"The Andalite bandits!" Visser Three cried in thought-speak.
That"s what the Yeerks think we are: An-dalites. They know whoever we are, we can morph. And they know only Andalites have mor-phing technology.
"We can"t stay and fight," the visser pouted. "Much as I would enjoy destroying these vermin! We have priorities. Bring the human!"
"We have to morph!" Jake hissed to me and Marco. "Into the shadows! Before the visser gets away!"
I had already started. This was a fight. I needed something powerful. Something extremely dangerous.
"They"re taking the captain!" Marco yelled.
"We can"t stop them! We need more firepower," Jake yelled. "Morph!"
My morph was already under way. Thick gray fur was sprouting from every inch of my body. My mouth was becoming a muzzle. A muzzle filled with long, sharp teeth.
"l could use some help here!" Rachel called as she knocked another Hork-Bajir into a wall.
The Hork-Bajir Ax had filled with rattlesnake venom was staggering.
But Visser Three and two of the Hork-Bajir had disappeared from view with Captain Torrelli.
"Cool!" a voice squealed. "Now, this part of the ride is excellent!"
To my amazement, people were still pa.s.sing by on the ride! Every few seconds another carload rattled past, filled with people who must have thought they were watching the most realistic House of Horrors Ride in all history.
"Look! It"s a werewolf!" someone said. He pointed. Right at me. Fortunately, we were all three in deep shadows. No one would ever be able to recognize us.
I was just finishing my morph. I had gone, as quickly as I possibly could, from human to wolf.
Rachel was roaring and belowing. Tobias was shrieking and flapping his wings. Ax was looking for another victim. But the fact was, Visser Three had Captain Torrelli. And the visser was gone.
I looked at Jake. He was just completing his tiger morph. I looked at Marco. He was almost all the way into his gorilla morph. I felt my wolf senses turn on. It was a powerful moment. There is nothing on Earth like a wolf"s sense of smell. And nothing much like a wolf"s sense of hearing.
I could tell exactly, precisely where Captain Torrelli had gone. I could smell every dragging footstep he had taken.
Then, suddenly, the remaining Hork-Bajir warriors bolted. They raced after Visser Three and Captain Torrelli.
"After them!" Jake yelled.
FWAPP! FWAPP! FWAPP! CA-RUNNCH!.
Bright lights! Blazing neon! It took a few seconds for me to figure out what had happened. Then I saw: Visser Three had used his Andalite tail to slice through the back wall of the House of Horrors. His Hork-Bajir had knocked the wall down.
Visser Three, his Hork-Bajir, and poor Captain Torrelli were loose on the grounds of The Gardens.
Chapter 26.
One evil Andalite-Controller and six Hork-Bajir - several of which were staggering from the wounds Rachel, Tobias, and Ax had inflicted - barrelled into the neon night, dragging a helpless Captain Torrelli.
They were pursued by a red-tailed hawk, a tiger, a wolf, a grizzly bear, and a gorilla with a rattlesnake around his neck.
"Help! Help!" Captain Torrelli cried.
"Back to the ship!" Visser Three yelled.
"After them!" Jake yelled.
"This is insane!" Marco cried. "lnsane!"
And the band played "Seventy-six Trombones" with lots of loud tuba and louder pounding ba.s.s drums.
Yes, I said the band. Because, you see, the nightly Gardens Parade of Characters was swinging up the main street. There was a bra.s.s band. In fact there were three. There were dance teams. There were clowns. There were floats. And best of all, there were cartoon characters.
Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Sylvester, the Tasmanian Devil, and Pepe Le Pew. They were all there in bigger-than-life costumes, dancing amidst a blaze of colored lights that blotted out the stars.
I ran full-out. I was faster than Rachel. I had more endurance than Jake. The Yeerks were moving swiftly, straight toward the parade.
Suddenly, out jumped a Daffy Duck! Right in Visser Three"s path. The Yeerk visser snapped his deadly tail. It flew through the air and Daffy"s head went rolling across the ground.
"Noooo!" I cried.
The girl wearing the costume stuck her head up and said, "Hey! What"s the matter with you?"
"Aaaahhhh!" the visser moaned. "What kind of creature is that?"
He slowed a bit. Just for a few seconds, as he contemplated the weirdness of a creature with a smaller head inside a larger head. And during that hesitation, we caught up.
Jake let loose a roar that seemed to knock the cotton candy right out of children"s hands.
"RRRROOOOAAAARRRRR!".
We all charged. I leaped for the throat of the nearest Hork-Bajir with my yellowed teeth bared in a snarl. The Hork-Bajir swung an elbow blade at me but I twisted with unnatural speed. The blade only sliced fur.
The Hork-Bajir couldn"t use its blades. I was in too close. All it could do was claw at me, and that wasn"t enough.
A vicious battle raged. Rachel and two Hork-Bajir. Jake, sinking his tiger fangs into another Hork-Bajir. Marco, using Ax"s snake morph like a bullwhip, snapping him in to bite, yanking him back out.
