Two minutes more, I told myself, and we bail.

  It was one minute too many. The Bug fighters opened fire without warning. They fired on Taxxon and human-Controller and Hork-Bajir alike.

  More Bug fighters were maneuvering to get into firing position. They were going to kill everyone, friend and foe alike. They were doing our work for us. But we would surely die as well.

  Hork-Bajir-Controllers were running for it, scrambling up out of the pit.

 

  Marco muttered.

  And then, what I had warned against, had foreseen … and forgotten. The ground opened beneath me and I fell.

 

  I fell a long way. My tiger speed and balance turned me around, aimed my feet down, tail twirling to maintain this attitude.

  I hit the dirt, took the shock in all four paws, rolled sideways, and came up snarling. Snarling at nothing. I was in an empty tunnel. Dark. Too dark for even my cat’s eyes. But I smelled plenty, a smell I knew: Taxxon.

  I stayed on guard, not too worried, but definitely ready. I heard a sound … shuffling, grinding … digging!

  The ground opened beneath me again and I fell in a cascade of dirt, down, and this time no hard landing on a flat surface. I was in a chute, rolling, trying to grab on with my spike claws. But the surface was smooth, almost like glass. And now I was getting worried.

  I fell for only thirty seconds or so, but that’s a long way to go underground. Finally the chute ended and I was once more rolled across a dirt floor.

  No answer. Was I that far underground? Out of thought-speak range? I took a chance.

  There was light. Dim, but more than enough for me.

  And there were Taxxons: three of them. Each carried a Dracon beam in one set of upper legs. I could get one, maybe two of them. But three? Before they could shoot me?

 

  It was thought-speak! Not the impossible-to-decipher hissing and spitting of spoken Taxxon. Thought-speak, and impossible as it seemed, I had the strangest impression that it was an Andalite thought-speak “voice.”

  I froze.

  I demanded.

 

  He knew my name. Of course the Yeerks did know my name now, but still it was a shock.

 

  The Taxxon who was speaking opened his pincers and let the Dracon weapon drop. The other two did the same.

 

  I took a deep breath.

 

 

  he countered.

  I couldn’t keep the horror out of my voice. One thing to be trapped as a hawk. But to be trapped as a Taxxon?

  Arbron said almost proudly.

 

 

  I stopped breathing. Could it be possible? Elfangor, Ax’s brother? Elfangor, who gave us the morphing power to begin with? This … this whatever he was had been a friend of Elfangor’s?

  I asked him.

  He shuffled closer and I had to resist the normal reaction of disgust.

 

 

 

  I said, although I was beginning to guess.

  Arbron said, now sounding almost desperate.

 

 

  I didn’t know what to say. Too much to absorb. An entire species wanting to morph? And surely Arbron knew that we no longer had the morphing cube, that Visser One had it. And in any event, Arbron must know that it wouldn’t work on him. Not on a nothlit.

  As if he was reading my mind, Arbron said,
 

  No choice but to be honest, I thought. I can’t sustain a lie. I can’t trick them. I said.

 

  I began, not daring even to complete the sentence, it was too amazing, the possibilities too incredible.

 

  They had given me up for dead back at the valley of the free Hork-Bajir, so when I came flying in at first light there was a certain amount of amazement.

  Not that Marco was going to make a big thing of it. “Oh, there you are,” he said. “So I guess I can’t have your CD collection after all.”

  I landed on the ground and demorphed as Cassie came running up, her tear-streaked face bright. She stopped herself from hugging me, and then turned away.

  “Cassie. Stay. Please,” I said. “Marco: Did we lose anyone last night?”

  “Yeah. Three of Toby’s people. One of James’s people, the guy named Ray. And you, or so we thought.”

  I had demorphed fully. I sat down hard. Ray was a kid born with severe birth defects. He’d acquired a leopard as his main morph. He loved the physical grace of the animal, a grace he’d never experienced in his human body.

  “How are they taking it, James’s people?”

  “About like we were taking your death, Jake: not well. At least it was quick: Dracon beam. He never knew what hit him.”

