thing in the world to use. You press the button at your end and touch the other guy with the other end, and he won't be bothering you for a couple of hours. Rats.'
'What?'
'It's buried too deep under the webbing,' Jack said, standing up again. 'Never mind. Here I come.'
Even with the dragon bracing the top, the ladder felt pretty shaky. He didn't want to think what it would have been like without the extra support.
But the ladder held, and so did the one to the upper control area. The lower section of the dome wasn't as badly crunched as it had looked from below, but there were several gaps big enough for them to get through. A minute later, they were standing outside on the top of the ship.
'Where is your spacecraft?' Draycos asked.
'Way back there,' Jack said, pointing toward the forested areas to the right. 'There's a crack in the hull about fifty yards back where I came in.'
'Good,' Draycos said. 'Quickly, then.'
They headed off. The damage wasn't as bad up here as it had been along the sides of the hull, Jack noted, but the handful of trees lining both sides more than made up for it. Most of them had been smashed into toothpicks as the ship plowed through the area, and those that remained standing had been knocked about at crazy angles. Mostly they were leaning away from the ship, but a few were actually leaning toward it.
Everything within sight, trees and ground alike, had been scorched and blackened by the heat of the crash. They were probably lucky the crash hadn't sparked a forest fire.
From the direction of the wrecked bubble behind them came the faint sound of crunching metal. Jack spun around, tangler in hand, but no one was visible. 'You think the ladder went down?' he hazarded.
'With some assistance, yes,' Draycos agreed. 'I believe the pursuit has begun. Come; over here.'
He veered suddenly toward the edge, aiming toward a tree that was leaning inward. 'Wait a second,' Jack said, frowning, as he turned to follow. 'The Essenay's still further back.'
'If we remain here, they will have a very limited search area,' Draycos explained over his shoulder. 'On the ground our chances of eluding them are greater.'
'Yeah, but it's forty feet to the ground,' Jack objected. 'There was a ladder built into the hull near where I came in—let's use that.'
'All ladders will be watched,' Draycos said. 'This they may not expect.'
'Right,' Jack muttered, throwing a dubious look at the tree they were making for. Leaning toward the ship, yes, but at its closest it was still a good ten feet away. 'I suppose it's too late to mention that my species doesn't jump nearly as well as yours does.'
'Do not worry,' Draycos said, trotting to a halt beside the tree at the point where the hull started its downward curve. This time he didn't even bother to crouch, but just jumped from a standing start over to the tree.
For a second he hung there, all four feet clinging to the tree with claws Jack hadn't noticed before. Then, turning his head, he peered back toward Jack. 'Leap when I say,' he said. 'Ready—'
With a convulsive jerk, the dragon pushed away with his hind legs and arched his whole body backwards, like a reversed vid of how he'd landed on the tree in the first place. The arching continued until he was stretched straight back toward Jack. His tail uncurled and stiffened—'Leap,' Draycos ordered.
If Jack had stopped to think, he never would have done it. To jump to the tail of an unknown alien as it hung from a fire-damaged tree was an amazingly stupid thing to do.
But all he could think about at the moment was the tangled Brummga and his buddies. He jumped as ordered, caught the gold-scaled tail, and a second later slammed against the blackened tree trunk as the dragon collapsed back to vertical again.
'Can you climb down from here?' Draycos asked.
'Sure,' Jack said, breathing hard as he shifted his grip from the dragon's slippery tail to the tree itself. He hadn't managed to get his feet up in front of him in time, and the impact had knocked a fair amount of the wind out of him. Fortunately, his jacket had protected him from the worst of the scrapes he might otherwise have collected. Taking a couple of deep breaths to steady himself, he started down.
Most of the branches had been splintered or knocked off by the ship's crash, but there were enough limb stumps still sticking out to provide hand and footholds. Draycos, having swiveled around on the tree until he was facedown like a squirrel, passed him going down the opposite side of the trunk.
Two minutes later, they were on the ground. 'Where now?' Draycos asked.
Jack looked around, orienting himself as he brushed the worst of the soot off his hands. 'This way,' he told the dragon, angling off through the scorch zone. 'There's a small clearing we were able to put down in, just past that ridge over there. Uncle Virge?'
'The ship's ready,' Uncle Virge's voice came from his comm clip. 'Better hurry. If the amount of ground-radio traffic is anything to go by, they're starting to heat up the search for you.'
Jack nodded grimly. Terrific. 'Right,' he said. 'Here we come.'
Chapter 6
The ridge Jack was headed for was yet another result of the crash: a mound of smoking dirt that had been thrown up by the big ship as it plowed across the ground. Most of the smaller trees in this zone had been knocked over as the dirt swept past, but there were enough of the larger ones sticking out at all angles to make navigation hazardous. Earlier, on his way toward the wreck, Jack had nearly run into at least three of them in the dense smoke, and he'd been able to feel the burning heat of the dirt itself right through his boots.
Now, as they angled toward the ridge going the other direction, it didn't look a whole lot more inviting. What Draycos and his bare paws were going to think of it he didn't know.
