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  TSEEEEEEW-buh-LOOOOOOSH!

  I dodged.

  TSEEEEEEW-buh-LOOOOOOSH!

  I dove.

  The Hork-Bajir raised his weapon again.

  FFFFFwwwpppwwppppwwppp.

  A whirling blur whipped over my head. A boomerang! It struck the Hork-Bajir in the throat, knocking him backward into the grass. His serpent neck was sliced nearly in half.

  I turned. Yami and his uncles were above me, crouched on the rocky bluff of the cliff.

  FFFFFwwwpppwwppppwwppp. FFFFFwwwpppwwppppwwppp.

  The men of the outstation launched a squadron of boomerangs.

  Thup. Thup.

  Two more Hork-Bajir fell.

  “Harr gurfass!” A Hork-Bajir pointed at the cliff.

  The others raised their Dracon beams.

  I screamed in thought-speak.

  TSEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!

  The edge of the cliff exploded.

 

  “No worries!” Yami’s voice rang out over the spring.

  FFFFFwwwpppwwppppwwppp. FFFFFwwwpppwwppppwwppp.

  Another Hork-Bajir fell.

  TSEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!

  The Dracon beam blasted a cave into the wall of the cliff.

  I kicked toward the shore. Had to show Visser Three I was the Andalite bandit! Had to lead the Yeerks away from Yami and his family!

  Other kangaroos swam past me. They had clawed most of the Taxxons to shreds. The remaining two or three aliens were busy devouring their dying brothers. The boomers sloshed ashore and leaped toward the open desert.

  I climbed from the water near the cliff.

  TSEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!

  The rock wall exploded above my head. I dodged. A Hork-Bajir bounded toward me.

  “RUFF! Grrrrrrrr!”

  A dog! Tjala scrambled down the cliff and vaulted for the Hork-Bajir. The Hork-Bajir spun.

  I bounded toward them.

  The Hork-Bajir aimed his Dracon at Tjala. I leaned back on my tail and kicked. Bone hit blade.

  TSEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!

  The Dracon fired out over empty desert.

  I dropped to the sand. My tail lay in two pieces, severed by the Hork-Bajir’s knee blade. Jagged bone pierced through the skin of my thigh.

  The Hork-Bajir turned. Watched me twist in agony. Drew up to his full height and leveled his weapon.

  “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

  Tjala leaped. The Hork-Bajir fired. Tjala clamped his jaws over the weapon.

  TSEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!

  A sapling behind me exploded. The Hork-Bajir stumbled and fell to the ground. The Dracon beam skidded across the sand.

  Tjala turned, teeth bared.

  “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

  He lunged! Ripped into the Hork-Bajir. Knew to go for the throat. Clamped his jaws on the alien’s neck.

  The Hork-Bajir lashed out. Flung his serpent’s head from side to side. Wrist blades sliced through the air an inch above Tjala’s back.

  The Hork-Bajir twisted sideways and pushed up with his arms. Whipped his head. Tjala’s grip broke, and he fell backward into the scrub. The Hork-Bajir climbed to his feet. He wiped his palm across his neck and looked at the blood.

  Tjala barked. The Hork-Bajir stood frozen for a moment, looking first at Tjala, then his bloody hand.

  The Hork-Bajir turned and ran away.

  Tjala bounded over to me. He licked my muzzle and sniffed my bleeding tail.

 

  I needed a hiding place. Had to demorph. Soon. I closed my front claw around a clump of grass and pulled myself toward one of the boulders at the base of the cliff.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  A low droning, almost like a mosquito, buzzed in the distance. Tjala barked at the sky. I turned my head.

  A glint of silver flashed on the horizon. Then another. I watched. Two tourist planes were headed directly toward us.

  Visser Three must have seen them, too. His thought-speak boomed over the battlefield.

  The sky shimmered, and the bottom of the Blade ship appeared. The port rippled open. Hork-Bajir leaped and hobbled toward the ship. Drop shafts descended to suck them up into the port.

  Two beams shot down from the front of the ship and scanned the desert floor, zapping each remnant of the battle.

