Chapter 7
How many alien planets have I been on now? Let me think: there was the Leeran home planet way back, an ocean-filled body with only one continent and a few islands. The life in the seas had been amazing, much more extravagant than marine life on earth. Then there was the Hork-Bajir planet. The massive trees (some three quarters of a kilometre tall) took up most of my view, although the strange, remnants of the Arn city was something to gape at. I've also seen the Andalite homeworld, or at least part of it on Andalite Dome ships. I've seen a few Andalite wildlife, they were weird too. I've seen the Pemalite home world through the hologram the pacifist android Erek had created. And I have a pretty good idea what the Yeerk homeworld looks like. All of them were weird. But this planet was just plain bizarre, almost as strange as the Iskoort planet I had the misfortune of being on for a short period of time.
The ship touched quietly down. I saw the smooth, multi-branched trees in the corner of my eyes. I could see grass that looked more like the pieces of paper you scrape out from the bottom of a office shredder. Some strands were tall and flat, others small and thick. But the thing that really caught my attention was the strange village perhaps three hundred metres away.
Now, I use the term village because the settlement was not large, not because I could see quaint little cottages with thatched roofs. No, these buildings were far from that. They looked like dull, foreboding ice-cream cones turned upside down so the point faced the sky. I hadn't a clue what they were made up of, but it wasn't something I was familiar with. At the top of the 'cone' was some sort of radar that turned this way and that, usually slowly, but occasionally faster as if it had heard something. There was no visible doors or windows, but who knew what creatures lived on this planet and what substitutes they had for doors. What looked like dark brown vines seemed to encircle the building, as if someone had just come along and wound vines around it. There were about ten of these strewn randomly around the clearing, also dotted with one or two different types of building: one that looked like a thick trident standing up on its own, the other looking like someone had just clustered lego bricks together, without any thought of what they were making, and came up with that. These last two were many times bigger than the smaller 'houses', as I had come to call them.
'What the...?' Jake asked in awe, as he finally noticed these strange buildings.
I looked around at my fellow Animorphs and recruits. I saw Jake, his brain cogs whirling. I could almost feel him asking himself, What should we do? Should we investigate? What if they are hostile? What if one of us is killed? His face may have seemed fearless, co-ordinated even, but I've known Jake nearly all my life, and I know when he's arguing with himself inside.
I saw Tobias, his intense hawk eyes almost burning a hole through the buildings outside as he focused intently on him. But Tobias' face was expressionless as a hawk face can be. It was probably the one face out of the six of us whom I could not read. I looked over at Menderash. He seemed to be squirming around, his eyes shifty. What was up with this guy? First he hid something from us, and then he seems like he wants to get out of here. What was his problem? I saw him glance nervously out of one of the tiny, slanted side windows.
Both Santorelli, and Jeanne, who had remained silent during most of the trip, were as quiet as ever, glancing around apprehensively. Again, there was something up with those two as well, and Jake knew something about it, I could tell. Still, he was keeping his mouth shut for the moment.
'Wait here,' Menderash said, looking around at everyone, 'I'll not be a moment.'
He vanished into a storage room. I glanced at Jake in puzzlement. He simply shrugged and turned away.
Menderash reappeared with familiar weapons cradled in his arms: Dracon beams. He passed one to Jake, one to myself, and one to both Santorelli and Jeanne. He kept one for himself.
'What are these for?' Jake asked, looking down at the Dracon beam in confusion.
Menderash looked puzzled for a second, then shook his head ever so slightly. 'Just for precautions,' he replied.
Ok, now my heart was beating ever so slightly faster than normal. Precautions? Maybe. I might have believed that if Menderash hadn't hidden something from us before, or looked shifty and nervous when we landed. There was something Menderash was worried about and he wanted us to be well protected.
I looked over at Santorelli and Jeanne. They were whispering to each other and holding the Dracon beams between their thumbs and first finger as if they thought the beams were some sort of rotten science experiment gone wrong. I walked over to them as Jake and Menderash started talking tactically.
'Hey,' I said.
Santorelli and Jeanne looked up in surprise. I hadn't spoken to them properly during the trip. I had spent most of my time with Menderash at the control panel.
'Hello,' Jeanne said politely. Santorelli just nodded in acceptance.
'Do you want me to show you how to hold these things properly?' I asked.
'Yeah, go on then.' Was there a sneer in Santorelli's voice? No, of course not. I was just being paranoid.
