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  "I'll find her," I said. "You guys get out of here. I'm supposed to be here. But we can't explain why you're here."

  I headed back toward the set area. It was still dark. Whatever Cassie had done to the lights, it was taking a while to fix them.

  There was an awful lot of shouting going on. A lot of unpleasant language was being used.

  I turned a corner and practically plowed into the back of a man who was standing there. He didn't even turn around. He was staring intently at a person standing just in front of him.

  146 I heard a voice say, "Yeah, can you believe my luck?"

  The voice seemed strange and familiar at the same time. Like I had heard it before, but not quite this way.

  Then I realized.

  "I mean, I fall in a crocodile pit, my house falls down on me, and now this."

  I raised up on tiptoes and looked over the man's shoulder. What I saw was me. Me.

  Actually Cassie, morphed into me.

  The man she was talking to was one of the show's producers.

  "You're a very unlucky girl," the man said.

  "That's what I keep telling people," Cassie said. "They keep saying how lucky I am to survive. I keep saying, like, not!"

  He nodded. "You know, for a moment there I wondered about you . . . ," he said, letting the sentence trail off. Then he shrugged. "But the crocodile has been destroyed. And yet here you are."

  I flattened myself back against the wall. If he turned and saw me he'd definitely flip. And what if he was a Controller? I couldn't take that chance.

  "Yeah, I'm glad it didn't get me," Cassie said. "I'm getting out of here. I have to find my dad.

  147 He's here somewhere. It would help if someone would like, you know, get things organized."

  Cassie pushed past the man. I turned my face away, not wanting to surprise her.

  "Andalite!" the man snapped.

  My heart stopped. He was testing Cassie. Waiting to see if she would react. If she would recognize the word. If Cassie hesitated or stopped he would know.

  He would know.

  I shouldn't even have worried.

  When he rapped out the word "Andalite!" she kept walking and without hesitation said, "Yeah, a light would be helpful, too."

  The man made a snorting, dismissive sound and turned away.

  I fell into step behind Cassie. "Nice job, sister," I said.

  "Oh, good, you're back," she said. "It's a good thing. I'm having the worst time trying to control this morph!"

  "You're having trouble being me? What could be hard about that?"

  She raised an eyebrow in a way that looked as much like Cassie as it did like me. "This brain of yours. It keeps trying to get me to do really dumb things."

  Paramedics came rushing past us, shoving us

  148 apart. When we were alone again I said, "Hey, I said we were going to improvise, right? And look how well it all turned out. We're all alive. Jeremy Jason probably won't be endorsing anything for a while, let alone The Sharing. Plus, I stepped on the Yeerk."

  "Jake will still kill you."

  I laughed. "Cassie, if I were Jake, I'd kill me, too. Say ... I don't suppose you'd want to stay in my body a while longer. . ."

  "Nope."

  "Coward."

  "Yep."

  149

  Two days later, we sat around watching TV up in my hotel room. It would be another week at least till my house was rebuilt.

  In the meantime, there was room service. And cable TV.

  We lounged around, eating pie. The Animorphs. Cassie, the ecology nut, animal girl; Marco, who thought everything was a joke; and our fearless yet modest leader, Jake.

  There was also a disturbingly pretty boy named Ax - a boy who was actually an Andalite when he wasn't in human morph. Ax's entire face was covered with pie. Ax doesn't have a mouth in his normal body, and the sense of taste totally over-

  150 whelms him when he morphs human. The boy is dangerous around food.

  And standing on the windowsill there was a fierce red-tailed hawk. Tobias didn't want pie.

  We watched TV and picked at remnants of pie crust as familiar theme music started to play.

  Marco invented his own lyrics and sang along. "Entertainment Tonight, we're so glib and so light. Entertainment Tonight, we got stars all right! We'll entertain you and drain you of all your thoughts tonight, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah!"

  Jake threw a pillow and hit Marco in the back of his head.

  "Shh," Cassie said. "Here it comes."

  The male announcer said, "You'll all remember the story we reported yesterday of the incredible melee during the broadcasting of the Barry and Cindy Sue Show. Wild animals brought to the show by Bart Jacobs broke loose and created a terrible scene, during which Jeremy Jason Mc-Cole, the young star of the hit television series Power House, was nearly eaten by a crocodile.

  "Well, today we have an update. Jeremy Jason McCole is out of the hospital. Doctors say he'll be fine. But in an amazing development, his agent says Jeremy Jason is quitting Power House and leaving the country. McCole's agent refuses to divulge the young actor's whereabouts, but

  151 sources say he has been spotted in Uzbekistan, a small central Asian nation."

  «Uzbekistan?» Tobias repeated.

  "I guess that was as far as he could get from the Yeerks and the media," I suggested.

  "I wonder if they have crocodiles in Uzbekistan?" Marco wondered.

  "I'm guessing no," I said. "I don't think Jeremy Jason McCole will ever get within a thousand miles of a crocodile again."

  "Or a Yeerk. At least if he can help it," Jake said.

  Cassie sighed loudly.

  "What is it, Cassie?" Jake asked.

  She sighed again. "It's just a pity. He really was cute."

  "Mmmm," I agreed. "Those dimples."

  "That hair."

  "Those eyes."

  "Those lips."

  "Ax," Marco said. "You should have let the crocodile eat him."

  I ignored Marco, as I usually do. "He was, without a doubt, the cutest guy ever."

  "That does it," Jake said. "Marco? Change the channel. Put on Baywatch."

  I reached over and tried to snatch the remote away from Marco, but he was too quick. He

  152 flipped through the channels and then said, "Ah, there we go."

