Animorphs #18: The Decision Plot: In uncovering a Yeerk conspiracy to infest the chief of President's Secret Service, the Animorphs have to morph misquitos and acquire him. But suddenly, they find themselves in Z-space. They are rescued by an Andalite scout ship, headed for the planet Leera. For the first time since the crash of his Dome ship, Ax is reunited with his people. As the mission goes on, he begins to wonder who his people actually are and if, in fact he even wants to go back to Earth.

Main Plot Points:

• A Yeerk plot that has its eyes on a prime goal: the US President.
• Ax tries to fight with Visser Three again but V3 bails when the other Animorphs show up.
• The Z-space theories are rewritten as the Animorphs find firsthand what happens to that excess morphing mass.
• Some Andalites have willingly become allied with the Yeerks, the case with the Ascalin incident.
• The only available Yeerk stronghold on Leera is destroyed. Unless someone in the Yeerk big seats makes a really stupid decision, the Leerans should not be in more danger anytime soon.
• Some weird, unexplained stuff going on in the hospital.
  

Characters Introduced/Mentioned:

• Samilin-Corrath-Gahar, captain of the Ascalin and traitor for some unknown reason
• Hareli-Frodlin-Sirinial, loyal T.O. who I'm wondering if he's related to Alloran
• Force Commander Prince Galuit-Enilon-Esgarrouth, even more likely to be related to Ax.
• Visser Four, demoted because of this mission and seen in MM3
• Some actual non-Controller Leerans

Morphs:

• Misquito
• Leeran

Personality Conflicts:

• This is mainly about Ax and his relations with humans and his decision (hence the title) about, since he's been on Earth so long, who are his people really?
• Everyone is generally PO'd at Ax in this book, though Cassie of course stands up for him a little. We get a little more evidence of Rachel & Tobias chemistry.
• Ax has to leave the Ascalin as its warriors sacrifice themselves for the sake of the war, and eventually ends up saving the day.

Notes and Observations:

• Ax is still learning about his human morph- he discovered the adverse effects of consuming large amounts of sugar near the beginning of this book, so there may be some things he still doesn't know.
• Visser Three has a kafit morph, though no one knows for sure how he acquired it (see unanswered questions).
• The Yeerks have apparently decided to stop messing with cops and vice-principals and youth groups and go for the big people in charge.
• Rachel was extremely upset when Tobias suddenly disappeared. And she wasn't exactly subtle about it.
• Leera is probably safe from Yeerk invasion now, since their two major projects: creating ocean-going shock troops, and conquest of the continent, a base from which they would spread into the sea, were both foiled. However, in #27 the Yeerks had developed water craft, modified Bug ships (I'll say it for them, they're smart, but they're not very creative). There may actually be a third attempt on Leera if they can manage water-weapons, since Dracon beams would be somewhat hard to carry through water, and they probably never even considered bombs.

Unanswered Questions:

There are lots of things going on in the background of this book that aren't really explained. One of them involves the Hewlett Aldershot III, which I'll address later. But first, the one that bugs everyone whenever they read this book: what the heck is the deal with V3 and the Andalite homeworld?

Okay, we know the Yeerks have had their eyes (let's not be nitpicky about Yeerk anatomy here, you know what I mean) on the Andalite homeworld. Until they have it and all its inhabitants, they can't consider themselves successful. Though one would assume that they would wait until they conquered Earth, then armed with 6 billion+  good-for-everything-except-blade-combat people, plus strip-mined all of the earth resources the humans haven't beaten them to, then take on the Andalite military.

But then, in #17 Visser Three morphs a kafit bird, which lives exclusively on the Andalite homeworld. Ax automatically assumes that for Visser Three to have acquired it, he must have either been to the Andalite homeworld or have allies there. Everyone gets irked by this because he, as an Andalite arsith, ought know that some Andalites acquire kafits for fun, or at least know that Alloran may have acquired it in his pre-Controller days.

