OctaviusBeaver posted:

A movie could cover up to the first Rachel book where they destroy the kandrona machine if they want a happy ending. Would probably be unsatisfying without sequels.

Epicurius posted:

About Erek King....he is a real person (presumably not an android, but I don't know for sure). Scholastic had an essay contest, asking, if you could morph an animal, what would you morph?", with the winner being written into the books. He won and his winning entry is below...


So his name got used as a character.

Epicurius posted:

I have to admit, the movie makes me a little nervous, just because of the size of the story. So, do you just do the movie based on the first book, ending with Tobias as a hawk, and everyone barely able to escape with their lives? That's kind of a downer (and pretty much cries out for a sequel), Or do you find a way to force some sort of happy ending?

Erwin the German posted:

Agreed, I suppose. It's been a long time since I read the series, so I could be totally forgetting some things that already would have flown over my 10 year old head. In addition to the graphic novel, there's also a movie planned, I think? Hopefully that gives us a fresh and more multifaceted reading on all this material.

quote:

I don’t think I would have believed any of it. Except for the small fact that we were in a huge underground park. And there were androids walking around.

Plus, there was the fact that my entire life had become one long, incredible, unbelievable story. So who was I to laugh at Erek’s story?

“So you all pass as humans?” I asked Erek.

He nodded. “Yes. We live as humans. We play the role of children and then grow older, and eventually our hologram is allowed to “die” and we start again as children.”

quote:

“How long has this been going on?” Cassie asked.

Erek smiled warmly. “I helped to build the great pyramid.”

“You designed the pyramids?”

“No, no, of course not. We have never interfered in human affairs. I was a slave. I helped to quarry the stone. It was a challenge, because I was new at pretending to be human. I had to hide my real strength, of course. The Pemalite home world had a gravity four times stronger than Earth’s. Naturally, we were designed for that gravity, which means we are quite powerful by human standards.”

“And you stayed as a slave?” Jake asked. “You could have taken over Egypt. You could have taken over the world.”

“No. We are not the Yeerks,” he said coldly. “You see, when our creators made us, they hardwired us for nonviolence. We are not capable of hurting another living being. No Chee has ever taken a life.”

Just then, I noticed a group of four Chee walking quickly toward us.

Erek saw them, too. Even though I know his “face” was just a hologram, it seemed to me he was annoyed.

“What have you done?” one of the Chee demanded. “What have you done, you fool?”

The four Chee came up and glared at us with robot eyes. “Humans? An Andalite? Here? What have you told them?”

“Everything,” Erek said defiantly. “These are the ones, these humans and this Andalite, who have been resisting the Yeerks. They’re the ones who can morph.” His voice rose. “They are the ones who are fighting the battle we should fight.”

“We are Chee. We do not fight,” one of the androids said. It turned on its holographic projector.

A human body appeared. The body of an old woman, maybe eighty years old.

“I am Chee-lonos. My human name for now is Maria,” she said. “I did not mean to seem angry toward you humans, or you, my Andalite friend. My dispute is with this Chee called Erek and some of his friends.”

“We stood by helplessly as the Howlers annihilated our creators,” Erek said to Maria. “We can’t stand by helplessly and watch this world be destroyed, too. Dogs and humans are intertwined. They have evolved a dependency. Dogs cannot survive without humans. If the humans fall to the Yeerks, we, the last great masterpieces of the Pemalites, and the dogs, their spirit-homes, will all die, too.”

I gave Jake a look. That’s why the Chee wanted to help humans? To save dogs? Jake shook his head slightly in amusement.

“We do not fight,” Maria said heatedly. “We do not kill. You know that, Erek. Yet you bring these outsiders here. You blurt the secrets we have kept for thousands of years. Why? What good can come from it? We cannot fight to save the humans.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Erek said softly. “We can fight. While you and the others merely hope everything will work out, my friends and I have been infiltrating the Yeerk organizations here on Earth. The Yeerks even think that I am one of them.”

Maria and the three unhologrammed Chee just stared.

“The Yeerks have been busy. They control a computer company called Matcom.”

It took me a couple of seconds to remember that name.

Erek went on. “The Yeerks are working on a master computer to infiltrate and rewrite all the software in all the computers on Earth. When they have achieved sufficient force among humans, they will launch this computer bomb, and in a flash, control all computers.”

“What does this have to do with us?” Maria asked.

“The heart of this system is a crystal the Yeerks obtained from a Dayang trader. The Dayang didn’t know what he had. But the Yeerks did. The crystal is a processor more sophisticated than anything even the Andalites could create. And it is more than fifty-thousand Earth years old.”

“A Pemalite crystal!” Maria gasped.

“Yes. A Pemalite crystal. If we had it, we could rewrite our own internal systems. Do you understand now? We could erase the prohibition against violence. We could be free! Free to fight!”

“A Pemalite crystal,” Maria whispered. “You can’t do this, Erek. You can’t!”

But Erek just turned away. “If we can get the crystal, there is very little we can’t do. Our strength, joined with these Animorphs? The Yeerks would have to double their forces just to contain us.”

<How did you convince the Yeerks that you are one of them?> Ax asked him.

Erek turned off his hologram and became a machine once again. And then the front of his head split open. Inside his steel and ivory head was a chamber, just a few inches in diameter. And inside that chamber was a gray slug, helpless, unable to escape. Tiny wires, no thicker than hairs, wrapped around it.

