-Rachel-

"Uh-oh" I said. "What's wrong?"

"Our scheduled arrival time to the Andalite Homeworld has dropped from five days to one. Apparently a Z-space rift opened up and they don't have to go around it."

"Crap!" I said.

"Yeah." He said, sighing heavily and leaning back in the desk chair with his hands behind his head. He looked over at me. "They may not try to infest us until after we land, but our best chance is destroying the Yeerks right away."

I started pacing, thinking about what to do. "Where's Jake when you need him?" I muttered, still thinking. I came up with nothing. I looked over at Marco.

We needed to figure out what to do. "Is there any way we can do this without blowing our cover?" I was frustrated with how tight time had suddenly become.

"Well," he said, looking like he was trying to hide something from me.

"Tell me." I said with my hands on my hips. He had something, I could tell.

He gave me a worried smile. He pulled up a layout of the ship on the computer. "Air ventilation ducts. The ducts run to all parts of the ship. If they didn't go into the Yeerk pool room, we wouldn't have been able to breathe in there, so we could morph the rats and climb into the duct system. But..."

I didn't get it. "But what? Why are you so worried? That sounds like it should work..."

He pointed to another part of the screen. "Not necessarily. First, we don't know if we'll be able to get the panels off when we get into the Yeerk pool room and second, the ducts are like a maze through this place. It will be difficult to follow them. Finally, they've scheduled to seal the air ducts and gas the rats out shortly before landing, in hopes of getting rid of them. So if we didn't get in and out in time ..."

"Oh Boy." I breathed, plopping down in a chair next to him.

"Add that to the fact that they may have even installed those Gleet BioFilters in the airduct panels ... " Marco continued. "It's too risky. There's not enough time to plan."

I thought for a minute. "Can you find out when we're scheduled to be infested?" I asked.

Marco turned back to the computer and started hacking into the main computer system. I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder watching. He glanced up at me and smiled, then focused back on the computer, muttering to himself as code after code locked him out. Finally, he was in. "Four hours." He announced. "They're going to do it while we're on the ship."

I had a plan. It was risky and very dangerous, but it would keep us from getting infested, and might even get us into the Andalite homeworld's yeerk pool. I told Marco.

"It's insane." He said grinning and shaking his head. "But I think it'll work."

"Let's do it!" I said grinning fiercely. He groaned.

We took off our outer clothing – down to our morph suits. They were almost like uniforms now.

Shortly after we started working together, Marco had again mentioned the morphing suit issue, especially since we never knew what the climate would be like where we'd be working. So we got matching suits. They were skin tight so we could morph them, but they had boots that were tight and protected our feet when we didn't have access to shoes. They were made from wet suit material, zipped up the front, and were far warmer than our bike shorts or leotards ever had been.

We almost looked like superheroes because Marco had insisted we get our initials on the front, so mine all had silver R's sewn on the left shoulder and his had M's. I thought it was a little silly, but it didn't look bad. The one I had on now was dark blue and Marco's was black.

The first part of my plan? We had to acquire each other – and make sure we had morphing suits incorporated into our morphs. It was easy, but time consuming. When we'd finally done that without completely embarrassing each other, we reached the second part of the plan – the risky part, and we only had 3 hours left.

I morphed a mouse and snuck up toward the bridge to watch Ganlor and make sure he stayed there. When I told Marco in thoughtspeak that Ganlor was still on the bridge and looked like he'd stay there a while, he, as himself, quietly ran down the hallway and entered Ganlor's quarters. I assumed he'd be in and out quickly. I kept an eye on Ganlor and none of the Andalites seemed to notice I was there. When he was done, he was supposed to tell me and we'd trade places. All the Andalites looked busy doing something on the bridge, so I didn't have much to do.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, Marco called to me. -OK, I'm out.-

-Everything alright?- I asked in disbelief. It couldn't be this easy.

-Other than being totally grossed out? I just acquired a yeerk! A YEERK! Ewww! Why did I let you . . .- His thought speak cut out right then, I guess he must have been demorphing back in our room.

-Stop complaining, you big baby.- I responded as I was scurrying back toward our room. -It's better than being a controller!-

I got back to the room and demorphed. "Ready?" I asked.

"As I'll ever be." He said starting his morph. "First a rat, then a Yeeeeeeeernt" he said as his face bulged outward.

"Ew." I interjected as he switched back to thoughtspeak. -Could this day get any grosser?-

"Yeah it could." I said. "What about an ant? Or a termite? Wouldn't those be far worse than a rat?"

-Yeah, but not a yeerk. Nothing is worse than a yeerk.- He answered.

I couldn't help but agree. I opened the door a crack and he scurried out toward the bridge. "Be careful." I muttered softly.

