| #14: The Unknown |
Detailed Plot: Cassie has never been interested in clothes, but fashion-conscious Rachel is her best friend. As a compromise, Cassie gets Rachel to assist her with an animal sickness call in exchange for promising to let Rachel take her shopping. Out they go to a remote farm where they've gotten a distress call about a horse that's acting disoriented, accompanied by Cassie's dad. They encounter a horse behaving really weirdly and acting like it's trying to make a phone call. Cassie and Rachel clearly see a Yeerk coming out of the horse, and moments later--after they spot a white horse approaching and Cassie senses danger--Dracon beam fire explodes the general area. When Cassie wakes up only slightly injured, no one knows what happened except that the horse that had had the Yeerk in it is nowhere to be found. The Animorphs meet in the mall--including Ax and Tobias in human morph--and discuss their findings. Zone 91 is a nearby area rumored to be full of alien conspiracies, and since it's close to where the horse was infested, they figure that might be a good place to investigate. They plan to morph birds and check it out. In school, Rachel keeps expecting people to give Cassie special attention because of the new outfit she's wearing, but no one really cares until Marco flips out complimenting her. (Though then we find out that Rachel bribed him to say something.) After school, the Animorphs (without Jake and Ax) fly out to Zone 91. Once they pass some horses that probably aren't suspicious, they find a place to land and demorph so they won't have to worry about the two-hour morphing limit. They rest for a few minutes, but soldiers sneak up on them and take them into custody while aiming guns. Only Cassie, Marco, and Rachel are taken, because Tobias is not suspicious to them as a hawk. The soldiers who take them prisoner ask them how they got there with no car and no shoes, and Marco speaks up to say they were dropped there by aliens. The three are taken in for interrogation, and though Rachel and Cassie play dumb, Marco keeps joking around and asking the Zone 91 guys where they keep the alien. Cassie notices a sign-up sheet for The Gardens on the wall, which has a bunch of names on it, and she doesn't know what it means. They give the military guys fake names and phone numbers, and after they're locked into the room, they quickly decide to morph cockroaches and get away. They manage to escape the facility, and Tobias tries to guide them away, but when he scoops them up to ride on him he accidentally drops Cassie on her back in front of a moving tank. Cassie gets squished and stuck to the tank's tread, but she's alive, and manages to use one still-working wing to flick herself off of the tank. Tobias gets her out of there and they all go to demorph. Marco reveals that he was making stupid alien jokes mainly to make the military guys think they were just wackos, because otherwise they might be suspicious about why completely sane people were sneaking into the facility. Nevertheless, they think the trip was pretty much wasted until they notice some nearby horses behaving strangely: notably, one horse deliberately hides behind a bush to take a dump, and the other horses seem to be laughing at her. Again they suspect Yeerk activity, and they return to their homes. At an Animorphs meeting (including Ax), they discuss how to get closer to the horses, and figure out a plan to get horse morphs that aren't recognizable. Acquiring them at the race track ends up being the best plan. In wondering why Yeerks would bother with horse-Controllers, they ponder whether they just want to get close to Zone 91 and investigate the alien rumors, but Ax claims they'd be able to tell if there was anything non-terrestrial on the planet. Despite not really knowing what they're investigating for except that it's suspicious, they fly out to the race track and hide in a barn to demorph (while Tobias goes ahead to find a horse since he can acquire DNA while in hawk form). But unfortunately, a couple of men enter the barn and spot them when they're not quite done morphing. The kids have to hide Ax, stalling by saying he's a horse they're grooming (though the men aren't ready to buy that they have a blue horse), but then Ax thinks fast and knocks some lumber down on the men. They're able to escape, though Cassie has a run-in with a teenager who grabs her ankle and tries to stop her. (She doesn't want to kick him because he's probably innocent, but then he mistakes her for "a guy," and she gets offended enough to kick him and continue her escape.) Cassie sneaks into a stall to acquire a horse and hides by morphing into the animal she just acquired. But when it turns out she's become the stallion that's supposed to win the Kentucky Derby, she gets roped into a race. Cassie responds to Tobias's request to know where she is, and the other Animorphs are confused and surprised that she's on the track. She gets a little befuddled when she's backed into the starting gate and dealing with being annoyed by another stallion nearby, so she accidentally ends up thought-speaking to her jockey. She wins the race, but not before she's thought-spoken to him a couple more times about philosophy of winning a race. During the whole mess, the others also manage to get horse morphs (though it's never explained how they went about it--not even how Ax managed it). They fly out to Zone 91 again, morph horses, and hook up with the horse-Controllers, pretending they're just some of the real wild horses who are following them around. Ax notices that the horses are using speech synthesizers and speaking Galard, the common language of interstellar people. The horses are telling each other that they just have to complete the mission so they can get out of the horse bodies and back to the ship where they belong. So, when the Yeerk horses start running to go into the facility (despite the guards being there), the Animorphs group follows them, and they all get inside to investigate what's inside. They run through the hangar and end up barreling their way into a secret room--where an unearthly object is sitting on display. The horse-Controllers, discussing this in Galard, say they don't know what it is. And then the soldiers usher them out of the room and they have no choice but to leave. Once back out, a Bug fighter eludes the human security and lands, carrying Visser Three. He comes out and asks the horse-Controllers to explain what the secret is, and when the leader can't say what it is because he doesn't know, Visser Three kills him. Then he notices the other horses standing around listening in and says they could be Andalites, and he suggests killing them. The Animorphs have to control themselves tightly to avoid running at that, so the Visser believes they're really horses after