"I'm not leaving you!"
"You have to. I'll play dead. And if he comes close enough . . ."
He hesitated, but only for a second longer. "Split up! Run for it!"
"I'm not leaving Rachel!" Cassie cried.
"Cassie, you have to," I said. "Now! Get out of here or we'll all be dead!" Visser Three flew toward us, gliding swiftly through the water. I saw a new spear roll into the flap. He began to swell, sucking in the water he used to propel the spear.
"He's getting ready again. You guys, GET OUTOFHERE!"
Cassie and Jake and Ax all wheeled sharply away, each heading off in a different direction.
SHOOOOOOP!
The spear raced after Ax! He was a hundred feet away and moving at full shark speed. But the spear gained swiftly.
"Now, Ax! Now!" I yelled.
He swerved right, and the spear blew past.
"Thank you, Rachel," Ax said.
The Visser hesitated. "Ah, splitting up, eh? Well, that will only affect the order in which I kill each of you. What have ! heard the human children say? Ah yes, eeny, meeny, miney, moo."
I almost said, "It's moe, you jerk. Moe, not moo."
But I had slightly more sense than that. I just lay there, hanging in the water, belly-up, looking dead and trying not to feel the pain from the spear in my tail.
Go after Cassie, I begged silently. Go for Cassie, you disgusting creature.
If the Visser went after Ax, he would pass too far from me to reach. The same if he chased Jake. Only Cassie would bring him near me.
Visser Three flapped his water wings.
I grinned a crocodile grin.
He came closer, closer, then he slowed and began to swell. Larger and larger he grew, like an overfilled balloon. And closer and closer he came.
Ten feet. . . five . . . two . . . twelve inches . . .
Close enough.
I jerked every muscle in my powerful crocodile body. My head thrust forward. My jaws opened wide.
And I bit down.
I definitely bit down.
Did you know a crocodile has the most powerful jaws in the animal kingdom? Did you know they can practically crush rocks with their jaws?
I clamped that long, toothy crocodile jaw down on the left wing of the Visser's javelin fish. And then . . .
POOOOMPFF!
SPWOOOOSH!
It was like biting into a water balloon. The inflated javelin fish exploded. All the water it had sucked in to fire its next spear went blasting out through the hole I made.
And that Lebtin javelin fish learned a whole new way to fly. It squirted wildly through the water, blasted up through the surface, arced through the air like a sick dolphin, and landed far away with a loud, satisfying splash.
And the whole time, we heard Visser Three's thought-speak voice crying, "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!"
I relaxed a little then, although relaxing just made me notice the pain in my tail. A dolphin came nosing up to me.
"Hey, it's me, Marco. I'm here to save the day!"
I actually laughed. "Just in time, Marco. Just in time."
"Allergy," Ax said. "You acquired some animal you're allergic to. It happens sometimes."
"This out-of-control morphing is an allergy? I have an allergy? To what?"
"What was the last animal you acquired?" Cassie asked. Then she answered her own question. "The crocodile. You must be allergic to crocodiles,"
We were in the safety of the woods out beyond Cassie's farm. It was a little area we went to fairly often for privacy. Ax needed to morph back to his own body. And Tobias . . . well, Tobias needed to hunt dinner before it got dark.
As we all talked, Tobias waited in an overhead
branch. We were on the edge of a small, grassy meadow. A meadow full of mice.
Tobias kept his laser vision focused on the tall grass of the meadow.
The others were all glaring at me. Except Cassie, of course, who was just shaking her head. She felt she'd made a mistake letting me keep my secret.
"You're saying because I acquired that crocodile I lost control of my morphing powers?"
"Not all control. Just some. It's . . . it's like when you humans suddenly make violent exhalations through your nostrils and shout, "Achoo!""
"Sneezing. You're saying I've been sneezing."
"Hah!" Tobias said. He opened his wings and swooped out across the grass, just a few feet above the ground. He flared suddenly, raked his talons forward, and for a few seconds disappeared from sight.
"And another mouse bites the dust," Marco commented.
"Yes, Rachel," Ax said. "You've been having an allergic reaction to the crocodile DNA."
"So what do I do? Is there some medicine I can take or something?"
"No medicine. At least none that humans could create. But there is a process. Something that happens naturally in these cases. At least it happens to Andalites. It's called hereth illint."
"That sounds poetic," Cassie said.
"A literal translation would be something like "burping DNA.""
"Now that's poetry," Marco said, laughing.
"Since we have no mouths we don't have phrases like "spitting out" or "vomiting up." Hereth is what we say instead."
Even Jake smiled. "How does Rachel do it? This process?" he asked Ax.
"The offending DNA will eventually be expelled from your system. You can't control when it happens. You just have to be careful, especially since this crocodile is a dangerous creature."
"Sounds easy enough," I said. "I'm always careful."
"It isn't easy. See, you basically have to morph the animal while you retain your own body. You have to create a whole, living animal out of the excess matter floating in Zero-space."
I looked at Ax. "Excuse me?"