In the central repair bay of the tram shed, the alarm came not from an iron whistle or a shouted warning, but from a sudden, unnatural shudder in the timber workbench.
Urel was bent over an open casing of replacement glass seals. His brass measured tongs poised above a rubber seating ring. Just then, the overhead lamp swung two inches to the left. The lamp was suspended from a catenary wire of braided iron that spanned forty feet between the brick piers of the shed. It anchored into the main stonework arch that carried the main survey line toward the southern under-road drain.
“Hold the table,” Len ordered, his voice cutting through the hiss of the chicory pot with the sharp clarity of an officer on a low roof wall.
His sound right hand shot out and clamped down on Urel’s shoulder, holding the technician rigid. Urel froze, his measuring tongs hovering a fraction of an inch above the fragile glass.
Across the gravel floor, young Kester Holt, sixteen years old, was coiling a thirty-fathom line of tarred hemp that had been used that morning to hoist replacement water jackets up from the lower sump. The boy was halfway through a standard sailor’s coil. His arms spread was wide, the rope looping over his left elbow.
