The Encounter Page 8
Then came Marco. When I exited the cave with him I practically ran into a big Hork-Bajir. He didn’t take any notice of me, either.
Cassie’s plan was working. Even with all the Controllers on maximum alert, it never occurred to them that their enemy might be a bird with a fish in its talons.
Back in the cave, it was just Rachel.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“I’d have to be crazy not to be nervous. Oh well. Here goes.”
She started to morph. I’d seen three others do it now, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. But it was still horrifying to watch a friend, someone you cared about, twist and deform and mutate before your eyes.
I don’t think any of us will ever get used to morphing. Maybe the Andalites are used to it. I don’t know. But I’ll bet it creeps them out, too, when they have to change.
I looked away as Rachel began to get strange and hideous.
She was almost completely a fish when it happened.
Crash! Crash! Someone was forcing their way through the bushes at the mouth of the cave.
“Heffrach neeth there.” A Hork-Bajir!
“Yes, I see it,” a human voice said grumpily. “You know, these human bodies aren’t blind. Just because you’re in a Hork-Bajir, don’t get delusions. Use those blades of yours to hack some of these thorns out of the way.”
I heard a sound like fast machetes, slicing away the vines and thorns.
“Better not find anything in here,” the Human-Controller said. “The Visser will do to you what was done to that poor fool yesterday who let the human escape.”
I looked at Rachel. It was too late for her to morph back.
“Go in fergutth vir puny body. Ha ha.”
“This was your sector to check. You didn’t even notice this cave. Keep getting on my nerves and I’ll tell him!”
“He gulferch you and eat your lulcath. Ha ha.”
Suddenly a human head appeared, followed by shoulders. He was wearing a Park Ranger’s outfit.
“Yeah, there’s a cave in here, all right. There’s some kind of a bird—”
I grabbed Rachel, now fully in fish morph. But the Human-Controller blocked the narrow entrance.
Well, I thought. It worked with a helicopter….
With a rush of wings I flew right at his face.
“What the—” He fell back, beating at the air.
I scraped past him.
The Hork-Bajir slashed at the air with one of his wrist blades. He shaved an inch off my tail.
But I was in the air now, and moving faster. Only it was hard with Rachel. The weight of a fish is more than a redtail can carry easily. And I had already carried three. I was tired.
Fortunately, I was also very scared. Fear can make you strong sometimes.
Ssseeeewww!
A Dracon beam sizzled the air above me!
Unfortunately for the Hork-Bajir who had fired, the Dracon beam did not stop when it buzzed by me. No, the Dracon beam hit the underside of the vast truck ship. A small, neat, round hole appeared in the bottom of the ship. It was too small to amount to anything.
But suddenly the Hork-Bajir lost his interest in me.
“Fool!” the Human-Controller cried. “Visser Three will have your head for dinner!”
While they were busy panicking, I dropped Rachel into the water with the others.
I could just barely see them, a small school of fish in the shallows. They swam off and disappeared into deeper water.
As I’ve told you, there are limits to how far thought-speech can reach. We don’t really know what those limits are. But I wanted to stay as close to them as I dared, in case they needed me. Not that there was much that I could do to help someone underwater.
I didn’t want to stay right over them. I figured that would look suspicious to anyone on shore. It was hard to figure out what to do. The monstrous bulk of the truck ship was overhead, leaving only a few feet open above the surface of the water.
I decided I had to chance it. I flew under the ship, skimming the dappled water below and practically scraping the metal belly of the ship above me.
It was a very difficult flight. I had to stay almost totally level. I couldn’t rise or fall by more than a couple of feet.
I guess I could have told her the truth. That I was within a few feet of them. But then Jake would have just gotten all mad and told me not to take stupid risks.
I figured that between the time it had taken through the entire morphing process, and carrying them one at a time to the water, plus now the time spent swimming out to the big intake pipe, Cassie had been in morph for just over half an hour. Jake had ten minutes more, then Marco and Rachel.
