I replayed the fight with Sofor. How had he known the exact second when I would strike? What had given me away?

  6 What was the matter with me? Was I actually mad because Sofor was faster than me? Of course he was a better fighter than me. He'd been in more battles than I could imagine.

  But it still made me angry. I didn't like people laughing at me. And I didn't like losing.

  Through my stalk eyes I saw someone coming up behind me. He'd been hidden by a stand of trees. I recognized him immediately, of course: Ar-bron. We were the only two arisths.

  Great. More bad news. I didn't really like Arbron much. He was very competitive with me. And still he never seemed to take anything seriously.

  «Well, hello, Elfangor,» he said. «Having fun with the old Yeerk-killer?»

  «Hello, Aristh Arbron',» I said, so stiffly I sounded like my own father. «l don't think it's very respectful to refer to Sofor as the old Yeerk-killer. He is a full warrior, after all, and our personal combat instructors

  Now Arbron laughed at me. «Yeah, right, Elfan-gor. Like you're so respectful. Teach me to be as respectful as you, pleeeease.»

  He laughed again, and I was starting to get even angrier. It was bad enough having Sofor laugh at me. At least he outranked me. But Arbron was just a lowly aristh like me. Lowlier, because I had four days seniority over him.

  7 «This is a Dome ship, not a play field,» I said.

  Arbron kicked lightly at the grass with one hoof in a gesture of contempt. Then he said the insult that went with the gesture. «Elfangor, when are you going to get your hooves back on the grass and out of theair?»

  «Some of us actually care about being better fighters. The people need us. These are evil times.»

  Arbron laughed. «You don't fool me. You're not some mighty prince or hero. You're just another scared, confused aristh on his first big deep-space mission. And by the way, you shift weight to your left hind leg when you get ready to strike. That's how old Sofor knew.»

  I was getting ready to say something really crushing to Arbron, but just then there came an announcement. It was a direct-beamed thought-speak summons.

  «Arisths Elfangor and Arbron to the battle bridge.»

  I stared at Arbron. He stared at me. We were both frozen in place. Our argument was totally forgotten because we were both busy being shocked and horrified.

  See, it was impossible. Neither of us had ever been to the battle bridge. The battle bridge was where the captain was. And the captain of a Dome

  8 ship is like one of the ancient gods. I mean, captains don't even look at arisths.

  «What did we do?» Arbron asked anxiously.

  «l don't know,» I moaned, «but it must have been really out of line.»

  «We're in trouble. We are in definite trouble,» Arbron said.

  9 A Dome ship is built with the dome at one end and then, far away, far back, there are the three huge engines. Zero-space engines, and you probably know how powerful those are. Connecting the dome to the engines is a long, long shaft. Inside this shaft is the place where everyone has their quarters - their private areas.

  For arisths, the quarters are tiny. I mean, extremely tiny. If you want to turn around you have to back out into the hallway. In my quarters I have holograms of my father and mother, of course. Plus a wish-flower representing the little brother I'll be getting in a few years. The Electorate has voted to allow more children to be born since we're in a war now. They say if the war goes on for long and there are lots of battle deaths, some families may even have three and four children.

  Personally, I don't think it will come to that. And even having one sibling is bad enough. Now, in addition to the morning ritual and the evening ritual, I have to do the wish-flower ritual. And you have to

  10 do the wish-flower ritual at the wish-flower, of course, which is in my tiny quarters. And you can imagine how impossible that is!

  My entire back half sticks out into the hallway and people are jostling past while I'm chanting, «We welcome our hopes embodied, we welcome a new branch of the tree, we welcome . . .» So on and so on.

  It's not easy being an aristh. Naturally, warriors and princes get bigger quarters. And of course the captain has quarters so big he can practically play driftball in there.

  But the captain isn't usually in his quarters. He's usually on the battle bridge. That's where Arbron and I were heading, as fast as our hooves could carry us down the long central shaft.

  «We're dead,» I said. «There's no way the captain calls us to the bridge unless we are in huge trouble.»

  «Maybe it's something good,» Arbron suggested. «Maybe he wants to tell us we're doing well in our studies.»

  «Yeah. Right. Or maybe he wants our advice,» I suggested sarcastically. «Captain Feyorn, the hero of like a thousand space battles, probably wants the advic
e of a pair of arisths.»

  All the while we were running. Running past the closed doors of various private quarters and

  11 storerooms and plasma conduits. Our hooves clicked on the hard, rough-textured floor. A prince stepped out of his quarters and I practically ran him down.

  «Sorry!» I yelled. «We've been called to the battle bridge !»

  The prince rolled his eyes and shook his head. But he knew: When the captain calls, you don't waste time.

  As we neared the battle bridge we saw more and more people in the hall. We weren't the only ones heading there. And then I started to notice some fighter pilots moving off toward the fighter bays.

  You can always tell a fighter pilot. There's a swagger they have. It's almost like there's a special light that seems to shine on them.

  When I'm a full warrior I'm going to be a fighter pilot.

  «There's going to be a battle!» Arbron said.

  «Yeerks!» I said. «We're going to burn some Yeerks!» I hoped I sounded tough and fierce.

  We barreled into the battle bridge just as the tactical officer, Prince Nescord, bellowed, «Where in a dark sun are those two arisths?»

  «Right here, sir!» I said.

  «Here, sir!» Arbron echoed.

  The tactical officer - the T.O. - looked at us like we might be a couple of pieces of dung stuck to

  12 his hoof. Then he turned to the captain. «Captain, the two arisths are here.»

  Of course the captain already knew we were there. They say Captain Feyorn can practically see through walls. He knows everything that goes on aboard his ship.

  He stood in the center of the room, with the TO. on his right and Prince Breeyar, commander of all fighter squadrons, on his left.

  The room was circular, with bright monitors glowing and computer screens reeling off data. Holographic monitors created images in midair, and there were sound-speech info-tags and thought-speech computer warnings.

  Warriors working on the battle bridge often used hand signals between themselves so that the thought-speak noise wouldn't become a jumble.

  At the front of the battle bridge was a large, holographic image showing the space around us. We were in normal space, not Zero-space, so the background was black, filled with bright stars.