  All evidence of Yeerk presence sizzled and vanished. Handheld Dracons, fallen Hork-Bajir, the floating carcass of a half-eaten Taxxon.

  The drop shafts rose back up into the belly of the ship, the sky rippled again, and the Blade ship disappeared. All that remained were the craters they’d blasted into the desert. And dozens of boomerangs scattered through the scrub.

  Yami and his uncles cheered. Tjala barked and scrambled up the cliff toward them.

  The two tourist planes buzzed overhead. Both pilots dipped their wings at the charming natives and flew on.

  I collapsed behind the boulder.

  “Cassie, you must demorph quickly.”

 

  I jerked my head around and rammed my nose into something hard. A leg. A canine-shaped leg of ivory and steel. I looked up. A Chee towered over me. A Chee I recognized.

 

  “Yes.” A shimmer and her human hologram slipped into place. “I smuggled aboard the Blade ship. I’m here to get you home.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Home.” Lourdes’s voice sounded so soothing. She was taking me home. I would be safe. “Your people have been searching for you night and day. You chose a very good place to hide.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “The little group of houses back there? Yes.”

 

  “Flying doctor. Okay. I’ve got it covered. You just morph back. I’ve extended a hologram around the boulder. No one can see you.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes.

  “Consumerism completely baffles you, doesn’t it, Cassie?” Rachel dropped her bag on the table.

  We were at The Gardens, the combination wildlife and amusement park where my mom works. Rachel and I had just come from the bathroom. Jake, Marco, Tobias, and Ax were waiting for us in the main concession area. Tobias and Ax were both in human morph. Ax was eyebrow deep in a box of popcorn.

  Rachel slumped into the chair next to Tobias. “Can you imagine my elation, my total euphoria, when Cassie, OUR Cassie, said she wanted to go shopping?”

  Marco nodded. “You were expecting to lay down serious cash at the mall.”

  “Exactly! See?” She turned to me. “Even Marco understands.” She shook her head. “But no, Cassie drags me to the zoo — the ZOO — where she ransacks the gift shop and comes up with a postcard. A POSTCARD. Cassie, buying a postcard at the zoo is not shopping. Say it with me now. Postcard. Zoo. Not. Shopping.”

  I shrugged, hoping to look casual, and slid into the chair across from Jake.

  He dipped a fry in his ketchup. “What kind of postcard?”

  I knew he’d ask me that. I smiled, casually, and reached into my bag. “It’s just something I wanted.” I glanced down to make sure I was pulling out the right card. “A reminder.”

  I held it up. It was a red kangaroo, a doe, with a joey peeking out of her pouch.

  “Hey!” Marco reached across and took the card from me. “It’s Cassie in her other life. Hop-a-long Cassie-dee.”

  “Yeah.” Tobias smiled at me, his strange, unblinking Hawk-boy smile. “The one where she doesn’t need the rest of us. The one where she single-handedly defeats all alien life-forms from here to Sydney.”

  “Sydney!” I thumped my head. “Of course. SYD.”

  Rachel looked at me. “SYD?”

  I nodded. “All the baggage tags said SYD. I couldn’t figure it out. Duh. They were go
ing to Sydney, Australia.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Tobias, “they were. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t make it.”

  “Yeah, Cassie.” Marco dropped a nacho into his mouth. “Some rich old Australian guy is offering a bundle of cash for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for stealing a sweater and two bottles of prune juice from his suitcase.” He wiped cheese from his chin. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you? I’m thinking we might have a real chance at the reward money.”

  “What is he doing?” Rachel frowned at Ax, who was now leaning back in his chair with the empty popcorn box mashed over his face.

  “What do you think he’s doing?” Marco grabbed the box. “Ax-man. Cardboard isn’t one of the major food groups, remember?”

  Ax sucked the butter off his fingers. “Unfortunately I am not in another morph. Or I would be able to reach the last bit of grease and salt with my tongue.”

  Marco rolled his eyes. “I’ll buy you another box. And here, clean your face off.” He threw Ax a wad of napkins. “Do I need to start carrying baby wipes for you?”

