Chapter 6
Wiping tears from my human eyes, I followed Jake to where Marco and Menderash were standing. From another direction, Santorelli and Jeanne appeared. There was a small huddle around the front screen window. I struggled to barge through, but my human morph was not as big as Jake or Santorelli or Menderash's human morph since it is not my true body and therefore does not grow older like my red-tailed hawk body does.
'What is it?' I heard Jake ask.
'It's the planet,' Marco replied smartly, pointing. 'Look.'
I finally pushed myself through the small crowd and looked out of the window. Directly in front of us, no more than a hundred thousand kilometres away, and getting closer at a shocking speed, was the planet we had been looking for for nearly a week. It was smallish, maybe three-quarters the size of earth, but like earth and presumably like the Andalite homeworld, it seemed extremely lush. Stretching from pole to pole were enormous rainforests, although we were still too far away to analyse it properly. There was one ocean as far as I could see (although there might have been more around the other side of the planet) and it was small compared to the oceans of earth, maybe the size of a medium-sized country. There was a mountain ridge that seemed to go all the way around the planet, although apart from that, the planet seemed almost flat.
By the way, my name is Tobias. With the exception of Ax, I guess I'm the strangest of the Animorph. A human, who incidentally, is the son of Elfangor, who got trapped in a morph. Not the smartest thing to do, but in some way, it really helped me. It taught me not to give in easily, and when I finally gave in, the hawk that was now 'me' would rise up and take control. People used to call me. Bullies at school, I guess. Now they worship me.
Not that I want to be worshipped, but its better than being bullied.
I used to be confused about my identity. What was I? A hawk? A human? And Andalite? A bit of all of them? Or worse, neither? But now, there's no point wondering. After all, as long as you're loved, who cares what you are? And although Rachel has passed away, I knew she still loved me, and always would.
I was a hawk. I hunted and lived like one, swooping on unsuspecting mice and shrews. I had the body of a hawk. I had the awesome eyes of a hawk, the unbeleivable ears of a hawk. But was I a hawk?
I was an Andalite. After all, Ax was my brother and Elfangor, the once- mighty warrior, was my father. I would happily give my life to save the lives of my people, my friends, or simply for freedom. But was I an Andalite?
I was a human. I thought like one. I could read like one, I liked their taste in music. When Rachel had died because of Jake's 'important' orders, I had grieved her death like a human and finally forgiven Jake. Just like a human would. But was I really a human?
And did I really matter?
Looking at the ship's accurate clock, I realised I should be demorphing soon. I backed off slightly, leaving the others to gawk at the planet, and felt the familiar changes begin.
I felt myself shrinking, as always. Shrinking is a lot like falling, except your feet never leave the ground. At first, you're looking at people's faces, then their necks, then their waists, then their knees and you stop shrinking level with their ankles. Feathers than began as light sketches sprinkling down my arms and chest began sprouting. I could feel the slight tickling as they did so, but I've done this morph countless times before. I could cope with it.
I could feel light, hollow bones that allowed me to fly replace the heavy, dense human bones. My arms stretched up horizontally. I could feel even more feathers finding their way out of my body. Atop my head, my dirty blonde hair began melding together to form the crown feathers.
My nose and upper lip began to suddenly pull together and melt, like fast-running wax. I looked down and there, was my nose practically bulging outwards and hardening. Not something you want to see everyday. This new formation of mutated growth began to curve towards a point at the end and became my so familiar red-tailed hawk beak. Through all this, I was still shrinking until I came to a dead stop between Marco's ankles and knees. My legs were suddenly erupting in yellow scales and shortening as they did. I could feel toes melding together or vanishing together or simply swivelling around to the back of my foot. In the end, I was left with three toes, three toes that were rapidly thinning and growing, instead of toenails, huge, cruel talons.
Yeah, sure, I was many times much smaller than my human body, but in reality, I was many times more powerful. After all, can a human swoop down at a hundred kilometres an hour at an unsuspecting Hork-Bajir and rip his eyes out or leave severe gashes in their bodies? No, can a hawk? Oh, most definitely. I was smaller, that was true, but I was just one big bundle of feathers wrapped in a bomb about to attack.