  “We took out a lot of Taxxons,” Rachel said, arriving on the scene impeccably dressed, looking like she’d just stepped out of an exclusive day spa despite the fact that it was not yet six in the morning and she, like all of them, had spent the night in one of the hasty, shabby log shacks we’d built.

  “Was it worth it?” Cassie wondered, then looked as if she wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

  I got up and went to her. I took her hands and said, “This time, yes. I think it was. Rachel? Round everyone up: Toby, the parents, the whole war council.”

  “Yeah?” she asked with an inquisitive look.

  “They’ve got fifteen minutes to dress, pee, and drink a cup of roots n’ twigs coffee.” I laughed. I was feeling incredible. Feeling, despite the lack of sleep, despite the aftermath of two terrible battles in one day, wild and alive.

  It took them twenty minutes, but that was okay. Okay aside from the fact that Marco tortured me for the secret the whole time.

  At last the frowsy, discontented bunch was assembled.

  “You’re alive,” Rachel’s mom said, not seeming too happy about it.

  “He’s hard to kill,” Marco said, shaking his head as though commiserating with her. “I’ve been tempted repeatedly during the last twenty minutes or so.”

  Ax said. He’s cranky till he gets a few good hoofsfull of dewy grass.

  I didn’t know where to begin. I thought about dragging it out and making a production out of it, but this was a dangerously tired, discontented crowd and I was too full of the news to keep it bottled up.

  “Well,” I said, trying to sound laconic, “the Taxxons want to defect. They want to change sides.”

  Everyone just stared.

  “Come again?” Cassie’s dad said.

  “The Taxxons. They want to join us. They’re ready to turn against the Yeerks.”

  The parents for the most part didn’t get it. Toby did. And Eva, the former Visser One.

  My fellow Animorphs just stared in dumb, openmouthed, it-can’t-be, no-way shock.

  All but Cassie, who sighed as if she’d been holding her breath for weeks.

  I went to her and said, “You knew, didn’t you?”

  She shook her head. “I hoped, that was all. I hoped.”

  “Pretty good hope, Cassie,” I whispered.

  “Oh my God,” Marco said, getting it now. “It’s the morphing. That’s it, isn’t it? The Yeerks got a taste of morphing. The Taxxons have figured out they could do it, too.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. The Taxxons grabbed me to talk to me. They’re led by an Andalite nothlit, trapped in Taxxon morph. He said his name is Arbron. He said he was a former companion of Elfangor’s.”

  Ax jerked visibly.

  I recounted the details of the meeting, playing to a very, very attentive audience.

  Tobias asked.

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t make any sense as a trap. They had me dead. If they wanted to trap us, if it was all a setup, they’d have demanded I return with all of you. They didn’t. They told me to come back alone. Arbron wants me to speak to his people. He wants me to tell them what I told him. He wants my personal promise.”

  “Your promise of what?” Toby asked.

  I looked right at Ax. “They want to be made morph-capable. They have contact with Yeerks who’ve morphed, and they are bitterly ticked that Visser One has refused to enable any of his Taxxon so-called allies. They realize we don’t have the morphing cube anymore. And Arbron is smart enough to know that even if we win we may not get the cube from Visser One. He could escape with it or even destroy it. But they’ve realized that the Yeerks will never, ever allow them to gain morphing capabilities because it would be the end of Taxxon dependence on the Yeerks.”

  “So they want us to promise Andalite cooperation?” Marco said thoughtfully. “They want us to guarantee that the Andalites will pay off on our debt?”

  I nodded. “Exactly. They want us to commit the Andalite high command to make every Taxxon morph-capable. In exchange, each Taxxon will choose a form and turn nothlit.”

  Ax said bluntly.

  “Even if it means stopping a war, saving a planet, and disarming their greatest enemy?” Cassie asked. “Are they that stubborn? That stupid?”

  Ax’s main eyes flashed.

  “They’ve said they’ll go nothlit under our supervision,” I said. “Permanent morph.”

  “The Andalite high command is not going to trust us that far,” Marco said.

  “The Andalite high command can drop dead,” Rachel said. “What good have they ever been to us? Where are they, huh? We’ve always been their last priority. They’ve done squat for us. They’re sitting off at a safe distance waiting to see whether we win or lose. If we win they’ll pat us on the head and say, ‘Good inferior species, good girl, here’s a doggie treat.’ And if we lose what are they going to do?”

