Animorphs - The Unknown Part 11

I took a relieved breath.

'Still, better kill them.'

'Uh-oh,' I said.

The Hork-Bajir warrior leveled his Dracon beam at us. A second Hork-Bajir came running from inside the Bug fighter.

I felt a thrill of terror. I ordered myself to run away. But I wasn't the only creature in my head right then. Minneapolis Max was in there, too. And he didn't feel like running away.

My hindquarters bunched up and fired every muscle fiber at once. And, before I knew what was happening, I was running. But not running away. I ran straight for the first Hork-Bajir.

"HrrrEEEEE-HEEE-he-he!" I whinnied. I reared up, all the way back till I was standing on my hind legs, and I flailed madly with my forehooves.

I couldn't exactly aim my hooves, mind you. Horses aren't predators. But I flailed away and just as the Hork-Bajir was pressing the trigger...

BONK!.

"Raaahhhh!" the Hork-Bajir bellowed. He dropped the Dracon beam from his hands. It clattered on the ground, and down I came. I landed directly with both hooves on the weapon.

. CRUNCH!.

I'd like to say it was deliberate. But the truth is that with my side-vision horse eyes I could barely even see my hooves, let alone aim them. But sometimes luck is as good as skill.

'Haul b.u.t.t!' Jake yelled.

Now Minneapolis Max was ready to run away. So I ran. We all ran.

The two Hork-Bajir took off in pursuit.

'lf they catch us, we're dog food,' Rachel said. 'Two Hork-Bajir versus six horses? Not a prayer.'

She was right. And to be honest, if it had been a hundred horses versus two Hork-Bajir, the horses would have lost. 'How fast are Hork-Ba-jir?' I asked Rachel. She had morphed a Hork-Bajir once.

'Fast,' she said grimly.

We bolted. We hauled. But the two bounding Hork-Bajir were hot on our trail.

Then we saw spotlights bouncing wildly toward us. Humvees! The security troops from the base were coming out to investigate.

We ran and the Hork-Bajir hesitated. When I looked back next, they were gone.

'Well, that was stupid from start to finish,' Rachel said as we got far from Zone 91. 'We could have gotten killed. And for what? Over something even the Yeerks don't recognize.'

'Whatever that thing is, it sure doesn't look like a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps Marco admitted.

'Or a secret weapon,' Jake said. 'And it doesn't look human, but who knows?'

'lt is not a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps Ax said. '0r a weapon. But it is also not human.'

'Well, I guess we'll probably never find out what it is,' I said with a sigh.

'Why won't you find out?' Ax asked.

'Because it's not worth risking our lives again,' I said. 'lf the Yeerks don't even know what it is -'

'Of course the Yeerks don't know what it is,' Ax said calmly. 'They have never been aboard an Andalite Dome s.h.i.+p.'

One by one, we each stopped walking. One by one we turned to face Ax.

'Ax, are you telling us you do know what that thing is?' Tobias asked.

'Of course. I started to tell you, but we were interrupted.'

'So? So what is it?' Marco demanded.

'lt's a disposable module of a type used in the old days on the first generation of Andalite Dome s.h.i.+ps. When the modules were used up, they were jettisoned into s.p.a.ce. They were supposed to be aimed toward a star, so they'd be burned up without a trace. This one must have . drifted through s.p.a.ce, eventually being caught by Earth's gravity.'

'So it's a s.p.a.ce engine?'

'lt's a weapon?'

'No, of course not. It's . . . well, this is a bit embarra.s.sing. It's an Andalite Dome s.h.i.+p's modular waste disposal system.'

For about a full minute, no one said anything. Then Marco spoke. 'You're telling me the Most Secret Place On Earth, the fabled Zone Ninety-one, the Holy Grail of conspiracy nuts, is hiding the secret of an Andalite toilet?'

'Only a very primitive model,' Ax said condescendingly. 'Since those days there have been huge technological improvements.'

Chapter 21.

We got out of horse morph and into bird morph and flew home.

We alone now knew the secret of Zone 91. An entire base built to a.n.a.lyze what they thought was an alien s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p but was, in reality, a high-tech Andalite Porta-John.

There was, according to Ax, absolutely zero chance that the Andalite toilet would give humans the ability to fly through s.p.a.ce.

We had done some very important things as Animorphs. We had fought some terrible and vital battles.

This wasn't one of them.

I got home just in time to walk into my living room and realize both my parents were waiting for me.

They had their angry-parent faces on.

"Where have you been?" my mother demanded.

Mom always takes the lead in discipline. She knows my dad will give in too easily. She thinks she's tougher. She thinks that because it happens to be true.

"I was out with Rachel," I said, more or less truthfully.

"Out with Rachel doing what?" my mom hissed. "You missed dinner. It's dark out. You didn't tell us where you were going."

