"Good thinking, Marco. We need local morphs," I said.

"I can take you to the monkeys." Ax suggested. "I believe they are close relatives of yours."

"Marco is second cousin to a monkey," Rachel said.

I was glad to see she was teasing Marco again. It meant she was back. Still, there was a darkness in her eyes. Not even Rachel could just shake off what she'd been through. And knowing Rachel, she would react by being more aggressive.

Maybe too aggressive.

"Monkeys would be good," Cassie said. "It would get us up off the ground and into the trees."

"Okay, Ax, lead on. Tobias? I hate to ask, but we could use some air cover."

"No problem." Tobias said.

He flew up into the trees. I knew he was tired. And I knew he was hungry. Flying is hard work, and a bird's metabolism is fast. They can't endure long periods of hunger as well as a human. But what else could I do?

Ax did not lead us very far. Within ten minutes we were standing beneath a group of monkeys chittering and yipping in the trees high above us. It isn't possible to acquire a morph from a person who's morphed. In other words, we couldn't just copy Ax's monkey morph. We had to go to an actual monkey.

"I believe I can get one of them to come down." Ax said.

"How?" Marco asked.

Ax hesitated. It's hard to tell if a monkey is embarrassed, let alone a monkey with an Andalite mind. But I could have sworn Ax was embarrassed.

"I ...! believe that I am that is to say my morph is an attractive female.

One of the males seemed interested earlier."

"Well, that does it," Marco said flatly. "We have moved permanently to bizarre-o world. We've traveled in time, we're in a jungle fighting brain-stealing aliens and ten thousand annoying species of bugs, and our resident space cadet is a hot-looking monkey. Somebody wake me up when we get back to reality."

Wake me up when we get back to reality." Marco and I said it at the same moment. He stared at me. I stared at him. Everyone else stared at us.

I sighed. "I guess I have something to tell you guys. I should have said something earlier, probably. But I thought I was just going nuts or something. See, I've been having these flashes. Really intense. It's like, I'd be in school and then suddenly I was here. And since we got here, I've been having flashes that I'm back home."

Rachel rolled her eyes as if to say, "What next?" Cassie looked concerned. Marco looked like he was trying to find a joke in the situation, but was too tired to come up with anything.

"I knew what Marco was going to say just now because that was one of the flashes," I said.

Ax stared at me with large monkey eyes.

"Prince Jake, how long ago did you start having these flashbacks?"

I shrugged. "It was just this afternoon. Yesterday, or today, whatever you'd call it. I was square dancing when the first one happened. Why?"

"You were square dancing?" Marco said. "I'd have paid to see that."

Ax scratched his neck vigorously, then looked intently at what he'd scratched up. He popped whatever it was into his mouth.

Obviously, he was letting the monkey mind have some control.

"Prince Jake, as I said, I'm not an expert on Sario Rips. But I think what's happening is that the flashbacks are fluctuations where two simultaneous identical states of consciousness intersect outside of space-time."

"That would have been my guess," Marco said. "Simultaneous . .

. whatevers."

"I have a theory . . ." Ax began.

"A theory is more than I have. What is it?"

"I suspect we have moved backward in time. But not far. We are existing simultaneously both here and back home. There are now two Marcos, two Cassies, two of each of us. One here, one there.

At the same time. The flashbacks only started today. So I suspect we have gone back one day in time, a little less."

"That's good," Marco said.

"No." Ax said solemnly."It's not good. We are in two places at the same time. That is impossible. It's a time-space anomaly.

It's an unstable conditions"

"Meaning . . . ?" I pressed.

"I think it means that the two groups, the two Marcos, Rachels, and so ons, will annihilate each other. Like matter and antimatter, it is not possible for there to be two of us in the same time."

"So why haven't we annihilated ourselves yet?" Rachel asked.

"We are still within the Sario Rip effect." Ax said. "I think So ... so I think we're okay till we get back to the time when the rip occurred. At that time, the rip will end, and we'll have an impossible situation: two identical groups of people existing in two places at one time. I think my teacher said it would cause a mutual annihilation. We'd cease to exist. Both groups. Here and back home. The time when the Sario Rip occurred was eight fifty-four, exactly."

"In other words, if we're getting back to our own time, we have to do it before the Sario Rip occurs at eight fifty- four," I said.

"Yes. We'd have to go back and change the time line. So that none of this would happen. We have less than six hours."

"How do we do that?"

"I'm not sure."

I nodded. "Well, if we're trapped, so is Visser Three, right?

He must know about Sario Rips, too. If he's going back, we can go back with him.

All we have to do is get to the Blade ship, hide out on board, and let Visser Three take us home. I mean, that's the only way, right?"

"There could be -" Ax started to say. Then he stopped.

"What?" I asked him. "Is there some other way to get back?"

Ax gave me a long look. Like he wasn't quite sure what to say.

Or whether to say anything at all. He was in monkey morph, so I couldn't read his expression.

"As I said, Prince Jake, I wasn't paying attention the day they taught this in school."

I knew he was hiding something. I should have pressed him. But I didn't.

Just one more mistake from the "fearless leader" of the Animorphs.

It was easy to "acquire" the monkeys. Several of them swung down from the tree to sniff at Ax. And they didn't seem terribly frightened by any of us, since we were all standing very still and quiet.

I reached very slowly, very gently for one particular monkey.

He looked at my hand, considering it. Then he turned his back, as if asking me to scratch it.

"Okay," I said. "I'd be glad to."

I scratched the little monkey's back. And as I did, I closed my eyes and focused my thoughts on the monkey. He became quiet, like he was in a trance. That's how animals usually are when they're being acquired.

I absorbed the monkey DNA into me.

"This should be especially easy," Cassie commented as she finished acquiring a different monkey. "These monkeys aren't direct relatives of Homo sapiens, but still, most of our DNA will be identical. After all, a chimpanzee's DNA is like ninety-seven percent identical to human DNA."

"Or in Marco's case, ninety-nine point nine percent," Rachel interjected.

"Yes, it's like the fact that Rachel's DNA is actually ninety- nine percent identical to Malibu Barbie," Marco shot back.

"Could we concentrate here?" I said gruffly. Actually, I was relieved to see everyone behaving normally. It's when Cassie isn't talking about animals and Marco and Rachel aren't teasing each other that you have to worry.