"Lost? Of course not," I said. "l don't get lost. We're heading just south of east. I know exactly where we are. But this isn't where I was heading."
"ls there something going on here?" Rachel asked.
"This makes no sense," I said. "l was heading for -"
And that's when I saw it happen.
We were gliding over the edge of the forest. Farmland on one side, all green and perfectly squared. Then a band of scruffy brush and fallen-down wire fence. Then the trees - elms, oaks, various pines.
The trees extended in a long sweep right, from the farmland up into the far-distant mountains. With my hawk's vision I could even see snow on those far-off peaks.
But that's not what I was noticing right then. What I was noticing right then was that a single huge oak tree was sliding to one side.
Just sliding. Like it had no roots. Like it was
on a skateboard or something. A huge oak tree just slid over.
And beneath the oak there appeared a hole in the ground.
"What is that?" Rachel demanded.
"You got me," I said.
"That whole tree is just. . . moving."
"And the hole under it isn't natural," I pointed out. "lt's too round.
It's man-made."
"0r else not man-made," Rachel said darkly.
Something's down there! I saw something moving. It's coming up! Coming up out of the ground!"
"l see it," Rachel said. "What is it? Can you see?"
I had a better angle than Rachel. And I could see what was coming up from underground.
I saw a snakelike head with huge forward-swept horns.
I saw powerful shoulders and arms that were armed with blades at the elbows and wrists.
I saw the big Tyrannosaurus feet and the short, spiked tail and the blades at the knees.
I saw seven feet of razor-bladed death.
"Hork-Bajir," I said.
"TTork-Bajir!" Rachel snarled.
A year ago that name would have meant nothing to me. It would have just been some nonsense word.
But now I knew the Hork-Bajir. The Andalite who gave us our powers had told us that the Hork-Bajir were once a decent, peaceful species. But they had been enslaved by the Yeerks. All of them were Controllers now.
The entire species carried the Yeerk slugs in their heads.
And with the Yeerks controlling their every action, the Hork-Bajir were walking killing machines.
Amazingly fast. Incredibly strong. Armored,
bladed, almost fearless. They were the shock troops of the Yeerk empire.
Hork-Bajir had come close to killing Rachel several times. And all of us had felt the Hork-Bajir blades at least once.
"What is a Hork-Bajir doing, coming out in broad daylight?" Rachel asked.
I looked closely. The Hork-Bajir was climbing some kind of ladder. When it reached the surface, it blinked its reptilelike eyes at the light. It climbed out and stood like some vision of a demon. Then I noticed that there was a second Hork-Bajir coming up behind it.
"There are two of them!" Rachel said.
"Yeah. And you know what? I think they look scared."
Just then . . .
SKREEEET! SKREEEET! SKREEEET!
The alarm was deafening to my hawk hearing. The sound screamed up from the hole in the ground. The two Hork-Bajir jerked in surprise and fear.
One of them grabbed the other and held it close for a split second. In an instant, they were off and running through the forest.
Running as if their lives depended on it.
And let me tell you something- Hork-Bajir can move out when they want.
Those big, long legs take big, long steps. They plowed into the
brush, slashing wildly with their bladed arms, slicing through bushes and thorns and small trees like a harvester going through a wheat field.
"How are you doing on morph time?" I asked Rachel.
"l still have an hour at least," she said.
"So we follow these guys?"
"0h, yeah."
We flapped to gain some of the altitude we'd lost and prepared to follow the Hork-Bajir. Not much of a challenge, really. They were chopping a path straight through the woods that a blind man could follow.
"They're not exactly into the stealth thing, are they?" Rachel commented.
And that's when things really broke loose. Up from the hole in the ground humans poured. Armed humans. Men and women, dressed in an array of normal-looking human clothing.
Controllers, of course. Not that you could tell by looking. But I knew now that hole led down to the Yeerk pool. And there was no doubt in my mind - these humans were human-Controllers. Slaves to the Yeerks in their heads.
They carried human weapons - automatic rifles, handguns, shotguns.
The Yeerks were going after the two Hork-Bajir. But they were being careful. They were
sending only human-Controllers. They weren't going to risk any more Hork-Bajir being seen by normal people.
Twenty . . . thirty human-Controllers climbed up out of the hole.
"They'll never catch them," Rachel said.
"l know. What is going on here? Are those Hork-Bajir trying to escape somehow?"
Up from the hole, machines began to appear. They seemed to levitate. I almost laughed when I saw them.
"Dirt bikes? The Yeerks have motorcycles?" It seemed bizarre, even funny. The Yeerks have faster-than-light spacecrafts. Now they were using dirt bikes?
"Uh-oh," Rachel said. "The Hork-Bajir are fast, but they aren't thatfast." VrrrrRRRROOOM! VrrrrRRRROOOM! Vrrrr-RRRROOOOM!
Human-Controllers were firing up the motorcycles. I could hear the sputtering roar of the engines. In all, fifteen Yamahas and Kawasakis came up through that hole.