Free The Message by K.A. Applegate

lasted an hour.
    I felt the change begin as I focused on morphing. At first, I thought it would kill me. I soon had most of the weight of a dolphin, with nothing but my human feet paddling to keep my head above water. My arms had already become flippers.
    A wave washed over me, leaving me sputtering from my mouth and my blowhole at the same time.
    I realized I could no longer keep my head above water. I took a deep lungful and let myself sink.
    As my eyes went from human to dolphin, my underwater vision improved. I could see other figures kicking and writhing in the water around me. Jake, half-changed. Rachel, almost complete. Marco, with a dolphin grin, looking amused.
    Then, with a kick of my newly completed tail, I knew I was safe. I had made the change. I was a dolphin in a dolphin’s world. The human clumsiness,the human cold, the human fear of an alien environment, all evaporated.
    I was warm and in control and right where I should be.
    
    One by one they answered. We had made it. Too bad this was just the easy part of the mission.
     Marco said sardonically. ever
do it again.>
     Jake prodded me.
    I tried to relax, to let my human mind recede just a little. I needed to listen to the dolphin instincts. I needed to understand the whale’s instructions. Something no human could ever do.
     I said.
     Jake said.
    It felt strange, taking the lead. But only I knew the way. We traveled near the surface for a while. This made it confusing for me, because whales go deeper, and the world the whale saw and knew was a deeper world than I, as a dolphin, experienced.
    And yet, I knew I was going in the right direction. My echolocating clicks painted murky, half-understood pictures in my mind of underwater hillsand valleys and rifts. I felt currents tugging at me. I sensed changes in water temperature.
    In the end, I just knew.
     I said.
    We surfaced, blew out the stale air, and filled our lungs with the good clean ocean air.
     It was Rachel.
     I asked her.
    
    We all watched as a helicopter flew low and very slowly over the water. It was just a few hundred yards away, and with our dolphin vision, we couldn’t see it as well as we might have with our human eyes.
    But as it flew closer, I could see that it was dragging a cable through the water.
     Jake speculated.
     Marco agreed.
     I said. No one argued. We all knew it was true. Controllers were flying that helicopter.
    The Yeerks were here.

CHAPTER 17
     
    E veryone take in as much air as you can,> I said again.
    We dove and swam almost straight down. Down, down, leaving the bright barrier behind. Away from the sun. Away from the light. Away from the air that we needed just as much as humans did.
    I echolocated a school of fish ahead, just below us. But we weren’t there to eat lunch. We swam through the fish and still we headed down. Down until we could see the ocean floor beneath us.
    We leveled off and skimmed across the ocean floor, like low-flying jets racing at treetop level. Over waving fields of seaweed. Through darting schoolsof fish. Over jutting extrusions of rock, encrusted by barnacles and home to a thousand bizarre crabs and lobsters and urchins and worms and snails.
    Ahead was a ridge, a sort of long, low hill. We sailed over it.
     Rachel said.
    We all saw it at the same time.
    Saw it, yes, but could hardly believe it.
    I’ve become used to seeing impossible things — aliens, spaceships, my own friends turning into animals. But this was just plain mind-boggling.
    It was round. As