steel mind of the shark left a slight crack. Enough of a crack.

Enough for my human brain to call up the picture of a human hand, bleeding from a small cut.

My hand! My hand. The human named Marco.

"0h, my God!" I yelled in thought-speak. "lt was me! It's my blood!

That's my own blood!"

The others didn't care. They continued to turn in ever tighter circles, looking, searching, marauding for the source of the blood.

"Jake! Jake! Shake it off, man. The shark has you. Jake, come on, man.

Get on top of it. Cassie! Rachel. Ax. Tobias. All of you. It's the shark instincts. Fight them. That was my blood."

It took a few minutes before we were all back to being ourselves. Tobias dealt with it easiest. I guess that's not a surprise. He's a predator normally. Maybe the shark mind and the hawk mind aren't so different.

Ax handled it well, too. Not that Andalites are sharklike. It was mostly that he'd morphed a shark already.

"Yikes," Cassie said, laughing nervously. "Kind of single-minded, aren't they?"

"No one else bleed," Rachel said. "l'll be hungry for hours." We were a little shaken up. We'd gotten cocky

about being able to control animal morphs. But the shark was different. I think at some level, at the most basic survival level, that primitive shark brain was actually superior to our own human brain.

It knew what it wanted. And there is a terrible strength in knowing what you want and having no doubts.

We swam around the island, back toward the holographically concealed underwater facility. This time we expected to be able to pass right by the supersharks who had almost taken us out when we'd been in dolphin morph.

We swam right through what looked exactly like seabed, right up to the facility. With dead shark eyes I stared through the portholes. The one that opened onto a busy cubicle area. And the other one. The one that looked into a more private room.

The guard sharks swam right past and around us, never paying the slightest attention.

"That was easy," Rachel said. "Let's go ahead and do this."

"Don't forget: The Leerans are psychic at close range," Ax warned.

"Whatever we do, we have to stay clear of them." This was the point where I'd normally make a joke. But just then I saw a woman entering the

private office. She was distorted by the convex glass, by the water, and by my own water-oriented shark's eyes.

But I knew her.

And I forgot to find something funny to say.

"l low what?" Tobias wondered. "We got past the guard sharks."

"Now I guess we go take a look inside," Jake said. He didn't sound too enthusiastic about the idea.

"Two of the three big hatches are open," Rachel observed. "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe?"

"Heads or tails?" I suggested.

"0ne potato, two potato?" Cassie said.

"What do these things mean?" Ax asked.

"These are highly advanced human methods for making choices," I said.

"How about the middle door?"

"Middle door," Jake agreed.

We swam toward the middle door. From a distance it was big. Up close it was even bigger. It was obviously big enough for the submarine to enter through.

From the outside the tunnel inside looked dark, but once away from the filtered green sunlight from above, we could see that there were lights on inside the tunnel.

We swam around, taking our time and trying to look casual. The open door and short tunnel led to a rectangular pool. A boat dock, obviously.

Probably used by the submarine. There were other hammerheads there, too.

But still they ignored us.

I rose to the surface, letting my dorsal fin slice its way into the air.

I rolled to one side, and raised my left eye above the water. Shark eyes are not made for seeing through atmosphere, but I could still see well enough. I saw a wall of corrugated steel that formed the rectangular boat dock we were in. But other than that I could only look straight up at the rafters overhead.

"We're not going to see much more staying in shark morph," Rachel said.

"We need to get out and look around."

"As what?" Jake asked. "We'd need something that fit in here. Something these Controllers wouldn't notice. But something with decent senses."

"F!ies," Cassie suggested. "Everyone except Tobias has a fly morph."

"0h, great. I get left out again," Tobias complained.

"l think the bad guys might notice a red-tailed hawk flying around in their underwater facility I said. "Although there are probably rats infesting this place, too, so the Controllers may appreciate your being here to eat their pests."

"We'd have to morph back to human under-water Jake pointed out. "Then morph to fly. All without drowning."

Scr-EET! Scr-EET! Scr-EET!

"What's that?"

"An alarm! Oh, man. They know we're here!"

Suddenly a rush of hammerheads was coming straight for us. I saw them first as dark shadows in the water. They loomed larger and larger. We turned to face them. But it was impossible. There had to be fifty of them!

On they came, whipping the water with their long tails.

Then . . . they swam past. They kept swimming for the far end of the dock. And now we could distinctly hear the sound of a mechanized door opening.

WHRRREEEEEEE!

"Those are definitely not normal sharks," Cassiesaid.

"Let's follow them," Rachel said. "They may lead us where we need to go."

"Yeah, or they might lead us right into where they make the new Oscar Mayer Shark-meat Lunchables," I said. "Hammerhead slices, American cheese, crackers, and a cookie."

We went after the sharks. We followed them to the far end of the dock. A new door had opened. There was actually a line of sharks waiting to get in. The pathway narrowed till soon we were single file.

"l'm starting to think Marco was right," Tobias said. "This sure feels like some kind of shark slaughterhouses