| #25: The Extreme |
Detailed Plot: Marco is ecstatic to have a date with one of the hottest girls in school, but it's mainly a bad experience; she invites him to a classical concert because he's a good student in their shared music class, and he turns out to fall asleep during the concert, leaving her unimpressed. He's sulking about this when Erek the Chee comes into the Animorphs' school to tell them the Yeerks have a new plan: they want to arrange for a satellite system to broadcast Kandrona rays, and the Animorphs have to stop them. First, they have to find where the new satellite is being built, and all Erek knows is that Visser Three is due to visit it soon, so the best thing to do is somehow get on his ship. They know where his secret feeding pasture is (since Visser Three is in an Andalite body, he's got to eat grass), so they head out there in bird morph to try to catch up with the Visser. Erek and some of his Chee friends change their holograms so they can impersonate Rachel, Cassie, Jake, and Marco. They fly to the feeding pasture in their bird morphs, switch to fly morphs, and attach themselves to the Visser's underbelly. When his Blade ship shows up, they hitch onboard with him. But then Ax overhears a discussion about the trip and finds that the flight will be three and a half hours, which causes a problem for their morphing limit. Trapped on the Blade ship, they have to figure out a plan to demorph briefly before returning to fly or they'll get trapped as flies. So, when they've got about twenty minutes left, they have Ax impersonate Visser Three's thought-speak voice to confuse the guards, and in the confusion they end up being alone in a room long enough to demorph and remorph. Unfortunately they have to kill a Taxxon to accomplish this, and the Taxxon eats itself out of instinct, disturbing everyone. But since the Taxxon was obviously killed by an Andalite, the Visser knows they're on board, and he charges his guards with the impossible task of finding them. Since the Yeerks probably know they're bugs, they figure insecticide might be on its way, so they decide they don't want to die bugs and morph to battle morphs. It's then that the Visser barges in and finds them, and he's got plenty of Hork-Bajir armed with Dracon beams to help him. But they happen to be in a room with some preserved specimens of a race Ax recognizes as the Venber, a sub-zero-living alien race that went extinct aeons ago. They're unsure why these creatures are there, but breaking one of the cold preservation modules helps spray supercooled mist through the room and keeps the Yeerks at bay. A quick and violent plan succeeds in opening a door for the Animorphs to tumble out of the ship (only about twenty feet above the ground), and they find themselves in a cold climate, unsure of where on Earth. To survive the cold, they have to figure out the best way to make use of their morphs. Marco has a close call going into shock in his gorilla body, but the others get him through it until he can morph to a wolf. The wolf bodies aren't ideal for the cold weather, but they're the best they have, with Ax and Tobias morphing to fleas to hide in Rachel's fur. As they're trying to figure out what to do, they encounter, surprisingly, some Venber. Ax is confused as to what they're doing there, but staying alive becomes more important as the Venber begin to attack them, tracking with echolocation and positioning Dracon assault cannons at them. They have to run away, and the wolves' speed and endurance manages to be enough to outrun the Venber. They don't know how the Yeerks are controlling these guys, because theoretically a Yeerk would freeze if it tried to infest a Venber, but they figure the Yeerks have to be behind this. When they're far enough ahead, they demorph and remorph in turn while protected by each other. Marco makes a crack about Tobias hiding on Rachel, which causes them to get self-conscious about their relationship, so Tobias and Ax hide on Jake instead after the morph. The Venber are apparently still tracking them, and then they see a polar bear so they know they're in the Arctic. The bear also starts loping after them, and as night falls they just don't know what they're going to do to survive the night. Eventually they dig a makeshift cave in the snow, and stay awake all night keeping each other warm and morphing/demorphing to refresh themselves. Ax explains that the Venber are extinct because another ancient race called The Five would harvest them--even though they were sentient--and would use their odd property of melting in temperatures above zero to use the resultant liquid in computers. As for these Venber, Ax suggests they were created in a hybrid situation with human DNA. In the morning they can still smell the Venber (but the Venber can't echolocate them as they're underground). They witness a polar bear seal-hunting, and they're a bit disgusted (though hungry) after watching the bear rip a seal apart to eat it. The Animorphs seem to think Cassie will have a problem with them trying to hunt seals, but surprisingly, she thinks it's fine and explains her values system to them. They eat some of the seal that the polar bear left behind, and Marco discovers that baby seals are watching them; they must be eating the pups' mother. But Marco also decides these babies will be good cold-weather morphs for them. Two of them morph to dolphin to get one of the babies, and they toss the pup onto the ice for the others to use. They all acquire the baby seal, then morph it. But then the Venber show up, and it's likely they saw the morphing happen so they can't let them get back to the Yeerks and report that they're human. They dive into a hole the Venber have shot in the ice, and off they go in the water. It's not long before a pair of orcas get on their tails and try to eat them. They have to jump out of the ice and get away, and decide to try to throw the whales off by morphing. The whales aren't exactly sure what to think of that so they leave them alone, but then they realize