And then, suddenly, I realized a feather pattern began to appear on my skin. Bald eagle feathers. I groaned.

"You see?" Ax said, noticing the beginning of the morph. "Passions and emotions set off the allergic reaction. You must try to eliminate the emotions."

"How about if I just eliminate Marco?" I growled.

"It's so perfect," Marco said. "Mighty Xena has a weakness: human emotion. She's a victim of l-o-o-o-v-e."

Jake grabbed Marco's arm and squeezed tight. "Marco, if you make her mad, she'll morph. And if she starts morphing, she might end up in full grizzly bear. Do you really want Rachel mad at you and in grizzly bear morph?"

Marco hesitated. He glanced at me. He bit his lip. "I get your point, Jake. I think I'll just go watch Tobias eat his mouse."

I was halfway feathered by the time I was able to reverse the morph. It took that long to calm down.

"Ax, tell Rachel whatever you can about this hereth thing. Get her prepared. And Rachel, until you are better, keep a very low profile. As in don't go to school. And forget about this TV show you were going to do with Jeremy Jason. Visser Three knows we're on to Jeremy Jason. The Visser will

make him a Controller immediately. Actor boy has seen too much.

They're probably infesting him right now."

"But we still have to stop him! We can't have him speaking for The Sharing. We could grab him, keep him locked up somewhere for three days till the Yeerk in his head dies."

"I know we have to stop him, and we will. We'll just have to figure out some other way to get at him."

"He's probably going to start endorsing The Sharing on the Barry and Cindy Sue Show. Then he'll leave town," I argued. "It's our last chance.

They'll be on guard now. They'll be watching for us. We'll never get near that stupid yacht again. That show may be our last shot at him!"

Jake nodded. "Could be. Could be we can't pull this off. Could be we'll have to forget about it." The good-humored smile evaporated. He gave me a cold look. "Maybe you should have thought about all that, Rachel.

You're the one who blew the mission today. You're the one who let Visser Three know we were on to Jeremy Jason. Next time maybe you'll let the rest of us know when you're not in shape to handle a mission."

I would have argued ... if I could have. But everything he was saying was true.

I glanced at Cassie. She was looking down at the ground, embarrassed. Ax made a point of

aiming all four of his eyes away, like he was watching something fascinating far off in the distance.

I couldn't see Tobias. He was still out in the tall grass. But he must have overheard because he whispered to me, "Hey, don't worry about it, Rachel. It's okay."

"No. It's not," I whispered.

Okay, yes, I had screwed up. But I was determined to fix the problem.

So I basically lied.

The next day I told Jake and Cassie that it had happened. The hereth ill int. I told them it had happened in great detail. I went on and on about how weird it was. I was very convincing. And they fell for it.

Of course, if I'd tried to fool Ax it wouldn't have worked. Because see, I didn't really know what was going to happen during this DNA burping.

None of us had really understood Ax when he'd explained it. Once he starts in about Zero-space, we all just kind of glaze over.

But if I had tried to trick Ax, he would have

asked the one question neither Jake nor Cassie thought to ask: What did you do with the extra crocodile?

Anyway, when ! saw Jake the next day in school and told him it was all over, he believed me. Even Cassie believed me because I told her in a hurried whisper as we changed classes. I think if I'd had to look her right in the face, she would have known I was lying.

I had no choice. I had to make it to the Barry and Cindy Sue Show. One way or another, whatever it took, we had to stop Jeremy Jason from endorsing The Sharing on that show.

See, I knew I was okay. Because all I had to do was to control my emotions. Just stay unemotional, and I wouldn't go into uncontrolled morphs. And I'm good at handling emotion.

Except anger, maybe. I have a small problem with anger.

But who was going to make me mad on a stupid TV show? It would be fine.

Fine.

Uh-huh.

After school I took a taxi again to my dad's hotel. I had the taxi pass by my house. Work crews were already there, ripping out the shattered remains of our kitchen and my bedroom. They had one of those super-sized Dumpsters out front, full of plasterboard and two-by-fours.

"Did you hear what happened to that place?"

the taxi driver asked me. "House just fell apart. I tell you, the way they build things nowadays."

To my surprise my dad was actually at the hotel, waiting for me.

"About time!" he said, a little frantically as soon as I walked in the room. "The show goes live at five o'clock! It's almost three! Where have you been?"

"School."

"Oh. Yeah. School. Come on, come on. Fortunately, we can walk to the studio and avoid traffic. It's just down the street. Five minutes."

Choosing an outfit took very little time: I only had about three things salvaged from the wreck of my bedroom. I quickly called Cassie to tell her to hurry, too. She was supposed to meet me at the studio.

She wasn't home, which probably meant she was already waiting for me.

That was the plan. Cassie would be with me. The others would try to get into the studio in innocent-looking morphs. But we knew the Yeerks would be watching the place. They'd probably have some of their people in the audience. And for all any of us knew, Barry or Cindy Sue themselves might be Controllers.

"Are you nervous?" my dad asked as we hustled rapidly down the street.

"Not really," I said.

"Nationwide, live TV broadcast? Millions of

people watching? Coast-to-coast? And you're not nervous?"

"Now I am," I muttered. I suppressed the nervousness. I couldn't afford to feel anything. I just had to get through this without feeling any extreme emotion. I could do that.