I forced a smile, trying not to look too nervous. "Sure, what's up?"

He nodded towards Jake's room, so I stood up and followed him there. Jake and Marco were inside, sitting on the floor, their video game frozen.

They definitely looked nervous, but like they were trying not to look nervous.

I took a seat on the floor next to Jake, and Dad sat across from us, sort of surveying us.

"You're not in trouble, or not yet," he said, then laughed in that dad way of his.

"Okay?" I asked, glancing over again at my kid brother and his shrimp best friend.

"I just wanted to ask if you knew anything about what happened last night," Dad continued.

"What happened last night?" Jake asked, sounding completely normal. Turning to me, he asked, "Did you hear anything about last night, Tom?"

I shrugged. "We went to the mall, got a snack, played video games at the arcade, then went home."

"A couple of the police who were in The Sharing had to leave early. Reports of lights and flying saucers," Dad began. "What they found were fireworks in the construction site across from the mall." A pause, then, he added, "Did you hear anything about this?"

We shook our heads. "My dad says there are drug dealers and homeless guys who hang out there. He'd kill me if he found out if I was there," Marco offered.

"And I thought the threat of being grounded until I was twenty was bad," Jake laughed.

"You don't want to spend your teenage years grounded," I said, slinging an arm around Jake's shoulder. "That would be a real bummer."

Jake snickered, and even Dad chuckled.

"All right. I just wanted to make sure. They said there were some kids there, but they ran. But I am glad to hear that you weren't there. You know that your mom and I trust you kids," Dad added.

"We know, Dad. Besides, I was with Midget. I wouldn't let him do anything stupid, right?" I added, turning to Jake in that corny big brother way.

Jake nodded. "Yeah, I know."

Dad laughed again, then stood up. "Had to check. The cops are worried, not because they want to be the bad guys, but to let the kids know you don't mess with fireworks."

"Right, because you could blow up your arm or something," I agreed.

"Exactly." Dad put a hand on both of our shoulders. "I know you wouldn't get involved in stuff like that."

He left, then, and we all looked at each other like we weren't sure if he believed us.

"You think he's one of them?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

Jake looked pained, and Marco shrugged.

"I mean, there's definitely something up with The Sharing," I went on. "I got weird vibes when I was there, at least after a couple of weeks, and suddenly they're at least kind of involved in stopping these kids 'shooting fireworks' and all that."

"Could be innocent on the cops' part," said Marco, diplomatically. "They might have just heard it was kids with fireworks."

"Not according to Rachel's article," I recalled. "Says that they responded to calls about aliens and flying saucers, and found fireworks and kids running away when they got there."

"I can't believe that Dad would be one of them," Jake insisted. "He's our dad..."

I placed an arm around his shoulder, and he didn't protest, which showed how alarmed he was.

"You know what he said. They could be anywhere, anyone. And they will still act the same." I shuddered. Hating the idea of Dad being a slave inside his head. "I think we need to spy on The Sharing. Go to an outdoor meeting, and when they split up into full members, someone can go fly or something and listen in."

"Do they have a lot of those?" Marco asked me, with some interest. "Or, are they mostly indoors?"

"I quit after about a month," I reminded Marco, "but I figure it's pretty much fifty-fifty. We do live where it's nice most of the time. Even if they are Yeerks, they know that humans want to be outside when we can."

"Or," Jake added, attempting a joke, "that our parents want us to."

I gave Jake a little nudge. "Because certain midgets would just stay indoors playing computer games all day!"

Jake gave me a mock offended look. "Hey, I go outside! I play basketball!"

He said the last part with a slight hitch in his voice, and I realized he was still bummed out about not having made the team.

If it had just been us, I'd have given him a hug. With Marco there, Jake really wouldn't want that.

I settled for tousling his hair, which earned me a glare, but also a momentary relieved look.

"So, what exactly do we do? Ask your dad when there's going to be the next outdoor meeting, in a wide open space?" Marco asked, sardonically. "Because that's not weird at all."

I frowned. It wasn't a bad point. For all Marco hating to be involved with this-and I thought the only person who was really gung ho about fighting them was Tobias-he was getting to be good at the strategizing. If we did fight the Yeerks, and he ended up fighting with us, I had a feeling his instincts would be spot on.

