"Are you okay?"

"No," he whispered. "It happens sometimes. It's the Yeerk. You see, he's mad. Insane. He's in my head and he won't get out. But he is insane!

Insane!"

"Okay, okay, try and chill, okay, Mr. Edelman?"

"Yes. Yes."

"Look, I can't stay much longer. But you have to tell me: How is the Yeerk staying alive without Kandrona rays? You've been in here for more than three days."

I cannot possibly describe the way he looked at me then. Hope. Dread.

Amazement. All three.

I grabbed him again by the shoulders. "I know it's weird, but you have to trust me. How does it happen? Why is the Yeerk insane? How does it survive without the Kandrona?"

"Andalite?" Mr. Edelman whispered wonder-ingly.

"Yes," I lied. "Andalite."

"It's the food," he said, gushing the information. "The food! During the famine after... after you Andalites destroyed the one Kandrona, we found out, they found out that a certain food could help them get by. For a while. But there were problems with it - AAHHH! Yeft, hiyiyarg felorka!

Ghafrash fit Visser!"

Mr. Edelman jerked and slavered and yelled for a few minutes and I waited and worried that someone might come. Some attendant or doctor or something. But no one did.

I wished I could help the man. I had spent enough time close to Controllers of various types - human, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxon - to guess that some of what he was saying was in the basic Yeerk language. And other words were Hork-Bajir. Yeerks seem to adopt some of the language of their hosts. The Yeerk who was in Edelman's head must have been a Hork-Bajir-Controller at one point.

Mr. Edelman calmed down and got control of himself again. "Sorry. The Yeerk breaks through sometimes. What you hear is the raving of a crazy Yeerk."

"It's okay," I said. "What's this food? The food that allows Yeerks to survive without the Kandrona?"

"They discovered it quite by accident. No one guessed what it could do.

No one realized it would prove addictive. But it did. Terribly addictive. And over time, the continued ingestion of it began to eliminate the Yeerks' need for Kandrona rays. At the same time, it drove them crazy. You see, it seems to literally replace some of a Yeerk's brain stem."

I nodded. I could barely contain my excitement.

A food that could destroy Yeerks! "What is the food, Mr. Edelman?"

"Oatmeal," he said. "But only the instant kind. And then, only the maple and ginger flavor." He shook his head. "Yeerks cannot resist the addiction, once exposed. And they slowly, but surely, drive themselves mad. There are dozens of men and women like me. In places like this. On the streets. Or worse."

"Thanks for telling me," I said. "Urn . . . Listen, is there anything I can do for you?"

He shook his head a little sadly. "The Yeerks will leave me alone. After all, who is going to believe a madman? I ... I am sorry I tried to destroy myself. It all just got to be too much. This . . . this alien lunatic in my head. My family wanting to keep me locked up in here."

"Isn't there some way to get the Yeerk out of your head?"

"No. No. He will'live as long as I do."

I've never seen sadder eyes. I hope I never see eyes that sad again. I looked away.

"I just wish . . . the times when I am myself, when I am in control, I wish I didn't have to spend them in here."

He looked out through the dirty bathroom window with its heavy wire mesh.

We have our ultimate weapon," Marco reported to the others when we were all safely assembled back in Cassie's barn. "Maple and ginger oatmeal."

"Instant maple and ginger oatmeal," I corrected.

"Instant," Marco agreed.

Cassie, Ax, and Tobias all just stared. Tobias was his hawk self, and he can really stare. Ax was in his own Andalite body, and he could stare with four eyes at once.

"Oatmeal," Cassie said.

"Oatmeal," Jake confirmed. "But only the instant maple and ginger. !

guess they don't know why."

"Maybe it's the maple," Tobias suggested.

"Maybe it's the ginger. Or maybe it's the 'instant.' Whatever that is,"

I said. "Who cares? Suddenly we have a weapon to use on human-Controllers. A human-Controller who eats this stuff gets hooked and the Yeerk in his head goes nuts. What we have to do is find some way to get a lot of this stuff into a lot of Controllers."

I took a sidelong glance at Cassie. Something told me she was not going to approve of this. But Cassie was bending over a cage, poking her fingers through the wire to check a bandage on an injured badger.

To my surprise, it was Tobias who said, "You know, something about this doesn't feel totally okay. You know?"

Marco, who had been lounging on a bale of hay, jumped up. "What? What?

We have green kryptonite here! We have something that can make Yeerks go nuts. Why is that not a good thing?"

"It sounds to me like they get addicted to it. Like a drug," Tobias said.

I winced. "It's oatmeal, okay? Not anything illegal."

"A drug is in the eye of the beholder," Tobias argued. "lf you get addicted to the illegal stuff and it messes you up, that's a drug to you. If you get addicted to oatmeal and it messes you up -"

"It's still just oatmeal," I said. "Oatmeal is oatmeal. Jeez! I can't believe we're having this conversation."

"Look," Marco said, "the bigger question here is WHO CARES?! They're Yeerks. They're the enemy. They attacked us, not the other way around."

"What about the hosts? The humans?" Ax asked. "The Yeerks are made invulnerable to their normal hunger for Kandrona rays. They can live inside their human hosts forever, even if the oatmeal is later taken away. These hosts would lose all hope."

"If we lose this war we're all going to be without hope," I said. "Ax, I can't believe you, of all people, would even hesitate."

Ax swiveled his stalk eyes toward me. "We Andalites have been at war longer than you. We understand the temptation to sink to the level of your enemy."