| #9: The Secret |
Detailed Plot: Cassie and Rachel morph into rats to try to figure out why Cassie's science project (with a rat in a maze) isn't working. They get their answer, but they also get chased by dumb boys at school and have to abort their "mission." Later, they meet up in Cassie's barn and discuss the logging company that's wiping out habitat in their forest. Unfortunately, they can tell it's a Yeerk operation because of a mysterious force field and armed guards on patrol, so they figure these guys expect that the forest must be where Andalites are hanging out. Cassie and Marco morph wolves while Jake and Rachel take to the skies as birds with Tobias. While in wolf mode, Cassie and Marco check out the logging operation and scope out how much woods have been cleared, but soon the guards start shooting at them and toss a net over them while firing with Dracon beams. Cassie isn't caught but Marco is stuck. She runs back to try to help, but can't lift the suspiciously heavy net. Luckily Ax shows up, slices the net with his tail blade, and releases Marco. The three escape into the forest. The Animorphs discuss the possibilities and decide to investigate how the Yeerks got permission to start logging in a national forest. They figure they need to get inside the force field-protected building. When Cassie gets home her parents want her to go rescue a skunk, which is something her dad won't do because he's been sprayed before and got sort of traumatized by it. When Cassie encounters the skunk she finds that it has been burned by what is obviously a Dracon beam, and she is overcome with guilt and sadness because the skunk got hurt because of her and her friends. The group (including Ax in human morph) meets up in the mall, where they discuss the next course of action. They decide to morph termites to get inside of the building. They're frightened because termites are also social insects and they don't want to have an experience like their previous ant morph. But they see no other way. Cassie tries to focus on her homework that afternoon but can't seem to get through it, so she helps her dad in the barn. He reveals to her that the rescued skunk has babies somewhere out in the woods, and that fact combined with knowing she has to go morph a termite in the forest in a dangerous mission really sends her into depression. She decides to acquire the skunk and impersonate the mother at some future time so she can take care of the kits. The group morphs into great horned owls (though it's not clear when some of the group members acquired that animal, particularly Jake), and they fly off to the woods. Cassie listens for the cries of baby skunks. She thinks she hears them, though as an owl they sound like food to her. They get to the building they're going to investigate and decide someone needs to distract the Yeerks. Ax is ineligible because he might be needed to operate a computer inside, so the others draw straws to see who is going to be bait. Weirdly, the distraction ends up falling to Jake, who's used to leading the missions. They have no choice but to go with it, so off Jake goes in wolf morph to distract some Yeerks. Ax, Marco, Rachel, and Cassie morph termites. They find they are blind but able to sense a "calling," which they follow. They find a way to get through the force field around the building by ducking in under the shield of a pine needle, and once they're inside they hear something so compelling that it sounds like a parent calling them, welcoming them in. They follow automatically and end up caught up in the chemical commands of the colony. They're forced to go through the motions that the termite queen's hormones demand--they're in charge of protecting the termites that are carrying the queen's eggs--and though Cassie eventually wakes up and remembers who she is, she can't break free of the commands. Somehow, despite being commanded to kill ants for the colony, Cassie manages to instead kill the queen, and it frees all the termites (including herself and her companions). Cassie panics and demorphs at that point, though it's painful because she's inside wood at the time. Finally the group is inside the building, but Cassie has been driven nearly insane by the experience. She feels she will never be okay again as Ax goes to work on the computer inside. Ax and Marco find that a committee still needs to vote on whether the logging can happen in the national forest, and they see that one of the members is checking out the site soon. They suspect this person will be made a Controller so he will vote yes. Ax adds something to the computer to let him access it from Marco's home computer, and he also uses it to turn off the outer defenses so the force field goes down. There, they escape as wolves. Cassie is still too rattled to think properly. Rachel and Cassie sneak into Cassie's parents' house and try to sleep. Cassie can't sleep properly and just keeps thinking about how all of nature is at war. When she finally does sleep she dreams about being a mother skunk looking for her babies. She awakes very upset at herself for destroying that termite queen--even though she was "just a bug," she hates being a predator or upsetting balance or hurting anything--so she decides she's going to go try to find the skunk babies. Tobias greets her and reveals that he knows she went a little crazy last night, and also it turns out he knows exactly where the babies are. He says there are "four left alive." She knows what that means. Cassie flies out to where the skunk babies are, morphs into the mother, and feeds the poor babies a grasshopper she'd brought. Then she crawls in and falls asleep, content. She's woken up by Jake who is furious that she's let herself be in morph for almost two hours. She morphs out while he tells her she was ten minutes away from being a skunk forever. Marco and Tobias are with him, but Jake tells them to leave him to talk to Cassie. He gets very serious with her and says they need her to win this war. She says that in nature the strong beat and eat the weak, and that maybe it's humans' turn to lose. Jake reminds her it's about individual people as well as a concept of their race. Because this is Cassie's pet project, the