Applegate, K A - Animorphs 24 - The Suspicion Page 2

  We went through swinging doors into a loading dock area. There was furniture piled here and there. Boxes of electronic stuff. Old TVs. A lot of old clothes and a jumbled pile of toys. Dolls, action figures, games, Legos, a tricycle. It was like all the toys of the last decade were having a convention on the cold concrete floor.

  18 "Okay, do you see it?" Jake asked me.

  I stepped gingerly around the scattered toys, picking my way over hairless Barbies and headless X-Men. Then I spotted a tangle of three toys.

  "There it is!"

  "Next to the Klingon battle cruiser and the G.I. Joe Attack Module?"

  I rolled my eyes. "You're such a boy. Sometimes I almost forget you're . . . you know. I mean, it's sweet."

  "Awwww." That would be Rachel, of course.

  Jake sighed and went to pick up the toy spaceship. He turned it over, wrinkling his brow in puzzlement.

  Then, through the open loading bay . . .

  A swift, silvery machine, no more than five or six inches long, swooped into the room.

  "Whoa," Jake said. "Toys have gotten so cool. I never had a toy spaceship that could -"

  Tseeew! Tseeew!

  "Ahhh! Owww!"

  "What?" I cried, jumping to Jake's side.

  He was cradling his right arm. I looked at it and saw two tiny holes burned through the sleeve of his morphing outfit.

  "That little toy spaceship just shot me!"

  19

  Most Omnipotent Leader! We have located the fools of the Galaxy Blaster. They have allowed themselves to be taken by the large aliens of this planet. But your loyal ship, Planet Crusher, will destroy all who stand in our way and mill save that other unworthy ship so that they might, perhaps by mere accident, serve your great will!

  - From the log of the Helmacron ship, Planet Crusher

  The small silver ship blew past us and I saw the engine nacelles glow an electric blue. It soared up toward the warehouse style roof then turned back toward us.

  Tseeew! Tseeew!

  I felt two pinpricks on my left cheek. "Oww! That hurts!"

  20 "Let's back off!" Jake said.

  "Back off?" Rachel yelled. "Back off from a toy? I don't think so." She snatched up a wooden baseball bat from the pile of toys and rested it expertly on her shoulder. "Come on, you little punk!"

  Tseeew! Tseeew!

  "Ahhh! My hair! They shot my hair."

  We all looked down in horror. There, on the concrete, lay the evidence: half a dozen long, blond hairs. The ends were still smoking.

  "Okay, that's it, they're dead," Rachel said and swung the bat.

  The tiny spacecraft ducked as the bat blew past, inches above it.

  "I hate to say it," Jake said, unable to stifle a grin. "But since Marco isn't here to say it... steeeeee-RIKE one!"

  "Oh, that's very amusing, Jake," Rachel snapped. "I'll laugh right after I knock these little creeps into the bleachers!"

  The ship turned once more and came at us from the side.

  Tseeew! Tseeew!

  This time we all ducked. Rachel swung the bat blindly over her head, but missed.

  "Like I said, how about if we back off?" Jake suggested.

  21 We duckwalked back from the toy pile and the little ship landed beside the other little silver ship.

  I stood up cautiously to be able to see. A bright red beam, thin as a hair, connected the two little craft.

  Jake and Rachel stood up, too.

  "Well, this isn't too weird," Rachel said.

  "Look, the other ship is lifting off now," Jake said. "They must have given them a jump start. Just don't hit them with the bat, Rachel. Maybe they'll leave on their own."

  But that was not to be. The two ships rose from the floor and hovered there around eye-level, pointing straight at us.

  "Okay, have the bat ready," Jake said. "They shoot, you swing."

  Then, to our surprise, we heard a thought-speak voice in our heads.

  «Aliens! Give us the power source! Give it to us and we will let you live as our slaves. We will not crush and annihilate you as we will crush and annihilate all the people of this planet!»

  "Power source?" Jake echoed.

  "The blue box," I said, understanding it all suddenly. "That's why they were on the water pump. They think the blue box is a power source."

  22 "Maybe it is, for them," Rachel said. "Not exactly polite, are they?"