  I looked up, expecting to see red bathing suits. Instead, I saw swords and leather boots.

  Xena: Warrior Princess. My kind of girl.

  Marco winked at me.

  "Well, okay," I said. "This we can watch."

  153 Don't miss

  Animorphs?

  #13 The Change

  «Hork-Bajir!» Rachel snarled.

  A year ago that name would have meant nothing to me. It would have just been some nonsense word.

  But now I knew the Hork-Bajir. The Andalite who gave us our powers had told us the Hork-Bajir were once a decent, peaceful species. But they had been enslaved by the Yeerks. All of them were Controllers now. The entire species carried the Yeerk slugs in their heads.

  And with the Yeerks controlling their every action, the Hork-Bajir were walking killing machines.

  Amazingly fast. Incredibly strong. Armored,

  154 bladed, almost fearless. They were the shock troops of the Yeerk empire.

  Hork-Bajir had come close to killing Rachel several times. And all of us had felt the Hork-Bajir blades at least once.

  «What is a Hork-Bajir doing, coming out in broad daylight?» Rachel asked.

  I looked closely. The Hork-Bajir was climbing some kind of ladder. When it reached the surface, it blinked its reptile like eyes at the light. It climbed out and stood like some vision of a demon. Then I noticed that there was a second Hork-Bajir coming up behind it.

  «There are two of them!» Rachel said.

  «Yeah. And you know what? I think they look scared.»

  Just then . . .

  SKREEEET! SKREEEET! SKREEEET!

  The alarm horn was deafening
to my hawk hearing. The sound screamed up from the hole in the ground. The two Hork-Bajir jerked in surprise and fear. One of them grabbed the other and held it close for a split second. In an instant, they were off and running through the forest.

  Running as if their lives depended on it.

  And let me tell you something - Hork-Bajir can move out when they want. Those big, long legs take big, long steps. They plowed into the

  155 brush, slashing wildly with their bladed arms, slicing through bushes and thorns and small trees like a harvester going through a wheat field.

  «How are you doing on morph time?» I asked Rachel.

  «l still have an hour at least,» she said.

  «So we follow these guys?»

  «0h, yeah.»

  We flapped to gain some of the altitude we'd lost and prepared to follow the Hork-Bajir. Not much of a challenge, really. They were chopping a path straight through the woods that a blind man could follow.

  «They're not exactly into the stealth thing, are they?» Rachel commented.

  And that's when things really broke loose. Up from the hole in the ground humans poured. Armed humans. Men and women, dressed in an array of normal-looking human clothing.

  Controllers, of course. Not that you could tell by looking. But I knew now that that hole led down to the Yeerk pool. And there was no doubt in my mind - these humans were human-Controllers. Slaves to the Yeerks in their heads.

  They carried human weapons - automatic rifles, handguns, shotguns.

  The Yeerks were going after the two Hork-Bajir. But they were being careful. They were

  156 sending only human-Controllers. They weren't going to risk any more Hork-Bajir being seen by normal people.

  Twenty . . . thirty human-Controllers climbed up out of the hole.

  «They'll never catch them,» Rachel said.

  «l know. What is going on here? Are those Hork-Bajir trying to escape somehow?»

  Up from the hole machines began to appear. They seemed to levitate. I almost laughed when I saw them.

  «Dirt bikes? The Yeerks have motorcycles?» It seemed bizarre, even funny. The Yeerks have faster-than-light spacecrafts. Now they were using dirt bikes?

  «Uh-oh,» Rachel said. «The Hork-Bajir are fast, but they aren't that fast.»

  VrrrrRRRROOOM! VrrrrRRRROOOM! Vrrrr-RRRROOOOM!

  Human-Controllers were firing up the motorcycles. I could hear the sputtering roar of the engines. In all, fifteen Yamahas and Kawasakis came up through that hole.

  VrrrrRRRROOOM! Vrrrrraaaa-vrrrraaa-vraaaa!

  The motorcycles took off. Some had just one rider. Others had two - one to steer and one to shoot.

  The Hork-Bajir had a lead of a few hundred yards, but they'd never outrun this small army.

  157 As I watched from the safety of the air above, the motorcycles roared off through the woods in pursuit. They churned up dirt and leaves and shattered the quiet.

  And they gained quickly on the two fleeing Hork-Bajir.

  Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

  Rifles barked. Motorcycles roared! The Hork-Bajir ran, but the bikes leapt and twisted and snaked toward them.

  Blam! Blam! Blam!

  Bambambambambambambambam!

  Rifles, automatic weapons, and shotguns all ripped apart the tree trunks. The human-Controllers were firing wildly. Firing at anything that moved. From the ground they couldn't see the Hork-Bajir yet. But they could see flashes of them, and they kept on shooting.

  «This is going to be all over in about ten seconds^ Rachel said grimly. «What are we going to do?»

  «You want to help Hork-Bajir?» I asked incredulously.

  «Have you ever heard the saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? The Yeerks want these two Hork-Bajir dead. That's good enough for me.»

  «Me, too,» I said. «We'll have to use thought-speak. Talk directly to them.»

  158 «Let's do it,» Rachel said.

  I would have smiled if I'd had a mouth. Rachel is so brave she's just short of being reckless.

  I like that about her.

  «Hey. Hork-Bajir down there.»

  I saw them stagger, as though they were shocked and amazed to be hearing thought-speak. Like that was their major problem.

  «You're about ten seconds away from being dead,» I said. «Listen to me and you just might get out of this alive.»