We are all in Cassie's barn. Her dad was away for the afternoon. And it's one of the few places where I can go and not look out of place. "

It's a regular old-fashioned barn, but with rows of clean cages and fluorescent lights. There are partitions keeping the birds away from the horses, and more partitions keeping the raccoons and opossums and the occasional coyote away from the skittish horses. The floor of the barn is usually strewn with hoses and buckets and scattered hay. There are charts on each cage showing the condition of the animal and what treatment it's getting.

It's usually a pretty noisy place, what with various birds chirping or cooing, horses snuffling, and raccoons fussing with their food.

I looked over a little nervously at a pair of wolves, one male, one female. One had been shot.

The other had eaten poison left out by a farmer. Wolves were new in the area. Wildlife experts had brought some back to the nearby forest.

Wolves make hawks a little edgy.

"We were always able to see Yeerk ships," Rachel pointed out. "We saw the Bug fighters and the Blade ship." She was leaning against a cage that housed an injured mourning dove. The dove was watching me suspiciously.

"Yeah, but every Yeerk ship we've ever dealt with has been either on the ground or about to land," Jake said. "Maybe the cloaking ability doesn't work when they get close to land. But if you think about it, Marco is right. They would have to be able to avoid being picked up by radar. Maybe they also have the ability to avoid being seen."

"It was a Yeerk ship," I said flatly.

"How can you be so sure?" Cassie asked. She was working as we talked, cleaning an empty cage with a brush and a bucket of sudsy water.

"It just was," I said stubbornly. "I . . . I just got this feeling from it. Also, it seemed huge.

Far bigger than even the biggest jet. This was huge. More like a real ship, you know, like an ocean liner."

"The question is, what do we do about it?" Jake asked. Of course, I knew he'd already made up his mind to do something. But Jake doesn't like to act like the one in charge, even though that's how I think of him. He lets everyone have their say first.

"I want to find out what it's doing," I said. "The first time, I had the feeling it was heading away from the mountains. The second time, it was doing just the opposite. It was flying too low to make it over the mountains. So I'm guessing it was doing something in the mountains."

Rachel nodded. "That makes sense."

14 Marco rolled his eyes. "The mountains? Have you suburb-dwellers ever been to the mountains? We're talking about a large area. No matter how big this ship is, it could hide in a thousand places in the mountains."

"Then we'd better start looking right away," Rachel said brightly.

Jake looked at Cassie. "Cass? What do you think?"

Cassie shrugged. "I halfway feel like we've done enough. You know? We attacked the Yeerk pool. We barely got out alive. We infiltrated Chapman's house and Rachel was captured.

Again, we barely got out alive. I guess the question is, how many risks are we going to take?

How many more times are we going to barely escape?"

I could see that Marco was surprised. Suddenly it sounded like Cassie was on his side.

"Exactly! Exactly! Just what I've been saying. Why is it our job to get killed?"

But then Cassie went and blew it all for him.

"I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I can't just do nothing while people are enslaved by the Yeerks." Cassie said. "Maybe it's just me . . ." She shrugged. "The thing is, I have these powers."

She shrugged again. "I can't just do nothing."

"Look, these aren't people we know," Marco argued. "They aren't my friends. Or my family."

He shot a guilty look at Jake. "And we did everything we could for Tom. So why should I get killed for strangers? We can't stay lucky forever. Don't you people understand that? Sooner or later, we'll slip up. Sooner or later we'll be standing around here crying because Jake or Rachel or Cassie or Tobias is gone."

"You know something?" Rachel exploded. "I'm tired of trying to talk you into this, Marco.

You want out? Fine, you're OUT!"

"Hey, Rachel, you're not just doing this to help save the human race," Marco yelled back.

"You get off on the danger. That's why you went with Tobias to free that bird. That wasn't about saving the world. That was about rescuing some stupid bird."

Marco realized he'd gone too far. He fell silent. The others all looked guiltily at me. Rachel shot Marco a look of pure anger.

"As of right now," I said, "as of today, only one of us has been hurt. Me. But I'm not going to give up. I'm not anyone's leader. But what I am going to do is go to the mountains tomorrow morning. What the rest of you do is your business."

"I'll be with you," Rachel said instantly.

Cassie nodded.

Jake made a wry smile. "You say you're not a leader, but I'll go with you."

Marco shook his head. "No," he said.

15 "Your choice," Rachel said.

"That's not what I meant," Marco said angrily. "I meant no, not in the morning. Tomorrow's a school day. If all of us skip school on the same day and later there's some trouble with the Yeerks, don't you think Chapman might put two and two together?"

Jake raised an eyebrow. "Marco's right. After school." He looked at the others and nodded.

It bothered me that Marco was right. But he was. Marco might be a pain in the butt. But he's a very smart guy.

It worried me a little. It made me wonder. Was he right about other things as well?

How many risks could we take before we lost? How long till the five of us were four? Or two?

Or none?

16 CHAPTER 6

Jake had a peregrine falcon morph we'd used before. Marco and Cassie had morphed ospreys.

Rachel had been a bald eagle. So we all should have been able to fly up to the mountains.

But there are millions of bird-watchers in this country. They're very cool people because they never hurt a bird. They don't hunt. They just get pleasure out of watching birds fly or nest.

Bird-watchers would think it was very, very weird if they saw a red-tail hawk, a bald eagle, a falcon, and two ospreys all flying together as if they were on a mission.

And some of those gentle bird-watchers might be not-so-gentle Controllers.

"Bird-watchers!" Marco snorted as he tramped over the carpet of pine needles deeper into the woods. "We could fly, but no. No, we have to walk. Twenty miles, probably!"

Cassie's farm has a lot of open grass areas, and it borders on a national forest. The national forest goes on forever. It stretches from the edge of town all the way up into the mountains.

It's all pines and oaks and elms and birches. Wilderness, really. Thousands of square acres of it.

"Oh, come on, Marco," Cassie chided gently. "It's an opportunity to try out a new morph!"

"Yeah," Jake chided. "Instead of being home doing math homework, you get to turn into a wolf. Are you going to tell me you'd rather be doing equations?"

"Let's see," Marco considered. "Math? Or becoming a wolf and going off to find aliens?

Maybe I should ask the school counselor what she thinks.' It's such a common problem. I'm sure she'd have some good advice."

Since it wasn't a good idea for us all to travel to the mountains as birds, the others needed a morph that could travel far and fast through woods. And there were the two injured wolves in Cassie's barn . . .