lake is in the mountains. It's a long way from where any of us live. And if we'd had to walk it would have taken several days. Fortunately, we didn't have to walk. We have our own little airline. TWA: Travel With Animorphs. It was a beautiful day. Just a few puffy clouds in a blue sky. Bright sun. A canopy of trees spread out beneath us as we flew toward the mountains. With my osprey wings spread wide and the sun toasting the ground so it sent up elevators of warm air, it was as perfect as life can get. If you overlooked the fact that we were head- ing toward utter, unspeakable grossness and certain destruction. less-than Time to split upeagreater-than Tobias said. less-than The lake is just over that next ridge. greater-than We had not been flying close together because that would have looked massively suspicious. Two ospreys, a harrier, a bald eagle, a peregrine, and a red-tailed hawk, all flying together? Not in the natural world. But we were all within a mile of each other, and all heading in the same direction. Tobias went into a lazy upward spiral, hanging back. Rachel and Cassie split off, too. The Yeerks would have heavy security around the meeting of The Sharing. The Yeerks know all about morph-+. They would be on alert. Ax, in a harrier morph, Jake, in his peregrine falcon morph, and I flew on toward the lake, though still far apart. less-than You know, one of your kind tried to kill me the other dayeagreater-than I said to Jake. less-than Tobias told meeagreater-than Jake said. less-than Gotta watch out. Falcons rule. greater-than less-than Yeah, well I noticed he didn't try it a second time. greater-than less-than Don't diss falconseagreater-than Jake said. less-than 0ne-on-one in a fair fight, an osprey would kick your butt. greater-than less-than As ifeagreater-than Jake sneered. less-than Excuse meeagreater-than Ax interrupted. less-than ls there some special meaning to this conversation that I don't understand8greater-than less-than Yeaheagreater-than I said. less-than The meaning is that Jake and I are scared, so we're babbling in a desperate effort not to think about it. greater-than less-than Ah. I am frightened, too. I don't really like morphing tiny animals. I keep thinking about all the rest of my mass. greater-than less-than Your what8greater-than I asked, not really caring. I was focused on the morphing ahead. less-than My mass. When you morph something smaller than yourself, your body mass must go somewhere. So it goes into Zero-space. Zero-space is the space that ships travel through when they are going faster than light. It's not very likely to happen, but sometimes a ship traveling in Z-space will intersect with a temporarily parked mass. greater-than This got my total, complete attention. less-than Wait a minute. Are you telling me that when we get small, all the leftover . . . stuff ... all the extra flesh and guts and bones go bulging into Zero-space like some big balloon of human tis-sue8greater-than less-than 0f course. Where did you think all the mass went8greater-than I shuddered. less-than like really didn't think about it. greater-than Jake was no more thrilled than I was. less-than So right now there's a big bag of Jake floating in Zero-space? And it's possible some spaceship will zoom along and hit it and splatter it all over8greater-than less-than No, no, of course neagreater-than Ax said. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Too soon, it turned out. less-than 0f course no ship would actually hit a floating masseagreater-than Ax said, talking to us like we were nitwits. less-than The ship's shielding systems would disintegrate the mass. That's what troubles me about doing small morphs. It very seldom happens. The odds are millions to one. But it could happen. greater-than Jake and I thought about this for a while. About a spaceship "disintegrating" some big wad of our mass. It was not a pretty picture. less-than Hey, Ax8greater-than Jake said. less-than You know how we wanted you to be honest with us? To tell us everything you know8greater-than less-than Yes, Prince Jake. greater-than less-than Small change. In the future, don't tell us things that will scare us silly just as we're going into possible battle. greater-than less-than A big wad of Marco in Zero-spaceeagreater-than I muttered. less-than Like hanging your butt out of a car window, waiting for a truck to come along and sideswipe it off. greater-than Just at that moment, I topped the crest of the ridge. Tall pines nearly scraped my belly. And there, spread out before me, sparkling in the sun, was a large lake nestled between the surrounding hills and mountains. less-than 0kay, boyseagreater-than Jake said. less-than This is where I peel off. Just one final word. I know spiders eat bugs, so do not, I repeat, do not, eat any flies. I'll have enough to worry about