Alloran's Choice

by K. A. Applegate

  Suddenly, it was as if a light had gone on in my head. Wherever the Jahar emerged into real space, the Yeerks would go tearing after it.

  No matter where.

  A trap! I could spring a trap!

  81 But where? Where should I draw the Yeerk fleet?

  To the StarSwordl My old ship. She was off pursuing a Yeerk task force near the Graysha Nebula. She'd been hoping to meet a second Dome ship there.

  Two Dome ships. Plus the Jahar. Enough fire-power to handle just about anything the Yeerks could muster.

  I went to the control panel and entered the coordinates.

  "You have a plan?" Loren asked.

  «More or less,» I muttered. I was already having doubts. «There's a place called the Graysha Nebula. We don't know much about it. But there are rumors of a sentient species living in that area. And there are rumors that the Yeerks are exploring the nebula. My old ship, the StarSword, went there to see if it could locate a Yeerk task force we were pursuing.»

  "So we're going there to meet up with your old ship. Is ... is this nebula place closer to Earth?"

  «No.»

  "Elfangor. . . am I ever going to get back home?"

  «Lorenr I will do my best»

  Chapman snorted. "And you've seen how good Elfangor's best is. You might as well kiss Earth goodbye."

  82 «We will emerge into real space,» I explained.

  «lf we're lucky, we won't be far from the StarSword. If we're even luckier, there will be additional Andalite ships close by. From that point it will only take the Yeerks an hour or so to start showing up.»

  "And then?" Loren asked.

  «Space battle, I suppose. Andalite fighters and Yeerk Bug fighters going at it. Us, too, of course.»

  "Is there anything I can do to help?"

  «Yes. Show me the best way to tie up a human,» I said, looking at Chapman. «l don't want any dis-tractions.»

  We tied the human around his feet and hands using spare conduit hose. Then we tied the hands to the feet behind his back.

  "One last thing," Loren said. She took a short length of the hose and wrapped it around Chapman's face, covering his mouth. "Now we won't have to listen to him."

  It took me a few seconds to understand. Many

  83 species communicate by making sounds with their mouths. But it had never occurred to me you could silence someone with a piece of hose.

  «To silence an Andalite you'd have to knock him outt» I said. «This won't hurt him?»

  "No. Unfortunately." She smiled to show she had been joking.

  After all she had been through, from being kidnapped by Skrit Na to being made a Controller, she could still laugh. I wondered if I'd been wrong to think humor was a weakness. I wondered if Arbron could still laugh.

  "Elfangor... aren't you tempted by what Chapman said? I mean, if it were me, I might want to use that Time machine thing to change things. You know?"

  «Like maybe go back in time and avoid getting kidnapped by the Skrit Na to begin with?»

  She laughed. "No. Not that. Look, my life was pretty dull before all this. I know when you take me back to Earth you'll have to erase all my memories of this. But still, even though it was horrible sometimes, I don't think I'd want to never have met you. If it wasn't for my mom worrying and all..."

  I was surprised. And pleased, too. «ln the Skrit Na ship, where I found the Mustang, I also found pictures of Earth. It looked very beautiful. Wonderful, delicious-looking grass and tall trees and

  84 streams of water that bubbled across stones. Is your home like that?»

  "We do have places like that," Loren said, smiling sadly. "There's a place we went once, back when I was little and my dad was still with us. Before he went to the war. It's a place called Yosemite. We camped out in a tent. Yosemite is like that."

  «And did you stick small white cylinders in your mouth and smile at the beauty of it all?»

  "Small white cylinders?" Loren looked puzzled. Then she laughed her strange but delightful human laugh. "You were looking at cigarette ads! Those white cylinders are called cigarettes. They're bad for you, actually. Very bad for you. They make you sick."

  «So ... so humans go to beautiful places and use sickening cylinders? Why?»

  But Loren was laughing too hard to answer. And pretty soon, even though I had no idea what was so funny, I was laughing, too. Although my laugh could only be heard by Loren inside her own head.

  "So," she said after a while. "Why don't you want to use this Time Matrix thing?"

