The Unknown

by K. A. Applegate

  «What sane person would ever even think that a horse would be a security risk?» Tobias said.

  «How do you like horse morph, Tobias?» I asked, making conversation to ease my nervousness.

  «Compared to flying7 It's dull. Compared to the old days when i wouldn't have been able to morph with you guys at al!? It's great!»

  We were at the side of a road. This part of the base was densely built up with low, whitewashed clapboard buildings, each bearing stenciled

  110 numbers. Not far away was a large building with a half-filled parking lot. I couldn't see well enough with my dim horse eyes to read the sign above its door, but people were coming out, pushing loaded grocery carts.

  «Base Exchange,» Jake explained. «Kind of a shopping center for the people stationed here.»

  «Must be boring out here,» Rachel said. «Not much to do but keep secrets.»

  A pair of Humvees loaded with uniformed troops came racing down the road. We stepped back out of the way. Totally unhorselike behavior. No one noticed. The guys in the Humvee never even glanced our way. They'd seen wild horses hundreds of times.

  The afternoon sun was intense. It was really hot. The horse part of me wanted to go find a nice shady patch and rest. I saw some trees and picnic tables off to one side of the Base Exchange. People were carrying slices of pizza and baskets of fried chicken and potatoes out to the tables.

  It was so weird. I was a human in a horse morph. I was walking along with Yeerks inside horse bodies. And we were, all of us, trying to figure out what, if anything, was being kept secret on this base.

  Was it true? Had a spaceship crashed here back in the fifties? Had the government hidden it

  111 all these years? Were the Yeerks determined to get it away from the humans in order to keep us from understanding its technology?

  What could be hidden on this base? A Yeerk Bug fighter? An Andalite fighter? Some ship belonging to some other race?

  «Hey, Jake? Tobias? Do you smell anything weird?» I asked.

  «! smell! those french fries over at the Base Exchange,» Jake said.

  «No, not that. Smell the horse-Controllers.»

  «Do I have to? Hey . . . wait . . . you mean that's me !!?»

  «Fear,» Tobias said. «Nervousness. Great. If they're scared, we should be scared.»

  «l have that covered,» i said dryly.

  I looked around, trying to make sense of the emotions I was literally smelling. I saw the second group of horse-Controllers. I saw Rachel, and Marco, and Ax along with a couple of tagalong horses. They were converging with us. Converging on the same building.

  It was one of the hangars. A very large hangar, maybe fifteen stories high, with doors you could walk a dinosaur through. And it was a very secure hangar. There were guards at the main doors. Guards at every corner of the building. Looking up, i thought i saw the outline of a man with a rifle up on top of the structure.

  ill

  112 There was a sign on the side of the building. ! squinted but could not read it with my dim horse eyes.

  «l miss my real/eyes,» Tobias grumbled.

  BRRRRRIINNNNGGGG! BRRRRRRIIIINNN-NNGGGG!

  An insanely loud bell went off. I reared up before I could control the reaction. But the horse-Controllers showed no response at all. No response except to grow very still and very focused. They were expecting the bell.

  The bell was a safety alarm. It was heralding the opening of the main doors of the hangar. 1 saw the guards move their automatic weapons down off their shoulders and into easy firing position.

  KRRR-Chunk! Rrrrreeeeeeeeee!

  The doors began to open, motors whining loudly in my horse ears.

  And that's when the second group of horses started to run. Three horse-Controllers, followed, after a moment's hesitation, by Marco. Ax, and Rachel, suddenly broke into full-out gallop straight for the hangar door.

  «0hs man,» Tobias groaned. «Why do ! get the feeling there's going to be shooting soon?»

  «Why are they doing that?» I asked. «it makes no sense. Why hide in horse bodies so you

  113 can come and go without anyone noticing, and then suddenly do this?»

  «Because the subtle approach isn't working,» Jake said grimly. «Remember what they said earlier: Do this and they're out of here. It's a final desperation move.»

  «So what do we do?»

  «We play follow-the-leader,» Jake said grimly. «And we hope these Yeerks have a good plan.»

  Suddenly, our group of horse-Controllers surged forward. I was startled, but I quickly ran after them, followed by Jake and Tobias.

