Chapter 1

--Well, this is all very nice!-- laughed Ferdie. --As long as you're an insect, you can enjoy free onboard entertainment, maximum legroom, and the possibility of certain death!--

--Glad to hear you're still in a good mood,-- I remarked. --Would you like me to introduce you to reality yet, Flawless? It's a very close friend of mine.--

Ferdie, Maggie and I were travelling as insects - Ferdie and I as wasps, and Maggie as beetle - on the back on Sam's goose morph. We were flying out to sea, searching for a military ship that was supposed to be somewhere in the vicinity. This ship was, according to some classified data into which I'd hacked, headed on a trajectory to New York, stopping somewhere in the Atlantic ocean to carry out some navy task.

The last couple of hours had been more than stressful. After a two full days morphing and travelling, we'd made it to Cardiff, where we'd broken into the head office of the international port. I'd grabbed the data we needed, and erased evidence of what information I'd seen. Unfortunately, we were spotted by several employees, and the unluckily for us the director had turned out to be a high ranking Controller. There had then been a grizzly battle - which I have a feeling Ferdie enjoyed - and the four of us had managed to escape. The plan was now for Sam to morph goose and the rest of us hitch a ride as insects on her back, and search for this ship. If all went well, we'd stow away on the ship and hitch a free ride to the USA. There was still a long way to go once we got to America, but we'd have to cross that bridge when we came to it.

--How are I supposed to know where I'm going?-- grumbled Sam. --All I can see below me is ocean. I could be flying in blimmin' circles for all I know.--

--Ooh, Sam, regretting playing Wonder Woman?-- laughed Ferdie. Sam had offered to go goose whilst letting the rest of us ride on her back to save us the effort of morphing and flying after battle.

--No, I'm not, I'm just concerned that, whilst Philip may have the navigation skills of an army officer, I can't even navigate a road atlas. We could be headed towards France and with you lot as bugs, how would we know?--

--Sam,-- I replied, --whilst I may be very well trained in this particular field, might I point out that very few creatures on earth - humans included - have the navigation skills of a Canadian goose. Slip into the bird's mind, Sam. Ignore Ferdie. The goose knows where it's going.--

--Yeah, well, I hope you're right. I'll blame myself if this all goes wrong.--

Sam flapped on, tirelessly. Geese are one of several types of birds, including herons and storks, that are able to migrate enormous distances, flying for hours at a time. At full flight, they can travel up to fifty miles an hour at an altitude of five to ten thousand feet. Sam, of course, wouldn't be travelling at that height or speed as she was only able to fly for two hours at a time, to allow for demorphing and remorphing. Any longer than two hours in morph and we'd be trapped in that form, unable to become human again. Being in wasp morph, I was finding it difficult to estimate the amount of time that had passed. I had briefly instructed Sam on how to use the sun to estimate the passing of time, but it would be a very rough approximation. However, I'd had enough practice whilst on sentry in the army to know how long two hours felt like, and advised Sam when necessary when it was time to demorph.

Demorphing was not a pleasant experience. Morphing and demorphing bugs never is. And, even when we were fully human, trying to stay afloat in the middle of nowhere was not a pleasant experience, either.

"Good god, I can't swim at all in these stupid boots!" spluttered Ferdie, kicking desperately with his boot-enveloped feet. He was the only one of us who'd managed to incorporate boots into the morph. His arms were still long, thin and hairy, and a pair of gossamer wings could be seen dissolving into his shoulder blades.

"Well, you're the one who insisted on wearing them, Ferd," I retorted, feeling my own fingers and toes re-emerge. "Just think what it was like for the rest of us walking on bare feet that whole time."

The four of us had landed, and were now finishing demorphing, in the ocean. Sam had landed and paddled as goose for a few minutes whilst the rest of us demorphed, so that we small bugs would still be able to cling to her feathers for a while and not become swept away in the water. Then, when Ferdie, Maggie and I were human, Sam began to demorph. Her goose morph was no where near as strange as our beetle and wasp morphs, but it was still a strange show to watch, even now. But soon the four of us were fully human, but resembling silly drowned rats as we treaded water, spitting the salty water out of our mouths. Although none of us tried to show it, I could tell that everyone was feeling terrified and very foolish, now having demorphed. We were four kids, swimming unaided, in the middle of a vast, unforgiving, ocean. No land could be seen in any direction. No sounds could be heard apart from our trembling voices and the swashing of the water around us. I felt my teeth chatter, and my limbs already tiring from treading water. I realised that, without our morphing ability, we'd be dead within hours.

"It's freezing!" gasped Maggie, as yet another wave washed over us. We were wearing only our thin morphing outfits, which consisted of leotards for the girls and tight t-shirts, cycling shorts or breeches for us guys, and boots for Ferdie. "Can we get out of here and get back to bugs, Sam?"

"Yeah - we won't last long out here, goose-girl," said Ferdie, sweeping a hand through his soaking wet mane of red hair and swallowing a gulp of the ice-cold water. "I say, isn't it about time we get back on board Insani-Airlines?

"Well," said Sam, "I think we've been travelled quite a while already. Philip - you estimated the ship would be about a hundred miles out, somewhere off the south coast of Ireland?"

"Yes, if everything has followed order." I paused, allowing a tiny sliver of hope into my usually cold and logistical mind. "Sam, I'm probably taking a huge leap of faith here, but we might be quite near already. We've been travelling for almost two hours at roughly forty miles an hour - that eighty miles in total."

"Yeah, but assuming I've been flying on the exact bearing that entire time. I could have flown eighty miles in the wrong direction."

"Not with the goose's mind," said Maggie, speaking up. "Aye, if you give the goose a destination, it'll get there. You go off course even a half a degree, and it'll let you know."

Sam seemed to take Maggie's words as a sign to be optimistic, and announced,

"Ok, guys, enough resting for now. The ship must be somewhere nearby, so I want everyone as geese for this last bit. We'll have far more chance of finding it if we are all birds. When we find it - and that's a when, not an if - we find somewhere safe to land, glide down, demorph, and hide until I figure out what to do next. There'll be several days stowing aboard that ship, and we can't stay curled up in a lifeboat for all of that time. We'll have to check that the ship's not riddled with Controllers, at the least."

"Can't we go shark?" whined Ferdie. "I've been dying to try out that morph ever since I acquired it!"

"Flawless, you've been dying to try out every morph you've ever acquired. And no, we're not going shark. Sam says we're going goose, so that's that," I retorted.

"Ferdie, we can't go shark," Sam continued. "We won't spot the ship from underwater. And we've had no practice. We'll morph sharks eventually, I'm sure of that!" she laughed, rolling her eyes at him. "Come on, people, lets go goose again."

And so forty-five minutes later, whether it was by sheer dumb luck or my excellent navigation skills, we spotted the ship.