Invasion

"Well, morph back, Tobias," I said. "You know what the Andalite said — never stay in any form for more than two hours."

Tobias hesitated. He tilted his hawk's head and peered at me with an incredibly concentrated gaze. At last, he hopped over onto my bed.

Let me tell you something, it is beyond weird, watching feathers turn into skin. The brown feathers ran together and merged and turned pink. It was like the feathers were melting. Like they had turned into wax and were being heated up.

The beak disappeared quickly, and lips grew out of it. The talons split into five and became toes.

Halfway through the process of changing, Tobias was a lump, half pink, half brown, with featherlike patterns still visible on his back and chest. His face was small and mostly human, except that he still had those sharp, alert hawk's eyes. Two tiny, shriveled arms protruded from the front of his chest with fingers like a baby's.

All in all, it was a pretty disgusting sight.

But the human DNA asserted itself over the hawk's and he became more normal. About three minutes sifter he'd started the change, there was a completely normal Tobias, sitting naked on the end of my bed.

"I haven't figured out how to morph clothes yet, like Cassie," he said sheepishly. "Can I borrow some?"

I loaned him a pair of pants and a shirt, but my shoes were all the wrong size.

"That was the coolest thing I've ever done in my life," Tobias said. His whole face was glowing. "I was riding the thermals."

"What's a thermal?" I asked.

"That's when there's warm air rising up from the ground. It forms this cushion under your wings. You can just float up there. Like a mile up! You just surf the thermals. You guys have got to do it! It is the best thing ever."

"Tobias, how on Earth did you do a hawk morph?" I demanded.

"There's an injured hawk right there in Cassie's barn," he said. "There's this cool osprey, too, but I decided on the hawk."

"How did you fly if the hawk you morphed from was injured?" I wondered.

Marco shook his head pityingly. "Jake, do you pay any attention in biology class? DNA has nothing to do with some injury. The DNA wasn't broken. Just a wing."

I ignored Marco. "You're lucky Cassie's dad didn't catch you," I said to Tobias. "He's so depressed," Tobias commented. "Who's depressed? Cassie's dad?"

"No, the hawk. I mean, I think he knows they aren't trying to hurt him or anything, but he can't stand being cooped up there while his wing heals." Tobias's eyes darkened. "It's terrible when birds have to be locked up in cages. They should be free."

"Yeah, free the birds," Marco commented sarcastically. "I'll get the bumper stickers printed up."

"You wouldn't have that attitude if you'd been up there with me," Tobias said angrily. "It was cool being a cat and all. But a hawk! It's just total, absolute freedom."

I hadn't ever seen Tobias so happy. I mean, Tobias has a pretty lousy home life. Thinking about it, I suddenly had this feeling…

I repeated the warning. "No more than two hours in any morph, right? You keep track of the time, right?"

Tobias smiled. "Yeah. I don't have a watch or anything, but with hawk eyes you can actually see the hands of someone's watch when they're half a mile below you. It's like being Superman. You can fly, plus you have super vision."

"Now he's Superman," Marco muttered.

"I was looking around. I guess I thought I might be able to see something from the air," Tobias said. "I was looking for something that might be a Yeerk pool."

The phrase sounded vaguely familiar. I remembered Visser Three saying something about "Yeerk pools."

"What's a Yeerk pool?" I asked Tobias.

"It's where the Yeerks live in their natural state. Every three days a Yeerk has to leave his host body and go into the Yeerk pool to soak up nutrients. Especially Kandrona rays."

Marco and I exchanged a suspicious look. Neither of us knew any of this.

"At the end," Tobias explained, "when the Andalite told us all to run for it, I stayed behind for a few seconds, I guess maybe I was too scared even to run."

I shook my head. I knew better. Tobias just hadn't wanted to leave the Andalite alone, I think maybe the Andalite meant even more to Tobias than to the rest of us.

"Anyway, he gave me… visions, I guess you'd call them. Pictures. Information. A lot of it, all at once. All jumbled. I haven't even started to sort it all out. But I do know about the Yeerk pools and the Kandrona."

Marco held up his hand, silencing Tobias. "Let me check the door," he said. He went to my door and peeked out into the hallway. "All clear," he announced.

Tobias gave Marco a questioning took.

"Tom," Marco said. "He's one of them."

"Don't make me hurt you," I warned him angrily. "Tom is not a Controller."

"Either way, we should be careful," Tobias said. He lowered his voice. "The Kandrona is a device that produces Kandrona particles. See, it's like this little portable version of the Yeerk's own home sun. The Yeerks need Kandrona particles to live, like a human needs vitamins or whatever. The Kandrona particles are beamed from wherever the Kandrona is and concentrated in the Yeerk pool. Once every three days, every Yeerk has to leave his host and go into the pool. They soak up the particles and then they reenter the host body."

"What does this have to do with you flying around playing Superman?" I asked.

"Well, it seems dumb now, but I was thinking maybe I could see the Yeerk pool." He made a rueful smile. "Saw a lot of swimming pools and some ponds. You get up there and you realize there are ponds and lakes and streams everywhere. But I didn't see anything special."

"And what if you found some Yeerk pool? Then what?" Marco demanded.

"Then we'd blow it up," Tobias said.

"Wrong," Marco said. "We decided not to get into this."

"No, we decided not to decide yet," I said.

"Well, I've decided," Tobias said.

"Suddenly the wimp is a hero," Marco sneered.

This time Tobias didn't blush. "Maybe I just found something worth fighting for, Marco."

"You don't even fight for yourself," Marco said.

"That was before," Tobias said softly. "Before the Andalite. Before he died trying to save us. I can't let that go. I can't let him die for nothing. So whatever you guys decide, I'm going to fight."