Cassie shot a nervous look over her shoulder. “My dad doesn’t need to see this.”
“No problem,” I said. I grabbed a pitchfork that was leaning up against the wall. “I’ll get them.”
“I’ll help.” Marco grabbed a ceramic pot. “I’m gonna trap these weirdos like bugs under glass.”
We moved toward the freezer.
The pink-and-aqua truck spun around and raced right between us.
Marco pounced.
I pounced and jabbed the pitchfork down on top of the truck. Vaguely aware that my elbow had hit Marco and that he was stumbling backward, clutching his head.
So what? The Helmacron ship had rolled off the truck and was tumbling toward the freezer. All I had to do was grab it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marco lose his footing and trip.
“Get it!” Cassie screamed.
“Look out!”
THUNK!
Marco. Sliding down the side of the freezer. Slumping forward into the hay.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Marco hit his head on the corner of the freezer,” Jake said.
Cassie had already rushed to Marco’s side. “Marco? Marco? Can you hear me?”
No reply. He was out cold.
“Man, these Helmacrons are bad news,” I complained.
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Rachel, you were the one who elbowed Marco in the head.”
“Because the little monsters were distracting me!”
Tobias shouted.
I glanced down. The Helmacron ship was right where it had fallen. I picked it up. “No worries,” I said. “I’ve got them.”
Tobias swooped toward Marco’s head and narrowly missed grazing Cassie with his talons.
“Hey, watch out!” Cassie yelled.
Tobias repeated.
Then I got it. The Helmacrons had bailed out of their ship. They were loose somewhere in the barn.
“Where are they?” I demanded.
“What?” But I was already down on my knees, inches from Marco’s face.
Frantically, I scanned the hay and dirt.
Tobias ordered.
Cassie and I scrambled back.
Tobias said.
“What?” Jake demanded.
Tobias said.
“How many?”
one of the Helmacrons cried.
“Give me one good reason why we should cooperate with you pipsqueaks,” I demanded.
the Helmacron demanded.
“News flash,” I said. “Keep threatening us and you’ll never get off Earth alive.”
the voice shouted.
came another voice.
the first voice shouted.
the second voice answered.
Then the Helmacrons fell silent. Probably beginning their march deeper into Marco’s nose.
“What’s this about male and female?” Jake asked.
Cassie shrugged. “Don’t you remember? When the Helmacrons were here before, Marco and I kind of gave the males a little … pep talk. We didn’t like the way the females were always bossing them around.”
“Yeah. Okay. This is a good thing,” Jake said. “Because now the Helmacrons have even more reasons to fight among themselves.”
Marco woke up about two seconds later. He took one look at the three of us staring into his face and got real worried, real fast.
“What happened?” he demanded, rubbing the back of his head and giving me a murderous look.
“Well, not anything good,” I said. “Not anything you’re going to like.”
“What’s the matter?” Marco asked.
“The Helmacrons kind of …” Jake started.
Tobias said.
“A hostage,” Cassie provided.
Marco’s eyes went wide. But before he could ask any questions —
“Ah! Ah! AhCHOOOO!” He sneezed, cupping his hand over his mouth.
“Did he sneeze them out?” Jake demanded.
Tobias reported.
Marco glared at us and climbed to his feet. “What is the matter with you people?” he demanded suspiciously. “Why are you interested in my bodily fluids? Where are the Helmacrons?”
Cassie came forward and slipped an arm around Marco. “They cleared out of their ship,” she said calmly. “And they went up your nose.”
“To hide?”
“Well, no,” Jake said. “More like — and I’m just guessing — it’s because they want to kill you.”
“No way!” Marco rubbed at his nose. Let out a snort. “That is so not okay with me!”
“Calm down,” Cassie said.
“Calm down?!” Marco bellowed. “I have Helmacrons up my nose! Lunatics! And they want me dead! No, I most definitely will not calm down.”
“I just thought we could think more clearly without you shouting,” Cassie said.
“Think about what?” Marco demanded. “We have to get them out! They’re armed. They might blow an artery or a, a — something else important! What exactly do we have to think about? Do something!”
“We will!” I shouted. “Just give us time to think!”
Marco frowned and flicked at his nose.
“Tobias, you’d better get Ax,” Jake said. “First, see if you can get Erek to keep watch for us. He won’t be able to follow the kid with the camera if he leaves the building but at least we’ll know where he is.”
Tobias flared his wings and was gone.
“Can we go in after them?” Jake asked.
Cassie made a face. “Smallest morph … I guess a flea is small enough to get into nasal passages. It might be tight, though. Maybe a tick?”
“Ticks are useless in battle,” I said.
