I live on a farm. Well, it used to be a farm, but we don't farm anything. We have some horses and a cow. Our barn is the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre which is, as I said earlier, run by my dad. It's not too far out of town, but far enough for the bus trip to be annoying. My mother's also a vet, but works at The Gardens, a local zoo and amusement park.

As soon as I got home, I said hi to my parents, told them I'd eaten at the mall, and went straight up to my room, where I hid under my duvet.

Ok. Now was the appropriate time to freak out.

I'd just watch somebody get eaten. My friends and I had just been hunted by killers. There were aliens. There were other sentient things in the universe. We were being invaded secretly. There were body-stealers among us. I could turn into animals, probably. I was most likely going to get post-traumatic stress disorder. Elfangor was dead. My friends might be dead.

This wasn't working.

I found a pen and paper and dragged my bedside lamp under the covers. Better.

I wrote the date neatly along the top right-hand corner, a habit I'd picked up off Rachel and her meticulous note-taking.

I wrote, There is sentient life on other planets.

I wrote, Invaders: Yeerks. Body stealers, want to enslave us all. Secret Invasion.

I underlined Secret Invasion twice.

I wrote, Protectors: Andalites. Oppose yeerks. Fleet will come to protect us, but not yet.

Anybody could be a Controller.

The Controllers know they were seen last night.

Did they see our faces?

Did they see our faces? If so, we needed to go into hiding. If not, trying to go into hiding could get us all killed.

I wrote Visser Three killed Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, a little surprised that I'd remembered the name. I circled Visser and Prince. Terms I didn't understand. With an arrow to Visser Three, I wrote Animal shapeshifter.

I paused.

Elfangor had given us the ability to shapeshift. He had that power. So why didn't he turn into something small and run away?

I wrote, Why didn't Elfangor flee before Visser Three landed?

I wrote, Moral or biological reason that Elfangor couldn't shapeshift. I wrote, Didn't want to provoke a chase in a crowded town. I thought about that, then added, Public chase would warn humans of invasion, so why not risk it?

I thought about it, and I couldn't think of a good reason not to flee if Elfangor had the shapeshifting power. Either the yeerks would follow, blowing their cover, or break off the chase, letting him escape. Perhaps it was an honour thing. Perhaps he couldn't shapeshift himself. I shrugged and moved to the next topic.

Telepathy, I wrote. No... what had Elfangor called it? Thought-speak. After a pause, I crossed out both terms. It was an andalite skill and they weren't on Earth yet. It was fascinating, but there were more immediate things to deal with.

Shapeshifting.

Turn into any animal after touching it. What had Elfangor said? Acquire its DNA pattern. Two hour limit. I underlined the limit.

Acquire its DNA pattern?

Aliens have DNA.

Did it use the same codes as ours? Were their cell walls the same?

Check that ability works on Earth animals.

But...

Just DNA?

There was more to an animal than its DNA. Not everything in a cell's structure was encoded into DNA. Incubation temperature of eggs determined the sex of reptiles, not their DNA. Mitochondria, things inside cells that no animal could live without, weren't build using the cell's DNA, they reproduced by themselves; so did chloroplasts, which allowed plants to photosyn –

Try on plants, fungi, bacteria.

I thought about that, crossed it out and emphatically wrote NEVER BECOME ANYTHING WITHOUT A BRAIN. It'd be really embarrassing to kill myself by turning into a nonthinking carrot.

I could experiment later. I wrote, Learn more biology on one corner of the page, then tore that off and got up to pin it to my little corkboard.

The corkboard was something I'd picked up off Rachel. It wasn't a big thing, just one of those little two-foot noticeboards. She'd cut out and stuck up a bunch of inspiring quotes about life and goodness and happiness, just little rules to live by and inspire her. My board had a few random quotes on it that I liked. "If you are not more confused by what is false than what is true, you have zero knowledge." "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." "You cannot hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot reach a goal you do not have." And along the top, in bright, bold rainbow gelpen, "We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night". I stuck the note to learn more biology in one corner, and went back to bed.

The stars. There was life among the stars.

Focus, Cassie, I told myself

What else?

I wrote The others. Crossed it out. Couldn't call them all, it could be suspicious. Couldn't do anything. No use fretting.

I drew a line down the page from Yeerks. What had Elfangor said? Taxxon allies, hork-bajir slaves. I added Human slaves.

Human voices, laughing, as Visser Three...

I wrote, I am not very brave.

That, I underlined twice. It's always good to know your strengths. Better to know your weaknesses.

I need to get better at running was added to the bottom of the list, and I started to giggle. Once I'd started, I couldn't stop; I convulsed in humourless giggles, paper tearing in my clenching fist, until I was exhausted, and barely had the strength to turn the lamp off before I drifted off to sleep.