There were other birds in the sky, of course. And we were flying fairly far apart so, as Tobias

  put it,

  We were spread across a mile or so of sky, sometimes closer together, sometimes farther apart, depending on the breezes and the little pockets of dead air that'd drop you twenty feet. There were geese flying fast above us, a neat V in the sky. And there were crows, gulls, and the occasional innocent hawk, all floating around below us, looking for food or just hanging out.

  I didn't think anything of them, although the other birds sure noticed us. They knew the bird-of-prey silhouette. They knew they didn't want to be too close.

  David yelled.

  It took me a few seconds to notice that his tone sounded different. More excited. More keyed up. By the time I looked, it was too late.

  David was tearing down, down, down like a falling rocket. Swooping, straight toward a careless crow.

  I watched, helpless. I was an osprey. There was no way I could catch him. Golden eagles are blazingly fast. Only Jake in his peregrine falcon morph might have intercepted the eagle, but he was too far away.

  With my laser-focus osprey eyes I saw the big eagle talons rake forward.

  There was no sound as David struck the crow. They were too far below me for sound. Just one minute the crow was flying along, and the next second it was tumbling.

  David caught the breeze again, leveled off, and swooped back upward. The lifeless crow twirled down through the air, an unbalanced, black pinwheel.

  Jake roared.

  David said.

  It was possible. It was hard, sometimes, to control the animal you'd morphed. So it was possible that's what had happened. The others certainly bought it. Cassie comforted him.

  But I have an instinct for lies. Maybe it's because I can lie pretty well when I need to.

  I know a lie when I hear one. David had killed that crow. Deliberately. In cold blood. For absolutely no reason.

  Tobias said.

  Rachel asked.

 
  jet? Marine One is the President's helicopter,> Tobias explained.

  Rachel marveled.

  I focused my osprey eyes on the helicopter. No time to worry about David. The helicopter was coming from the direction of the airport, straight toward the compound. A second, identical helicopter was a mile back from the first. A decoy. Unless the first chopper was the decoy.

  Then I noticed something else. A blurring in the air above and behind the helicopter. Like the air itself was swirling a little. Almost like heat waves coming up off hot asphalt.

  Tobias had noticed it, too. <0h, man! We've seen that before!>

  David demanded.

  Ax said calmly.

  David cried.

  I said.

 
  Move! Move!> Jake yelled.

  We hauled. We flapped our wings like insane ducks, racing to reach the helicopter before the Yeerks did. It was off to our side. Going the same direction as us, but still distant.

  At the speed the helicopters were moving, they'd probably have reached the Marriott resort in twenty minutes. It was an hour away for us.

  I could see from the dimensions of the shimmering effect that this was no little Bug fighter moving in. This was far bigger. And there was only one Yeerk ship likely to be big enough.

  The Blade ship. Visser Three's personal death-dealing machine.

  The shimmering air moved closer, up behind and above the helicopter. We got closer, but we were spread out, ragged. Rachel behind with Tobias, Jake and David up front, me, Cassie, and Ax more or less in the middle.

  A long, narrow rectangle began to appear. It appeared in the sky as if it were just floating there. A very narrow, very long rectangle that slowly opened wider.

  Ax said.

  So. He, too, had decided this must be the Blade ship.

  The hatch widened, opened, revealing the inside of the Blade ship. It was utterly bizarre. The stealth shield didn't work over the hatch itself. I could see inside. I could see a sort of inverted cradle, ready to receive the helicopter. I could see foul Taxxon heads rising from behind consoles and control panels. And I could see Hork-Bajir warriors, wearing the red uniforms they wore aboard the Blade ship.

  But none of this could be seen by the helicopter. The hatch was in a blind spot above and behind. And the chase helicopter wouldn't see it, either. The angle was all wrong.

  I raced. The hatch opened. I was wearing out, beating my wings against the breeze. But I was getting closer.

  Suddenly, the helicopter's rotors slowed. The engine roar died out.

  Ax yelled.

  The helicopter was almost directly above us now. From below, it looked sort of like a dark green boat as seen from underwater. There were two pylons sticking out on either side for the landing wheels.

