Helmacron

The Helmacrons are a fictional race of aliens in the Animorphs universe. They are about a sixteenth of an inch tall with humanoid bodies with another set of legs. Their heads are perfectly flat on top, with large green eyes sitting on them. Their faces come down from the top in an inverted pyramid to a hooked, barbed chin. Their mouthparts are insectlike, with gnashing sideways teeth. They dress in silver colored one-piece suits with turquoise or magenta collars depending on their ship.
They are mentioned and/or present in books 24, 39, and 42.
Helmacron society
Helmacrons are tiny creatures. Female Helmacrons are dominant to male Helmacrons, holding the important military positions on a spaceship, while male Helmacrons have janitorial or guard jobs (prompting Marco to comment that they were "an entire species of Rachels"). The Helmacrons kill their leaders before promoting them to make sure the captain will never make an error in judgment and thus have to be executed for making mistakes (a philosophy that Marco found particularly disturbing because it actually made "a sick kind of sense").
Helmacrons have the unusual mental ability to transfer their minds to another when their bodies are destroyed. Therefore, one can never really "kill" a Helmacron mind, since it dwells within other Helmacrons. Despite this, the Helmacrons seem to be no wiser than if they had only one, or even no mind at all; despite their tiny size and relative weakness, they have inflated personalities and further inflated egos, constantly proclaiming that they will crush all other races even when their ships can be threatened by large bricks- on one occasion they even vowed to take control of "this vast expanse of huge blue fur" and then use it as a base when their ship was lost, apparently unaware that they were on Ax's fur, and of all the alien species in the Animorphs universe, seem to be the least mentally stable. It is possible that the fluidity of their minds is the cause of this.
After the first Helmacron encounter, Marco and Cassie had given the male Helmacrons a pep talk, inspiring them to revolt from their slave-like existence. The subsequent revolt of male Helmacrons throughout their empire has ultimately destabilized their already shaky social order. When last they appear, the Helmacrons are well on their way to engaging a massive civil war between the sexes.
Helmacrons, or at least the males, do not have names; a male, whom Marco dubs "Wuss", did not even know the meaning of the word "name".
They have never apparently had any contact with the Andalites, as Ax was unaware of their existence, but they are aware of the Yeerks, with Visser Three regarding the destruction of a Helmacron ship as no great challenge, even mockingly referring to the damaged ship as 'cute' after he had destroyed it with a hand-held Dracon beam. They are also somewhat of a joke among the Yeerks, as Visser One mocks Visser Three's pride by saying he had been hanging around with the Helmacrons.
Technology
The Helmacron spaceship Galaxy Blaster is shaped like a baton, with three clusters of three long tubes at the far end and a fierce death's-head bridge at the front. It resembles a from the television series, Star Trek, albeit a tiny one; when Cassie initially finds it, she believes it to be an old toy. Their second craft, Planet Crusher is similar in appearance.
They also possess a shrinking and anti-shrinking beam. In the books these are powered using the morphing energy of the Escafil device, but they can presumably be powered by other energy sources. When used against the Animorphs, it reduced Marco, Cassie, and Tobias (and later many others) to the same height as the Helmacrons, with Tobias being the same height as Marco and Cassie despite having started out smaller than they due to the Helmacrons shrinking everything to a specific baseline, simultaneously causing all morphing to be restricted to that baseline; when Marco and Cassie morphed flies, they were reduced to a size where they could see individual cells. However, new morphs acquired during this time frame would not be shrunk; when the Animorphs and Visser Three acquired and morphed an anteater to effectively battle the Helmacrons, the resulting anteaters were all normal sized (Although whether this would remain the case if it was morphed again remains unknown, as the anteater morph was never used afterwards).

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu