I rode my bike to the woods. I couldn't ask to borrow my mom's car every single time I went out, not while claiming I didn't need it for anything important. I wanted my family to think I was still a normal teenager who wasn't up to anything special.

Although that kind of made my fight with Jake earlier seem stupid. I should probably apologize to him. But one thing at a time.

I was the first one to meet Ms. Chapman at the ship. Mr. Chapman was last to arrive, and he brought their daughter with him.

"Melissa? Why are you here?" Eva asked with concern. We were meeting to discuss the Andalites, and I knew Eva didn't want to talk about anything scary in front of her.

Wearily, Chapman explained, "She said if I left her at home, she'd follow on her bike and bang on the ship's door until we let her in. She knew this meeting was important and she refused to be left out."

"Good for you!" I grinned and gave Melissa a high-five.

Eva gave a little sigh. Then she said, "Fine. How much do you know already, Melissa?"

"An Andalite ship landed last night, and Andalites are the really bad aliens hunting the Yeerks," she answered.

"Although," her mother Alison spoke up with a hopeful smile, "you never actually saw them, right? For all we know, it could've been a completely different alien in a stolen ship."

"Actually," Eva said with a sad frown, "we analyzed the blood sample we found last night." She looked over to Mr. Tidwell.

Tidwell took his cue and turned on a computer screen. It showed a strand of DNA and a detailed report written in Yeerk language. "There's no mistake. It is Andalite."

Alison sagged. "Oh. So much for that theory."

It was only a slim possibility, but one we all hoped for deep down. Instead, we had confirmation: There was at least one Andalite loose on Earth.

Tidwell pressed more buttons. The screen switched to a picture of the Andalite ship alongside schematics. "We also found a match for the ship in our database. It was a modified, deep space, military fighter. A standard fighter is part of a fleet and rides inside a larger Dome ship. But this model has z-space engines and can make long voyages alone. It's designed for two pilots and up to one passenger, but it can also be flown by a single person if necessary."

"So it's three at the most. That's not too bad, right?" Melissa said.

"One's enough to break the Kandrona," Chapman said grimly.

Tidwell continued. "The ship was already damaged when it landed. Either there was some sort of accident, or an unknown party attacked it on the way. Either way, we're assuming it was too badly damaged to be flown again. So they abandoned ship and activated the self-destruct to stop anyone from scavenging the parts."

"That just seems dumb," Alison said with a shake of her head. "Now, I get they probably couldn't move it to a better hiding spot. But now they have no chance of ever fixing it. How do they plan to get home?"

"Maybe their plan is to steal our ship," I said. "They have no idea it can't fly either."

"I'd like to point out," Eva spoke up, "the Andalite home world is eighty-two light-years away from Earth. If-"

Melissa interrupted. "It's how far? How many miles is that?"

I relayed Tem's answer out loud. "In Earth measurements, one light-year is about five-point-eight-eight trillion miles. So . . ." Tem did the math in my head. I tried to follow along. "Four-hundred-eighty-two trillion. Rounded up."

Her eyebrows shot up. "How long does a trip like that take?"

"It varies. Zero-space sort of shifts around sometimes," I told her. "Right now, I think it takes a couple months, including rest stops."

"No wonder it broke down on the way," Melissa joked.

Eva resumed. "What I'm saying is, the Andalite army is spread thin. If that fighter was traveling with other ships, they'd be in orbit already. But they're not. Therefore, we can assume it'll be a long time before more Andalites come to investigate what happened."

"With three Andalites and nutritional rations for them, there would be very little room for any other cargo," Tidwell said. "Then again, Andalite technology doesn't tend to be very large. We have no way of knowing if they saved any devices from their ship. If they did, it's too small for our scanners to track."

"So to summarize," I said as I crossed my arms, "we're dealing with two Andalites - or maybe one - or three - probably not more. They were attacked by another alien who's on our side - unless they weren't. And they don't have any technology left - unless they do." I nodded. "Well, this is extremely useful info. Should I be writing this down?"

The adults gave me unamused looks. But I saw that Melissa was trying not to smile.

"Fair enough," Tidwell said. "Let's focus on what we do know: The Andalites themselves."

He worked the keyboard, and several more screens lit up. Most of it was text written in Yeerk language - useless to Melissa. But there was one screen showing a picture of our enemy.