  The first group was racing full tilt toward the hangar. They were almost there. The armed guards were watching them in bemusement. But you could see the bemusement turning to puzzlement. And finally ... too late . . . fear.

  WHAM!

  The lead horse slammed bodily into one guard, knocking him into a second guard. Hooves flashed as the horse ran over the guard. I could see it, even with my weak horse eyes, because we were close now. Running straight for the door of the hangar.

  We were there!

  A madhouse! Guards mingling with seemingly insane horses. Guards being knocked to the ground.

  114 "Get these horses outta here!" someone bawled.

  "Neigh-heh-heh-heh!" the horses screamed.

  "Sarge, what do we do?"

  "Ahhhh!"

  "HrrrEEEE-heee-he-he!"

  "Shoot 'em!"

  "Negative, soldier, do not fire! We could hit what's inside!"

  Our group jumped into the rnelee of frantic soldiers and madly dancing, rearing, screaming horses. But our group stayed close together and plowed straight through.

  Straight through and into the Most Secret Place On Earth.

  115 into the hangar we thundered!

  My hooves scrabbled on smooth, painted concrete. Through the eyes on the side of my head, I saw flashes of heavy equipment, banks of computer consoles, and flashing numerical readouts.

  There were men and women in white lab coats running as if we were a pack of wolves or something. There were uniformed airmen running after us, waving their guns in the air. There were stuffy old officers with medals on their chests, standing with hands on hips and outraged expressions on their faces.

  And everyone was yelling.

  "What the blazing Hades is going on here?"

  116 "Stop those horses!"

  "Shoot!"

  "Don't shoot!"

  "Help! I'm allergic to horses!"

  It was nuts. But the truth is, in a weird way, it was fun, too. Minneapolis Max was running. And when he was running, he felt fine.

  Every nerve in my big horse body was tingling. I was incredibly alive with fear and excitement and the lust for competition. I wasn't some plow horse! ! was a running fool. I was a born and bred champion! A big, tough, dominant stallion!

  Yee hah!

  "HREEE-HEEE-He-he!" I screamed for no reason, scaring a woman in a lab coat into dropping her open yogurt on the floor.

  We thundered by, our weird herd of real horses, Yeerk-infested horses, and Animorphs in horse morphs.

  And then we came to the room. You could tell it was the center, the nexus, the reason for all the security.

  «lt's gonna work,» Marco exulted. «We're in! We're in!»

  It was glass on all sides. Glass that looked like it could be a foot thick. Through that glass we saw a pedestal of shining steel. And all around that pedestal were cameras, sensors,

  117 wires, lights, glowing screens, and rows of massive computers.

  Bathed in the light, high on the pedestal, was something not from this planet.

  It was about eight feet across. The shape was like a cube with the corners rounded off. The entire surface was covered with tubing and painted symbols.

  At one end was an opening, large enough for a person to walk inside. I could just barely get a glimpse of the inside. It was smooth, a lovely green in color, with soft lighting. There was some sort of in
strumentation on one wall.

  «That's it! That's it! The most closely guarded secret in all of history!»

  I've never heard Marco sound happier.

  Jake and Ax and Marco and I, along with three or four horse-Controllers, all stared transfixed at what Marco had called "the most closely guarded secret in all of history."

  "Cullem fallat?" one of the horse-Controllers asked.

  «He wants to know what it is,» Ax translated.

  "Jahalan fornella," another horse-Controller said.

  I didn't even need Ax's translation to understand: The Yeerks had no idea what it was.

  They had succeeded. They had busted in.

  118 They had laid eyes on the big secret. But they had no clue as to what it was.

  "SERGEANT! GET those HORSES out of my facility! NOW!" a colonel bellowed.

  "Yes, sir!" the sergeant yelled. "Horses! About face!"

  It must have surprised the poor sergeant when, amazingly, we all complied. Animorphs and Yeerks, we turned and walked away.

  119 It was getting dark by the time we walked away, none the wiser, from the Most Secret Place On Earth.

  The horse-Controllers walked glumly away into the Dry Lands. We shadowed them, keeping just a little distance. We'd been in morph for more than an hour. But Jake decided we should stay a while longer.

