The bell was a safety alarm. It was heralding the opening of the main doors of the hangar. I saw the guards move their automatic weapons down off their shoulders and into easy firing position.

KRRR-Chunk! Rrrrreeeeeeeeee!

The doors began to open, motors whining loudly in my horse ears.

And that's when the second group of horses started to run. Three horse- Controllers, followed, after a moment's hesitation, by Marco, Ax, and Rachel, suddenly broke into full-out gallop straight for the hangar door.

"Oh, man," Tobias groaned. "Why do I get the feeling there's going to be shooting soon?"

"Why are they doing that?" I asked. "lt makes no sense. Why hide in horse bodies so you can come and go without anyone noticing, and then suddenly do this?"

"Because the subtle approach isn't working," Jake said grimly.

"Remember what they said earlier: Do this and they're out of here. It's a final desperation move."

"So what do we do?"

"We play follow-the-leader," Jake said grimly. "And we hope these Yeerks have a good plan."

Suddenly, our group of horse-Controllers surged forward. I was startled, but I quickly ran after them, followed by Jake and Tobias.

The first group was racing full tilt toward the hangar. They were almost there. The armed guards were watching them in bemusement. But you could see the bemusement turning to puzzlement. And finally ... too late .

. . fear.

WHAM!

The lead horse slammed bodily into one guard, knocking him into a second guard. Hooves flashed as the horse ran over the guard. I could see it, even with my weak horse eyes, because we were close now.

Running straight for the door of the hangar.

We were there!

A madhouse! Guards mingling with seemingly insane horses. Guards being knocked to the ground.

"Get these horses outta here!" someone bawled.

"Neigh-heh-heh-heh!" the horses screamed.

"Sarge, what do we do?"

"Ahhhh!"

"HrrrEEEE-heee-he-he!"

"Shoot 'em!"

"Negative, soldier, do not fire! We could hit what's inside!"

Our group jumped into the melee of frantic soldiers and madly dancing, rearing, screaming horses. But our group stayed close together and plowed straight through.

Straight through and into the Most Secret Place On Earth.

Chapter 19

Into the hangar we thundered!

My hooves scrabbled on smooth, painted concrete. Through the eyes on the side of my head, I saw flashes of heavy equipment, banks of com- puter consoles, and flashing numerical readouts.

There were men and women in white lab coats running as if we were a pack of wolves or something. There were uniformed airmen running after us, waving their guns in the air. There were stuffy old officers with medals on their chests, standing with hands on hips and outraged expressions on their faces.

And everyone was yelling.

"What the blazing Hades is going on here?"

"Stop those horses!"

"Shoot!"

"Don't shoot!"

"Help! I'm allergic to horses!"

It was nuts. But the truth is, in a weird way, it was fun, too. Minneapolis Max was running. And when he was running, he felt fine.

Every nerve in my big horse body was tingling. I was incredibly alive with fear and excitement and the lust for competition. I wasn't some plow horse! I was a running fool. I was a born and bred champion! A big, tough, dominant stallion!

Yee hah!

"HREEE-HEEE-He-he!" I screamed for no reason, scaring a woman in a lab coat into dropping her open yogurt on the floor.

We thundered by, our weird herd of real horses, Yeerk-infested horses, and Animorphs in horse morphs.

And then we came to the room. You could tell it was the center, the nexus, the reason for all the security.

"lt's gonna work," Marco exulted. "We're in! We're in!"

It was glass on all sides. Glass that looked like it could be a foot thick.

Through that glass we saw a pedestal of shining steel. And all around that pedestal were cameras, sensors, wires, lights, glowing screens, and rows of massive computers.

Bathed in the light, high on the pedestal, was something not from this planet.

It was about eight feet across. The shape was like a cube with the corners rounded off. The entire surface was covered with tubing and painted symbols.

At one end was an opening, large enough for a person to walk inside. I could just barely get a glimpse of the inside. It was smooth, a lovely green in color, with soft lighting. There was some sort of instrumentation on one wall.

"That's it! That's it! The most closely guarded secret in all of history!" I've never heard Marco sound happier.

Jake and Ax and Marco and I, along with three or four horse-Controllers, all stared transfixed at what Marco had called "the most closely guarded secret in all of history."

"Cullem fallat?"one of the horse-Controllers asked.

"He wants to know what it is," Ax translated.

"Jahalan fornella,"another horse-Controller said.

I didn't even need Ax's translation to understand: The Yeerks had no idea what it was.

They had succeeded. They had busted in.

They had laid eyes on the big secret. But they had no clue as to what it was.

"SERGEANT! GET those HORSES out of my facility! NOW!" a colonel bellowed.

"Yes, sir!" the sergeant yelled. "Horses! About face!"

It must have surprised the poor sergeant when, amazingly, we all complied. Animorphs and Yeerks, we turned and walked away.

Chapter 20

It was getting dark by the time we walked away, none the wiser, from the Most Secret Place On Earth.

The horse-Controllers walked glumly away into the Dry Lands. We shadowed them, keeping just a little distance. We'd been in morph for more than an hour. But Jake decided we should stay a while longer.

"l don't get this," Marco complained. "l don't get this at all. It was a success! The Yeerks did it. They broke into the hangar. They saw . . . we all saw what was in there. So why are they de-pressed?"

"Ax says they don't know what it is they saw," Jake pointed out.

"lt didn't look like a spaceships Rachel said. "But it was definitely something alien."

"Yeah, but what?" I said. "lf the Yeerks don't know, and we don't know, and probably the scientists back at the base don't know, then what's the point?"

""lt is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Shakespeare," Tobias said. "Every conspiracy nut in the world is obsessed by what's back there in that hangar. We saw it, and we don't even know what it is."

"Actually . . ." Ax began. Then he stopped.

"Actually, what?"Rachel pressed.

"Oh, well ... I sort of know what it is. It's kind of—"

"Look!" I yelled. Something was swooping in fast across the darkening desert. It flew along the ground, just inches above the scattered scruffy trees. It churned up the dust as it came. It was smallish, no bigger than a large human fighter plane. But it was shaped like a streamlined, headless beetle. There were long, serrated points aimed straight forward on either side.

"Bugfighter!"

I had to resist the urge to run. That was only natural. But what was strange was that once more I smelled fear from the horse-Controllers.

They were scared of that Bug fighter. More scared than they'd been in rushing the hangar.