<Yeerk!> Ax hissed.

“Yes,” Erek said. “The Yeerks believe I am human. I accepted infestation. But of course the Yeerk cannot make a Controller of me. I made a place for him instead. He sees nothing. Knows nothing. I tapped his memory, not the other way around. And now I can pass among the Yeerks like
one of them.”

I had two reactions. One, I was sick at the thought of that Yeerk, trapped inside a steel cage. As much as I hated Yeerks, it seemed harsh just the same.

quote:

But another reaction was much stronger. We had an ally! A powerful ally. An android who could pass as a Controller, who could enter Yeerk society. And an android with many powers of his own.

“How do you keep the Yeerk alive without Kandrona rays?” Cassie asked.

See, every three days a Yeerk has to return to the Yeerk pool to absorb Kandrona rays. Without that, they die.

“I am able to use my own internal power to generate Kandrona rays to keep this Yeerk alive,” Erek explained. “When I go to the Yeerk pool I am able to trick the Yeerks into believing that my Yeerk is swimming in the pool. I generate a hologram of a Yeerk leaving my ear and dropping into the pool. Later, I create a hologram of it returning. The Yeerks never notice that they don’t encounter this Yeerk actually in the pool. Yeerks communicate very little in their natural states.”

“How do we fit into all this?” Jake asked. “I mean, what do you want with us, Erek?”

Erek resumed his human appearance. He stepped toward us, eager, excited. “We could fight together against the Yeerks. We could be allies. If only … we need that Pemalite crystal. But the Yeerks have created a maze of defenses like nothing you can imagine. That crystal is in a room at the heart of the Matcom building. There are Hork-Bajir everywhere. Elite Hork-Bajir warriors, the best.

“And the crystal itself is guarded by an ingenious system. It is concealed in a room of absolute darkness. Absolute darkness. The slightest, faintest light, ultraviolet, infrared, any light, will set off alarms. Within the darkness are wires that are set off by the slightest touch.”

“So to get to the crystal you’d have to be able to find it without seeing it, and avoid the wires that are also invisible in the darkness,” I said.

“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack when you’re blindfolded and can’t touch a single piece of hay. The walls, ceiling, and floor are all pressure-sensitive, so you can’t touch them. It may be impossible,” Erek said.

“How are we supposed to do that?” I demanded. “How can you find something you can’t see? It’s not like it’ll smell or call out to us.”

“Um …” Cassie said.

“Excuse me?” Jake asked in surprise.

“It can be done,” Cassie said. “I mean … if we want to.”

“Of course we want to,” I said. “With these guys on our side, we actually have a chance of winning. Of course we want to. Animorphs and Chee together? Our morphing ability, their strength and holographic tricks? We’d kick Yeerk butt.”

“No,” Maria cried. “You don’t understand. Chee do not hurt. Chee do not kill. No Chee has ever taken a life.” She grabbed my arm and looked right in my eyes. “While humans and Yeerks and Andalites and Hork-Bajir and a million other species on a million worlds warred and slaughtered and conquered, we remained at peace. Would you end all that? Would you make us killers, too?”

“Yes, ma’am, I guess I would,” I said, a little coldly. “We’re in a fight for our lives here. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our friends - they are all going to be slaves of the Yeerks, if we don’t win. So I’ll do whatever it takes. If you’d fought all those thousands of years ago, the Pemalites would still be alive. And you wouldn’t be living with dogs in a big underground kennel.”

I didn’t mention the sudden interest The Sharing had in my father. I didn’t want to make this personal.

Maria let me go, and Erek nodded.

“A big underground kennel,” Erek said bitterly. “Exactly.”

“We’ll get your crystal for you,” Jake said. “Tell us all you know about this Matcom, and we’ll get your crystal.” He looked at the Chee called Maria. “Sorry, but Marco is right. The Yeerks have my brother. There’s nothing I won’t do to get him back.”

quote:

We rode the fake basement back up, leaving the eerie golden world of dogs behind.

“So. Do we have a deal?” Erek asked. “You’ll help us get the Pemalite crystal? And then we’ll fight alongside you to defeat the Yeerks.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said quickly. “Unless anyone has any objection -” Jake started to say.

That’s when Cassie interrupted. “Erek, let us talk it over. It’s a big decision.”

I was surprised, but not as surprised as Jake was. Then we heard a noise coming from directly above us.

“HhhhrrrAAAAWWWWRRRR!”

“Oh, man,” I said. I knew that sound. We all knew that sound.

“Rachel,” Cassie said under her breath.

“We were down there a long time,” Jake said. “Erek, I think a friend of ours may have come in to rescue us.”

Erek shrugged. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

“You don’t know our friend,” I said.

The basement had settled back into its normal place. I tore up the stairway. “Rachel! Chill!”

I burst back into the utterly normal kitchen and raced into the utterly normal living room.

The front door of the house had been ripped off its hinges. The couch was thrown against one wall. And there, in the middle of the room, standing so tall its head scraped the ceiling, was a fullgrown grizzly bear.

“HhhhRRAAAAWWRRR!” Rachel roared in rage and frustration.

Frustration, see, because the Chee who passed as Erek’s father had her in a full nelson. His human-holograph arms were wrapped around the unbelievably massive shoulders of the grizzly, and he was actually holding the great bear still.

