"Ready to fire!" Ax said.

It wasn't a question. "Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Wait until . . . NOW!"

I swept the red target circle toward the black-diamond head of the Blade ship. I squeezed the trigger. And I kept squeezing.

Brilliant Dracon beams stabbed toward the Blade ship.

But at the same instant, the Visser fired!

Dracon beam hit Dracon beam.

ZZZZZOOOOOWWWW!

An explosion of light so intense I could actually see Through my own hand. I could see Cassie's teeth inside her head!

WHAAAMMMPPPH!

I was thrown against the ceiling.

I fell to the floor and rolled, out of control.

Rachel landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of me.

The Bug fighter was spinning. My eyes were filled with balls of light, like suns inside my own head.

Spinning . . . spinning . . . spinning . . .

And with each turn I was thrown hard. Into Ax. Into Marco.

Tobias batted his wings wildly, trying to get some control. It was like we had all been tossed into a washer on spin cycle.

Then, with a sickening lurch, the Bug fighter came upright.

There was a floor again. And a ceiling.

And through the window, there was a planet.

Earth.

Big, blue, and getting closer very, very fast.

"We're going down!" Rachel yelled. "Ax! Ax! We're going down!"

Ax scrambled to his hooves and made his way back to the controls. "Too fast!" he said. "We're going down too fast!"

"Look!" Tobias cried. "0ver there. To the left. We're not alone."

Tumbling down alongside us, just a mile away, was the Blade ship. It was twisting and twirling and falling, just like us.

"Wait . . ." Cassie said, sounding more confused than terrified. "It's daylight in the western hemisphere."

"Do I care?!" Marco yelled. "We're going down!"

"It was dawn in the Middle East," Cassie insisted. "Now it's daylight in the western hemisphere."

Suddenly, friction flames began glowing from the nose of the Bug fighter. We were going back into the atmosphere.

"Ax, can you pull us out of this?" I demanded.

"I am slowing our descent." he said. "We are slowing down. B.

. .

but I don't think it will be enough."

"Great," Marco moaned.

"At least the Blade ship will go down with us," Rachel said.

"Does that make you feel better, Xena?" Marco grated.

Rachel actually smiled. It was a sad, brief smile. "Not much better," she admitted.

"Ten seconds to impact!" Ax said. "Ten . . . nine . . . eight.

. ."

FLASH!

I was no longer in the Bug fighter.

I was square dancing.

I was giving Rachel a resentful look as I bowed to her in time with the music. What the ...

FLASH!

"Four. . . three . . . hold on!"

I saw green. Green on green, rushing up at me.

And then we hit.

And for a while, I didn't see anything at all. Time Unknown.

00! HOO! HOO! HOO!

HOOHOHOHO-HOHO! HAH! HAH!

KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH!

I woke up.

I woke up very suddenly.

KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! YAHA-HAHAHAH!

My head hurt, and the screaming noises didn't help. My back hurt, too. I was lying on the ground. On mildewed, rot ting leaves. Trees towered over me. Insanely tall trees. Ferns dipped down to Tickle my face. There was a root or something under my back, which explained the back pain.

But I was alive.

KeRAW! KeRAW! KeRAW!

VrrEEET! VrrEEEET! VrrEEEET!

I sat up quickly. But that sent a spear of pain through my head.

"Oh, man," I groaned.

Then I saw the bug. The bug on my lap. The big, giant, MONSTER bug. I guess it was some kind of beetle. It had yellow and black stripes and something that looked almost like curved antlers. I swear it was six inches long. Or at least three inches. It would have been beautiful, if it hadn't been on me.

"AAAAAHHH!" I yelled and brushed the beetle away.

Then, I felt the itchy, crawling feeling on my leg. Ants!

There were a dozen ants climbing up my right shin.

I have been an ant. So you'd think maybe I have some sympathy for them. Wrong. I slapped at my leg till I was sure they were gone.

I climbed to my feet. I felt woozy and confused. Where was I?

Where were the others?

I looked around. Green. Green everywhere. I mean, every where.

"The visions," I said to no one.

I was in a jungle. I knew that for sure. I'd never been in a jungle before, but there was no doubt in my mind. Maybe it was the monkeys and birds screeching at an insane volume all around me in the trees that gave it away. Maybe it was the creepers and vines. Maybe it was a flash of an amazing red- and-blue bird flitting through the branches. Maybe it was the fact that beetles really shouldn't be as big as that beetle had been. It was jungle, all right. Just like it had been in the weird flashes I'd been experiencing since that afternoon while square dancing.

"That's what did it," I muttered. "It was the square dancing that drove me crazy." I decided to yell for the others. "Hey!

Hey! Cassie! Marco!"

It was like my voice had no power. The sound was just swallowed by the trees and ferns and bushes.

"Okay, get a grip, Jake. Try to remember. You were coming down in the Bug fighter. Obviously you crashed. Duh. So look for the Bug fighter. It can't be far away."

I glanced around me at the solid wall of green in very direction. The air was steaming with humidity. And the mells of overly sweet flowers and tropical rot made me feel like I was walking past some department store perfume counter. Then I spotted a tree where the top half had been snapped off. I started walking, trying to get a better angle on the broken tree. I saw a second tree, splintered. I began to notice what looked like a tunnel plowed through the dense foliage. A tunnel plowed through the trees and foliage should lead to the Bug fighter.

"Or the Blade ship," I reminded myself.

HOO! HOO! HOO! HOOHOOHOOHOO! HAH! HAH! HAH!

The jungle was quieting down a little, but there was still some fairly crazy screeching from up in the tall trees. The jungle animals sounded annoyed.

Probably they didn't appreciate someone crashing a Bug fighter into their home. And they didn't like my looks, either. The jungle floor was surprisingly clear. Down at foot level there wasn't much growing, just dead leaves. But at face level there were vines and bushes and ferns, all slapping me in the face as I pressed on.

Suddenly I came to a clearing. A hole in the canopy where a tree had fallen. Bright sunlight shone down through the gap.

And it was as if every species of plant life you could imagine was crowding into that sunny spot. I found myself facing an incredible wall of vegetation: a dozen types of brilliant flowers, mosses so green they didn't seem real, small vines wrapped around bigger vines wrapped around tree trunks. It was the greenest place on Earth. There were even plants growing out of the smooth trunks of tall trees. I trudged on, back into the shadows of the forest, and when I looked up, I could no longer see the tunnel through the foliage.

That's when I started to get really scared. I was in a jungle.

And jungle isn't like forest, where you can usually see for hundreds of feet in any direction. Jungle presses in close around. It's like being buried in green.

Ger-Ak! Ger-Ak! AKAKAKAK!

"Marco! Cassie! Rachel!" I yelled, feeling the edge of panic.

"How about Tobias?" a voice said in my head.