Katherine Alice Applegate - Invasion

"I wonder if we should try and talk to it," Rachel suggested. She was standing there with her hands on her hips looking at the spaceship like it was a puzzle she had to figure out. "I mean, we should communicate. If that's even possible."

Tobias nodded. He stepped forward and held out his hands. I guess he was showing whoever was in the ship that he wasn't carrying any kind of weapon or anything. "It's safe," he said in a loud, clear voice. "We won't hurt you."

"Do you think they speak English?" I wondered.

"Well, everyone speaks English on Star Trek," Cassie said with a nervous laugh.

Tobias tried again. "Please, come out We won't hurt you."

I froze. Okay, I had definitely heard someone say "I know," only… there hadn't been any sound. I mean, I heard it, but I didn't really hear it.

Maybe this was all a dream. I looked kind of sideways at Cassie. She looked back at me. Our eyes met. She had heard it, too. I looked at Rachel. She was turning her head back and forth, like she was looking for where that sound — that wasn't a sound — could have come from. I started to get a sick, twisty feeling in my stomach.

"Did everyone hear that?" Tobias whispered.

We all nodded at once, very slowly.

"Can you come out?" Tobias asked in his loud, talking-to-aliens voice.

"We won't be frightened," Tobias said.

"Speak for yourself," I muttered. The others giggled nervously.

A thin arc of light appeared, a doorway, opening slowly in the smooth side of the pod part of the ship. I stood there, totally hypnotized. I just stared, waiting.

The opening grew, like a crescent moon at first, then a full, bright circle.

And then he appeared.

My first reaction was that someone had cloned a person and a deer together. The creature had a head and shoulders and arms that were more or less where they should have been, though the skin was a pale shade of blue. But below that he had fur, a mix of blue and tan, covering a four-legged body that really did look like it belonged to a deer, or maybe a small horse.

He ducked his head out the doorway and I could see that even the fairly normal-looking parts of him weren't all that normal. For a start, he had no mouth, just three vertical slits. And then there were his eyes. Two of them were where they should have been, although they were a glittery green color that was kind of shocking. But the real shock was the other eyes. He had what seemed like horns, only on the top of each horn was an eye. The horns could move, twisting to point the eyes front and back or up and down.

I thought the eyes were bad, until I saw the tail. It was like a scorpion's tail, thick and powerful-looking. On the end was a wickedly curved, very sharp-looking horn or stinger. It reminded me of the alien's spaceship. It had seemed kind of cute and harmless, till you noticed the tail. The alien seemed kind of harmless at first glance, too. Then you saw that tail of his and you thought, whoa, this guy could do some damage if he wanted.

"Hello," Tobias said. His voice was gentle, like he was talking to a baby. He was grinning. I realized I was smiling, too. And at the same moment, I realized that there were tears in my eyes, I can't really describe how it felt, except that it seemed like the alien was someone I'd known forever. Like an old friend I hadn't seen in a long, longtime.

the alien said, in that silent way that you only heard inside your head.

"Hi," we all said back.

To my surprise, the alien staggered. He fell out of the ship to the ground. Tobias tried to grab him and hold him up, but the alien slipped from his grasp and fell back to the dirt.

"Look!" Cassie cried. She pointed at a burn that covered half the alien's right side. "He's hurt he said.

"Can we help you? We can call an ambulance or something," Marco said.

"We can bandage that wound," Cassie said. "Jake, give me your shirt. We can tear it up and make bandages." Cassie's parents are both veterinarians and she's totally into animals. Not that this was an animal. Not exactly, anyway.

"NO!" I cried. "You can't die. You're the first alien ever to come to Earth. You can't die." I don't know why I was so upset. I just knew that way down deep inside, it hurt me to think of him dying.

"Other aliens? Like you?" Tobias demanded.

The alien shook his big head slowly, side to side.

Then he cried out in pain, a silent sound that echoed horribly inside my mind. For a moment, I had actually felt him dying.

he repeated.

"Different? How?" I said.

I will remember his answer forever.

He said,

It was strange, the way we all just knew he was telling the truth. No one said "no way" or "you're making it up." We all just knew. He was dying, and he was trying to warn us of something terrible.

"Are you telling us they're already here on Earth?" Rachel demanded.

"Why hasn't anybody noticed them?" Marco said reasonably. "I think someone would have mentioned it at school."

I guess he couldn't think of a word to explain Yeerks, so he closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate. Suddenly a bright picture popped into my head. I saw a gray-green, slimy thing like a snail without its shell, only bigger, the size of a rat, maybe. It wasn't a pretty picture.

"I'm guessing that was a Yeerk," Marco said. "Either that or a very big wad of slimy chewing gum."

Suddenly we felt that blast of pain, straight from the alien. I could also feel his sadness. He knew his time was almost up.

