That night at the construction site, he morphed into some creature from a far-off planet, a huge, horrible monster. And then he took the Andalite and . . .

You know what? I really don't want to talk about that. . . . You'll have to ask Jake.

We all fell silent as we passed by the site.

Then I noticed that Cassie had stopped walking and was just standing there. I went back to her and realized that she was crying.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. Are you?"

I sighed. Flying around in the sky had been a wonderful distraction. But my head was still full of awful memories. "I guess not," I admitted.

"Last night I had a terrible nightmare about the Yeerk pool. I was back down there. Down there in that vast open cave. And I was hearing the screams and cries of the people being dragged to the pool."

Cassie nodded. "You know what's worse than the screams? The way they stop screaming once the Yeerk is in their heads. Once they've become Controllers. Then you know they are slaves again. Lost."

"Like Tom."

We both turned. It was Jake. He and Marco had seen us stop and had come back.

Tom is Jake's brother. Tom is a human-Controller -- a human being enslaved by a Yeerk in his head. We'd found the Yeerk pool and gone down into that hell to get Tom. We'd failed.

We'd barely escaped with our lives.

Cassie put her arm around Jake's waist. "Someday we'll save Tom," she said.

Jake kind of stroked Cassie's head. I guess he got embarrassed, because he instantly pulled away. Cassie didn't mind. She knows how guys are about showing their true feelings.

I looked across the construction site and saw Tobias come fluttering down out of the sky. I couldn't see where he landed, because that part of the site is hidden from the road, but I knew right where he was -- on the spot where the Andalite had died. Somehow, in those brief moments when the Andalite had been with us, Tobias had formed some kind of special bond with him.

We started walking again.

14 "We need to find another way to get at them," I said angrily. It bothered me, imagining Tobias back in that maze of never-finished buildings mourning for the Andalite.

"Get at who?" Marco asked suspiciously.

"The French, Marco," I said sarcastically.

"Who do you think? The Yeerks, duh."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Marco said. "We tried that, remember? We went down into the Yeerk pool after them and got our butts kicked. Yeerks ten, humans zero."

"So you figure you should just give up?" I demanded.

"We lost one game," Jake said. "You don't quit the sport just because you lose one game."

"Some game," Marco said bitterly. "Some sport."

"We didn't lose, anyway," I said. The others looked at me like I was crazy. "Look," I explained, "I know we didn't save Tom, and we sure didn't stop the Yeerks. But we gave them a reason to be afraid, at least."

"Yeah, they're terrified of us. Visser Three probably can't sleep at night, he's so worried about five kids," Marco said sarcastically. "Look, Visser Three doesn't think we're a threat. He thinks we're lunch."

"He doesn't know who -- or what -- we are," I pointed out. "The Yeerks are convinced that we're Andalite warriors because they know that we can morph. And they know that we found the Yeerk pool, and infiltrated it, and took out a few of their Taxxons and Hork-Bajir while we were at it.

I think they're probably a little nervous, at least."

Jake nodded. "Rachel's right. But just the same, I don't think we want to try to go back to the Yeerk pool. Besides . . . the door is gone."

We all stopped and stared at him.

He shrugged. "Look, I just wanted to see if the door still worked, okay? Just in case. But it's not there anymore."

The door leading down to the Yeerk pool had been hidden in the janitor's closet of our school.

There were dozens of doors to the underground Yeerk pool, spread all over the city, but this was the only one we knew about.

"So we find another way to get at them," I said. "We can follow Tom again, when it's time for his Yeerk to return to the Yeerk pool." Yeerks have to go to the pool every three days.

They drain out of their hosts" heads and soak up Kandrona rays.

15 "No. We leave Tom out of it," Jake said firmly. "If we call attention to him in any way, the Yeerks may decide he's trouble for them. They may decide to kill him."

Marco gave me a sour look. "This is what you want to keep doing? Risking our lives and the lives of everyone we know? For what?"

"For freedom," Cassie said simply.

Marco didn't have a smart answer to that.

"There's still Chapman," Jake said.

Chapman is our assistant principal. He's also one of the most important human-Controllers.

He runs The Sharing, the club that helps recruit unsuspecting kids into being hosts for the Yeerks.

"If there were some way for us to get close to Chapman . . ." Jake let the words hang in the air. He carefully didn't look at me. But I knew what he meant. He'd obviously been thinking about this for a while.

"Melissa?" I asked.

He nodded. "It's a possibility."

See, Melissa Chapman, Assistant Principal Chapman's daughter, is one of my closest friends.

Or at least she used to be. The last few months, she'd been acting very strange toward me.

Like she didn't care anymore. We take gymnastics together. Actually, we got into it at the same time. You know -- something to do together.

"I don't like using a friend that way," I said.

"Oh, suddenly the mighty Rachel is weaseling," Marco crowed. "You don't like using your friends? You're pretty willing to risk my life."

"Sure, Marco, but who said you were my friend?"

"Very funny," Marco said. But at the same time he looked a little hurt.

"Kidding, Marco," I said. "Just kidding. Of course you're my friend. But you're an Animorph.

Melissa is just an innocent bystander."

"I wish I had never come up with that word," Marco said. "Animorph. Gimme a break."

"Rachel, Melissa's father is one of the main Controllers," Jake said gently, ignoring Marco.

"She's in this whether she likes it or not."

I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. Jake was right, of course. Chapman was the logical lead to follow. And Melissa was our way to get close.

It made sense. It made sense for me to betray an old friend.

16 It also made me feel like dirt.

17 Chapter 4

The next day after school I headed for my gymnastics class at the YMCA, which is just across from the mall. They have a big indoor pool, so the entire building always smells of chlorine. Except for the weight room, which just smells like sweat.

My class is taught in a smaller room, with blue mats covering the floor. We have balance beams and uneven parallel bars and a vaulting horse with a springboard.

I'm okay at vaulting and the parallel bars, but I'm pretty lame at the balance beam. To be honest with you, it kind of scares me. It takes such total concentration.

It's not one of those real serious gymnastics classes. I mean, none of us is going to be going to the Olympics. When I started out, I had dreams of being the next Shannon Miller. But then I started to grow. I'm pretty tall now, for my age. People look at me now and say, "Oh, you're going to be a model," not "Oh, you could be a gym nast."