Rachel rolled her eyes. "We didn't have a chance to go into it, all right? We barely got the one Hork-Bajir to the cave."

"I mean, do female Hork-Bajir cry at 'chick' movies?" Marco went on, talking mostly to himself. "Do they get all goo-goo when they see a baby?"

"What about the female?" Jake asked Rachel and me.

Rachel shrugged and looked away.

"We don't know," I said. "We saw her get knocked into the ditch. That was it."

"Man, this whole thing stinks. It's a trap. It's a setup," Marco said.

"But I think the real question is, do female Hork-Bajir get all weird around bugs and snakes?"

"l don't think so. About the trap, I mean."

"Weird around bugs and snakes?" Cassie asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Is that how girls are, Marco?" With that, she reached into a low drawer beneath the bottom row of cages. A second later, a snake was lightly tossed through the air in Marco's direction.

"Ahhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Get it off me!"

Cassie retrieved the harmless garden snake and put it back in its drawer while everyone laughed. Except Ax, who doesn't always get human humor.

Even Marco had to laugh. "Oh, that was so not fair. Funny, yes. Fair, no. Can we please act more mature here?"

"Sure, Marco," Rachel said. "Why don't you leave and we'll automatically be a more mature group?"

"Could we stick to business?" Jake asked. But he was still smiling from the snake thing, so no one took him too seriously.

"Why would a Yeerk . . . even a Yeerk inside a Hork-Bajir, want to run away?" Marco asked. "Sooner or later he has to get back to the Yeerk pool. It doesn't make any sense."

Rachel sighed. "Marco, how dumb are you? Don't you get it? These aren't Controllers. There is no Yeerk. Somehow these two Hork-Bajir are free."

Cassie looked thoughtful. "Isn't it kind of a

coincidence that you just happened to be in the area where the Hork-Bajir were escaping?"

"Yes," I said. "Definitely. Especially since I wasn't even heading there. I was actually trying to go somewhere else."

I saw the two stalk eyes on Ax's head swing up to focus on me with new interest. His main eyes stayed on Jake.

Cassie gave me a tilted-head puzzled look. "You mean -"

But Rachel interrupted. "Look, we need to decide what to do about this.

We've got this Hork-Bajir male in a cave. But the Yeerks will keep looking for him. And I have to tell you, this Hork-Bajir is not exactly Stephen Hawking."

"Who?" Cassie asked.

"He is a human physicist," Ax responded. "l've read some of his writings. He is very brilliant, but also very wrong about several things. For example, when he refers to the structure of atoms in -"

Jake threw up his hands in exasperation. "Is there any chance we could stick to business?"

"I remember when Jake used to be fun," Marco said in a loud whisper.

"Now he's such a grown-up."

"I was never fun," Jake said with a tolerant smile.

"No, you were never smart, but you were a/ways fun," Marco teased.

"The question is, what do we do about this Hork-Bajir?" Rachel asked.

"He's sitting out there in a cave in the woods moaning about his kalashi. What do we do with him?"

We all looked at Ax like he'd have the answer.

"l have never known of a free Hork-Bajir," Ax said. "They've been slaves of the Yeerks for a long time. But it is possible. Maybe somehow, while this Hork-Bajir's Yeerk was in the Yeerk pool, the Hork-Bajir managed to escape. It is possible. His wife as well. In which case these may be the only free Hork-Bajir in the entire galaxy. The only two free members of their species."

"Imagine . . ." Cassie whispered. "Imagine being the only two free humans in all the world ..."

Somehow no one felt like messing around anymore. Even Marco looked thoughtful. If the Yeerks won, humans would be no different than the Hork-Bajir - absolute slaves of the Yeerk empire.

"So what do we do with the only free Hork-Bajir in the galaxy?" Marco asked.

"What does the Hork-Bajir want to do?" Ax asked me and Rachel.

Rachel and I stared blankly at each other. "You know," I admitted, "we never asked."

"Then I guess that's step one," Jake said. "Let's find out what the Hork-Bajir wants."

Everyone agreed. But I saw that Cassie was still troubled. Under her breath she muttered, "And then let's find out why Tobias was somewhere he didn't mean to be."

I don't think anyone else heard her. But I did.

Why had I been there?

Lt took a while to figure out how we were going to deal with the Hork-Bajir. In the end, we decided I'd go ahead with Ax. The others would morph and stay close enough to hear what was happening.

The problem was, we were afraid to be honest with the Hork-Bajir. It could all still be some kind of a trap. We couldn't let anyone know who we really were. Or what we really were.

See, the Yeerks know that there is someone out here messing with them.

They know they're being attacked by someone using animal morphs. Since only the Andalites have the power to morph, the Yeerks assume we must all be Andalites. They figure we must be a group of An-dalite guerillas.

We want them to think that. We sure don't want them realizing that the Animorphs are mostly a bunch of human kids. If they ever found out where Jake and Cassie and Rachel and Marco live . . . well, that would be the end of us.

The cave where Rachel and I left the Hork-Bajir was small for a creature of his size. It was hidden by brush and fallen branches. It went in about twenty feet, but was only about five feet tall.

I landed on a fallen branch outside the cave entrance. I waited till everyone was in position. Then I said, "Hey, in there. Hork-Bajir. It's me, the talking bird. I'm coming in. With a friend. "

It's hard for a bird to push through bushes and thorns, so Ax stepped forward, almost dainty on his four hooves. He pushed the tangle aside with his weak arms. He stuck his head inside the dark cave.