- the Yeerk cannot ignore this! It's like something gets in the way when it tries to direct the human mind to move. ...it can itself move if it doesn't want to use the human mind for it, it can try to crawl out or something, but it can't use her while that block is in place.

:–That could be very valuable, actually. Hmm. I want to try something slightly more complicated, if you are all right with waiting five more minutes: 

She unpicks the set-command, it's a lot slower to undo than to place but she's good at it, and then, warning both of them that she's going to do something temporary for about thirty seconds but not what, she dissociative-blocks the mage volunteer, approximately cutting off the usual crosslinks in her mind between memory and decision-to-act (along with a lot of other things, it's an invasive block, though it's actually faster both to do and to set right than subtler ones.) 

How does that affect the Yeerk's ability to use the human body? 

- wow, that's really disconcerting. He's not using the human brain for decisions-to-act, he's making those himself, but it takes a weird amount of effort to just piece together where the arm is in order to move it, and then to send the instructions to move it in a way that doesn't piggyback on anything that's blocked. 

"Weird," he says out loud after a moment, his voice sounding a little off; this takes all his concentration.

:Interesting: Nayoki suddenly wants to spend the rest of the day using this fascinating opportunity to do research, but she should probably save that for when they have actual Yeerks to study and not some poor Andalite warrior who hates his life right now.

She undoes it. :One more thing and then I will be done: Can she set-command the Yeerk into relinquishing control? 

She can! 

:Sorry. I know that is very unpleasant: She undoes it, checks that she hasn't left anything on either of them, and then announces she's finished with all the most important tests. 

The Andalite is going to demorph and take a moment to collect himself. <That seems very useful> he says stiffly.

"Thank you for your help." 

She goes to Matirin. "Mindhealing done to a person's mind - a human mind, at least, I have not tested on Andalites - does also restrict the Yeerk. I think that later on, with a captured real Yeerk, if possible, we ought test if I can use Mindhealing blocks to prevent Yeerks from accessing certain parts of a person's memory. If that works, we could use this to protect sensitive strategic information before sending people into a situation where there is a risk of capture, for example." 

<That would be very valuable if it is possible. I do not expect us to have trouble capturing a real Yeerk for tests once we're on Earth, though I am not sure if they can kill their host by shredding the brain when captured if not mind-controlled not to do that.>

"Ack," Nayoki says, grimacing. "Well, fortunately we have several forms of easily reversible mind-control available, and Healers." 

Speaking of that, Leareth wonders if it makes sense for the Healers volunteering to get some experience with Andalite bodies, in case that's ever urgently needed. He's sure the Andalite medical technology is excellent, but the advantage of a Velgarth Healer is that they don't need any supplies or equipment at all. 

That makes sense; what would it entail?

For training, the Healers mostly just need to spend a while with their Sight, and maybe read about what the Andalites know of their own anatomy and physiology. And then ideally they would test Healing some actual injuries. Leareth isn't sure whether injuries incurred to an Andalite's actual body rather than a morphed form can be dealt with by morphing something else or are still there when the Andalite demorphs again? 

You can morph away injuries to your base form! The demorphing process isn't really restoring your exact body so much as rebuilding it from its template. (Some people have philosophical concerns about this and they avoid morphing and write papers, he is not one of them himself). However it's possible to be injured badly enough you can't concentrate on a morph, and some people aren't morph-capable for other reasons, so they do have normal emergency medicine and would be delighted to share notes with the Healers.

Huh! (Leareth is in agreement with Matirin that the philosophical concerns sound like boring ones and not the point.) Leareth's Healers selected for this mission have battlefield emergency-Healing training in particular, so hopefully can retrain for Andalites without too much trouble.

He goes back to his Gate-work. Makes more progress on understanding the fundamentals, but is still kind of blocked. He suspects that to get to the Andalite world via Velgarth Gate-magic, he needs to route through another plane first, which may or may not be one he's familiar with, but he doesn't know which one and it's hard to translate directly from the math so he's resorting to trial and error.

The next morning - day four, now, since Vanyel's misadventures in Highjorune - they get a message from King Randale in Haven, asking if the Andalites are still willing to assist with the Karsite war and specifically the plan that involves being dropped off directly in Sunhame and Gating from there. 

The Andalites confirm they are willing to help with this. It would need to be in the next few weeks since after that they will be leaving.

Right, of course, they've been planning from that premise. Randi thinks they can have troops ready by the end of this week, if they really need to, and the only question is whether they want to keep waiting in the hopes that Vanyel's goddamned Companion will come back and he'll be able to go be half of their military force as usual. Probably expecting him to be up for it in the next couple of weeks is questionable anyway. 

They can be ready at the end of the week if needed, and if the invasion is delayed for Vanyel's availability then the next week works as well. 

(Unbeknownst to the Andalites, Melody and Randi spend the rest of that morning having a candlemarks-long fight about the matter of sending Vanyel to Sunhame.) 

Randi finally, eventually, concedes that they can only bring Vanyel if Melody personally agrees that it's not a terrible idea. And maybe they can ask the Andalites to drop him off in a second wave, so he doesn't need to spend half a candlemark in the proximity of one or more Gates? 

Leareth keeps at his research. 

With the help of Fetchers and mages the Andalites repair the hyperspace jump sensors, and repair the shields, and repair the antigravity; they move the ship out of its crater and flip it over so they can do additional repair work on the underside, though they keep gravity pointed towards the former floor of the ship since that's where the grass is. 

Leareth's people think the upside-down gravity is the COOLEST THING EVER and want to see what happens when you Gate from inside to outside the ship, do you end up flipped or do you suddenly fall on your head. (They'll try it crawling, the first time, just in case.) 

By default you will suddenly fall! The grass is nice and soft, though.