Then, up and up! I felt myself flying upward at an insane speed. But still I clung to the ropes that were threads in a cotton shirt.

The host had been reinfested. I was on a Controller. I was on his shirt, scuttling for cover beneath a damp collar.

"Hah! Let's see the hunter robots find me here," I said triumphantly.

I was alive. I had escaped from the Yeerk pool itself!

But I couldn't be elated. I didn't know what had happened to my friends.

For all I knew, they had not made it.

I was riding safe and secure, clutching to twisted cotton threads the size of bridge cables.

"Cheap shirt," I muttered to no one. I could feel the roughness of the fabric.

Eventually, I was going to have to jump. Hopefully, the person I was on would go into one of the buildings. Hopefully, he was not going to head straight back out of the Yeerk pool to the outside world.

I didn't want to leave the place. Not yet. I had to find out what had happened to the others.

I felt a breeze blowing across me. I felt the fabric ripple. We were walking. How fast, how far? No way to know.

Had the quality of the light changed? Impossible to say. I had to take a shot in the dark. Had to guess.

I raced out from under the collar and headed uphill. I climbed up onto what I assumed was a shoulder.

Could I do this? Could ants jump? Only one way to find out. I ran out to the end of the shoulder. I carefully released the grip of each of my six legs. One by one. Then I crouched and pushed off.

I guess the movement of the person who'd been carrying me was enough to make it work. I didn't so much jump as I rolled off the edge.

I fell! Forever. I swear it took me ten seconds to hit the ground, and in that time I tumbled, totally out of control, mostly blind. I had no way of knowing when I would hit. And even though I knew an animal as small as an ant wouldn't be hurt by the fall, it was frightening.

POOMPF!

I hit. I rolled onto my legs. Where was I? I felt around with my antennae. A smooth surface.

Okay. Fine. I was on a floor. Where I could easily be stepped on.

Great. Now to find someplace dark where I could demorph without being seen.

I raced across the floor, totally unaware of where I might be. Then, darkness. But what did it mean? Was it a different room? Or had I just crawled under a cupboard or something?

I ran on for a while, making sure that the space I was in was large enough. Then I began to demorph.

It's a long, long way up from the ground going from ant to human. But my eyes didn't return till I was halfway demorphed. I looked around. Dark, but not the dark of the cave. There was dim, gray light here. It outlined sharp edges and right angles.

A storeroom. There were boxes piled all around me. They seemed to be made of blue plastic. I leaned against one as I finished returning to my own body.

Human again! I looked around. My eyes had had plenty of time to adjust to the gloom. There was writing on some of the boxes. But not any alphabet I'd ever seen.

There was a square pad outlined in red, just an inch on each side.

"Well, why not?" I muttered. I pressed the pad. Instantly the top of the box came loose with a sound like a vacuum seal breaking. It sounded like when someone opens a can of coffee.

I looked inside. Then I smiled. I reached in and lifted out a hand-size Dracon beam.

"Cool."

The grip was weird. Designed for Hork-Bajir hands. But that was okay.

Right by my thumb there was a slide. It went up and down. "Power settings," I decided. I had to use my middle finger to reach the trigger.

Sudden light!

A door opened. A Hork-Bajir warrior was framed there. He blinked once in the darkness.

I raised my hand and squeezed the trigger.

TSEEEWWW!

The Hork-Bajir dropped like a sack of dirty laundry.

I stepped over to him. He was still breathing. I was breathing, too, in ragged gasps.

"So, that was the low-power setting," I said.

Then, "What's keeping you?"

A human voice! Female. I ducked back into the darkness.

She stopped when she saw the Hork-Bajir stretched out on the floor. She was just about to yell when . . .

TSEEEWWWW!

Down she went, sprawling right across the Hork-Bajir. She groaned once, then passed out.

I looked at the Dracon beam in my hand. "Cool. Phasers on stun, Captain."

I took the woman's shoes. As always, you can't morph shoes or bulky clothing. I took her blazer, too. It wasn't a bad blazer. I checked the label. "DKNY. Excellent. A little big for me, but okay."

I pulled my hair back into a ponytail. The blazer was large, the shoes were half a size too small, and the glasses I took from her face made the world seem a little distorted around the edges. But all in all, it wasn't a bad look. And I wanted to look good for my first trip around the Yeerk pool as a human.

I stepped out of the storeroom into the office outside. No one there. A second office outside that one. A man sat there. He was wearing a cotton shirt with a collar. He'd been my ride. Before he could turn around, I fired.

TSEEEEWWWW!

He crumpled in his chair and looked like he was asleep. Which, of course, he was.

I slid the Dracon beam into the pocket of the blazer. And then I stepped out into the world of the Yeerk pool.

I was slightly tense.

I was walking around the Yeerk pool complex, wearing someone else's coat and shoes and glasses. I was carrying a Dracon beam. The smart thing to do would be to head for the nearest exit.

But I had to see if the others were okay. Which meant searching the entire complex.

The Yeerk pool itself is a sort of pond. But all around it is a base, with warehouses, armories, administration buildings, a motor pool, and a cafeteria for each of the major species of Controllers.

It was always being enlarged. Around the edges were human construction equipment:

Caterpillar earthmovers and backhoes and dump trucks.