Applegate, K A - Animorphs 24 - The Suspicion

by The Suspicion (lit)

  «We are the Helmacrons, lords of the galaxy! Our science and technology are vastly superior. We can easily penetrate your simple disguises and see the transforming power at work.»

  "They can tell people who are able to morph," I said to Marco. I had to resist the urge to giggle. But for once, Marco had not yet figured out what I had just figured out.

  "0 mighty masters," I said, "we were fools to imagine we could deceive you. There is only one other like us on this planet. Only one other who possesses the transforming power! It is he who has the blue box of transforming power. It is he

  77 whom you must find. It is he whom you must defeat!"

  «We will crush him beneath us like the lowliest of creatures! He will grovel before us for an eternity of days!»

  Marco still looked puzzled.

  "There's no point trying to hide him from the Helmacrons, Marco," I said. "There is only one other morph-capable creature on Earth. And the Helmacrons are just going to have to destroy him."

  Suddenly, the light went on in Marco's head. "Visser Three?"

  I nodded, feeling very pleased with myself. "Visser Three."

  78

  ?We're going to lead them to Visser Three?" Marco asked me in a voiceless whisper.

  "You have a better idea?"

  "No." He shook his head admiringly. "It's just so ... sneaky. I didn't know you had it in you."

  Visser Three, leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth, is the only Andalite-Controller in the galaxy. The only Yeerk ever to acquire the morphing power.

  "Just one problem: Where do we find Visser Three?"

  Marco considered. "Chances are he's on

  79 board his Blade ship. Or on the Pool ship. Or down in the Yeerk pool. Or -"

  "Do you think these guys could find the Blade ship?"

  Marco shrugged. "Bigger question: What do these little guys do when they find Visser Three? Sting him with their tiny little Dracon beams?"

  «You will lead us to this person who has the transforming power!» one of the Helmacrons yelled.

  "He's on a spacecraft. In orbit," I said.

  «Lies! Are we fools, or are we the very epitome of Helmacron courage and wisdom?» the Helmacron demanded. «We know that your pitiful species is not capable of real space-flights

  "True," Marco said smoothly. "The person you're looking for isn't a human. See, you guys aren't the only aliens trying to conquer Earth. There are these guys called Yeerks."

  This news caused a total sensation. There had been a half dozen Helmacrons in the room around their dead captain. Now many more came rushing in, all jabbering wildly in thought-speak. Some were hauling what seemed to be computer consoles of some sort. Others dragged in oversized weapons.

  80 There was a lot of yelling, but one thought-speak word I heard again and again was «Yeerk.»

  "They know the Yeerks," I said.

  "Oh, yeah. They know them, all right."

  The yelling and gabbling and wild gesticulating went on at a furious pace for quite a while. Suddenly, without warning, there were steel blades flashing! Where the blades had come from, I couldn't say.

  It was a sudden, violent onslaught. But not against us. There were four or five Helmacrons surrounded by all the others.

  «Die, fools!» the mob cried. The swords flashed and the little gaggle of Helmacrons disappeared from our view, hidden by the wall of screaming, enraged Helmacrons.

  Calm descended as suddenly as the violence had been. Through gaps in the crowd I could see Helmacrons lying dead, pierced by swords.

  It was a shocking thing to experience. But the Helmacrons didn't seem very upset.

  "Maybe we'd better get out of here," Marco muttered. "These guys really are insane."

  "I don't think they mean to hurt us. Not yet."

  One of the Helmacrons turned to face us. «Where is this Yeerk with the power source? Tell us, lowly one, or be crushed beneath our feet!»

  81 "The Yeerks have a Pool ship and a Blade ship in orbit," Marco said. "The Blade ship is the place to start. But it's shielded, you know. Invisible to radar and sensors and all."

  «Fool! We are the Helmacrons! Primitive Yeerk technology means nothing to us!»

  "Of course," I said soothingly. "But you know what? Now that you know the Yeerks are here, you probably want to focus on them, not on us. So you could just let us go."

  «We will drive the Yeerk usurpers before us! We will grind their flesh! They will wail in terror! The humans are ours to enslave! We are the mighty Helmacrons! Rulers of the galaxy!»