  «l don't get this,» Marco complained. «l don't get this at all. It was a success! The Yeerks did it. They broke into the hangar. They saw . . , we all saw what was in there. So why are they de-pressed?»

  «Ax says they don't know what it is they saw,» Jake pointed out.

  120 «it didn't look like a spaceships Rachel said. «But it was definitely something alien.»

  «Yeah, but what?» I said. «lf the Yeerks don't know, and we don't know, and probably the scientists back at the base don't know, then what's the point?»

  «"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Shakespeare,» Tobias said. «Every conspiracy nut in the world is obsessed by what's back there in that hangar. We saw it, and we don't even know what it is.»

  «Actually . . .» Ax began. Then he stopped.

  «Actually, what?» Rachel pressed.

  «0h, well ... I sort of know what it is. It's kind of -»

  «Look!» I yelled. Something was swooping in fast across the darkening desert. It flew along the ground, just inches above the scattered scruffy trees. It churned up the dust as it came. It was smallish, no bigger than a large human fighter plane. But it was shaped like a streamlined, headless beetle. There were long, serrated points aimed straight forward on either side.

  «Bugfighter!»

  I had to resist the urge to run. That was only natural. But what was strange was that once more I smelled fear from the horse-Controllers. They were scared of that Bug fighter. More scared than they'd been in rushing the hangar.

  121 Or, more likely, scared of who was in that Bug fighter.

  The Bug fighter swooped overhead, circled, and came to land in a pile of rocks.

  «l can't believe the radar back at the base doesn't pick that up,» Tobias said.

  «Radar. Is that the human tool that bounces radio beams off objects? I don't mean to offend, but any Andalite child could build a radar-cloak from the pieces of his toys.»

  «Somehow you are grinding my nerves, Ax,» Rachel said grumpily. «And that's supposed to be Marco's job.»

  We followed the horse-Controllers around the back of the rocks. The Bug fighter was waiting there, already on the ground. But the door didn't open until the horse-Controllers were assembled before it. Fear was radiating from them.

  So much fear. It gave me a pretty good idea who was in that Bug fighter.

  The door of the Bug fighter opened.

  Out stepped a Hork-Bajir warrior. Seven feet of razor-bladed death. The Hork-Bajir swung his horned snakehead left and right, ail the while holding a portable Dracon beam weapon.

  Then, when it looked safe, the other occupant of the Bug fighter stepped out into the rapidly cooling air.

  He was an Andalite. At least, he had an An-

  122 dalite body. But of course he was no true An-dalite.

  «Visser Three,» I said. It was not a surprise.

  «Yeah,» Jake said grimly. «Suddenly all this just got more serious.»

  Visser Three: leader of the Yeerk forces on Earth. Leader of the invasion. The only Yeerk in all of history to successfully seize control of an Andalite body. The only Yeerk in all history to gain the Andalite morphing power and Andalite thought-speak abilities.

  Our greatest enemy. The human race's greatest enemy.

  «Report,» he said in a tone of complete casu-alness.

  The lead horse-Controller began to reply in Galard. "Visser, gahallum fillak-"

  «Don't waste my time. Did you succeed? Or did you fail?»

  "Visser, kir fillan -"

  FWAPPPP!

  The visser's Andalite tail moved so swiftly it cracked the air. The deadly blade stopped a millimeter from the horse-Controller's throat. A twitch would send his head rolling.

  «Did you penetrate the facility, yes or no?»

  According to Ax, the horse-Controller answered yes.

  «Did you see the object the humans are hid-

  123 ing in there? The object we know is constructed of nonhuman alloys?»

  Again, he answered yes.

  «And can you now tell me what it is?»

  The horse-Controller hesitated. And that's when the visser twitched his Andalite tail.

  «Fools! Idiots! lncompetents!» the visser screamed in enraged thought-speak. «Weeks have been wasted setting up this effort. First we lose that clumsy fool, Korin Five-Four-Seven, when he was bitten by a snake. And now we've lost poor Jillay Nine-Two-Six!»

  The visser indicated the no-longer-in-one-piece horse-Controller, like it had been someone else's fault he'd been lost.

