"Uh, a little warning before we make any turns, please?" I said. "In this light I can barely see a thing."
"Ditto," Tobias added.
"If we can't see each other," Rachel said, "it's unlikely Visser Three and his walking wood-chippers are going to see us. I think."
"Think again," Cassie said. "Look who's coming."
A familiar blue blob. A now-familiar aroma.
"Stick to the ceiling," Jake said.
Visser Three trotted right past us.
Right past us and into his room.
Then his voice was exploding in our heads like a nuclear bomb.
"Guards!" A moment's hesitation as he put it all together. Then, "The Andalite bandits! They are on board!"
The hallway was suddenly filled with the smell of Hork-Bajir.
"Ax, what light path do we follow?" Jake asked.
"I cannot be certain which leads to where. The Yeerk color sense may - "
"JUST PICK ONE!" Jake roared.
"Follow me," Ax said meekly.
49 Jake almost never yells. When he does, you have to know it's time to do what he says.
There were four lines of lights, and all of them looked the same hazy gray-green to me. To all of us. But Ax picked one.
"Get the Andalites!" the Visser screamed in an absolute frenzy of rage and excitement. "Here! On my own Blade ship! Ah-hah! I will slowly kill the fool who fails me! Do you hear me? Get them! Get them! GET THEM!"
We blew out of there as fast as our little fairy wings would take us. We chased that ribbon of light, hoping it wasn't leading us into an even uglier death trap.
50 Ax found the storage bays and led us there like he'd been born and raised on that Blade ship.
"They know about insect morphs," Cassie said. "We're vulnerable. They could flood the ship with insecticides."
"I'm not dying as a fly," Rachel said. "They want me, I'm taking some of them down with me."
She was already demorphing. And as far as I could see, she was right: Forget dying as a bug. If the Yeerks were going to catch us, it wasn't going to be with a can of Raid.
51 We were about as trapped as we could get. Visser Three knew we were on his ship. It was only a matter of time. And as far as this battle was concerned, the Yeerks owned time.
In our normal bodies again we could see how scared we were. I could see the way Jake was gritting his teeth, Rachel's mean grin, Cassie's worry, tinged with sadness. It would almost have been better to remain in morph. In morph you could hear the fear, but you didn't have to look it in the eyes.
I was watching Rachel, trying to decide for the millionth time whether she was brave or just insane, when I happened to focus past her.
Rising up behind her was a pillar of glass. A cylinder ten feet, twelve feet tall, and half as broad. Inside the cylinder was a vague shape, blood-red and midnight-blue slashes highlighting a glistening silver body.
Yes, body. Because despite the frosted glass and the mist that filled the cylinder, that ten-foot-tall tube contained something biological. There was a row of the cylinders spaced across the cargo bay. Maybe ten in all.
"They look like creatures of some kind," Cassie said.
I could feel the cold emanating from the cylinders. I reached out to touch one, but my
52 fingertips went numb before they'd gotten within an inch of the surface.
"Okay, this is a totally unnecessary new weirdness," I said.
"They look almost like ..." Ax began.
"Like what?" I demanded.
"I was going to say they look like the Venber Visser Three mentioned," Ax said. "But they cannot be ..."
"What's a Venber?" Rachel asked.
"An alien race from a frozen moon several dozen light-years from here," Ax explained. "We learned about them in school. They were among the earliest evidence we obtained of life beyond our own planet. But the Venber have been extinct for thousands of years."
"Yeah, well, speaking of extinct," I said, "we'd better get morphed or we're gonna end up the same way."
Cassie was trying to peer through the mist, struggling to get a closer look at the big, silver creatures. "What would Visser Three want with some extinct aliens? What do you know about these guys, Ax?"
"They never got beyond primitive tool use, though they may have had the intelligence to evolve further. Had they survived. They lived in very cold conditions - two hundred of your degrees below zero."
53 "Now they're our degrees, too?" I muttered. "Hey, here's something to think about: The bad guys could be here any minute. Any one of our minutes. Do we want to spend the last few minutes of our lives talking about extinct alien Popsicles?"
I must have sounded a bit hysterical. Jake actually smiled. "Marco's right. Get ready."
