During the twenty-fourth rehearsal run on the turntable rig, disaster struck the test model with the sudden, violent brutality that always accompanied clockwork failure under load.
A young messenger boy from Track Three, carrying an unshielded red kerosene lantern, ran into the repair bay to announce that the evening ration tubs had arrived from the central kitchen. The boy stumbled on an oily cross-tie. He swung the red lamp in a wild, sweeping circle as he fought for balance in the dim light.
On the staging platform, an assistant mechanic named Tom—a nervous youth whom Venn had placed on the emergency safety tether—saw the swinging red light through a cloud of boiler exhaust. Tom panicked. Convinced that the red glare was the emergency stop signal from the pit, he reached out with his iron prybar and tripped the quick-release toggle on Melli’s harness. Meanwhile, the turntable wheel was under full four-hundred-and-twenty-pound load.
The tarred tether parted with a sound like a pistol shot.
The sudden, total loss of counter-balance whipped the oak spoke backward with terrifying speed. Melli was thrown four feet across the staging, her left hip slamming brutally into the oak A-frame upright. Meanwhile, the four hundred and twenty pounds of pig-iron in the pit plummeted six feet onto the stone floor.
