The Suspicion Page 3

  I guess this was news to the Helmacrons, because they fell silent. I thought, Good, maybe I got through to them.

  FLASH!

  I blinked and held up my hand, too late to block the flashbulb brilliance. It had been a green light of shocking intensity. I wasn't hurt, but I was definitely seeing spots.

  And then I noticed something very odd.

  37 The cages were growing larger. The animals in them were growing larger. The Helmacron ship and the blue box were growing larger.

  "Oh, no," I said, more amazed than frightened. "I'm shrinking."

  38

  I was getting small. I was getting small very fast.

  I've shrunk before, when I've morphed various insects, for example. But this was new. I was shrinking as a human.

  The only good thing was that at least my morphing suit was shrinking, too. Bad to be shrinking. Worse to be shrinking right out of your clothes.

  "Hey!" I yelled. "What did you do to me?"

  «Hah! You glory in your swollen, bloated bulk, human! You dare to defy us! We shall see how bold you are when you are the same size as we. Now you will taste bitter defeat! Now you will feel the sting of eternal humiliation^

  39 "I don't glory in my ... Hey, who are you calling bloated? Wait a minute! Stop this!"

  I was still shrinking. I'd started at four foot something. Now I was less than a foot tall. And I was still shrinking. I glanced over and saw a raccoon. He was bigger than I was. Not to mention a million times more hostile.

  «Cassie!»

  I spun around and spotted Tobias, swooping in like a 747 coming in for a landing.

  "Tobias! Look out! They have a shrinking ray!"

  «A what?»

  FLASH!

  "Never mind. You'll find out soon enough."

  «Hah HAH! You all think to resist the might of the Helmacrons because you are large and because you glow with the transformational power! But we, too, know how to use the transformational power! Shrink! Shrink! And become our abject and pitiable slaves!»

  «Hey,» Tobias said, sounding puzzled. «I'm shrinking. And you've already shrunk!»

  "Tobias! You have to warn the others not to come in here! Somehow they're using the power of the blue box to do this."

  «l can't leave you. You're less than six inches

  "Warn the others!" I cried.

  40 Tobias turned, but he was shrinking fast. He was already down to about hummingbird size. Suddenly the door was much further away for him.

  «Well, this is unfortunate,» he said.

  A huge, galumphing form appeared in the doorway: Marco.

  "Get back!" I screamed.

  But of course what he heard was, "Get back!"

  FLASH!

  "Hey!" Marco ye I led. "No flash photography."

  «Marco! Quick, before you shrink. Warn the others to stay out!»

  "Say what? Before I what?"

  But he turned and yelled over his shoulder. "Jake! Ax! Rachel! Stay out of here!"

  I could see him peering down at me. His face was about the size of the Goodyear blimp - if it was about to land on top of you.

  "Oh, this isn't good," he said.

  I was shrinking still further. I was already as small as a cockroach. The roof of the barn already looked like it was the sky. A dim overhead light might as well have been the moon.

  Marco was standing on sequoia legs, with feet the size of twin Titanics.

  "What's happening in there?" Jake yelled.

  "Well," Marco said calmly. "The Helmacrons

  41 have the blue box and they seem to be using it in a kind of bizarre way."

  "I'm coming in," Jake said decisively.

  "No!" Marco yelled in a voice that already sounded like someone breathing helium. "No, Jake and Ax, do not come in!" Then, as an afterthought, he said, "Rachel, you could come in."

  «Marco!» Tobias chided.

  "Hey, the Wicked Witch gets to be full size and I'm down here singing, 'We represent the Lollipop Guild?' I don't think so."

  «Rachel, Jake, everyone stay out!» Tobias cried in thought-speak that we all heard clearly.

  "Okay, everyone just stay put," Jake ordered. "Look, the other Helmacron ship took off. Rachel hit it with a brick."

  I would have laughed. Only I was now shrinking down to the point where scattered bits of hay on the ground were looking like huge, felled trees. Grains of dirt were the size of soccer balls.

  "I think I'm done shrinking!" I said. Not that anyone heard me. Something flew into view. Something that seemed weirdly large. Tobias. He was roughly the size of a very small fly. But he was about as big as me.

  «l think I've stopped shrinking,» he said.

