They keep going, and going, and going . . . I pushed off with my feet, flapped my wings, and sprung straight into t h e air. Through the t r e e s . Above the waterfall.

<Hey, this is cool,> I said. <No long, running takeoffs. No flapping along the ground. When t h e duck wants to be in t h e air, he's in t h e air\>

Tobias and Ax followed, and we flew oven The Gardens. Three identical ducks, morphed f r o m the same DNA. . . . We decided t h r e e ducks flying by themselves looked a little conspicuous, especially to Controllers who were probably looking f o r t h r e e ducks flying by themselves. So we hooked up with a flock of mallards heading in the direction of the capitol. We leeched on to t h e back of their V f o r m a t i o n , and flapped off over the mountains.

This wasn't sleek, soaring r a p t o r flight. With our round heads, long necks, and plump bodies, we looked m o r e like bowling pins with wings.

I was the Energizer Bunny with feathers. The Energizer Birdie . . . The author wishes to thank Lisa Harkrader

for her help in preparing this manuscript. Thank you to Art Alphin

CHAPTER 1

For Larry, Austin, and Ashley

And for Michael and Jake

Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly

Art Direction/Design by Karen Hudson/Ursula Albano If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this I dove. Tucked my wings. Folded my tail. book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the Hurtled toward earth!

publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book." I was a bullet. A bullet with feathers.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored And feeling pretty righteous until Tobias rockin a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permiseted past. He skimmed the top of the freight sion of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to train and looped sideways in a corkscrew roll, Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

wing over wing. His feathers grazed the big gun ISBN 0-439-11525-6

of one of the tanks.

<Show-off,> I said.

<Hey, I'm a hawk.> He pulled out of the roll. SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, ANIMORPHS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

<l only get so many hobbies, and perfecting my 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 6/0

Red-Tail Spiral of Death happens to be my favorites Printed in the U.S.A.

First Scholastic printing, March 2001

We pumped our wings and shot past the locomotive. Two guys wearing bib overalls and ball 1

caps sat inside. One, the engineer, I guessed, The M-ls belonged to the National Gu

was driving while the other watched the track They were chained one to a flatcar, their big gu ahead.

rotated toward the back. And they were heade They weren't wielding Dracon beams. Or

toward the city.

weapons of any kind. And they weren't paying Truck and Humvee convoys had been snaking

any attention to the osprey and red-tailed hawk into town for days. Battalions of National Guard who'd dropped from the sky to spy on them. soldiers from all over the state were bunkered in

<They don't look like Controllers,> said ToGuard centers around the city. bias. <Like that means anything.>

Now they were bringing in tanks.

<Yeah. Everything looks normal,> I said. Ax had been monitoring all the local TV chan<Well, except for the tanks.> nels and the cable news networks, but nobody I wheeled. Scanned the line of flatcars. Nothhad mentioned a wide-scale urban training exering unusual. Nothing that wasn't supposed to be cise. I couldn't find anything on the Internet, and there.

the Chee hadn't heard anything from their Yeerk Still, something prickled at the back of my sources, either.

brain. Something didn't seem right.

Tobias and I were here to do a little firsthand Battling aliens every day of my life has fineinvestigation. To find out if our state government tuned my already rampant paranoia.

had finally realized Earth was being invaded. To I powered my wings and caught up to Tobias see if they were mounting a defense.

and the locomotive. A beautiful thermal radiated Or to see if this was a carefully laid out Yeerk up the side of the mountain. I fanned my wing plan. Were all those National Guard troops Conand tail feathers and soared on the billowing jet trollers? Some of them, yeah. But all of them?

of warm air.

We were talking thousands of soldiers. If they The freight train clattered below. One engine were all Controllers, we were in big trouble. We pulling a line of flatbed cars, loaded with military were talking serious doo-doo.

tanks. M-l Abrams.

But we were betting they weren't. Hoping

Yeah, M-l Abrams. I knew them as well as I they weren't. Careful prior planning wasn't Visser knew my own PlayStation. All those hours playOne's usual MO. He usually jumped in with both ing Tank Commando had finally paid off.

feet and a lot of noise. And if the details didn't 2

work themselves out, he just ripped a sub train. If there were, your raptor eyes would've visser's head off and plowed ahead with his next seen it a mile off. You're just a paranoid freaks maniacal plan.