Now, let's get something straight. On earth, I was the best Animorph at flying, due to the fact that i had way too much practise. I could perform stunts that the best pilot could never perform even if he had the best plane in the world. While I was still spiralling centimetres from the treetops, he would be burning and heading for ground. But that was on earth, and that was when I had thermals, rising columns of hot air.
Now I was in some crummy spaceship that was way too small for me to fly any distance and was seriously lacking thermals. Without thermals, taking off was extremely hard for a bird that required them.
So you can imagine the struggle of taking off in dead air in a space the size of a medium-sized garden and having to avoid walls, the floor and ultimately, the ceiling. I flapped futilely and tried to power myself up with my feet. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to do it, but I'd been in this lousy, way-too-cramped spaceship for almost a year and had practise. Pushing myself off, I frantically flapped my wings and flew, centimetres above the floor, struggling for non-existant headwind. Ok, I was airborne, but barely. A wall! I cranked, my tail feather, turning miniscule distances to allow me to bank sharply and turned heavily, scraping the wall as I past. Now I was slightly higher up, but the only way to reach my perch where I spent the majority of my time was to circle the room, getting slightly higher each time.
I skimmed over the heads of the Animorphs and the others as they continued staring out of the window at the planet that loomed ever closer. Nobody looked up as I zoomed over them, finally gaining enough altitude to flap persistently and land on my perch overlooking the front screen.
'Menderash?' Jake asked in the I-am-the-leader-please-answer-my- question-quickly tone. 'What's the report on the planet?'
'The majority of the planet is made up of lush rainforests,' Menderash replied without hesitation. He seemed to have finally considered Jake his 'prince'. 'However, if my speculations are correct, there were will be no sentient creatures there apart from tribal beasts, as the rainforests are probably full of predators and dangerous animals. Instead, I presume sentient creatures will be found in the areas between the forests. I have located a promising site. It is an area of flat ground, ten square kilometres big, next to a small lake. If there is any sentient life on this planet at all, there will be some there.'
'So that's were we're headed, I presume,' Marco asked.
There was a tense pause by Jake. 'Yes.'
'Aye, aye, Captain,' Marco mocked.
Maximum burn, Menderash said to the computer.
Okay, being a human under the effect of maximum burn is bad enough, but being a bird...Not the best of feelings, being propelled backwards at shocking speed into a wall as the ship underwent changes from a leisurely speed to an impossibly high speed. And I spent so long working to get up to that perch...
Still, I could help smiling (inwardly, of course—hawks can't smile) as the others shot backwards in a flurry of arms and legs. Only Menderash, who grabbed onto a steel handlebar nanoseconds before the ship accelerated forwards, managed to stay upright.
I saw Jeanne disappear as she was bombarded by the bodies of Santorelli and Jake. Marco went flying in my direction.
Through binocular vision, I saw the planet looming up like a huge lush, asteroid in front of us. It used to be scary. After all, flying a ship so close to a huge planet, which, I used to think, could roll over and squash us, seemed terrifying at one point, but of course, that's impossible. As big as it was, it couldn't harm us...until we landed, of course. As we moved ever closer to it, I saw strange, swirling clouds travelling as fast as a car across an emerald-green sky.
'Sensors show numerous life,' Menderash said as the ship slowed down enough for us to actually hear each other, 'although I cannot yet tell if sentient life is present.'
We flew through the thick atmosphere of the planet. We had to slow down so as not to be destroyed by the heavy air. I saw everyone else scramble to their feet, muttering sullenly.
'Beats the roller coasters,' Marco said.
We dropped from the atmosphere kilometres up to just above ground level, maybe only twenty metres, where the treetops reached up to scrape the bottom of the ship. And what strange trees they were. Ok, maybe not entirely strange compared to the weird asparagus-like trees Andalites have on their home world, or the vertically-challenged trees on the Yeerk world, or maybe the enormous Hork-Bajir trees, but to earth trees, they weren't exactly normal. They shot straight up for maybe fifteen metres: no bumps on the trunks, no indents, just plain, smooth trunks that split up into three horizontal branches. These branches in turn split up into three smaller branches, and again until there were dozens of tiny branches, each with a single, brown leaf on the end.