  No one had an answer to that. Then Cassie said, “Ax, you need to tell them.”

  Ax looked startled. His stalk eyes jerked toward Cassie.

  “It’s time to choose, Ax,” Cassie said very quietly. “Once and for all. We all know what Alloran did to the Hork-Bajir world, trying to keep them from falling into Yeerk hands. The Andalites won’t allow Earth to fall to the Yeerks, will they?”

  All attention was on Ax.

  It was a long time before he spoke. It’s hard to read Andalite emotions — they lack mouths, and that makes them less expressive than humans. But it was easy enough to guess at the conflicts going on inside that wonderfully quick, agile brain.

  Ax said slowly.

  “I’ll kill you myself!” Rachel erupted.

  “Rachel,” I said as evenly as I could.

 

  “Now can I kill him?” Rachel demanded.

  I wasn’t far from letting her. I was furious. Betrayed! Ax had used our limited communicator to chat with his people? Behind our backs?

  Cassie said, “Ax has already defied them. They ordered him to stop our attack on the Yeerk pool. He disobeyed.”

  Ax asked her.

  “I’m an Animorph, Ax,” Cassie answered. “A flea on your back when you would sneak out of camp.”

  “Why on God’s green Earth would these Andalites order him to stop us from killing their enemies?” Rachel’s mother asked, and for once it was a good question.

  Eva had the answer. “I can guess: They didn’t want anything to stop the Yeerks from concentrating their forces here. They wanted the Yeerks to pour into Earth.” She laughed mirthlessly. “The Yeerks are evil, destructive, dangerous creatures, I know that better than anyone. But the Andalites are no saints themselves. They want the Yeerks to concentrate here because the Andalites have written us off, decided we can’t win, and they wanted to blast the entire planet out of existence and take out the bulk of the Yeerk race along with the human race.”

  “Is that true, Ax?”

  Another long hesitation. Then,

  In a few moment’s time I’d gone from the heights of hope and optimism to the depths of rage and despair. The Andalite fleet wasn’t coming to rescue us. They were coming to destroy us in order to destroy the Yeerks.

  In a heartbeat we’d lost one enemy, the Taxxons, and gained another, far more deadly: our erstwhile friends, our long-awaited saviors, the Andalites.

  Tobias asked. He and Ax are best friends.

  “You’re asking him?” Rachel raged, stabbing an accusing finger at the Andalite.

  Ax held his head high and for a moment I thought he might refuse to answer Tobias’s question. Then,

  “So, how do we tell them?” Marco said. “Any time we dial up that communicator my dad invented it just reaches the Andalite fleet.”

  Ax said.

  Tobias asked.

  Ax looked grim.

  That put it back in my court. I didn’t have an answer.

  “Arbron wants me to speak to the Taxxons tonight,” I said. “He’s suggested I appear in morph — to demonstrate the possibilities. He doesn’t know much about Earth animals. But he thinks the Taxxons would prefer something not too different from their current forms. Something strong but something not afflicted by the Taxxon hunger. Cassie?”

  She looked blank. “Something similar to their present forms? Centipedes? Caterpillars? No, they’d want a longer lifespan at least. And you said strong … ah. I have an idea. I don’t know. Maybe … I don’t know. I’d be guessing.”

  I said, “Cassie, you guessed that letting Tom take the morphing cube might weaken rather than strengthen the Yeerks. You guessed that Ax was …” I stifled the most bitter word that came to mind. “… conflicted. I’ll back your guess any day of the week.”

  “I think he means he’s sorry he doubted you and treated you like crap,” Rachel said archly.

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean. Come on, Cassie, show me where to go next.”

  “Is it a python?” I guessed.

  “Anaconda,” Cassie said.

  The Gardens had survived the destruction of the town since it was outside the radius of annihilation. But it was closed. A handful of dedicated people worked to keep the animals from starving, but the place was a mess: The breeze blew trash around the usually pristine sidewalks; the whole place reeked of uncleaned cages and habitats; water pressure had been cut off so the picturesque moats and ponds were scummed over.

 

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