| #24: The Suspicion |
Detailed Plot: Rachel and Cassie are gathering up stuff that Cassie's family is going to give to Goodwill when they find a tiny spaceship that looks like a toy. They throw it in with the donation pile and head off to spend the day at the beach. When they get back, Jake is hanging around Cassie's house, having just dropped off some stuff to donate as well. When he sees Cassie in her suit he gets a little bit awkward, which Rachel takes as a sign that Jake thinks she looks hot. Cassie is confused by the whole thing. Then they see a second "toy" ship, which has enough differences that Cassie can tell it's not the same ship they saw before. Amazingly, they see it lift off and fly away. This is of some concern because both the toy ships landed near where the Escafil device is hidden. They call an Animorphs meeting right away. One of the first things they do is go to the secondhand store and look for the ship they saw the first time. Both ships are found there, and the ships actually fly around and shoot at them with little tiny lasers. A thought-speak voice comes from one of the ships announcing that they are the Helmacrons here to dominate the planet, and the voice insults the humans. Rachel goes ballistic when one of the lasers burns about six strands of her hair, and the kids start going after the ships with a baseball bat, but the ships get away. Later, Ax says he's never heard of "Helmacrons," and the group puzzles over how such a tiny race of aliens can be so megalomaniacal. Tobias is following the ships because they're trying to go back to get the Escafil device, and the others use the time to morph to birds so they can also follow, but soon they're able to catch up to Tobias because he's being attacked. Why would they attack a bird? They don't know, and they were trying to shoot his eyes out, but the Animorphs get there in time to stop Tobias from being wounded, and they observe Helmacron ships back at Cassie's farm using their lasers to slice through the water pump which is hiding the Escafil device. Another battle ensues, with the Animorphs in bird form trying to stop the Helmacrons from taking the blue box. But then they use the blue box to channel its power into a shrink ray and they use it on Cassie. She becomes the same size as the Helmacrons, and so does Tobias. Marco gets shot too, and they have to warn Jake, Rachel, and Ax not to come in the barn so they won't get shrunk. After some hijinks involving hiding Ax from Cassie's dad and the tiny shrunken Animorphs trying to avoid getting stepped on, the small group ends up facing the Helmacrons, who are weird flat-headed four-legged creatures who emerge with their laser guns. But since the two ships are competitive against each other, they end up fighting to see who will take them prisoner. The non-shrunken Animorphs take that moment to morph to cockroaches (except for Ax, who does a spider), and though the Helmacrons pretend the morphs don't scare them, they still run, especially from the giant spider. They shoot at Ax and Jake, though, and wound them so they have to demorph. Ax is afraid of crushing the small ones, though, so Marco and Cassie surrender to distract the Helmacrons so Ax and Jake can demorph and heal themselves. Once Marco and Cassie are taken, they're made to crawl to meet the Helmacron leader, who is apparently quite dead. They worship and cater to a dead Helmacron, which makes them think these guys are insane. The Helmacrons insist that Marco and Cassie make a show of groveling before this dead Helmacron, which they do to the best of their ability while wondering what the heck is going on, and then the Helmacrons demand to know the location of the Escafil device. They reveal that they can tell who is morph-capable because of an energy signature they radiate, so Cassie gets the idea to pretend Visser Three--the only other morph-capable creature on the planet--is their absent friend, in order to sic the Helmacrons on him. When Marco and Cassie reveal that they're talking about a Yeerk, a scuffle breaks out among the Helmacrons in which some of them are killed, but they don't really even seem to notice. Then they call for a male Helmacron to come take Marco and Cassie away, which suggests the larger, more aggressive ones are females. The male they're assigned to--whom Marco names "Wuss"--teaches them that they must obey females and wash their food before eating it and just be quiet. Then they realize the Helmacron ship has made it to space, where they see the Pool ship. They track Visser Three, who's in his Blade ship, back down to Earth and next to his limo (where he assumes human morph), and the Helmacrons are excited when they begin to try to attack Visser Three and he knows they're Helmacrons--recognizes them. Cassie and Marco know that they don't want any part of this fight between these two, and they morph to flies. Which has them growing so tiny they're on the microscopic level; they can see individual cells. When their ship gets hit with a Dracon beam, their small size and ability to fly helps save them from getting cooked, but they are briefly unconscious, and when they morph back they're floating down through the sky, landing