The reaction was immediate.

A bladed arm slashed, missing Ax's head by inches. Ax jerked back and cocked his tail to strike.

"NO!" I yelled. "Listen in there, you weed-

whacker-looking jerk, calm down! And Ax-man, take it easy!"

The bladed arm withdrew slowly, and Ax relaxed his tail.

I took a few seconds to slow my heart down. When a bird is startled it wants to fly. Natural instinct. I had to fight to control it and stay put.

"What's going on?" Cassie asked.

I looked up at the sky. Rachel and Cassie were up there in bird morph, Rachel as her bald-eagle self and Cassie as an owl. The sun was just setting. And when darkness fell an owl would be a lot more useful than an eagle. The two of them were flying cover. Making sure we weren't disturbed.

"0h, nothing much," I said. "We're all just saying hello. By the way, is everything clear up there, Cassie? Rachel?"

"Yep. Everything is clear," Rachel called down.

I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to steady my nerves. Neither Ax nor I wanted to go into that cave anymore. You just can't be careless when you're dealing with Hork-Bajir. One fast move and they can leave you wondering why your head is rolling across the grass.

"Hork-Bajir, come on out," I said firmly.

Slowly the big creature crawled out. He stood erect, blinking in the dim evening light.

"Not Hork-Bajir," he said. "Jara Hamee. My name. Jara Hamee."

"He's kidding, right?" Jake said in my head. "His name is Jeremy?" I glanced up to see a big, round, white-and-orange face. A face with deep, intelligent eyes and yellowish teeth about four inches long. It was Jake, in his tiger morph. He was above the cave opening on an outcropping of rock, if the Hork-Bajir had made a wrong move, Jake would have been all over him.

"You better talk to our boy Jara Hamee here," I said to Ax. I figured Ax would know more about talking to other aliens than me.

Ax held his hands open in a gesture of peace. He lowered his tail still further. I could see he really didn't want to do that. The air between the Andalite and the Hork-Bajir seemed to crackle with tension.

"My name is Aximili," Ax said.

"You are Hruthin. Andalite."

"Yes."

"You kill me?"

"No. I won't kill you," Ax said.

"Hruthin kill Hork-Bajir," the Hork-Bajir named Jara Hamee said.

"Hork-Bajir kill Hruthin."

"This is going really well," Marco said dryly. Then he sang new words for that Barney song. "l kill you, you kill me, we're an alien family . . ." I saw Marco settling in behind a stand of trees off to the left. He looked like a very large, very hairy man. A gorilla, actually. We had decided to have plenty of muscle ready, just in case the Hork-Bajir turned out to be trouble.

"Andalites tried to save the Hork-Bajir from the Yeerks," Ax said, sounding a little defensive.

The Hork-Bajir stared at Ax's face. "You darkap. You fail."

"Yes. We failed. But I'm here now. And I don't kill Hork-Bajir . . .

unless they are tools of the Yeerks."

The Hork-Bajir made a sort of forward jerk with its head and a raspy little sound in its throat. It sounded like a derisive laugh. But who knows? I had no idea what a Hork-Bajir laugh should sound like. Or even if they laughed at all.

WHAP!

The Hork-Bajir slapped his chest with his left hand. It startled me enough that I was halfway airborne before I got a grip.

The Hork-Bajir threw out his arm and said, "Jara Hamee escaped the Yeerks. Jara Hamee free! Jara Hamee has his own head." He pressed both hands gently against his snakelike head.

"How do we know you are free? How do we know you "have your own head"?"

Ax asked him coldly.

The Hork-Bajir looked puzzled. Then, to my complete and total shock, he made a quick movement of his arm.

It was faster than a human eye could have seen.

But I saw it.

I saw the wrist blade slice right into his own head. He sliced right into his own head!

"No!" I yelled in horror.

"Yah!" Jake yelped.

There was a gash six inches deep in the Hork-Bajir's head. He reached up with his clawed hands and pulled the gash open. He pulled his own head open! And it's not like it didn't hurt him. I could see the pain on his face.

Blood - or something - oozed in shades of deep red and deeper blue-green. He held the gash open and we stared, Ax and me, right into the Hork-Bajir's brain. I guess Jake and Marco could see it pretty clearly, too.

"0h, man," Marco moaned. "Can I just say "yuck"?"

Jara Hamee pressed the two sides of the gash together. He held the cut for a few seconds, and with amazing speed, the bleeding coagulated.

A long scab began to form over the gash.

That's when I started breathing again. I had stopped. Then I started my heart up. I swear it had stopped,too.

"Did you see a Yeerk in there in his head?" I asked Ax shakily.

"No," Ax said, just as shaken as I was. "No Yeerk. "

"Did that scare the pee out of you, Ax-man, or doesn't that kind of thing bother you Andalites?"

"l am as peeless as you, Tobias, my friend."

"That wasn't necessary," I told Jara Hamee.

His face - insofar as he had a face - was still scrunched up in pain. He was breathing hard and sweating the same blue-green fluid I'd seen inside his head.

"Necessary," he grunted through his pain. "Jara Hamee is strong. But Jara Hamee needs help."

"Help to do what?" Ax asked him gently.

The Hork-Bajir stared at Ax, then shifted his gaze to me. "Flying animal saw my kalashi. Jara Hamee must find her. Jara Hamee ..." He struggled to come up with a word. Then he made a gesture with his hands, as if someone were tearing something out of him. As if someone were removing his heart.