After I waited a couple minutes, he said -OK, they're all here and it looks like they'll be a while. One of the Andalites is reprogramming the Z-space computer to ...- He droned on about the Z-space computer. I didn't understand it really, but he'd spent a lot of time learning about the computers so he could be the hacker on our missions. I mostly ignored him.

I snuck out, down the hall, and opened the door to Ganlor's quarters. I went inside, morphed Ganlor, and went into the cupboard that wasn't really a cupboard. There was the yeerk pool. I demorphed, reached in and acquired a yeerk. No problems yet. I quickly morphed Ganlor to go back out when Marco called to me. -Rachel, Ganlor's heading that way! Hide!- He said urgently.

Great. I realized there was only one place I could hide where I wouldn't be found. -Marco!- I called -I'm going to morph the Yeerk and hide in the pool. Keep track of time, ok?-

-OK, but I'm going to try and get him to come back onto the bridge so you can escape.- Marco replied, sounding freaked.

-Fine with me- I replied as I demorphed. I was not looking forward to this at all. I climbed into the Yeerk pool and started the morph, the soft squishy Yeerks running into my legs as they swam blindly through the sludge.

-Marco-

Marco to the rescue! Again. Just how many close calls were we going to have on this mission? I had to come up with something to get Ganlor away from his quarters.

I decided to take the simple approach. I morphed Ganlor and sent a page for him to go to the bridge. I doubted Andalites could tell the difference in one another's thought speak. I was going to go to the bridge to distract the Andalites with some complex computer question when I realized I couldn't use thoughtspeak when I wasn't in morph. How would I tell Rachel to escape? I'd have to morph. The only morph I had that Ganlor wouldn't suspect was Rachel.

I morphed Rachel and headed toward the bridge, trying to remember what Ganlor had seen of her and how he'd expect her to act. I got to the bridge and Ganlor was there. I went over to one of the Andalites and asked him a question I already knew the answer to, but I expected Rachel didn't.

While he was explaining the answer, I called to Rachel. -Ganlor is not near the room, so you can go ahead and escape. I'm on the bridge talking to one of the Andalites, but I morphed you. So when you come out, morph me. We don't want them to see two of you at once.-

She didn't respond. I guessed she was probably too human at the time, but I knew she could hear me. I kept nodding my head at the Andalite. I kept an eye on Ganlor who was apparently having a private conversation with the other Andalite. Good, he was still there. Finally he finished answering my question and I said. "Oh, OK!" Weird. Rachel's voice sounded so funny coming from my own mouth!

I stood there thinking for a minute, wondering if I should ask another question when Rachel finally responded. -I'm coming up to the bridge as you. Then we can get back to our room.-

Then, I walked onto the bridge. Not me, but my body – Rachel in morph. Whoa. That was weird. I was Rachel and she was me! Seriously bizarre! But I couldn't look like I was shocked. So I walked over to her and said, "Hi honey, what are you doing here?" in Rachel's high voice. It still felt weird to talk as her.

In thoughtspeak she said -Honey?- she sounded amused.

Aloud he/she replied "I was looking for you, there's something I need to show you back in our quarters." Looking at myself this close was even weirder.

"OK." I said, then turned around toward the Andalite I'd been pestering. "Thanks for answering my question!"

He blinked one stalk eye at me, but didn't say anything.

Rachel as me and I as her ran down the hall to our quarters and shut the door. I demorphed immediately. Rachel did the same. We both sat down on the end of the bed. She looked at me.

"That was a little close." She said, sighing heavily.

"Not to mention really really weird." I said, remembering.

"How much time do we have left?" she asked, looking exhausted.

I looked over at the clock. "An hour." I replied. "So what's it like being a Yeerk? Do they have any weird instincts I should prepare for?"

She looked down. "Not really," She said shaking her head, then looking up at me. "They can't really see or hear anything. They don't really seem to communicate at all in the pool."

"OK." I said, not happy about what we had to do. "Let's go, then."

The plan was completely nuts. A person can't be infested by two yeerks at once, so the plan was for one of us to infest the other as a yeerk and when they tried to infest us the first time, whoever was the yeerk would come out partway and then go back in. We needed to practice that part. We knew we might have to do it while we were on the Andalite homeworld too, so we both had to practice being yeerks and infesting each other. That was why we had to acquire each other – in case they were looking for one of us specifically to infest first. We had to have both of us available, but already be infested before they came for us.

Rachel lost the coin toss, so she would be the yeerk first. We filled the hot tub with water so it would be more like actually infesting from the yeerk pool. Then we both got in and looked at each other, remembering what had happened the last time we were in the hot tub together. I grinned at her. "Slime time!"

She looked like she was going to be sick. "Yuck." She muttered, "I am so not looking forward to this." She looked down, as if she were thinking. Suddenly, she leaned over and kissed my lips hard and quick. Then she sat back, took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut tight as she started morphing into the yeerk.