"Just keep an eye out when he talks about the meetings, I guess," Jake offered, with a shrug. "Assuming that The Sharing is at all related to the Yeerks, which I don't think is the case, he will probably talk it up a lot."

"Probably," I agreed, feeling the same way I thought my kid brother did.

Things seemed to be falling into place, as much as I hated to believe it. I'd had a gut reaction against The Sharing ever since I went to my first meeting, and it was only because of Alison that I stayed as long as I did. If I'd kept going for another month or so, would they have taken me? I knew that she was a full member. Were all full members Controllers, or was there a level of membership even higher than that?

We wouldn't know without some serious spying.

Granted, if The Sharing was totally harmless, we were wasting our time and the Yeerks could make even more headway while we ran around in circles. What we needed was to find the Yeerk headquarters and smash it to bits.

We also needed more heavy duty morphs than what Cassie had in her barn. Birds and injured foxes and stuff just wouldn't cut it against the stuff that Visser Three had ready.

Suddenly, there was this loud noise at Midget's window.

(Let me in, all right? I can't hover here forever.)

Tobias's voice, in my head. Not just mine, based on Midget and Marco's reactions.

Jake, being closet to the window, opened it up and this red-tailed hawk flew in, then landed on his dresser.

"It's some eagle or something," Marco murmured, and I could tell that he was trying to back away.

(A red-tailed hawk, actually,) Tobias corrected him, with just the slightest smirk in his voice.

Ha, knew it. I guess paying attention in Biology was actually paying off.

"Is that you, Tobias?" Marco demanded. "I thought we weren't going to do any more of this morphing!"

(I never agreed to that,) was his response.

I tried not to roll my eyes at Marco. Why had I asked them to acquire every animal in Cassie's barn if we weren't going to morph? Okay, I knew that he was worried about his dad, and if he wanted out, I couldn't blame him. But, he certainly couldn't control what the rest of us did.

I tried a more diplomatic approach. "You should probably morph back, anyway," I suggested, keeping my voice even. "Remember the two hour limit. We don't want to risk anything.

(Okay, but, uh, I don't know how to morph clothes, like Cassie,) Tobias warned.

"We'll look away," I promised, "and Jake can lend you some clothes."

As Tobias began to change, Jake headed to his closet to retrieve the basics. Once that was done and Tobias was dressed-the clothes were a little big on him, but they didn't swallow him up or anything-he began talking about how great it had been to be a bird.

It did sound pretty cool. Since I had the DNA stored inside me, I almost wanted to try it out now. Based on Jake's expression, I could see I wasn't the only one. Marco, on the other hand, remained unconvinced.

"Yeah, free the birds," he was saying, the sarcasm evident. "I'll get the bumper stickers printed up."

"How did you manage to keep track of the time you were in morph?" I asked, both to change the subject and because I was genuinely interested.

It hadn't sounded like Tobias had just morphed hawk and headed to our house.

Tobias grinned and explained how with the hawk's amazing eyes, he could pick up the time on watches and stuff from people, even like a mile up in the air.

"I was looking around," he continued. "I guess...I thought I might be able to see something from the air. I was looking for something that might be a Yeerk Pool."

"Yeerk pools. What's a Yeerk pool?" Jake asked.

"It's where the Yeerks live in their natural state," Tobias explained, making sure to keep his voice low, even though Jake's door was closed. "Every three days, a Yeerk has to leave his host body and go into the Yeerk pool to soak up nutrients. Especially Kandrona rays."

We all exchanged surprised looks, because even though I remembered Visser Three mentioning Yeerk pools, he sure hadn't said all that.

"At the end," Tobias went on, "when the Andalite told us to run for it, I stayed behind for a few seconds. I guess maybe I was too scared even to run."

"Maybe," I allowed, "but that's important information you got. Major, really. If a Yeerk has to leave their host every three days, sounds like the Yeerk Pool is pretty major. Not just because it's where they live, but they have to go there, like, two or three times a week. It has to be somewhere nearby, somewhere they can access pretty easily."

"Unless it's on their spaceship," Marco pointed out. "Theirs didn't get blown up."

I frowned. "Right."

"We need to find the Yeerk pool," Tobias insisted, "and when we do, we blow up and kill every one of those slugs."

"First things first," I said. "We need to get into a full members Sharing meeting."