  "Me, too."

  42 «But we're the same size. I should be smaller than you. I started out much smaller than you.»

  "I guess that's not how it works," I said. "I think the idea here is to shrink us all to the same size as the Helmacrons themselves."

  Marco, now no more than three inches tall himself, came walking over. He was huge to us. But his face was getting closer all the time.

  "Oh, man, you guys are small," he said. "Honey, I shrunk the Animorphs!"

  "Rachel! Get a brick!" Jake said in a huge voice that reverberated around us.

  43

  ?I am loaded up and ready," Rachel said grimly.

  "Give them a warning shot," he said. "Careful not to hit Cassie or the others."

  Rachel must have thrown the brick, because there came a humongous earthquake.

  WHAMBBBB!

  It only lasted a second, but it knocked me on my butt. Fortunately, that involved a fall of only a few millimeters.

  "Helmacrons, listen to me!" Jake said. "That was a warning shot. The next one lands right on top of you. Leave the blue box. Restore our people to normal size and we'll let you leave peacefully!"

  44 «Never! Your brick weapon does not frighten us!»

  "Yeah? Well, it banged up your other ship pretty well," Rachel said.

  «Helmacrons, listen to me.» I recognized Ax's thought-speak voice. Which meant he was probably in his normal body.

  Great. All I needed was for my parents to come home, find Jake and Rachel and a big blue scorpion-tailed four-eyed Deer-boy in a standoff with a toy-sized spaceship, and me the size of a gnat.

  «Helmacrons,» Ax said patiently, «if you are capable of spaceflight you must also understand the fundamental laws of motion. Her weapon has a mass as great as the mass of your ship. It will be thrown at a velocity that will -»

  «Do not lecture us on physics, you inferior human!»

  «l am not an inferior human, I am an Andalite.»

  "Hey!" Rachel said.

  «Sorry,» Ax said. «l didn't mean to say that humans are inferiors

  «We will crush you, Andalite! All Andalites will grovel before us.»

  «Not if my friend Rachel hits you with the dense oblong cube she is holdings

  45 "It's a brick, Ax. It's called a brick. We build houses out of them."

  «Perhaps you should not mention that fact,» Ax said in an aside. «The Helmacrons are already contemptuous of humans.»

  "Okay, I've had enough of this battle of the alien egos here. I'm counting to three. Then I'm throwing this brick. You little insects either fix my friends . . . and Marco, too ... or you get bricked."

  «Do you dare to threaten us?!»

  "One . . ."

  «Grovel before the might of the Helmacrons!»

  "Two ..."

  Tseeew! Tseeew!

  "Aaahhh!" Rachel cried.

  "The other ship! It's back!" Jake yelled. "Lookout!"

  I could see it all happening, far, far overhead. A gigantic Rachel, holding a brick the size of a high school. The second Helmacron ship, which no longer looked nearly as tiny, came zipping in and shot Rachel in the shoulder.

  She let the brick fly. But it wasn't an aimed shot. It was reflex.

  The brick arced through the air, and began to drop. Straight toward us
.

  46 "Run!" Marco yelled. He was now as small as Tobias and me.

  We ran. Tobias flew.

  "Noooo!" Jake screamed and launched himself through the air, hands outstretched to catch the falling brick.

  But then . . .

  FWAPPPP!

  Ax's tail blade snapped like a bullwhip, there was a shower of sparks that might as well have been the Fourth of July to us on the ground, and suddenly there were two smaller bricks tumbling apart.

  I shot a look upward at the two tumbling half-bricks.

  "Freeze!" I yelled.

  WHAAAM!

  WHAAAM!

  They dropped on either side of us, once again knocking me off my feet.

  Then a much heavier impact.

  WHA-BOOOOM!

  Jake hit the ground, fortunately missing us as well.

  His face lay sideways. It was about as high as a thirty-story building. His eyes were like brown-and-white swimming pools, huge globes that looked as if they might pop and drain down like runny Jell-0.

  47 His mouth was a valley. His nostrils were caves. When he breathed out it nearly knocked Tobias out of the air. And when he sucked in a pained inhalation it was like being near a vacuum cleaner.

  I stared up, transfixed by this face I had always found attractive. And I found myself staring at a zit bigger than I was.

