The Mortron flew at me!

The visser’s blade split the air, aiming at my head!

Something moving! To my left, not fast by Andalite standards, but fast enough.

Loren spun the dead Mortron in her hand around and threw it with all her might. The Mortron slipped off the end of Loren’s claw fingernails. It flew through the air and hit the other Mortron head on.

“Softball!” Loren yelled.

The Mortron that had been attacking me was knocked down. I swept my tail blade right to left and knocked the visser’s blade away. It came within a hair of my face.

Loren calmly picked up her softball bat from the spot where it had fallen. And she annihilated the last Mortron, the one that had been tangled in her hair.

I think it was that very moment when I decided I could definitely get to like humans. At first they seemed almost ridiculously weak, tottering around on their two legs, having to make sounds to communicate, lacking anything in the way of tail or other defenses.

But humans had some definite possibilities.

<Nice throw,> I said.

“It’s called a pitch,” Loren said. She smiled. “Thanks.”

<Your Mortrons are done for, Visser,> I said to him. <It’s just you and me now. Tail-to-tail.>

The Yeerk slug called Visser Thirty-two glared hatred at me through his stolen Andalite eyes. <You think you’ve won, Andalite? You think you can kill me now? Guess again. You haven’t thought it through. But then again, I have the advantage of adding Alloran’s Andalite knowledge to my own. What do you think will happen to whoever is left behind in this universe once it is broken apart?>

I had to struggle to think. An artificial universe … composed of the thoughts and memories of three different individuals …

<What? Over your head, is it? A collapsed time line returns us each to our own proper space-time location.>

<So you go back to the Jahar. Back to being sucked into a black hole. I can live with that, Yeerk. I don’t care how you die. Here, from my tail. Or there, drawn helplessly into a black hole. So long as you die. You are an abomination. The first Andalite-Controller. I just want you to be the last.>

“I told you he was scared to fight you,” Loren said.

<I guess you were right.>

The visser hesitated. But I knew he would walk away. I could feel his resolve failing. But his malice, his evil remained as strong as ever.

<The day will come, Elfangor, when I will destroy you. I will make it personal. I will make it very personal.>

Then he turned and plunged back into the vortex wall.

“That’s the end of him.”

<No. I don’t think so,> I said. I won’t say I had a vision. I don’t believe much in supernatural things. But I felt deep down that the visser and I would find our time lines entwined again someday.

“So now what? We have to get out of here fast. My hair is still growing. My nails are out of control. I feel like I’m getting older. My … well, I’m getting older, I’ll leave it at that. But I swear I’m suddenly eighteen!”

<Yes. Your face is changing. And I, too, feel myself changing. We must leave. But this time there can only be one person directing the Time Matrix. We have to go somewhere real. Somewhere that is a part of the true universe.>

“The Andalite world?”

<No,> I said heavily. <What would I do if I went back to my own people? I mutinied against Alloran, my prince. I left Arbron behind to live as a Taxxon. And I know too many secrets. I know that my own people did use a Quantum virus in the Hork-Bajir war. What might they do if they suddenly had the Time Matrix?>

“I guess sometimes even good people do bad things. I mean, that’s what war is all about, isn’t it?”

<If we use the Time Matrix to win this war we will no longer be Andalites. Not what I think of as Andalites, anyway. We have to win this war by being ourselves. By living up to our own standards, not by becoming as brutal and ruthless as the Yeerks are.>

“You mean what’s the point of winning, if by winning you lose what you were fighting for.”

<Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. I can’t give my people the Time Matrix. And I can’t let the Yeerks have it, either. And it cannot be destroyed, only hidden.>

Loren looked strangely at me. “You’re going to hide it on Earth?”

<Earth. Yes. And this time no nosy, greedy Skrit Na will stumble across it.>

“What do you want me to do?”

<Imagine your Earth, your home, just as it is today. Picture every last detail. Your mother. Your friends. Your hollow human house. Picture the time just after the Skrit Na took you. An hour afterward.>

“That was like, what, a week ago? Did all this happen in just a week?”

<Yes. Just a week. And we need to go back in time. Back before your mother would have noticed you missing. But not before the Skrit Na took you or we would undo this entire time line.>

“Maybe we should erase this time line. Save Arbron. Save Alloran.”

<And the two of us never meet?>

“I wouldn’t want that.”

<Me neither. But more importantly, we wouldn’t know the exact effects of rewriting all that history. It may mean the Skrit Na escaped clean with the Time Matrix and delivered it to the Yeerks. No. We have to keep our time line intact. And as long as the you you’ve been this last week doesn’t encounter some second you, we’ll be fine.>

“There’s one more problem. This me has aged. I’m older. I must be almost eighteen now, judging from the way I’ve grown. People would notice.”

<Yes. But imagine that they don’t. Imagine that you are eighteen and that everyone who has ever known you expects you to be eighteen.>

“Is this really going to work?”

<I don’t know, Loren. Nothing else I’ve tried has worked so far.>

She smiled with her human mouth. “Then I’ll take care of driving the Time Matrix. Let’s go.”

She placed her hands against the Time Matrix and closed her eyes.

The swirl tightened around us, and I saw images flash by. Images of a planet I had never visited, but already knew and cared for.

And then we were a million light-years, and one week, away.