Chapter 5
The worry of wether I had done the right thing weighed down on my shoulders, making it almost impossible to stand. For most of the journey, I lay on the floor, pretending to be asleep, but in reality, I got about two hours of sleep each day. I could feel the pressure gnawing away inside me, slowly leaving gaps in my insides. Had I done the right thing? Was zooming off to a strange planet where there was only a small chance that there were sentient species there with Z-Space capable spacecraft the right thing to do? After all, even if they did have the correct spaceships, would they be friendly enough to allow us to take one? What if they were hostile?
But then again, was floating around in space, slowly dying of starvation and thirst, waiting for non-existent Andalites to show up and refuel us also the right thing to do. I'd rather die by a beam weapon, quick and hopefully painless, than by starvation. I thought that the others would agree...but no, I realised, thinking even further, Marco wouldn't want that. I could imagine him saying, 'But I don't want to die at all, Jake!'
I almost smiled. But a smile, one that is created genuinely because you are amused, was rare these days, especially for me. I had my cruel smile still around and my smug smile was still in business somewhere, but my amused smile had faded out into the background, never to reappear.
It just made me realise how harsh war was and how it changed. I had always been serious, but had always also been able to laugh at Marco's jokes. I had a sense of humour, but lately it had been swarmed with seriousness and pressure, a pressure that still hung like a much-too-heavy curtain over my shoulders. Even Marco had turned the slightest bit serious, but he wouldn't let us down on the joke side, I hoped. A Marco without unfunny jokes wasn't the Marco I knew so well.
And then there was Tobias. Marco and I, and even Cassie back on earth, well, we'd changed more subtly. After all, Tobias had managed to change from being a human boy that was occasionally picked on to a fierce bird with eyes that penetrated your skin and a cruel, ripping beak. Sure, I'd changed into many different animals. Tiger, wolf, flea, chimpanzee, rhino...But I had always returned to be human form afterwards. For a long time, Tobias' only form was the form he was stuck in...red-tailed hawk. And even when he did regain his morphing abilities, instead of demorphing into a human when the two-hour time limit was up, he would have to demorph into his red-tailed hawk body, which was now more himself than his human morph.
I sat up, looking at Santorelli and Jeanne. They were complete unknowns. In a situation, I didn't know how they'd react. Would they be perfectly solid, go fighting until the very end? Or would they turn and run away? After all, if I'd been in their shoes, whisked off into outer-space for a year, before fighting brain-stealing aliens that lived in muddy puddles—well, I might do the same? Would they surrender, hoping that was the way to survive? Or worse, would they betray us?
I know Marco and Tobias. Even Menderash, to some extent since I had spent three years with the company of Aximili, and knew pretty much how the Andalite mind worked. I knew Menderash would never betray us and I knew he would be willing to kill himself for the freedom of his people. I knew those three people. But I didn't know Santorelli and Jeanne. That was a problem I should have foreseen.
I glanced sideways. Marco and Menderash were at the console again, which is where they spent most of their time. Tobias was watching the scene with his laser eyes. I also saw Santorelli and Jeanne huddled in a small corner, whispering about something I couldn't hear. Perhaps I should get up and interrupt them, see what they were saying. Started to get up...but realised the pressure still dragged me down. No, the ship could manage without me for a few more minutes. I slid back down and tried to get to sleep.
It was six more days before we caught sight of our destination. We mad one Z-Space jump to minimise the time, but Menderash told us this was extremely risky. If our fuel supply vanished while we were in Zero Space...well, nobody wanted to think about floating in a blank, empty whiteness for the rest of their lives. We emerged in quite a lively part of space. A few hundred thousand kilometres away, I saw an asteroid belt, slowly circling what looked like a dead, frozen world. The planet Menderash had spoke off. Also there, according to the ship's map, perhaps eight hundred thousand kilometres away was the planet we were heading. It had no name.
By now, everyone was eager. Menderash, a true Andalite, wanted to see if there were sentient species down there and if there were, to see if they were as of yet unknown. If they were, he would be the first Andalite to see them and therefore, discover them and name them if they didn't already have a name for themselves. Tobias wanted to see if there was live prey down there. He had been living on frozen animals for a year and although he hadn't complained, I knew he needed life prey. I knew he wanted to swoop down on it and squeeze his talons into its still-warm body...I know, after all, since I've been a bird of prey before. Marco wanted to go because he was just bored. I wanted to go solely to find a ship to get home in and maybe see Cassie again. What did Santorelli and Jeanne want? I didn't know. Again, it was an example of how little I knew them.
