across the field toward her, cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting something... .
She caught the sound of his voice, but the wind whipped the words away.
Deryn's feet now dangled a few yards above the ground, which raced by as if she were on horseback. She peeled off her heavy, sodden jacket and tossed it overboard.
The prison loomed close again as the Huxley sped along. Smashing into its walls at this speed would turn her and the airbeast into bloody splotches.
Her fingers scrambled at the pilot's rig, searching for a way to escape the harness. Deryn reckoned her chances were better dropping onto muddy grass than crashing into a wall. And with her weight gone the Huxley would rise back into the air.
Of course, that clart-rag of a coxswain hadn't bothered showing her how to unbuckle the rig. The leather straps were swollen with rain, cinched as tight as a duck's bum. Evidently the Service didn't trust recruits not to wriggle out in a panic and fall to their deaths.
Then Deryn saw the knot over her head - the cable that bound the airbeast to the ground!
She looked at the cable stretched out between her and the winch ... about three hundred feet of it now. That length of rain-soaked hemp had to weigh more than one skinny wee lassie and her wet clothes.
If she could set the Huxley free, it might still have enough hydrogen to carry her up to safety.
But the ground was rising again, shining wet grass and puddles blurring past just beneath her feet - the prison walls ahead. Reaching up with one hand, Deryn felt the half-familiar shape of the knot... .
It was nothing but a backhanded mooring hitch! She remembered Jaspert telling her how Air Service riggers used sailor's knots, the same ones she'd tied a thousand times on Da's balloons!
As Deryn struggled to free the wet cable from its knot, her boots struck the ground with a bone-jarring thud, skidding across the wet grass.
But the real danger wasn't below - it was the approaching prison walls. Deryn and the Huxley were seconds away from smashing into that shining expanse of wet stone.
Finally her fingers pushed the cable's working end free. The knot spilled, the rope twisting like a live thing, skinning her fingers as it slipped from the steel ring.
As the weight of three hundred feet of wet hemp dropped away, the airbeast soared, clearing the prison walls with yards to spare.
Deryn's breath caught as a belching chimney passed beneath her feet. She imagined raindrops tumbling down its mouth to the coal fires below, spitting steam, the sparks rising up to ignite the angry mass of hydrogen over her head.
But the wind whipped the sparks away - moments later the Huxley had cleared the southernmost prison buildings.
As she climbed, Deryn heard a hoarse cheer from below.
The ground men raised their arms in triumph. Jaspert was beaming, cupping both hands to his face and shouting something that sounded congratulatory, as if to say she'd done exactly what he'd told her!
"It was my barking idea, Jaspert Sharp," she muttered, sucking her rope-burned fingers.
Of course, she was still in the middle of a storm, strapped to an irritable Huxley, both of them soaring across a stretch of London with precious few spots to land.
And how was Deryn meant to land this beastie? She had no way to vent hydrogen, no more ballast in case the creature spooked, and no clue if anyone had ever free-ballooned with a Huxley before and lived to tell the tale.
Still ... at least she was flying. If she ever came down alive, the boffins would have to admit as how she'd passed this test.
Boy or not, Deryn Sharp had shown a squick of air sense after all.
EIGHT
The storm felt strangely still.
She remembered the sensation from Da's hot-air balloons. Cut free from its tether, the medusa had exactly matched the speed of the wind. The air felt motionless, the earth turning below on a giant lathe.
Dark clouds still boiled around her, giving the Huxley an occasional spin. But worse were the flickers in the distance. One sure way to set a hydrogen breather aflame was to hit it with lightning. Deryn distracted herself by watching London pass beneath, all matchbox houses and winding streets, the factories with their sealed smokestacks.
She remembered how Da had said London looked in the days before old Darwin had worked his magic. A pall of coal smoke had covered the entire city, along with a fog