- Clinging to the ratlines on the Leviathan's flank, Deryn Sharp looks down a thousand feet to the sea below.
- Mr. Rigby, the bosun, yells at her to keep going. There's no navel gazing in combat drills—only naval gazing.
- Turns out Deryn has already passed the middy's test to become a midshipman while on board the Leviathan—also, no one has yet noticed that she's a girl.
- Now she's training with the other middies to learn all about living, fighting, and dying on an airbeast, and about how Darwin used evolution to learn to fabricate new animals.
- No matter what kind of strange stuff Deryn's learning, the weirdest thing of all is learning to be a boy.
- Deryn finally reaches the top of the airbeast, and she and Mr. Newkirk, another midshipman, rest and observe the airship. Mr. Newkirk's mother is a Monkey Luddite, a person who is afraid of fabrications, and he's a little freaked by them himself.
- She and Newkirk give each other a hard time, and Deryn thinks that being a boy is pretty tough.