"Applegate, Katherine A - Animorphs - 02 - The Visitor (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Applegate Katherine A)

Before he died at the hands of the Yeerk leader, a terrible creature called Visser Three, the Andalite gave us a great gift Ч and a great curse.
The gift was the power to morph. To absorb the DNA of any living animal and to become that animal. Never before had anyone but the Andalites themselves been given the power to morph.
It meant a life of secrets. Of terrible danger.
The Yeerks think we are a small band of escaped Andalites. They know that morphs had attacked their Yeerk pool. They know that morphs had even infiltrated the home of one of their most important Controllers Ч Chapman.
But they don't know that we are just five normal human kids who'd been walking home from the mall one night.
Visser Three wants us caught or dead. Visser Three usually gets what he wants.
But I was glad to fight the Yeerks. Maybe I just had less to lose than the others. Or maybe something about the lonely, defeated, yet courageous Andalite prince touched me so deeply that I could never regret fighting to settle the score.
But there has been a price to pay. You see, there is a limit on the power to morph. You must never remain in a morph for more than two hours. If you do, you are trapped.
Forever.
And that is the curse of the Andalite's gift.
That is why, when Rachel returned to her human body, I didn't.
It would take Rachel a while to get home on the bus. I traveled a little faster. So I had time to waste.
The sun was setting, and in my mind I could still picture the freed hawk heading into the sun.
I hoped she had found a nice patch of forest to spend the night. That's what a red-tail likes: a nice tree branch with a clear view of a meadow full of little mice and rats and shrews and voles as they scurry below. That's how we . . . they . . . hunt.
I headed toward the tall buildings of downtown. I caught a beautiful thermal that billowed up the face of some skyscrapers. A thermal is like a big bubble of warm air. It rises beneath your wings and makes it effortless to just go soaring up and up.
I caught the thermal and went shooting up the side of the skyscraper like I was riding an elevator.
A lot of the offices were empty, since it was Saturday. But around the sixtieth floor I saw an old man looking out the window. Maybe he was some big, important businessman, I don't know.
But when he saw me he smiled. He watched me soar up and away. And I knew he was jealous.
I was half a mile up when I finally turned away from the sun and headed toward Rachel's house.
The sun was going down. The moon just peeked over the rim of the world.
Then, I felt . . . I don't know how to describe it. It was in the air above me. Huge. Vast! Bigger than any jet.
I looked up. But there was nothing there.
And yet, I felt it in my heart. I knew it was up there. Coming toward me, but perhaps a mile higher than me.
I focused all the power of my hawk's eyes on the sky.
A ripple!
That's what it was. A ripple. Like the ripple you make throwing a stone into a calm pond. The faint twilight stars flickered as it passed by. The sun's light bent. And for Just a split second I was sure I could see . . . something.
But no. No. It was gone.
If it had ever really been there.
I tried to follow the hole in the sky, but it was moving too fast. I tried to see which way it was going. And where it had come from. It seemed to be moving away from the mountains and picking up speed.
But I lost it over the suburbs as it accelerated away.
I flew on to Rachel's house. I watched as she got off the bus far below me. The others, Jake, Marco, and Cassie, were all up in her room, waiting for us. I was not surprised.
I said, floating above her.
She could only wave up at me. You can "hear" thought-speak when you're human, but you can't make thought-speech.
I told Rachel.
She gave me a little wink.
Rachel went in through the front door. I flew in an open window. There we were, all together, the five of us: the Animorphs.
The other three of us must have seen the commercial and were not at all happy. -
Marco started the conversation.
"Are you INSANE?!!" he said.


CHAPTER 3

Marco yelled for a while. Jake made us promise never to do something that stupid again. And Cassie, being Cassie, got everyone to make up and be friends again.
"We aren't supposed to be rescuing animals," Marco said. "We're supposed to be rescuing the entire human race from being enslaved by the Yeerks."
I pointed out.
He scowled at me. But there's no point in scowling at me. With my face I can out-scowl anyone.
"You're right," Marco said. "But since all of you guys think you have to save the world, and since you're all ray friends, more or less, I figure someone has to keep you from being total idiots."
Marco is the most reluctant of the Animorphs. Although actually he's the one who came up with the word "Animorph." And he's been in with us from the start. Marco just thinks we should look out for ourselves and our own families.
Marco and I will probably never be very close. He's a typical smart-aleck kind of guy. Always confident. Always has some funny or sarcastic thing to say. He's short, or at least he's not very tall. I guess girls think he's cute because he has this long brown hair and dark eyes.

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