“Excuse me,” Marco cried. “Are you planning to have a BATTLE in my NOSE?!”
“You have a better suggestion?” I demanded.
“No,” Marco whimpered, slumping down on a bale of hay.
“Ideas?” Jake demanded.
Cassie sighed. “Well … we have the Helmacrons’ ship. We could power it up with the morphing cube, get tiny, and go after the Helmacrons as humans. That is, assuming the controls are still working.”
Nobody said anything for a few beats.
Considering.
Pretending not to glance at Marco.
I know Marco. Marco is a get-it-done guy. He has the strategic mind of a serious military man and he’s never afraid to make unpopular decisions for the good of the mission. He knew our going after the Helmacrons was the fastest way to solve the problem. He wasn’t going to stand in the way of the goal.
Still, we were talking about invading his body in an unbelievably intimate way. He had a right to be a jerk about it if he wanted to be.
“That could work,” Jake said tentatively.
Nothing from Marco.
Tobias asked.
A red-tailed hawk and a northern harrier fluttered into the barn and settled into the rafters. Tobias and Ax.
“We were just thinking about using the controls aboard the Helmacron ship to shrink ourselves and go after the aliens in Marco’s nose,” Jake explained.
Ax said. ation.>
Marco squeaked. “This is so Magic School Bus. Rachel, have I ever told you that you could definitely be my Ms. Frizzle?”
I ignored him.
“What information?” Cassie demanded.
But Marco had already figured it out. “The Helmacrons know we’re humans with morphing power. From what we’ve seen, the Helmacrons hate the Yeerks and vice versa. But if the Helmacrons learn that Visser Three is looking for a group of morphing bandits, and there was something in it for them, the Helmacrons would sell us out in a minute.”
Jake sighed. “Okay, we go after them. No choice.”
“Isn’t anyone going to ask me what I think?” Marco demanded, his arms wrapped around his belly. “The nose you’re talking about happens to belong to me!”
Like I said, I know Marco. He’d already accepted the plan.
Jake gave Marco an impatient look. “Well?”
“Oh, sure,” Marco said weakly. “Make yourself at home. Just try to be neat. Think of it as the National Nose Land. Keep it in good shape for generations to come.”
Ax fluttered down from the rafters.
Jake nodded. “Tobias?”
Tobias would keep watch. Let us know if anyone got close enough to the barn to see Ax do his thing.
Ax began to change. His sharp raptor head ballooned up. His bright yellow harrier eyes migrated to the top of his head, turned blue, and sprouted stalks.
Total freak show.
“Why did the Helmacrons have to show up today?” Marco whined. “I already used my Honey, I Shrunk the Animorphs joke the last time they were around. I just can’t get a break.”
Cassie went to the freezer and started digging for the morphing cube. I followed her. Mostly because the sick look on Marco’s face was making me uneasy.
“Why does your dad keep a freezer out here?” I asked her.
“We store stuff in it,” Cassie said. She handed me an unidentifiable lump of something. It was frozen solid, so cold my fingers started to ache.
“Like what?”
“Frozen grubs,” Cassie said, leaning back down into the freezer. “Certain, um, bodily fluids from the animals. Oh, and Popsicles. Dad likes grape.”
“Sorry I asked.” I considered the frozen lump in my hand. Decided I didn’t want to know.
“I figured nobody in their right mind would go pawing through this freezer,” Cassie said. “Besides, I needed a place where no living creature could accidentally come into contact with the cube.”
“I’m with you on that one,” I agreed.
Ax went to work on the Helmacron ship.
I watched for a while. He used some of the surgical equipment Cassie’s dad kept in the barn. Held the precise instruments in his delicate Andalite fingers and carefully manipulated control rods the size of human hairs. Squinting at the procedure for ten minutes was enough to give me a headache.
My eyes kept drifting to Marco. Still sitting on the hay, looking miserable. I wandered over to him. Sat next to him. Considered giving him a hug, but couldn’t quite bring myself to actually do it.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Great. I always wanted to grow up to be a Helmacron Holiday Inn.”
It wasn’t funny, but I smiled anyway. “We’re going to get them,” I told Marco.
An hour later Ax was finished.
Ax told us.
I felt wired. Nervous energy. I was anxious to get moving. The Helmacrons had been in Marco’s body for over an hour. Plenty of time to do plenty of damage.
“Just show me which button to push,” Marco told Ax eagerly.
Jake looked at Marco. “You’re going to shrink us?”
“Who else?”
“I thought Ax would do it.”
“Isn’t he going, you know, on the mission?” Marco asked.
“Well, we know there are at least twelve Helmacrons,” I said. “Five of us. Even with Ax they outnumber us more than two to one. I say he comes.”
