The Underground (Animorphs)

infobox Book |
name = The Underground
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Rachel morphing into a bat.
author = K. A. Applegate
illustrator =
cover_artist = David B. Mattingly
country = United States
language = English
series = "Animorphs" #17
genre = Science Fiction
publisher = Scholastic
pub_date = April 1998
english_pub_date =
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages = 167
isbn = 0-590-49436-8
preceded_by = The Warning
followed_by = The Decision

"The Underground" is the seventeenth book in the "Animorphs" series, written by K.A. Applegate. It is narrated by Rachel.

Plot Summary

The Animorphs see a man jumping out of an office building, and save him. Rachel finds out he has been talking about Yeerks, so the Animorphs go to talk to him. He tells them that he is a Controller, and the Yeerk inside him doesn't need Kandrona Rays because he ate Maple and Ginger Instant Oatmeal, which seems to give Yeerks to ability to survive without Kandrona Rays. However, there is a downside. The oatmeal is extremely addictive and makes the Yeerks who eat it go crazy and only able to control their host some of the time. The Animorphs decide to dump a bunch of oatmeal into the Yeerk pool, which would cause thousands of Yeerks to go insane.

Unable to enter the Yeerk Pool the normal way because of a new invention called the "Gleet Bio-Filter", which doesn't allow creatures besides Humans and Yeerks to enter the Yeerk Pool, they spend a week digging through the ground as moles. Upon entering the Yeerk pool, they are attacked by two hunter robots and Rachel falls into the Yeerk pool. She morphs an ant, gets out, steals a dracon beam and disguises herself as a human-Controller. She learns that Ax and Tobias have been captured and there is a large amount of Maple and Ginger Instant Oatmeal near the Yeerk pool.

When Visser Three comes, she throws the oatmeal into the pool and gives the dracon beam to Marco (who, being in gorilla morph, has hands). Visser Three decides to sacrifice the Yeerks in the pool in order to catch them, so Rachel throws him in too. Visser Three starts to morph giving them no chance to escape, so Marco shoots open the barrels of oatmeal in the pool. Then he collapses the tunnel and the animorphs escape as moles.

Morphs

Trivia

*This book has one of the longest titles out of all of the books in the series.
*This is the fifth book to feature a cover morph that was not acquired in the book. The Animorphs (except Tobias) acquired bat morphs in the tenth book, "The Android".
*The front cover quote is, "There's nothing to fear but the Yeerks themselves....", a reference to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's famous quote "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
*The inside front cover quote is, "There's nothing to fear. Batgirl is here...."