Okay, that's intriguing. As soon as Cayaldwin determines it safe for him to get the new morph version, Leareth will acquire Nayoki and morph her and have MINDHEALING SIGHT (unfortunately it's with Nayoki's obnoxious bread metaphor, he should acquire Melody when they get back, she has a better one.) He - is honestly not sure what to do with it but at least he's used to other Gifts. 

And then he can try morphing, hmm, Amanda except with all of Nayoki's Gifts. 

This is significantly harder to do than just morphing another person. There's an obvious sort of path-of-least-resistance to morphing Amanda and a obvious sort of path-of-least-resistance to morphing Nayoki and then if you try to wobble between them you mostly just get stuck halfway. But if you can manage to have forward momentum, sort of, and hold the specific thing you're trying to do clearly enough in your head, it feels like it ought to be possible to stop getting stuck.

Well, Leareth is really good at concentrating and holding specific things he's trying to do in his head, that's how all Gift-control works, and he's also very stubborn and can try it a lot more times than the Andalites can before he's too tired. 

Eventually he gets it, though somehow he also ended up with Nayoki's hair.

Well, that's ridiculous, especially since she's a mage so her hair is snow-white at this point, and 'Amanda, except with a puff of wooly tightly-curled white hair' looks very silly. He stays in that form for a bit, though, and asks Nayoki if he can practice minor Mindhealing on her, since at least she can put it back afterward herself, or talk him through it, if he messes up. 

Nayoki can't keep a straight face at all about how he looks, but sure she'll help. 

He is not any worse at minor Mindhealing than any person with a newly-awakened Mindhealing Gift (a little better, because he has a better general command of magic).

None of the Andalites can make the composite morph work at all, and soon they get too tired to keep trying, but they are still in good spirits and run around the field watching him with Nayoki and congratulating Cayaldwin.

Awwww. 

(Nayoki is aware of the giant soul-hole in Cayaldwin's head, it's pretty conspicuous though she hasn't brought it up to anyone else except Melody, who confirmed she, too, had noticed. It's really lovely to see him happy in spite of it, however briefly.) 

When he's had enough practice and can do shaky set-commands of the kind needed to make a host mind unusable to a Yeerk, Leareth demorphs and rests for a bit on the grass, then tries the Gate again. 

Not yet.

(They are about four light-candlemarks behind the ship, the pilot tells him.)

That's really far, no wonder he can't reach them. He'll go back to reading and notes and occasionally trying his morph again. He would like to be able to morph Amanda looking exactly right, to pass as Visser Three if necessary, but keep all of Nayoki's Gifts too. The Yeerks shouldn't have any way to detect the difference. (Until he starts using them, that is.) 

Leareth can eventually morph Amanda-with-Nayoki's-Gifts without also carrying along any of Nayoki's appearance, and once he's done it once then the morphing technology seems to know what he's aiming for and after that it's no harder than a normal morph.

None of the Andalites can get the hang of Gifts in a composite morph at all. Cayaldwin wonders which brain regions specifically need to be carried along, he thinks he's not succeeding at holding onto them through the morph.

Nayoki can see it with her Mindhealing-Sight? And can pull him into rapport and show him the difference between Leareth morphing normal human Amanda and Leareth morphing Amanda except with Gifts, although her Sight is metaphorical and weird and it's not literally like a brain scan. Healing-Sight is a bit more direct and might show that too? Also watching morph with Healing-Sight sounds really interesting in general. 

He will fascinatedly collect inputs from all of these angles. He rests and tries again every hour or so and eventually he gets it, and can be a Mindhealer-Healer-Thoughtsenser-Mage, though he does not actually try doing any magic because he's exhausted and several of those are dangerous when you don't know what you're doing. 

His father would be proud. Maybe even impressed.

They're 2.2 lightcandlemarks behind the ship, the pilot says.

Leareth is so delighted when Cayaldwin gets the hang of the composite Gifted morph. He acquires a Healer too and tries to add that to the Nayoki morph. 

He tries the half-Gate again every six hours or so. 

Now that Andalites can morph Gifts they should all have the same set-commands as Leareth's people, in case they're captured.

They should! This gives Nayoki the fascinating research project of testing whether and how set-commands even carry across to a morphed form, and if she needs to modify them with that in mind. 

Standard ones don't reliably carry across, especially not if the brain being morphed-to is significantly different. (In light of this it might just make sense to block captured Andalites from morphing as well as from using Gifts in the form they're captured in.)

Nayoki can keep working on figuring out some non-standard conditional form that can be put on once and left there, but for now the plan can be for her to do set-commands on people in their morphed form right before an operation? In which case the set-command should probably be to demorph and then block further morphing, because otherwise they'll all get morph-trapped in whichever person they're morphing, which would be kind of terrible.

If she practices that a lot she'll get pretty fast at it. 

0.7  of a lightcandlemark behind, the pilot tells Leareth. Of course, 0.7 of a lightcandlemark is a lot when measured in units such as miles, but even assuming he can't jump them until they're basically right on top of them that'll be nine candlemarks from now.

Leareth is going to start checking every hour then. How close do they have to be before the ship will probably notice them? 

They don't expect it to be able to notice pursuit through the shields but if they can it'll probably only be once they're within a million miles.

Fair enough.

It's somewhat tiring doing even the tiny half-Gate, but Leareth can check approximately every candlemark and get enough rest in between. He takes lots of little naps. 

They close the remaining distance. Does Gift-morphing change the strategic plan here - what is the strategic plan here -

Leareth's original plan had been to raise a Gate and send Nayoki through to set-command as many people as she could, and then impersonate Visser Three in Amanda's body and demand to know what was going on. (And, if necessary to convince anyone wavering between loyalty to Mhalir and to whoever organized the coup, at some point demorph privately in a closed room so he can re-morph in Mhalir's Yeerk form, but hopefully he can push and not do that. 

Given Gift-morphing - hmm, they should probably send everyone who can morph Nayoki and has any idea how to do set-commands, they don't have to be good set-commands, Nayoki can probably explain very fast how to get people to STOP MOVING and not resist the boarding and then she can fix them afterward once they determine who needs to be imprisoned versus who will cooperate now that Mhalir is demonstrably not dead. And then Leareth can be Amanda, except with Gifts in case he ends up needing to defend himself, which makes him feel much better about the whole thing.