It took a few minutes of walking through the corridors. There were mostly human controllers on this ship, with very few Taxxons or Hork-Bajir, so we kind of stuck out. I wondered about that in private thought-speak to Arbron. He told me that the Yeerk head of security had loaded the Blade ship with his personal followers and allies, while Visser One had taken his usual crew to the Pool ship with him. {Maybe that's a good thing,} I suggested. {They probably won't fly the ship as well as the Visser's guys, right?}

{If only that were true,} said Arbron. {However, the command crew that mans the bridge is only the tip of the iceberg, as you humans would say. Much of the real work in operating the ship is done by the technical crew in the secondary bridge. They are so absorbed in their work that they don't have anything to do with the factionalism of the Yeerk officers, and just serve whoever happens to be in charge. It is a sort of survival trait for the species – after all, they'd never advance if everyone who failed the Vissers was abruptly killed. There would be no competent people left. Instead, those who specialize in their jobs do so under the authority of someone with ambitions. That Yeerk is the one who gets the rewards and promotions, and who pays for failures with his life. The Yeerk leadership barely notices the specialists who make things happen.

{That is how my own people and our resistance movement survive – we stay below the notice of the leaders. They might not be aware of this, but the Animorphs have no doubt benefited as well from this functionality. When they raid Yeerk projects and facilities, they leave behind survivors who barely notice anything but the damage that was done, without putting together a lot of details on what took place. That is undoubtedly why they lasted so long without the Yeerks realizing they were human. Any of the clues they might have left, or common behaviors, passed unnoticed by the rank-and-file, while the officers were busy getting killed in battle or in punishment for their failures. Yeerks do not have a high regard for the value of individuals, since their very biology dictates that individuals die to propagate the species. The few who do think in terms of individual beings think of their own individual selves first and foremost. They are the ones who seek advancement and position, and desire the best hosts they can get. They are the ones who become warriors and leaders and scientists. Meanwhile, the engineers and technicians and laborers do what they are told and keep the whole empire running smoothly.}

It was a strange new look at the Yeerks for me. I didn't remember anyone saying anything like this when I had been travelling with the Andalites years back when I first met Arbron. When I commented on this to him, he pointed out that the Andalites had no way of understanding this. He was able to grasp it all, because of his unique position as a member of a race that served the Yeerks, without being controlled by any particular Yeerk, and also having the brain of yet another species, which gave him an outsider's analytical perspective, instead of just accepting things as the way they are, the way most Taxxons did.

It might have turned into a complex and fascinating discussion about inter-species psychological differences, but we arrived in the section of the ship where the Yeerks were keeping their stolen morphing device. The door was guarded by two Hork-Bajir, but I walked up to one of them and hit him in the face without giving him time to think. He reeled back from the blow and reached to grab me, along with his partner when -TSEWW- Arbron's Dracon beam dropped him. His partner drew his own beam and spun to face Arbron, and I smashed into him, throwing his aim off. He whirled back and clipped me in the side of my head with a powerful backhand blow that gouged my face and made my right eye go dark. I staggered back, desperately trying to keep my remaining good eye on him, but a second shot from Arbron stunned him as well. {Quickly, Loren, you must demoprh.}

I did just that, and as I returned to my human form, my vision was restored. {Acquire one of the guards,} Arbron suggested. {Then you can pretend to be staying on guard duty while I search the facility inside.} I bent to touch the guard who I had hit first, but felt nothing. No matter how hard I concentrated, I could not recapture the feeling from when I had acquired the hawk, or Ket Halpak.

I tried to acquire the other guard, but with no more luck. I even tried to morph into one of them, thinking that perhaps I had acquired them without realizing it, but nothing happened. Arbron could not explain it, though he dismissed the various questions I thought up as possible reasons. {No, Loren. Even if they have been acquired by another morpher, you should be able to acquire them. No, you can acquire more than one Hork-Bajir. No, even if they are morph-capable, you should still be able to acquire them…}

I realized that last one was true, since I had acquired Tobias, and there was another former blind girl living in the valley who had acquired Rachel. Eventually, we just dragged the bodies into the room with us, hoping that no one would come by and wonder where they were.

