We snugged the Time Matrix up against the hatch, with air and time running out.

Once more inside the Jahar, I could see the suffering that Loren had endured. The blend of gases from the hoods was adjusted for Andalite bodies, not humans. She was in pain from gradual decompression. She could barely stand.

The visser, though, still stood. Or at least floated.

<Well done, Andalite,> he said. <Thirty seconds left to activate this thing.>

<Go ahead, Yeerk,> I sneered. <Make your move.>

I saw the coldness in his eyes. Colder even than the freezing cold of space. I knew I had guessed right. He had intended to eliminate me. One slash of his Andalite tail to finish me off.

But I was prepared and he knew it. Which of us would win a tail fight in zero gravity? He didn’t know, and neither did I. And there was no time left for mistakes.

How does one turn this thing on? I wondered, looking at the white globe half crammed into the hatchway. No visible instruments or control panels. Has to be direct mind-link using a physical interface.

Loren moved her lips as though speaking. But in the vacuum no sound could be heard. I saw through the plastic hood that her lips had turned blue. Her eyes were fluttering.

<Touch,> I said. <The Matrix responds to touch. I think if we touch and form a mental link, we can —>

The visser moved. Not to attack, but to press his hand against the Time Matrix. He was trying to gain control over it before I could!

I pressed my hand against the Matrix and searched desperately in my mind for a link.

What happened next is almost impossible to describe. And surely impossible for anyone to understand who has not experienced it himself.

As I touched the Time Matrix, and searched for it with my mind, the entire universe simply opened up. Opened up like a piece of fruit that has been exploded into its segments. But that’s not telling a millionth of it.

Everything changed. Everything! The ship around me, the familiar Jahar, was suddenly not a vessel anymore, but an amazing array of fragments, each twisted inside out and outside in. Each piece was connected to every other piece in insane ways that no rational mind could make sense of.

And from each piece of the ship there stretched lines that curled and twirled through space, connecting back to the Taxxon world and back to the StarSword and back to a thousand other places, all somehow visible to me. I could see every place the ship had been. It was as if each of those places were right here and a billion miles away at once!

But all the lines of the ship were dim and dull compared to the spectacle of the living bodies around me. I saw the Andalite body of Alloran opened up and split apart, transparent, twisted so that every part could be seen from every angle at once. I saw the living, beating hearts! I saw the muscles of the tail. I saw the ways the eyes were attached to the brain, and not just from outside, but from inside.

And to my horror, I saw the Yeerk slug. It was wrapped around Alloran’s brain, sinking into every wrinkle and crevice, sinking deep between the four segments. I could literally see the flow of thoughts and emotions. I saw inside the slug that was Visser Thirty-two. I saw the way the Yeerk mind drew memories from Alloran and sent back orders. I saw and felt the impotent rage of Alloran as he lay helpless in the Yeerk’s grasp.

I know how impossible it is to really grasp this. But I saw in and through and around everything at once. I saw time lines stretching back from the Yeerk and back from Alloran. I saw their pasts. And I saw the horrible moment when those time lines became entwined, becoming one.

I could see Alloran’s past in flashes of wild action and wild emotion. I saw the terrible moment when Alloran stood amidst battlefield slaughter on the Hork-Bajir home world. I saw the ground piled high with Hork-Bajir and Andalite dead.

And I saw the actual decision deep in Alloran’s despairing brain, the decision to release the forbidden Quantum virus.

I felt his bitterness when even that evil measure failed, and the Hork-Bajir were lost to the Yeerks. I saw the retreat of the shattered, beaten Andalite force.

I was almost drowning from this assault of data. It was as if I had been plugged directly into every computer ever built and all of them were dumping information into my brain.

I even saw the time line of the black hole itself. I saw it form from the explosive moment of the universe’s birth, and watched it condense and burn, bright as a huge star. I saw it die and collapse, digging a hole in space itself.

But then, amidst all the swarm of information, among all the insides and outsides, all the pasts and all the connections, I felt the will of Visser Thirty-two.

I felt him take hold of the Time Matrix. And I felt the Matrix respond, felt it turn to him. In the visser’s Yeerk brain I saw the image of the Yeerk home world. He was forming it, clear and detailed.

I saw the awful pools where the Yeerks were born. I felt the Kandrona rays that beat down from the Yeerks’ own strange sun.

He was directing the Time Matrix! Aiming it! Telling it to take him there, to the Yeerk home world!

NO!

I focused my will, and in the weird universe I inhabited, I saw my own living brain as it focused, concentrated, bringing more and more mental power to bear.

It was insane! I could watch my own brain work. Watch my own brain watching my own brain watching my own brain.

I had to take control of the Time Matrix. I had to fight, to resist the visser. I summoned up an image in my head. But it was a confused picture. I saw the part of the Andalite world where I had grown up. The trees, the grass, the sky…. But mixed in with that image were others. I saw them float up out of my own brain. I saw them skim by, three-dimensional pictures looking so flat and strange in this multidimensional universe.

I saw my own Andalite world, but mixed in with it were images of Earth — the pictures I had seen.

Somewhere far off, I realized I could see my own body beginning to freeze. Systems were shutting down. I could see inside fingers that were frozen stiff. I could see a tail that hung limp, all tension gone. My hearts were beating sluggishly.

I was watching my own body die. I was weakening. The visser, too, was hurt by the cold, but the Yeerk himself, down inside Alloran’s head, was still alert and strong.

Slowly the balance shifted to him. The images were more and more of the Yeerk home world. His images were coming in over mine, like a tide. I was losing. I was failing as the cold shut down my body and reached tendrils into my mind.

And then … a new mind. Alien, but familiar in a way. I saw the Yeerk jerk in alarm and surprise. This new force, this new mind was strong. Stronger than he could have expected.

Loren!

I saw inside her and through her. I saw her thoughts. And I saw her push back the visser’s own images. Not defeating him, but keeping him at bay.

I realized something else had changed. The black hole was further away now. The Jahar could still be seen, but it, too, was further away.

We were moving! The Time Matrix had been programmed, and we were moving through time.

The last memory I had, as the cold collapsed my consciousness, was of someone vast and incredible. A being like nothing I could have imagined. It saw me. It saw us all.

And it laughed.