A paranoid freak whose wings felt like they were going to snap off if I didn't stop flapping Besides, with a Blade ship and a fleet of Bug them.

fighters at his disposal, the visser didn't need a

<This is stupid,> I said. <We want to know bunch of clunky tanks.

where the tanks are going, right? The train's not On the other hand, Visser One had been

going that fast. Why don't we just land on one pushing for all-out war. To wage war, you need an and find out?>

army. And if you need an army in a hurry, why not I dove toward a flatcar in the middle of the hijack an existing one? If the highest-ranking Natrain and swept over the top of the tank. My tional Guard officers were Controllers, Visser One talons skidded across the big brass padlock on could easily round up the rest of the troops for a one of the top hatches. I locked them around a mass infestation of host bodies. And if he got the metal cargo cage, pulled my wings down, and tanks out of the way, noninfested troops couldn't hunkered against the bottom of the cage. Wind use them against him.

whipped the feathers on the top of my head. Chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk.

The freight train rolled along the tracks. It A shadow slid over me. Tobias latched onto wasn't going all that fast for a train. About ten the hull of the tank, behind a big metal ring. miles an hour. Maybe fifteen downhill.

He hugged the metal. <Okay, this doesn't But it was plenty fast for sustained, level, raplook too weird,> he said. tor flight. Tobias and I had started out over the The train groaned down a steep hill. I turned engine, slippedt>ack to the first flatcar, then the my head. The column of tanks stretched out second. Now we were somewhere near the midbehind me, chugging through pine trees that dle and losing ground. My wing muscles ached, towered above us on either side of the track. burned, and finally went numb.

Sunlight filtered through the pine needles and I wheeled again. Studied the train. Someflickered over the camouflage green of the tanks. thing still seemed odd. What was I missing?

I saw no other movement. No life-forms, ex Nothing, Marco. There's nothing scary on this traterrestrial or domestic.

Normal. Everything looked —

Wait. <No guards. If this is a National Guard operation gearing up to fight aliens, wouldn't they have soldiers posted on the train? And if it's Visser One, you know he'd have Controllers crawling all over. Thirty-four tanks, and nobody's watching them.>

<Oh, I wouldn't say that,> said Tobias. CHAPTER 2

I turned my head.

Another red-tailed hawk swooped around a

curve ahead. Behind it, in formation, flew a squadron of golden eagles and peregrine falcons. We were definitely not alone.

The red-tailed hawk shot toward the train. The eagles and falcons followed, banking and diving above the tracks.

<They obviously don't have much flight

experiences Tobias directed his private thoughtspeak to me. <They're upwind. Flying in formation. A flock of eagles and the falcons acting like fighter pilots, taking orders from a hawk. These are not ordinary birds out for an afternoon of joyflyings The eagles and falcons swooped past the locomotive and perched on the first tank. The redtailed hawk hung in the air and watched the train pass under it. They hadn't seen us.

Yet.

Tobias slipped down the hull of the tank and anymore. The Yeerks know who I am. Or know crept underneath, into the dark cavern between who I was, anyway.

the tank's tracks. Where he could see without beYeerks. I'm sure you know all about them by ing seen.

now. If not, here's the condensed version: slimy But I was on top. On the turret. I couldn't gray slugs that slither into your ear canal, flatten themselves out over the surface of your brain, move without catching the hawk's eye. I pressed and seize control of your body. Parasitic aliens myself against the floor of the cargo basket who are conquering Earth, one human at a time. and watched. Waited. Hoped my gray-and-white My mother was a Controller, controlled by one feathers blended in with the camouflage paint of of the most powerful Yeerks in the Yeerk Empire, the tank.

the former Visser One. We rescued her, killed the Right. We're talking about hawk vision here. Yeerk who'd slithered into her head, staged a No such thing as camouflage.

fake death for my dad and me, and evacuated to The red-tailed hawk kited above the train. Exthe mountain valley of the free Hork-Bajir. amined each car, each tank, that passed below. Which should've been great. And it was. For

<So, who are they?> I peered through the wire me personally. And for my family. Okay, so we cage. Twelve of them. Two of us. <Or should we were on a never-ending camping trip with sevenbe overly optimistic and hope it's James and his foot-tall bladed aliens who rarely, if ever, bathed. gang?>

And no, I hadn't seen an indoor toilet in weeks. James and his gang. A group of auxiliary AniBut I wasn't complaining. I had my mom morphs we'd recently recruited to help us fight back. Had my family back. And, as an added the Yeerks. Disabled kids by day. Superheroes by bonus, algebra homework was now only a distant, night. Or something like that.

quickly fading memory.

