And this was Switzerland, still neutral territory. Would the Germans dare attack by land?
But as Rigby repeated the signals, the words flashed past again, clear as day. Along with another bit of news:
E-S-T-I-M-A-T-E - T-E-N - M-I-L-E-S - C-L-O-S-I-N-G - F-A-S-T
Suddenly Deryn's brain was fully back into soldiering.
"Can you get him down without me, Newkirk?" she called.
"Aye, but what if he's hurt?"
"He's not. It's barking Clankers ... and they're coming by land! I've got to raise an alert."
Deryn pulled out her command whistle and piped the signal for an approaching enemy. A nearby hydrogen sniffer perked up its ears, then began an alert howl.
The wailing spread down the ship, sniffer to sniffer, like a living air-raid siren. In moments men were scrambling everywhere. Deryn looked about for the officer of the watch - there he was, Mr. Roland, running toward her across the spine.
"Report, Mr. Sharp."
She pointed up at the Huxley. "It's the bosun, sir. He's spotted another walker coming!"
"Mr. Rigby? What in blazes is he doing aloft?"
"He insisted, sir," Deryn said. "The walker's got eight legs, he says - I checked that part twice."
"Eight?" Mr. Roland said. "Must be a cruiser at least."
"Aye, it's big, sir. He's spotted it from ten miles away."
"Well, that's lucky. The big ones aren't so quick. We'll have an hour at least before it's here." He turned, snapping at a message lizard scuttling past.
"Begging your pardon, sir," Deryn said, "but Mr. Rigby said 'closing fast.' Maybe this is a nippy one."
The master rigger frowned. "Sounds unlikely, lad. But check with the Clankers. See if they know anything about this eight-legged business. Then bring word to the bridge."
Deryn saluted, spun about, and headed down.
Drop lines were hanging all along the spine, so she clipped a carabiner onto one and rappelled, bouncing down the flank. The rope hissed through her gloves, the metal carabiner turning hot as she slid.
Deryn's blood began to race, the rush of coming battle erasing everything else. The ship was still defenseless, unless the Clankers could get their engines going.
When her boots clanged against the metal support struts of the pod, Mr. Hirst looked up from the jumble of gears. He was hanging off the edge of the engine, no safety line in sight.
"Mr. Sharp! What's all this howling about?"
"Another walker's been spotted, sir," she said, then turned to Alek. His face was streaked with grease, like stripes of black war paint. "We're not sure what kind. But it's got eight legs, so we reckon it's big."
"Sounds like the Herkules," he said. "We passed her at the Swiss border. She's a thousand-ton frigate, new and experimental."
"But is she fast?"
Alek nodded. "Almost as quick as our walker. You say she's here in Switzerland? Have the Germans gone mad?"
"WARNING THE NEW ENGINE TEAM."
"Mad enough - she's ten miles east, and has scouts with her. How long do you think we've got?"
Alek spoke to Hoffman a moment, translating into German and metric. Deryn felt her foot tapping as she waited, her stinging palms wrapped tightly around the rope. One jump and she'd be sliding toward the bridge.
"Maybe twenty minutes?" Alek finally said.
"Blisters!" she swore. "I'm heading down to tell the officers. Is there anything else they should know?"
Hoffman reached out and took Alek's arm, muttering in hurried Clanker. Alek's eyes widened as he listened.
"That's right," he said. "Those scout craft you mentioned - we saw them too. They're armed with spotting flares, full of some sort of sticky phosphorous!"
Everyone was silent for a moment. Phosphorous ... the perfect stuff to roast a hydrogen breather.
Maybe the Germans didn't plan on capturing them after all.
"Well, get going, lad!" Mr. Hirst shouted at Deryn. "I'll send a lizard to the other engine. And you two, let's get this contraption started up!"
Deryn took one last glance at Alek, then stepped from the strut. She dropped toward the bridge, the rope sizzling hot between her gloved hands.
THIRTY-SEVEN
"But the engine's not warmed up yet!" Alek cried. "We could crack a piston in this cold!"
"It'll work or it won't," Hirst shouted back at him. "The ship's going up either way!"
The Leviathan's master engineer had a point. Below them ballast sparkled in the sunlight as it spilled from the forward tanks. The metal deck rose beneath Alek's feet, like an ocean vessel lifted by a wave. Men were streaming back toward the airship across the snow, the howls and whistles of godless animals echoing like a jungle around them.
The airship shifted again, ice snapping from the ground ropes as they stretched and tightened. Mr. Hirst was darting about outside the pod, cutting the pulley lines they'd used to haul the engine parts up. In a few moments all connections with the earth would be severed.
But the engine wasn't fully oiled yet. Half the glow plugs were still untested, and Klopp had forbidden starting up before he'd personally inspected the pistons.
"Will it run?" Alek asked Hoffman.
"Worth a try, sir. Just start it slow."
Alek turned to the controls. It was still strange, seeing the Stormwalker's needles and gauges out of their usual place in the pilot's cabin, and the gears and pistons that belonged in the walker's belly splayed in the open air.
When he primed the glow plugs, sparks flew around his head.
"Slowly now," Hoffman said, putting his goggles on.
Alek took hold of the single saunter - the other was over on the starboard engine with Klopp - and pushed it gently forward. Gears caught and turned, faster and faster, until the rumble of the engine set the whole pod shivering. He glanced over his shoulder to see the plundered guts of the Stormwalker spinning before his eyes, black smoke rising from the exhaust tubes.
"Wait for the order!" Mr. Hirst called above the roar. He pointed at the signal patch on the airship's membrane. It was made of cuttlefish skin, the master engineer had explained, connected by fabricated nervous tissue to receptors down on the bridge. When the ship's officers placed colored paper on the sensors, the signal patch would mimic the hue exactly, like a camouflaged creature in the wild. Brilliant red meant full speed ahead, purple meant half power, and blue meant quarter speed, with other shades in between.