However, it may not be fair to expect Ax to know this. As K.A. has said, even though Ax and Elfangor are brothers, they belong to two different generations of advancement. For example, Elfangor had a language chip implanted in his head to understand different languages, but Ax's group of arsiths had a cell-sized unit to contain all of that information so that it wouldn't impede on morphing. Likewise, the war with the Yeerks seemed much less serious in Elfangor's day than the present day with Ax. Back then they were pretty much out of sight of the main Andalite populace, fighting for their hosts on faraway worlds over races the Andalites didn't care about, building machinery and ships which they did not unveil and release into war until Ax's time. Therefore, with the war more intense, Ax wouldn't have time to just acquire animals and morph them for fun like Elfangor did, and since none of the older warriors would tell him about that, there was no way for him to know about this. For that matter, since those two half-generations were so different, who knows how different Alloran's generation was? Since the morphing technology was an extremely new, prototypical thing when Alloran was already a prince, he must have acquired after the Hork-Bajir war, in which case he might have never had a chance to acquire the kafit.

But even if we could know for sure that Alloran had previously acquired the kafit before being infested by Visser Three, this doesn't mean that there's no foul play going on in the homeworld. For one thing, Alloran, who was briefly free in #8 because he was snake-bitten and Visser Three bailed out, stammered something about "All the things I've seen . . . the homeworld . . ." and dropped out. He could have been trying to warn Ax about Yeerks getting near the homeworld. Then again, he could have been about to comment on the homeworld "being almost taken over by all these new-generation hippies who don't believe in war. Can you imagine such a thing?" Who knows?

Plus, there's the fact that Captain Samilin was a traitor to the Yeerks. The comfortable thing to say would be "because he's a bad person," but when you've been at war with another species for a good part of your life, a species which tradition and laws call you to hate with all your heart and soul, you don't just wake up one morning and say, "Hey, they're not so bad. After all, they seem to be winning, so why don't I just call them up tell them I'll help them?" He must have had some darn good motivation to do some thing, though he seemed to enjoy himself in a fashion reminiscent of Visser Three, to betray his people in such a way, especially when immediately following was an excellent example of how the Andalites revere "The People." This could mean that the Yeerks had formed some special, private contact with him and had struck a deal. Maybe he was actually doing it for the sake of something he held dear like his ship and crew, or his family. I don't know about you, but it seems a little suspicious to me.

Now, onto our man Hewlett Aldershot the third, one of the Secret Service men, or at least someone important in presidential security. Someone, according to Visser Three, who would have access to "half the secrets of this planet." Evidently the Yeerks have not been able to infest anyone of particular importance. Hearing of him being in town, they arrange for him to be injured -- Chapman ran over him with his minivan (which seems rather foolish, because not only could he have died, but if there were any witnesses, Chapman could have been accused of hit-and-run and been in an awkward position). Anyway, the plan was for the Yeerk doctors (almost all of the hospital staff were Controllers) to fix him up, have him infested, and use his information to help further the invasion, plus eventually arrange for infestation of the President. Which I don't need to tell you would be very, very bad.

Here's the strange part: the doctors claimed that Hewlett had sustained irreparable damage to his brain stem and was in a coma. Visser Three was extremely angry about this and threatened one of the doctors with the blade-on-neck thing, basically telling them that if he wasn't up and about in three days, they'd die. With that kind of motivation, if the doctors can't cure him, he must really be a vegetable, right? Well, it turns out that all it took to wake little Hew up was a misquito bite. The first time I read this book I thought it was for comedic effect; the doctors had done all they could to bring him out of his coma, but what it really took was a misquito bite delivered by a morphed alien-slash-deer-slash-scorpion-slash-four-eyed centaur, (as Marco so eloquently put it). But when I re-read it, it seemed a little odd. Especially considering all the stuff I had read since then, with Yeerk rebels and peace movements and all such stuff, there is a slight possibility that they were actually lying to their Visser.

There is a slight possibility that, for some reason or another, they were actually administering drugs or whatever it took to keep Aldershot unconscious, telling Visser Three, not exactly an expert on human health and anatomy, "Whoops, he's a vegetable; too bad we won't be able to infest him." It could have been that they weren't too crazy about the plan and wanted to stop it. Whatever it was, they must have felt very strongly about it, because they risked death by doing it. However Visser Three, resourceful little grub that he is, decided just to morph him and play his part for a while, though he wanted Hewlett to be well so that he wouldn't be forced to live his life. Their purpose defeated, at this point the doctors would have decided to take Hewlett off the drugs or whatever since he would be safe and uninfested.

It's a somewhat odd theory, but it's an odd situation. If you have any better answers, please feel free to send them to me.  

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