Disclaimer: I don't own the Animorphs, the Chee, the Yeerks, or the Pemalites.

Chapter Fifteen.

We couldn't morph and fly from Erek's house. Although Erek was more than capable of keeping up with us in bird morphs, it was simply too dangerous to do it inside the town unless we had to. So we drove out to the edge of town.

There was more than one reason for us doing this, or at least for me requesting it.

See, we wanted to meet up with Ax and Tobias. Which meant my parents' house, the farm.

As usual, my mother wasn't there. She was out at work. I was…sad, really. I missed her. But I was glad, too. My father wasn't there, either. I wanted to see them both. But I knew that meeting them, and then having to leave them again, would be worse for all of us.

Still, it was hard. I felt a painful lump in my throat as I looked around. This was my home, and I was leaving it.

While the others were finding Tobias, I slipped into the barn.

Three minutes later, I came out of the barn and carefully handed Erek a small object. He looked at it, then at me, and nodded.

I turned to the fields and saw Ax, a smudge of tan and blue, running across the grass. Rachel was morphing. Tobias was already in the air.

I closed my eyes and focused. I tried to put aside all the concerns I felt –worry for my parents, for my friends, for the Pemalites, for Inest…

Feather patterns rose on my skin. My arms flattened. My eyesight and hearing went about a hundred times sharper. My toes sharpened. My head changed shape.

I spread my wings and beat them down once, twice, three times, rising slowly into the air until I caught a breeze and used it to lift me. The others were also rising; Rachel stately, majestic in the body of an eagle, Jake lifting more slowly with his smaller wings.

We didn't fly as high as we could –we needed to be low enough for Erek to follow us. But I flapped and soared until I had my bearings, and then I swooped away like an arrow, fast and sure. Moving –I hoped –in the direction of the Pemalite camp.

The others gathered around me.

We flew, we Animorphs, together again, in a loose formation. So far from the town, there wasn't much chance of anyone seeing us, and wondering at the sight of two ospreys, a hawk, a harrier, a falcon, and an eagle flying within metres of each other.

Nor was there much chance of anyone looking down and seeing two seeming humans running at definitely inhuman speeds through the woods –Erek, and another Chee called Jenny who'd shown up as we were morphing.

It was us. Alone with nature.

Ax and Tobias were very curious about my brush with death. At least, Ax was. He was very curious about the timing of the intervention. I guess that blood poisoning's a pretty serious thing to Andalites as well as humans.

We flew. And flew. Since we were flying so low, the journey took longer than it had when I'd headed for the town. We had to stop and demorph at one point. Then we were back in the air, chattering and laughing –rather sadly, in my case.

Up, above the trees, following the ground. I saw the mountain ahead. The other mountain, the one between the Pemalites and the town, was behind us.

I flapped. I soared.

(Whoa!) Marco yelled.

(That is one big spaceship,) Tobias commented.

It was a big spaceship. Seeing it from this perspective kind of enhanced the fact. It was bigger than the Blade ship. Maybe half as big as the Dome we'd rescued Ax from.

It was not as big as the Yeerk Pool ship. But we'd seen that up in space. When you are up in space, there are not many things around to give you a reference. You have the moon, and you have the Earth, but it's kind of hard to use those as reference points because you can't judge how far away they are. Around the Pemalite ship, however, there were plenty of trees to refer to. And those trees made the Pemalite ship look very, very large.

Small enough to hide. But still large.

(Not very good at hiding things, are they?) Rachel said. (I mean, come on. If anyone touches down on an alien planet, the first thing they do is pick somewhere their ship won't be easily seen. Right, Ax-man?)

(I think they had scenery in mind, not defence,) I said. (I mean, it's a beautiful place.) It was beautiful.

(Yeah,) Marco said. (And it's maybe a hundred or so miles from our town. Which has the Yeerks. And it's in the forest. Where the Hork-Bajir colony is. Is it just me, or has this section of Earth turned into Alien Central?)

We laughed. I adjusted my wings and went into a descent, right above Erek and Jenny.

Ten minutes later, I landed on the path beside my cave and began my demorph. The others landed around me and began to change –except for Tobias. Erek appeared, walking up the path.

And then I heard footsteps.

Erek's hologram dropped abruptly; came back up, flickering. I turned around.

It was Ionos. The darker-furred Pemalite who had, according to Inest, landed the ship.

She looked about as startled to see Erek as Erek was to see her. Which was rather more startled than my fellow Animorphs were, and they were pretty surprised.

----

We headed into the camp. Ionos seemed surprised to see Erek and Jenny. Surprised, but happy.

The problem –the little problem that had been nagging at me all day, along with all the other, larger problems –was Inest.

Jenny took one look at her and flickered violently. It took about five minutes for her to stabilise, and when she did, the look on her face was pure dismay.

"Tell me that's not what I think it is," I said.

"If you're thinking 'Howler germ weapon', then it's what you think it is," Jenny said grimly. "But after thousands of years…I don't see how. And only affecting one? It doesn't make any sense!"

One of the healers looked at Jenny and asked her something in their language. Jenny's hologram dropped. She hesitated, then replied in the same language. She sounded rather glum.

"What?" I asked sharply.

"We never found a cure. Never. We tried everything, but…"

I looked at Inest again. She had stopped writhing, but she whimpered in pain every few seconds. Her fingers twitched occasionally.

Something was wrong with her eyes. Normally they were dark, warm, and full of laughter. But now they were gummy around the edges, crusted with green-blue muck. They seemed to have sunk back into her skull.

She was breathing strangely, too. She'd gulp air in, breathe out slow, in slow, blow it all out, pause, and then gulp air in again. I didn't like it.

"No cure," I said quietly, and got to my feet.

I went to find Jake. I eventually found him in my cave, looking around.

"Jake?"

"Mm? Oh, hi, Cassie." He smiled that wonderful slow smile of his. "Nice place you've got here."

"I'm glad you like it. Jake, listen…"

I explained the problem. Jake listened attentively.

"Let me guess," he said at last. "You've come up with a solution, and you're worried I won't like it."

"I'm fairly sure you won't like it, but I'm going to go ahead anyway. I just thought I ought to tell you."

"And?" he prompted.

I took a deep breath. "Erek brought the morphing cube up here."

"Ah." He fell silent, looking at the floor.

Finally, he looked back at me. "Well…"

"She's not like David!" I said angrily.

"I wasn't saying she was!" Jake protested. "Look, Cassie, I'm not saying we should stop her from morphing. She's a Pemalite; we know what the Chee are like. It's just…" He hesitated. "Well, remember Ax? Back when Aftran was nearly killed, and we all came down with that stupid yamphut disease."

"Yes. So what?"

"Ax was sick in morph. Cassie, using the blue box…it might not work."

I felt like I'd had a bucket of water dumped over me. Slowly, I shook my head.

If the disease couldn't be cured by morphing…if it was like the yamphut…then I remembered something else. "That sickness was contagious," I said. "Very contagious."

We looked at each other.

There was no logical reason for Jake to care about whether the entire camp of Pemalites came down with some incredibly slow, deadly disease. There was no logical reason whatsoever. But humans aren't just logical. We're capable of caring about things, about people, that we have no logical connection to.

Jake looked sick. He stared out of the entrance of the cave. I followed his gaze. A couple of children ran by, laughing.

I knew what he was thinking. I knew it, because sometimes Jake and I think exactly the same things, and this was one of those sorts of times.

"It might work," I said helplessly.

"Yeah. It might." He looked around again at the place where I had almost died. Then he looked back at me. "I'm coming with you."