A screaming siren! Flashing lights! The robot defense towers blazed with green and blue light. The spacecraft began to power up.
The entire base was suddenly very alive. Very, dangerously, alive!
«A thought-speak detector!» I cried. «They know the Mercora use thought-speak and they have a thought-speak detector!»
«What, are you kidding?» Marco demanded. «How is that possible?»
«Actually, our own Andalite scientists have been trying for years to develop such a system. It would work on the principle of -»
Scrr-EEEEEE-eeeee-EEEEEE-eeee-eeee. Scrr-E E E E E-eeeee-E E E E E-eeee-eeee!
«Here they come!» Cassie yelled. «From the mound! Here they come!»
A red-black river of Nesk poured from the mound. More belched up from the ground beneath us. The soil was alive with them! Millions, millions of them.
«Let's do this!» Rachel cried.
I leaped toward the warehouse. I kicked with my powerful Tyrannosaurus leg and knocked a small hole in the walls. I kicked again. The hole grew
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K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs only slightly.
«Marco! Go help Ax!» Prince Jake said.
Soon there were two tyrannosaurs attacking the mud wall.
«This is so Godzilla!» Marco said with a giddy laugh. «After this, we head for Tokyo!»
Suddenly, the wall collapsed. I was inside. But I was too tall! My head emerged above the roof of the building. I would have to crumble the roof, too. And each chunk of roof that fell hid more of the things inside the storeroom.
Rachel vaulted past me and began to dig through boxes and crates, the stolen remnants of a dozen alien civilizations. She used her claws to rip them open, scattering their contents, even as chunks of the roof fell on her.
«The ships are starting to get off the ground!» Tobias yelled.
«Prince Jake,» I said urgently. «You can attack the ships more easily before they get in the air!»
«Yeah, I thought of that,» he said grimly. «Ax, you and Rachel stay on it, man. Everyone else, let's see just how much damage these dinos can do.»
Tobias
One minute we were standing in a ghost town. The next minute it was like being trapped in the middle of an out-of-control video arcade. Lights! Sirens! Spaceships powering up. The robot security towers shining broad-spectrum floodlights everywhere.
And worst of all, millions of Nesk everywhere! But they hadn't attacked us.
«They haven't figured out it's us,» I said. «They don't know where the thought-speak is conning from. They haven't figured out it's coming from us.»
«They will, soon enough,» Rachel said. «Ax and I are ripping their building apart. They'll figure it out.»
«That weird oval-looking ship is powering up fastest,» Jake said. «Let's get it.»
Three huge tyrannosaurs began stomping toward the ship. I ran ahead of them, faster and more agile in my Deinonychus morph. There wasn't much I could do to damage the ship. Except. . .
I leaped, landed on the outer oval, just as the ship began to rise from the ground.
Crunch!
My weight tipped the ship sideways, slamming the outer ring down into the dirt. And then . ..
WHAMMM!
It was like having someone drop a house on the other end of your seesaw.
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K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs I flew through the air, cartwheeled, landed on my dinosaur butt and rolled to my feet.
Cassie had mimicked me. Only when she leaped, she leaped in a much, much larger way. Her massive tonnage ripped open the steel hull, crumpled it like aluminum foil, and flattened a segment of it in the dirt.
«Cool,» she said. «See? I don't mind stomping machines. Are you okay, Tobias?» «Well, my dignity is hurt,» I said. «That pyramid-looking ship over there!»
We turned and raced toward the second ship. «Found one!» Ax yelled suddenly. «I don't know the yield, but it's definitely an explosive device!»
«Then haul butt!» Jake cried. «Rachel, can you carry it?» «Already have it!» «Do we take out the pyramid ship or run?» Cassie asked. «Ax and Rachel, get that nuke outta here, the rest of us will stay and
do some more damage. Maybe make it harder for them to come after us.» I ran for the pyramid-shaped fighter. But the Nesk had figured out what
was happening. They'd made the mental breakthrough: It was the dinosaurs who'd become their enemy. Once they figured that out, the Nesk got nasty. TSAAAAPPPPPPPP! A bolt of energy from the nearest robot tower blew a hole in the ground,
right where I'd been standing a split second earlier. I felt a jolt of
pain. The back half of my left foot was burned off! I staggered on, but now the pyramid fighter was turning toward us, bringing its weapons to bear.
I ran full at it, but the wound slowed me down. Jake passed me and bounded through the air, tons of muscle and bone becoming one big projectile. He hit the pyramid fighter just as the fighter fired.
CH-CH-CH -! WHUMPF! The fighter went rocketing sideways, out of control. And at that moment
a second robot tower fired. TSAAAPPPPPP! KUH-BLOOOOOOOM! The energy weapon hit the fighter. It exploded, becoming a small sun of
brilliant orange and yellow light. The impact hit me in the side. I was in the dirt before I knew what had happened. Up I jumped, but my leg was weak as the first injury drained its strength away. Page 81
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Stinging! The Nesk were all over me, biting, stinging, attacking in the most primitive way.