I could see strange birds that just seemed to be two wings. There didn't appear to be any body between the wings. They flew oddly, one wing beating downwards, the other beating upwards. I watched one in fascination as we zoomed overhead.
'There is a clearing up ahead,' I heard Menderash say quietly, as if he didn't want anyone to hear, but, of course, my ears heard everything.
Was Menderash trying to avoid saying something? Was there something wrong that he wasn't telling us? I looked around at everyone. Santorelli and Jeanne looked unbeknownst. Jake shot a glance at Menderash but then looked back at the screen. But of course, the one person even Menderash couldn't fool: Marco. Those dark brown, sceptical eyes looked sideways at Menderash, then up towards me. So, he'd felt something too and if there was someone who noticed odd things first in the group, it was Marco.
Is he trying to hide anything? I asked Marco in private thought speak.
I couldn't answer of course, not without giving away what we were talking about, but I saw the ever so slight shrug from Marco's shoulders that told me he had heard.
'Perhaps we should avoid this particular clearing,' Menderash said.
Oh, yes, he was definitely hiding something. Intense, brilliant yellow hawk eyes and dark shrewd eyes focused intently on him.
'Is something wrong?' Jake asked.
There was a short pause. I could almost see Menderash's brain turning, but not even my hawk eyes were that good.
'No, of course not,' Menderash said sharply.
Now even Jake was suspicious. Marco turned towards him and jerked his head in Menderash's direction. Jake raised an eyebrow.
'Beginning to land,' Menderash reported.
I saw the ground jumping up at us as we started our descent. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I was paranoid. But I had been in the company of Aximili- Esgarrouth-Isthil for three years and I had learned when an Andalite was lying. Menderash may now be a permanent human, but the signs were still there.
Menderash was hiding something from us. But what was it?
Wiping tears from my human eyes, I followed Jake to where Marco and Menderash were standing. From another direction, Santorelli and Jeanne appeared. There was a small huddle around the front screen window. I struggled to barge through, but my human morph was not as big as Jake or Santorelli or Menderash's human morph since it is not my true body and therefore does not grow older like my red-tailed hawk body does.
'What is it?' I heard Jake ask.
'It's the planet,' Marco replied smartly, pointing. 'Look.'
I finally pushed myself through the small crowd and looked out of the window. Directly in front of us, no more than a hundred thousand kilometres away, and getting closer at a shocking speed, was the planet we had been looking for for nearly a week. It was smallish, maybe three-quarters the size of earth, but like earth and presumably like the Andalite homeworld, it seemed extremely lush. Stretching from pole to pole were enormous rainforests, although we were still too far away to analyse it properly. There was one ocean as far as I could see (although there might have been more around the other side of the planet) and it was small compared to the oceans of earth, maybe the size of a medium-sized country. There was a mountain ridge that seemed to go all the way around the planet, although apart from that, the planet seemed almost flat.
By the way, my name is Tobias. With the exception of Ax, I guess I'm the strangest of the Animorph. A human, who incidentally, is the son of Elfangor, who got trapped in a morph. Not the smartest thing to do, but in some way, it really helped me. It taught me not to give in easily, and when I finally gave in, the hawk that was now 'me' would rise up and take control. People used to call me. Bullies at school, I guess. Now they worship me.
Not that I want to be worshipped, but its better than being bullied.
I used to be confused about my identity. What was I? A hawk? A human? And Andalite? A bit of all of them? Or worse, neither? But now, there's no point wondering. After all, as long as you're loved, who cares what you are? And although Rachel has passed away, I knew she still loved me, and always would.
I was a hawk. I hunted and lived like one, swooping on unsuspecting mice and shrews. I had the body of a hawk. I had the awesome eyes of a hawk, the unbeleivable ears of a hawk. But was I a hawk?