"Are you saying they take over human beings?" Rachel asked. "People? These things take over their bodies?"

"Look, this is serious stuff," I said. "You shouldn't be telling us. We're just kids, you know. This is like something the government should know about."

the alien continued.

"How can they do that?" Cassie wondered.

The alien seemed to smile with his eyes. he said.

Another spasm of pain ripped through him, and we all knew he was nearly gone.

"No one is ever going to believe us," Marco said hopelessly. He looked at me and shook his head. "No way."

He was right. If these Yeerks were to wipe out the Andalite's ship, how on Earth would we ever convince people? They'd think we were either nuts or on drugs.

"I don't care if he thinks he's going to die, we have to try and help him," Rachel said. "We can get him to a hospital. Or maybe Cassie's parents… "

the Andalite said. Then his eyes brightened.

"What?"

We all looked at each other. Who was going to be the one to go inside the ship? Somehow we all seemed to agree it would be me. Actually, I didn't agree, but everyone else did.

"Go ahead," Tobias said. "I want to stay with him." He knelt beside the Andalite and placed a comforting hand on the alien's narrow shoulder.

I looked at the doorway into the spacecraft. I glanced at Cassie.

"Go ahead," she said, sending me a smile. "You're not scared."

She was wrong; I was plenty scared. But the way she smiled at me, I wasn't about to weasel out.

I walked over to the door of the ship and looked inside. It was surprisingly simple. It looked cozy, almost. Everything was a creamy color with rounded edges and shapes that tended to be oval. That was one of the things that helped me to spot the box so easily. It was sky blue and square, maybe four inches on each side. It seemed kind of heavy for being so small.

I stepped up into the ship. There was no chair, just a sort of open space where I guess the Andalite stood on his four hooves while he worked the few controls. There weren't a lot of buttons or anything. I wondered if the Andalite controlled the ship with his thoughts.

I quickly reached for the box and started to head back outside. But then something caught my eye. It was a small, three-dimensional picture — four Andalites, standing all together, looking like a strange gathering of deer with solemn faces. Two of them looked very small kids. I realized that this was a picture of the Andalite's family.

It filled me with sadness to think that here he was, dying, a million miles from his family. Dying because he had tried to protect the people of Earth. I felt a small flame of anger against the Yeerks, or Controllers, or whatever they were, for causing this.

I went back to the circle of my friends.

"Here's the box," I told the Andalite.

"I, um… was that your family? That picture?"

I'm real sorry," I said. What else could I say?

"What?" Rachel demanded.

We all looked at each other. All except Tobias, who never took his gaze off the alien.

"Powers?" What was that supposed to mean?

the Andalite explained.

"Morph? Morph how?" Rachel asked, her eyes narrowed.

the Andalite said.

Marco laughed derisively. "Become animals?" Marco isn't the most accepting person in the world.

"He's kidding, right?" Marco asked me.

"No," Tobias said softly. "He's not kidding."

"This is nuts," Marco said. "This whole thing is nuts. Yeerks and spaceships and slugs taking over people's brains and Andalites and the power to change into animals? Give me a break."

"Yeah, it is beyond weird," I agreed.

"We're off the map of weirdness by this point," Rachel said. "But unless we're all just dreaming, I think we'd better deal with this."

"He's dying," Tobias reminded us.

"I'll do it," Cassie said. That surprised me. Cassie isn't usually so quick to decide. But I guess, like Tobias, she felt the truth of what the Andalite was saying.

"I think we should all decide together," I suggested. "One way or the other."

"What's that?" Rachel asked. She was looking up toward the stars. Far, far overhead, two pinpoints of bright red light were shooting across the sky.

The Andalite said the word in our minds, and we could feel his hatred.

The twin red lights slowed. They turned in a circle and came back toward us.

"We have to do this," Tobias said. "How else can we fight these Controllers?"

"This is so insane!" Marco said. "Insane."

"I'd like more time, but we don't have that choice," Rachel said. I'm for it."

"What do you say, Jake?" Cassie asked me. It was odd. Like suddenly I was the one who had to decide for everyone?

I looked up at the Yeerk ships. What had the Andalite called them? Bug fighters? They were circling closer, like dogs sniffing for a scent. I looked down at the Andalite and remembered the picture of his family. Would they even know what had happened to him?

I looked at each of the people around me — my usually funny, occasionally annoying best friend, Marco; Rachel, my smart, pretty, confident cousin; and Cassie, who everyone knew liked animals more than she liked most people.

Finally, I looked at Tobias. It was weird, the feeling I had at that moment, staring at him. A chill or something.

"We have to," Tobias said to me.

Slowly I nodded. "Yes. We have no choice."

We did. Five hands, each pressed against one side. Then a sixth hand, different from ours, with too many fingers.

the Andalite said.