  I waved my stalks forward and back in a gesture of uncertainty. «You can't just go messing around with time. They say it's insanely complicated. Sure, maybe I could go back, like Chapman said, and stomp out the first Yeerks who evolved. But who

  85 knows how many other things that might affect? Besides, to be honest, I guess I'm scared of the Elli-mists.»

  "The what?"

  Supposedly they're the race that built the Time Matrix. Thousands and thousands of years ago. They built it, and then, suddenly, as far as anyone can tell, they vanished. The entire species of Ellimists just vanished.»

  "You think it was because they used the Time Matrix?"

  «No one knows. Some people say the Ellimists still exist, but they've moved beyond the normal space-time dimensions we know. There are some who say the Ellimists are almost all-powerful.» I shrugged. «Of course, there are others who say they're gone forever. Or even that they never did exist. Now Andalite parents tell their children stories about the Ellimists.»

  "Fairytales."

  «Are fairies magical beings in human mythol-ogy?»

  "Not just fairies. We have elves and leprechauns and Santa Claus and hobbits and werewolves and vampires. .. . We even have aliens from outer space."

  Despite myself, I laughed. «Yes, those outer space aliens are quite troublesome.»

  86 "Doesn't the Time Matrix prove that these Elli-mists are real?"

  «Well... I don't know. But if Ellimists are real, if they really do live in dimensions beyond our own, then they have powers we could not imagine. Pretend . . . never mind.»

  "No, tell me," Loren urged. "Unless you have something else to do."

  «Okay, well, you know that space-time has ten dimensions. There are the normal dimensions of up/down, left/right, and forward/back. Then there is the fourth dimension, which is time. Then, there are six other dimensions, but they are curled up into themselves, so we don't see or feel them. All we feel are three space dimensions, plus time.»

  Loren nodded her head. I wondered what this meant. But she didn't ask me to stop, so I went on.

  «lmagine if, instead of three normal space dimensions, we only had two. Imagine we were flat, and we couldn't go up or down, just in the other two directions. Call us the Flatties. See?»

  "Like if we lived on a piece of paper," Loren said.

  «Exactly. It would be like we were drawings on a piece of paper. And if someone came along and drew a box around us, we could never get out. Because the lines of the box would be walls. But what if a three-dimensional person came along? A three-dimensional person could lift that Flattie right up

  87 out of that box. The Flattie wouldn't even know what was happening, because he's never gone up or down before. He doesn't even know up and down exist»

  "You're saying we're like the Flatties. Except we're in three dimensions, not just two. So we're like Cubies or something."

  «Yes. So if some creature came along who existed in more dimensions than us, he'd be able to do things that would be impossible for us.»

  "Ellimists. That's what they are?"

  «Maybe. Like I say, no one knows. But someone built the Time Matrix. Someone real. Someone who isn't around anymore.»

  "Whew."

  «So maybe we could use the Time Matrix and pop in and out of time. Or maybe we'd disappear, like the Ellimists may have.»

  "Or maybe we'd just make these Ellimists mad," Loren said.

  «Exactly.»

&nbs
p; "But if you give the Time Matrix to your people, won't they use it, anyway? Even with all the risks?"

  «A week ago I'd have said absolutely not. I'd have said we Andalites don't do things like that. Not even in war.»

  "But now... whatever Alloran did on that Hork-Bajir planet, it was wrong, wasn't it?"

  88 I stared at her with my main eyes. «Loren, I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. I just don't»

  The computer signaled that we were nearing the translation point.

  «We're going back to normal space,» I said. «And by the way ... if we do survive all this, and get you back to Earth, could you show me this place with the grass and trees and tall waterfalls?»

  "It's a date," Loren said.

  «Could we have a Mustang there, too?»

  She put her arm around my waist and looked deep into my eyes with her two tiny blue human eyes. "Anything you want, Elfangor. Just no white cylinders."

  89 «Coming out of Zero-space ... now!»

  Zero-space is dead white. Normal space is usually deep black, dotted with stars that burn in bright white and pale red and cold blue.

  But this space was not like that.

  "Jeez! Amazing!"

