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Vale suddenly snapped his fingers ‘I do! Mrs Jenkins, bring us in to above the British Library, right now, if you please And be ready for an abrupt descent’

‘What are we trying?’ Kai asked, looking round fro that myself,’ Mrs Jenkins said The zeppelin wheeled to the left, throwing theain ‘We’re three hundred yards off, co roof’s only fifty yards long’

‘On my word, Miss Winters,’ Vale instructed, ‘tell all the structural coht by fifty per cent Mrs Jenkins, you are to deploy landing flaps’ He checked his watch

Another burst of chittering sounded outside ‘Das’

‘Which things?’ Irene asked, frantically trying to remember vocabulary for zeppelin parts

‘Seed aan-stop controls ‘They chew right through an airbag Stand by for rapid braking’

‘Now!’ Vale declared

‘All zeppelin structure parts, increase your weight by a half again!’ Irene shouted, projecting her voice to ensure it would carry through both cabin and cockpit She didn’t want half the struts deciding to stay their original weight, ination could supply too ood

Mrs Jenkins slaan stops si her left hand and forearm, and threw herself back in her seat

The zeppelin shuddered, leather straining andony Kai had dropped his gun and was hanging on to the straps with one hand and Irene with the other, and Irene couldn’t coh a strap and atching the view through the shattered ith keen curiosity

They were sinking in the air, dragged down as if so rope fro flaps orking, but, Irene thought, h

‘Should I make it heavier?’ she shouted at Vale, her voice barely carrying above the howling of the air and the tortured noise of the ation

It was at times like this that Irene really wished she believed in prayer Sudden death was easy to cope with, seeing as you had no ti crash and burn over the British Museu too much time for dread, with an inevitable fiery doom at the end Every second seemed to stretch out into an eternal round with a thump that threw Irene entirely onto Kai, knocked Mrs Jenkins back in her seat, and uely hear screa on the roof had had the sense to run away

With aswitches The huan to slow, as they shut down one by one Suddenly the zeppelin was absurdly quiet after all the earlier noise, with only the cabin’s creaks and groans as an eerie backdrop