The Animorphs — originally just five human But for the Animorphs, and for the war we

kids and one Andalite — are trying to stop the were fighting, my mother's escape was the beginYeerks. I'm one of the human kids. Marco. That's ning of a long, terrifying, downhill slide. And we all I'm going to tell you about me. No last name. were about to hit rock bottom. Hard.

No address.

A big part of the reason we were struggling Not that it probably makes any difference

was that the Yeerks had had better weapons than their families and flee to the Hork-Bajir valley. us. Plus, they outnumbered us about three gazilRachel with her mom and two sisters. Cassie lion to six. But we had a couple of advantages with her parents. Tobias with his mother.

that helped level the playing field.

And Jake. Alone.

One: We could morph. We could touch an anWe tried to get Jake's family out. Even Tom, imal, acquire its DNA, then become that animal. his brother, who'd been a Controller since the beA dying Andalite war-prince gave us that ability, ginning of the invasion. But the Yeerks got there and with it we could infiltrate, spy, destroy, and first. Turned his mom and dad into Controllers, kick Yeerk butt in ways no human ever could. too.

Two: Since morphing is Andalite technology, the Turned Jake into someone none of us knew

Yeerks believed we were all Andalites. The foranymore. mer Visser Three, commander of the Yeerk invaAx moved to the valley, too. It had become our sion of Earth, had turned the planet upside down new sort of base.

looking for a rogue band of blue aliens.

Bottom line: We were human kids, and the

But he didn't find us, because he never

Yeerks knew it. And we'd thought that was the looked in places we might actually be. Cozy subworst thing that could happen to us. urban houses on tree-lined, Leave-lt-To-Beaver We were wrong.

streets. Noisy school hallways between classes. We needed more help. More firepower. More

The food court at the mall. Not your typical AnAnimorphs. So we recruited humans we knew we dalite hangouts. Well, except maybe the food could trust. Humans the Yeerks had written off. court. After this war is over, I fully expect Ax, our Humans they wouldn't infest.

resident Andalite, to spend the rest of his life in Disabled kids.

human morph at Cinnabon.

The Yeerks caught on to what we were doing, After we rescued my mother, though, it didn't and in the the last battle we lost the morphing take Visser Three long to figure out the "Andalite cube. The blue box that gave anybody who

bandits" just might be human. He was promoted touched it the power to morph. Our one weapon, to Visser One, and he poured most of his rethe weapon Visser One had never been able to sources into finding us.

overcome, had fallen into Yeerk hands. Yeah, we The other Animorphs were forced to rescue

could still morph. But now the Yeerks could, too. 10

Things were very, very bad.

I looked into the sky. The red-tailed hawk circled. Examined the tanks below. Its eyes locked onto mine.

Birds do not have lips. Birds cannot smile. But I swear this one did.

CHAPTER 3

TSEEEEEEEER!"

The red-tailed hawk rocketed from the sky, eyes gleaming in triumph.

Chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk.

The freight train was giving me a free ride right toward my enemy.

I flapped to the top of the cargo bin and found a foothold.

<Marco?>

Tobias inched onto the bed of the flatcar. Four blocks of wood were wedged against the tank's tracks, two in front, two in back, keeping it from rolling. Tobias stood beside one of the front blocks, in its shadow, out of the hawk's line of vision. 12

<You do know a bird of prey is shooting from Now!

the sky, aiming for you, right?> he said. I dove. Sideways and down, toward the hull of

<Uh, yeah.> My thought-speak actually the tank.

sounded confident, like I really knew what I was Thungk-crack.

doing. <The hawk doesn't have much bird experiThe red-tail slammed into the steel pipe ence, remember?>

above me.