Suddenly Ax looked alert, like he was listening to far-off music. "We are descending. Possibly preparing for a landing."
"Fine, whatever, let's morph," Jake said.
Descending? I wondered. Preparing to land? Why would Visser Three let the ship land? If he landed, we could conceivably escape.
A mistake?
I shook off the worry. I had enough worries already.
Minutes later, we were as ready as we were going to get. Jake was in tiger morp h; Rachel was a grizzly bear; Cassie was a wolf; and Tobias and Ax were their own handsome selves. Me, I went gorilla.
Together we were a tough, deadly fighting team. And then ...
Shwooof! To our left a door opened.
Shwooof! To our right a door opened.
Shwooof! The door opened right ahead of us.
Each door was big enough to frame a dozen
54 Hork-Bajir. Peering over their shoulders were more HorkBajir.
And right then I realized why Visser Three had let the ship land: He'd located us. He knew he had us. And we were definitely dead.
55 I stopped breathing. Hork-Bajir were everywhere. Everywhere!
This wouldn't be a fight. This would be a slaughter.
Then, at the center door, he appeared.
"Well, well, well. Here aboard my own ship. How nice of you to come around to see me. Can I offer you anything? Something to drink? To eat? Or maybe just a quick death?"
The Visser laughed. He had reason to laugh. Three doors open and filled with Dracon-armed Hork-Bajir.
"Give the word, Jake," Rachel whispered. "Give the word and I swear I can at least get him."
56 Three doors? Wasn't there a fourth door? And why wasn't it open?
"Ax!" I said urgently. "I don't want to turn around and look, but is there a fourth door?"
Ax swiveled one stalk eye. "Yes! It must lead to the exterior of the ship. But there is a control pad protecting the emergency manual release. It is undoubtedly coded. It would take me hours to find the security code."
Of course. And Visser Three knew that. But maybe this wasn't a case for subtlety. I flexed my canned ham fist. "Jake! There's another door behind us. A keypad. Maybe I can break it open."
"And get fried before you twitch," Jake pointed out.
"No. The Yeerks will not fire weapons in here. Not with those canisters," Ax said. "They are obviously valuable specimens."
Jake reached a very fast decision. "Rachel. Next word Visser Three says, you slam the nearest canister. Marco? The keypad. Ax, back up Marco. Tobias, Cassie, and me, straight at Visser Three, a feint."
I was getting ready to make a lame pun about "feint" and "faint" when the Visser spoke.
"Surrender now and -"
Before he could get to his fourth word, Rachel
57 struck! A mountain of grizzly slammed hard into the nearest cylinder.
WHAM!
Nothing!
Too late, I'd already spun around and bounded toward the keypad.
"KILL THEM!" Visser Three screamed.
"Tseeeeer!" Tobias screamed.
"Hraawwwrrr!" Rachel bellowed. She slammed all her weight this time, all her strength.
Crack!
A single crack, a s
mall, pathetic crack, appeared in the cylinder wall. The mist began to seep out.
Jake, Cassie, and Tobias attacked. No other option now.
I saw a flash of orange and black leaping straight at Visser Three. No less than half a dozen Hork-Bajir enveloped him, blades flashing.
I saw the keypad. I drew back my pile-driver arm and slammed it with all my might. It crumpled like a tin can.
"Rip away the metal!" Ax yelled, even as he used his reversed stalk eyes to aim a sonic-boom tail snap at a rushing Hork-Bajir.
Rachel withdrew, backed up a dozen feet, and ran all out, full speed, on all fours at the
58 cylinder. A small army of Hork-Bajir leaped after her.
Just then, I saw Cassie flying through the air. Not a leap. She'd been thrown, bloodied and broken.
Tobias was in the air, harassing Visser Three, aiming for his vulnerable stalk eyes.
WHAM!
Rachel hit the cylinder. A flailing mob of Hork-Bajir literally covered her.
And then the cylinder shattered.
CRASH! It fell in pieces.
Whoosh! The mist inside billowed out. Hork-Bajir screamed and tried to back away. But too late! The clouds of mist caught them, freezing any body part it touched.