But then again, Tobias' ears were strong.
I looked over at Tobias. He was in his human morph, as he did every few days to eat the food we ate. I pulled him aside.
'The other day when Santorelli and Jeanne were whispering in the corner,' I said quietly so nobody else would overhear. 'Did you hear what they were saying?'
'Of course,' Tobias said proudly. 'You underestimate hawk ears, Jake.'
'And...what were they talking about?' I asked.
Tobias hesitated, but only for a moment. He wouldn't...no, couldn't...lie to me. 'Morphing,' Tobias replied bluntly. 'They were talking about morphing.'
I was confused for a second. Why were they talking about morphing? 'But Santorelli and Jeanne don't have the power to morph,' I said in puzzlement.
'Exactly,' Tobias said, 'but they wish they had. I heard Santorelli say, 'Ok, look, I know I agreed to come on this mission, but that was only for two reasons. One was that I could get to know the Animorphs and say, when I got back to earth, 'I not only saw them, I went on a mission with them!' The second reason was that I hoped that I could morph. I've heard Jake talk about how great being a dolphin and a falcon is. I really wanted to try that for myself, you know. I expected both of us to be given the power and for us to acquire animals or whatever, but that doesn't seem the case anymore. In fact, I wish I never came in the first place. This mission is one big suicidal idea after another. I've had enough of it.' I don't think they exactly see you as their prince, Jake.'
'Do you?' I asked nervously, fearing the answer. When Tobias had found out I sentenced Rachel to death by telling her to infiltrate the Blade ship and destroy Tom, he had raged at me and barely spoke to me until the end of war, and even then it was simply, Hello and Goodbye, Jake. He had stolen the urn that held Rachel's ashes without a word. Would he still consider me as his leader? After all, he had morphed Andalite back on earth when I'd ordered him to.
There was a pause. 'Sure, Jake.'
'What do we do then?' I asked, feeling stupid. After all, I had just asked Tobias if he considered me his leader and here I was, asking him questions. I was supposed to be a fearless leader, not go asking people questions every time I didn't know what to do. But then again, while warring against the Yeerks on earth, I'd never really thought of myself of a real leader. I was only towards the end, when the war with the Yeerks intensified so much we had to make huge sacrifices, that I began to act like a real leader; rapping out orders that could end in my friend's dead, sacrificing thousands to save the millions of earth, instructing Cassie and the others to do things they might not agree with, telling them to hold on when everything else seemed like a lost cause. It was then that I felt like a true leader. But in the years that followed, I had lost that status, acting like a zombie, wandering around like a hollowed version of myself. Perhaps now was the time to get my head out of my rear end and start acting like the Jake I had acted like many years ago, despite the granite-slab pressure that slammed down on my shoulder.
'I don't know, Jake,' Tobias replied uncertainly. 'We can't give them the morphing power. For one, we don't have the blue box, for two, would we want to? After all, we gave David morphing abilities, look how that turned out.'
David had been an ordinary boy, like me, or Marco or even Tobias before he got trapped in red-tailed hawk morph. An ordinary boy, that is until he found the blue box. Long story cut short: Visser Three found out David had the box and tried to hunt him down. We gave him morphing abilities and allowed him to join us. He betrayed us. We trapped him in rat morph. Not the nicest way to spend the rest of your life, but as Cassie said, better than dying. But when you thought carefully about it, was it?
'We also gave James and the other auxiliary Animorphs the power,' I pointed out, 'and they helped us a lot, especially when we needed a distraction to get aboard the Pool ship...' I fell silent, remembering that scene of slaughter. That was the moment James and the others died. They died, providing us a distraction for us to climb aboard the Pool ship, when in fact we were already on board. 'But, you're right anyway,' I continued heavily. 'After all, we don't have the blue box.'
'Ok, we pretend we haven't heard,' I said quickly, acting the part of leader again. 'After all, they can't possibly know how good your hearing is, can they? We pretend we haven't heard them but we have to keep a careful eye of them, Tobias, Ok? I, or anyone else, for that matter, can't tell what they're saying when they go off whispering, but you can, Tobias. Will you do that for me?'
There was another pause, this one shorter than the other one. 'Yes.'
'Good.' I headed out towards the other, but hesitated and turned back. 'Thanks, Tobias. You've been a real help over the years, you know that? Without your hawk eyes and ears, I don't know what we'd have done without you.'
