Speaker of the House. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Good grief."

"Hey, wait," Marco said. "John Tesh is listed. That I can believe. Snoop Dogg? I don't think so. The Spice Girls? They suck, but I don't know if they're Controllers."

"This is ridiculous," Rachel said. "This is a waste of time. Some typical Internet wacko picked the word 'Yeerk' out of thin air and decided to make a Web page. It doesn't mean anything."

"That was my reaction, too," I said. "Then I saw this name." I used the mouse to point.

"Chapman!" Rachel said. "Huh."

Chapman is our assistant principal. He's also a high-ranking Yeerk and a major supervisor of The Sharing. The Sharing is a front organization.

They pretend to be a sort of coed Boy Scouts or whatever, but they are a Yeerk organization.

Which made me wonder. "So if whoever put this page together really knows anything about Yeerks, why isn't there anything about The Sharing?"

Cassie nodded. "Good question. Maybe they don't know about The Sharing."

"Or maybe this whole thing is nothing but a Yeerk trap," Tobias said.

"Exactly," Rachel agreed. "Then they wouldn't want anyone knowing what The Sharing really is, would they?"

"So why mention Chapman?"

"It's a pretty common name," Marco pointed out. "Could be random. Could be coincidence."

I pushed back from the computer and looked at my friends. "If this thing is real, then maybe we have allies out there who could help us."

"But if it's just a Yeerk trap then we could be the mice, and this stupid Web page could be the cheese," Rachel said.

We all just kind of looked at each other for a while, shrugging.

Then Cassie said, "What about the chat room?"

"There's supposedly a scheduled chat starting right about now," I said.

"But I wasn't sure if it was safe for one of us to go there. A chat room goes beyond just disabling cookies. How secure are screen names?"

Marco grinned. "A lot more secure after I get done. See, I have the access codes for the system at my dad's work. So I can hack in through -"

"Excuse me, Prince Jake," Ax interrupted, "but if you would like I can encode Marco's software in a way that will make it impossible for anyone to trace you. Why is it called software?"

I glanced at Marco. He's proud of his skills. But the truth is, Ax is about three centuries ahead of us in computers.

Marco threw up his hands. "Fine. Go for it."

"There is only so much I can do with this very primitive system," Ax said. "Two-dimensional screen, an actual keyboard instead of a decent psychic link, rigid codes ... I'm not an archaeologist. I don't know much about ancient types of computers."

Just the same, he sat down and in three minutes had typed in a code that made Marco's system hack-proof.

"Okay. So. Do we chat about Yeerks?" Cassie asked.

"Yep. We chat about Yeerks."

you've never seen a computer chat room before, it's kind of confusing.

It's like a conversation between people who aren't really listening to each other.

Plus everyone can only type about ten words at a time, so it gets pretty confusing. But you get used to making sense of it after a while.

The six of us watched, fascinated, as the conversation went scrolling down the screen. A conversation about things we thought only we knew about.

YeerKiller9: there's no way! GoVikes: You have to chop them up to be sure they're

really

Chazz:

GoVikes: YeerKiller9:

Chazz:

YrkHSer: Gump8293:

Chazz:

YeerKiller9: Gump8293:

GoVikes: CKDsweet:

GoVikes: Gump8293:

Why don't we get serious here? The Yeerks are dead.

Listen to me, I was infested by a Yeerk. It

only getting stronger. And instead of using this Chat to plan Kill all Yeerks! I think my dad is one. What can I do? some action, we end up doing nothing, was only by a miracle I escaped.

I mean it's weird because my dad actually seems in some ways. But Yeerks are like worms. If you just cut them in

can anyone help me? There's this organization called half they just grow again, he is too nice. He's

got all these new friends

suddenly and

YrkHSer: Kill all Yeerks ! CKDsweet: the sharing, and I think they are all Yeerks.

I looked at Marco. He nodded.

"The Sharing," he muttered. "Interesting. See if anyone stomps on that."

Sure enough, someone did. The supposedly enthusiastic Yeerk hater.

YrkHSer: The sharing is okay. I checked them out.

Chazz: Wrong. The sharing is a Yeerk front organization.

YrkHSer: No way. They're like Boy Scouts.

"Whoa," Rachel said.

"This Chazz guy seems fairly serious," Tobias offered.

"YrkHSer may be a Controller himself," I said.

"Or he may just be mistaken," Cassie pointed out.

Gump8293: he's with them all the time. The other day I Carlito: Gump8293: Carlito: MegMom:

GoVikes: MegMom: GoVikes:

I've discovered that Yeerks need to go someplace secret and heard my dad and these new friends whispering about

feed or replenish. Every three days. I think they someone called "Visher" or "Vister" or something, get out of their host body to do this. Gump, I think it's "Visser." I think a Visser is like a they're like snails, only without a shell, general or something. I think Visser is a rank. Rank. LOL. Totally rank.

"GoVikes is just your standard chat room moron," Marco said. "But Chazz and Meg and Carlito seem like they may know something."