Men and beasts were everywhere on this flank, four searchlights stretching their shadows to monstrous proportions. The main gondola lay at an angle, half hanging from the harness, half resting in the snow. She scrambled down the ratlines and hit the ground running. Inside the gondola the decks and bulkheads leaned to starboard, a fun house full of overturned furniture. With the scent of hydrogen everywhere, the oil lamps had been extinguished, leaving the chaos lit with the sickly green of glowworms. Men jostled in the slanting corridors, filling the air with curses and shouted orders. Deryn dodged and weaved among them, hoping for a glimpse of Newkirk or Mr. Rigby. They’d been dangling from this side of the ship, which had rolled skyward, so they couldn’t have been crushed… . But the bosun had looked badly wounded. What if he’d been dead before the airship had hit the snow? Deryn swallowed the thought and kept running. Checking on the boffin was her first responsibility, a duty she was already late for.
