"Come on, come on," Dumbarton growled.
"I'm coming," Alison snapped back, pretending her foot was tangled in the comforter as she lowered her hand toward the crouching K'da and tapped her fingertips vigorously on the side of the bed.
To her relief, Taneem got the hint. A dragon paw grabbed on to Alison's wrist, and a moment later the K'da was back on her skin. "No room," Taneem whispered.
"I know," Alison whispered back. "Off my left foot, when I signal." Making a show of freeing herself, she stood up. "Can I at least change in the bathroom?" she asked aloud.
Silently, Dumbarton planted himself directly between her and the bathroom door and folded his arms across his chest. "Fine," Alison growled, coming around the bed toward them. "Would you at least get me one of the robes from the bathroom?"
"Sure." Dumbarton looked at the Brummga, jerked his head.
The big alien turned and lumbered off. "Thanks," Alison said, unfastening her belt, her eyes darting around the room. With the Brummga's back toward her, and Dumbarton's attention about to be elsewhere, getting Taneem off her body without being seen ought to be easy enough.
But that was only the first problem. In an open room like this, there were precious few places something the size of a small tiger could hide.
And then Alison's eyes fell on the computer desk in the corner. It would be a tight fit, she knew, but it should work.
Provided she could make Taneem understand what she wanted.
"Don't think I'm not going to go straight over to that computer and log a complaint when this is over," she warned Dumbarton, walking up to him and looking him straight in his eye.
"I'm sure the colonel's real scared," Dumbarton said dryly.
"He should be." Out of the corner of her eye, Alison saw the Brummga disappear through the bathroom door. Lifting her left foot past Dumbarton's legs, she wiggled her ankle furiously.
She nearly lost her balance as Taneem shot out the leg of her jeans. The K'da hit the deck silently, her neck turning back and forth as she looked around. Alison held her breath . . .
Then the long neck straightened, and Taneem headed off in a fast lope toward the desk. Ducking under the modesty panel, she rolled over onto her back and reached all four legs up toward the underside of the desktop itself. Because Alison was listening for it, she heard the faint scrunch of claws digging into wood.
And the gray-scaled K'da body pulled upward and disappeared behind the panel.
"I'm going to need more clothes, too," she told Dumbarton as the Brummga emerged with the robe and tossed it on the end of the bed. "At least one more outfit, plus a nightshirt or something to sleep in."
"Check the closet," Dumbarton said shortly. "There's probably something in there you can use."
"Oh," Alison said as she turned and snatched up the robe. "I never thought of that."
Dumbarton snorted under his breath. "Some criminal mastermind," he muttered.
Alison smiled to herself. Being underestimated, her father had often said, was nearly as good as not being noticed at all.
Half an hour later, when they brought back her clothes, Alison was sitting at the desk, her knees helping to support Taneem's weight, pounding out the indignant entry she'd promised into the ship's log.
Dinner was served at seven o'clock that evening, ship's time. By then Alison had found and disabled the two microphones that had been sewn into her clothing while Frost was having them scanned.
The colonel was apparently not the type to give up easily.
She and Taneem ate together in silence, finishing off the entire selection of food that had been provided. Alison wondered if her seemingly vast appetite was going to raise any red flags among Frost's men. Still, she was fourteen, and fourteen-year-olds' appetites were the stuff of legend. Hopefully, that would be the conclusion Frost would draw from the next nine days' worth of cleaned plates.
Later, with Taneem again riding her skin, she pulled out her array of gadgets and began double-checking all of them. Her life was riding on this job, not to mention the lives of all those K'da and Shontine out there. Whatever it took, she was going to succeed.
If only to see the look on Jack's face afterward.
CHAPTER 7
The Great Assembly Hall turned out to be the long structure straddling the river that Draycos had noticed on their flight into the canyon earlier that day. A good two hundred feet long and thirty wide, with open sides and a wood-and-weave roof, it was supported by a set of wide, ten-foot-high stone pylons sunk deep into the edges of the river.
The positioning of the Hall puzzled him for a while until he remembered that with the high canyon walls, the crops spread out along the floor would receive only limited sunlight each day. Whatever land lay beneath the Hall would receive none at all. The Golvins had therefore built the structure over the river, which couldn't be farmed anyway.
Dinner was a crowded and noisy affair, with at least two hundred of the aliens present. Jack was seated at the One's table, laid out just beneath a tall thronelike chair at the northern end of the Hall. From the flurry of one- and two-syllable names being tossed around the table, Draycos concluded that the boy had been seated among the very top crust of the canyon's social structure.
But while the Golvins chattered and laughed through the meal, Jack himself was uncharacteristically quiet. He was polite enough, answering any questions put to him, and smiled and nodded "when appropriate. But his heart clearly wasn't in any of it.
Draycos's chance came late in the meal, when local custom apparently required the diners to get up and mingle with those of different rank. Jack left his seat as well, but instead of milling around he went to the side of the Hall. Leaning his elbows on the waist-high wall, he gazed out at the moonlit canyon around them. "Jack?" Draycos called tentatively from his shoulder.
"Right here," the boy said, his voice sounding as distant as the rest of him.
"I need to check out the shuttle," Draycos told him, trying without success to read the boy's face. "Is the area clear?"
Jack took a deep breath, as if forcing himself out of distant thoughts, and glanced around. "Looks okay," he said. Turning a little, he stretched his right arm over the wall and let it dangle downward.
Draycos slithered down the boy's arm and popped out of his sleeve. A quick snap of his front legs, and he had caught the outside of the wall with his claws. For a moment he hung there, confirming for himself that the area was clear of observers. Then, with a last look at Jack's troubled face, he let go and dropped onto the edge of the cropland below.
There were at least eight different plant species being cultivated in the canyon, Draycos had noted during Jack's walk that afternoon. Generally, there were two to four different types in each of the plots marked off by the narrow irrigation channels.
The farmers probably saw the arrangement as an efficient way of using the different needs of the different plants. A poet-warrior like Draycos saw instead the possibilities of having differently sized plants to move through. Flicking out his tongue every couple of breaths to sample the subtle odors of the area, he headed downstream toward the landing pit and the shuttle.
He was halfway there when he spotted a lone Golvin on the far side of the river moving along the walkways between the crop plots, heading the same direction Draycos was.
Draycos froze, crouching down beside a wide stand of wheat-like plants, frowning to himself. The alien wasn't carrying any tools, so he probably wasn't going out to work in the fields. He probably wasn't simply going for a stroll, either—he was behaving far too furtively for that.