  I watched Marco and Ax walk toward the concession stand. Took a deep breath. “I’ve been wondering” — I wasn’t sure I even wanted to ask this — “does anybody know, I mean, did anybody see —”

  “What happened to the Marines?” Jake asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. How did you — ?”

  He shrugged. “You’re you, Cassie. Anyway, the official story is a UA. Unauthorized Absence. The Marine Corps says two Marines hijacked an armored truck loaded with sensitive Defense Department research.”

  “Translation: Bug fighter wreckage,” said Tobias.

  “Right,” Jake agreed. “The Marines, the truck, and the guys who were supposed to be driving the truck all disappeared into the mountains. The Marines dropped the armored-truck guys off in the parking lot of some roadside tourist attraction —”

  “World’s biggest ball of gum wrappers.” Rachel.

  “And nobody’s seen the Marines or the truck since.” Jake sighed. “So, I guess that one was a tie. NASA doesn’t have the chunk of Bug fighter, but neither do the Yeerks.”

  He smiled at me. He’d been sitting with one hand wrapped around his Coke, and now he laid it flat on the table so that his fingertips were touching mine. He looked into my eyes. A little flip of hair fell down over his eyebrow. “Except you’re back now, Cassie. So we won. We definitely won.”

  I turned his hand over and squeezed it. He squeezed back.

  He glanced sideways at Rachel and Tobias, then leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “I was kind of hoping we could hang out. You know, to talk.”

  “Talk?” Rachel rolled her eyes. “Puh-leez. He wants to give you a big, fat, sloppy kiss. You should’ve seen him. He was a total zombie the whole time you were gone.”

  I smiled at Jake. “A zombie? Really?”

  Jake shot Rachel a dirty look, then stared down at his french fries. “Depends on your definition of a zombie.”

  “How’s this for a definition?” Tobias said. “Somebody who can’t eat, can’t sleep, spends every minute of the night and day searching the airport and all other known Yeerk hangouts, and can only utter one intelligible sentence: ‘I have to FIND HER.’”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Okay, so I was a zombie.”

  He looked up at me and smiled. A little ball of guilt wedged itself in my throat. While Jake had been ripping the city apart looking for me, I’d been taking boomerang lessons from somebody else. What kind of person was I?

  I looked past Jake. Marco and Ax were weaving their way through the tables, loaded down with greasy, salty snacks.

  Marco set another plate of nachos on the table. He looked at Jake, then me. “Uh, is the moment over now? Because some of us would like to eat.”

  Ax picked the kangaroo postcard up from the table so he’d have a place for his popcorn and his onion blossom.

  “Cassie, it is good to have you back,” he said. “Erek the Chee projects an excellent hologram but it could never take your place.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, Ax. And speaking of Erek, next time he fills in for me he needs to turn his brilliance down a notch. He aced my algebra test, and now my parents think I’m some kind of math genius. My mom wants to enroll me in accelerated calculus next semester. She says I haven’t been living up to my potential.”

  “Your mother can’t even imagine how infinite your potential is,” Rachel commented.

  Ax studied the postcard in his hand. “You were an animal with two heads?”

  “No, Ax, that other head belongs to the baby kangaroo. See? The mother carries him in her pouch. You know, like a pocket.”

  “A baby in a pocket.” Ax frowned at the postcard, then handed it to me. “Is it effective?”

  “Amazingly effective, Ax.” I slipped the card into my sack, on top of the other card. The card even Rachel hadn’t seen. The card that had taken me forever to find. I’d practically turned the rack upside down and shaken it. But I’d found it. An osprey in full flight.

  Later, I addressed it when I was in the bathroom waiting for Rachel: Piti Spring Community, Northern Territory, Australia. I didn’t sign it. Yami would know. I would mail it from the airport. I figured an airport postmark was pretty anonymous. Untrackable. Even for Visser Three.

  The message was short: No worries.

  The author wishes to thank Lisa Harkrader for her help in preparing this manuscript.

  My name is Marco.

