Of course it could climb. It would have been too easy if it had hung around on the ground waiting for them to fall. At least it was going slowly, but then it wasn't as if Ian or John could climb very fast covered in all this slime. And Ian was sure he must be imagining it, given that it was on his suit and not on his skin, but it itched.

As slippery as it was, he wasn't just going to wait for the blob to catch up to them. Nor could he sit here and let it get to John because John was stuck behind him. Except that every time he reached up for a hand hold his hands slipped. He could get his arms over a lower branch, but then his feet slipped.

But if they couldn't move up, perhaps they could move down. "Maybe we could wait for it to nearly catch up with us and then jump off and run." Jumping would be easy, landing less so from this height. And that assumed the blob couldn't understand what they were saying.