"Oh. NO!" I said. "The Helmacrons tracked the Galaxy Blaster and told you where it would be. Then you guys came here with the blue box? Don't you see? The Helmacrons are going to try and take the blue box! They figure we'll be too busy fighting Yeerks to stop them!"
116 «But they're back at the barn . . . and . . . oh, man! Ax! We have to get to Ax! He's in human morph with human eyes! He doesn't even realize he has to look behind him!»
Tobias flapped his wings and caught air. He began to fly away, leaving us stranded on the vast, mostly empty plain of Chapman's head. But Tobias didn't get far.
«Now we shall destroy all who oppose us!» the familiar, blustering Helmacron voice shouted. «AII will cringe and cry and wail and rue the day they first drew breath!»
It flew in low, skimming just a few inches over Chapman's head, I looked up and saw it zip past. It was the Planet Crusher.
And it was carrying the blue box.
«Now shall we avenge our bold and brave comrades of the Galaxy Blaster who died like great heroes!»
I looked at Marco. "Brave and bold? They despised the Galaxy Blaster and vice versa."
Marco roiled his eyes. "The Galaxy Blaster has been destroyed. Now they're cool. I'm telling you these guys are nuts."
The Planet Crusher, straining to carry the blue box, stopped and hovered just a few inches over Chapman's head. Chapman's head began to turn, following the ship.
The scalp dome tilted down. Down till we
117 could see over the edge of our little world. And there stood a vast, dim, but unmistakable figure.
Visser Three.
Looking unhappy, as well he should. Because the Planet Crusher was aiming right at him.
They fired! The green flash beam bathed the Visser in its light, and as we watched, he began to get smaller.
118
O Most Magnificent and Omnipotent One! We have taken the blue box of transforming power! Though the blessed and glorious heroes of the Galaxy Blaster are gone from us, we of the Planet Crusher shall avenge them!
- From the log of the Helmacron ship, Planet Crusher
Visser Three literally began to sink from sight.
Chapman immediately made a mad grab for the little ship, but it skipped away easily from his groping fingers.
There was a lot of loud veiling, but no one stopped the little ship from firing again. Again and again.
119 «Jake! Rachel! Ax!» Tobias yelled in thought-speak. «We have problems here! Like right now»
But I guess they already knew about it. It was hard for me to make sense of what I saw, since I was watching the movement of shapes so vast they might as well have been planets.
But I did make out a humongous wall of gray and pale feathers go flying past, shockingly close to Chapman's face. It was a peregrine falcon that could have swallowed a blue whale, from my perspective. Talons so big it would take me five minutes to walk from end to end of them came flashing out, reaching for the Helmacron ship.
It wasn't about saving Visser Three, of course. It was about the blue box. That box could not fall into Yeerk hands. Indeed, as he shrank, becoming an ever smaller and smaller Andalite-Controller, Visser Three cried out in anguished thought-speak.
«The blue box! The morphing cube! Get it! Get it you fools! Nothing else matters, get that box!»
Total pandemonium followed as huge, shadowy creatures rushed to and fro around our perch on Chapman's head. There was Jake in his falcon morph, dodging and swerving at incredible speed (although it seemed pretty poky to us), trying to snatch the box from the Helmacrons.
120 There was Ax, back in his own proper, monstrously large Andalite body, his stalk eyes looking like big, green swimming pools.
And Rachel, so big it looked like her shaggy bear head must be scraping the stars out of the sky.
Human-Controllers ran here and there. I even thought I saw a flash of Hork-Bajir horn rushing past.
It was like this awesome dance of giants. A titan hoedown. And everyone was yelling.
«Rachel! Grab it!» Jake yelled.
"Get the box! Get the box!" various panicked Controllers yammered.
«Get the box or I'll make every one of you suffer!» Visser Three yelled in enraged, impotent thought-speak.
And of course, the Helmacrons would not shut up. «Scurry in heedless terror, pathetic weaklings! It will not save you from our righteous wrath!»
Everywhere hands and talons and claws were grabbing at the ship. But nothing seemed to connect. Even slowed by carrying the weight of the blue box, the Helmacrons were faster than the blundering mob of Controllers and morphed Animorphs.