all, but decides they should be killed anyway and sends Hork-Bajir after them. Cassie attacks one and steps on his weapon, and then they run away. They feel a bit silly seeing as how they've gained no information, but then Ax explains that the object the humans are hiding looks to be an Andalite waste disposal module. Marco can't believe they went to all this trouble to find out the mystery object is an Andalite toilet. Cassie goes home and her parents are disappointed that she has been out late with no explanation. She gets them to leave her alone by admitting she was with Rachel and Jake, and they figure she's just acting a little irresponsibly because she has a crush on him. Behind a closed door they joke about using her crush to embarrass her if they ever need to discipline her. Cassie is still bothered by why the Yeerks need a backup plan to get into Zone 91, but later realizes they want to erase evidence of alien life so the government can't make the public suspicious. She suspects that the Yeerks are going to try to make Controllers out of Zone 91 employees at a scheduled outing of their workers to The Gardens. So, the Animorphs group has to scout out the theme park and possibly investigate whether the Yeerks are infesting people. They are late because Cassie misread the military time for the event, so they have to hurry to figure out their plan. They zero in on a few dark places, so Cassie, Jake, and Marco end up on a log ride. They have the terrible luck to end up in the same car as one of the officers who was interrogating them when they showed up without shoes in Zone 91, and the guy recognizes Marco's voice, so he threatens arrest and calls on his radio for help. Once the car is in the dark, they jump out into the water. They all end up having to go over the waterfall without a boat, and they get out of the way quickly to avoid getting crushed by the next car, after which they do their best to run away from the soldier who wants them arrested. They end up running to the House of Horrors, which is the other place suspected of being a good infestation site. There, Jake, Cassie, and Marco hop on the ride, but end up behind another guy from Zone 91; he doesn't recognize them, but suddenly the guy who DOES recognize them is on a car behind them again and he tells the new guy to not let them get away. The car moves forward and they see the usual fake horror gimmicks, but then they see something truly horrifying: Visser Three and some Hork-Bajir. Luckily, Rachel, Ax, and Tobias have gotten into position too, and Ax in rattlesnake morph is crouched on Rachel's grizzly bear hand, ready to strike if something turns ugly. When the captain they're hoping to infest--who's the head of security and therefore a good candidate--comes through the line, the Yeerks go into action and yank him out of his car to take back to the ship. But the Animorphs attack and start battling them, trying to get the captain back. The whole fight gets messy when Marco, Jake, and Cassie join it and chase the Yeerks out into the street, where they get mixed up with costumed members of the parade. They have a rough time catching up to the Controllers, but when Visser Three gets distracted by seeing that a costumed human has taken off her large character head and has another head underneath, it's enough time for the Animorphs to catch up. They've parked their Bug fighter right on top of an Alien Adventure ride, so it blends in pretty well. The captain manages to get away, and since their cover is blown, the Yeerks decide to get out of there. The newspaper reports the whole mess as pranksters vandalizing the House of Horrors, and claims that the attempted abduction of the captain was a hoax. The Animorphs decide not to get themselves involved in this anymore and figure the Zone 91 folks have had their warning, and it's okay that the Yeerks have this distracting project to keep them busy. In the meantime, they have more important things to do . . . like talking Marco out of launching his brilliant idea to have them all morph horses and make money off a horse-racing scheme. Narrator: Cassie New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Horse (golden stallion) Marco: Horse Rachel: Horse Ax: Horse Tobias: Horse Notable: A typo happened fairly early in the book: "shrivel way" was written instead of "shrivel away." Zone 91 is an obvious reference to Area 51. When Cassie is injured in a bomb blast that is thought to be just a "lost" bomb from the nearby military base, the theory that it's just an accident is accepted readily by Cassie's dad. I think most fathers would be so shaken and freaked out about their daughters being almost caught by a BOMB in an area deemed safe for civilians that he would at least start up an investigation of some kind. A military base causing bombs to go off outside the base which could kill civilians would be a massive scandal and news story. During a conversation between Cassie's parents, Cassie overhears her dad joking that they can embarrass her by dragging her in to talk to "Father Banion" about her relationship with Jake. This suggests that there is some involvement with religion in their family. In a previous book, Ax noticed that Cassie's family does not do a prayer ritual of any kind before eating dinner, while Jake's family does. So apparently Cassie's family is churchgoing but does not say prayers at mealtimes. The Zone 91 group attends The Gardens under a fake company name. The name they choose is "Gondor Industries." K.A. Applegate likes Tolkien references and this is just one of many. It wasn't made clear why the Zone 91 company's outing to The Gardens was known to the Yeerks. Cassie found out about it because she was there to infiltrate, but up to that point no Yeerks had gotten inside, and the horse-Controllers who did never saw anything but the Andalite toilet. Why did they know about the outing if they didn't already have people on the inside? Best lines:
Marco: "I think I like you better as a chicken, Tobias."
Rachel: "Hah-hah! Oh, man, I love this! I love this, I love this, I love this! Yeeeee-haaah!" Cassie: I realized my life had gotten weird. I was flying a mile up, listening to a thought-speak debate between a bald eagle and an osprey over the existence of aliens. Good grief.
Rachel: "Are you okay?"
Jake: "We acquire some horse DNA, then we fly out to the Dry Lands and spy on the modest horses."
Cigar-chewing man: "Your horse is blue. Never seen a blue horse."
Ax: "It's an Andalite Dome ship's modular waste disposal system."
Cassie: "And in the meantime, we have to avoid getting arrested by an Air Force captain who is frantically trying to protect the Most Secret Place on Earth, where they are hiding an old Andalite toilet."
Marco: "Could this get any faker?"
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