They can only make you a Controller if you de-morph, I told myself. They can't do anything to a bat. Too small a brain for a Yeerk slug. Stay in morph.
But then I began to notice something. The Yeerks didn't seem to be paying any attention to me. It was like they didn't even notice the presence of a floundering bat.
Maybe they didn't.
Those hunter robots weren't there specifically to kill us. They must have been programmed to attack any animal. The Yeerks were being careful. They knew we'd infiltrated the Yeerk pool before. So they had brought the Bio-scans to the entrances. And they had activated the hunter robots. But a lot of innocent animals must have been fried over time. Other bats had probably wandered in.
So I was probably not the first animal to end up in the Yeerk pool with a Dracon beam wound.
THUD.
A Yeerk bumped into me.
I froze. Nothing.
SLOOOP.
A Yeerk brushed against me. Nothing.
It hit me then. "Oh, man. They're blind. They can't see when they're in the pool. They can't see without using some host's eyes." So how did they find their way back to their host when it was time?
Smell? Sound? Some other sense?
I looked up and saw the domed rock roof so high up above. I looked for my friends, but I couldn't see them. Maybe they were safe. Maybe not.
If they had been taken prisoner I had to save them. But I couldn't thought-speak. They'd probably assume I'd been badly injured. Or worse.
If I called them, they might be destroyed trying to save me.
What should I do?
If the Yeerks couldn't see a bat, could they see a human? I could morph to shark and go rampaging through the pool, eating the vile slugs till one of the Controllers on shore saw my dorsal fin and burned me.
There was a vaguely circular current in the pool.
I was drifting around in a lazy semicircle. Coming closer and closer to that evil steel pier where they dragged the hosts and thrust their heads under the water to allow the Yeerks to re-enter.
Under the pier! If I was going to demorph, that was the place.
Closer, closer I drifted. Closer, and I could hear the shouts. The cries. The screams. The utter despair.
"No! No! Let me go, you have no right! Let me go, I have children who -"
The voice was cut off. The woman's head had been shoved brutally down under the surface. And seconds later, she stood up, perfectly calm. A Controller once more.
I could see the pier clearly, although from a very low angle. Bored Hork-Bajir-Controllers dragged unwilling humans and unwilling Hork-Bajir to the end of the pier, kicked their legs out from under them, and thrust their heads into the pool.
It was just a day's work for the Hork-Bajir. The threats and pleading meant nothing. They'd heard it all before. Hundreds of times. Thousands and thousands of times.
The idea of morphing to a shark and laying waste through the Yeerk pool was starting to seem better and better. How I hated the foul slugs that surged and frolicked around me.
But that would be a suicide mission. Maybe there was still some way to stay alive.
The pier was coming closer. It was very low, just inches above the water surface.
What should I do?
Well, Rachel, I thought, you sure don't want to end your life as a one-winged bat.
I began to demorph.
There, floating amidst the enemy, i began to emerge back into human form.
I was under the pier!
I reached, hoping I had something like a hand. Rough, stubby fingers scraped along the steel underside of the pier.
I thrust a face that was half-human and half-bat up into the three inches of air space.
I could see up through the gaps in the steel planks. I saw Hork-Bajir feet and the short Hork-Bajir tail go by overhead.
I saw human feet being dragged.
"Please, no. Please, no. Please, no," the man whimpered.
I was larger now, a lot larger, so more and more Yeerk slugs were banging into me or brushing past me.
Oh, for my hammerhead shark's razor teeth.
But that wasn't the way to survive.
They human, I began to morph again.
I needed to be right at the end of the pier for it to work. I was going to get very, very small. The distances had to be small, too.
I was going to do the one morph I'd sworn never to do again.
I shrank. As I shrank I pulled myself closer to the end of the pier.
When my arms became useless, I paddled.
I shrank and shrank till the low roof of the pier over my head seemed miles away.
An extra set of legs extruded from my midriff.
Antennae shot from my forehead.
My body was severely squeezed into three segments. I was an hourglass with a head.
My skin grew hard as fingernails. Just like a cockroach's exoskeleton. But I was not morphing a roach. ! was going much, much smaller. A cockroach would be visible. A cockroach would be an elephant compared to the animal I was becoming.
I was less than an inch long and still shrinking. Becoming the most terrifying animal I had ever become.
I was becoming an ant.
I fought my way continually to the surface. I couldn't afford to be trapped under the water. And soon, my natural buoyancy and small size kept me riding easily atop the swells.
I took a last look around with my fading eyes. I knew what was coming. I knew I'd be almost blind. I needed to pick a direction and know where I was.
A huge pillar, fifty times as big as a redwood, loomed up in front of me. Right in front of me.
My eyes went off like someone had thrown a switch. I was nearly blind.
More blind than a mole. All I could see were vague, distorted lines between dark and light. Shadows. But I knew where I was.