He had pinned a grizzly so powerful it could literally turn a Toyota into an aluminum can.

“Okay, now I’ve seen everything,” I said.

<You Chee are very strong,> Ax commented.

This was the understatement of all time.

<Where have you been!> Rachel demanded. <I waited as long as I could. I figured you were dead or something. And if you don’t have a good explanation, you will be dead!>

“Oh, we have a story, all right,” Cassie said.

Rachel had calmed down and stopped roaring when she saw us. Now the Chee slowly released her, and she began to change back out of morph.

Jake looked embarrassed and started to pull the couch back down. “Um, Erek, this is our friend Rachel.”

“It was smart of you to keep a reserve,” Erek commented. To Rachel he said, “I hope you weren’t hurt.”[quote]

We were told in the last chapter that the Chee are strong, but now we see exactly how strong.

[quote]“How come you can wrestle a grizzly if you have to be nonviolent?” I asked Erek.

“Of course, my “father” here knew she was not a true bear. And he only held onto her. He did not destroy her. If Rachel had been strong enough to win, my “father” would have had no choice but to allow himself to be destroyed.”

I laughed. “I see why you want to change that.”

I expected Erek to agree. Instead, he looked a little sad. “Yes,” he said. Just that one word.

We started to leave. I let the others get a few steps ahead of me. I pulled Erek over.

“Hey, Erek. You were at my mom’s funeral. I don’t think I said thanks at the time.”

Erek looked away and bit his lip. “Marco … there’s something I have to tell you.”

“I think I already know. My mother isn’t dead. She’s a Controller. She’s Visser One.”

It was Erek’s turn to be impressed. “You guys have learned a lot.”

I shrugged. “Is that why you were at the funeral? Did you know?”

Erek nodded. “I knew. I might have been able to save her… if.”

I met his gaze. “Too late to save her,” I said. “But payback is going to be very painful for those filthy slugs.”

On the way home, we filled Rachel and Tobias in on what had happened. It took a while. We were back at Cassie’s barn before we were done.

“I say do it,” Rachel said. “That Chee guy held onto me like I was a baby. They’re strong. They have technology we don’t. They’ve already penetrated The Sharing. They would double our chances. End of story.”

“No, not end of story,” Cassie said, contradicting her friend. “What right do we have to interfere and destroy the thousands of years of peace this species has had? Didn’t you hear Maria? No Chee has ever taken another life. You want them to be saying a thousand years from now that no Chee ever
took a life till we made them killers?”

I rounded on her, angry. “What I don’t want a thousand years from now is for people to be saying, ‘Too bad about the humans. They ended up as dead as the Pemalites.’”

“Ax?” Jake asked. “You haven’t said much.”

Ax was in human morph, of course, since we were in the barn. “As you know, we Andalites are not supposed to interfere in the lives of other species. I am already breaking that law with you. And I am proud to be breaking that law in this case. But the Chee … Chee! It makes a funny sound, doesn’t
it? Chee.” He smiled with his human mouth, then grew serious again. “The Chee are a different species. Older than Andalites. I feel … badly … helping another species to become violent.”

Rachel said, “Look, no one likes violence. All right? But we didn’t ask for this war with the Yeerks. When the bad guys come after you, when they start the violence, they leave you no choice: fight or die.”

“Fight or die,” I agreed. “And you want proof? Look at the Pemalites. They didn’t fight, they died. All gone. No more. Scratch a whole species. Now their ‘essence,’ whatever that means, is stuck inside dogs, and their robots feed them extra kibble. Yippee. That worked out real well for them. And even that’s better off than we’ll be if we lose to the Yeerks.”

“Law of the jungle,” Rachel said. “You eat or you get eaten.”

<Maybe,> Tobias said, speaking up for the first time. <But still, wouldn’t it be nice if that wasn’t the law?>

“How can you take that attitude?” I demanded. “You’re a predator. You know how it is.”

<Yes. I know exactly how it is. That doesn’t mean I like it. Look, the Pemalites were wiped out, maybe because they didn’t fight. Maybe they’d have lost even if they had fought. We’ll never know. But the Chee have lived for thousands of years. I know they’re androids, but they’re a species, too. They’ve survived without killing. Doesn’t something about that make you jealous? Don’t you wish we could say the same? Don’t you wish Homo sapiens could face the universe and honestly say, “We do not kill? We don’t enslave. We don’t make war”?>

“I don’t make the rules,” I said. “I didn’t start this war. Humans didn’t start this war. Look, I don’t want to make this personal, but I know the name Matcom. My dad is involved in some work with them. And the other day Tom …” I shot a glance at Jake. “His brother was on me to come to The
Sharing and bring my father. The Sharing is targeting my dad, and now we know why. So for me, it’s simple: If we take this Pemalite crystal, maybe my dad isn’t involved with Matcom any more. And maybe the Yeerks find someone else to infest.”

No one had an answer to that. I knew they wouldn’t.

quote:

Cassie walked down to the far end of the barn and came back carrying a small cage.

“Total darkness, can’t touch walls, floor, or ceiling, and you have to travel through a room strung with sensitive wires you can’t even see.” She held up the cage. “Meet the animal that can do all that.”

It was no larger than a small rat with its leathery wings folded back.

“Cool,” I said. “First I’m Spiderman, now I get to be Batman.”