I was about to go to Marco and see what the report was, but I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around again to see tears forming in Tobias' human face. Normally, being in a hawk body, he didn't know how to use human expressions when in morph. There was no mistaking what was on Tobias' face, though.
'Tobias?'
'It's...nothing.' He shrugged. 'Just thinking about Ax, that's all.'
I understood. Tobias had been closest to Ax during his time on earth. After all, what with Ax being a freaky part-human, part-deer, part-scorpion alien and Tobias being part-human, part-hawk, part-Andalite, they seemed right for each other. Ax considered Tobias his shorm, a person he could trust even with their tail blade against his throat and I'm sure Tobias thought the same of Ax.
'He's dead, isn't he?'
I couldn't lie. Not only would it have been wrong, but Tobias knew me. He could spot a lie as easily as he could spot mice in a field.
'Yes, he is,' I replied gently. 'Even if The One, or whatever that freaky alien was called, didn't kill him, the explosion of the Blade ship surely must have. We just have the remember Ax because of the good times we had with him on earth.'
It was an example of how the Animorphs had changed in the space of a few years. One was dead, another almost certainly-dead, another left behind on earth. Another, a hawk. The rest on a deep-space mission with little chance of ever surviving. Sure, there were three more members, but I could never call them true Animorphs, not when two were unable to morph and one was an Andalite trapped in a human body, never to morph again.
It was strange how fast we'd coped with such changes. Only seconds after realising Ax was dead, we were planning on returning to earth, without pausing even for a few minutes to mourn Ax's death. Sure, we'd mourned Rachel, some more than others, but she was a true Animorph, with us from the very beginning and a human. She hadn't deserved to die. She was a true warrior on the inside, a pretty girl with the instincts to shop on the outside. She didn't deserve to die. She should be here with us, enjoying the thrill.
But then again, so should Ax. If we mourned the death of Rachel, why not the death of Ax? Because he was alien, not human? Not an excuse. He was almost as one of us as Rachel. He had trusted us, confided in us and proved countless times that he thought of humans as his own species rather than Andalites. So why had we not grieved Ax's death and we had Rachel's, I thought bitterly. Perhaps that's what we'd become.
Then, there was Marco's voice calling to me from the console, 'Jake, Tobias, you have got to look at this!'
The worry of wether I had done the right thing weighed down on my shoulders, making it almost impossible to stand. For most of the journey, I lay on the floor, pretending to be asleep, but in reality, I got about two hours of sleep each day. I could feel the pressure gnawing away inside me, slowly leaving gaps in my insides. Had I done the right thing? Was zooming off to a strange planet where there was only a small chance that there were sentient species there with Z-Space capable spacecraft the right thing to do? After all, even if they did have the correct spaceships, would they be friendly enough to allow us to take one? What if they were hostile?
But then again, was floating around in space, slowly dying of starvation and thirst, waiting for non-existent Andalites to show up and refuel us also the right thing to do. I'd rather die by a beam weapon, quick and hopefully painless, than by starvation. I thought that the others would agree...but no, I realised, thinking even further, Marco wouldn't want that. I could imagine him saying, 'But I don't want to die at all, Jake!'
I almost smiled. But a smile, one that is created genuinely because you are amused, was rare these days, especially for me. I had my cruel smile still around and my smug smile was still in business somewhere, but my amused smile had faded out into the background, never to reappear.
It just made me realise how harsh war was and how it changed. I had always been serious, but had always also been able to laugh at Marco's jokes. I had a sense of humour, but lately it had been swarmed with seriousness and pressure, a pressure that still hung like a much-too-heavy curtain over my shoulders. Even Marco had turned the slightest bit serious, but he wouldn't let us down on the joke side, I hoped. A Marco without unfunny jokes wasn't the Marco I knew so well.
And then there was Tobias. Marco and I, and even Cassie back on earth, well, we'd changed more subtly. After all, Tobias had managed to change from being a human boy that was occasionally picked on to a fierce bird with eyes that penetrated your skin and a cruel, ripping beak. Sure, I'd changed into many different animals. Tiger, wolf, flea, chimpanzee, rhino...But I had always returned to be human form afterwards. For a long time, Tobias' only form was the form he was stuck in...red-tailed hawk. And even when he did regain his morphing abilities, instead of demorphing into a human when the two-hour time limit was up, he would have to demorph into his red-tailed hawk body, which was now more himself than his human morph.
