"Rachel! I . . . What can I do?"

"We can't get out," Rachel cried. "Listen to me, Tobias. We're trapped. There is no way out.

This ship will take off soon. They'll find us when they get to the mother ship and unload the water. Tobias? We . . . we don't want to be taken alive."

My blood ran cold. My head was whirling. "What are you talking about?"

"Listen, Tobias, we can't be taken alive! Do you understand? If there's anything you can do .

. . anything!"

"Rachel! What can I do? I can't get you out of there!"

"I know," Rachel said. "We all know. But if there's some way to . . . if the ship could be destroyed. We know it's probably not possible. I . . . just if there was some way - "

"No! No!"

"I have to morph to human. We'll tread water here. We have to be ready for when we get to the mother ship. Then we'll morph into other animals and go down fighting."

"This can't be happening," I cried. "This can't be happening!"

"I guess Marco was right all along," Rachel said sadly. "I guess it always was insane to think we could fight the Yeerks."

"Rachel . . . I never told you . . . "

"You didn't have to, Tobias," she said. "I knew. Good-bye." She fell silent. In my mind I could picture her regaining her human shape. Treading water with the others, unable to escape. Expecting only the worst. Praying that I might find a way to make their end swift. As Visser Three had offered to make mine.

We had lost. The Yeerks had won, finally. And when we were gone, the last hope of the human race would die.

Above me the Blade ship waited like . . . like a hawk watching a rabbit. Ready to swoop down and finish me.

Only I wasn't a rabbit.

Visser Three was a predator? Well, so was I.

And I no longer had anything to be afraid of. If my friends were to die in the mother ship, I would be lost and alone in a world where I belonged nowhere.

77 I had nothing more to lose.

Just then I saw something that should have terrified me. Across the metal plain of the ship they crawled and slithered toward me. All around me. A dozen of them. Giant worms.

Centipedes with a hunger for living flesh.

Taxxons.

They had come from the inside of the ship on Visser Three's orders.

If I stayed put, they would catch me. If I flew, the hovering Yeerk ships would fry me.

The Taxxons closed the circle around me.

"It looks as if you have run out of time," Visser Three said in my head. He laughed, ft was not a nice laugh.

Ah, Visser Three, you ruthless predator, I thought Very clever. You have me trapped.

Trapped like a rabbit.

But a trapped rabbit is one thing. And a trapped hawk, a hawk with the mind of a human being, is a whole different matter.

The nearest Taxxon leveled a hand-held Dracon beam at me. He watched me with two of the circle of red globs they have for eyes.

I pushed off with my feet. I beat the air with my wings.

I flew straight for those red Jell-O eyes.

He raised one of his feeble forearms to shield his eyes. The wrong move! I trimmed a shade right, raked my talons forward and struck like I was hitting a mouse in a field.

My talons closed around the Dracon beam. The Taxxon's weak grip was no match for my speed.

The Dracon beam tore loose from his grip.

"Get him!" Visser Three cried. I could practically see the Blade ship rock from the force of his rage.

But I did not take to the air. I flew fast but hugged the surface of the ship's metal curve. They could not hit me without hitting their precious ship."

I knew just where I wanted to go. Wingtips actually hitting the ship on each downstroke, I raced toward the ship's bridge. Toward the tiny windows where I had seen the Taxxon crew.

I could not save my friends, perhaps. But I could try to grant Rachel's last wish. I could try to bring this ship down.

Even if it meant the end of my friends.

78 79 CHAPTER 25

"Take off! Move!" Visser Three commanded the crew of the truck ship.

Almost immediately, the huge thing began to move forward. Very slowly at first. But as it moved, it created a headwind. The bridge was moving away from me. The ship was rising as it went. A hundred feet up now. Two hundred!

"Ha! Not so easy, Andalite!"

Right then I had a powerful urge to shock the evil monster and say, "Guess what, creep? Not an Andalite at all. The name is Tobias!"

But I wasn't ready to start bragging. The truth was, it was looking bad. The ship was slowly picking up speed.

I flapped harder, harder. I gained again. But it was painfully slow. I was wearing out. The Dracon beam weighed me down. The headwind was building.

Ahead of me, just a few feet away, I saw the bulge of the bridge.

I gained a foot. Another. Another.

I landed and folded my wings. I couldn't fly any more. But I could still pull myself along with my talons, gripping the small edges and ridges that ran along the top of the ship's bridge.

I was there! Below me, transparent plastic. I could see the crew on the bridge. Taxxons stared wildly up at me.

With one desperate lunge I propelled myself into the air. I had to fly full force to stay ahead of the onrushing windows of the bridge.

Then, with one sharp talon, I pulled the trigger on the Dracon beam.

"Fry, you worms!"

There was no recoil. Not like a regular gun at all.

But a beam of intense red light lanced from me to the bridge. It burned a hole through the window, sliced through a fat Taxxon, and began slicing up control panels and instruments like a hot knife going through butter. I squeezed that trigger for as long as I could.

At last, exhausted, I could do no more.

The Dracon beam slipped from my talon and plunged toward the earth below.

But I had done it.

It was an incredible and terrible thing to see. The ship, big as a skyscraper, vast beyond belief, shuddered as though it had hit a speed bump.

80 Still it rose, sharply upward into the sky, as if it were a whale breaching. It aimed for space, its natural home. But it was clear that it was no longer under control. It rolled suddenly onto its side.

BOOM! A ball of orange flame!

The out-of-control ship had smashed recklessly into one of the helicopters. The chopper fell in ruins.

The Bug fighters and the Blade ship scurried quickly out of the way. But too late.

KA-RUNCH! BA-BOOM!

One of the Bug fighters had slammed into the side of the ship. The Bug fighter was finished.

The Blade ship and the remaining Bug fighter withdrew quickly.

And then I saw the hole.

A tear a hundred feet long had been opened in the side of the truck ship. From the hole, the water of the lake gushed. It was a waterfall from the sky. Millions of gallons hemorrhaging out.

"Oh, boy," I whispered.

We were maybe seven hundred feet up over the forest now, when I saw them.

Cassie first. Then Rachel and Marco together. And Jake. They fell, fully human, from the torn side of the ship.

They plummeted, helpless, doomed, to the uprushing ground!

"Noooo!"

I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew it. But still I hurtled after them. Hurtled with all my speed to them as they fell, arms flailing, mouths open in screams of terror.

81 CHAPTER 26

They fell.

But as they fell, they began to change.

Cassie was the first. Feathers sprouted from her skin. One of her morphs was an osprey. A distant cousin of the red-tails.

She fell, and as she fell, she became less and less of a human.

Marco and Rachel had both previously morphed bald eagles. Bald eagles are huge birds, much bigger than red-tailed hawks.