As the log boat went over the last waterfall, Torrelli made another grab for Marco. Out of the corner of his left eye, Slade caught sight of the captain trying to make his move again. In the time it took Marco to blink twice, Slade turned in his seat and grabbed Torrelli's wrists in his steel-strong grasp.

"You don't learn very quickly, do you?" Slade snarled.

"I'm one of those stubborn types," Torrelli growled.

"More like one of those stupid types," Slade scoffed.

Both men glared at each other, and Torrelli was so busy hating Slade at that moment that he didn't even take any notice of Slade's glowing eyes. it was a good thing, too, since Slade wasn't going to any lengths to hide his eyes. Pulling backwards on the captain's wrists, Slade hauled him out of his seat. And then, bracing his knee against his own seat, Slade threw Torrelli as far away from the log boat as he could manage.

Just as he turned around, Slade heard the captain's enraged shouting, something about how he would have their heads for this or some such crap.

Jake turned back to look at Slade. "Where's the captain?"

Slade smirked. "I think he missed the boat."

Behind them, Torrelli started ranting again. By the time their boat had almost reached the end of the ride, Torrelli had managed to swim to the edge of the channel that the boat was traveling in, not that the rest of the Animorphs would find this out until they were almost off the ride. Once the log boat had come to the end of the end of the artificial river, the Animorphs got themselves ready to leave the ride.

"I guess this ride wasn't the one the Yeerks were using," Jake said, just loudly enough so that only his friends would be able to hear, as the four Animorphs left the boat and started walking away from the ride. "No one tried to jump out and attack us, with the possible exception of Captain Torrelli."

"So it is the House of Horrors," Cassie said, nodding. "We should get there as fast as we can, Rachel and the others are probably going to need our help."

Slade turned suddenly, his keen senses having spotted someone sneaking up on them. Or trying to at least, there weren't many things that could get past him, now that he knew not to ignore the data his enhanced senses were capable of gathering. "We're going to have to move a little more quickly, then. There's someone trying to come up behind us."

Just after Slade had made this pronouncement, the other Animorphs were able to make out the sound of swift footfalls coming ever closer to their position.

"He's right, we gotta get going!" Marco exclaimed, and he the others all started running.

The soft slapping of bare feet was overshadowed by the shouts of the security forces as they pursued the Animorphs. Slade and Jake, who were by far the best runners, soon pulled ahead of Cassie and Marco. Jake, however, was unwilling to leave the others behind to fend for themselves, so he slowed down a bit to keep pace with them. Slade, finding that he was suddenly alone at the forefront of the group, slowed his rapid pace as well.

Once they all had reached the House of Horrors, the only one who wasn't at least a little tired was Slade himself. Cassie and Marco were by far the worst off, though, and Cassie was stooped over while trying to regain her breath.

"Now what?" Marco panted.

"Now we have to go find Rachel and the others, they're probably already in position," Jake paused, thinking for a second. "For that matter, so are the Yeerks, we're going to have to be careful about what we say, since there might even be a few Controllers among the security here."

"Jake," Cassie closed the distance between herself and her fellow Animorph as she spoke. Marco and Slade also came closer, both to keep anyone else from accidentally overhearing, and to hear better themselves. "Rachel and the others are going to be in morph, we don't know for sure what kind of morphs they're going to be using this time. It's going to be harder to find them when we don't know what they are."

"Yes, it is," Jake conceded. "And, we're also going to have to find out if the Yeerks are using this place as a base of operations for infesting the personnel from Area 51. If they are, we have to stop them."

"Yeah, and we're also going to have to figure out if they're going to be normal Human-Controllers or Hork-Bajir, or Taxxons," Marco said, sighing. "Great, this night just keeps getting better and better."

"Well, we'd better get going then," Slade said. "We're wasting our time just standing out here."

"Yeah, the more time we spend out here, the more risk there is of Torrelli or The Gardens security finding us," Cassie said, as the four of them started walking again.

"Right, that too," Jake nodded.

"Has anyone ever considered the fact that there's a possibility that maybe we're all just nuts?" Marco asked sardonically. "I mean, we're all standing here in these weird little aerobic outfits, with no shoes, trying to stay away from all the security this place can throw at us, and meanwhile we're trying to find a bunch of brain-stealing aliens who may or may not be using this ride as their temporary base of operations. And the reason that we're all here freezing our butts off as opposed to being nice and warm in our beds at home is that the leader of the aliens wants to find out what's in The Most Secret Place on Earth, which we all happen to know about. Does anyone stop to think about the fact that what we're trying to do here is completely crazy?"

"No," Slade said flatly.

Marco gave Slade a look, but ignored him and pressed on. "I mean, have you ever thought that this is all something we dreamed up, like some sort of mass hallucination? And that we're all inmates in some hospital for the hopelessly wacko?"

"We are trying to save the world here, Marco," Cassie said.

"Yeah, well that's what all crazy people say, isn't it," Marco commented slyly.

Slade shook his head, and Jake made his way to the front of the group so he could deal with anyone or anything they might encounter. "Come along, my wacko friends. We still have things to do before we leave."

Jake led the four of them to the line in front of the House of Horrors ride. It was a short one, like all the others in the park. Looking ahead, Cassie could see that this ride involved cars on a steel track, as opposed to log boats floating in water. She was grateful that at least there wouldn't be any water this time around.

There was an empty car in front of them, with room enough for six people to sit in it. Not unlike the log boats that they had all traveled in previously, and Cassie wondered for a minute if all the rides in the park were set up like this. She had personally never been interested in the side of the park that had those rides, having spent all her time in the wildlife park areas.

It was a real change for her to be out and about in the amusement park areas, but it wasn't really an experience that Cassie would want to repeat any time soon. As they all piled into the car, Cassie saw that another person was getting on the same car with the four Animorphs. It was a man that looked like he was in his late twenties or early thirties. He had a crewcut and was very military looking. The man smiled at Cassie.

"Are you sure that you kids aren't too young to go on this ride?" he asked kindly.

"I'm sure, sir," Cassie smiled back. "We're all pretty good at handling scary things." And even that's a bit of an understatement. We've done things that no one in their right mind would believe.

"I don't see any of the others here," Jake said quietly, worried that the other Animorphs might have run into something that even they couldn't handle.

"Relax Jake, if they got here so long before us, they're probably in position right now," Slade said, trying to reassure his apprehensive leader.

"Right. You're probably right, Slade," Jake nodded.

Over the soft sound of Jake and Slade's conversation, the booming synthesized laughter of a mechanical skeleton echoed in a vain attempt to be ominous. Vain, that is, to the Animorphs and the soldier who was sitting behind them. He thought it was funny, they all just thought it was lame.

"Beware! Beware all ye that enter here! Beware the horrors that lie within!" another synthesized voice, over another hidden speaker, yelled. Again trying and failing to be scary.

A mechanical pirate, holding his own severed head and screaming, jerkily waved a scimitar at them. An animatronic snake, looking like a giant green cobra, bared huge fangs at them and hissed. Glittery green eyes glared at them.

"Yeah, yeah, could all of this get any faker?" Marco rolled his eyes. Slade shook his head, also not seeing any point to all of this.

"Why are you kids all so cynical?" the man asked, chuckling in good-natured humor at all of the fake-looking animatronics.

"We all watch way too much TV," Marco said, with a sidelong smirk at the man sitting behind him.

"Oh, well, then that explains everything," he said, grinning back at Marco.