I sat up, looking at Santorelli and Jeanne. They were complete unknowns. In a situation, I didn't know how they'd react. Would they be perfectly solid, go fighting until the very end? Or would they turn and run away? After all, if I'd been in their shoes, whisked off into outer-space for a year, before fighting brain-stealing aliens that lived in muddy puddles—well, I might do the same? Would they surrender, hoping that was the way to survive? Or worse, would they betray us?
I know Marco and Tobias. Even Menderash, to some extent since I had spent three years with the company of Aximili, and knew pretty much how the Andalite mind worked. I knew Menderash would never betray us and I knew he would be willing to kill himself for the freedom of his people. I knew those three people. But I didn't know Santorelli and Jeanne. That was a problem I should have foreseen.
I glanced sideways. Marco and Menderash were at the console again, which is where they spent most of their time. Tobias was watching the scene with his laser eyes. I also saw Santorelli and Jeanne huddled in a small corner, whispering about something I couldn't hear. Perhaps I should get up and interrupt them, see what they were saying. Started to get up...but realised the pressure still dragged me down. No, the ship could manage without me for a few more minutes. I slid back down and tried to get to sleep.
It was six more days before we caught sight of our destination. We mad one Z-Space jump to minimise the time, but Menderash told us this was extremely risky. If our fuel supply vanished while we were in Zero Space...well, nobody wanted to think about floating in a blank, empty whiteness for the rest of their lives. We emerged in quite a lively part of space. A few hundred thousand kilometres away, I saw an asteroid belt, slowly circling what looked like a dead, frozen world. The planet Menderash had spoke off. Also there, according to the ship's map, perhaps eight hundred thousand kilometres away was the planet we were heading. It had no name.
By now, everyone was eager. Menderash, a true Andalite, wanted to see if there were sentient species down there and if there were, to see if they were as of yet unknown. If they were, he would be the first Andalite to see them and therefore, discover them and name them if they didn't already have a name for themselves. Tobias wanted to see if there was live prey down there. He had been living on frozen animals for a year and although he hadn't complained, I knew he needed life prey. I knew he wanted to swoop down on it and squeeze his talons into its still-warm body...I know, after all, since I've been a bird of prey before. Marco wanted to go because he was just bored. I wanted to go solely to find a ship to get home in and maybe see Cassie again. What did Santorelli and Jeanne want? I didn't know. Again, it was an example of how little I knew them.
But then again, Tobias' ears were strong.
I looked over at Tobias. He was in his human morph, as he did every few days to eat the food we ate. I pulled him aside.
'The other day when Santorelli and Jeanne were whispering in the corner,' I said quietly so nobody else would overhear. 'Did you hear what they were saying?'
'Of course,' Tobias said proudly. 'You underestimate hawk ears, Jake.'
'And...what were they talking about?' I asked.
Tobias hesitated, but only for a moment. He wouldn't...no, couldn't...lie to me. 'Morphing,' Tobias replied bluntly. 'They were talking about morphing.'
I was confused for a second. Why were they talking about morphing? 'But Santorelli and Jeanne don't have the power to morph,' I said in puzzlement.
'Exactly,' Tobias said, 'but they wish they had. I heard Santorelli say, 'Ok, look, I know I agreed to come on this mission, but that was only for two reasons. One was that I could get to know the Animorphs and say, when I got back to earth, 'I not only saw them, I went on a mission with them!' The second reason was that I hoped that I could morph. I've heard Jake talk about how great being a dolphin and a falcon is. I really wanted to try that for myself, you know. I expected both of us to be given the power and for us to acquire animals or whatever, but that doesn't seem the case anymore. In fact, I wish I never came in the first place. This mission is one big suicidal idea after another. I've had enough of it.' I don't think they exactly see you as their prince, Jake.'
'Do you?' I asked nervously, fearing the answer. When Tobias had found out I sentenced Rachel to death by telling her to infiltrate the Blade ship and destroy Tom, he had raged at me and barely spoke to me until the end of war, and even then it was simply, Hello and Goodbye, Jake. He had stolen the urn that held Rachel's ashes without a word. Would he still consider me as his leader? After all, he had morphed Andalite back on earth when I'd ordered him to.
There was a pause. 'Sure, Jake.'
