The alarm didn’t ring like a chapel chime. It fell like an iron bolt dropped down an empty elevator shaft.
High above the intake vault, in the narrow darkness between the brick piers and the iron cross-ties of the tram yard, a dry, metal rattle broke through the thrum of the ventilator ducts. A chain rattled furiously over a grooved pulley, links slapping against the sheet-metal housing with the rapid clatter of a startled pheasant. Two seconds later, a hollow, ringing clang boomed through the undercroft, shaking the damp limestone against Len’s shoulder blades.
CLANG. Clang-clatter-clack.
The lead balance weight of the header tank float had hit the bottom stop inside its guide pipe.
Doma Reel didn’t look up, but her jaw clenched until the muscles along her neck stood out like corded hemp. She dropped the heavy iron wrench she had been holding onto the landing, the steel ringing sharply against the brickwork.
“Thirty gallons,” Doma said, her voice dropping into a flat, dark flat voice. “The float has dropped past the lower warning line. The header tank has drained its reserve.”
Len leaned his back against the brick wall of the shaft. He held his ash sounding pole braced across his right knee. His left forearm felt swollen inside its tightly wound linen bindings, throbbing with a persistent, feverish heat that pulsed behind his eyes in time with his heartbeat. He had spent three years carrying freight across northern mountain passes. But this was a different tiredness. The…