Epicurius posted:

It's really not surprising that the Chee have factions and disagreements like everyone else. One of the things this book does well is, too often in science fiction and fantasy, non-humans are all one thing, so in Star Trek, the Vulcans are all logical, the Klingons are all violent and obsessed with honor, or whatever, and the idea that there are differences in these alien societies are downplayed. But so far in this series, we've seen Visser One set the Animorphs free to gain a political advantage over Visser Three, even though that hurt the Yeerk war effort, and now we've seen the Chee disagree over the morality of non-violence and non-interference, with Erek and Maria the head of two diametrically opposed factions. We've seen less of the Andalites as a society, but we've seen both Seerow and Elfangor willing to disobey the law against sharing technology because they felt they had a moral obligation to break the law, tragically in Seerow's case. I think it makes for a more developed world when you allow diversity of opinions and goals between members of the same group, instead of making them monolithic.

Epicurius posted:

This is kind of a nice touch. Marco, who hates the Yeerks, and has every good reason to, nevertheless feels pity for the Yeerk Erek has imprisoned. And, of course, what Erek is doing is the same thing the Yeerks are doing....he has it completely trapped, unable to move or exercise its will, and using its memories as he wants to.

Epicurius posted:

I just got the Invasion graphic novel on Kindle. It's very much a point for point plot retelling. The art is really good, though.

disaster pastor posted:

My only issue with the art was that making Tobias's hair that long made it hard to distinguish between him and Rachel in a bunch of panels.

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

post the eight legged fire beast

FlocksOfMice posted:

Do they make Andalites look as doofy photoshoppy as the original cover arts did?

disaster pastor posted:

The Yeerk pool spread was seriously impressive art, too. Better than my mental picture.

On the other hand, Chapman looked nothing like my mental picture, and for some reason that bothered me.

Epicurius posted:

It was the beard, wasn't it?

Epicurius posted:

Here's Visser 3

Acebuckeye13 posted:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was inspired by this thread to order the graphic novel

It is funny though just how much of a resurgence in Animorphs there's been lately between the movie announcement, the graphic novel release, and of course the general uptick in remembrance and discussion of the series (Such as this thread). I'm glad to see it though, it was a great series and really ahead of its time in a lot of ways.

SardonicTyrant posted:

I remember seeing them in the old scholastic catalogs they'd hand out in school, but I never read them then, I thought the covers were goofy and took it at face value. What got me to give the series a glance was that dumb Virgin Harry Potter / Chad Animorphs meme. I'm easily amused, but the animorphs books seriously impressed me.

FlocksOfMice posted:

Something that's really sending me is, how rereading this for the first time in like, 20 years? The mental images are, I'm positive, almost the exact same ones I saw 20 years ago. I remember imagining Cassie's barn looking the same when I was a kid as I imagine it now. I read these books so often, very clear images got into my head of what things looked like. Specifically I remember before the first Andalite art, I pictured them way more literally, with brown deer bodies, and segmented scorpion tails.

disaster pastor posted:

The Yeerk pool spread was seriously impressive art, too. Better than my mental picture.

SardonicTyrant posted:

What got me to give the series a glance was that dumb Virgin Harry Potter / Chad Animorphs meme.

QuickbreathFinisher posted:

That meme may be dumb but it's also just the facts

freebooter posted:

But that's really interesting re: imagining locations. When I read - whether as a kid or today as an adult - I almost always just subconsciously slot in an actual real place from my own life. Not hyper-realistically, but sort of in the way that a dream has vague edges. The lake in this book is the lake I would visit as a kid; the Animorphs' high school is just my primary school; Jake's house is just the house I lived in when I started reading the books; Marco's new house's deck is just the verandah out the back of that house. (As in, this is how I vaguely pictured it at the time, and how I still picture it.) I guess if a scene is primarily dialogue and character, I don't think about the stage dressing? I never really develop visual images of characters, either.

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Can we have the 8 headed fire beast

SardonicTyrant posted:

Cythereal posted:

Actually, Erek and his captive Yeerk raises a new question in my mind: why haven't the Yeerks tried to build artificial bodies for themselves? It's clearly possible to create a small, personal Kandrona, and the technology also clearly exists to hook up a Yeerk's nervous system to a computer.

The Yeerks could completely free themselves from the pools and parasitism, if they wanted to.

Homora Gaykemi posted:

I kind of assumed that that was really only possible because of how advanced the technology in the Chee is

Cythereal posted:

Actually, Erek and his captive Yeerk raises a new question in my mind: why haven't the Yeerks tried to build artificial bodies for themselves? It's clearly possible to create a small, personal Kandrona, and the technology also clearly exists to hook up a Yeerk's nervous system to a computer.

The Yeerks could completely free themselves from the pools and parasitism, if they wanted to.

quote:

I thought for once we’d get a chance to practice with the bat morph. We were planning to go after the Pemalite crystal the next weekend.

Plenty of time to plan and prepare.

Yeah, right.

“Marco?” My dad yelled up the stairs to my room, where I was desperately trying to figure out some math homework.

“Yeah?”

“Phone.”

“‘X’ equals point oh-three-nine,” I reminded myself so I wouldn’t lose my place. I went out into the hall to grab the upstairs phone. “Point oh-three-nine. Yeah, who is it?”