other Animorphs volunteer to help her take care of the skunk babies until their mother is well enough to release again. They work out a schedule, and though Cassie is happy that she can save them, she's also disappointed in how small a contribution she's making by doing so. Nevertheless, she and her friends care for the skunk kits, and Cassie at one point ends up having to skunk-spray a dog that gets too enthusiastic. It turns out to be Jake's dog. Poor Homer. The information Ax has gotten from the computer warns that the voting member is coming to check out the woods that very day, and since the Yeerks have already started cutting down the forest they can assume that they have reason to not care what this guy sees. They obviously plan to infest him. They decide they have to stop the Yeerks from infesting this guy at the same time that they have to stop the logging machines from mowing down their skunk babies. Tobias and Cassie fly out to find out if the voting member has been infested yet. They discuss the predator/prey relationship and Cassie wonders where right and wrong fit in, and wonders if it's fair to stick up for her own species at the expense of others. Soon they see the guy--Farrand, the commissioner--and he's very upset by seeing that logging has started. But then Visser Three arrives in human morph. He reacts to the commissioner's protests by slapping him and injuring him. The Animorphs attack and the Yeerks attack back, resulting in Cassie getting a hole burned through her wing. She gets thrown into a box with Farrand and passes out, waking up a little while later with Farrand still only semi-conscious. Her friends are hijacking the heavy equipment and turning it toward the Yeerks, but they turn on the force field so they can't be attacked. Cassie morphs into her regular body (relieving her injury) and then turns into the skunk. Finally, she takes a risk and thought-speaks to Visser Three (trying to sound Andalite), and she threatens to kill Farrand. This gets his attention. When he opens the box prepared to shoot "the Andalite" without hitting the human they intend to infest, Cassie is standing there calmly, ready to fire her skunk payload. And she does so, taking out the whole room of soldiers and putting them into a panic. Cassie thought-speaks to Jake about what she's done, and they bring Ax around to bargain with the Visser. He convinces him that he does not want to go on board the Blade ship smelling like he does because the smell will never come out, and he offers to give the Visser the secret to neutralizing the odor if they will hand over the unconscious human. The deal is made and the Animorphs win. Cassie is still confused at the end of the story, wondering about herself; she killed a termite queen and attacked a Visser to save herself and her people, but she put herself out to save skunks. She can turn into a rat and run from bad kids, but feed pre-killed mice to Tobias. What role do humans really have in this mess, she wonders? Jake helps her sort it out, and they have a laugh over the fact that Visser Three thinks it's grape juice, not tomato juice, that gets rid of skunk smell. Narrator: Cassie New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Rat (white), termite, skunk Marco: Termite, skunk Rachel: Rat (white), termite, skunk Ax: Termite, skunk Notable: The kids who come in and randomly decide to try to kill Rachel and Cassie while they're in rat morph seem to lack real motivation. It seems possible that someone might try to kill a rat if it shows up unexpectedly and bothered them, but it seems very unlikely that these punks would go after rats and try to kill them with their own hands and feet. Rats are big. They aren't bugs. Squishing or smacking one would be really messy. Sometimes it is not said when characters got their morphs, and in this case the great horned owl morph's acquisition is undetermined. It was clear from #6 that Cassie and either Marco or Rachel had this morph, and in subsequent books Rachel used the owl morph, but it wasn't said conclusively that Marco had it. Now in this book everyone morphs owls, including Ax (who didn't use an owl morph in #6 because he was pretending to be Jake). The most likely time for everyone but Jake to have acquired the owl was during #6, but since he has this morph too, at least some of the acquisition has to have been done behind the scenes. Similarly, the termite acquisition appears to have been done mostly in the mall. It must be assumed that Ax either acquired it earlier or acquired it later offstage, because he cannot absorb animals' DNA when in his human morph. The logging company is said to be called "Dapsen Lumber Company." According to Ax, the word "dapsen" is a rude word in the Yeerk language. The commissioner who escaped being attacked and captured by the Yeerks wasn't mentioned again. He didn't exactly see any Yeerk secrets, but the Yeerks tend to either eliminate or infest anyone who might cause trouble for them. It seems strange that the Animorphs would have him delivered to a hospital and then never follow up on whether he was still unmolested, but it's true they can't protect everyone. Best lines: Rachel: "You know, school's been out for ten minutes, and here I am, still at school. This can't be right. It's unnatural." Cassie: That's the thing about Rachel--she's always willing to help talk you into doing something you probably shouldn't do.
Marco: "We're fighting to save the world from the Yeerks. Who cares about some ecology, tree-hugging, recycle-your-cans stuff?"
Jake: "You know how I mentioned you can't eat cigarette butts or dryer lint? Add engine oil to the list." Marco: "I'm just saying if we're going to be superheroes we need to do something about these stupid outfits. We look like refugees from a Bulgarian gymnastics competition." Marco: "Cassie's been the only sane one for so long. Welcome to the loony bin, Cassie. Save the skunks! Hug the trees! Let dogs vote!" Ax: "I believe the smell is causing me to become deranged. I may have to run away in panic."
Visser Three: "You do realize that one day I will have you all. With all your clever tricks, I will still find you."
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