Urel stepped to the center of the zinc table. It set down his heavy brass measuring tongs and an old wooden slide-rule bound with brass corners. His gray eyes were steady. But his fingernails were chipped and stained with dried battery acid from four years of maintaining Morn’s backup tracking data lines. Behind him, two younger apprentices from the machine shops stood holding iron oil-cans and a box of hardened steel taper pins, their faces tense with the knowledge that the machine they were discussing had killed twelve men in Year Seven.
“We have the shape,” Urel said, looking at the assembled delegates. “Now we talk about the oak.”
He picked up a piece of charcoal from the oven bucket. Then he drew a full-scale cross-section of a single spoke from the two-meter governor wheel.
“The wheel has twelve spokes,” Urel explained. His voice carried the dry, practical rhythm of an arsenal machinist. “Each spoke is turned from white mountain hickory, two and a half inches in width, pinned into the bronze hub with half-inch narrowed steel pins. But three years ago, during the Year Nine check, Chancellor Morn ordered the upkeep crew to coat every spoke with hot sheep fat to prevent fungal rot in the damp air of the pit.”