Inside the room, there were several computers and what looked like small hatches in the walls, like cupboards or something. Arbron scuttled over to one of the computers and began tapping away with his peculiarly dexterous claws, while I kept an eye on both the door and our unconscious captives. I also kept the Dracon beam I had grabbed from the second Hork-Bajir pointed at the two of them. I had only managed to hit them by surprise and because one was more worried about Arbron with his gun, and he still knocked me silly. Having a powerful morph was not the same as having combat experience, and the Yeerks had plainly left capable fighters on guard duty.

All my earlier confidence was shaken, and I realized on a whole new level that I was in way over my head. {How's it coming, Arbron?} I asked hopefully.

{Hmm…? Oh, forgive me Loren, I found the records of the studies the Yeerks were performing on the Escafil device…}

{The who? I thought you were looking for where they kept it! We know what it does, and you're an Andalite. Shouldn't you know how to work it? What do a bunch of Yeerk studies have to do with anything?}

{It has to do with how I can use the device. The Yeerks have been making extensive studies of morphing technology for the last three years. Due no doubt in part to the nuisance our friends the Animorphs have made of themselves. They found ways to adapt various technology and biological process to track the energy from the z-space extrusion that…} He glanced back at me, and seemed to realize that I was not remotely interested in technical explanations that pushed back the minute we left this ship.

{Anyway} he continued with a mental pulse that seemed to be the thought-speak equivalent of clearing your throat {they also developed a counter-radiation to the particular energies of the morphing process, and were even able to concentrate these energies in a controlled emission. This so-called Anti-Morphing Ray was a significant project until it failed and the two administrators, and their human scientist hosts, were fed to … executed.

{However, as I told you, the real researchers continued their work, except that no leadership Yeerks were willing to take up the project and it languished until the Visser's security chief captured the Escafil device. With the actual mechanism to study, they were able to build on their previous research exponentially. They have found a way to fundamentally alter the base morph of a living creature!}

I was confused. {Doesn't the morphing power already do that?}

{Not at all,} insisted Arbron. {The only way that happens is in the case of a nothlit like me. And even then, there are lingering artifacts of the former base morph, such as my ability to use thought-speak. For a morph-capable being, the morph is an artificial construct of z-space matter that takes a couple of human hours to fully take on the permanent molecular state of a biological organism. That's why there is a time limit on morphing. Once your morph has "solidified" for lack of a better term, you cannot banish it to z-space, but you no longer have the Escafil function in that body to alter your form again. That is how a nothlit becomes trapped in a morph.}

{What the Yeerks have discovered is a way to alter the base morph, rather than substitute a z-space construct. That means that the being to which this new function is applied now has a whole new form in which he can acquire morphs and from which he changes into those morphs. For example, a Yeerk in human morph could use the morphing cube on himself. The Yeerk's new form would be a human, and he could then morph into any other form he acquired, including his former Yeerk body, to take a host or swim in the Yeerk pool, for up to two hours at least, and then demorph to human and take other forms as needed.}

I had a sudden feeling and glanced down at the unconscious guards. {Indeed,} Arbron said. He moved over to a machine hanging from the ceiling on an articulated metallic arm, and touching a screen, caused it to move down and point a disc at the guards. Suddenly they began the erratic process of morphing – or demorphing in this case – in completely different ways, but both ending up as humans after a couple of minutes. {It seems the Anti-Morphing Ray did work after all. I wonder why they thought otherwise?}

{So the reason I couldn't acquire one of those guys is that they were humans in morph?} I asked.

{Rather they are Yeerks, who had altered their base form into humans, and then morphed into Hork-Bajir for their guard duty. It makes sense, especially from the point of view of space travel. Humans take up less room, consume far fewer resources, both in oxygen and food than Hork-Bajir or Taxxons, and don't need a Yeerk pool or Kandrona. And they can simply reverse the process when they wish to be normal Yeerks and take hosts for espionage or simply to enjoy their natural state.}

He turned to the unconscious guards and blasted them with his Dracon beam. The bodies both vanished. {This is an incredibly dangerous power to leave in Yeerk hands. Only the research team knows of this so far, but once the current battle is over, it will no doubt spread to the commanders of this renegade group. They may be allies to my people and the Animorphs at this moment, but I cannot trust them. I may no longer have the form of an Andalite, and perhaps I am bending the law of Seerow's Kindness by giving the morphing power to my fellow Taxxons, but I will not break it outright by allowing the Yeerks to surpass Andalites with our own technology. I am honor-bound to prevent this from falling into their hands.}