The Encounter Read Free Page A

wanted me. I ended up getting shunted back and forth between an uncle here and an aunt across the country.
    Neither of them really cared about me. I don’t think they even missed me. I had arranged for Jake to leave a message with my uncle. We told him I had gone to stay with my aunt. Each of them, my uncle and my aunt, thought I was staying with the other.
    I had no idea how long that trick would hold up before one of them figured out I wasn’t in either place.
    I guess when they realize it they’ll call the cops and report me as a runaway. Or maybe they won’t even bother.
    So. What was I going to do with my day? I’d been floating up here in the high air, just below the clouds, for a couple of hours. It was time to give it up and try again another time.
    I tilted my wings and adjusted my tail, turning toward Rachel’s house. Maybe she would be hanging around the house, bored.
    Then it happened.
    A mile or more above me, the ripple passed through the air. An emptiness, a hole where no hole could be.
    I reacted instantly. I had to get closer.
    I flapped till my chest and shoulders were sore. But it was moving too fast, and it was too high.
    It pulled away from me, a wave of air, a rippling of the fabric of the sky. It was moving in a different direction, though. It was moving
toward
the mountains.
    Then … a flight of geese on the move in a tight V-formation.
    There were maybe a dozen of the big, determined geese, moving along at an amazing rate, powering their way through the air like they always do. Geese always seem to be on a mission. Like, “Get out of our way; we’re geese and we’re coming through.”
    The geese were aimed straight for the disturbance.
    Suddenly, the lead goose folded like it had been hit by a truck. Its wings collapsed. But it did not fall.
    The crippled goose slid through the air. It slid horizontally, rolling and flopping like it was passing over the top of a racing train.
    Most of the other geese suffered the same fate. One or two peeled away in time, but geese are not real agile.
    The invisible wave smacked into the flight, and the geese were crushed. They were rolling and sliding along some unseen but solid surface.
    And everywhere the geese hit, I could catch little glimpses of steel-gray metal.
    The wave passed by. The geese fell in its wake, dead or crippled.
    It
flew on, unconcerned. But then, why should the Yeerks care about a handful of geese?
    And that’s what they were, I was certain. Yeerks.
    What I had seen, or not quite seen, was a Yeerk ship.

CHAPTER 5
     
    I t figures,” Marco said thoughtfully. “The Yeerks would have to have some kind of cloaking ability. Like ‘stealth’ technology, only much better.”
    We were all in Cassie’s barn. Her dad was away for the afternoon. And it’s one of the few spots where I can go and not look out of place.
    It’s a regular old-fashioned barn, but with rows of clean cages and fluorescent lights. There are partitions keeping the birds away from the horses, and more partitions keeping the raccoons and opossums and the occasional coyote away from the skittish horses. The floor of the barn is usually strewnwith hoses and buckets and scattered hay. There are charts on each cage showing the condition of the animal and what treatment it’s getting.
    It’s usually a pretty noisy place, what with various birds chirping or cooing, horses snuffling, and raccoons fussing with their food.
    I looked over a little nervously at a pair of wolves, one male, one female. One had been shot. The other had eaten poison left out by a farmer. Wolves were new in the area. Wildlife experts had brought some back to the nearby forest.
    Wolves make hawks a little edgy.
    “We were always able to see Yeerk ships,” Rachel pointed out. “We saw the Bug fighters and the Blade ship.” She was leaning against a cage that housed an injured mourning dove. The dove was watching me suspiciously.
    “Yeah, but every Yeerk ship we’ve ever dealt with has been