in fly morph. greater-than less-than Remind me ageagreater-than I said. less-than Why are we doing this instead of staying home and sleeping in late8greater-than less-than We're saving the worldeagreater-than Jake said. less-than 0h, yeah. Great. My mass is hanging out in the Zero-space highway and I'm about to become Spiderman. I knew there had to be a pretty good reason. greater-than here were probably two hundred people around the lake below us -- boys, girls, older people. Some were swimming. Some were water-skiing. Some were grilling burgers and hot dogs over charcoal fires. A lot were just milling around and talking and laughing. You'd swear it was some kind of big community picnic. From the air they all looked so normal. And probably most of the people below us were normal. But a lot of them were Controllers. And one of them was Erek, who was certainly not normal. We stayed well back from the lakeshore and dropped down into the trees. We came to rest on the ground, inside a cluster of tall bushes. My osprey vision and osprey hearing had revealed no one within a hundred yards. But I was tingling with nervousness, just the same. less-than Shall we demorph8greater-than Ax asked. less-than Not yet. Tobias said he would swing back over, once we were on the ground. greater-than So we waited there, looking a bit weird, two birds of prey just hanging out inside a bunch of bushes at the edge of the forest. I could hear the whine of power boats out on the water, and closer, little snatches of human laughter. less-than 0kay, guys. greater-than Tobias's thought-speak voice suddenly spoke in my head. less-than Looks clear to me. You've got a guy and a girl maybe a hundred yards off. But I think they're making out, so they should be busy for a while. greater-than I quickly began to demorph. One of the limitations on morphing is that you can't just morph straight from one form to another. You always have to return to your own body in between. In Ax's case this meant returning to his An-dalite form. That had to make him nervous. There were dozens of Controllers just a few hundred feet away. Yeerks might overlook one kid sneaking around. They wouldn't overlook an An-dalite. less-than Are you ready to morph ag8greater-than Ax asked me, once we were back in our normal bodies. "I'll neverbe ready to morph a spider," I said. My teeth were chattering, and it wasn't cold. less-than like have to morpheagreater-than Ax said. less- than like can't stay here in Andalite form. greater-than "Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. Okay. Okay, I'm going to do this. But I'm going to keep my eyes closed." I focused my mind on the spider. But I lost concentration, mostly because even the image of that wolf spider grossed me out. Then Ax started to change. I knew still couldn't just stand there and watch. I knew I had to morph. "It can't be any worse than morphing a fly, right? Or an ant?" I asked no one. Not that I wanted to think about the ant morph. We'd had a very, very, very bad time in ant morph. I closed my eyes and focused again. This time I kept my concentration. I felt myself starting to shrink. Shrinking is always a little weird, but now I was also thinking about some big, disgusting balloon of Marco mass suddenly bulging out into Zero-space. Whatever Zero-space was. I could feel myself getting smaller. I could feel very strange things happening inside me: sudden feelings of emptiness where organs were simply disappearing. And there was a distracting squishy sound that came up my spine and through my skull. The sound of bones turning to marrow, and of marrow sort of oozing away. I wouldn't be needing any bones, I guess. I kept my eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see what was happening. And I held on to my fears with a death grip of determination. I mean, if there's anything worse than being a spider, it's being some disgusting mix of half human, half spider. But then . . . POP! POP! POP! I could see! I tried to close my eyes, but no! I didn't have eyelids. It's very hard to close your eyes when you don't have eyelids. Eyes were popping open in my forehead. Eyes were erupting out of