“Hi, Marco. It’s me, Erek.”

“Oh, hi, Erek, what’s up?” I hoped he would remember our phones could be bugged.

“Not much,” he said, sounding very convincingly human. “I was just thinking, though, you know that thing we were going to do next weekend? Why don’t we just do it tonight instead?”

I knew what the “thing” was. And I knew Erek wasn’t calling on a whim. Something had gone wrong. I swallowed my heart, which had jumped up into my throat. “Okay. Maybe I’ll call Jake and see if he wants to do it, too.”
“That’d be excellent,” Erek said. “Later, man.”

quote:

I hung up the phone and thought seriously about pretending I hadn’t gotten the call. I mean, I wanted to do this. It was important, life and death. But it was like something out of Mission: Impossible. And without planning or practice, it was beyond impossible.

Plus, I had homework to do.

I picked up the phone and called Jake. Four hours later, with all of our parents asleep in their beds, we met at Cassie’s barn. All of us, including Ax. Erek arrived last.

He didn’t waste time with small talk. “There’s a problem. The Yeerks are putting in a brand new security system on top of the existing systems. I don’t think it’s active yet, but I can’t find out what it is.”

<Fine. We can wait a few weeks till you can get the details,> Tobias said.

“The crystal is already so well protected that any new system may put it beyond our grasp for good,” Erek said. “And don’t forget - the Yeerks are racing to use this crystal to create a computer system so powerful it can take over every computer on Earth. They’re not there yet. But the longer we
wait…”

“Oh, man, this sucks,” I said. “No planning? No preparation? Just go in and hope for the best?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” Erek said. “Listen carefully. It’s not too complicated.”

For a few seconds we sort of teetered on the edge. We weren’t sure what to do. Erek wanted us to go in, obviously. But he had his own interests, which might not be the same as ours.

quote:

It was the worst possible situation. Any one of our parents could wake up and discover we were not at home. That would mean frantic phone calls back and forth from our folks to our friends’ parents, calls to the cops, probably search teams out beating the woods.

“Go or don’t go?” Jake asked.

“Go,” Rachel said, but with less enthusiasm than usual. A lot less.

“Go,” I said. “But personally, I can’t blame anyone who wants to sit this one out.”

Cassie gave me a dirty look. I guess she took it personally. “I say go,” she said. “I don’t sit anything out, Marco.”

<I’m not in this,> Tobias said. <I’m useless on this mission, so I don’t vote.>

<I go where Prince Jake goes,> Ax said.

“Don’t call me “prince,” Jake said wearily for the thousandth time. “Okay, we go.”

Erek immediately began telling us all he knew about Matcom and the security for the Pemalite crystal. After about two minutes I was ready to change my vote.

But by then it was too late. We’d made our decision, and it was as if we were being swept toward a waterfall - like a bunch of canoeists who’d lost their last paddle. We’d survive … or not … but one thing was sure. We were definitely going over the edge.

quote:

Erek was not going with us. But he would be waiting outside Matcom when we came out.

Assuming we came out.

We flew from Cassie’s barn to the Matcom building. It was one of those boring-looking, threestory glass and cement buildings you see in industrial parks everywhere. Just a bunch of blue glass rectangles with a big parking lot in back.

In fact, it looked so much like every other boring square building in the industrial park, we had trouble finding it. We flew around, a lost gang of owls, for a good fifteen minutes before Rachel spotted the Matcom sign.

We landed on the roof of the building. Erek had assured us there were no cameras or guards up there.

“Let’s find that pipe,” Jake whispered as soon as we were all human again. Or, in Ax’s case, Andalite.

“Erek said southwest corner, right?” I said.

“Northwest,” Cassie said.

She sounded sure, so I decided to agree.

“Yeah, that was it. Which way is northwest?”

Ax laughed in thought-speak, till he realized I was serious. <You can’t find directions?> He sounded shocked. Like he’d just discovered we had hidden tail blades. <It’s that corner over there.>

The pipe was about three inches in diameter.

“I hope this works,” I said. “I don’t even know if my Spiderman can make silk.”

“Spiderwoman,” Cassie said. “Your spider morph is female. Wolf spiders don’t make webs, but they do make silk. It should work.”

“Easy for you say. I don’t even know how to turn on the silk thing.”

But Ax was already morphing into the wolf spider, so I hurried to catch up. By the time Ax and I were in spider morph, the others had all become cockroaches.

<Man, you two are ugly at this scale,> Rachel said. <Jeez, I don’t ever need to see another spider my own size again.>

<We’re ugly? You want to know what you look like right now? You look like dinner,> I said, laughing evilly. <Juicy cockroach. This spider morph is hungry, and you look tasty.>

<Marco, get a grip,> Jake said patiently. <Let’s do this.>

<I’ll demorph and step on your ugly butt,> Rachel growled.

From where I was standing in the gravel of the rooftop, the pipe looked like a round skyscraper.

It extended above the roof by about a foot, which is quite a distance when you’re half an inch high.

I scampered around the pipe. One side had been splashed with tar. It would be easy to grip. Iraced easily up the pipe to stand precariously on the lip.
I could feel a breeze blowing up from the blackness beneath me. It was like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The pipe went down through all three stories and an extra underground story.

Four floors. Bad enough when you’re human size. A million miles when you’re a spider.

Ax came crawling up to teeter alongside me.