I spread my wings. Flared my feathers.

Thump.

Fanned my tail. It's what raptors do when they're And fell backward into the cargo basket. He threatened. Make their bodies as large and menlay on the bottom of the cage, unmoving, his acing as possible.

neck twisted back and to the side.

What raptors do not do is plan suicidal fake<That was a little on the crazy side, don't you out maneuvers. No, that was purely a human think?> Tobias lifted his wings. <Now let's get move. My wings weren't spread high and wide away from here before his buddies notice he just to make me look tough, though I'm sure I hasn't come up for air.>

was one intense-looking bird. My wings were acThe train rattled around a curve. We swooped tually covering a thick steel tube that jutted up over the side. Stayed low. And came beak to beak behind me through the cargo basket.

with the pack of golden-eagle-Controllers. A steel tube I was betting the hawk, in his Did I mention that a golden eagle is almost rush to skewer my guts, hadn't noticed.

three times as big as an osprey? That it's got I glared at him. Dared him to hit me.

about three times as much attitude and, in my

"TSEEEEEEEEEEER!"

opinion, is wound just a little too tight?

I stood my ground. Held my perch. My tail

And that's just your regular, run-of-the-sky feathers flicked up and down like a lever, adjustgolden eagle. Stir in a crazed Yeerk and a terriing my balance to the movement of the train. fied human host, and we're talking one seriously Tobias watched from the shadows, wings

demented bird.

tense, ready to blindside the hawk if I failed. I cut sharply to the right. Tobias was already The hawk plummeted, his beak aimed at my

ahead of me. We powered our wings and shot exposed chest.

toward the front of the train, six golden eagles on Six feet above me. Four. Two.

our tails.

Chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk.

The clatter of flatcars nearly drowned out the sound of beating wings. We whipped past one car. Another. We were gaining on the train. The eagles were bigger. Meaner. But not as quick. If we could outlast them, we could outdistance them. I flapped my wings. We rounded the CHAPTER 4

curve.

<Uh-oh,>said Tobias.

Five falcons circled above us. They weren't as big as the golden eagles. Not even as big as me or Tobias. But a whole lot faster.

One of the falcons peeled off. Dove!

<0h, man. Not this again. I am so tired of being dive-bombed by birds.> The falcon dropped from the sky. Another But this wasn't just any bird. This was a pereperegrine zeroed in on Tobias. grine falcon. Not a bullet with feathers. A misI pumped my wings. Scanned the rail bed, sile. A missile shooting toward me at two hundred searching for an opening. A hiding place. A miles an hour.

shield.

Which gave me zero time to think up a suiciNothing. dal fake-out maneuver.

A wall of trees on one side. A freight train on We were absolutely, positively toast.

the other. A flock of psycho-eagles behind.

<Under the train!> I yelled.

I dove between two flatcars. Tobias followed. Chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk.

Metal grated against metal. We dodged under axles. Between wheels. Around brake boxes. It was reckless and desperate and stupid. Thousands of pounds of steel zinging along the tracks, 16

a fraction of an inch from our wings, our legs, our I tucked in my wings.

heads. One wrong move, one slight miscalculaTobias swept under the eagle in a Red-Tail tion, and we'd be chicken nuggets.

Spiral of Death. His talons slashed the eagle's But it was our only chance.

feathered legs.

We shot between the rail bed and the floor of

"KYEEEEEEER!"

the flatcars above. Lost an eagle. And another. A The eagle screamed. Banked. Turned to face bird with a seven-foot wing span has no business his attacker.

under a moving freight train.

But he wasn't as quick as Tobias, and he was But the falcons kept coming. From the front. weighted down by an uncooperative osprey.

From behind. Raking. Slashing. Pummeling.

"TSEEEEEEEEEEEEER!"

<Did you ever see that old movie The Birdsl> Tobias slammed into his throat.

I screamed.

The eagle veered. Raked a talon at Tobias. My

<Not funny, Marco!> Tobias screamed back. neck fell from its clutches.

I jetted out from beneath a car, two falcons on I spun, my butt clenched in one eagle claw, my tail. I shot up. Around the tank. In. Out! Lost my head and shoulders flopping in midair, while one of the falcons. Spun around the big gun. Tobias and the eagle threw down above me.

