There's a seriousness to him, way down beneath all the glib jokes and teasing. Marco sees things other people sometimes miss. He is very smart and very wideawake, if you know what I mean.

Marco is Jake's best friend. They've been best friends forever. No one even remembers when it started. But ever since their friendship began, they've been arguing with each other about the most completely idiotic things in the universe: whether you should use more pedal or higher gears to win this dumb driving video game they love; whether Spiderman could beat Batman; whether basketball takes more teamwork than football; whether cheese tastes yellow.

I'm notkidding. They once spent an entire Saturday arguing whether something could taste like a color. I seem to remember that Marco thought cheese actually tasted green.

Despite this, Jake and Marco, along with Rachel and me, are the most normal members of the Animorphs. The other two are definitely weirder.

Take Tobias. Tobias is a kid trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk.

That happens if you stay more than two hours in a morph. You stay in that morph permanently. Tobias lives in the forest near a meadow. He still lives by hunting mice and rabbits.

But a vastly powerful creature called an Ellimist just recently gave Tobias back his power to morph. So now Tobias can morph like any of us.

Except that just as we each have to return to our human form before two hours, Tobias has to return to his hawk form.

So the human body Tobias was in at the mall was actually a morph of his old human body. That's why he seemed nearsighted: He was used to his laser-sharp hawk eyes.

He could stay forever in that human body, but then he'd be trapped as a human, unable to morph.

Confusing? It gets worse.

The last member of our group is not a human at all. His full name is Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill. We call him Ax.

Ax is an Andalite. But he also has a human morph he created out of bits of DNA from Jake, Marco, me, and Rachel.

Ax in his human morph is shockingly pretty for a boy. And extremely weird. See, Andalites have no mouths. No sense of taste. So when Ax is in human morph and has a mouth, he has no resistance whatsoever to flavors.

Ax is dangerous around cinnamon buns. And chocolate. And popcorn.

And the paper boxes the popcorn comes in.

Basically, Ax in human morph should not go anywhere near anything that can be eaten. We've had to stop him from eating the butts out of ash- trays. Don't get me wrong. Ax is brilliant and decent and honorable and brave — when he's in his own body.

"So. What's up?" Tobias asked.

Six sets of eyes casually scanned the area around us. The mall was not busy, and it was too early for a big dinner crowd at the food court. But we had to be sure that no one was even slightly within range to overhear.

Our enemies could be anyone. Anywhere.

"Rachel and Cassie went out to Zone Ninety-one and found horses making phone calls," Marco said.

Tobias's eyes darted to me, then to Rachel. He looked very serious. He had mostly forgotten how to make human expressions with his face. But he was still Tobias. "Can someone interpret from Marco-babble to normal language?"

"I think I like you better as a chicken, Tobias," Marco said.

"Red-tailed hawk," Tobias said tolerantly.

Marco shrugged. "Chicken, pigeon, hawk, whatever."

"Urn, how about if we get down to business before someone interrupts us?" Jake suggested.

"Okay, Dad,"Marco said. Then, becoming instantly serious, he quickly and efficiently summarized for Tobias what we knew.

"Yeerks in horses," Rachel said. "It makes zero sense. Why would Yeerks want to make Controllers out of horses?"

"Do horses have some special powers? Pow-werz-zuh?" Ax asked. In addition to enjoying taste, he finds speaking words out loud to be strange.

I shrugged. "They're herd animals. Not very smart. In fact, pretty dumb, really. They can run fast, but there are lots of faster animals. They're strong, but there are lots of other animals that are stronger." I shrugged again. "I can't see why the Yeerks would be wanting to infest horses."

"Maybe they think they can win the Kentucky Derby," Rachel joked.

"Maybe it's some kind of strange Yeerk entertainment," Jake offered.

"Maybe it's fun for them."

"I don't believe Yeerks do anything for fun, Prince Jake," Ax said. "They would have some reason."

"Ax, please don't call me 'Prince Jake.' Especially not in public."

"Yes, Prince Jake. Jay-kuh."

"Are you two sure about this?" Jake asked Rachel and me. "It was a Yeerk you saw? Not a snake or a snail or something?"

"And what if your dad is right, and it was an exploding artillery shell, not a Dracon flash?" Tobias suggested.

"We're not doubting you," Jake added quickly. "It's just that there's no good reason for Yeerks to infest horses."

I looked at Rachel. I was sure of what we'd seen. Mostly. "Well ... I guess I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure."

"Yeah. Pretty sure," Rachel echoed.

"So? What do we do?" Jake asked. "Take a look around out in the Dry Lands? See if we can get some more proof?"

"Very good flying out there," Tobias said. "Lots of sweet thermals."

"And plenty of delicious snakes and toads?" Marco asked with mock innocence.

"I can't go tomorrow," Jake said. "It's my dad's birthday. We're all going out for dinner."

"Even Tom?" Rachel asked.

"Tom says he'll be there," Jake said darkly. "But who knows? He spends a lot of time at meetings of The Sharing lately. All the more reason why I haveto be there. My dad is not going to celebrate his birthday without at least one of his sons there."

"What did you get your dad?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Jake grinned. "Haven't done it yet, but I think I'm going to clean the roof gutters for him."

Marco shuddered. "Actual physical labor? Couldn't you just get him a nice Hallmark card?"

"I am kind of curious about this thing with the horses," I said. "But we could put it off till the weekend."

"It could be worth checking out," Jake said. "But we don't need everyone to go along. Who wants to go flying with Cassie tomorrow after school?"

In the end Tobias, Rachel, Marco, and I decided to go. Jake was busy, and I don't think Ax saw any point in it. We broke up and went our separate ways. We try not to spend much time together in public. We don't want any inquisitive Controllers to start thinking of us as a "group."

So Rachel and I left together.

"No one is taking this seriously, are they?" I asked her. "I get the impression Ax thinks we're nuts."

"Yeerks in horses? Horse-Controllers? It is kind of hard to see where that's some big threat."

"Yeah. I guess that's true."

"But hey, any excuse to go flying, right?"

Chapter 5

The next day I wore my new outfit to school. I hooked up with Rachel before first period and we walked to class together. Down the main hall.

Me and Rachel, the Goddess of Clothing and Good Grooming.

"You look great!" Rachel said.

"Hi, Rachel," a boy named Charles said, smiling awkwardly. "Oh, and hi, urn ... Carla."

"See? Charles smiled at you."

"He called me Carla."