It was really bizarre. The Nesk were frying everything in sight with highly advanced energy weapons, and at the same time, biting.
«Okay, that's it! Head for the trees!» Jake yelled.
He didn't have to tell me twice. I saw the tree line, illuminated by early dawn light and the brilliant explosions, and I moved out. Pain or no pain, I was running for cover.
But then, my injured leg just stopped working. I was down! Two gigantic tyrannosaurs lumbered by overhead. I should cry out, tell them. But if I did, they'd die trying to save me.
Like some foul-breathed savior, there came a massive, square head. Down it came, jaws open. The jaws closed gently around me. Seven-inch teeth cut into my skin, but did not penetrate muscle.
The Tyrannosaurus lifted me up and up and up. It jolted away. Each step shot pain through my body. But at least I was up off the ground, away from the Nesk.
«Let me know if I bite too hard,» Cassie said.
CH-CH-CH-CHEEEEW!
The ground beside me erupted. Cassie was carrying me so that I was looking back. I saw the second pyramid fighter rise up and open fire. Behind it came the other undamaged fighter.
I twisted my head forward. A long, long way to the trees. And between us and the trees, one of the deadly robot towers.
Cassie ran.
The fighters came after us.
No way. No way to make it.
«I'm going to contact the Mercora,» Ax said.
I barely had time to think what? when the tower opened fire. The others were all past the tower. But Cassie and I were trapped between the deadly fire from the tower and the advancing fighters.
«This doesn't look good,» I said.
«No. It doesn't.»
Suddenly, Jake and Marco turned back. They came running at the tower from behind. The tower was thirty or forty feet tall. The two tyran-nosaurs slammed into a corner of its support beams.
CRRR-UNCH!
The tower did not fall. But it did shake. And it sagged to one side. Just enough that their next shot went wild.
Jake and Marco slammed it again, and now Cassie and I were caught up with them. Cassie gave the supports a devastating kick.
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K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Slowly, slowly, then faster and faster, the robot tower began to fall. It fell like a redwood, strai
ght down toward the Nesk mound. It helped, but not enough. We'd been too slow. As we raced for the
woods, the fighters closed in. There was no way to outrun them. No way
to outmaneuver them. They had us cold. We were all going to die, sixty-five million years before any of us would be born.
Rachel
We hit the tree line, me and Ax, In my front claws I held a small, oblong white tube. According to Ax, a nuclear explosive. Let me just say this. Carrying around a nuclear weapon? That'll make you
nervous. I looked back. And I saw what was about to happen. Three very big Rexes -Jake, Marco, and Cassie -were running. Head
forward, tail back, running like roadrunners. A Deinonychus was in the mouth of one Tyrannosaurus. And two spacecraft were practically above them. It would be point-blank slaughter now. «The situation is hopeless,» Ax said. «What do you mean, hopeless?» I demanded.
«I am speaking with the Mercora,» he explained. I remembered him saying something earlier about that. But it was irrelevant to me.
«I'm going back for them,» I said.
«Don't be foolish, Rachel. All you would do is give the Nesk another target.» «Exactly,» I agreed grimly. «Maybe if they're shooting at me, one of the
others will get away.» I started back out into the open. I heard Ax come lumbering behind me. CH-CH-CH-CHEEEEW! The pyramid ship fired. «Aaaaahhhhhh!» Jake cried. He fell forward, half a dinosaur. «DEMORPH!» I screamed. The pyramid ship turned at a leisurely pace, hovering directly above the
writhing, thrashing, helpless monster who was Jake. CH-CH-CH-CHEEEW! Page 83
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs At point-blank range, the Nesk pyramid ship fired.
«Nooooo!» Cassie screamed.
The blast was blinding. But when the flash cleared, Jake was still there! An electric glow illuminated a sort of invisible shell around him.
«Force field!» Ax said. «The Mercora!»
Then we saw the two Mercora ships. Exactly like flying saucers. One was just above the pyramid ship. It had projected the force field to protect Jake.
The Nesk pyramid fighter saw it now, too. It fired. At the same instant, the Mercora fired.
BOO-BOOOOM!
The twin explosions were almost simultaneous. The pyramid ship and the Mercora saucer both blew apart. I thought I saw a big Mercora claw go spinning away into the darkness.
The remaining Mercora saucer hovered above Jake and the others. The remaining Nesk ship seemed to hesitate. And while it did, Jake and the others began to demorph.
«They're going to try and take us all aboard,» Ax said. «We should demorph. They don't have room for these bodies.»
I began to demorph, but it was an agonizing wait while the Nesk considered whether to attack or retreat.
The saucer hovered. The Nesk hovered. Standoff.
Jake, Cassie, Marco, and Tobias all de-morphed. Ax and I stepped out from the trees, out in plain view. The Nesk were looking at humans for only the second time, and they were seeing an Andalite for the first time ever.
"What do you think they're going to make of you?" I asked Ax.
«Perhaps they will think that the Mercora have acquired powerful new allies,» Ax said.
As if the Nesk had heard him, their ship suddenly veered off and retreated to the wreckage of the base.