  "Fine by us," Marco said.

  The Helmacron shouted a command in shockingly loud thought-speak. «Male! Male, here!»

  A hatch in the floor opened. And up through the floor poked a trembling head. It was like the other Helmacrons, but smaller. The flat head had a forward slant. The mouthparts were less horrifying. Still insect-looking, but smaller, gentler. The entire bearing of this creature was humbler.

  «Male, take these aliens. Instruct them in the ways of obedience!»

  The Helmacron shoved us toward the hatch.

  82 "Male?" Marco wondered. "Did he... I mean, was that ... is this . . ."

  "I think so," I said. "The loud, hyper ones are females. This one is a male."

  "Oh, man. Now I'm really scared. It's an entire species of Rachels."

  83

  «I am your teacher in the ways of submissions

  We had been taken to a small room. Well, of course, everything was small - the room was probably about the size of an aspirin. But I mean it seemed small to us.

  There were no chairs or other furniture. I guess the Helmacrons didn't mind standing. And neither did we, actually. I still felt weirdly strong because of my size.

  "What's your name?" I asked the male Helmacron.

  «Name?»

  "Never mind."

  84 Marco said, "How about if we call you 'wuss'? Listen up, Wuss -"

  "That's not very nice, Marco," 1 interrupted.

  "He doesn't have a name, and let's face it: He's a wuss. So, Wuss, tell me: What's the deal with the captain? He's dead."

  «She. Yes, of course she is dead.»

  "And why do you want your captain to be dead?"

  «How else can you be sure she will not make a mistake?»

  That seemed to stymie Marco. But the patient male who even I was now thinking of as "Wuss" went on to explain.

  «Those who make errors must be eliminated. It is inevitable that a captain, who would make many decisions if she were alive, would therefore also make many errors. What is the point of a captain who must be killed for error? In this way we have a captain who may be respected and revered by all.»

  Marco looked at me helplessly. "What's sad is that it makes a certain bizarre kind of sense." He turned back to Wuss. "How about your other leaders? All dead?"

  «Yes, a Helmacron female may not ascend to a position of importance in our society unless it is certain that she will not cause problems.

  85 She must be a symbol that all can admirer

  "Kind of like our society," I muttered.

  "Well, Wuss, aren't you supposed to tell us how to behave?"

  «Yes. You must obey all females. You must wash your food before eating it. As males, you must be quiet and calm at all times.»

  "I'm not male," I said. "I'm female."

  «No, you are a slave. Thus you are male and must do whatever a female tells you to do.»

  "Kind of like our society," Marco said, mimicking me.

  "Is that it? That's all the rules?"

  «Yes. If you fail to obey the rules, you may be killed. In fact, you may even be made captain! You will stay in this room until summoned,» Wuss said calmly. «l will leave you now.»

  A door opened, the Helmacron male left, and the door closed behind him.

  Marco and I looked at each other. "These people are nuts, and this is a nuthouse, and we need to bail. I don't want to be captain."

  "No. No promotions, please. But we ne
ed to think. These guys are going after Visser Three, which means they'll leave Jake and Rachel and Ax and Tobias alone. All that's good. On the other hand, it seemed to me like they need the blue

  86 box to create their shrinking ray. So maybe they need it to unshrink us," I reasoned.

  "If they can unshrink us. Maybe it's a one way thing. Did you ever think of that?"

  "I don't want to think of that," I said. "I have a family I have to get back to. A life."

  Marco nodded, obviously deep in thought. "If we were small like this permanently, we could grow old, have kids, and populate the world with a new race of tiny people."

  "Marco, would you mind helping? Think of what we should do."

  "Okay." He squared his shoulders. "Okay." He blew out a loud sigh. "What should we do? I don't know. Here's one thing I know: These guys are nuts. They hacked those guys down. They put dead guys in charge. They are nuts, pure and simple, Looney Tunes, whack jobs, freakazoids. They could go off on us for no reason at all. So priority number one is to not help them get Visser Three. Priority number one is let's get outta here."