CHAPTER 23
There was nothing to do but wait. Wait while the water level inside the ship rose and carried my friends toward the top of the chamber. Up to where the grate was.
I could not maintain my level flight beneath the ship any longer. I said good-bye to my friends and zoomed out the far side. The open air was a blessing. I soared high on a nice thermal pattern created by the ship itself. I rose high up and over the top of the ship.
The Park Rangers were all around on the ground. The helicopters and two of the Bug fighters were still parked on the ground in the little clearing. The Blade ship was there, too.
Two other Bug fighters continued zipping around at treetop level.
While I watched, they brought the Hork-Bajir who had carelessly fired off the Dracon beam. They dragged him before Visser Three.
We’d gotten so we thought of Hork-Bajir as these totally fearless, deadly monsters. But this Hork-Bajir was not looking very brave. He collapsed on the ground before Visser Three. I almost felt sorry for him.
It was one of the terrible things about our battle against the Yeerks. See, our enemy was
just the Yeerk slug that lived in the heads of Controllers. That Hork-Bajir may have been made a Controller totally against his will. He had lost his freedom to the Yeerk in his head. Now, he was about to lose his life, for something that he had no real power over.
I couldn’t hear what was happening down on the ground. But I could see. My hawk’s eyes could see far too well.
I turned away. I won’t tell you what was happening to the Hork-Bajir. That memory will be my own private nightmare.
But when next I looked, the Hork-Bajir was gone. And in his place was a sudden rush of other Hork-Bajir and Taxxons and humans, all surrounding Visser Three. The Visser looked angry. He was pointing at the sky.
Within a few seconds, the helicopters were lifting off.
The two Bug fighters powered up and took off.
I had a very bad feeling that I knew what had happened. The doomed Hork-Bajir had told Visser Three about the bird he had fired at. And some other Controller had probably said, “Oh, yeah, I saw a bird acting suspiciously, too.” And someone had no doubt said, “Hey, wasn’t it a bird that distracted the Hork-Bajir yesterday and let that human get away? “
Visser Three had put two and two together. An animal acting unlike an animal meant just one thing to him: Andalites in a morph.
I guess I should have been flattered that Visser Three believed we Animorphs were true Andalite warriors. But it didn’t make any difference whether he thought I was an Andalite or a human. He was sending his creatures into the sky. Looking for a bird that was no bird.
Me.
A Bug fighter skimmed over the trees. Its twin Dracon beams fired again and again in short, sharp spears of burning light.
My heart was in my throat. They were killing every bird they saw!
The hawk! This was her territory.
But then, behind me, a helicopter! Thwak thwak thwak thwak! Ssshhhheewww!
A Dracon beam. A near miss. I couldn’t get away. Between the Bug fighters and the helicopters, they were too numerous, and too fast.
But there was one place no one was going to risk firing a Dracon beam. Not after what Visser Three had just done to the careless Hork-Bajir.
I let go of the air beneath my wings and dropped. Down, down, down. Toward the vast truck ship, spread below me like a steel meadow.
In an instant they were all on me. But the angles were wrong. I was too close to the ship. They couldn’t fire!
I landed on top of the hovering ship. I planted my talons on the hard, cold metal surface. It stretched in every direction around me. The surface curved down and away from me so that I couldn’t even see the edges. It was as if I were standing all alone on a metal moon. Over my head hovered helicopters and Bug fighters. I could see human and Hork-Bajir and Taxxon eyes all focused on me.
I knew the look in their eyes. The look of the predator.
And me, their prey.
CHAPTER 24
It was not looking good for me. If I tried to fly off that ship, I would be Draconed ten different ways before I could get away.
It was an eerie scene. I stood on the vast metal plain while over my head they hovered, a swarm of deadly predators.
Then things got worse. A lot worse.
It floated up into my vision like a dark moon—the Blade ship of Visser Three.
It hovered just a few hundred feet up. I felt my last reserves of courage beginning to fail.