  Jake said.

  Jake and David soared, up and up. The rest of us went after them.

  Tobias pointed out.

  But at that moment, as if in response to Tobias's warning, something new appeared. It looked as if it were a halo of light glowing all around the helicopter. But then it separated slowly, becoming distinct.

  A second helicopter! It looked as if the real helicopter had shed an outer skin.

  Ax said grimly.

  The true helicopter's rotors had come to a stop. The hatch was fully open. Up it rose. Up inside the Blade ship. And the hologram of the helicopter took its place, flying along, looking exactly like the real thing.

  Jake and David soared. Jake flipped in midair, extended his talons, and caught an edge of one of the pylons. David grabbed a strut and held on.

  The hatch began to close!

  I said. I flapped till I thought my lungs would burst. Hatch closing ... me racing ... hatch closing . . .

  I saw Cassie zip through, followed by Ax.

  No time left! The hatch was closing too quickly. The opening was two feet wide . . . eighteen inches ... a foot... six inches . . .

  Zoom!

  I blew through, scraping my belly and my back. A split second later, I'd have splatted. But I was in! I killed speed, twisted hard, swooped under the belly of the helicopter, and landed on the now-closed deck.

 

  I'd made it! I'd made it aboard the Blade ship of Visser Three.

  Oh, goody.

  What, was I insane?

  I was beneath the helicopter. So were Jake, Ax, Cassie, and David. Rachel and Tobias were stuck outside.

  Poor Rachel and Tobias.

  The helicopter sat low to the ground, and since it rested in a sort of shallow depression in the deck, we were almost entirely hidden from sight.

  I looked at Jake.

  he said tersely.

  We demorphed. Within minutes we were four very scared kids and one shaky

  Andalite lying beneath the President's helicopter. I looked at David to see how he was maintaining. He looked

  like he was getting ready to visit a dentist who didn't believe in Novocain. He was ready to wet himself.

  Good, I thought. Only an idiot wouldn't be scared.

  Looking past him and the others, I could see Hork-Bajir feet rushing around the helicopter. They carried an unconscious man from the helicopter. I saw dark gray suit pants, and black shoes. I saw the sole of one shoe. There was a slash across one heel. Like he'd stepped on something sharp.

  The President? If so, we had less than zero time.

  "Ax," Jake whispered. "We need a distraction."

  Jake obviously thought the same. We needed time to morph.

  I think if I were Ax, I might have felt just slightly resentful right then. It was like, "Ax-man, go get yourself killed so we can take our time morphing."

  But Ax is a soldier down deep inside. Smug and superior sometimes, loopy and silly other times, Ax is still an Andalite aristh, a warrior-in-training. And he's Elfangor's brother, which tells you a lot.

 

  Unfortunately, it wasn't such a good idea. There was no room. Ax was squeezed in beneath the helicopter's bottom. And it was suddenly obvious that none of us could go to our combat morphs in such a small space.

  This was not going to come down to a quick battle. We were already too late to save the man in the slashed shoe.

  "David," I whispered. His face was just inches from me now as he squirmed to get out of Ax's way. "Did Cassie set you up with a bug morph?"

  He looked confused. "She made me touch . . . I mean, acquire ... a cockroach. Is that what you mean?"

  "Jake!" I said. "He has a cockroach morph. What do you think?"

  Jake nodded. He wasn't happy, obviously. But it was the only way. We'd have to morph something small enough to get out from under the helicopter. Then worry about breaking up whatever was going on.

  "Okay, dude," I said to David. "We're morphing roaches. Just focus down hard, shut your eyes, and don't think about it."

  So far, nothing was going well. For one thing, we didn't have Rachel or Tobias with us. For another thing, we were trapped beneath a helicopter. And for a final thing, whoever the guy

  with the slashed shoe was, we were going to be too late to help him.

  Unless they moved awfully slowly, the Yeerks would have plenty of time to infest him.

  I assumed the slash-shoe man was the President of the United States. And man, you just don't want to think about your president being a slave of alien invaders.

  If that happened, the only possible thing we could do would be to kidnap the man and keep him locked up for three days till the Yeerk in his head died from lack of Kandrona rays.

