BOOOOOMMMMM! A Hork-Bajir clawed foot the size of Arkansas landed behind

  me. Hah! Too slow.

  Too slow by about three millimeters. Next one might get me.

  Then . . .

  Jake yelled.

  Opening to where? I didn't care. I saw a dark, horizontal band stretching forever to my left and almost forever to my right. It was just a seam

  between one level of steel and another, but it was taller than a quarter was thick, and that's all I needed.

  WHOOOOOSH!

  BOOOOOMMM!

  Suddenly I was running on five legs. One had been yanked out by the roots as the Hork-Bajir toe landed on it. The roach didn't care. It creeped me out, but the roach was indifferent.

  We were in a two-dimensional universe. Below us, steel. Above us, pressing down on our backs, steel. We could go forward/back, and left/right. That was it. We were an Etch-A-Sketch drawing.

  Ax reported.

  We went for the light. But overhead was a pounding thunderstorm like nothing you've ever imagined. Dozens of humongous Hork-Bajir running above us, their massive impacts translating down through the steel. We might as well have been running around inside a drum.

  BOOOM.'BOOOM.'BOOOM.'BOOOM!

  I said, trying out a little humor.

  All the while, the dim light ahead grew brighter. And suddenly, the pounding footsteps above us died off. We had passed beneath some

  kind of wall. Bulkhead, I guess it's called on a ship. Anyway, the thunder was behind us, the light ahead of us, and I was starting to experience a tiny ray of hope amidst the gibbering terror.

  Say one thing for roaches: They don't wear out.

  HSSSSSSSSSS.

  David asked.

  My whole body could feel that the hissing was behind us. And my antennae were already getting a sick, quivering feeling that they smelled something unpleasant.

  I stopped. Spun toward my two-legged side and looked back. Through compound eyes I basically saw nothing. Nothing but a narrowness, a horizontal narrowness. And yet... something was coming nearer. I could feel it.

  Something that smelled.

  Something that. . .

  I screamed.

  < The light!> Ax yelled.

 
  "hello" to all our dead relatives and explaining our impure thoughts to Saint Peter!> I cried.

  Ax asked, puzzled.

 

  The gas. The light. The gas. The light.

  A pole, heading upward into the light.

  Zoooom! A roach shot up the pole.

  Zoooom! Zoooom! Zooom!

  And then me. The little roach brain, which wasn't bright enough to add two plus two, was a world-class expert at running away. I jumped,

  went vertical, hit that pole, and up I went. Zoooom!

  The gas wave rolled by beneath me. I hauled straight up. Out into the light.

  I screamed in total, idiot glee at having survived.

 

  We were in a very bright room. Steel floor all around, but just one distant pair of Hork-Bajir legs. And then, over my head I saw it: the Leaning Tower of Wing Tip. A gigantic shoe, cocked at an angle, totally still. It seemed so tall it was like it disappeared into the clouds. It may well have been a size thirteen.

  More important, my weird-colored, fragmented, crazy, fun-house eyeballs managed to notice that the heel had a gouge in it.

  I said.

  Cassie asked.

  I said.

  The sound of approaching steps. Strange steps.

  Ax said ominously.

  That meant only one person.

  Jake said.

  I wondered.

  Cassie cried.

  We climbed the leg of the President. Up over the polished shoe. Up across the sock. Up to the leg hair. And we cowered there beneath gray wool amidst a sparse forest of leg hairs.

  Clip-clop. Clip-clop.

  Hooves walked into the room.

  Visser Three.

  the Visser muttered to the Hork-Bajir guard.

 

  I echoed in my mind.

  Then it occurred to me. Slash-shoe wasn't going to be infested. Visser Three was acquiring his DNA. He wanted to be able to morph the President!

  Of course! How could I have been so stupid? Like Visser Three would ever let another Yeerk take control of the most powerful human on Earth?

  He was going to acquire him. Then he could become the President whenever he wanted.

  Suddenly, we were moving. The Hork-Bajir was dragging Slash-shoe along the deck.

  David asked.

  Cassie muttered.

  Slash-shoe wasn't being dragged far.

 
  Jake said.

  I asked.

  Jake said.

  David said boldly.

  I said.

  We bailed. Down the hairy leg. Across the sock. Down the back of the shoe to drop onto the steel deck.

  Cassie remarked.

  It took about three seconds for us all to form a mental picture of what that meant. We were standing on the hatch. The hatch that would be opened to release the helicopter.

  I said, and then, the hatch began to

  move beneath us. Directly beneath us. A bright line of daylight appeared in the floor not an inch away.

  I turned to run.

  The line widened.

  And that's when I realized that not even a roach can outrun the wind.

  The wind reached in, plucked me up, swept me into the escaping air, and sucked me down through the widening crack in the floor.

  I yelled.

  I saw two roaches fly past, like jets in the powerful wind.

  I grabbed at the deck with my two front legs and held on. For about one millionth of a second.

  And then I was falling.

  Falling, twirling, twisting, down, down, down toward the ground below.

  To be continued. . .

 

 

  K. A. Applegate, The Discovery (Animorphs 22)

 

 

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