"Indeed. We'll benefit tremendously from the chance to spread out."

"I regret that I cannot be of more help there."

"I actually expect you can! Not with the technical end perhaps but certainly with shaping relations once we're spacefaring. - Kalana do you mind if we step inside somewhere -"

"Not at all -" Eko warned her and she has maneuvered them near the building of the education department, where it's pretty easy to commandeer a meeting room.

"The first aliens to hand us spaceflight will have the enduring allegiance of our people. Yes, even if they're the Yeerks."

"Fortunate for us then that that's not really the Yeerks' style."

"Are you winning your war?"

"We are not confident of winning it."

"And yet it doesn't really seem like the overriding directive of the Andalite government is to win it at any cost. Some costs, like killing off planets, sure - but other costs, like teaching a people starfaring -"

"I cannot teach you starfaring. But yes, it's not policy to invite another war in the pursuit of winning this one."

"I sincerely think that not teaching us risks an eventual war far more than teaching us ever could."

"You want more planets, desperately. What will you do if they're already taken? It's so easy, you know, when you happen on pre-spacefaring societies, a virus in the water and they're all gone and you can move right in -"

"How many planets do the Yeerks have?"

"Ten, twenty."

"That would keep us a long time. Long enough to carry us well past the point where we'd invent it on our own. Or are you planning to handicap us permanently lest we make trouble in the stars -"

"I am a stranded military commander, I'm not planning anything except to eat the tasty food and endeavor not to start a war over our presence. But it's not Andalite policy to interfere with technological development in anticipation of a society being hostile. If you start killing off planets of innocents to colonize them then we'd find ourselves at war."

"Anitam does not do that to our neighbors."

"It is very common to find it easier to annihilate truly alien societies than familiar ones."

"Right now," he says, "you are in a position to propose terms. We make starships for the war against the Yeerks, we take our cut of Yeerk planets and look for empty ones and leave all other civilizations alone, we accept the friendship and guidance and protection of your people, and you are adored because you gave us babies. Your war does not sound like it's going well, if you've resorted to destroying civilizations your enemies happen upon because you cannot save them, if five billion hosts will tip the balance and there are planets like us where they could scoop up thirteen billion in the space of a single year. I'm not a soldier. But if I were my understanding of my duty would be first to win and then secondly to arrange after-the-fact permission to have won the way I did."

"I cannot give you starships."

"Liar."

"I think I'd like to head back," he says to Kalana.

She glances at Aitim.

"I could check whether they have the information they need from your brother yet. But if they don't you are going to be delayed in going back, and if they do then you are not in a position to propose terms anymore and we will go into space on our own terms and fight the Yeerks only if they happen to menace us."

" - if you've hurt my people -"