  We heard a second, blustering thought-speak voice. «No, we shall not let all three of you live! Only the one who brings us the power source. All others must feel the wrath of brave Helmacron warriors, the true and natural rulers of the galaxy!»

  Rachel cocked an eyebrow at Jake. "Now can I hit 'em?"

  I stepped forward, hoping to make peace. I held up my hands to show they were empty. I smiled. I said, "Hi, welcome to Earth. Look, some of what you're saying sounds almost threatening. And I'm sure you don't mean it that way. But -"

  «Do you insult the flower of Helmacron space forces? You may insult the crew of the Planet Crusher, but he who insults the Galaxy Blaster will be smashed into little bits, and those bits ground into dust, and that dust will be blown away by the wind!»

  "Ooookay. Let's try again."

  Tseeew! Tseeew!

  The little beams burned neat pinholes through my morphing outfit.

  Then, without another word, the two tiny spaceships turned and shot out through the open door.

  23 For about ten seconds the three of us just stared at one another. There are a lot of words for what we were feeling: Disbelief. Incredulity. Amazement.

  And resentment.

  Rachel said it first. "Oh, come on. Like we don't have enough problem aliens?"

  Then it clicked. "The box! They're going back after the blue box!"

  24

  ?Tobias! Follow them," Jake said as we leaped from the loading dock platform onto the ground outside. "We'll be along as soon as we can."

  It was time for speed. We needed to get back to the farm before the Helmacrons could manage to get hold of the blue box. We found one of the Goodwill trucks open and empty. We climbed in the back and pulled the door down to within a foot of being closed. Enough room for us to get back out when we were done morphing.

  I focused on the osprey whose DNA is a part of me. I began to feel the familiar, creepy morphing sensation of pain-at-a-distance. Morphing does shocking things to your body: dissolves organs

  25 and twists bones and causes body parts to grow where no body part had been. It should be the most hideously painful experience any human has ever endured. But the morphing technology masks that pain. Like Novocain masks the pain of having your teeth drilled.

  But just like when you go to the dentist, you sort of know the pain is there. I mean, you realize pain is being created, it's just not reaching your brain.

  Very weird. Even in a morph you've done before, as I've done the osprey morph.

  Far, far away there was the awful pain of skin blistering and forming feather patterns that grew and grew, thousands of quills erupting from my flesh. My back, my chest, my arms and legs, my face - all sprouted feathers as fast as one of those stop-action films of plants growing.

  My lips grew hard as fingernails, then pouted outward to form the sharp, hooked beak. My fingers stretched and my arms shrank, and with a snap! here and a snap! there my human arm and shoulder bones became the wing and shoulder bones of a bird.

  I was shrinking all the while, of course, as the dark truck grew vast around me. Two of my toes melted into the others and then turned crusty and hard. My heel bone suddenly popped through the flesh to make the rear talon.

  26 And yet throughout all this, throughout watching my friends undergo very similar changes, we kept up a normal flow of conversation.

  It's amazing what you can get used to, I guess.

  «Wait a minute,» Marco was saying. «You're telling me those are actual spaceships? Three inches long?»

  «Maybe four,» I said. «l didn't have a ruler.»


  «Ax, what do you know about a race called the Helmacrons?» Jake asked.

  «Nothing. I have heard of no such race.»

  «How can aliens be that small?» Marco demanded. «It makes no sense. They'd have to have faster-than-light travel. In a three-inch-long toy spaceship?»

  «They seem to disagree,» I said. «l guess they don't mind being small. They certainly seem to have a high opinion of themselves.»

  «How do you mean?» Ax asked.

  «Well, they say they're going to make us all their slaves,» I said. «You know, conquer the world.»

  «Kind of ambitious for a bunch of sub-midgets^ Marco said.

  «We do not know how large these Helmacrons are,» Ax cautioned. «They may well be any size. Perhaps these spacecraft are simply robots. Miniaturized, robotic scout vessels. The Helmacrons

  27 themselves may not be inside the ships. They may be elsewhere.»

