"Then I guess that's step one," Jake said. "Let's find out what the Hork-Bajir wants."
Everyone agreed. But I saw that Cassie was still troubled. Under her breath she muttered, "And then let's find out why Tobias was somewhere he didn't mean to be."
I don't think anyone else heard her. But I did.
Why had I been there?
Lt took a while to figure out how we were going to deal with the Hork-Bajir. In the end, we decided I'd go ahead with Ax. The others would morph and stay close enough to hear what was happening.
The problem was, we were afraid to be honest with the Hork-Bajir. It could all still be some kind of a trap. We couldn't let anyone know who we really were. Or what we really were.
See, the Yeerks know that there is someone out here messing with them.
They know they're being attacked by someone using animal morphs. Since only the Andalites have the power to morph, the Yeerks assume we must all be Andalites. They figure we must be a group of An-dalite guerillas.
We want them to think that. We sure don't want them realizing that the Animorphs are mostly a bunch of human kids. If they ever found out where Jake and Cassie and Rachel and Marco live . . . well, that would be the end of us.
The cave where Rachel and I left the Hork-Bajir was small for a creature of his size. It was hidden by brush and fallen branches. It went in about twenty feet, but was only about five feet tall.
I landed on a fallen branch outside the cave entrance. I waited till everyone was in position. Then I said, "Hey, in there. Hork-Bajir. It's me, the talking bird. I'm coming in. With a friend. "
It's hard for a bird to push through bushes and thorns, so Ax stepped forward, almost dainty on his four hooves. He pushed the tangle aside with his weak arms. He stuck his head inside the dark cave.
The reaction was immediate.
A bladed arm slashed, missing Ax's head by inches. Ax jerked back and cocked his tail to strike.
"NO!" I yelled. "Listen in there, you weed-
whacker-looking jerk, calm down! And Ax-man, take it easy!"
The bladed arm withdrew slowly, and Ax relaxed his tail.
I took a few seconds to slow my heart down. When a bird is startled it wants to fly. Natural instinct. I had to fight to control it and stay put.
"What's going on?" Cassie asked.
I looked up at the sky. Rachel and Cassie were up there in bird morph, Rachel as her bald-eagle self and Cassie as an owl. The sun was just setting. And when darkness fell an owl would be a lot more useful than an eagle. The two of them were flying cover. Making sure we weren't disturbed.
"0h, nothing much," I said. "We're all just saying hello. By the way, is everything clear up there, Cassie? Rachel?"
"Yep. Everything is clear," Rachel called down.
I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to steady my nerves. Neither Ax nor I wanted to go into that cave anymore. You just can't be careless when you're dealing with Hork-Bajir. One fast move and they can leave you wondering why your head is rolling across the grass.
"Hork-Bajir, come on out," I said firmly.
Slowly the big creature crawled out. He stood erect, blinking in the dim evening light.
"Not Hork-Bajir," he said. "Jara Hamee. My name. Jara Hamee."
"He's kidding, right?" Jake said in my head. "His name is Jeremy?" I glanced up to see a big, round, white-and-orange face. A face with deep, intelligent eyes and yellowish teeth about four inches long. It was Jake, in his tiger morph. He was above the cave opening on an outcropping of rock, if the Hork-Bajir had made a wrong move, Jake would have been all over him.
"You better talk to our boy Jara Hamee here," I said to Ax. I figured Ax would know more about talking to other aliens than me.
Ax held his hands open in a gesture of peace. He lowered his tail still further. I could see he really didn't want to do that. The air between the Andalite and the Hork-Bajir seemed to crackle with tension.
"My name is Aximili," Ax said.
"You are Hruthin. Andalite."
"Yes."
"You kill me?"
"No. I won't kill you," Ax said.
"Hruthin kill Hork-Bajir," the Hork-Bajir named Jara Hamee said.
"Hork-Bajir kill Hruthin."
"This is going really well," Marco said dryly. Then he sang new words for that Barney song. "l kill you, you kill me, we're an alien family . . ." I saw Marco settling in behind a stand of trees off to the left. He looked like a very large, very hairy man. A gorilla, actually. We had decided to have plenty of muscle ready, just in case the Hork-Bajir turned out to be trouble.
"Andalites tried to save the Hork-Bajir from the Yeerks," Ax said, sounding a little defensive.
The Hork-Bajir stared at Ax's face. "You darkap. You fail."
"Yes. We failed. But I'm here now. And I don't kill Hork-Bajir . . .
unless they are tools of the Yeerks."
The Hork-Bajir made a sort of forward jerk with its head and a raspy little sound in its throat. It sounded like a derisive laugh. But who knows? I had no idea what a Hork-Bajir laugh should sound like. Or even if they laughed at all.
WHAP!
The Hork-Bajir slapped his chest with his left hand. It startled me enough that I was halfway airborne before I got a grip.
The Hork-Bajir threw out his arm and said, "Jara Hamee escaped the Yeerks. Jara Hamee free! Jara Hamee has his own head." He pressed both hands gently against his snakelike head.
"How do we know you are free? How do we know you "have your own head"?"
Ax asked him coldly.
The Hork-Bajir looked puzzled. Then, to my complete and total shock, he made a quick movement of his arm.
It was faster than a human eye could have seen.
But I saw it.