"What are you doing? Leave her alone!"

Marco yelled.

I yanked several handfuls of bloody fur. Then I raced toward the spot where Tobias waited. He was resting on a strong fern, looking down at a swarming mound of ants. I took a small sample of the grizzly fur and laid it right beside the mouth of the ant mound. The reaction was instantaneous. Hundreds of ants swarmed across the bloody fur. I used another tuft of fur to lift a handful of ants, then I walked a few feet toward Rachel and dropped the tuft. I repeated the process, getting closer and closer to Rachel. I was worried the ants might lose the scent. But they were keeping up with me, and even racing ahead. Slowly, surely, I led the ants to Rachel. Cassie and Marco were human once more. They looked like I probably looked: scared, horrified, vulnerable.

"We have to get them off her!" Cassie cried when she saw me.

"They're inside her ears! They're in her mouth! They'll kill her!"

"I know." I dropped my last blood-soaked tuft of fur. If this didn't work, Rachel was finished. I stepped aside and put my arm around Cassie.

The new colony of ants followed the trail I'd left them. There was a moment's hesitation, almost as if the whole rampaging colony paused upon seeing the bear. But then, like the well- trained army they were, they attacked. Ten thousand new ants swarmed onto Rachel's unconscious body. They slammed into a wall of ants from the first colony. I've been an ant. I've seen how different colonies of ants get along. I hoped they would act the same way here. They did. It was like some old Civil War battle. The two armies charged at each other.

Perfect, obedient automatons responding only to smell and instinct.

They attacked each other. The ants swarmed back out of Rachel's ears and mouth, ready for the battle.

"That was good thinking, Jake," Cassie said. "But sooner or later, one colony will win."

"We have to hope Rachel regains consciousness before then," I said.

The enemy armies of ants battled ferociously. It wouldn't look like much to most people. But having been an ant, I had some idea of the awesome slaughter that was going on in the fur of the grizzly.

Down there, ants were being torn apart by other ants.

Literally torn apart. Legs ripped out. Heads bitten off.

Stinging poisons being sprayed.

The battle was turning. The challengers" mound was too far away. They weren't able to call up enough reinforcements. In a few minutes the desperate ant war would be over.

But while they fought, they did not tear into Rachel's flesh.

And then . . .

"Unh . . . wha ... oh! Oh!Oh! I'm covered in ants!"

"Rachel! Rachel! It's me, Jake. Morph out. Morph out and be ready to run!"

Rachel didn't have to be told twice. She started demorphing.

She shrank. Pink flesh re-placed fur. Massive shoulders and huge paws became smaller, human features.

"Oh!" Rachel cried as soon as she had a human mouth.

"Arrrrggghhi"

"Rachel, get up! Follow me!" I said to her. "Tobias? Where's that stream?"

Tobias rose up and flew swiftly through the trees. I followed, crashing through the bushes, my bare feet torn, tripping. It was no more than a hundred feet. It felt like a mile.

Rachel was screaming now. Rachel is the bravest person I know.

But the thousands of vicious ants were beginning to attack her, now that they were done attacking each other. No one can stand that.

No one can stand that.

"Get off me! Oh, no! Oh! They're in my -"

Suddenly there was no more green. A muddy stream ... I leaped for the water. Pah-Loosh!

I heard Rachel hit the water beside me.

Pah-Loosh!

I swam toward her. She was still underwater. The water was too murky for me to be able to see her well. All I saw was flailing limbs.

Ants were floating to the surface of the water and being carried away by the current.

Then . . .

SPLOOSH!

Rachel came up, gasping for air.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

She looked around, confused for a moment. Then she recognized me. And she spotted Marco and Cassie on the bank of the stream.

"Get out of the water!" Cassie screamed.

I grabbed Rachel's arm and dragged her toward the bank. I pushed her ahead of me, slipping and sliding up through the muddy grass. I was just pulling my feet up out of the water when I saw the churning, frothing commotion Cassie had seen first.

I yanked my feet away, inches ahead of a school of flesh- eating piranha.

"This is the rain forest?" Rachel demanded angrily, spitting water and combing through her hair for any remaining ants.

"This is the rain forest everyone wants to save? Ants and piranha and snakes and bugs the size of rats? Well, as far as I'm concerned they can burn it down, pave it over, and put up malls and convenience stores!"

I sat staring at the piranha. They say a school of piranha can strip a cow down to nothing but bones in a few minutes.

Right then, thinking about what almost happened, shaking and panting and wanting to cry, I agreed with Rachel.

3:09 P.m.

Now we need to find Ax," I said. "But we need to be careful.

This jungle alone is enough to mess us up bad. And we have the Yeerks to deal with as well."

"I am not lost, Prince Jake." a thought-speak voice said.

"Ax!" I cried.

"Yes, it's me." Ax said.

"But I am in a morph. Don't be startled." With that, he dropped from the tree above us and landed on the ground.

"Well," Marco commented with great satisfaction. "Someone finally made a monkey out of Ax."

He was small, covered in brown fur, and definitely a monkey.

But he was alive.

I don't think I've ever felt so relieved in my life. I had been screwing up plenty. First by deciding to go into the stupid Safeway to begin with, then by endangering Tobias, then by endangering Ax, then by leaving Rachel alone to almost get killed. But at least no one had gotten killed.

Yet.

"I'm thinking spider monkey," Cassie said, frowning. "But I'm not sure. I'm not all that strong on rain forest animals."

The monkey -- Ax -- was holding something in his paw. It was bright yellow and about the size of a computer diskette, only round and a little thicker.

"What is that?" I asked.

"I did what you told me to do." Ax said. "This is a vital part of the Bug fighter -- the computer core. No one can fly the Bug fighter without it."

"That thing is the computer?" Tobias asked.

"Yes, the Yeerks are still somewhat primitive. An Andalite version would be a third this size."

"Well, I'm relieved you're okay, Ax," I said. "We haven't been doing very well."

"I barely made it." Ax said simply. "There are several dozen Hork-Bajir out combing the forest, looking for us. I think they are divided now into platoons of five, each accompanied by a human-Controller, I haven't seen the Visser, but he will be around as well. And as you know, Visser Three can morph, so he could be any of the animals we see."

"That's a good point," Rachel said. "We have to be on the lookout for animals as well as Hork-Bajir and the natives."

"The human-Controllers," Marco said thoughtfully. "I think I know why they're traveling with the Hork-Bajir. See, the human-Controllers would know which animals belong here in the rain forest, and which don't. If they see a grizzly bear or a tiger or a wolf, they'll know that it doesn't belong. They'll know it's us."