Fortunately, the gull brains were close enough to the other bird brains we'd all experienced that it was fairly easy to control them. We didn't waste a lot of time getting started.

Although, once we did get started, everyone was constantly pointing out food.

"Hey! Look! French fries on the ground."

"Whoa! That's half a 3 Musketeers bar by that car!"

"O ooh, ooh! Look at the Dumpster behind that McDonald's!" Sometimes you just have to accept the animal's basic mindset and go with it.

"There's the beach," Jake said as we flapped and soared and flapped some more.

It's easier being an osprey in some ways. Much less flapping.

Once we were out over the water, we could at least stop scanning for food. Mostly.

"Hey! Is that a bag of potato chips floating down there?" We flew low, just a few dozen feet above the water. Not like hawks, who can ride the thermals up to the bellies of the clouds.

But Tobias wasn't much higher than we were now. There are no thermals over water and he was having to flap a lot to stay aloft.

We flew on, skimming the choppy surface of the water.

"Hey, look," Rachel said. "Over to the left."

49 Sleek gray shapes sliced through the water, up, down, up, down, breaking the silvery barrier between sky and sea. It was a school of dolphins.

"You know, sometimes this is just so wonderful" Rachel said. "l mean, we're flying. We're flying! And later, we'll be like them, at home in the water."

"Yeah, just us and the sharks," Marco said darkly.

"Still, it is cool," Rachel said.

"There's a ship up ahead," Jake announced.

"You just now noticed it?" Tobias laughed. "Wow. Seagull eyes aren't exactly great, are they? It's a container ship called Newmar. It's from Monrovia. You want to know what color the captain's hair is?"

"Show-off," Jake grumbled.

Hawk eyes are totally amazing. As long as it's sunny out, Tobias can read a book from like three blocks away.

It was hard, flying to catch up to the ship. It was moving fairly fast, and by the time we were close I was exhausted.

The ship was gigantic, painted a rusty blue, with a deck longer than a football field. The superstructure was all crammed toward the back. That's where the crew would be, so we flew forward, hoping to find someplace private.

The deck was stacked with containers, big steel boxes like trailers. Row after row of them lined the deck, and we could see hundreds more down in the hold.

We settled in the narrow space between two rows of containers, far forward. It was like having walls all around us. Corrugated metal walls that went high over our heads.

"Tobias? How much time?" Jake asked.

Tobias twisted his head down to see the tiny watch strapped to his talon. " It's been about an hour and a half."

We decided to resume our human shapes. The space between the rows of containers was even narrower when we were fully human again.

"Brrr. It's chilly out here," I said. The steel deck was cold beneath my bare feet. And even though the sun was high in the sky, we were in shadow.

"Man, I swear, this is the worst thing about morphing," Marco said. "Can someone please figure out how to morph shoes, and maybe a sweater? Come on, Cassie. You're the morphing genius. I'm sick of these morphing outfits."

"But you look so cute in Spandex," Rachel teased him.

50 "Plus, they aren't exactly fashionable. All I'm saying is - uniforms. Something cool-looking.

And warm. Warm would be nice. When winter comes, we are going to be some sad little Animorphs."

"I have a more important question," Rachel said. "How do we know when we're there? You know, our destination."

Jake made a "who knows?" face. "I figure this ship is going like, what, twenty miles per hour? Figure an hour, and that puts us twenty miles out, right?"

Rachel pointed a finger at her forehead and said, "Jake's a total mathematical genius. One hour at twenty miles per hour. Right away he figures out that's twenty miles."

Jake laughed. "That's about all the math I can do."

"Actually, we're moving about eighteen miles per hour," Tobias said.

We all just stared at him.

"I fly along the roads sometimes and watch the car speedometers. So I have a pretty good idea how fast I'm flying. When we were flying alongside the ship, I clocked it."

"Okay, eighteen miles an hour, more or less, straight south," Marco considered. "That would put us within a couple of miles of where Cassie thinks we should go."

I winced. Every time anyone said something about me deciding where to go or what to do, it made me nervous.

"I'd better head back," Tobias said regret fully. "l don't want to try and fly eighteen miles back without a rest. And if I stay on this ship I'll end up in Singapore."

"Singapore?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah. I read the captain's log as we were flying alongside. That's where they're heading." Tobias flew off, leaving us the little watch.

It was extremely dull waiting for an hour, with nothing to do but try and guess what was in the big containers all around us. On the other hand, we knew what we had to do next would definitely not be boring.

So basically, we were happy to just be bored for a while, huddling together to stay warm in the whipping ocean breeze.

51 Chapter 16

After a long time, Jake checked the watch. "It's been about an hour. Cassie? What do you think?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I ... I guess I was hoping that when I was back in dolphin morph I would be able to make sense of more of the details the whale communicated to me. It was mostly images. And some of the images were about sounds and currents and water temperatures, and stuff you can't see from the surface."

Jake thought for a moment. "Oh, well, now is as good as any time, I guess. Let's head for the side."

We stood up, uncramping our cold, stiff legs and arms. We moved along the row of containers toward the left side of the ship. The port side, as they say.

We reached the side. There was a solid steel railing that ran all around, about waist high. Jake checked to see if we would be in view of the bridge, and we headed forward a little more to a blind spot where no one should see us.

The four of us leaned over the rail and looked down at the water. It looked like it was a million miles below.

Marco whistled. "Man. That is some high dive."

"No big deal for a seagull or a dolphin, but a mighty long way for a human," I agreed.

"We can't morph up here. We'd never get our dolphin bodies over the side," Rachel pointed out.

"Nope," Jake agreed. "We have to jump in with our human bodies. All except Marco. He can't swim. I thought he could morph up here, and then we could all shove him over the side.

"

Rachel looked skeptical. "Jake? When Marco is in dolphin morph, he'll weigh like four hundred pounds."

Jake looked worried. "I kind of didn't think about this when I was planning."

I had a sinking feeling. The plan was falling apart before it had even begun.

"I'll lean against the railing," Marco suggested. "I'll start morphing, then, before I lose my legs, you guys help shove me over. I'll finish morphing within a few seconds of hitting the water."

"Unless the water knocks you out and you just sink," I said flatly. "Forget it. Forget it. Let's just morph back to seagulls and fly back home. This is insane."