After finding out that the Andalite they'd met – the one they were calling Ax, since his name was just about as hard to pronounce as Elfangor's own – was the younger brother of the Andalite who they'd met in the abandoned construction site, Tommy found himself feeling a lot more kindly disposed toward him than he'd been before. He had to have been scared, being trapped under the ocean for however long, stranded so far from home, and then finding out that a family member that he seemed to love very deeply had just died.

In light of all that, Tommy could understand why Ax had been so quick to ambush them.

As the seven of them explored the remnants of the Andalite ship that had crashed with Ax – and not a single other surviving Andalite, which Tommy could tell that the other Animorphs thought was sad, just like he did – Tommy found that the Yeerks, for all the bad things he'd already known about them, were worse than even he'd expected them to be. They didn't just enslave the people of the planets they tried to invade, which was bad enough on its own, but it was almost like they tried to enslave the planet itself.

That was the best way that Tommy could think of to describe what he'd heard from Ax, as he and the rest of the Animorphs made their way through the dome of the ship that had crashed in the ocean.

Finding out that it might be two years before the Andalites came back to Earth – before they could have some actual help against the Yeerks – Tommy found himself both grateful for the way Ax had immediately volunteered to join them, and even less sure about their chances. Seven people really didn't have that much more of a chance than just six, especially when they were up against an empire that seemed to have conquered entire planets.

Several planets, if Tommy was reading the implications of Ax's words right.

Just as they'd been starting to discuss how they might be able to get Ax out of the crashed remains of the Andalite ship – what they'd all come here for in the first place, and something that'd come as more of a surprise to the Andalite in question than Tommy had been expecting; he still didn't know what that said about the rest of the people Ax knew – the harsh sound of what Marco was quick to identify as sonar rang out all around them. The seven of them bolted for the crashed ship's air lock, morphing as soon as Ax had sealed it behind them.

As water flooded in, Tommy pushed his morphing speed for as much as he could manage; all of them would need all the speed they could manage, since the Yeerks had found the ship.