Do you think David is actually dead?

[Chad32]

They didn't kill him in Solution because he was Human. That's all. which is a dumb reason, but Cassie goes berserk if any Human is killed, regardless of what they've done. I think the main reason she left Jake in the end is because he sent Rachel to kill Tom.

[SuperBlue]

Meh, Even if her sense of right and wrong wasn't how it was, that still probably would have been the final straw for Cassie or any girl for that matter. That entire final arc was full of Jake making lowdown and morally wrong decisions, not just what he did to Rachel and Tom.

Back on topic...

They could have just killed him and never tell Cassie Just put him on that remote Island like she planned and then have Tobias fly there for a midnight snack

[INH]

I think that the situation in #49 actually proves that David was not able to contact the yeerks.  David knew all of their names, their addresses, everything, but in #49 the yeerks were still searching for them.  When the Anis got into the base, the yeerks had only found Tobias's mother (who David didn't know about), and it was implied that that happened very recently.  If David got in touch with the yeerks, they would never have run the DNA search program at all.  Before the Animorphs knew anything, the yeerks would have stormed their houses, infested their families and, if possible, infested or killed them.

That said, in #48, David had recruited two "henchmen," who saw Rachel morph multiple times, and managed to escape at the end of the book.  If they talked about it, that certainly could have tipped off the yeerks that the Anis were human.  So it might still tie in, in a way.

The one scene in particular that makes me think of this is in #52, when she goes to kill a controller even when he is trying to escape the war and trap himself in a bird morph.

I'm pretty sure that the controller only told Ax that he was trying to escape the war.  If I remember right, Rachel didn't come in until after Ax had let him go, so she probably didn't know what the controller was planning to do.

On topic, I think that Rachel did kill David.  I don't have any particular reason, it just feels like it would fit better than the alternative.  And, like I said, we know that David did not get in contact with the yeerks.

[Ss112]

Then again, how would the two teenagers have tipped off the Yeerks? Who do you talk to to do that? They could have overheard them talking someplace, but that would be extremely coincidental. And, if that happened, it seems even more unlikely that information would have filtered and gotten passed along and upward to Visser Three/One and his army. (And they may not have even taken notice if it did-- it might not have been regarded much more than Chapman and Tom and whoever else speculating the "Andalite bandits" were human early on in the series.)

I think it's probably just coincidence, but it does seem a kind of fitting coincidence that the discovery they were human happened after David's return and the possible things he could have said.

[TobiasMasonPark]

     I'd like to think that Rachel didn't kill him. Despite her recklessness and bloodthirstiness, I think killing David would have been too much for her. Because David wasn't just another faceless human/humancontroller; he was someone who used to be human. And I think Rachel saw a lot of similarities between herself and David: their recklessness, their fondess for agressive animals as decisions for morphs (eagles, bears, lions, etc), and their tendency to "shoot first, ask questions later". Sure, you can say that David was "evil" (I would disagree, but NEVERTHELESS) and Rachel, despite all of those things, was "good".

     Personally, I don't think it's as black and white as that. David probably figured that he had to adopt a survivor mentality; a sort of "eat-or-get-eaten- mentality that I think Tobias would agree with. Obviously, David went too far. But maybe he figured that it was his only option.