I looked down and saw my tail. I was cornplete. The water was too shallow, though, and I was barely afloat. I kicked my tail, scraped across the sandy bottom, and finally surged out into deeper water.

I waited for the moment when the dolphin brain would surface, full of instinct-driven need and hunger and fear. The way it had always been before.

But it wasn't like that. It wasn't like a squirrel or even a horse.

This mind was not filled with fear and need.

This mind was ... I know this sounds strange, but it was like a little kid. I tried to listen to it, to understand its needs and wants. To prepare my self for a sudden onslaught of crude, primitive animal demands. Flee! Fight! Eat!

But that didn't happen. I felt hunger, yes. But not the screaming, obsessive need that Jake felt when he morphed a lizard or when Rachel became a shrew.

There was no fear. None.

And fortunately, I did not find a true thinking, conscious mind. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Just - again, I know it sounds strange - but I just found this feeling, like she wanted to play.

Like a little kid who wants to play. I wanted to chase fish, catch them, and eat them, but that would be a game. I wanted to race across the sur face of the sea, and that would be a game, too.

"Cassie?" I heard Tobias's thought-speech in my head. "Are you okay?" Was I okay? I asked myself. "Yes, Tobias. I'm ... happy. I feel like . . . like I don't know. Like I want you to come and play with me."

"Play with you? Mmmm, I don't think so, Cassie. Hawks don't do water."

"Come on, everyone!" I called to the others. "Come on! Let's go! Let's swim to the ocean! I want to play!"

"Let's go! Come on, you guys, let's go!"

I didn't like the river. I wanted the ocean. I could feel it close by. I could feel it in the way the current rushed me forward. I could feel it in some deep, hidden part of my dolphin being.

The ocean. I wanted it. It was my place. It was where I should be.

We swam in a school, the four of us, with Tobias flying overhead.

32 We raced the river's current, and soon I could taste the salt. I could feel the saltwater on my skin. It was as if I had opened the door of a toy store with every toy on Earth, and I had all the time in the world to play.

I saw my friends around me, swift, pale shapes in the water. Sleek gray torpedoes as they rose to breathe.

I lived in both worlds - the sea and the air. I saw the blue-green of the ocean, the pale blue and white of the sky. I slipped back and forth through the bright barrier that separated them.

Jake went zipping by, shooting up from beneath me to explode into the air. I heard the slap of his belly as he landed. It was a game! I dove deep, down to where the sandy floor sloped toward depths even I could not explore. Then I powered my tail, steadied my flippers, and drove hard toward the surface. Above me I could see the shimmering, silver border between water and air.

Faster! Faster! I was a missile.

"Yah haaaaah!"

I shattered the barrier of the sea and hurtled up into the sky. I felt warm wind on my skin, in stead of cold water. I hung, poised in midair, almost floating above the surface of the water.

Now the barrier was beneath me. I pointed my nose toward it and dropped from the sky.

"Aaaaah!"

The water wrapped around me, welcoming me back.

"ls this cool, or what?" Marco laughed in my head.

"This is cool," I answered.

"This is beyond cool," Rachel chimed in.

"Let's all do it at the same time!" Jake said.

The four of us dove deep. The ocean floor was still far below us, rippling sand dotted with rocks and clumps of seaweed.

Near the ocean floor we leveled off, practically scraping our bellies on the bottom. And then, aiming at the silver barrier once again, we shot upward, racing each other, ecstatic from the joy of our own bodies' strength.

We launched into the air like a well-trained team of acrobats.

We flew, side by side, exhaling and refilling our lungs with warm air.

Life was joy. Life was a game. I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance through the sea.

So I did.

33 There was nothing I could not do. There was nothing I could ask of my body that it would not give me. Racing, spinning, turning, diving, skimming the surface, flying up into the sky.

I wasn't just in the sea. I was the sea.

"Are you guys just going to play all day?" It was Tobias. "You realize you've wasted forty-five minutes already?"

Minutes? I laughed. Who cared about minutes?

"Look, guys? I know you think the dolphin mind hasn't affected you, but it has. You need to get a grip. You have a reason for being here."

Reason? What was that?

"You're supposed to be looking for ... well, for something," Tobias said. "Something unusual. An Andalite spaceship or something."

Yes, he was right. He was definitely right. But would it be fun? Would it be a game?

"Find the spaceship. Cool," Rachel said. "l bet I can find it first!"

"No way!" Jake said instantly. "l'll find it."

"Where is it? Let's go look!" Marco said.

"Good grief," Tobias said. "You're like a bunch of five-year-olds." But I was too distracted to care. "Hey. Can you guys do this?" I concentrated, and suddenly, from someplace in my forehead, came a series of loud, very rapid clicks, almost like loud static.

"Whoa! What was that?"

Then, to my total surprise, I heard something in those clicks. It was weird. It was kind of like hearing, only not. The clicking noises had hit something, far off in deeper water. I sort of felt the sounds as they came back to me, like scattered echoes.

There was a universe of information in that echo. Some of that information made me uneasy.

"You guys?" I said. "l know this is crazy, but I feel like there's something out there.

Something ... I don't know. But I don't like it."

The others immediately began firing off the clicking noise that is the dolphin's underwater radar. It's called echolocation.

"Yeah," Marco said. "Now I see it. I mean, I don't see it, but you know what I mean." I searched in my dolphin mind, deep down in the places where instinct had been hidden be neath layers of intelligence.

34 Then a picture just popped into my consciousness.

"l know!" I cried, as if I had just won a contest. " It's a shark!" Suddenly we weren't playing anymore. The others had all found the same instinct in themselves. The echolocation indicated that there was a large shark nearby.

And we knew one thing for sure. We didn't like sharks.

35 Chapter 10

"You know, I hate to sound like the only sensible person - so to speak - " Tobias said, "but you aren't here to fight sharks!"

"He's right," I agreed. "Dolphins don't attack sharks unless the sharks attack first."

"Wait ... I'm getting more echoes," Rachel interrupted. "There's more than one shark. And there's something bigger, too."

I reached out with my echolocation sense and "felt" the sea ahead of me. "You're right," I said. "Several sharks. And a great one."

"A what?" Tobias asked.

I was confused. What did I mean? The words great one had just popped into my mind. "l mean there's a whale. A whale. Being attacked by sharks."

"A great one being attacked?" Marco asked. He sounded upset. It was strange, because we were all upset. More than we should have been.