The Time Skip Between TAC and Visser

[Astarte]

Okay, I was talking to my son about Animorphs, and he brought up a very intriguing point that I'd like to share here. In The Andalite Chronicles, which takes place, remember, in 1975, the Yeerks discovered the human race, and when Elfangor, Loren, and Visser 32 entered another universe, he said the Yeerks were on their way to Earth. But we see later in Visser as the reports came in, Edriss 562 left to investigate Earth against orders, but when she got there, which couldn't have been more than a few months of years later at most, it was around 1991, and the Gulf War was raging. Can anyone account for this inexplicable gap between years, and please don't say KA forgot the dates. That's the real world explanation. I'm looking for an answer in-universe.

[donut]

Huh, I never noticed that.  Does Visser explicitly give a date or call it the gulf war?  I can't remember.  If not, and we aren't too picky about the dates, we could say they arrived during the Yom Kippur war.  It happened in 73 and had pretty serious tank battles in the mideast, mostly Western weapons against Soviet. 

If we have to stick with 91, I can't think of anything.  I doubt they would even have the supplies to travel for 15 years.

[Astarte]

I haven't read Visser in a while either, but my son says they mention Operation Desert Storm while listening in on Earth communications.

[NothingFromSomething]

It probably just took eventually-Visser-Three that long to mobilize a force and get there.

[Astarte]

That doesn't work either, since Edriss and that other Yeerk she was with stole a ship because her superiors forbid her from going.

[NateSean]

Well, the most plausible in-universe explanation is The Ellemist. This isn't a lazy copout because if you take every instance in which the Ellemist has a direct effect in the life of Elfangor, Tobias, and the others, it can only make sense that the main reason the Yeerks were delayed was that he did something to slow them down.

[Astarte]

But what? It's implied Edriss leaves immediately after TAC, in which a Class 5 species is discovered. Or could it be that maybe it took that long for the message to reach them at the base they were on? And even longer to process it through the Yeerk bureaucracy? If so, that might explain it, but it seems kind of flimsy to me since the Yeerks were desperately looking for a Class 5 species to help them against the Andalites.

[NateSean]

Yes, and we know that the Ellemist had direct influences over Elfangor in the last half of TAC. It would be flimsy if I were using the Ellemist out of context, like, say in any of the books before we knew he existed. But since the Ellemist was a main character in TAC and we know that Elfangor was instrumental in stopping a Yeerk victory because the Ellemist took him from his human life on Earth and placed him where he needed to be, it's still a plausible explanation.

But okay, so lets say you still don't buy the Ellemist interaction. Here's the cubie explanation.

Visser Three, then a Sub visser, whose number I can't remember, discovered the Class 5 species. On that same day, he becomes the first ever Yeerk to infest an Andalite and incidentally, he's also the first Yeerk to infest a human. When Elfangor and Arboron seemed to fall off the face of the Taxxon-homeworld, the sub visser probably went to great lengths to make sure the information about Chapman and Lauren didn't leave until he was able to exploit it and present a double win for the Yeerk Empire.

Infest your greatest enemy and give the Empire a Class 5 species all in the same day? We know from Visser Three's attitude that he gets away with a lot of stuff. Is that really so hard to believe he withheld information that he learned from infesting Chapman until it was no longer advantageous for him to do so?