My Andalite stalk eyes went dark. A large, amazingly long, fast-moving, forked tongue grew in my mouth. But it wasn't like a human tongue.

74 This tongue's sense of taste was beyond anything a human tongue could ever achieve. This tongue tasted the very air.

And then, I felt the feature I had waited for. Huge, long, curved fangs. Fangs that were each a tiny, hollow needle. Above them poison glands grew and filled with toxin.

I felt the snake's mind emerge beneath my own awareness.

It was not a hot, driven mind like some animals. It did not overwhelm me with fear and hunger. It was a slow, calm, deliberate mind. The mind of a predator. A hunter. A calm, deliberate killer.

And the senses!

The lidless eyes saw strange colors, but they gave me a good range of vision.

The tongue, which shot out from a slit on the bottom of my mouth, taste-smelled the air. It brought me an incredible array of sensations: the scent of grass and earth, the scent of insects, and the scent of living, warm-blooded creatures.

Just below and behind my snake nostrils were two pits that sensed heat, especially the levels of heat put off by prey.

Yes, this was a good morph to use. The Visser would not expect me. The Visser's Andalite body was fast, but it was not faster than the snake. I knew that from my own experience.

I began to move, slithering through the grass. I moved with sinuous grace, easily, silently. I followed my tongue. It shot out and back, again and again, sensing, smelling, tasting.

I felt the rattler's mind with my own. It was unafraid. It had no honor. It had no friends to worry about, no family to disappoint, no laws to break. It-felt no loneliness. The snake had always been alone.

I settled into the grass and waited, patient, motionless, counting off the minutes in my head.

And then I felt the vibration of the earth be neath me. The vibration that was the sound of a Bug fighter landing. Then another. Just two. Not far away.

It was time.

The Yeerks were coming. Visser Three was coming.

And as I drowned my fear in the calm lake of the snake's predator brain, I prepared to kill.

And to die.

75 Chapter TWELVE

I smelled him long before I saw him. I smelled Andalite flesh. The Yeerk that was the real Visser Three - the Yeerk inside the Andalite body - I could not smell.

"Spread out," Visser Three ordered. His thought-speech was loud, open, to reach his soldiers. "You! Watch the tree line. You two to the far side of the meadow. Shoot anything that moves."

His voice was in my head. I felt churning in a stomach I no longer really had. I tried to squash my own fear beneath the snake's calm, but it rose suddenly.

I went over the plan: strike, escape, demorph, go back for the kill.

I would have to demorph before the Visser's guards could come to his side. And I would have to hope that the snake venom would slow him down.

Then . . . galloping!

Four sharp hooves beating across the meadow. My tongue flicked and smelled him on the wind.

Yes. He was coming closer.

Yes, he would come to the stream.

A shadow. He was there! Overhead. He blotted out the sun.

My snake tongue smell-tasted him. My lidless, always-open eyes saw his belly overhead like a curved roof. I felt his warmth.

He stuck one hoof into the cool water to drink.

No time to think. He could move at any moment.

T-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S!

A sound! What was it?

Me! It was corn ing from me! My tail!

A rattlesnake's tail! It had sounded its grim warning without conscious thought.

I saw the Visser's head lowered. I saw his two main eyes focus. I could read the dawning fear in his eyes.

SSSSSS-ZAAPP!

I struck! My coiled muscles fired all at once.

My head rocketed through the air. My mouth opened wide. My fangs came down.

76 STRIKE!

Fangs sank deep into Andalite flesh. I could feel the venom pumping! I could feel the poison shooting into Visser Three's leg.

He jerked.

I released.

He tried to back away. He was very fast. But I was so much faster, STRIKE!

Pump the venom into him. Poison the monster. Poison the Abomination. Poison Elfangor's murderer.

I drew back. I could taste my own venom dripping from my fangs.

His tail swept over his head, lancing down at me.

But I was already gone. The blade sliced deep into the ground. I felt the wind of it as I slithered swiftly away.

"DEMORPH!" I ordered myself.

Still the Visser had not called his guards. He would be wondering. He wouldn't know how dangerous the snake was. He wouldn't realize at first that it was not a true snake. Then slowly he would begin to suspect.

I was racing at breakneck speed through the grass. Behind me my rope body twisted and coiled and released and slithered. But my head stayed level and straight, flying at ground level through the grass.

I was twenty yards away when my snake body grew slow and sluggish from the changes.

Tiny legs appeared, just stubs at first. Tiny stalk eyes grew from the broad top of my diamond-shaped head.

"There is a snake!" Visser Three roared. "Find it! Kill it!" I struggled on, heading for the edge of the for est.

Then . . . body warmth! A warm-blooded animal. Just ahead of me.

My tongue flicked and smelled an aroma I knew. Hork-Bajir!

Hork-Bajir, the shock troops of the Yeerk empire. A peaceful, decent race that happened, as Marco often said, to be built like lawn mowers. Bladed arms. Bladed legs. Tearing, clawed feet. A slow but deadly tail. They were all Controllers. All slaves of the Yeerks in their heads.

77 I could move no further. I was no longer a snake. Not yet an Andalite. And the Hork-Bajir was just a few feet away.

Too close!

"So," I thought,"this is how it all ends."

My Andalite stalk eyes had emerged. I was rising slowly from the grass on my spindly Andalite legs. My tail was forming again.

I saw the Hork-Bajir. And I saw that he saw me.

There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could do but die.

The Hork-Bajir swung his bladed right arm like a scythe. It would hit me in the neck.

WHUMPH! The Hork-Bajir staggered. His blade arm sliced the air above me.

"HhhhhuuuurrrrrOOOOWWWWRRR!" A roar! But not the roar of a Hork-Bajir.

The Hork-Bajir went flying! Seven feet of deadly, dangerous Hork-Bajir warrior just cartwheeled through the air.

And where he had been now stood Rachel.

Of course, not the human Rachel with long blond hair and cool blue eyes. This was another Rachel. Rachel in the morph of a grizzly bear.

The bear was on its hind legs, standing even taller than the Hork-Bajir had stood. With claws that almost rivaled the Hork-Bajir's blades. And muscles powerful enough to simply throw a Hork-Bajir ten feet.

"HHHHuurrhhoooorrwww!" the bear growled wildly. "Oh, man, I love doing that!"

"Rachel?" I asked wonderingly.

"No," she said, in that human tone that means sarcasm. "It's Smokey the Bear. Finish morphing, you Andalite idiot. Then let's go kick some Yeerk butt." I was almost fully Andalite again. I swept the meadow quickly with my stalk eyes. Visser Three was in the middle of the field. Two Hork-Bajir were rushing to his side, bounding through the grass.

Across the meadow at the far end, a third Hork-Bajir looked around wildly, with his Dracon beam at the ready. He looked in every direction but up.

From the tree above him something that seemed almost liquid, something orange and black, dropped, claws outstretched.

Prince Jake!

78 And in the sky overhead, a hawk wheeled in low circles above the field.

"Two Hork-Bajir guarding the Bug fighters," Tobias announced. "One Hork-Bajir in the ...