Animorphs - The Unknown Part 10

"Ahhhh!"

"HrrrEEEE-heee-he-he!"

"Shoot 'em!"

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

Our group jumped into the melee 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.

Chapter 19.

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?"

"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 l.u.s.t for compet.i.tion. I wasn't some plow horse! I 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 gla.s.s on all sides. Gla.s.s that looked like it could be a foot thick. Through that gla.s.s we saw a pedestal of shining steel. And all around that pedestal were cameras, sensors, wires, lights, glowing screens, and rows of ma.s.sive 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 instrumentation 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.

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.

Chapter 20.

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.

'lt didn't look like a s.p.a.ceships 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?'

'"lt 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.

'Oh, 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.

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 a.s.sembled 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, all 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 Andalite body. But of course he was no true Andalite.

'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 casual ness.

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 hiding 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.

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 gra.s.s. 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.'