I laughed. "Guess you're right, Ax. Looks like the Nesk have had enough. Modern age or Cretaceous, no one can beat the team of human and Andalite."
The Mercora saucer picked us up, us and our little nuke. But they were a grim, depressed bunch of aliens. It was hard to tell at first. But then I noticed that each of them was minus one of their smaller legs. There were just oozing stumps.
"What happened to your legs?" I asked. But even as the words were out of my mouth, I saw the limbs in the corner. They were laid out on a brightly colored cloth which was draped over a shelf. There was something ceremonial about it. Almost religious.
«Can you explain the meaning of this?» Ax asked politely.
«We must make the sacrifice of pain. The legs will regenerate, but those Page 84
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs we honor will not,» the Mercora pilot said. «This is a symbol. It speaks to our spirit's pain, by echoing it in physical pain.»
"They did this for the Mercora who were in the other ship?" Jake asked.
«For those who were in both ships,» the pilot said. «To be killed is a sadness. To kill is a sin.»
"You'd fit right in with these guys, Cassie," Marco said.
Cassie ignored him. "Our legs and arms do not regenerate," she said to the Mercora.
The pilot responded, «Then you must bear the pain inside.»
"Yes, "Cassie said. "I will."
"Thanks for saving us. We're sorry about the Mercora on that other ship," Jake said. "We owe you. We owe you big. I don't know if that concept means anything to you, but we owe you."
"That goes for all of us," I added. "Anything we can ever do for you ... I mean, until we get back to our own time. Anything."
«Don't make promises you can't keep, Rachel,» Tobias said in a thought-speak whisper only I could hear. «It will only make it worse later.»
I looked at him for an explanation. But the eyes of a hawk give nothing away.
Tobias
Flying beneath the force field was a strange experience. Plenty of heat radiated up from the Mercora town and the fields around it, so there were stunning thermals. But the force field created a sort of glass ceiling above me that I could not hit without risking another busted wing.
A weird experience. But it was good to be flying again. And I felt like I had a sort of mission. I felt someone should see this Mercora settlement. Someone should see all that would be lost, and remember.
It was amazing, really. The universe had so many secrets. Who would have guessed that so long before the humans and the Andalites and Yeerks would even appear on the screen to play out their own life-and-death struggle, there had been an earlier war for Earth?
Through the slight distortion of the force field I could see the Pteranodons in their cliff-side nests. I wondered how they hunted and what they caught in this strange situation. But who could tell? Like all living things, they were doing their best to adapt. They were looking to eat without being eaten. Same as my life as a hawk. The same old cycle: Life trying to stay alive by any means it could find. Life trying to survive the enemies of disease, hunger, fire, flood, and all the animals who were bigger and badder.
I felt the warm wind fill my wings. I turned and circled upward till I could see the entire valley and feel the force field just inches above me. Somehow the Mercora had figured out how to let the rising air pass through the field. They were a smart, advanced, and decent race. I hoped somewhere out in the galaxy there were other Mercora colonies.
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K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Down below, down on what could almost be a street, I saw my friends talking to some excited Mercora. I spilled air and began to dive. Sometimes there's nothing more relaxing than a hurtling dive through the air.
I perched on a land vehicle that was parked near the others.
«What's up?» I asked.
"The Nesk are leaving!" Cassie cried happily. "The Mercora say the Nesk have left Earth! Their orbital ships came down and removed everything from the base."
"Looks like the good guys won," Rachel said. "I think the Nesk saw that the Mercora had some new friends, some serious, butt-kicking new friends." She laughed, mocking her own bravado.
«Yeah. Guess so, huh?» I said.
The Mercora celebrated their victory that afternoon and into the evening. They celebrated by plowing up another hundred acres at the edge of the colony and planting seeds.
The others and I went to the rooms they'd set aside for us. We ate the food they'd provided, and rested on the shaped force fields that passed for furniture.
Ni
ght fell, and through the window the comet seemed to fill the sky. I perched where I could watch it.
"So okay, now we have to figure out where and when to use this nuke," Jake said.
«The Mercora have agreed to let us use their computers,» Ax said. «With their help, I can probably recreate the theory behind Sario Rips, and then come up with an accurate plan.»
Jake nodded. "Good. Great. Take your time, Ax. Do it right."
"Yeah, why rush? We have all the broccoli we could possibly need," Marco said, making a face of utter disgust.
I watched the night deepen. I watched the head of the comet. And then, I saw it: a stab of flame that shot from the side of the bright white comet head. Blue flame, at a right angle to the trajectory of the comet.
I felt my heart skip a beat.
The Mercora noticed it, too. From the streets outside there came a wailing siren.
"What's that?" Marco asked. "Sounds like the cops."
Jake shrugged. "Who knows with the Mercora? They're some strange aliens. Maybe it's Mercora music."
Several minutes later, two Mercora came bursting into the room. Their eyes were fluttering open and shut at an alarming rate. Their two weak-looking hands were waving wildly.
In the Time of Dinosaurs Page 12
