The violet glare from the central core pit surged with renewed violence. It cast long, wavering shadows across the brick arches of the watching gallery. The air had grown so dry that Ivara’s lips had cracked, bleeding into the corners of her mouth. But she kept her gaze locked on Chancellor Morn’s face.
“Deren Vey corrected the heat swelling coefficients seven years ago,” Ivara stated, the words falling like lead weights onto the table. “He went down into the quarry drifts with a liquid silver heat gauge and an iron probe. He proved that the limestone beds can absorb seventy thousand heat units every twelve minutes—provided the water jacket is kept at eight hundred gallons a minute and the release is pulsed in stepped stages.”
Morn took two rapid steps toward her. His heavy hands opened in an appeal that was half-command, half-supplication.
“Then give me the tables, Ivara,” he pleaded, his voice thick with gravelly urgency. “Sign the working release order. I’ll assign you sixty armed men from the central guard. We’ll take the quarry valves by force, we’ll clear the lower silt traps. We’ll bleed the core down to forty percent capacity before midnight tomorrow.”
Ivara looked at his open, grease-blackened hands.