'Ok, first thing we need to understand,' I said, acting like some teacher I had had in fourth grade, 'is that these weapons were originally designed for Hork-Bajir hands. You know about the Hork-Bajir, right? Well, as you can see, they were built for clawed, large hands, but we can still use them. We just have to make sure we don't shoot ourselves in the foot. Now, they're like normal guns. You hold it, with your finger on the trigger, except when you fire, there is no recoil, which is good. Now, as you can see, there are lots of different settings on the Dracon beam, ranging from small stuns to a beam powerful enough, it can burn a hole in a mountain. Let's have both of yours of setting four. That'll stun large creatures and kill smaller ones. After all, we don't know what's out there and if they are friendly or not.'
Bad choice of words perhaps. I saw Santorelli and Jeanne glance at each nervously, as they had done for the past year or so.
'But...but what if they aren't friendly?' Santorelli asked apprehensively. He didn't sound scared, just worried, almost as if everything was a nightmare. In a nightmare, you become worried, even nervous, but you can only become scared in reality.
'Then, we'll shoot our way out of here,' I said simply. 'Or morph.'
Again, Santorelli and Jeanne looked at each other. They were about to say something, but—
'Everyone off the ship!' I heard Menderash say loudly, almost screaming the words out. 'Get off the ship! NOW!'
Andalites rarely shout and when they do, they have a good reason behind their outbursts. I heard a Swooosh! as the ship door swung open. I looked over at Jake.
'You heard him!' he yelled. 'Out! Now!'
I didn't need telling a third time. My heart hammering like a set of drums in my chest, I raced for the exit, not knowing why I was running. That's the scariest terror of all. I've seen Hork-Bajir, I've fought them, and I've run silly away from them. And I was plenty scared then. But the most terrifying thing is when you don't know where or what your enemy was. Like now. We were running from something I had not yet seen.
Jeanne and Santorelli scrambled in front of me, running as if they had never felt this terrified before. Which may have been true. Me, I've been through worse things. Doesn't make it any better though. Santorelli and Jeanne were out first, leaping down the ramp onto the planet's surface. Menderash was next. Then me, running, falling, getting to me feet and jumping through the hatch. Then there was Tobias, swooping low and rocketing like a bullet out of there. And finally Jake, after making sure everyone else had managed to escape, jumped out.
'Don't stop!' I heard Menderash shout. 'Run! Run!'
We ran. We ran like the crazed fools we were, through needle-sharp grass, alerting huge, beast-like insects underfoot as we went. Menderash led, using his fit human morph to leap over rat-sized beetles, or whatever they were, that lay in our path. I scrambled only centimetres behind him. Behind me, Jake made sure Santorelli and Jeanne didn't lag behind. Above us all, Tobias tore through the heavy air.
'Ok, stop,' Menderash said.
We all stopped and turned back towards the ship we had run so crazily from. Instantly, I noticed the danger. A turret. Beyond the ship, maybe fifty metres or so, I saw a turret, and there, nestled at the top of the turret, lay something that resembled a Dracon cannon. It's 'locater', or whatever you may call them, locked onto the ship.
TSEEEEEEW!
The ship exploded. No other words can describe it. Fragments of the once glorious Rachel spun and spiralled into the air. I saw all my DVDs and computer games go up in smoke. I saw the ship we had called 'home' for the last year be reduced to a few atoms, rising up in the heavy alien air. The all-too-familiar mushroom cloud rose up spectacularly into the air. I saw a few birds that were unlucky enough to be flying overhead at the time, be sucked into the cloud. I was blasted by a wave of rendering heat that made my flesh bubble for a few seconds, before the heat was withdrawn.
Then...rising up through the noise of the explosion...an alarm.
'Quick! The creatures of this settlements have been alerted,' Menderash shouted over the noise. 'We do not know if they are hostile or not. Into the trees where we can decide better!'
We ran, stumbling, scrambling into the strange trees that populated the forest. I saw some sort of creature emerging from behind a building, but it was too far away for me to see it properly.
'Jake,' I whispered, crawling close to him. 'Jake? What do we do?'
'These creatures had turrets around,' he answered, 'but that doesn't mean they are not friendly. That just may mean they are safety-freaks or something. Maybe they're under attack from another species and the turret was a form of defence. Or, these aliens may genuinely ferocious. We don't know. But let's be on the safe side. Marco? Morph. I'll do the same. Tobias? Stay up top and look around, but if things don't look good, land and morph into something fierce. Menderash? You can be the talker. Santorelli? Jeanne? Stay here were it's safe. We'll come back for you, although if we seem to be in trouble, fire the Dracon beams, Ok?'
I glanced at Santorelli and Jeanne. They look nervous considering the situation, but they nodded reluctantly in agreement.
We ducked further into the trees. And, thinking of one of my favourite morph so many years ago, I felt the once-familiar changes begin.