And Tobias was using all his speed and agility to tear at the visser"s vulnerable Andalite stalk eyes.
"Yay!" a voice yelled.
"Cool!" another voice cried.
And then people started applauding wildly. Without even noticing, we had been swept up into the parade. We had become part of the show.
And the people loved it!
I dropped away from my Hork-Bajir. He was out of the fight. I ran for the Hork-Bajir who was still yanking Captain Torrelli along. He was way out in front, weaving through the parade. Weaving past Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. Barreling rudely through the bra.s.s band, which was now playing "You"re a Grand Old Flag!"
"Here boy! Here boy!" some kid yelled as I shot past. Like I was a dog.
The crowd grew thick just ahead of me. Too thick for me to see Captain Torrelli. But I could still smell him. I could smell the minuscule traces of scent left by his shoes. I could smell about ten thousand things right then, everything from candy apples to the grease on the bearings of the Ferris wheel to the gel on a punk guy"s hair. It was almost too much.
But I focused hard on just one smell: a few floating molecules that said "Torrelli" to my wolf nose. I put my nose down and shouldered through the crowd. People petted me. People b.u.mped into me. I didn"t care. My wolf nose was working, and there was no way I was going to lose the captain.
The crowd thinned out. I looked left, right. I saw nothing. But the scent trail led left and my wolf ears picked out one voice among all the thousands of voices, one sound among all the sounds of The Gardens.
"You"re connected with those darned kids, aren"t you?" Captain Torrelli demanded angrily of the Hork-Bajir.
I went after him at a full run. There! A Hork-Bajir dragging the captain. The alien brushed aside a child who had rushed over with his mom to have her take his picture with "the monster."
I timed my approach and I fired my wolf haunches. I flew through the air, aiming right for the back of the Hork-Bajir"s neck.
"Rrrumpf!"
"Aaaarrrrggghhh!" the alien cried.
Captain Torrelli broke free and ran like his life depended on it. Which it pretty much did.
I relaxed my jaws and dropped to the ground. The Hork-Bajir and I stared balefully at each other for a few seconds. We sized each other up like a couple of boxers in the ring. But then we both saw and heard the visser go rushing past in a clatter of Andalite hooves.
The Hork-Bajir ran to join his commander and suddenly, the Yeerk invasion of The Gardens was over.
A few moments later, the others caught up to me. We watched a pair of Bug fighters rise from the amus.e.m.e.nt park and streak into the sky.
They had hidden the Bug fighters in plain sight. They"d been parked atop the Alien Adventure Ride.
As the Bug fighters powered away into the night, I noticed a kid shaking his head disgustedly. "Those aren"t what alien s.p.a.ceships look like," he said.
"That"s for sure," his grandfather agreed. "I was taken aboard a s.p.a.ceship once. The aliens performed medical experiments on me. And their ship was nothing like that."
Chapter 27.
The official story in the newspaper and on the local TV news was that a group of pranksters had dressed up as monsters and vandalized the House of Horrors.
They had also carried out a mock abduction of an Air Force captain named Torrelli. The captain was only slightly injured.
Captain Torrelli was quoted in the newspaper as saying, "It was those kids! I am looking for three kids named Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and Cindy Crawford."
The reporter wondered if perhaps Captain Torrelli had been drinking. And when Captain Torrelli was asked what an Air Force officer was doing at a company outing for Gondor Industries, he said, "No comment. Forget I said anything at all. I was obviously mistaken. Nothing happened."
We met up at the barn the next day. Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Ax, Marco, and me. The Animorphs. The six kids who are trying to save the world.
"Just one question," Rachel asked. "Don"t you think, in all fairness, in all decency, in all kindness, we should tell Captain Torrelli he"s guarding an alien toilet?"
I shook my head. "No, Rachel. That wouldn"t be kind at all. He and the others have a meaning to their lives now. Why should we destroy all that and make them feel trivial and foolish?"
"Ooooh, wisdom," Marco mocked gently. "Deep."
"So the Most Secret Place On Earth remains secret," Jake said thoughtfully. "Maybe that is wise."
"The Yeerks will continue to try and penetrate the secret of Zone Ninety-one," Tobias pointed out.
"Yeah, but the captain will really be on guard now," Jake said.
"Besides, maybe it"s all for the good. It will keep them busy, keep the Yeerks from doing anything more dangerous," Rachel said with a laugh. "Everyone needs a project, right? Everyone needs some hopeless cause to pursue. A quest. A mission."
As she said that last part, she was eyeing the hem of my jeans. Then she started shaking her head. "When did you buy those, Ca.s.sie, when you were four?" she asked.
"These jeans are fine."
"Yeah, if you"re expecting a flood."
"Wait a minute!" I held up my hand. "Isn"t this how this whole thing started?"
"Leave Ca.s.sie alone," Jake said, laughing. "We"re not going to start this all over. No way."
"Except maybe for the horse-racing thing," Marco said. "See, all I"m saying is, we morph racehorses, right? And then we bet -"
And that"s when I dumped a bucket of water on Marco"s head and we all went home.