The Invasion (31 page)

She looked at the other humans and Hork-Bajir behind her in the line. “Run! All of you, run!”

They did. Cassie plowed into the panicky crowd. Moments later a black-maned head appeared above the shoulders of the crowd. Cassie had become a horse and was racing for the stairs.

I started after her, racing back around the pool toward Marco, Rachel, Tom, and the crowd of hosts they’d freed from the cages.

The Controllers were starting to get organized. A group of Taxxons were slithering out to stop Cassie and me. Both the Hork-Bajir and the Taxxons were carrying weapons now.

Up and over!
I said to Cassie as we neared the line of Taxxons.

Up and over!
she yelled back.

I leaped. Cassie jumped. Side by side, we sailed over the startled Taxxons. They fired their handheld Dracon beams, but too late. The beams sizzled the air behind us and we blew past.

I could see Rachel’s towering gray bulk just ahead. The stairs were near. I saw Marco with Tom.

We were going to make it!

And then
he
stepped out daintily from a group of Hork-Bajir.

He seemed almost harmless in his Andalite body. A gentle half deer, half human–looking creature with
bluish fur and an extra set of eyes on comical stalks.

Visser Three didn’t look all that scary. Not compared to the Hork-Bajir, the Taxxons, or even our own Earth-animals.

But Visser Three had an Andalite body. He had an Andalite’s power to morph. And he had been all over the universe acquiring the genetic patterns of monsters like nothing ever seen on Earth.

A Taxxon slithered up beside Visser Three and spoke. It was a weird, half-whistling sound.
“Ssssweer trrreeesswew eeeesstrew.”

Visser Three said nothing. He just looked at me with the horizontal slits that were his eyes.

This Taxxon fool says you are wild animals,
Visser Three said.
He wants to know if he and his brothers can eat you.
He laughed silently.
But I know you are not animals. I know who and what you are. So. Not all of you Andalites died when I burned your ship.>

It took me a couple of seconds to realize what he meant. Then it hit me. Of course! He thought we were Andalites. He’d guessed that we were morphs, not real animals. And he knew that the Andalites were the only species with morphing technology.

I compliment you on getting this far. But it will accomplish nothing. Because now, my brave Andalite warriors, it is time. Time to die.

He began to morph.

I acquired this body on the fourth moon of the second planet of a dying star. Like it?