Thirty minutes after the last bell rang, I walked in through the front doors at the mall. The food court was the main hub of the whole building, with the various wings of the mall spreading out in a lopsided T-shape. There were two levels. Cyberia was on the ground floor, sandwiched in between RadioShack and a Pizza Hut. Everyone else was already there, sitting at a table nearby.

"So," Jake said, after checking to see that there were no eavesdroppers nearby, "Now that we've had a few days to process all the shocking revelations from the weekend, we need to decide what to do next."

Shocking, indeed. Not only had we confirmed that The Sharing was really being operated by the Yeerks, but we also had reason to believe they controlled a deep-sea research facility called The Esplin Foundation. And we had a whole list of confirmed and suspected Controllers. That list included our school principal, Mr. Chapman, Jake's big brother, Tom, and quite possibly Lee's parents.

"I think what we need to do is find that Pool," Rachel said.

The Yeerk Pool. Their main base of operations on this planet - or at least for our city. I was the one who'd found out about it. Back at the construction site, Elfangor had done... something. I guess it was like Vulcan mind-melding. Basically, he dumped a whole bunch of information into my head all at once, and it had slowly been unscrambling itself in my mind over the last few days. Some of it didn't seem like it was of any immediate help - bits and pieces of Andalite culture, history, and trivia. It was like trying to understand Earth with a few notes from Mozart, half of the Mona Lisa, and a fuzzy picture of an elephant.

But some of it was a bit more relevant to fighting Yeerks: details about some of the species they'd enslaved (most of which we'd probably never see because they couldn't survive in Earth's atmosphere or gravity), estimates about how many Blade Ships they had (probably between 17 and 25)... and, of course, the Yeerk Pool and Kandrona rays. Every six days, the Yeerk had to leave its host and swim in the Pool to absorb nutrients and Kandrona rays - basically, a type of radiation emitted by the sun on their homeworld. If we could disrupt the Pool, or damage their Kandrona generator, we might be able to seriously disrupt their operation. Maybe buy time for Andalite reinforcements to arrive.

"That sounds like it might be pretty dangerous," Marco said.

"All we need to do for now is find it," Jake said, "We can worry about the next step after that."

Marco nodded his head. "All right. How do we find the Pool?"

"We could try following one of the Controllers we know about," Jake said, "Sooner or later we'll probably see one of them heading for the pool entrance."

"Which Controllers, though?" Cassie asked, "There's about a dozen to pick from, and there's no way we can keep track of them 24/7."

"Well, we'll just pick one or two," Rachel suggested. "Which ones seem like they're the most promising?"

"Well, that Trent guy seemed like he was pretty important," I said, "I don't know how much he's in charge of, but he was definitely the most important Controller at that meeting. Tom-" Jake winced slightly "-and Chapman were the only ones who actually talked to him, so they're probably important, too."

"I think we can rule out spying on Trent," Lee said, "All I know is where he works, nothing about where he lives. But we do know where to find Tom and Chapman."

"All right, let's start with Chapman," Jake said. "I'll-"

"You'll be careful," Marco interrupted, "Because if he catches you spying on him, he'll put you in detention until you're 40."

Nervous laughter echoed up and down the table.

"All right," Jake decided, "We'll check out Chapman first. I'll morph something small tomorrow so I can sneak into his office."

"I'll go with you," Marco said, "Somebody needs to be there to watch your back. Hey, you're my best friend. You really think I'm going to let you do this alone?"

"While you guys are working on that," Lee said, "I'm going to keep an eye on my parents. Even if they don't lead us to the Pool, I've got to know for sure whether or not they're Controllers."

"So, that's two targets, six of us..." Jake said, thinking out loud, "How about we split into two groups of three, then? All right, Marco, Cassie, and I will check out Chapman tomorrow. Tobias, Rachel, you can help Lee keep an eye on her parents."

"One more thing," Rachel said, "I think we could do with an extra way of sending messages." She reached into her backpack, pulled out a few notecards, and handed one to each of us. There were two rows of letters - on the top row, the alphabet. Bottom row, the alphabet in reverse.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's called the ATBASH cipher," she explained, "If you want to write a coded message, you just match the letters from the top row to the bottom row. For example, 'hello' becomes..." she scribbled with a pencil on a spare card, "S-V-O-O-L. Then when you want to read the message, you just match up the bottom row against the top row."

"You really think this will help us?" Marco asked.

"Maybe. I mean, if one of us can't get close enough to talk or use thought-speak, we can just write a message that looks like gibberish to everyone else, and then you can leave it in Jake's desk or locker or something."

"Anybody else got news or ideas or something?" I asked.

"You get anything else useful from that Andal... *ahem* Vulcan mind-meld?" Marco asked.

"Um... not unless you care about how to properly care for trees that don't grow on our planet, no."

"Well, if we've covered everything important for now," Jake said, as he pointed towards the arcade, "How about we go play 'Streetfighter'?"

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