SLASH!

SLASH! My wrist blades and elbow blades ripped into Hork-Bajir flesh. I went a little crazy, I think, because I didn't even know what I was doing anymore. I was on automatic. I was a slashing, ripping, tearing machine.

But I was getting hurt at the same time. I was outnumbered. There were three Hork-Bajir on

me. Two on Rachel. There had been three on her, too, but she'd taken one of them out of the fight.

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! My entire world was nothing but blow and counterblow. A wrist blade cut toward my head, and I blocked it. I swiped upward with my knee, and then jerked my talons back to catch the thigh of the Hork-Bajir behind me.

Every move happened in a split second. In the time it would take a human to blink his eyes once, I would block two thrusts and throw three of my own.

Then . . . WHAM! I was on my back in the dirt. My left leg had stopped working! Two Hork-Bajir now stood over me. One raised his ripping talon, ready to bring it down on my chest!

I lay back helpless, staring up at the blue sky.

Suddenly, a flash of pale gray, coming down like a rock! Like an arrow fired from a cloud it came, wings tucked back, dropping at more than a hundred miles an hour.

A peregrine falcon. The fastest thing in the air.

Jake!

At the last second, his wings opened, he took the shock of the air and he swept his talons forward, all in one fluid movement.

Even in pain, lying there a second away from

death, I thought I had never seen anything so perfect in my life.

In a split second Jake was gone, and the larger Hork-Bajir was screaming and holding his eyes.

I was ready. I swept my leg left to right and knocked the Hork-Bajir off his feet. I was up and hobbling on my one good leg before he hit the ground.

I ran to Rachel and helped knock her last Hork-Bajir foe to the ground.

"Ready to go?"

"Been ready," Rachel said.

Although my one leg was almost useless, I could still use my tail for balance and hobble at a pretty good speed. Rachel soon pulled out ahead of me. But that was okay. That was the plan.

"Jake?" I said. "That was one sweet save back there. Would it be wrong for me to say I love you, man?"

"Hah-HAH! That was fun! Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that was a rush!" Jake exulted.

Rachel and I ran toward the lip of the ravine. And now I could actually feel the heat of the fire approaching. The wind shifted and I gagged on thick black smoke. I lost sight of Rachel.

When the smoke cleared, I was face-to-face with a Taxxon. "You're lucky I'm in a hurry, or

you'd be worm hash," I said, and brushed past the huge centipede.

"Rachel! Ten feet to your left," Jake instructed. "Yeah! Yeah! Right there between the two saplings!"

I looked forward just in time to see Rachel leap out into the air. Out into the emptiness she went . . . and then disappeared. She fell from sight.

My hearts stopped beating. Both of them. I felt my throat clutch tight.

It was a hundred feet to the bottom of that ravine. Not even a Hork-Bajir could survive that kind of fall.

Now it was my turn. I ran for the ravine lip.

"0h, man!" Jake cried. "0n your left! In front of you! I didn't see them all in the smoke! Tobias, it's him!"

A thick wall of smoke swirled around me, then blew away. It was like some horrible magic trick. One minute, there was the ravine. The next second, there stood three Hork-Bajir. And one Andalite.

One Andalite who was no Andalite at all.

Visser Three stood on the very lip of the ravine. Right in my path.

Hork-Bajir are fast. But the tail of an Andalite is faster. I couldn't win a fight against Visser Three and three Hork-Bajir. No way.

But then it suddenly occurred to me ...

I grinned. At least as much as a Hork-Bajir can grin. I looked Visser Three right in his main eyes.

"Ket Halpak free!" I yelled, using my Hork-Bajir voice.

And I charged straight at him, running flat-out, ignoring the searing pain from my injured leg.

Visser Three watched me calmly for a couple of seconds. Then it occurred to him, too. Just like it had to me. See, he might get me with his tail, and even kill me before I could get to the ravine, but my momentum would certainly carry me forward.

And I would knock Visser Three off the edge, too.

At the last second, Visser Three dodged nimbly out of my way.

"Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee freeeeeeee!" I shouted defiantly as I jumped off the edge of the ravine.

I fell.

The floor of the ravine was a long, long, long way down.

I saw a brutish, massive arm shoot out. A fist the size of a Virginia baked ham grabbed my leg,

I stopped falling. I slammed into the ravine wall. And the massive arm yanked me back up-

ward. Right up into the shallow cave in the ravine wall.

No Earth animal could possibly have caught a falling, seven-foot-tall Hork-Bajir in midair. No animal except a gorilla.

"Nice catch," I said to Marco.

He hauled me up into the cave and bodily shoved me back to where Rachel was waiting quietly.

We huddled there. Waiting. Silent. We were just a few feet down below the lip of the ravine.

Because of the overhang, I could look down and see the floor of the ravine. Down there, on the sand, lay the crumpled forms of two very dead-looking Hork-Bajir. A pair of hungry wolves were already tearing at their "dead" flesh.

Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak lay still as Cassie and Jake, who had to fly down to the ravine and morph from falcon to human to wolf, pretended to begin devouring them. Fortunately, Hork-Bajir can stand a lot of pain.

And they heal quickly. Because I'll tell you what - if I didn't know the truth, even I would have thought that two dead Hork-Bajir were about to become wolf chow.

I held my breath. Would the Yeerks be fooled? Would Visser Three believe that Rachel and I had fallen to our deaths?