Ax repeated.
Marco giggled nervously. “That didn’t sound too weird.”
Jake looked troubled. “Marco, don’t you want to have someone here with you?” he asked.
“You mean, in case I collapse?” Marco asked. “Pass out? Or, to make things crystal clear, drop dead?”
Jake rubbed his eyes. “Right,” he said wearily.
“No.” Marco shook his head. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather have the maximum firepower working to make sure none of those things happen. What’s Ax going to do for me here? Hold my hand?”
“We still have the camera to deal with,” Jake pointed out.
“I’ll handle the kid,” Marco said. “One homey shutterbug is nothing compared to a tiny bunch of squabbling psychopaths from outer space.”
Jake’s expression got serious. “Look, you can’t take unnecessary risks while this mission is going on. Don’t play hero. Just keep in touch with Erek or whoever he’s got on surveillance.”
Ax said,
Jake pushed his hair off his forehead. “Got that, Marco?”
“Uh, not really. Ax, try English.”
“Look,” Jake said. “No morphing, under any circumstances.”
“Don’t worry,” Marco snorted. “The thought sort of makes me sick.”
“Okay, Ax, you’re with us,” Jake said. “I’m hoping we won’t be gone long. But Marco …”
“Yeah, yeah, Erek’s phone number is on the fridge. Listen, is it okay if I help myself to a snack after the kids go to bed?”
“All of this strategic planning is fun and all,” I said loudly. “But we’re giving the Helmacrons a big honkin’ head start.”
“Okay,” Jake said. “In the words of my gung-ho cousin, ‘Let’s do it.’”
“We should hold hands,” Cassie said. “That way we won’t get separated when we shrink. Maybe.”
The five of us huddled together. I took Cassie’s hand and gently held Tobias’s wing. We watched as Marco hovered over the Helmacron ship, looking too big and clumsy.
Ax said.
“Yeah, I got it,” Marco said. “Ready, set —”
Ax said.
“I got it,” Marco said, sounding annoyed. “Ready —”
FLASH!
A flashbulb brilliance. The light was green and shockingly bright, like looking into an emerald sun. Then, with surprising speed, we all started to get very small.
Down.
Down, and down, and down.
We were shrinking. Fast.
The Helmacron ship and the blue box were growing larger. Marco was positively enormous.
“Hey, Marco,” I said. “From this angle, you actually look tall.”
“Hey — cool!”
“Too bad you can’t shrink the whole school,” I said.
“Ha-ha. And, free this month only, a bonus ha!”
Shrinking is something like morphing an insect. But different, too. When I’ve been in fly morph the fly instincts feel that being tiny is natural.
Being a teeny-weeny human is just plain weird.
I’d started out at five-foot-something. Now I was roughly the size of an American Girl doll. And getting tinier rapidly.
We were the Littles. The Borrowers. Thumbelina and friends.
Marco was peering down on us. His face was the size of a billboard on Times Square. If he’d been
wearing Calvin Klein briefs — and nothing else — the illusion would have been complete. Almost.
“Remember, Marco,” Jake called. “No morphing.”
“What did you say?” Marco asked. “Small people are hard to hear.”
“I said, no morphing!” But at that point it probably sounded like, “I said, no morphing.”
“I can’t HEAR you!” Marco was starting to sound like a cheerleader at one of those televised competitions.
“Tell him,” Jake said to Ax.
Ax yelled in thought-speak.
“Okay!” Marco boomed. “Your puny lives depend on my following orders.”
That was when the first wave of fear rippled through me.
Okay, morphing is creepy. But, in a strange way, you’re in control.
Concentrate hard enough and you can control the morph, at least to some extent.
Concentrate hard enough and even when you think you’re about to take your dying breath, you can get your own body back.
But shrinking …
I couldn’t undo this on my own.
In a very real and spooky way, my life was in Marco’s hands.
And, of course, Marco was infested with microscopic lunatics that wanted him — and us — out of their way.
Now we were flea-sized, and still shrinking.
The workbench loomed overhead like a windowless skyscraper.
The treads on Marco’s running shoes were like enormous purple sculptures.
Down.
Down, and down, and down.
Down until rake marks in the dirt looked like hills.
Down until bits of hay were huge, felled trees and grains of dirt were the size of soccer balls.
And we were still shrinking.
Marco’s mammoth form was entirely filling my view. “I just thought of some —”
His voice just blinked out mid-sentence. Like a radio suddenly switched off. But I knew Marco was still talking. I could sense his words as sound waves breaking around me.
Cassie gripped my hand a bit tighter. “What just happened?”
Ax said.
“That didn’t happen before,” Cassie said.
Tobias agreed.