An Andalite looks kinda like a cross between a centaur and a scorpion. They were covered in fur, mostly blue, with a bit of tan mixed in. They had a flank with four legs ending in hooves, like a small horse or a large deer. Above that was a torso, two arms, and a head, all humanoid in shape - shape but not appearance. The hands had too many fingers. The face had no mouth. There were two eyes on the face, but two more eyes on stalks growing out the top of its head. At the other end of its body was a tail that curved up and forward, ending in a sharp blade.

"Its tail looks like a scorpion's," Melissa pointed out. "Is it poisonous like a scorpion?"

Tidwell shook his head, keeping his eyes on the screen. "No, but it's very sharp and very fast. It would take only a second to slice through -" He paused awkwardly and looked at Melissa, as if he just remembered how old she was. "- a tree branch."

"It's not their natural bodies we should be worried about," Chapman said. "The most dangerous thing about Andalites is their ability to morph."

"Morph?" Melissa repeated the unfamiliar word.

Eva explained. "It means they become an exact copy of other life forms." She read a screen as she spoke, double-checking her facts. "First they physically touch a creature, and that lets them absorb a DNA sample into their own body. After that, the DNA is inside them forever, and they can use it at any time to become a genetic clone of that creature."

"I didn't know it worked like that," Alison said. "Niss always thought they could turn into anything. But you're saying they can only 'morph' the things they touched at some point. Well, that's not quite as bad."

"It's still very bad," Chapman reminded her. "If only because it lets them heal injuries."

"How do you mean?"

Chapman explained. "Let's say you cut an Andalite's tail off. Then it morphs into a Hork-Bajir. The Hork-Bajir tail is undamaged. So you cut that off too. But then it demorphs back into an Andalite. The Andalite tail also grows back. Every time they morph or demorph, they're essentially growing a brand-new body out of the DNA. Nothing can hurt them for long. Anything less than instant death, and all they have to do is morph and they're good as new."

"That's amazing," Melissa said.

"I don't want them to be amazing," I snapped. "I want them easy to beat, with a big fat bull's-eye on their weak spot. Do they have any kind of weakness?"

Tidwell looked through the files. "They can only stay in morph for up to two Earth hours. If they stay any longer than that, they're stuck in that form permanently and can never morph again."

"That's not a weakness, that's a limitation," I responded. "A weakness is something like Kryptonite, or silver bullets, or holy water. Something that lets us go, 'stay away from us, or we'll hit you with your weakness!' Anything?"

He looked more thoroughly. "Uh . . . No. Nothing."

"Great. Perfect. You can hit them with a chainsaw, and they'll just shrug it off. Meanwhile, we die in agony if you spill salt on us! This is not a fair match!"

[What do you mean 'we'?] Tem asked. [Salt doesn't hurt humans.]

[I'm trying to show solidarity.]

[Your vocabulary is improving.]

[Thank you.]

"Will they attack the people here? I mean, the humans?" Melissa asked.

Eva shook her head. "Not likely. They are known to attack allies of the Yeerks. But if they think you have nothing to do with them, they'll ignore you. I'm pretty sure they even have a law against getting involved with 'primitive' species. At the very least, we don't have to worry about them going on a rampage throughout the city."

"That's right," Tidwell said. "They're more likely to lie low, and search for the Yeerks stealthily."

"So we need to find them before they find us. Now, where could they be hiding? Any suggestions?" Eva asked.

"There are some abandoned buildings in the city," Tidwell said. "We could search all of them one by one."

"Or maybe they went back to the construction site after the police left," Alison said.

"Wherever they go, the first thing they'll do is acquire local morphs," Chapman said. "They'll want to observe humans unnoticed. Learn everything they can about this new planet."

"How do Andalites eat without a mouth?" Melissa asked.

The randomness of the question made us all stop.

I stared at her. "Does that really matter right now?" I asked.

Chapman ignored me and answered, "They have a kind of mouth in their hooves. They eat by stepping on grass."

"Then they'll set up their base somewhere where there's lots of grass, right?" Melissa said. "Just like you keep coming here for Yeerk food, the Andalites will keep going back for Andalite food."

We all stopped again. Looked at each other.

I smirked. Leave it to the little kid to point out the obvious solution.

"Of course," Eva said. "They went to the forest - this forest. It's the natural Andalite habitat. Plus, there're plenty of Earth animals here to acquire. They'll explore the city in a morph, and then come back here to rest."

"But the forest is enormous," Alison complained. "It goes all the way out to the mountains. We'll never find them."

Then Chapman said, "If even one Andalite has free rein of the woods here, then it's only a matter of time until they stumble onto this clearing."

