Part 3 (2/2)

I saw them up above us. They were going the same direction as us, but moving in a tight V-formation.

'Let's go catch them!' I cried.

Tobias laughed. 'Yeah, right. See the way they fly? They never stop flapping. They're like machines. They can fly hundreds of miles. You ever watch a dog try to catch a pa.s.sing car? That's what it would be like, us trying to catch those geese.'

He was right. The geese just kept power-flying. Soon they were way past us.

'How long till we get to the Dry Lands?' Rachel asked.

'Long time,' Tobias said. 'But we're getting some great alt.i.tude. That will help.'

'This will be so cool,' Marco said. 'Zone Ninety-one! We will penetrate the very heart of the government conspiracy to cover up alien visitors !'

'Marco, just how dumb are you?' Rachel asked. 'We know about the real aliens. We know they don't look like E.T. or the guys you always see on alien books. And we know the real aliens, the Yeerks, don't go around kidnapping backwoods goobers and doing medical experiments on them.'

'Maybe there are two different bunches of aliens,' Marco said. 'Maybe there are these aliens who crash-landed back in the fifties. Plus the Yeerks more recently.'

'Yeah, right, Agent Mulder,' Rachel grumbled. 'Earth is the crossroads of every pa.s.sing alien. We're the McDonald's next to the highway of the galaxy.'

They argued on for a while, and, not for the first time, I realized my life had gotten weird. I was flying a mile up, listening to a thought-speak debate between a bald eagle and an osprey over the existence of aliens.

Good grief.

After a while I tuned them out. It is very quiet in the high air. No noise from the ground. None. Sometimes you hear the engines of a jet flying by, five miles farther up. But mostly all you hear is the soft rus.h.i.+ng of wind over feathers. And the sound of your own wings beating.

We used the alt.i.tude of the first thermal to jump from thermal to thermal. We would fly out of one gentle vortex of warm air, descend to the next, and let it raise us up again.

And after a while, I saw the roads becoming fewer and smaller. The houses thinned out. The gas stations were miles apart. I saw cows and sheep standing around in random patterns far below.

And then even the cows and sheep were left behind as were the last homes and businesses. Below us the ground was dry, covered with yellowed gra.s.s, and marked out by barbed-wire fences.

Tobias said, 'Hey. Check out that sign down there. The one by the dirt road.' I aimed my osprey vision and read: STOP!.

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. RESTRICTED AREA.

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.

ALL OTHERS ARE SUBJECT TO ARREST AND.

PROSECUTION. THIS MEANS YOU.

'l'm guessing this is the beginning of the famous Zone Ninety-one,' I said.

'Friendly, aren't they?' Rachel said.

'lf you were trying to conceal a vast government conspiracy to hide an alien s.p.a.cecraft, you'd be paranoid, too,' Marco said.

I wasn't sure whether he was joking or not. Sometimes it's hard to tell with Marco.

I could see the base called Zone 91. It was a cl.u.s.ter of squat, unattractive buildings that all looked as if they'd been built forty years ago. There were three very large buildings that looked like aircraft hangars. And there was an airstrip. But I could also see lots of vehicles: trucks, Humvees, even some tanks.

And there were horses, just scattering, sauntering through the base like it wasn't there.

'Marco, I know a lady you'd love,' Rachel muttered. 'Her name is Crazy Helen. Crazy, because she sounds like you.'

'Let's look for those horses,' I suggested. 'l think that's the place to start.'

'The phone-using horses,' Tobias said. 'Horse-Controllers.'

Something about the way he said it made it sound like he doubted the whole thing.

'We did see a Yeerk crawl out of that horse's ear,' Rachel said defensively.

'And we did almost get fried by a Bug fighter's Dracon beam,' I pointed out.

'You didn't actually see a Bug fighter, though. And with pathetic human eyes, who can tell if it's a Yeerk slug or just a plain old snake? Now that I can become human again, I can really remember how blind humans are.'

'l cannot believe you don't believe us, Tobias^ Rachel complained.

'l didn't say I don't believe you. It's just that it doesn't make any sense. I mean, why would Yeerks want to infest some s.k.a.n.ky wild horses?'

'l don't know,' I admitted. 'But I know what I saw.'

'There!' Rachel said. 'A bunch of horses. Over by the water hole. Maybe that's them.'

We banked sharply left and headed toward them. There were half a dozen mares, two gangly colts, and one big stallion who stood off by him- self on a slight rise. The stallion sniffed the breeze, head high.

'That's not them,' I said.

'How do you know?'

'Because they're acting exactly like horses, that's why. They have colts. And the stallion is behaving like a stallion. The horses we want won't act that way.'

'Okay. Well, you guys need to demorph,' Tobias said. 'You're nearly at the two-hour limit. There are some rocks over there. You'll have shade and privacy.'

So we headed for the rocks and landed. They were just a pile of rocks like any other jumble of boulders.

Except that we'd overlooked one vital fact: They were on the far side of the sign. The sign that said THIS MEANS YOU.

Chapter 8.

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