they've been spotted by a human in a boat. (The engine of the boat probably helped drive the whales away too.) The human had seen them morph, so he thinks they're spirits. He introduces himself as Derek, and Marco supposes he's Inuit. Immediately Marco likes him because he has a sense of humor and is not rattled by seeing an Andalite or a talking bird either. He gives them seal pelts to keep them warm. Derek starts talking about the "Star Trek guys"--obviously the Yeerks building the base nearby--and he tells them he thinks it's really irritating. He doesn't like the disturbance they're making and the mess they're creating in the water and on the land. Derek wants to know if the Animorphs are related to those guys, and Jake explains that the Yeerks are the bad guys and the Animorphs are there to destroy their base. So when Derek mentions that he is "buddies" with the polar bear--and has named it Nanook--they ask for his assistance in acquiring polar bear DNA. So they manage to subdue the bear long enough to get its DNA, and then they all use the bear morph to make their way to the nearby Yeerk base. Then the next task is to figure out how to destroy it. In their polar bear morphs, they head on up to the base and none of the Venber appear to notice them. It isn't until a human-Controller notices them that any alarm is raised, and because someone calls out "program the Venber!" they realize these aren't Controllers; they're more like biological robots, being used for their cold-weather strength and their ability to work tirelessly. When the programming changes to chasing them, the Animorphs run to one of the Bug fighters parked at the base, and the Venber helplessly follow, melting in the heat inside the ships. It's horrifying because they're unable to fight their programming and just die because they're programmed to, but the Animorphs have no choice but to go on with their mission as they witness this. They steal the Bug fighter, use it to destroy several key parts of the base, and take off in it heading south. Visser Three's ship gives chase, and since the Visser's ship is faster they just run as far as they can before abandoning it (once they escape in their bird morphs, of course). They manage to get home by navigating trains and whatnot, and when they finally relieve the Chee of their impersonation duties, Marco is relieved that they're back someplace warm, having destroyed the base and survived. Narrator: Marco New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Seal (baby), polar bear Marco: Seal (baby), polar bear Rachel: Seal (baby), polar bear Ax: Seal (baby), polar bear Tobias: Seal (baby), polar bear Notable: This book was ghostwritten by Jeffrey Zeuhlke. A couple of early language mistakes: this book capitalizes "Android" once for no reason, and accidentally writes "Visser's Three" instead of "Visser Three's." The Venber race is introduced here: An alien species that lived in sub-zero temperatures. Being that they melt above zero, the liquid they melt into is a good superconducter and another ancient race called The Five used them in their computers, as a harvest animal even though they were sentient. Their planet is called Venbea. The Venber that show up in this book are probably hybrids with humans, created and bred by the Yeerks. Ax and Tobias satisfying their hunger by drinking blood in flea morph brings up an interesting question. If they morphed to flea to eat and then morphed back to their natural forms, would it mean they wouldn't be hungry for a while? If they morph back, does "hunger" grow or shrink based on what state they left their morphs in, or would it be dangerous for one of them to expect a satisfactory amount of food for a flea to carry them through once they go back to normal? The Five don't seem to get mentioned in any other books even though Ax suggests they had an important altercation with Andalites in the ancient past. The Andalites are insinuated to have assisted in their complete demise. The character Derek is not as disturbed or as determined to question the Animorphs as most people would be if they saw people turning into animals. The explanation here is that he is an indigenous person and their tribe believes in animal spirits. This is the second time the Animorphs books have done something like this--relegated a witness to non-dangerous status because of some ideal Native naïveté. Most of the time if someone witnesses them morphing or gets in on their secrets, they become a security risk. But people who are rural natives of some kind--in this case, Derek is Inuit--always seem to be ignored as a security risk and assigned an unrealistic, stereotypical local tradition that covers this base. It's read as offensive by some since several times the Animorphs show up in remote lands and meet natives who act like this, and it's especially odd in this case since Derek otherwise seems aware of pop culture references. Best lines: Marco: Every class has a Marco. You know, the one who's the smartest, wittiest, most charming, coolest, and the best-looking. Marco: "I'm not allowed to hitchhike. Especially not with evil alien parasites. My dad is very definite about that." Marco: I was fly-size now, but my body was still more human than insect. I was not an attractive creature right then. Marian would not have asked me out. Ax: "He's welcoming the Visser back aboard the Blade ship. Or he may be telling him his brother is a meteor fragment. I understand Galard, but this morph's hearing is very uncertain."
Jake: "What do polar bears eat?" Marco: It was not a good night. It did not pass easily. I was cold, scared, hungry, cold, hungry, and also cold. Cassie: "Don't kill a sentient creature except in absolute self-defense, try not to wipe out endangered species, and if you're going to raise animals for food, treat them as well as you possibly can. But when you're a wolf, a starving wolf wandering around the frozen Arctic, and you see a meal, eat it."
Derek: "So what are you, then? Aliens?"
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