"It's the only clue we have, and we are running out of time."

I said. "Let's go."

"Go into the light." Marco said.

"What?"

"Poltergeist. That old movie. Don't you remember? The little munchkin lady saying, "Go into the light, go into the light"'?"

"What was this light?" Ax asked, completely mystified.

"I think it was like . . . death, or something." Marco said.

"But, hey, I could be wrong. Maybe it was just a big, bright, afterlife McDonald's."

"Shut up, Marco." Rachel said.

We had two hours left. Then, if Ax was right, the Sario Rip would end, and the universe would have two Jakes and two Cassies, and would eliminate them both.

Go to the Blade ship. Get aboard. Hope Visser Three could get us back. Somehow. Even without the Bug fighter's computer.

Not much of a plan. But I was the leader, and a leader has to give people hope. Even when he doesn't have much himself.

"Let's go see what this light is." I said.

Living through the eyes of the jaguar, the rain forest was dark.

But, oh, the things I saw, gliding like a ghost along the jungle floor.

It was like some incredible theme park ride. Like one of those haunted houses, where each turn of the little car you're in brings you face-to-face with a new goblin or ghoul or skeleton.

But it wasn't dead spirits that I saw in my trip through the rain forest. It was life. Life in more shapes and types than you can imagine.

Huge snakes, twenty feet long and as big around as the branches they hung from. And snakes so tiny they could almost have been worms.

Monstrous insects, beetles the size of your fist, and centipedes as big as rats. And rats as big as poodles. At least, they looked like rats. And frogs in bright, warning, touch-me-and-die colors.

And ants everywhere, some marching along in columns, with each ant carrying a piece of leaf ten times its own size. Lizards that shot past, flashes of green. And what I assume were salamanders, like lizards but in brilliant, slimy colors. And overhead, birds and monkeys and more birds.

We had been blind as bats, stomping through the rain forest in our human bodies. We had seen nothing. But the jaguar saw and smelled and heard everything.

A million species of life filled the forest around us. Forms of life stranger than anything that had come from outer space.

Incredible, insane, brilliant life, all fighting to stay alive, all working to grab one little piece of the rain forest.

It was overwhelming. For a long time, none of us said anything. We were discovering a world we had never even guessed at. It was as if Polo and his people had been transported to a shopping mall at Christmastime. They would have been amazed and stunned at all the things man creates.

Now, the reverse was happening. This was the world the jaguar knew. And it was the world that Polo and his people knew.

Their shopping mall at Christmastime, filled, not with all the things man makes, but with all the wild, amazing, insane, extreme, shocking creativity of nature.

And every time I thought, Well, I've seen it all, the rain forest would answer, Kid, you haven't seen anything. Take a look at this bird! Take a look at that flower! Get a load of this creature!

Little human boy, I have more to show you than you could see in ten lifetimes.

"0kay." Rachel said, breaking the silence at last. "I take it back. I don't want to pave over the rain forest. I don't care if it is dangerous and deadly and it's trying to kill us."

"You have an amazing planet." Ax said. "Amazing."

Surprisingly, it was Cassie who reminded us of our mission.

"We have very little time left. We have to get to the Blade ship."

"You're right, Cassie, but I thought you'd be enjoying this."

I said. "This is the ultimate nature walk."

"Yes, it is." she said softly. "And the Yeerks want to destroy it, and anything else they can't use on this planet. I'm not going to let that happen. So let's haul butt, find the Blade ship, get back where we should be, stay alive to keep fighting, because no one, man or alien, is messing this place up while I'm around to stop them."

"Yes, ma'am." I said.

"I see lights up ahead." Marco said.

From high above us: "I'm over the lights now. It's not a village. It's the Blade ship. And guess what? They dragged the Bug fighter here, too."

Something about that fact . . . that the Bug fighter was with the Blade ship, made me uneasy.

There was no reason for Visser Three to have his people drag the two ships together. There was something wrong there.

Something I should see. Something I should realize.

But I shook it off. My problem was that I needed a plan. It was time to think, not time to worry about things that made no sense.

We crept, silent as a dream, through the bush. One foot in front of the other, sliding through leaves, our jaguar spots confusing to the eye, invisible.

The Hork-Bajir had chopped down a clearing around the Blade ship. There were Taxxons crawling over and around the ship, working feverishly. The Taxxons appeared to have finished work on the Bug fighter. Taxxons are like gigantic centipedes with raw, red circular mouths at one end, and a ring of eyes like red Jell-0.

"They fit right in." Marco said.

I was thinking the same thing. The Taxxons could be rain forest natives. Although, even by rain forest standards, they would have been huge.

"Not enough Hork-Bajir." Ax said. "There should be more. Many more. They should be ringing the perimeter."

"I count just five Hork-Bajir." Rachel said.

"Wait! Look! Inside the Blade ship. Through that window.

Visser Three."

I stared hard and saw the outline of an Andalite head. "Yeah.

Good. At least we know where he is."

"What do we do?" Rachel asked.

She was asking me. And I didn't happen to have any brilliant answers.

"0kay, we know Visser Three needs the Bug fighter to get back to our time, right? And we have the computer core, so he can't use the Bug fighter without us. So... we could bargain with him, but he can't be trusted. Or we could sneak aboard the Blade ship and just leave the computer core where he can find it"

"If he just happens to find the computer core lying around, he's going to know how it got there. And he's going to know what we're up to." Marco said.

"Time is running out." Ax said."If we stow away on the Blade ship but don't give Visser Three the computer core, we're trapped here, along with him." Cassie pointed out.

I felt like my head was swimming. Somehow I'd just hoped there would be an answer at the end. But there wasn't.

"Look, I don't know, all right!" I yelled. "I don't know. I don't know what to do. I don't have any magic answer."

"Jake, you're supposed to be our fearless leader." Marco said.

I swear, I almost lost it right then. If we'd both been in human form, I might have punched Marco.

"I never said I was anyone's leader! I never asked to lead anything. Why do I have to know the answers? You don't, Marco.

You don't, Rachel."

"0h, man." Marco groaned. "Jake, you can't lose it, man. We need you."

I was about to say something very rude when Cassie interrupted. "Something has been bothering me. Why is Jake the only one who had those flashes? We all exist in both places at once, right? So why is he the only one who had jungle hallucinations?"