ZOOM! Through the trees!
ZOOM! Barely rising fast enough to clear a rocky outcropping!
ZOOM! Left!
ZOOM! Right!
ZOOM! Straight up with every single muscle screaming.
"Tseeeeeer!" I screamed in a combination of fear and total powered-up, red-tailed excitement.
Man, I was doing some serious flying.
But I was not getting close to my goal. And I was not losing the pursuing dirt bikes and four-by-fours.
"Tobias! Oh, man! There's a helicopter coming up from the south. Maybe two minutes away!"
"We're dead meat if that chopper gets here before we lose these Controllers on the ground. There's a stream. Think these monsters swim?"
"They don't look like they do," Rachel said.
"Hork-Bajir. Can you swim? If you can, signal me by quickly slicing down the next sapling you come to."
Slash! A sapling was suddenly shorter.
"AII right then, stay with me!"
I hung a brutally hard right and scraped my belly across a branch doing it. I fought my way through the grasping twigs and leaves and motored on.
"Thank goodness I ate a good breakfast," I muttered.
"Tobias! You can't go that way. The trucks will cut you off! They have guys in the back of each one with shotguns."
"No choice," I said. "ln about two minutes I'm going to collapse. And right about then that helicopter will get here!"
"0kay. Then we need to get rid of the guys with the guns," Rachel said calmly. Like flying against a guy with a shotgun was no big deal.
"Rachel, have I ever mentioned that you are extremely cool?" I said.
Then, to the Hork-Bajir: "Just keep running this same direction. Don't stop."
I peeled away, and fought my way up and up and up, above the treetops.
There was Rachel, gliding majestically on her huge eagle's wings. I needed altitude so I could turn it into speed.
Ahead, through the gaps in the tree cover, I could see the two pickup trucks. They were still bouncing along, kicking up dust as they hurried to cut off the Hork-Bajir.
In the back of each truck there was a man with a shotgun. These guys were holding on for dear life, so at least we had a chance of not getting killed.
"You take the one on the left. Ready?" I asked Rachel.
"Let's do it," she said.
We aimed to intercept the trucks. Like a pair of cruise missiles, we targeted the spot where the trucks would be in five seconds. Four seconds. Three seconds.
I could see my guy clearly. Middle-aged human. He looked like a guy you'd see working in a hardware store or something. But he wasn't really human. The Yeerk in his head was aiming the gun.
Two seconds!
The Controller saw me. He frowned. Then he realized . . .
One second!
The shotgun came up. The twin barrels looked huge.
I raked my talons forward.
BOOM!
The shot passed millimeters over my head. I actually felt the wind!
"Tseeeeeer!"
I struck! The Controller fell off the back of the truck, clutching his face and howling.
A split second later, Rachel hit her target.
At that same instant the two Hork-Bajir came barreling out of the woods, right into the racing trucks. One jumped. He sailed over the truck and landed hard on the far side.
The second Hork-Bajir was too slow.
WHAM!
The truck slammed the Hork-Bajir. The Hork-Bajir went flying and sprawled in a brush-covered ditch.
BOOM! BOOM! Rachel's guy was firing blindly.
The first Hork-Bajir was up, but not running. I was close enough to hear him bellow in a voice full of despair.
"Kalashi! Kalashi!"
"Move, you idiot!" I screamed at the Hork-Bajir.
The two trucks had braked in a cloud of dust and dirt, fishtailing wildly on the narrow dirt road. Guys were piling out of the cabs, armed to the teeth.
From the edge of the woods, just down the road, three dirt bikes roared into sight.
BOOM!BOOM!
BLAMBLAMBLAM!
The Hork-Bajir froze. He looked up at me as I shot past him. And he said, "No! My kalashi ! My wife!"
"Wife?" I said.
"Wife?" Rachel echoed.
That may have been the last word I'd ever expected to hear a Hork-Bajir say.
"You'll be dead in two seconds," I snapped at the Hork-Bajir after I'd recovered from the shock. "Run. Run, or you're no good to anyone!" He ran.
I guided him to the stream that lay half-concealed behind a stand of trees. He hit the water with surprisingly little splash and disappeared beneath the surface.
"Hesaid wife, right?" I asked Rachel.
"Wife," she agreed.
Wife? Excuse me, you said wife?" Marco asked incredulously. "You mean there's such a thing as a female Hork-Bajir?!"
"l guess so," I said. "We didn't really have time to ask."
It was late afternoon. We were all in Cassie's barn. Actually, I was in the rafters of Cassie's barn, looking down at the rest of the group - Jake, Cassie, Marco, Ax, and Rachel, back in human form again.
Ax was in his own, natural Andalite body. It's a danger to have him there because we can never allow anyone to see the Ax-man. I mean, one look at Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill, at the two movable stalk eyes on top of his head and the deadly scorpion tail and the centaur body, and you know he's not exactly a local boy.