"Fine. Next question: How do we get inside?"

"With incredible timing, that's how," I said. As we watched, a Taxxon came writhing and shimmying out through the one door. Its sides scraped as it pushed through.

"Next Taxxon to come out, we go in," I said.

"What if another Taxxon doesn't come out?" Ax wondered.

"Don't you Andalites believe in luck?"

"No."

"Me neither. How about hope?"

"We believe in hope."

"Good. Now me, I believe in Jake. See him over behind the left building?

The tiger? I think he's just about ready to -"

"Grrrrooooaaaaarrrrr!"

"- do that."

The roar was the roar of a tiger. A noise that could make adults want to crawl in bed with their teddy bears and pull the blankets over their heads.

The effect on the Taxxon in the doorway was instantaneous. He decided to back up.

"0h, man! Okay, we go now!" I said. I released my talon grip on the steel cross-beam, swept my wings back to gain speed, aimed for that doorway, opened my wings, adjusted my tail, and blew just over the Taxxon's heaving, squirming back at about fifty miles an hour.

"Yah-HAH! Oh, man, that's still fun!"

A harrier and a red-tailed hawk were milliseconds behind me.

Past the distracted Taxxon without being seen! Through the doorway, way too fast! A long hallway. The end of the long hallway, coming up way, way, WAY too fast!

"Look out!"

"Turn!" Tobias yelled.

"Where?"

"Doorway! Now!" Tobias practically screamed.

I banked my wings and shot through an open side door, scraping my back and my right wing on the doorjamb.

A room. A desk. A chair. Walls! Walls! Walls!

I flared to kill my speed, but not enough.

"Left!" Tobias yelled.

I banked an amazingly sharp left and flew through a second doorway into an almost totally dark room. I was no longer going fifty miles an hour.

I was probably only doing about fifteen. But

let me tell you: Flying at fifteen miles an hour in a dark room where you can't see the walls is slightly too exciting.

"Tight circle!" Tobias said. "Tighter, spiral down, get ready to land!" WHUMPF!

WHUMPF!

CRASH! Rattle . . . rattle . . .

Ax had hit the desk. Tobias had hit the floor. I had hit a metal trash can and gone rolling inside it.

"Everyone okay?" I asked.

"l have damaged my bird body," Ax said calmly, "but I am alive."

"Me, too," I said, testing a painful tail. "l think I broke my tail."

"Good grief. This is the last time I ever fly through a building with you two amateurs," Tobias said.

"0kay, let's demorph," I said. "There's no one around, and Ax and I aren't going to be flying till we remorph."

With my excellent osprey hearing, I could make out sounds of damage and destruction coming from somewhere outside.

"What do you think Rachel morphed?" Tobias asked. "Elephant or bear?"

"She'd do them both at the same time if she could figure out how," I muttered.

I demorphed as quickly as I could. We'd done a lot of morphing in a very short period of time. I was getting tired. But still, within a few minutes, it was me as human, Tobias morphed into his human shape, and Ax as his own Andalite self.

"You know, sometimes there's just a very fine line between us and the Three Stooges," I said.

"What are stooges?" Ax asked.

"A stooge is a guy stupid enough to run around inside a Yeerk stronghold wearing a pair of bike shorts and accompanied by a Deer-man from outer space and a mouse-eating Bird-boy. That's a stooge."

I led the way from the darkened room. Ax came behind, tail at the ready.

Tobias walked awkwardly at the rear. He's still getting used to being able to be human again.

"I can't believe I lived most of my life with these lame human eyes," he grumbled. "You people are blind."

"Shhh."

I crept out into a brightly lit hallway. I took a second to try and figure out which direction to go. At the end of the hallway was a door, different from the others. On it was a gold symbol of some kind. Like the presidential seal.

"That way. Ax? If anyone pops out of any of these doors ..." I let it hang. Ax knew what to

do. He twirled the bladed end of his tail, limbering it up, I guess.

We scurried down the hallway. I reached for the door handle. I opened it.

"Come in," a voice said.

I froze there. My head poking through the open door. My friends were hidden behind me.

"I said come in," a sinister voice said. "Never make me give an order twice. You won't live to hear me give it a third time."

So I stepped through the doorway, closing it quickly behind me, blocking Ax and Tobias from view.

And I walked on wooden, rickety legs to the big desk in the center of the room. I walked over and stood there. Facing her. Facing my mother.

he looked the same.

But she also looked different.

Same dark eyes, same mouth, same movie-star hair. But there was a different soul looking out through those eyes. They were hard eyes. Mean eyes. Ruthless, pitiless eyes.

Like the eyes of a shark. No more gentle or sweet than the cold, eerie eyes of a hammerhead shark.

I was glad. You see, I had wondered whether she had been a Controller for long before she faked her own death. I had wondered whether it was a Yeerk kissing me good night, and teasing me about my vanity, and laughing at my dumb jokes.