"Yes. Totally useless without the transponder."
Rachel threw up her hands. "Then what exactly are we doing?"
Jake just shrugged. Cassie sidled up next to him and gave him a small little sideways hug. No one was supposed to notice. But right away Jake's harsh look mellowed a little.
That wasn't doing anything for my bad mood, though. "Well, I'm guessing that in about two centuries or so, humans will discover zero space and make transponders. Whatever they are.
But in the meantime, I'm going to have a sandwich."
Tobias came drifting down through the branches and leaves of the tree, almost silent. He landed on a low branch of the oak. "No one anywhere near here," he reported. "Looks safe.
At least as far as you guys are concerned. But there's a golden eagle about a quarter-mile south. I think I'll stay out of sight for a while and hope he goes away." Not for the first time, I realized how tough Tobias's life is. He shares all the same dangers we do, but he also has all the dangers that come from being a red-tail hawk. Golden eagles sometimes prey on hawks. They are bigger and faster than he is.
"So. What's up?" Tobias asked.
"We have a completely useless distress beacon," Rachel said. "We need a transponder that probably won't be invented on this planet for a century or two."
"How about Chapman?" Tobias said.
"What about Chapman?" I asked. Chapman is the assistant principal at our school. He's also one of the most important Controllers.
I used to hate Chapman. I mean, once I knew that he was a Controller and all. But then we learned that he surrendered his freedom to the Yeerks as part of a deal to keep his daughter, Melissa, safe.
It's hard to hate someone for protecting their kid. Even if he or she ended up being a deadly enemy. That's one of the terrible things about fighting the Yeerks. The real enemy is just the evil slug in a person's brain. The host is often to tally innocent.
"We know that Chapman communicates with Visser Three," Tobias said. "He talks to Visser Three on the Yeerk mother ship, or on the Blade ship. Wherever Visser Three is. Doesn't that mean that Chapman's secret radio thing must have one of these Z-Space transponders?"
"Yes!" Ax said instantly. "If this Controller speaks to any Yeerk ship, he would have to have a Z-Space transponder. The Yeerk ships are all cloaked. Cloaking technology requires a Z-Space deflection."
34 Jake caught my eye. "That's pretty much what I figured."
I smiled, despite the fact that I had a bad feeling about the way this conversation was go ing.
"How big is a Z-Space thingie?" Cassie asked.
Ax held two of his fingers close together, indicating something the size of a pea. "There would be several redundant units in any transmitter. We could take one without it being noticed. At least not right away."
Rachel stood. "We are not going into Chapman's house again," she said firmly. "The last time we did, we almost got Melissa made into a Controller. We cannot morph her cat again.
Chapman is on guard now. It won't be easy this time." She realized what she'd said and added, "Not that it was exactly easy the first time."
"A historic first," I observed. "Rachel saying 'no' to a mission."
"Rachel's right," Jake said. "We do nothing that will endanger Melissa again. So the cat is out. Also any other plan that means major risk that Chapman will discover us."
For a while no one said anything.
Finally Ax spoke silently in our heads. "I can not ask anyone to take risks for me. You rescued me from the bottom of the ocean. You sheltered me. And my foolishness almost got Prince Jake and Marco killed yesterday."
What he said surprised me a little. I guess I'd expected him to argue that we should try and help him.
"What if ..." Cassie began.
We all looked at her. "Yes?" Jake asked.
"What if there was a way to get into Chapman's basement room - the secret room where he keeps the transmitter - without even going through the house? With almost no chance of getting caught?"
I felt my heart sink. "As long as it doesn't involve anything with an exoskeleton."
I'd meant it as a joke. But Cassie just looked at me solemnly.
"What?" I demanded. "A lobster again? How is a lobster - "
"No," she said. "Think smaller. Much smaller. Much, much smaller."
35 Chapter 8
" Ants . That was Cassie's brilliant idea. Ants.
See, ants could get into Chapman's basement. And ants could carry away the small transponder.
Ants.
This was what my life had come to. We ended up spending a couple of hours debating whether we should be red ants or black ants. I finally left in disgust. I didn't want to be an ant, red, black, or any other color.
I saw Jake the next day in school. I had just come out of history class, where I had blown a pop quiz.
I wasn't in the best mood.
I was opening my locker and muttering about the Mexican-American War, and how was anyone supposed to remember the difference between that war and the Texas war of independence.
"Hi," Jake said. "The answer is black. Turns out most of the ants near Chapman's house are black. Tobias checked it out."
I looked over Jake's shoulder to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. "Jake, I don't want to be a bug. I've been a gorilla, an osprey, a dolphin, a seagull, a trout, of all things, a lob ster . . . and I'm probably forgetting a few. Gorilla was fun. Dolphin was fun.
Osprey was fun. Ant? Not fun. Basically, bugs are a bad idea."
Jake shrugged. "I was a flea. That was no big thing." He grinned like he'd made the world's funniest joke. "Seriously, it was like nothing. I couldn't see anything. I could barely hear anything, just vibrations. All I knew was I liked warm bodies and whenever I got hungry I just poked a hole in some warm skin."
"And sucked blood."
He looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, it was Rachel's blood. Kind of. I mean, okay, it was cat blood, but Rachel was morphing the cat."
"Jake? Do you ever listen to yourself?"
"I try not to think about it," he admitted. "But look, we want to try and give Ax a chance to get home. And if he stays here he's a danger to us. We've got this big Anda - " He looked around to make sure no one could hear, and lowered his voice. "We have this big Andalite running around Cassie's farm. What if someone sees him? Any Controller is going to know what he is. And they're going to wonder why he's on Cassie's land."
I nodded. "Yeah. You're right. But I almost died the other day. I was almost boiled alive. I know you're the big hero type, Jake, but I'm not."
36 I grabbed my book out of the locker, slammed the door, and headed down the hall. Jake kept pace.
"You know what next Sunday is?" I asked him suddenly. I hadn't planned to say anything.
"Sunday? I don't know. What?"
"Two years, to the day. Two years since my mom died. And I don't know what to do. I don't know whether I should talk to my dad about it, or just let it pass. But I know one thing - this would be a really bad week for me to turn up dead."
I kept walking. He didn't follow me.
Two years.
She'd taken the boat out of the marina. She'd sailed it out into a rough sea. No one knew why.
She'd never done it before. We'd always gone out together, the three of us.
That night, after the high winds had blown past, they found the boat driven up onto the rocks.