She screamed and closed her eyes.
And gripped him tighter.
He pried her loose and set her away from him, holding her upper arms to prevent her from launching herself at him and clinging like a leech.
“Fall here,” he said.
Annika gaped at him when he made the comment, very clearly, in English. She went through the motions again, using her hand to demonstrate the fall and her voice to mimic an explosion. He nodded vigorously. “Fall here,” he repeated and then gestured toward the edge of the thing they were standing on. “Ah-na fall dere.”
Unwilling to move toward the edge, Annika lifted her head and eased up onto her toes to look. She saw then that they were standing on the canopy of a tree that looked to be well over a hundred feet tall, possibly a good bit more. Rather than the limbs and leaves particular to earth trees, however, this was one tall ‘stalk’—a trunk that must have been twenty to thirty feet in diameter—no telling how big in circumference. And it had a top rather like an umbrella thatseemedsolid.
Forgetting her fears, Annika looked around.
There was no sign of the ship.
Well, actually, there was a great deal of sign that something heavy had hit the thing. It was scarred up pretty badly and it looked like fairly fresh damage.
But there wasn’t so much as a loose bolt lying on the surface as far as she could see.