my head like zits. I almost lost it right then. I would have screamed if I'd had a voice any longer. But I was already half spider. And I was staring at Ax as he underwent a change very similar to my own. I was watching him with vision that was half human and half the shattered, broken-mirror vision of the spider's compound eyes. Something horrifying was growing from the place on Ax's face where a mouth should have been. Something huge and bulging and foul. Two monstrous, swollen things like . . . like nothing I'd ever seen before. They were jaws, but huge and outsized. From the end of each one, a wicked, curved fang grew. Sometimes you really, really need eyelids. There are definitely some things you don't want to have to see. I knew the same thing was happening to me. My bulging jaw parts grew till they entered my own distorted field of vision. Fortunately, I didn't have to worry too long about the jaws. See, I became distracted when legs suddenly exploded from my chest. SPROOOT! Four new legs, two on each side, just shot out of me, like I was a tube of toothpaste someone had stomped. They sprouted all Gumby-unformed, then began to form joints. Way too many joints. My human legs and arms were changing to match these first spider legs. I fell forward, no longer able to stand erect. It wasn't much of a fall. I was already pretty small. The pine needles beneath me already seemed to be as big around as a human finger. Not that I had any fingers left to compare with. All the while, new eyes kept opening suddenly where eyes absolutely did not belong. Some were compound eyes. Some weren't. Then, as if the extra legs, and the mix "n" match eyes, and the huge jaw-and-fang combo weren't enough, some new leglike things came sprouting out of my ... well, out of where my neck used to be. They were like extra legs, only they weren't. I had no idea what they were. But they moved. Much later, I found out they're called pedipalps. A sort of cross between a mouth part and a leg. My head was swelling, compared to the rest of my body. It was gigantic ... in a small way. My entire body was now divided into two big chunks: a sort of bulging head and an even bulgier body. I was almost entirely spider now. The pine needles that had seemed as big as fingers were now as big as two-by-fours. As the last touch, strangely soft hairs began to grow from everywhere on my body. It was the hair that seemed to trigger the awakening of the spider brain. The wolf spider has good eyes for a spider. But it's all the thousands of tiny hairs that really get the spider brain's attention. They sense every subtle clue in the wind. Every minor movement in every direction. And all of a sudden it felt like the whole world was moving: leaves, pine needles, the dirt beneath my claw-tipped eight legs, bugs in the dirt, moles under the ground, birds in the air. All of it seemed to be hardwired into the hairs that covered my spider body. With all that sensory overload, the spider brain woke up. I had been afraid it would be like the brain of an ant: a mindless machine. Or that it would be the terrified, fearful, panic-stricken mind of a prey animal. But oh, no. Definitely no. They didn't call it a wolf spider for nothing. This guy was tiny, no more than two inches from the end of one outstretched leg to the end of the farthest back leg. A toddler could easily crush him underfoot. But I guess it isn't size alone that makes a predator, because as soon as I felt the edge of that spider brain I knew this boy was trouble. The wolf spider was a killer.
Hunger. That was pretty much what the spider mind had to say: hunger, it was hungry. It wanted to hunt. It wanted to kill. It wanted to eat up a few nice juicy bugs. It was hungry. Did I mention hunger? And it didn't care what kind of bug. Could be beetles, could be grasshoppers, could be crickets, could be a big mean mantis. The spider didn't care. It ruled the world of bugs. It was to bugs what a lion is to a herd of antelopes. It was a shark among guppies. They could run from the wolf spider, but they couldn't hide. Motion! Something moved, left to right across my field of vision, and I was after it like a dog af ter a rabbit. Eight legs powered up and I blew across the forest floor like a drag racer firing out of the start ing gate. The world was weird to my eight spider eyes. I saw colors no human ever saw. It was like when you mess with the color and tint knobs on the TV. Things that should have been brown were blue, and green was red, or whatever. From some an gles the pictures were almost clear, but a second later everything would shatter into bits and I'd be watching a million tiny monitors at once. I never could make logical sense out of it. But mostly what I saw was movement. I was very, very interested in movement. My eyes and every hair on my disgusting little body were about spotting movement. And when the right thing moved, my body just answered all on its own. It was a rush, as they used to say in my dad's day. A charge. It was like tapping into the main pipe of adrenaline. It was electric. It was nuclear. I blew across pine needles and fallen leaves and over patches of dirt and I kept that moving bug in my field of vision and I knew what I was doing, I mean, I knew I was Marco, a human in morph, and I knew I didn't really want to eat that racing bug, but man, I was too jazzed to stop. The prey was running and I was the predator. I had evolved for hundreds of millions of years to do exactly this. When Tyrannosaurus rex was still millions