  And I am to cuisine what Sammy Sosa is to baseball.

  When it’s my night to make dinner, I don’t order in. I don’t crack open a can of Chef Boyardee and call that a meal. Please.

  I go the extra mile.

  I use the oven.

  I know. You’re saying to yourself, “But, Marco, man, you’re fighting a war against alien invaders. You and your friends, you guys battle Yeerks twenty-four seven. How do you find the time to cook?!”

  It isn’t easy. But with a little help from the freezer aisle and a guy I know called Red Baron, it’s a lot simpler than it could be.

  Plus, this particular night, I was trying to make my stepmom feel, well, glad that she’d married my dad. Even if I wasn’t one hundred percent behind the whole thing, she made my dad happy. That’s worth something.

  A car pulled into the driveway, a car door closed, heels clipped up the sidewalk. Nora, my stepmother.

  I threw three paper plates on the table, spread out some silverware, grabbed cups and a block of napkins. Nora doesn’t go for paper plates, but hey, it wasn’t her night to do the dishes.

  The door opened. I heard a sigh, the sound of a heavy bag dropped to the foyer floor.

  “Hey,” I called.

  “Hey,” Nora called back. “That faculty meeting lasted far longer than it …” The smell of Red Baron’s home cooking met her nostrils, no doubt. “Marco!” she cried, entering the kitchen. “You’re really making dinner!” She glanced at the paper plates and decided not to comment. “You’re the stepson of my dreams.”

  The woman was a math teacher. I would never really understand her. And now she was going goopy on me.

  I forced a smile. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

  Another car pulled into the drive. Whistling, then rapid steps up the walk.

  I grabbed a few sodas from the fridge.

  The front door opened. Dad was all spring-in-his-step, a big smile plastered across his face. His cheeks were flushed. He looked like he’d just struck oil.

  “Hello, family!”

  Okay, that was more enthusiasm than I wanted to see. And the word family, when applied to anyone but me, Dad, and my real mom, would always sound very weird. To worsen the nausea, Dad pulled a bouquet of flowers from behind his back.

  They were not for me.

  I think there was a kiss. Maybe some mushy whispers. I don’t know. I looked away. I see enough of the “power of love” between Jake and Cass
ie, and Rachel and Tobias.

  “What’s the occasion?” Nora giggled like a middle-schooler and sat at the table.

  “Oh, nothing,” Dad said, beaming at her from the chair opposite. “You’re just the most wonderful woman in the world.”

  “I know better than that.” Her adult voice reemerged as she set the flowers aside. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Let’s just say things are getting pretty exciting at work. Taking those stock options could be the best thing that ever happened to us.”

  The buzzer rang. I pulled the pizza from the oven and cut it up on a pizza board.

  “What’s the big deal, Dad? We gonna be rich?”

  I heaped a cheese-dripping slice in front of him.

  “Well …” he said slowly, “what my team is working on may just be one of the greatest advances in human history.”

  “An HBO descrambler?”

  “Marco, I’m serious. Discoveries like the one we just made make me want to see you do well in math.” He looked knowingly at Nora. “Or at least pass an exam.”

  “He’s right. Mathematics is the language of nature. It’s the universal language. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.” Nora’s face had taken on a weird glow. I wondered how numbers could make anyone feel like that.

  The nightmare of my last algebra test flashed before my eyes.

  “Dad. Just tell us what you’re working on.”

  “I really shouldn’t,” he said suddenly. “It’s secret. Top secret.”

  Nora gave him a look. It worked.

  “Okay,” Dad said slowly. “If you promise not to say a word … and I mean to anybody … I guess I can give you the basics.”

  He swallowed a bite of pizza, then pushed his plate aside so he could lean forward, elbows on the table.

  “We’ve discovered what could be thought of as a whole new dimension, yet not a dimension at all. It’s sort of like … Marco, you’ve studied conic sections, haven’t you?”

  When would I learn not to ask Dad to elaborate? Engineers, like math teachers, have a way of waxing prolific about theoretical situations that put my feeble mind to sleep almost instantly. Even faster than my math book.