<Oooookay,> I said. <Now comes the fun part.>

I tried to search the spider brain, looking for the subtle, secret signals that would start me spinning silk.

Fortunately, the spider wasn’t exactly Albert Einstein. It only knew how to do about four things, one of which was spin silk.

The spider body sort of… well … pushed out a strand of gooey white filament. It stuck to the edge of the pipe.

Ax did the same.

<Well, this is certainly disgusting,> I said. <Ready, Ax?>

<Yes.>

<Then … Yeeeeee-HAAAAAHHH!>

I sprang from the lip of the pipe into the darkness.

It was so totally Spiderman.

I fell slowly down, down, down, twisting and turning my way down the pipe. Behind me a long white string grew. It braked my fall, so that I was dropping in slow motion. The spider eyes were not bad at seeing in the relative dark. A bit of moonlight followed us down part of the way as we
dropped.

And then it started being fun. I kicked away from the side of the pipe and cartwheeled through the air. My web looped around Ax’s, and soon we were weaving a weird silk rope.
It was cool in a way … till I felt a certain emptiness.

<Ax! I’m running out of web.>

<Yes, me, too.>

<How far do you think we’ve dropped?>

<I don’t know.>

<You know which way is northwest but you don’t know how far we’ve dropped? We could still have two stories to go,> I said.

<I think our plan has a minor flaw,> Ax said with his usual understatement.

quote:

<But we are very light, small creatures. We should survive a fall. So should the others in cockroach morph.>

<Maybe. See, the problem is, there’s only one way to find out if we’ll survive. By dropping.>

Ax didn’t say anything.

<Oh, man,> I groaned.

I cut the strand of web.

And I fell. Down through the darkness, toward a landing I could only hope wouldn’t kill me.

Epicurius posted:

The Animorphs: Book 10-Chapter 20
And we leave our heroes on the verge of potential death.

quote:

It was a long drop.

<Aaaaahhhhhhh!>

<Aaaaahhhhhhh!>

WHAP! WHAP!

We hit something hard. We bounced. We hit again.

WHAP! WHAP!

<You okay?> Jake called down.

<Oh, yeah, I’m great,> I said. <I fell about a billion feet and landed on a steel trampoline.

Couldn’t be better.>

<Sarcasm,> Rachel commented coolly. <He must be okay.>

<Laugh now, Rachel. We’ll see how much you laugh when it’s your turn.>

The plan was for Ax and me to create a silk cable the others in cockroach morph would be able to climb down. That way, they wouldn’t all have to go spider. Not that it would have helped, anyway.

<We’re coming down,> Jake said. <When we reach the end of the silk we’ll jump. If you two survived, we will. Nothing kills a cockroach.>

<Why don’t you stand right beneath me, Marco?> Rachel suggested. <You can break my fall.>

Ax and I scurried out of the way. A few seconds later, after they had clambered down to the end of our silk …

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! Three cockroaches landed nearby.

<Where are we?> Jake asked.

<It’s pretty dark. Who knows?> I answered. <It’s a heating/air-conditioning vent, I guess. Erek said it would be part of the furnace system. Supposedly we go west a hundred feet or so, then drop down, then go across the furnace, then down again, then right. Then we’re at the edge of the High Security Room, where the real trouble starts.>

<Excuse me? Did someone say furnace?> Cassie asked.

<Yeah. I said furnace.>

<Does it occur to any of you that the furnace might actually come on?> Cassie said.

<Not till right this minute,> I said.

<It’s not very cold out,> Rachel pointed out.

<Okay, I’ve seriously changed my mind,> I said. <Let’s go home.>

Of course, no one listened to me. We scrabbled along the steel floor, two spiders and three cockroaches. Our rough claws seemed to make a horrible din on the metal, scuffing and scratching.

But it probably wouldn’t have sounded like anything to a human.

As we ran, there was more and more dust on the floor of the vent. It was weird, like walking through dried leaves. My eight legs kicked through it, and it swirled behind me as I passed.

Eventually the dust became as thick as a carpet, although in reality it was probably no more than a few millimeters thick.

Every ten feet or so there would be a grilled opening. Through the massive upright bars I could see offices. The light in the offices was very dim, just the glow of computer screen savers and red or green function lights. But it helped us to find our way through the darkness of the vent.

Then …

<What’s that?> Rachel yelled. She was the farthest back. <Uh-oh. Something coming! I feel the vibrations! Something big!>

She took off. I took off. We all took off.

Now I could feel the vibrations, too. Quick, confused-sounding footsteps. And a dragging sound, like something was being hauled.

I ran. To my left, another spider. Ax. Ahead of me, two roaches, almost as big as I was. Rachel was just back to my right.

I couldn’t exactly turn and glance over my shoulder. I had no shoulder. And I had no actual head to turn. So I paused, spun around, and in the dim light from a vent, I saw it.

Huge. Twenty times my size! A vast, horrible menace.

<A rat!> I yelled. <It’s a RAT!>

The thing I’d heard dragging was its naked tail and furred abdomen. It was hungry, and it was after us.

And, unfortunately, it was faster than me.

quote:

<Go! Go! Go! It’s gaining!> I yelled.

We blew at top spider and cockroach speed. Which seems really fast when you’re an inch long, but isn’t really that many miles per hour. A rat can do maybe five or six miles per hour. A spider is lucky to break one mph.