  «And now you don't even know what you saw?»

  He was enraged. And Visser Three mad is beyond dangerous. His horse-Controllers backed away as far as they dared.

  «l will have the secret!» the visser said In a suddenly low, sinister, thought-speak voice. «l will have it!»

  For a while no one moved or spoke or even breathed. No one, me included, wanted to take any chance of attracting the furious visser's attention.

  Then, «AII right, I've punished the one responsible. Transport will come for the rest of you.

  124 We still have the backup plan. It was always the better plan. We'll simply take control of a few of the humans working at this base. Have you idiots at least identified the right targets to infest?»

  "Jihal, Visser!" one of the horse-Controllers said.

  «Good. Then you can live. We'll target the right humans, and seize them tomorrow at . . .» Suddenly he stopped. «Those horses. What are they doing with you? They are not our people.»

  In Galard, the horse-Controller explained that it was normal for horses to herd together. It was good for real horses to be there. It provided camouflage of sorts.

  This was not the answer the visser wanted to hear. He aimed his Andalite stalk eyes directly at me. «Fool, do you not realize that the Andalite bandits who plague us can morph any animal they like, including horses? I will have to kill these creatures, just to be sure.»

  «No one move. No one act like they heard anything,» I hissed to the others. I lowered my big golden head and crunched up a mouthful of grass. And then I did what horses do. And I wasn't modest about it.

  The visser laughed derisively. «l suppose they are real horses, after all.»

  I took a relieved breath.

  «Still, better kill them.»

  125 «Uh-oh,» I said.

  The Hork-Bajir warrior leveled his Dracon beam at us. A second Hork-Bajir came running from inside the Bug fighter.

  I felt a thrill of terror. I ordered myself to run away. But I wasn't the only creature in my head right then. Minneapolis Max was in there, too. And he didn'
t feel like running away.

  My hindquarters bunched up and fired every muscle fiber at once. And, before I knew what was happening, I was running. But not running away. I ran straight for the first Hork-Bajir.

  "HrrrEEEEE-HEEE-he-he!" I whinnied. I reared up, all the way back till I was standing on my hind legs, and I flailed madly with my forehooves.

  I couldn't exactly aim my hooves, mind you. Horses aren't predators. But I flailed away and just as the Hork-Bajir was pressing the trigger...

  BONK!

  "Raaahhhh!" the Hork-Bajir bellowed. He dropped the Dracon beam from his hands. It clattered on the ground, and down I came. I landed directly with both hooves on the weapon.

  CRUNCH!

  I'd like to say it was deliberate. But the truth is that with my side-vision horse eyes I could barely even see my hooves, let alone aim them. But sometimes luck is as good as skill.

  126 «Haul butt!» Jake yelled.

  Now Minneapolis Max was ready to run away. So I ran. We all ran.

  The two Hork-Bajir took off in pursuit.

  «lf they catch us, we're dog food,» Rachel said. «Two Hork-Bajir versus six horses? Not a prayer.»

  She was right. And to be honest, if it had been a hundred horses versus two Hork-Bajir, the horses would have lost. «How fast are Hork-Ba-jir?» I asked Rachel. She had morphed a Hork-Bajir once.

  «Fast,» she said grimly.

  We bolted. We hauled. But the two bounding Hork-Bajir were hot on our trail.

  Then we saw spotlights bouncing wildly toward us. Humvees! The security troops from the base were coming out to investigate.

  We ran and the Hork-Bajir hesitated. When I looked back next, they were gone.

  «Well, that was stupid from start to finish,» Rachel said as we got far from Zone 91. «We could have gotten killed. And for what? Over something even the Yeerks don't recognize.»

  «Whatever that thing is, it sure doesn't look like a spaceship^ Marco admitted.

  «0r a secret weapon,» Jake said. «And it doesn't look human, but who knows?»

  127 «it is not a spaceships Ax said. «0r a weapon. But it is also not human.»

  «Well, I guess we'll probably never find out what it is,» I said with a sigh.

  «Why won't you find out?» Ax asked.

  «Because it's not worth risking our lives again,» I said. «lf the Yeerks don't even know what it is -»