Before Arthur could finish uploading the power transfer protocols, an alarm klaxon shrieked from the ceiling of Vault 04-B. A burst of harsh red strobe lights cut through the gentle blue light of the nursery. An ear-splitting hiss echoed from the northern work channel.
“Warning!” the self-running vault computer blared in a blended feminine voice. Its warning tones rose in pitch. “Main coolant line rupture in Carousel Seven. Glycol pressure dropping sixty percent. Pod heat rising: negative one hundred and forty... Negative one hundred and ten... Critical threshold approaching in three minutes.”
Arthur sprinted down the aisle, his boots skidding across the polished concrete. At the far end of the chamber, Carousel Seven was surrounded by clouds of boiling white vapor. A high-pressure silver-steel coolant pipe had fractured near the ceiling pipe hub, spraying freezing liquid glycol across the floor. Meanwhile, the internal cooling loop of four hundred baby pods drained into the sump.
“The shaking from Titus’s ground-shaking pulse in the submarine dock must have weakened the rusted through joints,” Valerie shouted over the alarm, raising her rifle to scan for backup load-bearing collapses. “If the pods hit zero degrees, the ice crystals will rupture the blastomeres! Four hundred lineages will be lost!”