How many alien planets have I been on now? Let me think: there was the Leeran home planet way back, an ocean-filled body with only one continent and a few islands. The life in the seas had been amazing, much more extravagant than marine life on earth. Then there was the Hork-Bajir planet. The massive trees (some three quarters of a kilometre tall) took up most of my view, although the strange, remnants of the Arn city was something to gape at. I've also seen the Andalite homeworld, or at least part of it on Andalite Dome ships. I've seen a few Andalite wildlife, they were weird too. I've seen the Pemalite home world through the hologram the pacifist android Erek had created. And I have a pretty good idea what the Yeerk homeworld looks like. All of them were weird. But this planet was just plain bizarre, almost as strange as the Iskoort planet I had the misfortune of being on for a short period of time.
The ship touched quietly down. I saw the smooth, multi-branched trees in the corner of my eyes. I could see grass that looked more like the pieces of paper you scrape out from the bottom of a office shredder. Some strands were tall and flat, others small and thick. But the thing that really caught my attention was the strange village perhaps three hundred metres away.
Now, I use the term village because the settlement was not large, not because I could see quaint little cottages with thatched roofs. No, these buildings were far from that. They looked like dull, foreboding ice-cream cones turned upside down so the point faced the sky. I hadn't a clue what they were made up of, but it wasn't something I was familiar with. At the top of the 'cone' was some sort of radar that turned this way and that, usually slowly, but occasionally faster as if it had heard something. There was no visible doors or windows, but who knew what creatures lived on this planet and what substitutes they had for doors. What looked like dark brown vines seemed to encircle the building, as if someone had just come along and wound vines around it. There were about ten of these strewn randomly around the clearing, also dotted with one or two different types of building: one that looked like a thick trident standing up on its own, the other looking like someone had just clustered lego bricks together, without any thought of what they were making, and came up with that. These last two were many times bigger than the smaller 'houses', as I had come to call them.
'What the...?' Jake asked in awe, as he finally noticed these strange buildings.
I looked around at my fellow Animorphs and recruits. I saw Jake, his brain cogs whirling. I could almost feel him asking himself, What should we do? Should we investigate? What if they are hostile? What if one of us is killed? His face may have seemed fearless, co-ordinated even, but I've known Jake nearly all my life, and I know when he's arguing with himself inside.
I saw Tobias, his intense hawk eyes almost burning a hole through the buildings outside as he focused intently on him. But Tobias' face was expressionless as a hawk face can be. It was probably the one face out of the six of us whom I could not read. I looked over at Menderash. He seemed to be squirming around, his eyes shifty. What was up with this guy? First he hid something from us, and then he seems like he wants to get out of here. What was his problem? I saw him glance nervously out of one of the tiny, slanted side windows.
Both Santorelli, and Jeanne, who had remained silent during most of the trip, were as quiet as ever, glancing around apprehensively. Again, there was something up with those two as well, and Jake knew something about it, I could tell. Still, he was keeping his mouth shut for the moment.
'Wait here,' Menderash said, looking around at everyone, 'I'll not be a moment.'
He vanished into a storage room. I glanced at Jake in puzzlement. He simply shrugged and turned away.
Menderash reappeared with familiar weapons cradled in his arms: Dracon beams. He passed one to Jake, one to myself, and one to both Santorelli and Jeanne. He kept one for himself.
'What are these for?' Jake asked, looking down at the Dracon beam in confusion.
Menderash looked puzzled for a second, then shook his head ever so slightly. 'Just for precautions,' he replied.
Ok, now my heart was beating ever so slightly faster than normal. Precautions? Maybe. I might have believed that if Menderash hadn't hidden something from us before, or looked shifty and nervous when we landed. There was something Menderash was worried about and he wanted us to be well protected.
I looked over at Santorelli and Jeanne. They were whispering to each other and holding the Dracon beams between their thumbs and first finger as if they thought the beams were some sort of rotten science experiment gone wrong. I walked over to them as Jake and Menderash started talking tactically.
'Hey,' I said.
Santorelli and Jeanne looked up in surprise. I hadn't spoken to them properly during the trip. I had spent most of my time with Menderash at the control panel.
'Hello,' Jeanne said politely. Santorelli just nodded in acceptance.
'Do you want me to show you how to hold these things properly?' I asked.
'Yeah, go on then.' Was there a sneer in Santorelli's voice? No, of course not. I was just being paranoid.