«Struggle in vain, pitiful, inferior creatures! All will serve to burnish the everlasting glory of the Helmacron Empire and its mighty warriors!»
121 Jake, Rachel, Ax, and Tobias were thought-speaking so that only we and they could hear. What they had to say wasn't encouraging.
«Rachel! Look out behind you!»
«l got him! No, I don't!»
«Prince Jake, it is coming your way!»
«Aaaahhhh! No! No! No! They got me. I'm shrinking! The treacherous little -»
"We have to help," I told Marco, grabbing his shoulder.
"Help? What are we gonna do? We couldn't beat a mad mitochondrion!"
«0h, man! I'm getting small!» Rachel cried. «l am so going to kick Helmacron butt!» Then, a few seconds later, «0kay, now this is way small. »
"They're going to get all of us!" I cried. I have seldom felt so desperate and helpless. What could we do? What could a pair of ant-sized humans do?
Then I had a brilliant idea. Or at least an idea.
"Marco, I have to morph! I have to be able to thought-speak. And you and I have to get even smaller!"
I focused as well as I could and began to morph to skunk. It was plenty small without being subcellular like a fly. As soon as I was able, I cried out frantically to Tobias.
«Tobias! You have to come and get me and Marco!»
122 «Why not? I can't do anything else,» he cried in utter frustration. «The Helmacrons are busy trying to shrink everyone they see. And the Controllers are all chasing them around, trying to grab the blue box. They're ignoring me! I'm not a threat! But you guys are too big for me to carry.»
«Not anymore.» I was shrinking rapidly, shriveling from a sixteenth of an inch to something far smaller. But at least I couldn't see the buzzing of individual molecules at this size.
That was way too creepy.
Marco followed my example, morphing rapidly to mole. Tobias came swooping down to us, himself a sixteenth of an inch long, but now quite large compared to us. He took us up, one in each big talon, and flew away.
«So do we have a plan?» he asked.
«Yeah. It's all about size, and we keep forgetting that,» I said. «We were shrunk to Helmacron size. A sixteenth of an inch or so. And when we morph something smaller, we shrink from that base height, right?»
«Either that or I've been having a really bad dream,» Marco said.
«0kay then. How about if we morph something bigger? Shouldn't we get relatively larger?»
«Hey, yeah!» Tobias said. Then, «So what?»
123 «So you said the Helmacrons are ignoring you, since you've already shrunk,» I said.
«Yeah. Again, so what?»
«So ... do you think you can land on the Helmacron ship?»
124
We clung to Tobias's legs, crawling up into his lower feathers so he'd have the use of his talons.
And then we flew.
It was still a melee. Human-Controllers were chasing the Helmacron ship, trying to grab the blue box. The Helmacrons responded by firing their ray and shrinking anyone who came too close.
But they didn't fire at Tobias. He was no threat. Or so they believed.
«l think I can get them!» Tobias yelled as the ship came swerving toward us.
It shot beneath us, then paused to aim and fire.
125 In that few seconds of h
esitation, Tobias went into a stoop, folding his wings back and dropping like a stone. Or at least like a large grain of sand.
He landed on the top of the seemingly huge Helmacron ship. The surface was encrusted with tubes, equipment, sensor arrays, and various other details, so his talons found a hold.
Then the ship was off again, zipping wildly through a forest of reaching hands.
«See the pitiful efforts of the Yeerk usurpers! They imagine that they will be masters of the galaxy. Hah! It is we, the Helmacrons, who must rule all!»
And frankly, they were pretty pitiful efforts. No one was going to shoot as long as the Helmacrons had the blue box. Everyone was focused on it and it alone.
«0kay, now what?» Tobias asked me.
«Now we morph. You morph to human. Your human morph should be in proportion to your natural hawk size. You should be at least a quarter inch tall! That's a lot of extra weight for this ship to carry on top of carrying the blue box.»
«It may slow 'em down,» Marco said. «But will it stop them? And even if it does, the Yeerks will be able to grab the blue box.»