  Kidnap the President. Off an alien spaceship. And keep him hidden for three days. No problem. It's not like anyone would be looking for him. Only the ENTIRE WORLD.

  Take it easy, Marco, I told myself. One step at a time.

  I focused on the cockroach whose DNA was inside me. And I began to change.

  I watched David. He was watching me, eyes showing white all around as he stared.

  "Close your eyes," I said.

  He did. But a second later they were open again. He was morphing, but slowly. He was shrinking quickly enough and was already no more than two and a half feet long. And the hard brown wings were forming on his back. But the really hideous stuff hadn't started yet.

  I felt my own body shrink and saw the floor expand out in every direction at once. I saw my skin grow hard and yellow-brown, like old-man fingernails. I glanced again at David. So far, so good. He was still shrinking. The roach body was taking shape. The neck was already pinched down, the wings were distinct, his arms had begun to segment, his legs likewise. He was halfway to roach.

  But his face was still mostly human. Distorted, twisted, contorting as it was reconfigured to be a roach face, but his eyes were still staring white.

  He'll be okay, I told myself, as long as he gets past the extra legs.

  And just then, the extra legs appeared. First on me.

  Sploot! Sploot!

  They came shooting out of what had been my sides. Two big, long, hairy cockroach legs. And I guess my face probably turned roachy at that point, too, because when I next saw David it was through compound eyes.

  So I saw hundreds of tiny, distorted images of him opening his mouth to scream.

  And when I heard the weird, railing, moaning, horrible sound, it vibrated down my antennae.

  He opened his mostly human mouth to scream. It wasn't much of a scream because his lungs were almost gone. But it was enough.

  A loud Hork-Bajir voice yelled, "Hitnef shel-lah.'Shellah! No sound!"

  Everything got very quiet. And then it was easy to hear when David screamed a second time.

  "Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Ahhh!"

  I yelled.

  Cassie said, being somewhat more gentle than me.

  "HaffVisser!" the Hork-Bajir voice said.

  I didn't need a Hork-Bajir-to-English dictionary to figure that out. It meant "Get the Visser."

  Jake said.

  That seemed to penetrate David's consciousness. He stopped screaming. But he began de-morphing. He was getting more human.

  Cassie said.

 

  she said.

  I'd never seen this exact side of Cassie. She's always good at understanding people. It hadn't occurred to me she'd be good at manipulating people if she had to.

  Cassie continued.

  I watched, and slowly, slowly David melted toward full cockroach.

  Of course, now he'd really hate me. Cassie had used the tension between me and David to manipulate him. It was the right thing to do.

  Necessary, if we were going to live. But it was ruthless in a way, too.

  Not that I had time to worry about that.

  Because now the helicopter was coming up off the floor. The Yeerks were using a magnetic field to lift it and see what was underneath.

  David said at last.

  I should have kept my mouth shut. But I guess I wouldn't be me if I always did the sensible thing. So I said,

  See? Stupid. Now I'd just confirmed that David would hate me.

  Jake yelled as the "sky" above us grew lighter. It was the helicopter rising, rising slowly up.

  We hauled like only a cockroach can haul: six legs scampering madly, like Wile E. Coyote loading up to chase Roadrunner.

  Zoom! Off across the steel deck.

  Zoom! Over a seam in the floor that was maybe an eighth of an inch but seemed like a wide ditch.

  Zoom! My little compound eyes millimeters above the ground, my antennae waving, streaming out behind me.

  Zoom! We were Vipers on the interstate! We

  were Porsches on the autobahn! We were like those crazy rocket cars out on the salt flats. We were moving at full, screaming, cockroach speed.

  Which, unfortunately, is about walking speed for an average adult human.

  Visser Three cried triumphantly.

  But we had one other skill, in addition to looking disgusting: We were agile little bugs. Ever try and step on a roach going full out? Ever try and step on a roach armed with full human intelligence?

  It isn't easy.

  WHOOOOOOOSH! Down came something so big it blocked out the sky.

  I stalled the legs on my left, motored the legs on my right, and did a Bat-turn that would have left the Batmobile skidding.

 

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