Chapter One

My name is Cassie.

I can't tell you my last name. I wish I could. It's kind of a nice last name. And I can't tell you where I live or the true names of my friends. Why? Because the enemy never stops looking for us.

The enemy. The Yeerks. They're everywhere.

The Yeerks: a parasitic species from a far-distant planet. All they are is little gray slugs, really. I've seen them in their natural state. They look like big snails without the shell. You could squash one under your foot and it would be helpless to stop you. But the Yeerks don't live out their lives as slugs. Like I said, they are parasites. See, they enter the head of another species, flatten themselves out, and wrap themselves around the brain. And then they take control.

That's what we call a Controller. A human who isn't exactly human anymore. Or a member of any species that is controlled by the Yeerk in its head.

Maybe you think what I've just told you sounds crazy. I guess if I were you, I'd think it was pretty insane. But sometimes even the craziest things happen to be true. The Yeerks are here. Everywhere. If you think you don't know someone who is a Controller, you're probably wrong.

The school bus driver, the police officer in the patrol car, the minister in the pulpit, the newsman on TV, the rock star in the music video, the person who smiles at you when you ride by on your bike --any one of them might be a Controller.

Your teacher, your friend, your sister, your mother and father. Any of them. All of them. And you'll never know. Until it's too late.

Until it is too late for planet Earth.

We fight them. But we're just a handful of kids --Jake, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, Ax, and me. We have some special powers, but we know we can't win this alone. We fight in the hope that someday --someday soon --the Andalites will return and help us. It was an Andalite prince named Elfangor who gave us our powers. He was dying. He was desperate. He wanted to do something to help doomed humanity.

He gave us the power to morph. To absorb the DNA of any animal we could touch. To become that animal.

So we fight the Yeerks and all their Controllers. The human-Controllers who may once have been our friends and relations. The evil, cannibalistic Taxxon-Controllers, those huge centipedes with their open, gnashing mouths and foul smell. And the deadly, dangerous, but formerly good creatures called Hork-Bajir --the enslaved foot soldiers of the Yeerk empire. 3

And we fight Visser Three. Leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. The only AndaliteController in existence. The only Yeerk who, like us, has the power to morph. The murderer of Elfangor. A killer. A destroyer. The creature who would make slaves of all humans and destroy our planet.

Unless someone stops him. Unless we stop him.

Five ordinary kids and a young Andalite we call Ax, against all the might of the Yeerk empire.

We call ourselves Animorphs.

We're only supposed to use our power for fighting the Yeerks. But there are times when it comes in handy for other things.

My best friend Rachel and I were at school, in the dark and gloomy science lab. The final bell had rung and kids were tearing out of there at top speed, running for the buses or their parents' cars.

You know how it is --when the school day is over you just want out of there. But I had been messing up in school lately. See, I have kind of a busy life. My dad runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in our barn. I help out there, taking care of injured or sick animals. Plus the whole Animorph thing takes up a lot of time.

Anyway, I had to do a makeup project for science class. I built a maze for a rat I'd named Courtney. I mean, I figured an animal project would be easy for me. I've been more animals than a lot of kids have seen.

Courtney was supposed to find her way through the cardboard maze to the end, where I had placed some tasty seeds and nuts. Then I would make notes on her progress. How hard could that be?

Rachel stared at me. She tapped her foot impatiently. She looked down at her watch. Then she looked up at the clock on the wall.

"You know, school's been out for ten minutes, and here I am, still at school. This can't be right. It's unnatural."

"Why can't she figure out the maze?" I wondered out loud. "What's the problem?"

"A stupid rat? Er, I mean, maybe you have a not very smart rat. That could be the subject of your paper --"My Dumb Rat.""

"What is the problem with you?" I demanded, ignoring Rachel and talking directly to the rat. I took Courtney from her cage and stuck her in the high-walled maze. "Smell the nuts. Smell the nuts and then find your way through the maze."

Courtney looked up at me and twitched her nose.

"That's not an answer," I said. "I need this grade. I am not going to try and explain a D to my parents just because you can't get it together."

"A D!" Rachel echoed. "You're looking at a D? No way."

"Rachel, why do you think I'm here? Because I'm trying to go from an A to an A plus? Yes. I am looking at a D. And I can't bring my parents a D. That would mean weeks of them going,

'Where did we go wrong? We must be failing as parents. We have to spend more time with Cassie, helping her every night with her homework.'"

Rachel shuddered at the absolute horror of that scenario.

"Hey," Rachel said. "Morph the rat. Maybe you can see what his ... her... its problem is."

"I could do that," I said slowly. "But see, if Jake found out... You know the rule-. No morphing except when necessary."

Rachel shrugged. "It's necessary that I get out of here. It's necessary that you don't get a bad grade.

Look at that --two necessities at once!"

I probably shouldn't have let her talk me into it. Except, actually, I'd already been considering it. That's the great thing about Rachel --she's always willing to help talk you into doing something you probably shouldn't do.

"You have to do it, too," I said.

"Why? Why do I have to morph a rat?"

"Remember the time you wanted to scare that guy with the elephants? Wasn't I there for you then? Besides, we can't leave till I try to figure this out." Rachel rolled her eyes. "Ooookay. That made absolutely no sense, but I'll do it anyway. Let's just get it over with."

Acquiring an animal's DNA isn't very complicated. All you do is touch it, and focus your mind on the animal. The animal gets kind of sleepy, kind of dopey. In a minute it's all over, and a new DNA pattern is swimming around inside you.

"I have the feeling this is a stupid idea," Rachel said. I was piling up books to make steps so we could climb into the maze once we morphed.

"Well, it was your idea, Rachel."

"Oh, yeah. My idea. Like I'm the one who cares how the rat handles a maze. Let's get this over with before someone decides to check in on us," she said. Already, she was beginning to change.

I focused my thoughts, forming a mental picture of the rat. And then ... I felt the change 5

begin.

I was shrinking. Shrinking very fast. For a human, I'm not very big. In fact, I'm kind of short. But I was a lot bigger than a rat, so it was a pretty big change in size. My T-shirt and my jeans were suddenly very loose.

I looked at Rachel. Huge long whiskers were growing out of her still-human mouth. The side of the cabinets beside me grew higher and higher. They had originally been maybe three feet high. Soon they seemed as tall as a three-story building. The grain in the wood looked like huge swirling patterns, like strange paintings the size of murals. The one-foot squares of tan and green linoleum seemed to double and triple and quadruple in size, until each was as big as a parking space. As I shrank, my clothes folded and billowed down over me like a collapsed circus tent.

My skin turned a sort of pinkish-gray, then suddenly sprouted white fur. My legs were shriveling. My arms were shriveling. My face bulged like a zit about to pop. My nose poked way out, farther and farther. My face became pointed.

And then, the rat's senses replaced my own.

On came the ears, like someone had thrown a switch. On came the nose. And on came the rat's instincts, bubbling up in my human mind and carrying their messages of fear and hunger and more fear.

<Yikes!> Rachel commented. <Nervous little things, aren't they?> 6