  «You've never been close to a nebula,» I observed. But the truth was, even I was awed.

  The nebula was a dust cloud so large that a dozen solar systems the size of Earth's could have been lost in it with room to spare. It was like a weird, twisted cloud. A cloud of purple and orange that seemed to envelop brilliant stars.

  "It's so beautiful!"

  «Yes. And if the StarSword is out there somewhere, it'll really be beautiful.»

  I glanced over at Chapman. He lay trussed up and gagged. He glared back at me.

  «Right now Yeerk ships are hearing the transponder they attached to us. They'll be on us in a very short time. I'm conducting a sensor sweep,

  90 looking for any Andalite vessels. But it's hard with the nebula around us. The dust confuses the sensors.»

  "Are we a long way from Earth?"

  «Yes. Even by the standards of space. We are hundreds of light-years away.»

  Loren stared out at the nebula. She bit her lip a little with her teeth and took her arm away from my waist.

  Humans like to use touch. It seems odd at first. But I had gotten used to it.

  «l'm going to try calling the StarSword,» I said.

  I made the thought-speak link with the communications system. «Any Andalite ship this sector, any Andalite ship this sector. This is Jahar.»

  I expected to have to wait. I was shocked when I heard the voice of Captain Feyorn. «Jahar! Jahar! Alloran, is that you? We are under attack. Say again, under attack. Can you -»

  «StarSword, I lost you! StarSword!» I checked the display. Yes, we had a location fix! I punched in the new heading.

  «Loren, get down on the ground. Back against the bulkhead. I'm going to Maximum Burn!»

  She ran and threw herself down on the ground, just as I punched in the burn. But the acceleration was barely noticeable. The Jahar had amazingly

  91 good compensators. But even though there was no feeling of acceleration, the ship blew through space.

  "Elfangor, what's going on?"

  «l don't know. But I'm powering up all weapons.»

  At Maximum Burn it took less than ten minutes for us to be able to spot the great Dome ship. She came up on my view screen at high magnification. She looked like a glowing steel stick with a bright half-ball on one end. Her engines were off. In the space around her were a dozen or more of our fighters.

  But what caught my attention were the asteroids - rough, dark tumbling rocks. The StarSword seemed to be in the middle of an asteroid field. Only that was unlikely. Asteroids orbited stars. There was no star close enough to hold an asteroid field in its gravity.

  "Hey! It moved!" Loren said.

  «What are you talking about?» I demanded. I sounded rude because I was busy trying to figure out what was going on. And I didn't think a human was going to be very helpful, really.

  "Those rocks. Those asteroids. Look! Look at them!"

  I turned one stalk eye to watch the asteroids. Then, in a flash, I focused all four eyes.

  92 «They're moving! They are under power!»

  As we stared, transfixed, one of the asteroids seemed to sprout a tail. It was a plume of hot plasma! The asteroid turned! It changed course, and shot toward one of the StarSword's fighters.

  The fighter fired a full-power shredder blast at the asteroid. The green beam zapped through the vacuum. The asteroid glowed where the shredder blast hit, and then it increased speed.

  The fighter turned to run. But to my amazement, the asteroid accelerated. It stayed on the fighter's tail, twisting, turning, accelerating and then . . .

  "Oh! Elfangor, look!"

  «No! It's impossible!»

  A pillar of living rock extended from the asteroid like some primitive arm. It struck the fighter. I saw a tiny puff as the air was squeezed from the ship.

  And then the rock simply grew over the doomed ship. It grew swift, unstoppable, until, within seconds, the entire fighter was covered by living rock.

  The asteroid had eaten a fighter.

  93 "What are those things?" Loren asked in horror.

  «l don't know. I've never seen or heard of anything like them. I mean, they are impossible!»

  "They're like living asteroids or something."

  «l think that's exactly what they are. But that's impossible.»

  As I watched in horror, a second fighter was caught and swallowed up by a living rock.

  «The StarSword will start shooting now,» I said confidently. «A Dome ship's shredders can blow chunks off a planet. They'll wipe these things out!»

  TSEEEEWWWWW! TSEEEEWWWWW!