'What do we do then?' I asked, feeling stupid. After all, I had just asked Tobias if he considered me his leader and here I was, asking him questions. I was supposed to be a fearless leader, not go asking people questions every time I didn't know what to do. But then again, while warring against the Yeerks on earth, I'd never really thought of myself of a real leader. I was only towards the end, when the war with the Yeerks intensified so much we had to make huge sacrifices, that I began to act like a real leader; rapping out orders that could end in my friend's dead, sacrificing thousands to save the millions of earth, instructing Cassie and the others to do things they might not agree with, telling them to hold on when everything else seemed like a lost cause. It was then that I felt like a true leader. But in the years that followed, I had lost that status, acting like a zombie, wandering around like a hollowed version of myself. Perhaps now was the time to get my head out of my rear end and start acting like the Jake I had acted like many years ago, despite the granite-slab pressure that slammed down on my shoulder.
'I don't know, Jake,' Tobias replied uncertainly. 'We can't give them the morphing power. For one, we don't have the blue box, for two, would we want to? After all, we gave David morphing abilities, look how that turned out.'
David had been an ordinary boy, like me, or Marco or even Tobias before he got trapped in red-tailed hawk morph. An ordinary boy, that is until he found the blue box. Long story cut short: Visser Three found out David had the box and tried to hunt him down. We gave him morphing abilities and allowed him to join us. He betrayed us. We trapped him in rat morph. Not the nicest way to spend the rest of your life, but as Cassie said, better than dying. But when you thought carefully about it, was it?
'We also gave James and the other auxiliary Animorphs the power,' I pointed out, 'and they helped us a lot, especially when we needed a distraction to get aboard the Pool ship...' I fell silent, remembering that scene of slaughter. That was the moment James and the others died. They died, providing us a distraction for us to climb aboard the Pool ship, when in fact we were already on board. 'But, you're right anyway,' I continued heavily. 'After all, we don't have the blue box.'
'Ok, we pretend we haven't heard,' I said quickly, acting the part of leader again. 'After all, they can't possibly know how good your hearing is, can they? We pretend we haven't heard them but we have to keep a careful eye of them, Tobias, Ok? I, or anyone else, for that matter, can't tell what they're saying when they go off whispering, but you can, Tobias. Will you do that for me?'
There was another pause, this one shorter than the other one. 'Yes.'
'Good.' I headed out towards the other, but hesitated and turned back. 'Thanks, Tobias. You've been a real help over the years, you know that? Without your hawk eyes and ears, I don't know what we'd have done without you.'
I was about to go to Marco and see what the report was, but I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around again to see tears forming in Tobias' human face. Normally, being in a hawk body, he didn't know how to use human expressions when in morph. There was no mistaking what was on Tobias' face, though.
'Tobias?'
'It's...nothing.' He shrugged. 'Just thinking about Ax, that's all.'
I understood. Tobias had been closest to Ax during his time on earth. After all, what with Ax being a freaky part-human, part-deer, part-scorpion alien and Tobias being part-human, part-hawk, part-Andalite, they seemed right for each other. Ax considered Tobias his shorm, a person he could trust even with their tail blade against his throat and I'm sure Tobias thought the same of Ax.
'He's dead, isn't he?'
I couldn't lie. Not only would it have been wrong, but Tobias knew me. He could spot a lie as easily as he could spot mice in a field.
'Yes, he is,' I replied gently. 'Even if The One, or whatever that freaky alien was called, didn't kill him, the explosion of the Blade ship surely must have. We just have the remember Ax because of the good times we had with him on earth.'
It was an example of how the Animorphs had changed in the space of a few years. One was dead, another almost certainly-dead, another left behind on earth. Another, a hawk. The rest on a deep-space mission with little chance of ever surviving. Sure, there were three more members, but I could never call them true Animorphs, not when two were unable to morph and one was an Andalite trapped in a human body, never to morph again.
It was strange how fast we'd coped with such changes. Only seconds after realising Ax was dead, we were planning on returning to earth, without pausing even for a few minutes to mourn Ax's death. Sure, we'd mourned Rachel, some more than others, but she was a true Animorph, with us from the very beginning and a human. She hadn't deserved to die. She was a true warrior on the inside, a pretty girl with the instincts to shop on the outside. She didn't deserve to die. She should be here with us, enjoying the thrill.
But then again, so should Ax. If we mourned the death of Rachel, why not the death of Ax? Because he was alien, not human? Not an excuse. He was almost as one of us as Rachel. He had trusted us, confided in us and proved countless times that he thought of humans as his own species rather than Andalites. So why had we not grieved Ax's death and we had Rachel's, I thought bitterly. Perhaps that's what we'd become.
Then, there was Marco's voice calling to me from the console, 'Jake, Tobias, you have got to look at this!'
