(Images instead of words?)

"I do not know how else to describe it."

Tobias and I were back at our clearing in the forest, halfway up one of the trees, watching the sun slowly sink lower. I had spent the last two hours describing our expedition to him.

(Hmm. That kind of sounds like what Elfangor did at the construction site. He sort of zapped a picture of a Yeerk into our heads. And he showed us the space battle, too.)

"Yes. And all the other information he put in your head."

(Well, that last information dump wasn't exactly what I'd call 'images'. It was more like having an encyclopedia stuffed into my brain. Anyway... a whale talked to you? Maybe Star Trek Four was on to something.)

"What does startrek have to do with it? You said they were in deep space."

(Yeah, but they come back to Earth in the fourth movie and go back in time to save whales from extinction. There's a scene where Spock jumps into the water and mind-melds with them. I don't think that whale had anything nearly as interesting to say as yours did, though.)

"Rachel said that there is nothing in Human history to suggest that Whales can speak."

(Nothing we have any reason to think of as fact, anyway. But talking animals always turn up in stories and legends. It's not a completely radical idea.)

"I have noticed that you don't sound as distressed about the Whale as the others do."

Tobias laughed.

(I don't think this is any more shocking than anything else we've dealt with lately. A month ago, I didn't even know for sure if aliens existed. Always hoped they did, though. I was so happy when I saw Elfangor's ship coming down to land. Plus, you know... I've had to spend a lot more time re-evaluating my concept of reality than the others.)

She didn't have to say why. It had been eighteen days since the battle in the Yeerk Pool. Almost three full weeks that Tobias had been trapped in morph and cut off from their old life. The others could just go home for the night and forget about our war for a few hours. But for Tobias, every waking moment was a direct confrontation with how much his world had changed.

(It's not too bad being stuck as a hawk,) he said, (but I would give anything to be able to morph for just one more day as long as I could go inside an Andalite ship. I completely missed the chance last time. I wanted to go in with Jake to get the morphing cube, but it felt like it was more important to stay by Elfangor for as long as I could.)

"Why was it so important?"

(It just didn't seem fair that he was going to die like that, without any of his family around to try and help him. Last thing he did was give me that disk to pass along to his son. If we can even find him. What do you think the odds are that his son is somewhere on Earth?)

Tobias may have meant it as idle speculation, but I took a few minutes to try and come up with an answer.

"There shouldn't have been any Andalites on this planet before Elfangor's ship arrived," I concluded, "But if the son was serving with him, the odds are about one in two hundred."

(Seriously?)

"Standard crew complement for a Dome Ship. And if that is true, then it's the same odds that the son is the Andalite who's been sending the distress call. But I cannot reasonably guess whether or not the son was on the Dome Ship in the first place."

(Well, do me a favor, then,) Tobias said, (When you guys find that Andalite, ask if he knows where Elfangor's son is.)

Author's note: I can't find any official information about the size of the crew for an Andalite dome ship. So I decided to follow through with Star Trek's influence on the source material and look up the crew size for the original USS Enterprise... and got conflicting results from Memory Alpha. Which puts me back into the realm of pure speculation.

My interpretation (as far as this alternate universe goes, anyway) is that the GalaxyTree had a complement of 12 fighters, three light shuttles/utility transports, 20 pilots, command staff, a platoon of Marines (or whatever the Andalite equivalent is called) for internal security and boarding parties, with the majority of the remaining crew being dedicated maintenance technicians for either the fighters and shuttlecraft or the dome ship itself.