The Visitor Read Free Page A

pool. He had stayed more than two hours in that morph.
    We had all returned to our human forms, but Tobias was still a hawk.
    Tobias will always be a hawk.

CHAPTER 3
     
    W e all walked most of the way home together, feeling worn out. The flying was a little tiring. And morphing always takes a lot out of you.
    Tobias flew high overhead. He didn’t really participate in the conversation. It’s hard for him. See, he can think-speak to us and we can understand him, but when we’re in human shape we can only talk in the normal way. He can’t hear us unless he’s close by, and he can’t be close and still fly.
    “This morphing thing would be so excellent if it weren’t for the whole thing with the Yeerks,” Marco was saying. “I mean, if it were just normal, we could really use these powers.”
    “To do what? Fight crime?” Jake asked.
    Marco looked at him with a mixture of pity and amusement. “Fight crime? Who are you, Spider-Man? I’m talking show business. Movies! TV shows! I could go on Letterman. I could be an entire episode of Stupid Pet Tricks all by myself.”
    “You’re right,” I said, batting my eyes so he would know I was kidding, “you already have the stupid part down.”
    “We’d be hot in horror movies,” Cassie said.
    “Or how about as stuntmen?” Jake suggested. “One of us could jump off the tallest building and it would be totally realistic. Then we just morph into a bird on the way down and fly away.”
    “Now I’m
really
mad at the Yeerks,” Marco said. “They’re getting in the way of my showbiz career. I could be a millionaire. I could be trading funny lines with Dave. I could have beautiful Hollywood supermodels all over me.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said, with a wink at Cassie. “Lots of women love animals. But sooner or later you’d have to change back into your actual self, Marco. And then, boom, they’d be outta there.”
    We walked along the boulevard that goes by the construction site. It’s this huge area of half-finished buildings with rusted earthmovers and cranes and backhoes scattered around. I guess it was originallygoing to be a shopping center, but for some reason they never finished it.
    We didn’t take the shortcut
through
the construction site, like we would have in the old days, though. See, it was at this construction site that we saw the Andalite prince’s damaged fighter land. It was here that the Andalite warned us of the Yeerk conspiracy and gave us our special powers.
    It was also here that we saw the Yeerk commander, Visser Three, murder the Andalite prince. Visser Three is the only one of the Yeerks who has our same power to morph. Visser Three is an Andalite-Controller, meaning he has an Andalite body. A Human-Controller is a Yeerk with a human body. A Taxxon-Controller is a Yeerk with a Taxxon body. You get the idea.
    Visser Three is the only Yeerk to ever capture an Andalite body. So he’s also the only Yeerk who can morph.
    That night at the construction site, he morphed into some creature from a far-off planet, a huge, horrible monster. And then he took the Andalite and …
    You know what? I really don’t want to talk about that…. You’ll have to ask Jake.
    We all fell silent as we passed by the site. Then I noticed that Cassie had stopped walking and was juststanding there. I went back to her and realized that she was crying.
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “No. Are you?”
    I sighed. Flying around in the sky had been a wonderful distraction. But my head was still full of awful memories. “I guess not,” I admitted. “Last night I had a terrible nightmare about the Yeerk pool. I was back down there. Down there in that vast open cave. And I was hearing the screams and cries of the people being dragged to the pool.”
    Cassie nodded. “You know what’s worse than the screams? The way they stop screaming once the Yeerk is in their heads. Once they’ve become Controllers. Then you know they are slaves again.