«l don't think it will stop them,» I admitted. «But my morph will. Let's see how well they fly with a humpback whale sitting on top of them!»
126 «Um, Cassie?» Marco said. «How is a three-or four-inch whale going to hold onto a ship?»
«I'll wedge myself between the engine nacelles. The bigger I get, the tighter I'll be wedged. »
«Let's give it a try,» Tobias said. And he began to morph to human.
Morphing is always frightening and disturbing and nightmarishly weird. But this was a new experience. I was on someone morphing. I sat there, clinging with my little skunk paws to Tobias's feathers as they began to melt away.
I slipped and landed on his middle talon as it swelled and grew and became smooth in texture. I was right there, inches away, when the toes began to grow. It was like being in the middle of an earthquake. The "ground" rumbled and shook.
Tobias rose, taller and taller, but as he grew he bent low, clinging with still-forming hands to the ship beneath us.
Marco and I began to demorph as well. We would have been a very odd-looking mess if anyone had bothered to look. A nearly invisible hawk, morphing into a boy smaller than a toy soldier, while from his legs there grew two much smaller humans.
The Helmacron ship was still dodging and weaving madly, but we were able to hold on. Our
127 small mass meant that our muscles were more than strong enough.
Tobias, with the two of us on his back, went crawling hand over hand toward the engine pods. Meanwhile, of course, the Helmacrons kept up their inevitable bombast.
«We will achieve the greatest victory since the dawn of time as the Yeerk usurpers, humans, and Andalites all come to grovel before us! Yeerk and human and Andalite will compete to see which can abase himself further!»
We reached the engine nacelles. They were warm to the touch but not painfully hot. Tobias helped us down off his back. Marco and I just looked up at him and shook our heads.
"Well, this is definitely it," Marco said. "We have at last achieved Maximum Weirdness. We're the size of pimples, looking up at a bird-turned-boy who looks huge because he's maybe a quarter of an inch tall, as we fly around on the back of a toy-sized spaceship, which we hope to crash by having Cassie turn into a whale the size of a baby mouse, so we can defeat a race of lunatics with brains the size of bacteria. That does it, the votes are in, the Oscar for Absolute Insanity goes to us. Everyone go home. We rule the lunatic world."
Tobias helped to hold me in place. His arm was huge and comforting to me. I don't know,
128 maybe it was the size of a piece of spaghetti. Probably not that big. Marco was right: We were taking up permanent residence in bizarro world.
"Okay," I said to Tobias. "Just hang on till I'm wedged in."
I began to morph. I began to grow. The biggest morph any of us had ever done: the humpback whale.
A real humpback is maybe fifty feet long. Maybe twelve times as long as I am tall, give or take. My baseline now was roughly a sixteenth of an inch. Twelve times a sixteenth of an inch is less than an inch.
But you have to realize that the ratio was for mass, too. In other words, saying "inch-long whale" doesn't really get across the reality. Because in the real world, a humpback might weigh sixty tons.
So as I grew, the Helmacron ship began to feel a weight on its back. A very large weight . . . for them.
I grew and grew and grew, feeling massive, despite the fact that I was no bigger than a goldfish. It hurt a little, being wedged in between the engine nacelles, but at least I wasn't going to fall.
And then, to our utter shock, a hatch opened in the top of the ship. A pair of Helmacron eyes popped up. Then another.
129 They climbed out and onto the exterior of the ship with us.
«Stop what you are doing and accept your fate as our everlasting slaves!»
«No,» I said. «I'm going to keep morphing and keep getting bigger till I drag this ship down.»
«We are the Helmacrons! We are the rulers of the galaxy! All who oppose us will be utterly annihilated^
"Oh, shut up," Marco said.
The two Helmacrons gaped at him.
"Just shut up. I mean, shut... up. Shut up! You aren't the masters of anything! You're lice, for crying out loud. You're fleas. You couldn't go mano a mano with a maggot and hope to win. And that's sad, because a maggot has no manos."
Tobias grabbed the two Helmacrons and held them up in the air. Their little legs kicked wildly.