  "I have to agree. First chance we get. But right now we're probably in space on our way to find the Blade ship, so there isn't exactly anywhere to go."

  The door opened quite suddenly. It was a swaggering female. «Come with me, insignificant aliens! Obey me!»

  "Yes, ma'am!" Marco said.

  87 We were led back to what had to be the ship's actual bridge. There was no captain, dead or alive. The Helmacrons seemed to do their jobs without being told. Although obviously there were occasional disagreements, as we had seen.

  «Screen on!» our Helmacron guide snapped.

  A video display showed a flat two-dimensional image of Visser Three's Blade ship.

  "Wow," Marco said, genuinely impressed. "You guys are fast. I mean, you ladies. You found the Blade ship!"

  «We are the Helmacrons! Yeerk pretenders and usurpers will beg for their lives as we march over their groveling, prostrate forms!»

  I formed a mental image of a Yeerk I'd seen in its natural form. And then of an army of tiny little Helmacrons marching over it. It would look roughly like ants on a dog doo-doo. I barely stifled a giggle.

  «We have found the weak and pathetic Blade ship! But a smaller Yeerk craft has detached and is heading toward the planet surface. Our sensors show a person aboard that smaller vessel, a person who carries the distinctive sensor signature of the transforming energy!»

  "Visser Three," I said. "He's heading down to the planet. Probably heading down to take the blue box. I mean the power source."

  The Helmacron ship was obviously in hot pursuit.

  88 We could see a Bug fighter dropping down through blue atmosphere. Our own familiar coastline was recognizable below us.

  The sun was going down. The line of darkness was marching across the earth, getting nearer to my own home.

  It suddenly hit me just how far away I was from the life I knew. Not just in miles, but in feet and inches, too. My parents were gigantic, skyscraper-tall behemoths. Marco and I, and maybe Tobias, were alone in the universe.

  «Tell us of the place the Yeerk Bug fighter is landing!»

  I peered at the screen. "Can you make it bigger? I mean, you know, magnify it?"

  The screen jerked as the picture refocused closer in.

  "Hey, look!" I said. "Very interesting."

  I could see a stretch of the boulevard that ran by our school. It was one of those commercial strips with tons of fast-food restaurants and muffler shops and banks and Blockbusters.

  An empty, abandoned restaurant - I think it used to be a Penny's or something - stood by itself, surrounded by a weed-grown parking lot.

  The Bug ship, invisible to humans thanks to its shielding, was settling down toward the empty restaurant.

  89 As we watched, the roof of the restaurant split and opened, drawing back like a pair of sliding doors.

  The Bug fighter containing Visser Three slowly, carefully, landed in the interior of the building. The roof closed behind it. And at that moment a long, black limousine came tearing into the parking lot.

  "Very clever," Marco said admiringly.

  "it's an empty building," I told the Helmacron. "The Visser will morph to human form and leave in that black vehicle."

  «Then we will crush him there! We will annihilate him! We will humble his pride till he weeps and begs for an honorable death.»

  "Uh-huh," Marco said dryly. "We've tried that before."

  90

  O Great One, Most Bold of Leaders, me grovel before you, though me are light-years away. It is our sad duty to report that the treacherous jackanapes of the Galaxy Blaster have nun away! They have seized two alien prisoners that were rightly ours and run away! Leaving us, your loyal warriors, to battle the large aliens as we search for the blue box of transforming energy.

  - From the log of the Helmacron ship, Planet Crusher

  ?It's like Lethal Weapon 5," Marco said. "This is cool! This is the ultimate weird chase scene."

  Visser Three had morphed to human and entered

  91 the limousine. We'd seen him do this before. I guess he liked limos because behind the blacked-out glass he could morph or demorph without being seen.

  And there might be other, crueler things he did in there. Visser Three was not exactly kind to his underlings.

  The limo glided down the boulevard. Night was coming, and already the neon lights were lit. Reflections of golden arches and big yellow mufflers slid over the oily black curves of the limo. The word Mobil slithered like a blue-and-red snake.

  An ambulance went wailing past. Minivans full of parents and kids kept pace with the long black car carrying the most dangerous creature on Earth. Or any other planet.