Tobias, old buddy, I said to myself, you are not going to get out of this alive.
But they just all hovered there. Slowly I began to realize the truth—they didn’t know what to do about me. They couldn’t shoot me without hitting the ship.
The voice in my head made me reel. I almost took wing out of sheer fright.
He had never spoken directly to me before. It was a voice of such absolute power. Such utter confidence. The mere silent sound of it in your head makes you want to obey. Makes you quiver and fear. It is the voice of dread. The voice of destruction.
Say nothing! I ordered myself. Nothing! If I tried to reply, he might know me for a human. I would not tell him that. I would not give him anything.
I closed my mind. But I could not shut out that dark voice.
I had seen what Visser Three did to the Hork-Bajir who displeased him. The memory was fresh in my mind.
Just then, I heard another voice in my head. A very different voice. It was faint. As if it were far away.
Rachel!
My blood ran cold. My head was whirling.
Rachel said.
Rachel said sadly.
She fell silent. In my mind I could picture her regaining her human shape. Treading water with the others, unable to escape. Expecting only the worst. Praying that I might find a way to make their end swift. As Visser Three had offered to make mine.
We had lost. The Yeerks had won, finally. And when we were gone, the last hope of the human race would die.
Above me the Blade ship waited like … like a hawk watching a rabbit. Ready to swoop down and finish me.
Only I wasn’t a rabbit.
Visser Three was a predator? Well, so was I.
And I no longer had anything to be afraid of. If my friends were to die in the mother ship, I would be lost and alone in a world where I belonged nowhere.
I had nothing more to lose.
Just then I saw something that should have terrified me. Across the metal plain of the ship they crawled and slithered toward me. All around me. A dozen of them. Giant worms. Centipedes with a hunger for living flesh.
Taxxons.
They had come from the inside of the ship on Visser Three’s orders.
If I stayed put, they would catch me. If I flew, the hovering Yeerk ships would fry me.
The Taxxons closed the circle around me.
Ah, Visser Three, you ruthless predator, I thought. Very clever. You have me trapped. Trapped like a rabbit.
But a trapped rabbit is one thing. And a trapped hawk, a hawk with the mind of a human being, is a whole different matter.
The nearest Taxxon leveled a handheld Drac
on beam at me. He watched me with two of the circle of red globs they have for eyes.
I pushed off with my feet. I beat the air with my wings.
I flew straight for those red Jell-O eyes.
He raised one of his feeble forearms to shield his eyes. The wrong move! I trimmed a shade right, raked my talons forward, and struck like I was hitting a mouse in a field.
My talons closed around the Dracon beam. The Taxxon’s weak grip was no match for my speed. The Dracon beam tore loose from his grip.
But I did not take to the air. I flew fast but hugged the surface of the ship’s metal curve. They could not hit me without hitting their precious ship.
I knew just where I wanted to go. Wingtips actually hitting the ship on each downstroke, I raced toward the ship’s bridge. Toward the tiny windows where I had seen the Taxxon crew.
I could not save my friends, perhaps. But I could try to grant Rachel’s last wish. I could try to bring this ship down.
Even if it meant the end of my friends.
CHAPTER 25
Take off! Move!< Visser Three commanded the crew of the truck ship.
Almost immediately, the huge thing began to move forward. Very slowly at first. But as it moved, it created a headwind. The bridge was moving away from me. The ship was rising as it went. A hundred feet up now. Two hundred!
Right then I had a powerful urge to shock the evil monster and say,
But I wasn’t ready to start bragging. The truth was, it was looking bad. The ship was slowly picking up speed.
I flapped harder, harder. I gained again. But it was painfully slow. I was wearing out. The Dracon beam weighed me down. The headwind was building.
Ahead of me, just a few feet away, I saw the bulge of the bridge.
I gained a foot. Another. Another.
I landed and folded my wings. I couldn’t fly anymore. But I could still pull myself along with my talons, gripping the small edges and ridges that ran along the top of the ship’s bridge.