I was an Andalite. After all, Ax was my brother and Elfangor, the once- mighty warrior, was my father. I would happily give my life to save the lives of my people, my friends, or simply for freedom. But was I an Andalite?
I was a human. I thought like one. I could read like one, I liked their taste in music. When Rachel had died because of Jake's 'important' orders, I had grieved her death like a human and finally forgiven Jake. Just like a human would. But was I really a human?
And did I really matter?
Looking at the ship's accurate clock, I realised I should be demorphing soon. I backed off slightly, leaving the others to gawk at the planet, and felt the familiar changes begin.
I felt myself shrinking, as always. Shrinking is a lot like falling, except your feet never leave the ground. At first, you're looking at people's faces, then their necks, then their waists, then their knees and you stop shrinking level with their ankles. Feathers than began as light sketches sprinkling down my arms and chest began sprouting. I could feel the slight tickling as they did so, but I've done this morph countless times before. I could cope with it.
I could feel light, hollow bones that allowed me to fly replace the heavy, dense human bones. My arms stretched up horizontally. I could feel even more feathers finding their way out of my body. Atop my head, my dirty blonde hair began melding together to form the crown feathers.
My nose and upper lip began to suddenly pull together and melt, like fast-running wax. I looked down and there, was my nose practically bulging outwards and hardening. Not something you want to see everyday. This new formation of mutated growth began to curve towards a point at the end and became my so familiar red-tailed hawk beak. Through all this, I was still shrinking until I came to a dead stop between Marco's ankles and knees. My legs were suddenly erupting in yellow scales and shortening as they did. I could feel toes melding together or vanishing together or simply swivelling around to the back of my foot. In the end, I was left with three toes, three toes that were rapidly thinning and growing, instead of toenails, huge, cruel talons.
Yeah, sure, I was many times much smaller than my human body, but in reality, I was many times more powerful. After all, can a human swoop down at a hundred kilometres an hour at an unsuspecting Hork-Bajir and rip his eyes out or leave severe gashes in their bodies? No, can a hawk? Oh, most definitely. I was smaller, that was true, but I was just one big bundle of feathers wrapped in a bomb about to attack.
Now, let's get something straight. On earth, I was the best Animorph at flying, due to the fact that i had way too much practise. I could perform stunts that the best pilot could never perform even if he had the best plane in the world. While I was still spiralling centimetres from the treetops, he would be burning and heading for ground. But that was on earth, and that was when I had thermals, rising columns of hot air.
Now I was in some crummy spaceship that was way too small for me to fly any distance and was seriously lacking thermals. Without thermals, taking off was extremely hard for a bird that required them.
So you can imagine the struggle of taking off in dead air in a space the size of a medium-sized garden and having to avoid walls, the floor and ultimately, the ceiling. I flapped futilely and tried to power myself up with my feet. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to do it, but I'd been in this lousy, way-too-cramped spaceship for almost a year and had practise. Pushing myself off, I frantically flapped my wings and flew, centimetres above the floor, struggling for non-existant headwind. Ok, I was airborne, but barely. A wall! I cranked, my tail feather, turning miniscule distances to allow me to bank sharply and turned heavily, scraping the wall as I past. Now I was slightly higher up, but the only way to reach my perch where I spent the majority of my time was to circle the room, getting slightly higher each time.
I skimmed over the heads of the Animorphs and the others as they continued staring out of the window at the planet that loomed ever closer. Nobody looked up as I zoomed over them, finally gaining enough altitude to flap persistently and land on my perch overlooking the front screen.
'Menderash?' Jake asked in the I-am-the-leader-please-answer-my- question-quickly tone. 'What's the report on the planet?'
'The majority of the planet is made up of lush rainforests,' Menderash replied without hesitation. He seemed to have finally considered Jake his 'prince'. 'However, if my speculations are correct, there were will be no sentient creatures there apart from tribal beasts, as the rainforests are probably full of predators and dangerous animals. Instead, I presume sentient creatures will be found in the areas between the forests. I have located a promising site. It is an area of flat ground, ten square kilometres big, next to a small lake. If there is any sentient life on this planet at all, there will be some there.'