«Bow before us and beg for your lives, abject, insignificant specimens of an inferior species!» the Helmacrons yelped.
"Cassie, morph some more," Marco said.
I resumed morphing and grew still larger. The Helmacron ship wasn't dodging and weaving as well as it had been. It was slowing. It was sagging to the rear.
And it must have been losing altitude as well,
131 because the reaching, grasping hands were all around us.
Huge fingers like the columns of Greek temples stabbed the air. Nightmare faces the size of Great Lakes were all around us.
The green ray continued to fire, but now the hands and faces were closing in and the little ship was slowing.
"Give it up, you idiots!" Marco raged at the Helmacrons. "Give it up and Cassie will de-morph. Surrender so you can get away!"
«We are the Helmacrons! We will never surrender! All will exist only to serve us! All will be our-»
And that's when the really, really, really large hand slammed into the side of the ship.
130
Chapter 26
WHAMMMMM!
CRRRRRRRUNCH!
Gigantic fingers rose above the edge of the ship. Slowly, slowly, they closed around it.
I could see the swirls of fingerprint. Could see the huge, creek-wide creases and folds in the hand. The ship should have been able to get away, but it was too overburdened. The Helmacrons would not release the blue box, and they would not surrender to us.
My plan was looking like a really bad idea.
"Demorph!" Tobias yelled.
"He's right, demorph!" Marco agreed. "Better the Helmacrons than the Yeerks!"
132 I started to demorph, shrinking as fast as I could.
Too late!
A thumb the size of Manhattan rose from the far side of the little ship. We were caught!
"I have it!" a monstrous voice bellowed, very close by.
And then, from above and behind the thumb, something that looked exactly like a crescent moon - and was just about that big - came swooping in.
Even to us it seemed to be moving fast. It sliced down and down and down!
FWAPPPP!
Ax's tail blade hit the thumb.
The thumb suddenly disappeared. I heard a world-shattering bellow.
The ship tumbled, out of control, around and around. Tobias let go of the Helmacrons and grabbed the first thing he found to grab. Ma
rco was still so small that he held on with ease, and I was still wedged in place.
A different hand, with more numerous and more slender fingers, reached up and snagged us out of the air.
«l have them, Prince Jake!» Ax cried.
«Then let's haul!» Jake yelled.
«Jake! Where are you?» I yelled in thought-speak, glad to hear his "voice" again.
133 «I'm about halfway up Ax's leg. I don't know which leg.»
«You're safe!»
«Not hardly. Rachel and I are not alone. Visser Three and about twenty Controllers are coming up the leg after us. We've got a very small tiger and a very small grizzly bear here against Visser Three, who has morphed into some kind of bizarre monster!»
«Ax!» I said. «You have to put us on your leg so we can help Jake and Rachel!»
«l do not know which leg they are on,» Ax said tersely.
He was in a full, all-out run now, clutching the Helmacron ship and the blue box in his two weak Andalite hands. One of his fingers was pressing down on me, so I began to demorph to release the pressure.
Tobias crawled back and grabbed me as I shrank far enough to unwedge myself. He pulled me up to sit on his knee like a toddler. Marco was on his other knee. Tobias was leaning back against one of Ax's fingers.
I saw the tops of a row of pinball eyes go marching past, just beyond the finger.
"The Helmacrons!" I hissed, now human again. "They're bailing!"
Tobias twisted his head and caught sight of them, too. He crouched down and motioned
134 Marco to be quiet. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of Helmacrons were abandoning ship, just over in the next space between Andalite fingers.
Tobias was the most visible of us, so he began to demorph back to hawk, making himself much smaller and less obvious to any inquisitive Helmacron.
Marco shook his head and in a voiceless whisper said, "Okay, I admit it. I was wrong. We had not achieved Maximum Weirdness. Now we are at Maximum Weirdness."
«l am outrunning my pursuers,» Ax said, «but I am entering areas where I may be seen. I should morph to human. But if I do, the Controllers chasing me may catch up. Also, they would learn that I have a human morph!»
«They know you have a human morph,» Rachel said. «0r at least they could assume it.»
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