Not freezing, as in it made them cold. Freezing, as in solid. Like stone gargoyles. I saw one puzzled Hork-Bajir gape in horror as his left leg simply broke off and lay on the deck like a piece of a statue.
The mist hit Rachel, too. But she had a thick coat of fur. The fur froze and shattered off like thousands of brittle needles.
I ripped away the loose metal of the keypad.
"Squeeze that handle!" Ax ordered.
I squeezed.
Too late, Visser Three saw his mistake.
59 "Bridge!" he roared. "Bridge, get us up! Get us up!"
The outer hull door began to slide. It opened onto empty whiteness.
"Jake! Cassie! Everyone! Door open! Bail!" I yelled.
The freezing mist was swirling around the floor now, forcing the Visser to back up. But that didn't mean he wouldn't send his troops into it.
"After them! After them!"
Hork-Bajir plowed through the mist and found themselves on frozen feet. Feet with toes that broke off, with ankles that snapped.
Jake coiled his tiger muscles and took the mist at a leap. Tobias was first out the door. Cassie lay unconscious in a heap, with mist advancing on her.
Without hesitation, Rachel walked into the mist and lifted Cassie's wolf body with her teeth. The grizzly's left foot stayed where it had frozen. Rachel staggered to the door on a stump.
One by one, we tumbled out of the door and into emptiness.
60 We landed about twenty feet below in a pile of fur, claws, wings, and hooves. I hit hard, facedown. I was under hundreds of pounds of morphed humans and one alien.
There was a huge whoosh. The Blade ship, following Visser Three's orders and going for altitude. Bad timing. I could practically hear him screaming, "No, no! Down! Down!"
I scratched at the ground and tried to pull myself out of the squirming pile. But the ground was slippery.
Ice. I could feel the black, leathery skin on my chest burning against it.
Just a few inches from my face, I could see Jake's claws scraping at the ice.
61 I tried to push away, to get out from under the grizzly bear lying over me. But not even my strength could move Rachel till she rolled away. I tried to stand up.
I felt my skin tearing as I pulled away from the ice.
"Ow ow ow ow!" I screamed.
But then I saw Rachel's foot. Or at least the stump where the foot had been. She was demorphing as fast as she could. Grizzlies can take a lot of pain. But nothing likes losing an entire foot.
Cassie was reviving, turning her wolf snout back and forth like a person having a bad dream. Then, "Yah! Oh! Oh, man! Wh-where are we?"
"Someplace cold," I said. "Really cold. You better demorph and remorph, fast!" I could see the Blade ship. It had shot into the air, up through the clouds, and was still hauling away. But it would be back.
"Marco's right," Jake said. "Jeez! Is it cold enough?"
My arms were already starting to lose their mobility. It was intensely, horribly cold. The still-warm blood on my chest gave off a steamy mist in the frosty air.
I was a jungle creature. Big and furry, but not really adapted for anything less than hot and
62 sticky. And we were a long way from hot and sticky.
Cassie was human again, standing barefoot on ice. "Th-th-think I'll re-m-m-morph," she chattered. Rachel wasn't far behind her.
"What is this, Alaska?" she demanded, steam escaping from between her lips. As out of place as we all were, no one looked more out of place than Rachel in human form.
"Could be Alaska," Tobias said. "About a mile that way I see some kind of base or even a town. Lots of gray, corrugated metal buildings. One bigger than the rest. Big doors like those on plane hangars. There's like this giant bowl attached to the roof. And that's the hawk report, boys and girls. I am morphing before I end up in the frozen foods section next to the frozen chicken."
"That settles it," I said. "it ain't Hawaii."
I couldn't see the base in any detail. Just a vague outline in the distance. But to my right was an endless body of half-frozen water, a jigsaw puzzle in ice. On our left, a hundred yards from the shore, was a huge outcropping of craggy rocks, the foot of an enormous mountain range that swept up and away into the distance. No trees, no grass. Just a ridge of black rock and white snow.
"Not the Caribbean, either," I said, trying to
63 ignore the fact that my big gorilla feet were freezing in place.
"Oh!" Cassie cried. "I've never felt cold like this! I'm a wolf and I'm cold!"