My mom isn't a real big person. Until she's mad. Then she somehow gets larger. She seems to rise up and tower over me. It's weird. I mean, normally she's maybe two inches taller than me, but right then she was at least eight feet tall.

"We were very worried," my father said in a soft, quiet voice.

I sighed. I could feel the guilt welling up inside me. I hate it when they say they've been worried. See, I understand about worry now. I feel worry all the time for Rachel and Jake and the others. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and worry for the whole human race.

"I'm really sorry," I said.

"Where. Were. You. Young. Lady?" my mom asked, doing her one-word-at-a-time voice.

"I was just with Rachel," I said. "And Jake."

My parents exchanged a look. My dad put his hand over his mouth. He was hiding a smile. At the same time, he was trying to look extra stern.

My mom leaned back and put her hands on her hips. "You know we have discussed your dating," she said, "and I thought we decided you were still too young."

"Dating?" I said weakly.

My mom sighed. Then she shook her head. "Maybe it's time for us to have another talk about the birds and the bees."

I swear the blood drained out of my whole head. Then it came rus.h.i.+ng back into just my cheeks and neck so that they burned. "Urn . . . I'm not dating."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," my dad said gruffly. "You're a normal young girl, you have certain . . . interests, certain . . . fascinations, a natural . . . curiosity."

At this point I wanted to dig a hole right in the living room floor, crawl in, and pull the rug over me.

"All we're saying is be honest with us," my mom said, all stern again. "Do not make us worry about you."

"Absolutely! I swear! I will never make you worry again! Can I go now?"

I raced from the living room into the kitchen. I wanted to make myself a sandwich, carry it up to my room, and try to do at least some of my homework.

And I really did not want to be subjected to a big talk abut boys. Good grief!

I was just getting the turkey from the refrigerator when a thought occurred to me. I tiptoed back to the kitchen door and pressed my ear against it.

"See?" I heard my mother say smugly.

"You were right, as usual," my dad said.

"It's the only way. Let's face it, Ca.s.sie works so hard already, what can you do? You can't give her punishment work or make her stay in her room."

"We have a very cool kid."

That kind of gave me a warm feeling. Your parents have to love you. But I felt as if my parents liked me, too. As a person.

"Yes, we do have a cool kid," my mom agreed. "But on those rare occasions when she screws up the only way to really discipline her is to embarra.s.s her."

They both laughed. Hah-hah-hah.

"Next time we can tell her we're going to have Jake and his parents over to discuss rules for their relations.h.i.+p," my mom said.

More laughter. Hee-hee-hee.

"Or as a backup plan, we could threaten to take her in to Father Banion for a family discussion about intimacy." That was my dad's suggestion.

So much for my warm inner glow. So my parents knew I liked Jake. And they knew that any discussion of that fact would embarra.s.s me to death.

Parents. You can never completely trust them.

I finished making my sandwich and went upstairs. My room was a disaster area. I am not a neat person. I went to my desk, moved some of my junk aside to clear a work s.p.a.ce and opened my binder to find my - Backup plan?

That's the phrase my dad had used. And Visser Three had said it, too.

Backup plan? Why would the Yeerks want a backup plan? After all, they'd penetrated the big secret of Zone 91 and it was a toilet. True, they had not understood what they'd seen, but they obviously knew whatever it was wasn't a Yeerk s.h.i.+p or a weapon.

So why would they still be interested?

I shook it off. Who cared now? We'd wasted enough time at Zone 91.1 had better things to worry about. Like homework. And the discovery that my parents knew more about me than I wanted them to.

I did some homework and I went to bed. At four o'clock in the morning, I woke up. I sat bolt upright and stared into the darkness.

"So it's a toilet," I cried. "That's not important. It's an alien toilet! An alien toilet! That's the point!"

Of course! Even if it was just a toilet, it meant the government had proof of life on other planets. Proof that the Yeerks did not want them to have.

The Yeerks were invading Earth. One of the reasons they were getting away with it was that no sensible person would ever believe it. Even if I went on national TV and announced that aliens were invading, who'd ever believe me? Even if I morphed right in front of people, they'd figure it was just some other kind of weirdness.

But if the government came out and said, "Look, we have proof that aliens exist," then people would start listening. People might even be prepared to believe that the Yeerks were among us.

That's why the Yeerks couldn't just forget about Zone 91. They couldn't allow the government to have any kind of proof of alien life.

There was a backup plan. That's what the visser had said.

And I suddenly had a pretty good suspicion what it was. Tomorrow evening at nineteen hundred hours, The Gardens would be full of people who worked at Zone 91. Just like the sign-up sheet at the base had said.

I was willing to bet the Yeerks would strike then. What better place to grab some key people from Zone 91 and fill their heads with Yeerk slugs?

Well, there were probably plenty of better places, actually. But Visser Three was not known for being patient. And the trip to The Gardens would be his soonest opportunity to strike.