The screech of escaping steam through the safety chest muscle subsided from an ear-splitting roar to a ragged, whistling hiss as Melli Dorn hauled the backup chimney damper two notches open.
The dense white cloud of sulfur vapor began to lift, drawn upward into the draft chimney pipes by the towering brick stacks overhead. Through the thinning mist, the casting bay reappeared, its iron floorplates glistening with a film of scalding water drops that sizzled and boiled as it touched the glowing foundation footings.
Ivara Quill knelt on the trembling steel grating of the pulpit. Her single hand held her graphite pencil against the thick parchment pad resting on her knee.
She didn’t flinch from the heat, and she didn’t wipe the water drops from her eyelashes. Her eyes tracked the liquid silver levels in the twin pressure gauge tubes mounted beside the lehr intake port, her pencil scratching rapid, precise numbers across the wet sheepskin:
Annealing Lehr Internal Zone 1: 852 TU. Zone 2 (Slope Descent): 740 TU. Conduit Line B Backpressure: 42.bone-crushing pressure. Ringing Vibration Period: 42.1 seconds.
“Look at the period, Melli,” Ivara shouted, her voice cutting through the roar of the draft fans. “Forty-two point one seconds. The exact water-pressure cycle Len and I measured on the River footbridge forty minutes ago.”