<We’ll have to morph back!> Jake said.

<Not in here!> Cassie cried. <Not enough room.>

<Next vent,> Jake said. <We go out through the next vent.>

The next vent was about ten feet away. I couldn’t turn around to look at the rat, but every hair on my spider body told me it was just inches behind me.

Yet there was something else making my hair tingle, too. Something about the breeze …

<YAAHHH!> I heard Jake yell.

A split second later, my spider legs were clawing air. It was like a Roadrunner cartoon. I zoomed out into space, seemed to hang there with my little feet motoring away, and then I fell.

<Oh, yes,> Ax said calmly. <Erek mentioned we had to go down again.>

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

We hit steel again, and each impact sent dust clouds swirling.

<Keep running!> Cassie cried, and fortunately, for once, I didn’t argue.

Buh-BOOOOOM!

The rat dropped behind us! It was still after us! Fortunately, it was a little stunned by the impact, whereas we were outta there!

Suddenly, ahead of us, the steel floor opened up again. But instead of a drop into darkness, there was a weird, vast plain of jagged spires. Each of the spires was steel, three times as tall as my little spider body. Each metal spire opened at the top. There were hundreds of them, all arranged in perfect
rows. A foul smell, something my spider mind knew nothing about, came from this field of spires.

A weird, flickering glow lit the landscape.

In the eerie light, it looked like some awful graveyard, with the spires like industrial-strength gravestones or something. I mean, it was creepy.

<What is that?> I asked.

<Let’s just get going, all right?> Rachel suggested. <We can sightsee some other time.>

I would never have walked into that “field” if the rat hadn’t been just two feet back and gaining again. I didn’t need spider senses to know there was danger here. It screamed danger.

I stuck out one spider leg and touched the top of the nearest spire. Then another and another. I walked from spire to spire, carefully, cautiously. The cockroaches crawled and squirmed through the valleys between spires. Unable to stand normally, they had to drag themselves inch by inch.

<What is that?> I asked again.

<You don’t want to know,> Jake said grimly. <Let’s just get out of here, okay?>

Right then it hit me. From the tone of Jake’s thought-speak voice.

<Oh, man. This is the furnace, isn’t it? These spires … the holes in the tops of them … it’s where the gas comes out!>

<Not if no one turns on the heat,> Rachel said grimly.

Over my head now, I saw the source of the eerie glow. It was the pilot light. It was a jet of blue flame as long as my body. I could feel the heat from it, even though it seemed to be as far above my head as the ceiling of a cathedral.

The rat, smarter than we were, decided to stop at the edge of the furnace. But there was no going back. We had to cross the furnace. We had to hope the Matcom Corporation was into energy conservation and didn’t waste heat. We had to pray that no one had messed with the thermostat.
Because if the heat came on …

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

<Gas!>

The gas blew with hurricane force up through the tops of the spires. In seconds the gas would rise to the pilot light. In seconds the entire landscape would erupt in flame!

I thought I’d been moving as fast as I could move.

I was wrong. I had a whole extra speed.

Ahead of me I saw Jake, Rachel, and Ax all reach safety. Only Cassie and I were still deadly inches away from safety.

<RUN! RUN! RUNRUNRUNRUN!>

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Then … WHOOOOOOSH!

Fuh-WWWUUUUMMMP!

The whole world seemed to explode around me. A wall of flame … a hurricane of hot air. I was blown head over heels, somersaulting through air as hot as an oven.

quote:

I somersaulted backward, hit steel floor again, and screeched like a skidding car. I plowed straight into Jake, and a split second later, Cassie plowed straight into me.

<Cassie! Cassie! Are you okay?> Jake asked.

<Yes, yes. I think so. Who can tell with this roach body?>

<I’m okay, too,> I said. <You know, just in case anyone cares.>

<I guess they like to keep this building nice and warm, eh?> Rachel said.

<That was very close to being a disaster,> Ax said. <We should thank the rat. If he had not chased us, we would have been crossing those gas jets several seconds later.>

That was not a nice picture to think of. We would have fried, sizzled, and popped open faster than we could even try to think about demorphing.

<That would have left a big wad of Marco mass floating in Z-space,> I muttered. I could joke about it, but I was quivering inside.

The rest of the trip through the heating and air-conditioning system was calm. But that just gave me time to think about the close call. One second slower, and I’d have gone out as a roasted spider.

<There are walls up here,> Jake warned from the head of our little pack of singed bugs. <No, wait, not walls. Like a maze. Like Erek said.>

We traveled through a series of switchbacks, around a steel panel, then back around another. It was a light-blocking system. It would block out every last photon of light that might come through the vent.

Then we came to the edge of a drop. Beyond it, I knew, was the High Security Room itself - the location of the Pemalite crystal.

We were six feet up. We had to drop, and then stay within two feet of the wall. Any movement farther toward the center of the huge room, and we would set off pressure sensors in the floor. By this time, we were used to falling.

<Next I want to try jumping out of a plane. Without a parachute,> I said as I stepped into the black void.

It is an eerie experience falling in total darkness. You have no idea where the floor is. It’s almost like you’re not falling at all. Until you hit the bottom, that is.

<Stay close to the wall,> Jake reminded everyone. <Hug the wall and demorph.>

I was relieved to be human again. But my human eyes were no better than spider eyes at penetrating the darkness. It was darker than any night. Darker than hiding in a closet at midnight. This was the darkness of being buried alive.