  We saw all this clearly because the screens were on all around the bridge. And we were flying right along, just slightly behind and beside the limo. We were maybe four feet from the back right-side window.

  Suddenly, the Galaxy Blaster took a hard jerk left and fired.

  TSEEEEW! TSEEEEW!

  What looked to us like huge, thick beams of light lanced toward the window. But of course the window was a smooth, black cliff to us. The

  92 Helmacron viewscreens didn't magnify - they shrank. They diminished. So as the beams traveled, they seemed to shrink to bright, insignificant hairs.

  «Ahhh! Die, Yeerk! Feel our might!» The Helmacrons yelled like fans at a football game whose team had just scored a home run. Or whatever it is they do in football.

  «Again! Again! Punish the arrogant Yeerk usurper!»

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  Once more there was giddy cheering and excitement. And then the window of the limo began to lower.

  A puzzled, human face looked out at us.

  Visser Three! We knew his human morph. It was Visser Three, unable, even in human guise, to conceal the dark evil within.

  But right now he didn't look frightening so much as puzzled. I saw his huge human mouth form the word "What?" And then slowly the expression turned to amazement.

  "Helmacrons?" the mouth said silently.

  «What words is the creature speaking?» the nearest Helmacron demanded of us.

  "He said 'Helmacrons?'"

  «Ahhhh! Yah-haaaah!» the Helmacrons crowed in thought-speak. And from their nasty little insect mouths came "Neep! Neep! Neep!"

  93 «Now feel your terror grow, Yeerk!»

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  The Galaxy Blaster fired, point-blank, at a face that could have been King Kong looking in the window of a skyscraper.

  Visser Three's human hand slapped his face and came away with two little spots of blood. He stared at the blood for a few seconds, and then his eyes, seething with rage, glared at us.

  «See the helpless, quivering terror in him!»

  "You see any helpless quivering there?" I whispered to Marco.

  "No. That is one p.o.'ed Yeerk."

  And that's when the chase scene turned deadly.r />
  The limo took a sudden swerve. The wall of steel and glass and the huge malevolent face all came flying toward us, irresistible as a tidal wave.

  The Galaxy Blaster reversed and pulled away, but it was a close call.

  I saw the bizarre sight of a human the size of the Matterhorn rising from the roof of the limo.

  "Sunroof!" Marco said. "It's a human-Controller coming up out of the sunroof."

  In the Controller's hand, a gun. And I hate to keep obsessing over size, but the gun he leveled at us was not like a cannon. A cannon would have been a BB gun compared to this thing.

  95 You have to understand, we were a sixteenth of an inch tall. The bullet that would have come flying from that gun was probably ten or twelve times longer than we were tall. I'm a little over four feet, so the equivalent would be a bullet like forty or fifty feet long.

  A forty-foot-long bullet.

  BOOOOM!

  Flames exploded from the gun barrel. Flames like a volcanic eruption. And that bullet the size of a Greyhound bus came flying straight for the Galaxy Blaster.

  94

  Chapter 20The Galaxy Blaster jerked with lightning speed. The biggest bullet in the universe blew past, leaving a brief tornado in its wake.

  «He dares to attack us! Unprovoked attack! The foul beast will curse the day he was born!»

  Marco looked at me. He was shaking. So was I.

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  BOOOOM!BOOOOM!

  The limo swerved madly. The little ship swerved even more madly.

  We lofted up over the top of the limo. The human-Controller was directly beneath us, raising his gun.

  TSEEEW!

  96 We fired and the man slapped his head in annoyance.

  BOOOM!

  Another sperm-whale-sized bullet went rocketing past.

  Of course, throughout all this, the Helmacrons kept up their lunatic cheering and yah-hooing and neep-neeping. The extravagant threats and insults flowed constantly.

  And then things got bad. The ship went over to the far side of the limo.

  "No, you idiots! Oncoming traffic!" Marco screamed.

  Through the screens I saw the horrifying sight of a car coming right for us. It was a sport utility kind of thing. Each of the bright, polished bars of the grill could have been an Empire State Building.