The kids gather at Chapman’s neighbors’ house, which has conveniently just been vacated.  They all wonder aloud why the neighbors moved, then dismiss it and move on.  But…wait, I’m curious now.  Why did the neighbors move?  I wouldn’t have questioned things if they’d just flatly stated that the house was up for sale; that happens.  But once the characters start chatting as if it’s a strange thing, I have to assume that it’s a strange thing.  So give me some answers!

I get no answers.

The kids all morph into ants, which is properly overdescribed and properly creepy.  Got to give some credit, these authors did their animal research and really know how to give nightmares.  They do a fairly good job getting across the idea of different senses, too, like with the ants using antennae more than eyes.

They also get overtaken by ant instincts, and I have to wonder once again why they never think to practice this shit.  They had time.  This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing.  And every single morph so far has had a period where they can’t quite get control.  So why don’t they take these bugs for a test ride or something? 

Anyway, Tobias snaps them out of it and everyone freaks out over losing their ‘selfness’ in the ants.  I got to say, I didn’t really buy that part.  The narration was too smooth, too…first person for me to really believe that Marco had lost his sense of being an individual. 

They get back on track with Tobias giving directions.  They make it into the basement and demorph.  And…conveniently enough, they’re in Chapman’s secret office.  The secret office that has only been recently built in, but they got in through a crack in the concrete.  Well, I guess when you build something that quick and on the sly, you have to cut corners somewhere. 

While poking through the office, they find Chapman’s computer (alien computer, which apparently operates a lot like Windows) and stumble across a memo about Visser One’s imminent arrival.  They count it as an oddity and move on once they have their stolen transponder, then carry it out as ants.

Suddenly, more ants!  The native colony finds them and attacks en mass. 

There were hundreds of them. Ahead. Behind. Flooding up from side tunnels. Bursting from the walls.

I’m trying to wrap my head around the logistics here, and I still can’t make it work that ‘hundreds’ of ants are crowding into a couple centimeters of tunnel. 

They demorph to human so that the ants don’t kill them, but I kind of want to know what kind of ants these are, because they’d still be getting bitten this whole time.  If they’re mild enough, that would just be irritating, but there’s plenty of ants in North America that will seriously mess up your system if enough of them bite you.  Ant bits itch because they’re venomous, and it’s a small enough amount to just be irritating, but a thousand small drops will add up to one big dose.  (Still not fatal, unless we’re talking fire ants, but they can make you very sick.)  In this book, though, apparently they run across a species of ant that just…ignores you once you get big enough?

And Rachel stopped stomping the ants – I mean, the ground.

I got to admit, though, when this book comes up with gems, they really shine. 

The next day at school, Marco notices that everyone is on edge and mentally disoriented from the whole “almost torn apart by ants” thing.  Rachel gets into a fight with another girl over a trivial matter, which is honestly a pretty good representation of high stress.  Much as I enjoy the pages and pages of musing about abstract concepts, it’s stuff like this that really brings it home for the series.  It’s watching the characters snap and react, even – especially – when they do it poorly, that makes it so much more real than all the monologueing in the world. 

A few days later they meet to find out Ax finished his decoy beacon, then decide to have this whole thing happen on Saturday.  After the meeting, Marco tells Jake that this will be his last mission, and Jake is pretty cool with it.  At least, outwardly.

That Saturday, they fly out to an old quarry to do Operation Cry Wolf (Marco should have named their missions, I bet he would have come up with some great stuff). 

I would miss the flying. But if I was out, I had to be out all the way.

Because…reasons?

But Ax didn’t have anything but a shark, a lobster, an ant, and a harrier. We figured he was better off in his own Andalite body, which was plenty dangerous.

Uh, you guys had several days to plan this.  Why not get him a morph to use?

So they all morph into their ‘battle’ morphs to get ready, because apparently it’s so easy to hide an elephant in a giant hole in the ground.  Yup, the Yeerks in the Bug Fighter won’t find that odd at all.

But…apparently elephants can hide in a giant hole in the ground, because a Bug Fighters shows up right on schedule.