"Tobias!" Rachel shouted. He had suddenly collapsed. He lay on the ice, flapping his wings lamely.
"I can't fly ... can't morph ... losing ..."
Rachel scooped him up and tucked him into her chest with hands half-human and half-bear. She morphed, growing huge around him, all the while keeping him pressed to her fur.
I slapped my big hands against my arms and rubbed, trying to work feeling back into my fingers. I looked up and saw the Blade ship, an ominous black shape against the clouds.
"He is not coming back this way," Ax said. "He will be heading for his base."
You'd think that would make us feel better. But no one thought for a minute that he was just going to let us go.
No, he just figured there was no hurry. Unlike us, he knew where we were. And he knew we weren't going to get far.
64 "We need to get moving," Jake said. His tiger morph was doing fairly well, I guess. Or else he was just refusing to complain. Which was fine. I'd complain for both of us.
"Ax?" Cassie asked. "How are you holding up?"
"I am holding nothing up," he said. "But I am slowly freezing to death. I doubt I can maintain brain function for more than a few more minutes."
"Ax, you really need to tell us these things," Jake said. "Hang in for a few minutes. We need to move out. We need distance."
I took off as fast as I could, which was pretty
65 slow, considering I could no longer feel my feet. Every gust of wind felt like a punch in the face. Tears streamed down my cheeks and froze before they reached my chin. The blood on my chest became a coating of pinkish ice.
We didn't get far.
Ax stumbled. " Prince Jake! I am not sure I can continue."
"Okay, look, um ... okay, Ax! Tobias!" Jake commanded. "Neither of you has a good cold-weather morph. Morph to fleas and hide in Rachel's fur!"
"Come on guys," Rachel shouted. "I've got you!"
Rachel stood over Ax while he began to morph. Tobias, still in her arm, began to shrink. Then Rachel scooped Ax's still-morphing form and held him to her chest as well.
"Okay, now we move. We need distance, we need cover. Before the Yeerks can come out after us. Let's go!" Jake said.
We took off again, a staggering, miserable little gang of biological misfits. A tiger, a bear, a wolf, and a gorilla.
I started giggling. Gorilla! Here in the snow. Funny.
Just tired. That was the thing. Tired.
I looked back up again for the Blade ship.
66 Nothing in the sky. But the cloud above was kind of pretty. Looked like a horse. No, a unicorn. Yeah. Pretty.
We ran and kept running. Along the frozen shoreline. Beneath the shadow of the gloomy rocks.
Every step was torture. My feet were numb, but the pain still burned in my legs. I ran on all my fours, gorilla-style, and my knuckles were soon raw and bloody.
The wind came in sudden gusts, lashing my face, cutting straight through my fur. I hated the wind. It made me tired. Couldn't see right.
Just follow the orange kitty, I told myself. Follow the big orange-and-black kitty.
Take a thousand ice cubes, fill a bathtub with them, and crawl in. You might get a fraction of an idea what I was feeling.
Now imagine the prick of a very sharp pin. Imagine a solid sheet of pins slapped against your face. Again and again. That was the wind.
We ran on bloody frozen feet and now I saw rocks looming higher and higher beside me. Hide. Hide in the rocks. Yeah, that way the ... the guys ... the ones who were chasing us, wouldn't be ...
I realized I was confused. The thoughts jumbling together in my head weren't making sense. Were they?
67 "Okay, in here!" Jake said. "We can take a break."
In where? Rocks all around us. Tall piles. Like ... like rocks. Yeah.
"I cannot believe how cold it is," Cassie panted, her breath turning to plumes of steam.
"I can barely feel my paws," Rachel complained.
"What?" I said. "I need to sleep now."
I looked down stupidly at my bare feet. Swollen. Huge. Nearly double their usual size.
I closed my eyes. Tired. Cold.
"Okay, everybody," Jake said. "We have to figure out what to do. Rachel, I know you're cold, but can you stand it?"
"For a while," Rachel said. "Not for long. Aren't grizzlies usually hibernating in a cave somewhere in the winter?"
"Cassie? How about you?"
"Well, wolves are cold-weather animals, but I can't stand weather this cold. At least not for long."
Not for long.
Voices. Faraway voices.