-Rachel-

Marco had carried me onto the ship. He wasn't supposed to do that. I was not happy with him, but I had to pretend for a while. The Andalite, Ganlor, gave us a tour of the small ship. There were quarters for only one couple at a time – I guess to make it more private, or maybe because it was very expensive to go up in space, very few people could afford it. We had our own little kitchenette with real food (none of that nasty liquid grass the andalites eat!). There was a bathroom designed for humans with a heart-shaped spa-type bathtub and separate shower. There was a king size bed, a desk with a computer, a large walk-in closet and even carpeting on the floor. Normally we'd just had to deal with Andalite quarters but this time, we were traveling in style! I grinned at Marco when we saw the room. It was really cool. He seemed impressed too.

Ganlor went through this big speech about how he knew we had just gotten married and he wouldn't be uncomfortable if we kissed and stuff in front of him. Oh great. Now we'd have to play the part all the way to the Andalite homeworld. I had thought the Andalites wouldn't know how humans act toward each other when they just got married. Obviously since he did this all the time, he knew how humans interacted with one another. I gave Marco a nervous look. This was going to be a long trip.

We took our suitcases into the large human quarters and started to unpack. It was 3 weeks to the Andalite homeworld. I got my stuff out and went into the bathroom to shower.

Marco had turned on the computer and was playing some game while I unpacked. Obviously he wasn't going to unpack anything. He never put anything away at home, why would he do it here? He'd probably be occupied for hours. When I came out close to an hour later, he was still on the computer.

I went to bed and he went into the bathroom to shower. He usually slept on the floor when we shared a hotel room. I guess that was what he would be doing here – but it was very cold in here. I felt bad for him, but what could I do? I wasn't going to share a bed with him, right? I went to sleep and dreamed about the last battle again.

I could see Tobias outside flying cover for the new animorphs – James' and his gang. He was yelling directions at them in thought-speak. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a dracon beam flashed and he fell out of the sky, smoking. "Nooooooooooooo!" I screamed. "Tobias!"

I was crying and soaked in sweat when a hand touched my shoulder. "Tobias?" I asked, still half asleep.

"No." came the reply in the dark.

-Marco-

She had this dream a lot. We all had had nightmares for years after the war ended, but I had a feeling she would never quite be rid of this particular dream.

"You OK, Princess?" I asked her.

"No." she answered, turning away from me.

Of course she wasn't ok. Tobias was dead. They'd never found the body, so she had no closure. I knew how that was – the same thing had happened to my mother. She was probably still doing the same things I'd done – imagining ways he could have survived, but knowing deep inside that it wasn't really possible. I felt sorry for her, but what could I do?

I grabbed one of the pillows she wasn't using and a blanket, and made my way to the floor. She turned on the light and sat up.

"Marco." She began. "We're going to be on this ship for a really long time – close to 3 weeks! The floor must be really cold and this bed is huge, why don't you just sleep up here - on top of the covers? It would probably be at least a little warmer and more comfortable." She trailed off.

I had no idea what to say, but the idea of not sleeping on the floor was definitely appealing. The idea of sleeping with Rachel was even more so. But it seemed like it would make things awkward. Well, they couldn't really get much more awkward – we'd gotten married, even kissed. "Um, ok." I said hesitantly lying down on the bed a good distance from her. "We have officially entered the Twilight Zone. Doo-dee-doo-doo. Doo-dee-doo-doo." I thought to myself as I fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up and Rachel was already up. I guess she was in the shower – I could hear it running. I got up and turned on the computer. We had a lot of time to kill. Close to three weeks and we only had a small ship to search. We'd need to plan how to do the search – Ganlor couldn't find out we were searching his ship, so we'd have to fake it somehow. Maybe at night, or something. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and ate it while I started a computer game. I guess Rachel came out of the shower at some point and ate some cereal, but I wasn't really paying attention.

After a while, she tapped me on the shoulder. "We need to decide what to do next." We chatted about it for a while and decided that we should sneak out while Ganlor was sleeping. His small crew of two other Andalites would not be sleeping, but we were not as suspicious of them either. There were only a couple rooms that hadn't been part of the tour, so we figured we'd search one every other day. We also had to hack into the computer systems and search for classified information. That was my job.

In the meantime we killed time playing cards or she'd read magazines and I'd play computer games. We didn't find anything in any of the rooms yet. We still had to search Ganlor's quarters, though. That would be the trickiest because we couldn't be caught. It had to happen while he was distracted.

Rachel went up and started asking him questions about the ship and how Z-space travel worked. Meanwhile, I went into his small quarters and started searching. I found nothing suspicious, until I tried to open a cupboard. It was locked – with a thought-speak detector specifically for his thought-speak. We'd have to get into it another time – I knew Rachel couldn't keep him distracted forever. A few minutes later we met back up in our own quarters to discuss the new information.