Lost the other.

Tobias circled. In. Out. Over. Around.

<AAAAAAAHHHHHH!>

The eagle whirled and dodged.

Talons the size of meat hooks clamped

<ls there a barf bag on this flight?> I said stuaround my back, pierced feathers, then flesh, as pidly.

a golden eagle plucked me from mid-flight. Tobias ripped his talons across the eagle's I thrashed. Tried to wrench free. My skin

back.

ripped beneath the eagle's viselike grip. Claw The eagle lashed out, both feet open.

scraped bone.

I was free!

The eagle beat its wings and rose above the I fell. Just plummeted toward the freight train train. I dangled from its talons like a helpless below. Toward solid steel and jutting periscope field mouse, twisting and writhing.

housings.

<Marco! Get your wings out of the way!> Fly. I had to fly! I focused. I pulled my wings A flash of brown.

up. Out.

Air filled my wings, like I'd opened a parachute. Somewhere above me an eagle screamed. I had to circle. Get back to Tobias and help him fight off the eagle. I swept over the train. Around a tank.

<Marco, look out!>

Smack.

It hit me from below. A falcon that came out CHAPTER 5

of nowhere. I lurched backward, end over end. Thunk.

And landed on the bed of the flatcar.

I lay on my back, wings splayed across rough wooden planks, belly exposed. Wind whipped my feathers. The flatcar swayed beneath me.

The falcon circled above. Flapped its wings and climbed. Gained altitude for another hit. I closed my eyes. Shut out the clacking of the train, the screams of hawk and eagle. Ignored the crippling pain shooting through my body. Forced one image into my head: Marco. Healthy human Marco.

I felt my feathers liquefy. Felt them melt and dissolve into my skin. My legs thickened. Shot out to human length. The armored-plated scales covering them softened and smoothed into human skin. 20

But I was still bird from the legs up, and I still My hands grew to the size of catchers' mitts. My couldn't move. Pain burned through my wings. I fingers swelled to sausages.

refocused the image: arms.

Currrrreeeeeeeek!

Currrrrrrunnnnnnch!

Human bones thickened. Arms shot out. My

My wings straightened, stretched. The pain skull shifted. Back, then up. My face flattened. stretched, too. Longer. Thinner. Faded to a tinJaw jutted forward. My skin darkened to a glisgle, then disappeared as fingers popped from the tening black, and waves of coarse dark hair ends of my arm-wings.

swept down my body.

I flexed them. Opened my eyes.

I was Big Jim.

I jerked to the side. Kicked at the falcon!

I leaped to the hull of the tank. The falcon Talons skidded across my thigh and locked

dove and raked my arm. Another swept over my onto my flesh. The falcon squeezed a mass of head, talons bared. A golden eagle swiped at my muscle between its dagger-sharp toes and kept face.

flying.

But I was a gorilla. The eagle was merely an

" AAAAAAAAAAAAAH H H H H H!"

annoyance. A pest. As fierce as a mosquito but A golf ball-sized chunk of meat was ripped as easy to swat. I batted them away, like King from my leg!

Kong swatting airplanes from the top of the EmIn human form, I could fend off the falcons. pire State Building.

In human form, I'd survive. Well, I'd survive I turned and scanned the rail bed. The trees longer than I would as an osprey.

had thinned. The ground was leveling out. We But why volunteer for that kind of carnage?

were getting closer to the city.

I crawled to the tank. Sat with my back

Closer to Yeerk reinforcements.

against the hull. Shoved the human image from Tobias shot around a tank three cars back, a my brain and thought of a different one: gorilla. golden eagle breathing down his neck. Two falWant to bulk up? Forget bench presses and cons buzzed and jabbed around him, taking

power shakes. Morph a gorilla.

whatever shots they could get.

I concentrated.

<Tobias!> I yelled. <Time to bail.> My chest and shoulders bulged. Stomach rip<You think?> pled. Biceps, deltoids, pecs. I was beefy. Buff. He flapped. Banked. Dove beneath the train. 22

The rail bed had been cut into the side of the One block was airborne.

hill. On one side the ground lay even with the