A trainer was standing by the gate. Cigar-man. The cigar was even more disintegrated by slobber now.

"He's always balky at the gate," Cigar-man said to the jockey.

Oh, really? Well, I would show them. I tossed my head proudly and I walked calmly into the narrow gate.

But once inside, I realized why Minneapolis Max was balky. There was zero room. The wooden slat walls pressed in on me from both sides. It was a trap! A trap!

Run!

I reared up, flailing my front legs wildly. I kicked the gate with my forehooves and yelled at the top of my horse lungs.

WHAM! ' "HreEEE-heee-he!"

"Take it easy, Max, easy," the jockey said.

I was scared. Or at least my horse brain was scared. And I still had the obnoxious scent of that other big stallion in my nose. So I was mad, too.

That's my excuse. I just wasn't thinking. Because when the jockey once again told me to take it easy, I did something I shouldn't have done.

Something I wouldn't have done if I hadn't been distracted.

"Youtake it easy. I'm crammed into a little box here!" I said in thought-speak.

Thought-speak is like E-mail: It only goes to the person you address it to.

So he did hear me. I know for a fact he did because he said, "Huh?

Wah? What the?"

BRRRRIIINNNNNG!

WHAP!

A massively loud bell rang, the gate slammed open, and I started running.

I kicked out with the big, bunched muscles of my back legs. I threw my front legs out to catch myself with each stride. I exploded from the gate.

Exploded!

I felt the adrenaline flood my system. To my left, horses! To my right, horses! We were running all out. Running ike mad, hooves flashing, mus- cles firing and releasing, manes streaming, tails bobbing, our nostrils flared wide to suck in gasping breaths.

I ran. I ran, and the other horses faded from my thoughts. I ran, and it was like I was the only horse on Earth. I saw the track ahead of me, and that's all I cared about. I just wanted to run and run for as long as there was open ground ahead of me.

I was doing what I had been designed to do. I was fulfilling millions of years of horse evolution.

I was running. And running was what I did. Running was what I was.

The jockey tried to rein me in. He was conserving my strength and stamina for the end of the race.

"Forget winnings I told him. "The point is not to win. The point is just to run."

To his credit, he didn't fall off in shock. And also to his credit, he gave me control, and I did what horses do:l hauled hoof.

Around the turn, digging my hooves in to keep from slipping. I moved in toward the whitewashed rail, cutting straight across the path of another horse. But I didn't care. Hah! I was running! Everyone else could just get out of the way!

Down the backstretch. No sound but my own gasping breath and the pounding, pounding, pounding of dozens of hooves on dirt.

The far turn! I was tiring now. My lungs ached. My muscles burned. I felt each new impact of my hooves on the dirt. It was time to slow down.

Rest a little.

But then I saw him. The dark brown stallion. I saw him sneak up, getting between me and the rail. And I saw him pull ahead of me.

"Don't fade on me now, talking horse!" the jockey said.

I saw the wild, triumphant look in the stallion's eye. It made my blood boil.

"Hang on, Mr. Jockey. We're gonna win this race!"

Easier said than done. The other horse was fast. Very fast. But I had something he didn't have: a human brain. See, I knew the finish line was not far off. I knew that I could pour every last ounce of energy into running. I could override my horse instincts that told me to slow down.

I stretched out my stride and powered down the track.

I was ahead!

He was ahead!

I was ahead!

He was ahead!

The crowd was screaming deliriously. I saw thousands of faces flash by, all with their mouths wide open. The roar just gave me more energy still.

The finish line!

FLASH! FLASH! The cameras went off.

ZOOM! I blew across the line. Exactly two feet ahead of the other stallion.

I had won!

I think it was the first time in my entire life I'd ever won any kind of athletic contest. Sure, I was a horse, but hey, a victory is a victory.

Chapter 17

Fortunately, in between running from stable hands and trying to find me, everyone in the group had managed to acquire a horse morph.

We flew out to the Dry Lands. It was a long trip, made even longer by the fact that the entire time we had the same conversation, over and over.

"AII I'm saying is think of how cool it would be," Marco pleaded. "We morph racehorses—"

"l don't think so, Marco," Jake said.

"— then, using our human abilities we figure out if we think we can win, and the others put money down."

"Not happening, Marco," Rachel said.

"We start out betting whatever we have saved. Like I have about twenty dollars. But if we bet that at say, three-to-one odds, before you know it — "

"Marco, forget it, okay?" I said. "lt wouldn't be right."

"— we'd have sixty dollars. Bet that at three-to-one odds you have a hundred and eighty. Then bet that and you have five forty! Then sixteen hundred twenty! Then four thousand eight hundred and sixty!"

"How is it you can multiply in your head like that?" Rachel asked. "You barely scrape by in your math classes."

"lt's a whole different thing when you're multiplying money," Marco said.

"A whole different thing." .

We repeated this conversation with small variations all the way to the Dry Lands.

"Hey," Tobias said. "l think we're in luck. Isn't that the same bunch of horses we saw be-fore?"

"The modest horses?" Jake asked.

"Yep. That is them," Tobias confirmed. "l remember the markings. Look at the way they move."

Down below, my osprey eyes spied the horses. They were walking almost in a line. Like soldiers.

Not like wild horses. But alongside the disciplined group were other horses. These other horses were moving normally.

"l think our main group of horse-Controllers has picked up a few tagalongs. It would make sense. The real horses don't know these are Yeerk-infested horses. So they hook up, figuring to be part of the same herd."

"And look where they're headings Marco said. "Right toward the base.

Right into Zone Ninety-one."

"l understand what a racetrack is now: a place where horses chase each other in circles as humans scream. But what exactly is this Zone Ninety- one?" Ax asked. "You were all talking about it before, but I am still confused."

"Youprobably already know what's going on at Zone Ninety-one," Marco said darkly.

Jake sighed. "lt's a secret base. They say it's a place where the government is hiding an alien spacecraft that supposedly crashed here about fifty years ago "Who is they?"Ax asked.

"Marco is they,"Rachel said. "Nuts. Wackos. Conspiracy freaks.

People who go on the Internet and call themselves DarkTruth or whatever."

"Ah," Ax said, like he understood.

Marco was right about one thing, however: The horses were heading directly into the base.

Of course, so were other horses. Horses not connected to the band of horse-Controllers.

"lf you want to infiltrate a heavily guarded base, what better way?" I admitted. "l saw horses wandering through the base when we were there."