Other birds had to kill to eat. Other birds had narrow, cramped environmental niches with just one or two kinds of acceptable food. Not me. I could live on junk food and garbage.

And that's why the skies were filled with my brothers and sisters. I saw them everywhere, al-

ways near the ground, always on the lookout for the next bread crumb.

Above me I spotted a dangerous form . . . the dark silhouette of a bird of prey. But I wasn't too worried. He was high up, and I was fast and very agile.

I flapped hard and flew fast, zooming like a wobbly, erratic rocket above the treetops, over the roofs, flitting through telephone wires, skimming easily over lawns and yards and gardens.

"Enjoying yourself, Rachel?"

What the . . . ?

"Hello. Hello in there, Rachel. You're not falling into the morph, are you?" It took a few seconds for me to track. The voice in my head was Tobias.

Tobias was a human. So was I.

Oh. Hello. Wake up, Rachel.

"Sorry, Tobias. I was getting kind of caught up in the seagull's head there for a minute. I wasn't prepared. I've done the morph before, so I wasn't on guard."

It was embarrassing, actually. When you first do a morph it's very hard to control the mind of the animal. I mean, when I'd morphed the crocodile, even though I was totally prepared, I'd been ready to chomp that kid.

But I'd done the seagull before. I shouldn't have had any difficulty with it.

"You okay, Rachel?" Tobias asked.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine, all right? I just wish everyone would stop asking me how I am. I'm fine."

This wasn't related to the problem with uncontrolled morphing. This was just a minor thing. A minor loss of concentration.

Nothing to worry about. That's what I told myself.

"You know your way to the beach from here?"

"0f course I know the way to the beach," I said, still mad for no good reason.

"Ooookay. See you there."

Tobias peeled off and I flew on. One thing the seagull knew was how to find the beach.

But I was not a happy little seagull.

Something was wrong with me, and it wasn't going away.

We met high above the beach. Four seagulls, looking totally normal among the hundreds of other seagulls. And higher up, floating on the thermals, a red-tailed hawk and a harrier.

The harrier was Ax. He'd never acquired a seagull. The harrier morph was a type of hawk, about the same size as Tobias.

"Okay, is everyone up for this?" Jake asked.

He was one of the wheeling, screaming seagulls around me, but I couldn't be sure which one.

"Let's do it!" I said. That's what I almost always say at the start of a mission. Everyone expected me to say it.

The truth was, I felt nervous and worried and totally unsure of myself.

But people expected me

to be all gung ho. If I hadn't been, they'd have known something was very wrong with me.

"What a shock," Marco said sarcastically. "Mighty Xena is ready to go.

Someone alert the media! It's a major story!"

"0h, shut up, Marco," I said.

"Okay, we fly out, find this yacht, then figure out how to proceed from there," Jake said. "Right?"

"lf we can find the yacht at all," Marco said.

"Not a problem. It's out there, maybe three miles, heading southeast.

There are three people on deck. I can't see their faces." Tobias laughed. "Hawk vision, boys and girls. You seagulls stick to Dumpster-diving. I'll take care of long-range spying."

"You sure it's the right boat?" Jake asked.

"The Daybreeze, right?"

"There is no way you can read the name on a boat that's three miles out," Marco said. "I've been an osprey, remember? Your eyes are good, but you're not Superman."

"Busted," Tobias said. "Okay, I can't read the whole name on the boat.

But I can see the D. And I took a good guess. I'm betting that's our wussy-boy actor."

"Good enough," I said. "Let's take a closer look." It was all the usual banter before we go on a mission. It felt good to be doing something. Action was better than sitting around waiting to see if I was going to morph out of control.

And I was still looking forward to actually seeing Jeremy Jason McCole.

There was still the possibility we could rescue him or something.

Tobias said, "l better bail out on you guys. I'm not good over water. No thermals. Ax's harrier will be weak, too, but he can always morph to something else and swim back. I can't."

We said good-bye to Tobias. I know he hates not being able to go with us on every mission. He feels like he's not doing enough, I guess. Which is stupid because really, no one does more for the cause than Tobias.

And none of us has paid a higher price in this war with the Yeerks than Tobias has.

We flapped away, slowly emerging from the dogfight of seagulls in the sky. We crossed the line from sand to surf. And then we kept going, out over green water and on to the deeper blue.

There was a breeze blowing against us and it was a struggle to make headway. But this was what seagulls were built to do. The seagull brain knew how to exploit every lull in the breeze. And the body was almost tireless.

Ax's harrier, on the other hand, was having a harder time. Hawks are made for soaring, or swooping down on their prey. They are great at riding the thermals, the big, billowy updrafts of

warm air. But they aren't distance flyers. They can't just flap their wings endlessly.

But he still had better long-range vision than we did.

"l see the boat clearly now," Ax announced. He didn't complain, but he sounded tired. "l can read the name Daybreeze very clearly. There are now four humans on the deck. Two older males. One female of medium age.

One juvenile male."

"Is it Jeremy Jason?" Cassie asked excitedly.

"Has to be," I said.