  I had never seen the StarSword's main shredders fire before. It was awesome. The beams of green light looked as thick as tree trunks as they blasted through space and hit one of the asteroids with enough power to punch a hole through a moon.

  The asteroid glowed brightly. But it did not explode. It did not disintegrate. It did not melt.

  It turned}

  94 «lt's going after the StarSword»

  Dozens of the asteroids seemed to be swarming the space around the StarSword. Close by, not three hundred miles away, I saw another fighter, twisting and turning, trying to lose one of the rocks.

  «Go to Zero-space!» I yelled. «Whatever these things are, they can't have Zero-space flight!»

  I guess the fighter pilot thought the same thing. I saw his engines glow bright as he powered up for a Zero-space jump. Suddenly, three more asteroids closed in on the fighter. They blocked its path. A massive arm of rock shot out and punched right into the fighter.

  The pilot was blown clear. Out into empty space. He kicked his hooves for a few seconds. Then he stopped moving.

  "Oh, God!"

  «No! No! Noooo!»

  The StarSword fired all shredders, lighting up black space with brilliant beams of light. But it didn't work. In fact, it seemed to draw more asteroids.

  "Hey! That's just attracting them," Loren cried. "The engines and the weapons - they attract them!"

  «You're right!» I don't know which shocked me more. That these asteroids were drawn to energy discharges. Or that it was the human girl who had figured it out.

  95 I punched up communications. «StarSword, StarSword, this is Jahar. The asteroids are attracted by energy discharge! You're drawing them to you!»

  I don't know if my message got through or not. But just then, I realized we had a whole new set of problems. Behind us, two Yeerk ships materialized, entering real space! They were no more than five thousand miles away.

  A Pool ship, like a fat, awkward, three-legged spider. As soon as it appeared in real space, it began launching Bug fighters.

  And beside the Pool ship, something I had never seen before. It was jet black so that it was barely visible. It was smaller than the Pool ship, but bigg
er than a Bug fighter. What seemed to be the bridge was a hard-edged diamond attached by a long triangular shaft to twin engines. The engines were a strange shape, like the blades of a two-headed ax.

  The entire thing looked like some ancient weapon - a battle ax. It was like some flying Hork-Bajir. A Blade ship.

  Don't ask me how I knew. I don't believe in psychic things, although some Andalites do. But still, I knew who was in that Blade ship.

  I felt cold hatred. Hatred of that black ship. Hatred of the abomination I had helped to create.

  96 «So. He's still alive,» I whispered. «This time, no mercy.»

  Space was filling up quickly. Yeerk ships, An-dalite ships, and the deadly, impossible asteroids. But the Yeerks were thousands of miles behind me, and I was thousands of miles from the Andalite fleet. If I was lucky, the Yeerks would not be able to see the Dome ship on their sensors yet.

  And they would not even be looking for murderous asteroids.

  The computer blinked to show an incoming communication. It was visual as well as thought-speak. The image that appeared on the screen was Andalite.

  The familiar face of Alloran-Semitur-Corrass. But from that familiar face shone an evil that I cannot describe.

  «Ah, Elfangor, I believe,» Sub-Visser Seven said. «Still have the Time Matrix, I hope? I'm here to take it from you.»

  I had not yet switched on my own image for him to see. I had to think fast. I grabbed a handheld shredder and carefully set it for lowest power.

  «Loren? Listen! The sub-visser doesn't know you aren't still a Controller. Take this. Stand behind me, where he can see you when I switch on my screen. Give me a few seconds to talk, then fire this. But miss me, okay?»

  97 "Got it, "she said.

  I switched on my screen. «So, Sub-Visser Seven. You survived. Too bad.»

  «l did survive. But you almost got me there, you really did. And by the way, it's no longer Sub-Visser Seven. I'm the first Yeerk to capture an Andalite body. I have already delivered more intelligence on Andalite fleet deployments than a century of spying could have yielded. So it's not Sub-Visser anything anymore. You are addressing Visser Thirty-Two

  «You're still just a slug as far as I'm concerned. You want the Time Matrix?» I asked. «Come and take it from me. I promise you -»