on Chapman's head and overhearing the conversation between him and Visser Three about destroying one of the Helmacron ships. Apparently the Animorphs who didn't get shrunk managed to defeat the other one by putting it in a vise and threatening the Helmacrons, but they managed to trick Jake and the others by offering to give up "hostages"--their dead leaders, of course. Meanwhile, Ax is nearby holding the Escafil device and Cassie thinks they've fallen into a Helmacron trap. So of course the remaining Helmacron ship manages to steal the Escafil device from Ax and brings it to where the Visser is, using its power to shrink him too. From that point, it becomes a madhouse of everyone trying to get the ship carrying the blue box while anyone who gets too close ends up at the wrong end of the shrink ray. Everyone is yelling instructions to everyone else (while the Helmacrons blast thought-speak gloating, of course), and in the middle of it, Cassie comes up with a plan. She and Marco shrink to their skunk and mole morphs so Tobias can carry them even though he's small, and then he lands on the Helmacron ship. When he becomes human, he's big enough to help steady them as Cassie grows into a whale to weigh the ship down. During the scuffle, Jake and Rachel get shrunken too, but Ax is still his normal size and he helps stop Controllers from getting the blue box. He manages to run away holding the Helmacron ship and the box, and then they get the bright idea to have Ax morph to a bird and fly away, going toward The Gardens so they can acquire a good animal to morph which will be useful against the Helmacrons. Some of them have some trouble holding on, but Visser Three is also there in the forest of feathers, morphing to a creature that is dangerous and deadly, with some shrunken human-Controllers along for the ride. And he's getting as annoyed as the Animorphs are at the Helmacrons. Just as they're about to join forces to attack the Helmacrons, Ax announces that they've arrived at The Gardens, and they use their small size as an asset to jump off the flying bird without getting hurt. Visser Three and some human-Controllers follow. When they land in an animal's fur, they acquire its DNA, finding out that morphing from DNA that's been newly acquired makes them able to attain the animal's usual size. Morphing to a full-grown anteater, Cassie ends up sucking up dozens of Helmacrons, who continue to threaten her from inside her mouth. She doesn't want to kill them, but then when Visser Three catches up to them he figures out their trick and also tells them the Helmacrons are a fungible species, not really able to be killed without having their minds transfer to another body. Hmm. But when Visser Three pulls the same trick and uses his anteater morph to trap Tobias--still a tiny hawk--Ax has to threaten him with his tail blade to call a truce. Uneasily, the groups negotiate. They figure out how to work the shrinking ray by demanding that the male Helmacrons teach them. As part of their deal, they un-shrink everyone and live to fight another day, but then some choice comments leave the Helmacron males inspired to fight the Helmacron females, and suddenly they have a new enemy--each other. After that's all over with, all Cassie wants to do is agree to go to the beach with Jake.
Narrator: Cassie New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Anteater Marco: Anteater Rachel: Anteater Ax: None Tobias: None Notable: This book has each chapter begin with a sort of absurdist quote from a Helmacron ship log, introducing us to these tiny megalomaniacal aliens. It's its own mini-story from the point of view of the Helmacrons aboard the either the Galaxy Blaster or its rivals on the other Helmacron ship, the Planet Crusher. A narration error pops up; Cassie is the narrator, and earlier in one chapter the narration says they're flying toward "my farm" but later it is referred to as "Cassie's farm," as if the author forgot whose voice she was using for a moment. The Helmacrons use thought-speak, like Andalites, but also have the ability to make spoken sounds. They also dedicate themselves to dead leaders and don't actually experience mental death when they're killed. Cassie figures out that acquiring DNA from an animal after she's been shrunk will enable her to morph into that animal at the size it's supposed to be. After they're returned to normal, it seems that if the shrunken DNA resulted in small versions of the animals, the anteater DNA would now be prepared to turn them into colossal anteaters if they used it. This isn't explored. Best lines: Cassie: "Come here. I just want to see if it's even possible for dirt to cling to you."
Marco: "We grovel like the pitiful losers we are! We grovel like a guy who hasn't got a date the day before prom and the only girl around is the head cheerleader, that's how much we grovel. Cassie, you could join in any time, you know."
Cassie: "The loud, hyper ones are females. This one is a male."
Marco: "How about if we call you 'wuss'? Listen up, Wuss--" Visser Three: "I don't know about you, Andalites, but these creatures are really, really, really annoying me."
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