'So that's were we're headed, I presume,' Marco asked.
There was a tense pause by Jake. 'Yes.'
'Aye, aye, Captain,' Marco mocked.
Maximum burn, Menderash said to the computer.
Okay, being a human under the effect of maximum burn is bad enough, but being a bird...Not the best of feelings, being propelled backwards at shocking speed into a wall as the ship underwent changes from a leisurely speed to an impossibly high speed. And I spent so long working to get up to that perch...
Still, I could help smiling (inwardly, of course—hawks can't smile) as the others shot backwards in a flurry of arms and legs. Only Menderash, who grabbed onto a steel handlebar nanoseconds before the ship accelerated forwards, managed to stay upright.
I saw Jeanne disappear as she was bombarded by the bodies of Santorelli and Jake. Marco went flying in my direction.
Through binocular vision, I saw the planet looming up like a huge lush, asteroid in front of us. It used to be scary. After all, flying a ship so close to a huge planet, which, I used to think, could roll over and squash us, seemed terrifying at one point, but of course, that's impossible. As big as it was, it couldn't harm us...until we landed, of course. As we moved ever closer to it, I saw strange, swirling clouds travelling as fast as a car across an emerald-green sky.
'Sensors show numerous life,' Menderash said as the ship slowed down enough for us to actually hear each other, 'although I cannot yet tell if sentient life is present.'
We flew through the thick atmosphere of the planet. We had to slow down so as not to be destroyed by the heavy air. I saw everyone else scramble to their feet, muttering sullenly.
'Beats the roller coasters,' Marco said.
We dropped from the atmosphere kilometres up to just above ground level, maybe only twenty metres, where the treetops reached up to scrape the bottom of the ship. And what strange trees they were. Ok, maybe not entirely strange compared to the weird asparagus-like trees Andalites have on their home world, or the vertically-challenged trees on the Yeerk world, or maybe the enormous Hork-Bajir trees, but to earth trees, they weren't exactly normal. They shot straight up for maybe fifteen metres: no bumps on the trunks, no indents, just plain, smooth trunks that split up into three horizontal branches. These branches in turn split up into three smaller branches, and again until there were dozens of tiny branches, each with a single, brown leaf on the end.
I could see strange birds that just seemed to be two wings. There didn't appear to be any body between the wings. They flew oddly, one wing beating downwards, the other beating upwards. I watched one in fascination as we zoomed overhead.
'There is a clearing up ahead,' I heard Menderash say quietly, as if he didn't want anyone to hear, but, of course, my ears heard everything.
Was Menderash trying to avoid saying something? Was there something wrong that he wasn't telling us? I looked around at everyone. Santorelli and Jeanne looked unbeknownst. Jake shot a glance at Menderash but then looked back at the screen. But of course, the one person even Menderash couldn't fool: Marco. Those dark brown, sceptical eyes looked sideways at Menderash, then up towards me. So, he'd felt something too and if there was someone who noticed odd things first in the group, it was Marco.
Is he trying to hide anything? I asked Marco in private thought speak.
I couldn't answer of course, not without giving away what we were talking about, but I saw the ever so slight shrug from Marco's shoulders that told me he had heard.
'Perhaps we should avoid this particular clearing,' Menderash said.
Oh, yes, he was definitely hiding something. Intense, brilliant yellow hawk eyes and dark shrewd eyes focused intently on him.
'Is something wrong?' Jake asked.
There was a short pause. I could almost see Menderash's brain turning, but not even my hawk eyes were that good.
'No, of course not,' Menderash said sharply.
Now even Jake was suspicious. Marco turned towards him and jerked his head in Menderash's direction. Jake raised an eyebrow.
'Beginning to land,' Menderash reported.
I saw the ground jumping up at us as we started our descent. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I was paranoid. But I had been in the company of Aximili- Esgarrouth-Isthil for three years and I had learned when an Andalite was lying. Menderash may now be a permanent human, but the signs were still there.
Menderash was hiding something from us. But what was it?