“There could be six Hork-Bajir standing three inches away, and we wouldn’t know it,” I said, in a whisper that seemed to be deadened by the darkness itself.

“That’s a nice thought,” Rachel said dryly.

<Even a single photon of light would set off the light sensors,> Ax said. <This is complete darkness.>

“And according to Erek, if we stepped two feet away from the wall, we’d run into a maze of ultrasensitive wires. Any contact and the alarm goes off. We have to travel forty feet without touching a wire. Without touching the floor or ceiling or walls,” Jake reminded us.

“Let’s morph. We’ll be able to see then,” Cassie said. “Or maybe not see, exactly, but you know what I mean.”

What she meant was that we would be able to echolocate. Kinda like the dolphin morph. We would be able to make very fast, ultrahigh sounds that the human ear would not even hear.

Those sounds would vibrate off any solid object and send back a sort of sound picture. At least, that’s what we hoped. We had been planning to practice and find out if it was true.

Instead, we were morphing without any knowledge of what we were getting into.

“Someday we’ll think all this is funny,” I said. “You know, if we happen to live long enough.”

I focused my mind on the bat morph we had each acquired. They aren’t as creepy as people think. Certainly not as creepy as morphing a spider. This particular bat was very small, just a few inches long. It looked like a mouse, with huge ears and the face of a Pekinese dog. If you forgot about
the leathery wings, it was just another basic mammal.

But this was one case where the weirdness wasn’t something you saw. I couldn’t see anything.

Nothing. I couldn’t see myself shrinking, the ground rushing up at me. I couldn’t see the way my legs shrank to almost nothing and brown fur sprouted from my body. I couldn’t see the way my fingers grew so long and a paper-thin leather web filled the spaces between them.

I saw none of it. I didn’t even know I was a bat, until my bat brain sent an order for me to open my mouth and chirp out a pulse of sound.

I fired a string of superfast sound pulses. Like making a loud machine-gun sound, only a lot higher, and way, way faster.

And then …

<Whoa, ho!> I said.

The entire black, pitch-black, invisible room, had just lit up.

It wasn’t like seeing, exactly. It was like … like feeling, almost. Except it was like you were feeling from a distance. I felt a vast room. I felt thousands of wires strung taut, up and down, left to right, at angles.

And, at the center of the room, beyond the maze of wires, I felt a raised, flat surface, and a sort of pedestal. There were curling wires coming from the top of the pedestal.

All that came in a flash. Then it was gone. The others each fired off their own echolocating blasts, but I couldn’t feel their sounds as clearly.

<Okay, that is cool,> Rachel said. <That is way cool.>

<The wires seem awfully close together,> Cassie worried. <I wish we’d had time to try out these wings. I guess all we can do is hope for the best. Trust the bat to do the flying.>

<Abandon yourself to the Force, Cassie Skywalker,> I said.

<Thanks, Darth. You first.>

<Me first? Oh.> Suddenly, I didn’t feel at all like laughing. I licked my lips with my little bat tongue. Assuming I had lips. I wasn’t sure.
I opened my wings. I spread them wide and thought, Well, this should be interesting. I tested the wings cautiously. They moved differently than bird wings. More like I was reaching out with each stroke to grab the air and push it behind me.

<Okay. Here goes.>

I fired an echolocating burst and took off.

Fired again! There were tight strings all around me!

Left!

Left again!

Down!

No, up!

Right, left, right, right, straight up!

Again and again the high-pitched sound machine gun fired. Again and again I dodged, millimeters from a wire.

It was insane! It was so fast my human brain was three steps behind. It was instantaneous. It was impossible! The speed, the agility, the instant translation of the echolocating blasts.

And suddenly, I was through! I was through the wires.

I landed on the table in the center of the room. It was all over in ten seconds of lunatic flight.

<Okay, now that is a roller-coaster ride! Yes!> I said, incredibly jazzed from having made it. <Yes!>

The others came, one by one. I could watch them fly, seeing them in my echolocating flashes.

Everyone made it. And we were feeling pretty good about it, too. It was a rush.

<We did it!> I said.

<These bats can fly!> Rachel added.

<Is that the crystal?> Cassie asked.

Ax fired a burst and said, <That must be it.>

It was no bigger than a grape. It rested on a small pedestal. Wires - not the sensor wires, but curling electrical-type wires, edged in all around it. But the crystal itself was not attached to anything. It just lay there, where anyone could grab it.

It made a low sort of humming noise. I know it makes no sense, but it was almost like that crystal
was alive.

<Um … I have a stupid question,> I said. <How do we grab this thing?>

For about ten seconds, no one said a word.

<We don’t have hands,> Cassie said, pointing out the obvious.

<We can grab it in our mouths,> Rachel said. <Right? Bats eat moths and stuff. They must have pretty strong jaws. Strong enough to get that crystal back to the air vent.>

<Oh, duh. Of course,> Jake said, sounding relieved. <I’ll do it.>

<I believe that may not work,> Ax said.

<Jake?> Cassie said. <Jake? If you have a crystal in your mouth, how do you fire the echolocating burst?>

At which point we were suddenly no longer feeling so good.

<I believe our plan now has somewhat of a flaw,> Ax said quietly.