'Ok, first thing we need to understand,' I said, acting like some teacher I had had in fourth grade, 'is that these weapons were originally designed for Hork-Bajir hands. You know about the Hork-Bajir, right? Well, as you can see, they were built for clawed, large hands, but we can still use them. We just have to make sure we don't shoot ourselves in the foot. Now, they're like normal guns. You hold it, with your finger on the trigger, except when you fire, there is no recoil, which is good. Now, as you can see, there are lots of different settings on the Dracon beam, ranging from small stuns to a beam powerful enough, it can burn a hole in a mountain. Let's have both of yours of setting four. That'll stun large creatures and kill smaller ones. After all, we don't know what's out there and if they are friendly or not.'
Bad choice of words perhaps. I saw Santorelli and Jeanne glance at each nervously, as they had done for the past year or so.
'But...but what if they aren't friendly?' Santorelli asked apprehensively. He didn't sound scared, just worried, almost as if everything was a nightmare. In a nightmare, you become worried, even nervous, but you can only become scared in reality.
'Then, we'll shoot our way out of here,' I said simply. 'Or morph.'
Again, Santorelli and Jeanne looked at each other. They were about to say something, but—
'Everyone off the ship!' I heard Menderash say loudly, almost screaming the words out. 'Get off the ship! NOW!'
Andalites rarely shout and when they do, they have a good reason behind their outbursts. I heard a Swooosh! as the ship door swung open. I looked over at Jake.
'You heard him!' he yelled. 'Out! Now!'
I didn't need telling a third time. My heart hammering like a set of drums in my chest, I raced for the exit, not knowing why I was running. That's the scariest terror of all. I've seen Hork-Bajir, I've fought them, and I've run silly away from them. And I was plenty scared then. But the most terrifying thing is when you don't know where or what your enemy was. Like now. We were running from something I had not yet seen.
Jeanne and Santorelli scrambled in front of me, running as if they had never felt this terrified before. Which may have been true. Me, I've been through worse things. Doesn't make it any better though. Santorelli and Jeanne were out first, leaping down the ramp onto the planet's surface. Menderash was next. Then me, running, falling, getting to me feet and jumping through the hatch. Then there was Tobias, swooping low and rocketing like a bullet out of there. And finally Jake, after making sure everyone else had managed to escape, jumped out.
'Don't stop!' I heard Menderash shout. 'Run! Run!'
We ran. We ran like the crazed fools we were, through needle-sharp grass, alerting huge, beast-like insects underfoot as we went. Menderash led, using his fit human morph to leap over rat-sized beetles, or whatever they were, that lay in our path. I scrambled only centimetres behind him. Behind me, Jake made sure Santorelli and Jeanne didn't lag behind. Above us all, Tobias tore through the heavy air.
'Ok, stop,' Menderash said.
We all stopped and turned back towards the ship we had run so crazily from. Instantly, I noticed the danger. A turret. Beyond the ship, maybe fifty metres or so, I saw a turret, and there, nestled at the top of the turret, lay something that resembled a Dracon cannon. It's 'locater', or whatever you may call them, locked onto the ship.
TSEEEEEEW!
The ship exploded. No other words can describe it. Fragments of the once glorious Rachel spun and spiralled into the air. I saw all my DVDs and computer games go up in smoke. I saw the ship we had called 'home' for the last year be reduced to a few atoms, rising up in the heavy alien air. The all-too-familiar mushroom cloud rose up spectacularly into the air. I saw a few birds that were unlucky enough to be flying overhead at the time, be sucked into the cloud. I was blasted by a wave of rendering heat that made my flesh bubble for a few seconds, before the heat was withdrawn.
Then...rising up through the noise of the explosion...an alarm.
'Quick! The creatures of this settlements have been alerted,' Menderash shouted over the noise. 'We do not know if they are hostile or not. Into the trees where we can decide better!'
We ran, stumbling, scrambling into the strange trees that populated the forest. I saw some sort of creature emerging from behind a building, but it was too far away for me to see it properly.
'Jake,' I whispered, crawling close to him. 'Jake? What do we do?'
'These creatures had turrets around,' he answered, 'but that doesn't mean they are not friendly. That just may mean they are safety-freaks or something. Maybe they're under attack from another species and the turret was a form of defence. Or, these aliens may genuinely ferocious. We don't know. But let's be on the safe side. Marco? Morph. I'll do the same. Tobias? Stay up top and look around, but if things don't look good, land and morph into something fierce. Menderash? You can be the talker. Santorelli? Jeanne? Stay here were it's safe. We'll come back for you, although if we seem to be in trouble, fire the Dracon beams, Ok?'
I glanced at Santorelli and Jeanne. They look nervous considering the situation, but they nodded reluctantly in agreement.
We ducked further into the trees. And, thinking of one of my favourite morph so many years ago, I felt the once-familiar changes begin.