  «Let's quit guessing and go find out,» Rachel said impatiently. She had morphed to a huge bald eagle. She walked on her talons over to the partially open door of the truck. She ducked down, spread her wings to lower her profile, and slipped out through the gap.

  I followed her, hopped down onto the bumper of the truck, and from there flapped my wings and tried to get off the ground. But it was dead air there behind the Goodwill building, so I ended up scooting along the ground for a few feet before I could get enough lift to fly.

  I flapped hard to get the first few dozen feet of altitude. But once above the roofline I found a gentle wisp of breeze, turned into it, and caught some easier altitude.

  The five of us flapped and circled and flapped some more till we were at a safe height, above the power lines and roofs and gas station signs.

  We set off toward my farm, hoping that was the right way to go. I searched the sky ahead of me for a glimpse of Tobias. Ospreys, like all birds of prey, have incredible eyes.

  But it was Rachel who spotted him, a tiny dot already halfway to the farm.

  «There he is,» Rachel said. «Too far for thought-speak.»

  28 «Let's just try and catch him,» Jake said. «Forget about staying together, everyone go for it.»

  «We're too obvious bunched up like this anyway^ Marco agreed. «We look like an Audubon Society bird-recognition poster.»

  To my surprise, we began to narrow the distance between us and Tobias. Which shouldn't really have been possible, since we weren't any faster - aside from Jake, in his peregrine falcon morph.

  «He's stopped moving forward,» Jake reported. «He's ... Oh, man! He's in a dogfight with one of those ships!»

  Ax said what I'd only begun to think. «A Dracon beam too narrow to do more than sting a human being might have a very different effect on a creature as small as Tobias.»

  Suddenly, the Helmacrons weren't all that funny.

  29

  With osprey eyes I could see the weird aerial battle long before we reached it. Tobias was twisting and turning, flaring, diving, catching up-drafts, and just generally putting on a display of flying skills.

  But the two Helmacron ships were matching him almost move for move.

  «Snoopy and the Red Baron,» Marco said.

  It did look like some bizarre parody of a World War I fighter-pilot movie. Only instead of machine guns, the Helmacrons were firing their tiny Dracon beams. I could see singed and burned feathers. But Rachel noticed what I had missed.

  «They're aiming for his eyes! They're trying to blind him!»

  30 Jake was the first to join the battle. Rachel was seconds behind him. The rest of us caught up half a minute later.

  Rachel went straight for the first ship. She hit it, talons out, raked it, spun it through the air, and peeled off to come back around.

  Jake tried the same trick on the second ship but it dodged and he missed. Fortunately, it dodged right toward me. And I was mad now. They'd been trying to blind Tobias.

  The little spaceship came straight for me, firing its little beams. I spilled air clumsily but managed to drop a couple of feet, whipped my wings open, caught a decent breeze, and shot up from beneath the ship.

  I couldn't get my talons up so I just slammed into it beak-first.

  That was not a good idea. The impact stunned me and made my vision swim.

  I didn't think I wanted to try that again. But fortunately, the Helmacrons broke off and hauled butt toward Cassie's farm, just a quarter of a mile away.

  We were fast birds, but the Helmacron ships were a lot faster. Now that they'd decided to avoid more bird fighting, they reached the water pump before we could really even line up to chase them.

  31 «We have to stop them!» Rachel yelled.

  But it was wings versus engines, and wings aren't going to win that kind of a race.

  «Tobias, are you okay?» I asked him as we flew.

  «Yeah, just a few holes here and there. They almost got my right eye but they missed. You guys got there just in time.»

  Ax was in northern harrier morph not far away. «The question is: Why did they attack Tobias?»

  «He was following them,» Jake suggested.

  «They should have thought he was just a bird,» Ax pointed out. «Surely they can tell the difference between humans and other Earth species.»

  «Are you suggesting they somehow knew what Tobias really is?» I asked.

  «l do not know,» Ax said guardedly. «l am just expressing concern.»

  Maybe so. But now I had concern, too. Why /7ac/the Helmacrons tried to shoot a bird?

