I've discovered that Yeerks need to go someplace secret and heard my dad and these new friends whispering about
feed or replenish. Every three days. I think they someone called "Visher" or "Vister" or something, get out of their host body to do this. Gump, I think it's "Visser." I think a Visser is like a they're like snails, only without a shell, general or something. I think Visser is a rank. Rank. LOL. Totally rank.
"GoVikes is just your standard chat room moron," Marco said. "But Chazz and Meg and Carlito seem like they may know something."
"Gump is sad," Cassie said. "Worried about his dad."
"Yeah, well, it's a sad world all around," Marco said harshly.
I had known for a while that Marco's mother
is a Controller. In fact, she's Visser One, a very high-ranking member of the Yeerk hierarchy. But the others had only learned recently.
And Marco is allergic to pity so he has to act extra tough.
Gump8293: Isn't there any way for me to get my dad to stop being YrkHSer: Kill all Yeerks!
Gump8293: a Yeerk?
YrkHSer: Talk to your dad. Tell him what you think.
Chazz: NO Gump. Say NOTHING to your father. If you say anything you'll be next.
MegMom: Gump, listen to Chazz. He's right. You can't do FiteyVVV: Hi everyone.
MegMom: anything to save your father. All you can do is get hurt.
Fitey777: I have a name to add to the list of known Yeerks.
Gump8293: I have to DO something.
FiteyVVV: Charles J. Sofor. He's the deputy police chief in YrkHSer: Kill all Yeerks!
Chazz: Hello Fitey.
20 MegMom: Good, Fitey's here. FiteyVVV: the capital. I am close to getting the location GoVikes: chop him up in little pieces. Fitey777: of a Yeerk feeding area.
"So, what do we think?" I asked the group.
Rachel sighed. "Who can tell? Maybe some of these guys are for real. But maybe it's all a Yeerk scam to lure people in."
"Like Gump," Cassie said. "They may be trying to get his name and address so they can warn his father, the Controller."
"I suspect a Yeerk scam," Tobias said.
"I'd go that way, too," Rachel said.
Cassie shook her head. "I'm not so sure. There's something real and genuine about some of these people. Not all. YrkHSer is probably a Controller. But Gump is real. I'd bet on it."
I learned to trust Cassie's instincts about people long ago. "I get the same feeling," I said. "Ax?"
"Who can tell? This primitive means of communication makes it impossible to judge. Now that humans have the telephone, why do they still use this primitive system?"
"Actually, the phone was invented first," I said. "This is more modern."
Ax laughed. "Humans. You invent the book first, then the computer.
Puter. Telephone before computer. Very backward."
"Marco? What do you think?"
Marco tilted his head back and forth in a "who knows?" gesture. "If I had to guess, I'd say a little of both. Maybe this Web page was created by Yeerks to help them locate any humans who know about them. But at the same time, maybe it got a little out of their control. I mean, maybe Chazz, Carlito, Fitey, and Meg are all for real."
I nodded. "We need to try and find out who these people are. Ax? Can you hack in and penetrate the protected screen name files?"
I stood up and Ax sat stiffly in the chair. He placed his unfamiliar human fingers on the keys. "What is 'Caps Lock'?"
"Forget 'Caps Lock.'"
"Yes, Prince Jake."
I sighed. "I'm not a prince," I said for probably the millionth time.
Ax entered the computer's software and began to write furiously. But after a few minutes he was obviously frustrated.
"What?" Marco mocked. "A superior Andalite can't hack into the Web Access America computer?"
"Can you?" Ax asked him.
"No."
"Ah." He went back to typing furiously. Then he pushed the keyboard away, almost angrily. "The most basic systems are not usable."
"In other words, you can't do it?" I said.
"No. This machine and the central computer are both too primitive. I tried to reconfigure the software, but it is not enough." He brightened.
"However, I fixed it so Marco will now be able to win any online computer game he plays."
"I already win every game," Marco lied.
"Your win and lose ratio is stored in the cornputer, Marco," Ax pointed out. "You do not win every game. You win forty-two percent of the time.
Ratio. Horatio. Ray. Shee. Oh."
"It would be nice to know if these guys are for real," Cassie said. "We may have allies out there. And there may be people like Gump who we could help."
I held out my hands. "So? How do we get the real names behind the screen names?"
"If we busted into WAA's main office ..." Marco began.
"Invade Web Access America?" Rachel said, grinning.
"Yeah," Marco said. "Invade Web Access America. Bust into their main computers. Get the screen names. And while we're at it, turn off that stupid program that keeps offering you a Web Access America Visa card."
Animorphs are like the world's greatest burglars. I mean, we don't steal stuff, of course. But when you can become any kind of animal, it's usually fairly easy to get into places.
Just one problem. Web Access America was not in our town. The headquarters of Web Access America was a couple of hundred miles away.
Too far for us to get to. Even if we morphed into birds, we couldn't cover that much distance in the two-hour morph time. And if we stopped and demorphed and remorphed, we'd still never make it there and back in a day.
So we needed some other means of transportation. And that's why we were at the airport in the terminal that Saturday morning, watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows as flights took off.