I was back in the air. I was flying. I was in falcon morph.

Below me I saw the grocery store.

But I was totally confused. My mind wouldn't focus on reality.

It was still in some jungle I'd never seen, staring into the eyes of a beautiful, deadly predator. What was happening to me? Was I going crazy?

"Um . . . um, I ... I guess we better take a closer look, huh?" I managed to say.

"Definitely. Let's work up a plan. Let's do it." Rachel said with her usual enthusiasm.

"Rachel, why is it whenever I hear you say "let's do it" my blood runs cold?" Marco asked.

"Let's see. Because you're a weenie?" Rachel speculated.

"Whatever this is, they're trying to clean it up fast. We have no time." I said. "Better do this tonight."

"0h." Rachel said. "Tonight? As in ... tonight"

She didn't sound so enthusiastic anymore.

"0h, good." Marco said sarcastically. "An-other rushed, unplanned, last-minute mission. Those always turn out so well."

Marco, I thought, you don't know the half of it. Because in addition to all the other ways this could go bad, your "fearless leader" is losing his mind.

Of course, I didn't say that. See, when you're the leader, you're not allowed to be crazy.

"I hate this kind of stuff." Marco said. "I hate rushing into things."

We had landed in the woods. Landing, by the way, is the hardest part of flying. Taking off is scary, but landing is terrifying. See, the difference between landing and crashing is about two inches and two miles per hour.

We landed more or less gracefully on the pine needle floor of the forest. Tobias flew off to look for Ax. The rest of us demorphed.

"I seem to remember that the last time we rushed into something we managed to screw up the plan." Cassie said. "0n the other hand, we did survive."

"Barely," Marco said, as he made the transition from mostly osprey to mostly human. "It's just a grocery store," Rachel said with a shrug of shoulders that were just emerging.

"Come on, how hard can it be?"

"How should we go in?" Marco wondered, looking at me.

I looked at Cassie. "Any suggestions?"

"We have a couple of morphs available for this job," she said.

"Like Rachel said, it's a grocery store. A burned-out grocery store, but a grocery store just the same. You'd expect there to be cockroaches, rats, flies..."

Suddenly, there came a rush of pounding hooves and a crash of underbrush. Ax raced up to us, graceful and bizarre all at once. He plowed straight toward us, moving as fast as a panicked horse. Just when I was sure he'd run us down, he kicked his hind legs and sailed easily over our heads. He landed almost daintily, and turned back to face us.

Ax is Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill. He's the younger brother of Prince Elfangor. As far as we know, Ax is the only Andalite to survive the destruction of their Dome ship. Andalites have certain things in common with Earth animals. But you'd know right off that he's from a long, long way away. His body is like a sort of strong pale-blue-and-tan deer. But where the deer would have a neck, Ax has a somewhat human upper body. It looks like the chest and shoulders of a boy. He has two weak- looking arms and a few too many fingers.

His head is where you'd expect to find it, but it is missing one very major ingredient: a mouth. Andalites eat by absorbing plants through their hollow hooves. And they communicate through thought-speak.

Ax has three small slits for a nose and two big, almond-shaped eyes. He also has two other eyes. These are mounted on top of his head on short stalks. These two eyes can move separately in any direction. It's distracting till you get used to it. Ax may look at you with his two main eyes, or he may look at you with both stalk eyes, or one stalk eye, or a combination of his two main eyes and one stalk eye.

To summarize: It's very strange making eye contact with an Andalite.

And last, but definitely not least, there's the tail. It's like a scorpion's tail, cocked up so that the deadly sharp blade on the end sort of hovers above Ax's shoulder.

The tail is fast. Very fast. As in, you're bleeding and wondering why you can only count to four on your fingers, before you even see it move. Fast, accurate, and very good to have on your side of a fight.

"Hello, everyone." Ax said."Tobias told me to hurry."

Just then, Tobias swooped low overhead and landed with utter confidence on a branch. He dug his talons into the bark and began to calmly preen his wing feathers.

"Hi, Ax," I said. "What has Tobias told you?"

"Everything. I guess we are going in to take a closer look?"

"You guess right, Ax-man," Marco said. "You have a preference for fly or cockroach morph?"

"I will do whatever Prince Jake orders."

"Ax, don't call me Prince Jake," I said automatically for about the thousandth time.

"Yes, Prince Jake." he said.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe Ax has a sense of humor. We'd never noticed one, but who knows?

"We have to get inside that Safeway," I said. "The closest place to morph is a long way away. Clear across the street, behind that boarded-up motel. No one will see us there, but then we have to get to the store. Across four lanes of traffic."

"Ouch," Marco said. "I hadn't really thought about that. Is it too late for me to change my vote?"

"We didn't vote," Rachel said. "But if we had, you'd have voted yes."

"How do you know how I'd have voted?" Marco demanded.

Rachel smiled. "Because I'd have voted yes. And you'd never let yourself look like a total wuss in front of girls."

"You think you know me," Marco said. "Unfortunately, you're right."

"Neither the roach nor the fly has very good vision," Rachel pointed out. "I mean, we want to be able to see whatever is in that store, right?"

"Yeah, but we also have to get across four lanes of traffic. I don't know about you, but I'd rather fly over the cars than try to walk in front of them,"Cassie said.

"Can flies even find their way that far?" I wondered out loud.

"Remember when we used to have normal, sane conversations?"

Marco said. "You know, we'd talk about baseball or who had a crush on who?"

Cassie gave him a wink. Then, she was back to business. "That grocery store must still be full of food, right? Rotting food, since I doubt the freezers are working in there. What's better at finding rotting food than a fly?"

"I can help guide you, maybe." Tobias said.

"You don't see that much better than humans do in the dark," I pointed out. "It'll be dark by the time we get in position."

"Car lights . . . streetlights . . . I'm just saying maybe I can help a little, all right?"

Tobias sometimes becomes frustrated because he can't go on all the missions. I understand. I feel sorry for him. But that's the way it is. I was about to tell him that when Cassie jumped in.

"Tobias, the only reason we even know about this is you,"

Cassie pointed out. "You discovered it. You showed it to us.

The least we can do is take the next step."

Cassie is so good at fixing hurt feelings. Better than me, that's for sure. But Tobias was still grumpy. "l'm still going along." he said.