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Still spinning the crank wildly, Deryn looked up Newkirk was hanging li away frohts had gone dead too The creere using electric torches to call the bats and strafing hawks back fro contraption had knocked everything out

But if the airship was powerless, as the wind pushing Newkirk away? Shouldn’t they all have been drifting together?

Deryn looked down at the flank, her eyes widening

The cilia were still er

"Now, that’s barking odd," she ines was content to drift Of course, the airbeast had been acting strangely since the crash in the Alps All the old crewines - had rattled its attic

But this was no ti past only a hundred feet away, close enough that Deryn could see his blackened face and soaking unifor

"Newkirk!" she yelled, her hand raw on the winch’s handle But he fell past without answering

The coils of slack cable began to rustle, like a nest of snakes strewn across the topside The Huxley was dragging its cable behind as it dropped below the airship

"Clear those lines!" Deryn shouted, waving off a crew coils Theto drag hiain, till the line snapped tight with a sickening jerk Deryn hit the brake and checked the cable s - just over five hundred feet

The Leviathan o hundred feet fro less than three hundred feet below Strapped into the pilot’s rig, he was probably all right Unless the fire had got hi stop

Deryn took a deep breath, trying to stop her hands fro

She couldn’t crank hien-filled Huxley, not to haul dead weight

Deryn followed the taut cable, cli down the ratlines on the airbeast’s flank From the ship’s waist she could just see the Huxley’s dark shape fluttering against the whitecaps of the waves

"Barking spiders," she murmured The water was much closer than she’d expected

The Leviathan was losing altitude

Of course - the great airbeast was trying to find the strongest wind to pull itself away fro poor burnt Newkirk against the ocean’s choppy surface

But the officers could drop ballast, and drag the ship up against its will Deryn pulled out her coain at the Huxley below

There was no human movement that she could see Newkirk had to be stunned, at least And he wouldn’t have the right equipment to climb the cable No one expected to clie lizard? She saw one scra across the membrane, and whistled for it But the lizard just stared at her and jabbered so about an electrical malfunction

"Brilliant," shehad scrambled the wee beasties’ brains! Down below, the dark water looked closer every second

She was going to have to rescue Newkirk herself

Deryn searched the pockets of her flight suit In airers "belayed," which was Service-speak for sliding down a rope without breaking your neck She found a few carabiners and enough line toher safety clip to the Huxley’s cable, Deryn twisted the carabiner tight She couldn’t wind the rope around her hips because the weight of the dead Huxley would snip her in half But after a , she attached the extra carabiners to her harness and strung the cable through theby wouldn’t approve of this ht as she kicked herself away from the membrane

She slid down in short jerks, the carabiners’ friction keeping her froloves, its fibers fraying wherever she snapped to a halt Deryn doubted this cable was designed to hold the weight of a dead Huxley and twocolder now that the sun had fully set The peak of a tall wave s like a gunshot

"Newkirk!" Deryn shouted, and the boy stirred in his pilot’s rig

A shudder of relief went through her - he was alive Not like Da

She let herself fall the last twenty yards, the rope hissing likea burnt smell into the salt air But her boots landed softly on the squishy membrane of the dead airbeast, which smelled of smoke and salt, like jellyfish cooked on a hearth fire

"Where in blazes am I?" Newkirk mumbled, barely audible over the rumble of the waves His hair was scorched, his face and hands blackened with s ocean, that’s where! Can youhis fingers, then unstrapped himself from the harness He stood up shakily on the fraed" He ran his fingers through his hair, or as left of it

"Can you climb?" Deryn asked

Newkirk stared up at the Leviathan’s dark belly "Aye, but that’s miles away! Couldn’t you have cranked faster?"

"You could have fallen slower!" Deryn shouted back She unclipped two carabiners and shoved theth of line "Tie yourself a friction hitch Or don’t you reby’s classes?"

Newkirk stared at the carabiners, then up at the distant airship

"Aye, I re that far"

"Ascending," of course, was Service-Speak for cliers worked fast with her own line A friction hitch slid freely up a rope, but held fast eight was hanging from it That way, she and Newkirk could stop and rest without relying on their o first," she ordered If Newkirk slid down, she could stop him

He pulled hi freely fro Mount Everest next!" As she spoke, another wave slapped at the Huxley, splashing across the, but her friction hitch held