"So maybe, in addition to everything else, we have Visser Three and a shipload of Hork-Bajir warriors to worry about," I said. "Someone please give me some good news."

"Well, it's still daylight," Marco said, putting on a big phony grin. "When night falls, then we'll be "Jake! Duck!" Tobiasyelled.

For once in my life, I didn't stop to think about it. I ducked. And even as I ducked, I saw the face. I saw the arm. I saw the spear.

It was coming straight at me.

Right for my face.

The vision! It was the hallucination!

I ducked. The spear went over my head and flew on harmlessly into the bush.

Tobias flapped wildly into the air.

"I shouldn't have been resting." he berated himself. "I should have been in the air."

I was too weirded out to worry about Tobias.

"I knew that was going to happen," I said. "That spear. The kid who threw it. I knew!"

Cassie looked strangely at me. "Jake, what are you -"

"There" Tobias interrupted. "They almost look like they might be kids. They're hauling butt out of here. Which is what we better think about doing, too."

"Why?" Rachel demanded indignantly. "We can handle some kids with spears."

"Forget the kids. I see a group of twenty . . . maybe thirty Hork-Bajir. They're tearing up the forest and coming this way!"

"We can't leave the Bug fighter!" Rachel protested. "How else are we going to get out of here?"

"We can't stand and fight twenty Hork-Bajir warriors, either,"

I said. "We have to pull back."

I glanced over and saw Cassie. She had retrieved the spear from the bushes. It was a long, thin stick. There was no spearhead on it. It was just a sharp stick with the sharp end blackened.

"That doesn't look too deadly," I said.

Cassie shook her head. "No. You probably couldn't kill much with this stick. Unless the tip was dipped in poison. And we are in the home office of natural poisons."

"The local people ... I guess they wouldn't waste their time using a weapon that didn't work, would they?" I said.

"No," Cassie said flatly. "The chances are pretty good that this spear is poison-tipped. There are poisonous frogs and plants down here that are used for arrow and spear poison.

Very deadly. Very, very deadly. The Hork-Bajir are definitely not our only problem."

"Jake, you guys need to move." Tobias warned. He was overhead again. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was up above the jungle canopy. "I can't see well enough through all this foliage. But I think a group of Hork-Bajir is getting close to you."

Decision time. Stay and fight? We'd lose. Run away? We'd be giving up the Bug fighter, our only way home.

"Ax? Is there something . . .anything. . .you can take out of the Bug fighter that would make it impossible for the Yeerks to fly it?"

Ax stared at me with his main eyes, even as his stalk eyes swept the forest around us. "Yes. Yes, I can think of something."

"Then get it," I said.

"Jake! There's no time."

Tobias called down. He must have been close enough to hear me.

But the foliage was so dense I had no clear idea where he was.

Ax hesitated, not sure what to do.

The others all looked at me.

"Do it, Ax," I said. He raced for the Bug fighter. "Everyone else, get out of here."

"I'm staying with you," Rachel protested.

"I'm not staying. Minimum risk," I snapped. "We only need Ax to handle this. No point risking anyone else."

I plunged into the green. I grabbed Rachel's arm and pulled her along. Cassie and Marco followed me.

"Jake." Tobias called down. "lf Ax isn't out of there in under two minutes, he's not going to get out of there."

I didn't answer.

It's the worst thing about being a so-called leader -- the times when you take a risk with someone else's life. If Ax ended up dead, it was going to be very hard to explain to my friends.

And to myself.

1:48 P.m.

I can't begin to explain what the rain forest is like. To explain it, you'd have to be a poet and a scientist and a horror writer.

All I can say is how it makes you feel. You feel small. Tiny.

Alone. Hopelessly weak. Afraid.

You feel heat and suffocating humidity. It's like there's not enough air. Every breath is like sucking air through a straw.

You're breathing steam and perfume and the stink of dying, rotting things.

The jungle is all around you. It presses against you on all sides. Wet leaves in your face; creepers that seem to reach up to trip you; sharp-edged stalks that cut you.

And then there are the twin horrors: bugs and thirst.

Mosquitoes, gnats, big flies, and other flying insects I didn't even have names for followed us in swirling clouds.

They'd descend and attack, then disappear for no reason, only to attack again later. If you stopped, even for a few seconds, you could find your foot covered with ants or centipedes or beetles or bugs that defied description.

And it didn't help that we were shoeless.

The heat sucked every ounce of moisture out of us. It was as bad as any desert. You'd think with all the greenery there would be water everywhere. But no. The actual ground under our feet was dry. All the water is captured in the plants.

All the while, as we fought our way through the thickets of vines and ferns and bushes and gnats and flies and mosquitoes, we were followed by a serenade of cackles, groans, screams, yelps, insane animal giggles, clicking, scratching, and the occasional coughing roar as each new species comments on the idiocy of a bunch of suburban kids wandering around the rain forest. For all we knew, they were taking bets on how long the dumb humans would survive.

We had pushed two hundred yards deeper into the rain forest from the Bug fighter when we heard an uproar behind us.

"Andalite!" a Hork-Bajir voice bellowed. "Andalite!"

"They're after him!" Tobias called down from above. "Ax has six Hork-Bajir on his tail! You happy now, Jake? Ax-man! Look out! Behind you!"

I bit my lip till I tasted my own blood.

"We have to morph and go back for him," Rachel said. Her eyes were blazing. I could have said no. I had reasons to say no.

We were in an unknown place, facing lousy odds. Besides, of us all, Ax was the fastest and best able to escape. But Rachel would have just gone anyway.

"Just two of us go," I snapped. "Me and you, Rachel. Marco and Cassie, stay back."

"Why are we staying back?" Marco asked, outraged.

"Because we need backup, Marco," I said tersely. I don't know if he understood this or not. Rachel did. She started to morph. I was morph ing into my tiger morph as fast as I could.

Rachel was already well into her grizzly bear morph - massive shoulders and shaggy brown fur and long, curved claws.

TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!

The sound of Dracon beams reached us. The jungle animals up in the trees exploded in a fury of commentary.

Ke-Rrrraaaaawwww!

HOO! HOOHOOHOOHOO!

I could hear something large crashing around the brush, but I couldn't see anything. In the rain forest you're lucky if you can see five feet in any direction.

"I'm ready." Rachel said.

"Wait for me." I told her.

"Catch up when you can." Rachel snapped. She lumbered away, back toward the Bug fighter, a huge, rolling mass of heavy fur and muscle. I cursed her silently.

My body was already covered with orange-and-black-striped fur.