  Fortunately, Tobias was paying attention to more important things. «Jake! Above you!»

  Jake rolled over, a moving mountain, just as the two Helmacron ships, holding the blue box with twin tractor beams, attempted to fly over him.

  He rolled onto his back and shot an arm about a thousand feet into the air. Fingers the size of Taxxons closed around the blue box and yanked it down.

  The two Helmacron ships jerked, shuddered, but flew on.

  We had the box back!

  Unfortunately, Marco, Tobias, and I were still small enough to set up housekeeping inside a thimble.

  48

  O Great One, Most Magnificent of all Leaders, we have met the Vast Enemy in battle and have triumphed! Using the power source we discovered, we have shrunk three of the aliens to our size. And we would have captured the power source as well, but for the cowardice of the Galaxy Blaster*. Filled with the courage you give us, we shall recapture the power source and use it to drive our enemies before us, wailing and crying!

  - From the log of the Helmacron ship, Planet Crusher

  ?Cassie? Tobias? Marco?" Rachel's huge voice boomed. I looked up at her, so tall she could have been the Sears Tower. I wasn't sure exactly how big I was, but I had the

  49 feeling I was not large at all. For one thing, dirt wasn't dirt anymore. It was rocks.

  I heard Tobias answer in thought-speak. «Rachel! Watch where you step. We're down here!»

  "Down where?"

  «0n the ground.»

  "I don't see anything."

  «We're kind of small,» Tobias said.

  "Kind of small?" Marco shrilled. "A termite could kick our butts."

  «Very small,» Tobias amended.

  "Are all three of you together?" Jake bellowed.

  «Yeah. We're all together. What are we going to do?»

  "I don't know," Jake admitted. "Ax?"

  «l believe, Prince Jake, that the Helmacrons have a means of diverting the energy of the blue box and using it in a very different way than was intended.»

  "Gee, do you think?" Marco mocked. Of course, none of them heard it because it came out, "Gee, do you think?" And even that's an exaggeration. To really convey how little sound we could make, we'd need microscopic print.

  «Perhaps they should attempt to morph,» Ax suggested. «It may be that their morphs would be normal size.»

  50 "Good idea," I said. "Tell them, Tobias."

  «Cassie says "good idea." She's going to try it.»

  I considered for a moment which morph to attempt. Something that could fly. Sitting in the dirt was not a good feeling.

  "I'll go back to my osprey morph," I said. I focused my mind and began to feel the changes. The feathers . . . the talons . . . the shrinking.

  The shrinking?

  I was getting smaller. Grains of dirt weren't rocks anymore, they were mobile homes!

  I reversed morph instantly. "Not a good idea," I told Tobias shakily.

  «Yeah, I noticed. Um . . . Jake?»

  "Houston, we have a problem," Marco intoned.

  «Jake? Cassie just tried to morph to osprey but she shrank. She was on her way to being a really, really small bird. It's weird, because I'm not small. I mean, I am, but I'm the same size as Cassie and Marco. But when she tried to morph she shrank.»

  «That is logical. Unfortunate, but logical,» Ax said.

  "Now he's Mr. Spock," Marco said.

  «The Helmacrons would have set certain size parameters, no doubt. That is to say, they picked a size and then shrank all three of them to that

  51 size. That is now the baseline. Any morphing will be relative to that baseline.»

  I thought about that for a moment, then said, "Tobias, is he saying that if we did something like morph a flea, we'd end up being microscopic?"

  «Ax-man, what happens if one of us morphs a flea or something?»

  «You would diminish in size. If we assume that a flea is no more than a sixteenth of an inch long normally, it would be one nine hundred and sixtieth of the height of a five-foot human. Thus, if we assume that you are currently, let us say, a quarter of an inch tall, it follows that your flea morph would be one quarter inch divided by nine hundred and sixty. Thus, your flea morph would be point-zero-zero-zero-two-six-zero-four of an inch.»

  "If he says 'thus' again, I'm gonna bite him on the hoof," Marco said.

  «Ax? I don't think we're a quarter inch. I think we're smaller than that.»

  «Ah. Then you should make appropriate adjustments to the equation. For example, if you are a sixteenth of an inch - and that would be my best estimate - that translates as point-zero-six-two-five inches, divided by nine hundred and sixty, which would make your flea morph point-zero-zero-zero-zero-six-five-one inches.»