of years away from even thinking about evolving, tiny arachnid hunters were killing and eating. The entire history of Homo sapiens from caveman to soccer mom was a blip in the history of spiders. I was death on eight legs. It was a beetle. That's what I was chasing. A big old beetle, much larger than I was. Larger and slower. He grew in my distorted field of vision. He grew and grew and I powered on. I wish I could explain why I kept on with the hunt. Sometimes the animal brain takes over for a while and sort of overwhelms the human mind. But that's not what was happening to me. I wasn't overwhelmed. I was just into it. A last burst of speed! My front legs touched the beetle. He dodged left, but too slow. I clambered right up on his back. I positioned my jaws with their deadly fangs, and
- less-than Marco. What are you doing8greater-than It was Ax. I scampered down off the beetle, feeling like I'd been caught doing something wrong. The beetle ran on, relieved to have escaped. If beetles can feel relief. less-than Nothing. I was just letting the spider be a spider. greater-than It was a pretty good answer, I thought. less-than like guess its instincts kind of carried me away. greater-than less-than Marco, I morphed the identical spidereagreater-than Ax said. I felt a wave of guilt and shame suddenly swell up inside me. less-than Ax, it was just a cockroach. Who cares? Come on, we have a job to do. greater-than less-than Sometimes humans worry meeagreater-than Ax said. I didn't ask him what he meant. Why had I gotten so into the hunt? Why hadn't I resisted the urge? I flashed on the rage I'd felt when I talked to Tom. Was that it? less-than like think it's this wayeagreater-than Ax said. He took the lead and I saw him moving in front of me, a spider scurrying effortlessly on his eight legs. I fell in behind him. I was calm now. The incredible, insane rush of the chase was over. Now the spider was just a tool I was using. Suddenly, from the sky . . . something fell toward me! It landed right between Ax and me. A grasshopper, three, four times our size. It looked like an elephant. Then . . . thwap! It fired its huge hind legs and shot into the air. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. We raced on through the forest, covering the two hundred feet between us and the edge of the party. I sensed the nearness of humans. I "heard" vibrations that might have been speech, but the voices were too garbled to make any sense out of. less-than Hey, Marco, Ax, you guys around8greater-than It was Jake's thought-speak voice. less-than Yes, Prince Jakeeagreater-than Ax answered. less-than We are here.greater-than less-than We're not pretty, but we're hereeagreater-than I added. less-than Cool. I'm not exactly handsome myself. I'm in fly morph. Haven't found our boy Erek yet, though. greater-than Something massive and slow appeared in the air above me. I scampered sideways. It landed slowly with a loud WHOOOMPHHH! A human foot. A shoe. Nike. less-than You know, I'd been worrying someone might step on meeagreater-than I said. less-than But humans are so slow. greater-than less-than Be careful anywayeagreater-than Jake said. less-than let me know if you find Erek. greater-than less-than like don't know how I'm supposed to recognize hmeagreater-than I complained. less-than These spider eyes aren't good at seeing distances. And human heads seem to be way up in the cl
ouds, from where I'm crawling down here.greater-than But Ax and I went on, skittering swiftly through a forest of huge, slow-moving legs and feet. Then, right in front of me, I saw it. It looked like a bare human foot. Except that
I could see through the skin. Through the toenails. With my eight strange, distorted spider eyes I could see right through the electronic haze of the hologram. I could see what was beneath the hologram. I saw what looked like interlocking plates of steel and ivory. The "foot" had no toes. In fact, it wasn't shaped like a human foot. More like a paw. It was not human. And everything in my tingling, buzzing, hyper, spider's senses told me it was not alive. less-than Ax8greater-than less-than Yes, I see it. greater-than less-than What is x8greater-than less-than like do not know. greater-than less-than lt looks like a machine, almost. Like it's made out of metal. greater-than less-than Yeseagreater-than Ax said. less-than like think your friend Erek may be an android. greater-than android8greater-than less-than Yes. A robot. A machine made to seem like a life-formeagreater-than Ax said, as though it was just the most common idea in the world. less-than This is like something you know about, Ax8greater-than I asked, looking up at the thing called Erek. less-than This is not a type of android I knoweagreater-than Ax said. less-than lt is not Andalite. I don't think it is Yeerk. I don't know who ...