Goliath Read Online Free Page B

Deryn’s face in a driving hail, pinging against her goggles. She gritted her teeth, but a laugh spilled out of her. They’d hit on the first pass, and soon the cargo would be airborne. And she was flying!
    But as her laughter faded, a low growl came rumbling through the air, a sovereign and angry sound that chilled Deryn’s bones worse than any Siberian wind.
    The fighting bear was getting twitchy.
    And it stood to reason. The frozen clart of a thousandbeasties was raining down onto its head, carrying the scents of message lizards and glowworms, Huxleys and hydrogen sniffers, bats and bees and birds and the great whale itself—a hundred species that the fighting bear had never smelled before.
    Its head reared up and let out another roar, and the great brown shoulders rippled with annoyance, tossing the Russian crewmen into the air. They landed safely, as surefooted as airmen in a storm.
    The grappling hook clanked in its loop as the bear jerked about, and the cargo line snapped and quivered beside Deryn. She threw her weight to the left, trying to pull herself and Newkirk to safety.
    The driver’s whip rose and fell a few times, and the bear settled a little. As more ballast glittered in the air above, the cargo finally began to lift.
    The last one of the fighting bear’s crewmen leapt from the pallet, then turned to wave. Deryn saluted him back as the bear slowed to a halt. The cargo spun in the air now, skimming just above the ground.
    Deryn frowned. Why wasn’t the
Leviathan
climbing faster? They didn’t have much time before the next bend in the trailway, and she, Newkirk, and the cargo were still below treetop level.
    She looked up. The spray of water had stopped. The ballast tanks were empty. The Clanker engines were roaringand belching smoke, trying to create aerodynamic lift. But the airship was climbing too slowly.
    Deryn frowned. Dr. Busk, the head boffin himself, had done the calculations for this snatch-up. He’d cut it close, to be sure, with a long trip still ahead of them. But Deryn and Mr. Rigby had supervised the ejecting of supplies over the tundra, bringing the ship to
exactly
the right weight. . . .
    Unless the cargo pallet was heavier than the czar’s letter had promised.
    “Barking
kings
!” Deryn shouted. Divine right didn’t change the laws of gravity and hydrogen, that was for certain.
    She heard the shriek of a ballast alert above, and swore. If anything tumbled from the bay doors now, she and Newkirk would be plumb in its path.
    “We’re too heavy!” she shouted down.
    “Aye, I noticed!” the boy cried back, just as the trailway veered to the right beneath him.
    Instantly the pallet clipped the top of an evergreen, and Newkirk was swallowed by an explosion of pine needles and snow.
    “We need to toss some of that cargo!” Deryn cried, and angled her wings to the right. When she and Newkirk were over the pallet, she snapped a safety clip onto the cargo line, then shrugged out of the gliding harness.
    She and Newkirk slid down, screaming, their boots thudding against the cargo as they landed.
    “Blisters, Mr. Sharp! Are you trying to kill us?”
    “I’m saving us, Mr. Newkirk, as usual.” She unclipped herself and rolled onto the pallet. “We have to throw something off!”
    “Full marks for stating the obvious!” Newkirk shouted, just as the pallet smashed into another treetop. The collision sent the world spinning, and Deryn fell flat, grasping for handholds.
    Pressed against the cargo, her nose caught a whiff of something meaty. Deryn frowned. Was this pallet full of
dried beef
?
    She raised her head and looked about. There was nothing obvious to toss overboard, no boxes to cut free. Just heavy netting covering the shapeless brown mass. It would take long minutes to cut into it with a couple of rigging knives.
    “Blisters,” Newkirk cried.
    Deryn followed his gaze upward, and swore again. The ballast alert was in full swing. Fléchette bats were taking to the air, and