The next part didn't need to be said out loud. We were all thinking it.

They find this huge clearing inside the woods, they find the mound of upturned dirt, they realize it's a spaceship buried underground. With just us five hosts, we couldn't possibly guard the ship 24/7. If the Andalites break inside while there's no host to defend the Kandrona, it's an automatic Game Over.

"There's no choice," Chapman said. "It's time to move the Yeerk pool to a more secure location."

"Do you have a more secure location?" Melissa asked.

Chapman went to the computer console. "We always knew we might have to move the pool one day. We've all been looking for alternate hiding spots. So far, this seems like best option."

He brought up a map of the city, then zoomed in to a single building. He pulled up floor plans of the building . . . and a diagram of what lay beneath it. "There's an abandoned building downtown. It's been empty for years. And deep underground is a cavern, with a path leading up to the building's basement. We know the cavern is of alien origin, but we have no idea which species made it. Or what they made it for. Or how long it's been there. But it seems to have been abandoned for even longer than the building. And without their ship's scanners, the Andalites will never even know it's there."

I nodded. "So we break into the building, hide the Yeerks and Kandrona underground, and hope the mystery aliens don't come back and kick us out . . . It's as good a plan as any, I guess."

"But we'll need to return there every three days," Tidwell said. "What happens if someone notices us sneaking in?"

"Then we'll claim The Sharing is renovating it," Chapman replied.

"What if someone buys the building?"

"Then we'll deal with that as it happens," Chapman replied. "If we're gonna move, we need to do it right away, before the Andalites have time to explore the woods. I say we transfer the Yeerks and the Kandrona tonight, so they're safe, and then move the computer equipment more gradually."

Eva raised her eyebrow and gestured to the pool. "Shouldn't we let the other Yeerks have a say in this plan?"

Chapman looked at her a bit skeptically. "I highly doubt they want to stay in the 'natural Andalite habitat'."

"All the same, I think we should keep them involved in this decision," Eva responded. "They're the ones moving."

Chapman stared for a moment. Then he nodded. "Fair enough."

We wrote a message on the computer. Eva and Tidwell already let them know last night about the Andalite ship. Now we explained our proposal for the new headquarters. We explained that moving might mean losing the computer for a few days, but staying in the woods might mean the Andalites finding them. We asked for a vote. Once we finished writing, a special pulse vibrated through the Yeerk pool, letting everyone know there was an urgent message that needed everyone's attention. With limited terminals inside the pool, it would take a while for everyone to have a turn.

"So, we have a plan for keeping the Kandrona safe, but we still don't really have a way of stopping the Andalites, huh?" I muttered bitterly.

Melissa raised her hand. "Um, I have a dumb question."

"There are no dumb questions, sweetie," Alison assured her. "Go ahead."

Hesitantly, she asked, "Do we actually know the Andalites are still after you? I mean, I know they were bad guys in the past. But isn't it possible these ones are just lost or something?"

"Yes, it's possible," Tidwell answered. "It's just not a risk we can take. Besides, it was a military ship."

I added, "You gotta remember, Melissa. These are the people who shot down every. Single. Refugee ship, except this one. They murdered the entire Yeerk species. And they killed hosts by the thousands along with them." I continued while ignoring the glares Mr. and Ms. Chapman were giving me, telling me I was scaring their daughter. "Now they're on the same planet as the only Yeerks left in the universe. We can't assume it's just a coincidence."

She winced a little. "I guess it was a dumb question."

"It really wasn't," Chapman replied. "The entire species isn't made up of blood-thirsty monsters. Elfangor wasn't like that."

"Elfangor?"

Chapman glanced away, calling up old memories. "Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. I met him a long time ago - many years before I bonded with Iniss. He was . . . Well, he wasn't a saint. But he was decent. He spoke out against the military's genocide plan. He was sick of all the killing."

"You know a friendly Andalite?" Tem had no idea there was such a thing. The idea got us excited. "Well, call him! Maybe he can reason with the ones here now."

"He's dead," Chapman said flatly. Quietly, he added, "Died a long time ago."

"Oh." Tem's and my spirits dropped. So much for that.

We got the results in less than half an hour. 62 in favor of the move to the underground cavern. 23 against or undecided. One didn't vote. (And we all knew who. Akdor was a weirdo who never used the computer and refused to talk with anyone.)

It was settled. We were moving the Yeerk pool. Today.

"Begin Operation Exodus," Alison said dramatically.

"It didn't need a fancy name," Eva said.

"It's depressing how you think that."