  No time for that now. We had to get to the blue box. But with my enhanced vision, I could already see that we were too late. The two little ships were hovering beside the pump. I could just make out the tiny little energy beams. Beams that were cutting - slowly - through the steel pump.

  32 I was wearing myself out, flapping as hard as I could. But the Helmacrons just kept slicing through the metal toward the prize.

  We were all about two hundred feet away when the pump simply fell over onto the ground. And sitting there out in the open, revealed for all to see, was the blue box.

  We closed the distance, Jake in the lead, Rachel right behind him, the rest of us bunched up. From the two Helmacron ships came a pale, greenish beam different from the weapons. It came from the bottom of each ship as they hovered directly above the box.

  The blue box moved.

  «Tractor beams!» Ax yelled. «They are attempting to take the box!»

  The ships rose slowly, and the box rose slowly with them. They turned, and the box turned, too.

  And then Jake struck.

  And then Rachel.

  One ship broke off. The tractor beam failed. The box fell to the ground.

  The earlier dogfight had just been a warm-up. Now things were getting serious.

  33

  «Rachel, look out! He's on your tail!»

  «l got him!»

  «Cassie, turn left, left, left!»

  I banked hard and twin Dracon beams missed me by millimeters.

  It was sheer madness. The two silvery toy spaceships, twisting and turning and firing wildly in a melee with six birds of prey.

  And all of it taking place within about a twenty-by-twenty-by-twenty-foot space in my yard. It's a good thing my parents were out.

  «Cassie! Above you!» Tobias yelled.

  I turned sharply, flapped, and found the ship coming down almost in front of me. I raked my

  34 talons forward, but I didn't have the speed. And worse yet, I was getting tired.

  Birds of prey aren't geese. They aren't made for long flights without some relaxing soaring and gliding. And they certainly aren't made for playing air tag for twenty minutes.

  We were all wearing out. It is unbelievably exhausting keeping your wings going constantly, let alone when you're in a turn ninety percent of the time.

  But the Helmacrons were not tiring. And while their little beams couldn't kill us, our talons and beaks couldn't kill them, either. We could knock them around, but we couldn
't penetrate their outer skin.

  Rachel was the first to land. She practically fell in the dirt. She had the largest morph, the one least able to endure the turning and switchbacks.

  «Can't . . .» she gasped. «Can't go on . . .»

  «Aaaahhh!» Ax yelled. A Helmacron shot had hit its mark. I saw a tiny, smoking hole in his right eye. He landed, too. Demorphing would fix the wound, but I knew it must be very painful.

  One of the Helmacron ships broke off the battle and went back to the blue box. But that couldn't happen.

  I landed and began to demorph as fast as I

  35 could. There are times when human is the best of all. I sprouted up from the ground and tried to catch the Helmacron with fingers only partly emerged from my wings and feet that were basically just size-six talons.

  The pale green beam locked onto the blue box. The ship lifted off again, carrying the box despite the fact that the box was bigger than the ship itself.

  The ship was heading toward the open barn door. Deliberately? No, that would be stupid. The Helmacrons simply didn't know they were heading into what would be a trap.

  I was more and more human and now I could walk fairly well. I chased the retreating blue box.

  Into the barn. Sunlight shone through dozens of small knotholes or gaps in the boards. But it was still dim and gloomy inside. The rows of smaller cages were stacked to my right. The larger cages were on my left in a single row. A rough half-wall kept the larger predators separate. Beyond them, isolated at the far end of the barn, were the horse stalls.

  The horses were all out in the field. But in the barn we had half a dozen bats, two rabbits, two raccoons, a vole, a gopher, two deer, a badger, a goose, two mourning doves, a fox, three mallard ducks, a merlin, a robin, and a bluejay.

  36 Not to mention the various rats and mice who lived there.

  The Helmacron ship had come to a stop, hovering in midair. It sat atop the blue box like a hen trying to hatch an egg.

  "Give up the box," I said to the Helmacron ship. "If you don't, I'll have to hurt you."

  «Surrender or be annihilated!» the Helmacrons replied.

  "I don't think so. In fact, I really don't think you folks are going to have much luck conquering Earth."

  «We will crush you! All humans will serve us!»