  52 "How big is point-zero-zero-zero-zero-six?" I asked Marco.

  "Bigger than a virus, smaller than a period," he muttered.

  «No way,» Tobias said.

  Then Ax said, «l would not advise morphing to flea. You would be operating at a microbial level.»

  «0kay, so we don't become fleas. I didn't want to morph a flea anyway. That's not the problem. What are we supposed to do?»

  "First thing is to get you guys somewhere safe," Jake said. "Then -"

  "Ah! Ax, morph to human!" I heard Rachel yell. "Cassie's dad is coming!"

  53

  ?Run! It's my dad!" I yelled, and started running, stumbling across the endless plain of rocks and boulders.

  "Hey! Why are you running? It's not like he'll notice us."

  "Who's gonna stop him from stepping on us?"

  "Aaaahhh! Run!"

  We ran. Or at least Marco and I did. Tobias flew. And there came all around us a huge, stomping sound.

  WHUMPF! WHUMPF! WHUMPF!

  My father's footsteps.

  "Jake?" my father said. "Rachel? What are you two doing here? Is Cassie around?"

  54 "Urn . . . no," Jake said. "At least. . . no."

  "We came here looking for her," Rachel said. "Not here."

  "Were you supposed to meet her?"

  "Hello!" a new voice said quite suddenly. Ax! He must have managed to morph to human. I cringed. Ax as an Andalite was brilliant. But Andalites have no mouths. No ability to make spoken speech and no ability to taste. So Ax as a human - with a mouth - could be slightly odd.

  "Hello," my dad said guardedly. "Do I know you?"

  "I do not know whether you know me," Ax said. "Only you would be able to answer that question."

  Then he added, "Chun. Quess-chun."

  "I ... I don't think I do know you," my father said slowly. "Why were you hiding behind that cage?"
/>
  "I did not wish you to see me," Ax said. "But now you may see me."

  There was a long pause. "Ooookay," my father said at last.

  "I am a friend of Cassie's," Ax offered.

  "From school?"

  "From school? Skuh-ool? Sss-cooool. Yes. From school. School-luh."

  55 Meanwhile, I was running and stumbling and banging my knees on particles of dirt. Marco was right beside me and Tobias was flying along above us.

  We were running flat-out. We were probably going like two feet an hour. Then . . .

  WHUMPF!

  "Ahhh!" Jake yelled. "Urn, look out where you're going!"

  "Why?" my father asked.

  "Because I ... because I ..."

  "He thought he saw a nail," Rachel said. "I thought I saw a nail, too. Ax, didn't you see a nail?"

  "What is a nail? Nay-yul? Is it similar to mail?"

  "Is he all right?" my father asked.

  "Who, Ax? Sure, he's fine," Jake said. "He's just from a different country."

  I groaned. "Oh, no, now my dad'll ask -"

  "Oh, very interesting. Ax? What country are you from?"

  "I am from the Republic of Ivory Coast."

  "Oh, man," I moaned. "Why did I ever give him that World Almanac?"

  "You know, if you don't mind my saying so, you don't look like you'd be from the Ivory Coast," my father said. He was getting that edge

  56 he gets in his voice when someone is slowly but surely beginning to grind his last nerve.

  "How about Equatorial Guinea? The Republic of Kyrgyzstan? Canada?"

  "Tell you what," my father said, "let's just go with Canada."

  "I am from Canada. I am Canadese."

  "Well, I think old Ax is handling that pretty well," Marco said brightly. "You'd never guess he was an alien. An idiot, maybe. Alien, no."

  "How about if you kids just go on home? I'll tell Cassie you came by."

  "Leave?" Jake asked, sounding panicked.

  "Yes, leave," my father said in his deep, this-is-your-father-talking-and-I've-taken-all-I'm-gonna-take voice.

  They didn't argue. What could they say? We heard their stomping feet as they walked off.

  Then, much closer, my father's humongous feet, roughly ten football fields long, WHAMing around. Just ahead was a gigantic horizontal tube. The bottom bar of a cage. We ran beneath its shelter and cowered there, gasping for breath after our three-inch run.