The Animorphs are like the world's greatest burglars. I mean, we don't steal stuff, of course. But when you can become any kind of animal, it's usually fairly easy to get into places.
Just one problem. Web Access America was not in our town. The headquarters of Web Access America was a couple of hundred miles away. Too far for us to get to. Even if we morphed into birds, we couldn't cover that much distance in the two-hour morph time. And if we stopped and demorphed and remorphed, we'd still never make it there and back in a day.
So we needed some other means of transportation. And that's why we were at the airport in the terminal that Saturday morning, watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows as flights took off.
"It's a one-hour-and-thirty-minute flight," Marco said. "Plenty of time."
"Right."
"All we have to do is morph, fly aboard the plane, try not to get swatted, and demorph when we get there," he said. "We can take United or Northwest."
It was just me and Marco at the window. The others were spread around the terminal. We try not to congregate together. We don't want to look like a group. Yeerk eyes are everywhere. They think we're a bunch of Andalites, not humans, but we have to be careful all the time.
"United or Northwest?" Marco asked.
I shrugged. "Flip a coin. Who cares? The problem I have is with the idea of being a fly on a plane. Lots of people looking to swat. And if anything goes wrong, how do we demorph on a plane?"
"You want to cancel out?"
I thought about it for a minute. Out on the runway, a 747 was rumbling down the tarmac, picking up speed for a takeoff. "Nah. I guess it'll be okay. It's a risk, but it's worth it."
Marco smiled. An actual, nonmocking smile, which is rare for him. "I remember back when you didn't want to have to make all the big decisions."
"I still don't want to make them," I said. "But someone has to, right?"
"Yep." He nodded.
"I just want to get back to a life someday where I don't have to make decisions that might get people killed."
"Do you?" Now Marco's smile was definitely of the mocking variety. "You really think someday we can all go back to being regular kids? You think after being the leader of the Animorphs you can go back to being Joe Average Student?"
"Yes, I do." I said it forcefully. I meant it.
"Uh-huh," Marco said dryly. "Come on, let's round up the others." He squinted to see the board announcing flight departures. "Let's catch the United flight. It leaves soonest. We have fifteen minutes. Gate nineteen."
"Is there a movie on the flight?" I asked, trying to catch Marco's casual tone.
"On a one-hour-and-thirty-minute flight? More like an in-flight cartoon."
We found the others, drifting from Cassie and Rachel to Tobias and Ax. We explained the plan. It was Tobias who asked the question I had overlooked.
"How are we going to find gate nineteen when we're in fly morph? How good are fly eyes?"
Tobias had never morphed a fly before. He'd just acquired the DNA earlier that morning.
"Pretty bad, actually," I admitted. "Compound eyes."
"The sense of smell is good, though," Marco said. "I mean, flies can sense poop or garbage from a long way off."
I looked at Marco. He looked at me.
"Oh, puh-leeze," Marco said. "Where would we find it? And what would we do with it? Hand it to the flight attendant at the gate? Tell him, 'Hang onto this for us. We'll be right back as flies'?"
A plane was disgorging passengers from a nearby gate. The people all looked tired and annoyed. Some smiled for the relatives and friends who were picking them up. But I guess it must have been a long flight, because some of the people had pressure marks on the sides of their faces. You know, like they'd been sleeping with their heads leaned against the windows of the plane.
Then there was the mother and father with their baby. The baby was squalling and squirming in its mother's arms.
They stopped just a few feet away.
"He needs to be changed," the mother said.
"Whose turn is it?" the father asked.
The mother handed the baby to him and he groaned. "Please let it just be number one."
"I don't think so," the mother said. "I think you're getting a full load."
I turned to Marco, Tobias, and Ax. "Okay, we need a volunteer for a very hazardous and disgusting mission. Someone has to get that diaper."
It turned out the volunteer was me. Ax couldn't even understand the basic concept. Which left three of us. We did rock, paper, scissors. Whoever didn't match the others was the volunteer.
Tobias and Marco took paper. I did rock.
I swear somehow or other they cheated.
Two minutes later I had an absolutely vile Huggies wrapped in a couple of paper towels.
"I don't suppose you want this," I said, offering it to Marco.
"What is it?" Ax wondered.
"A diaper," I said. "Baby poop."
"Diaper gravy," Marco said. "We're going to use the diaper gravy to guide our flight as flies."
"I don't understand."
I sighed. "This would be one of those things I really don't want to explain, Ax," I said. I carried the diaper toward gate nineteen. I stuffed it into a large, standing ashtray and returned to the others. "That should do it. Let's get back with Cassie and Rachel."
"See, now this is why we aren't Batman or Spiderman," Marco complained. "Spiderman never has to follow the trail of baby poop."
"Who is this spider man?" Ax asked
