"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.

It didn't take long for him to find out. Only a few steps into the smoke Draycos, who had been in the lead, paused and let Jack catch up. A silent leap, a brief weight on Jack's chest which quickly vanished, and Jack was slogging his way through the crumbly dirt alone.

He continued on, fighting hard not to cough as he waded through the smoke, feeling more than a little annoyed. The least the dragon could have done, he grumbled to himself, would have been to ask permission before climbing aboard.

He had gone perhaps ten paces more, and was passing a particularly large tree trunk that had managed to stay mostly vertical, when a pair of arms reached out from behind the tree and wrapped themselves solidly around his chest. "Gotcha!" a deep human voice said.

"Ye-owp!" Jack gasped, trying to pull away. A human voice? "Hey!"

The man responded by lifting him completely clear of the ground. "Oh, no you don't," he growled. "Settle down or I'll break your ribs."

"No, no, let me go," Jack pleaded, still fighting against the grip as he flailed his legs around helplessly. It was no use; the man was as strong as an ox. "Help! Mommy!"

"Oh, shut up," the man snarled contemptuously. He shifted grip slightly, and there was a soft click from somewhere behind Jack's ear. "Base, this is Dumbarton. I've got him."

"Do you need assistance?" a fainter voice demanded. Jack stiffened, a chill running through him despite the sweltering heat of the ridge. Earlier, he had thought of Draycos's voice as being snakelike, which made sense now that he knew the dragon's reptilian nature.

But for absolute snakelike quality, this new voice beat Draycos hands down. It was human, but as cold and heartless and just plain nasty a voice as Jack had ever heard.

Considering some of the people he and Uncle Virgil had kept company with over the years, that was saying a lot.

"Negative, sir," Dumbarton said. His tone was suddenly respectful, and Jack had the odd sense that this wasn't who he'd expected to answer the comm clip. "Like the Brummy said, he's just a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen. I can handle him."

"He was alone?"

"Yes, sir," Dumbarton said.

"Very well," the evil voice said. "Bring him here. The rest of you, spread out and continue the search. I want his ship, or his house, or wherever it is he came from. And I want everyone who's still there."

There was a series of faint acknowledgments. "Okay, kid, let's go," Dumbarton said, swinging Jack around toward the wrecked ship. As he did so, Jack felt a brief tug of extra weight down by his left hip. "You want to walk on your own, or—?"

He never finished the question. From behind Jack came the faint crackle of an electrical discharge; and without warning, Dumbarton's grip loosened, and Jack found himself dropping through the encircling arms to land flat on his rear in the blazing hot dirt.

Stifling a yelp, he scrambled to his feet, legs and rear end feeling flash-toasted even through his jeans. Dumbarton was sprawled on his back, his eyes shut, his mouth hanging half open. Beside him on the ground, humming softly as it automatically recharged itself, lay his slapstick.

"About time," Jack muttered, wincing as he brushed the bits of dirt off his rear.

There was a sudden burst of gold in front of his face, and Draycos leaped into view, landing on the ground beside the fallen man. A quick slash of his claws, and the comm clip on the man's shoulder went spinning away into the smoke. "I apologize for the delay," the dragon said. "I had hoped that with your capture they would call off the search. That would have given us more time."

"No, they want the complete package," Jack said. Still, for a lizard, this Draycos was pretty smart. "Let's not wait till they figure out that they don't even have me," he added, pulling open his jacket and shirt and offering Draycos his chest. "Get aboard and let's go."

To his surprise, Draycos stepped instead behind Dumbarton and began digging with his front paws into the hot dirt beneath the man's shoulders. "First help me move him to this tree," the dragon said.

Jack blinked. "Why?"

"Because he might otherwise burn to death," Draycos explained. He had a grip on the man's shoulders now and was straining to lift him up. "At the very least, his hands and neck will be severely burned."

"I thought he killed your people," Jack protested. "What do you care if he dies or not?"

"I am a warrior of the K'da," Draycos said firmly as he started to drag the man back toward the nearest tree trunk. "We kill only when necessary, and in battle. We do not slaughter helpless enemies."

"He was sure going to help them kill us, you know," Jack reminded him.

"Will you help me, or not?"

Jack shook his head in disgust. "I don't believe this," he said under his breath. But he stepped to Draycos's side and took one of the man's arms. A minute later they had him propped up against the tree, his head sagging onto his chest, his hands lying in his lap out of the dirt. "There," Jack said, stepping back. "Happy?"

"It will do," Draycos said. Brushing the dirt off his front paws, he leaped up at Jack and flattened himself out around his torso again. "Now: to your ship."

"Assuming there's still a ship to go to," Jack muttered, slapping his hands against sudden hot spots on his chest and stomach. His first thought was that the heat was coming from Draycos himself, but he saw now that it was merely bits of dirt that had been clinging to Draycos's back paws, dirt that had been left behind when the dragon went two-dimensional.

This whole thing, he decided, was definitely going to take some getting used to.