The building reality of postponing the core release into the morning of Day Eight was a terrifying sharp-angled cascade that threatened to tear the fragile coalition apart.
On the intermediate narrow high walkway of Level Five, fifty feet above the flooded floor, Ivara Quill set her brass land-mapper’s transit on its leveling tripod, training the high-zoom lens through the rising plumes of sulfur steam toward the northern wall. Mounted forty feet above the drowned drain pits. There, the main channel entered the quarry chamber from the deep solid mountain stone, hung the master liquid silver pressure gauge. A heavy four-foot U-tube of toughened heat-proof glass wrapped in a protective slotted brass cage.
The column of black liquid silver was shaking with violent, rhythmic shudders that matched the underground throbbing of the mountain core.
“Read the knee pad, Urel,” Ivara commanded without taking her eye from the transit eyepiece. Her single hand adjusted the fine tangent screw on the brass level plate. That brought the crosshairs into razor-sharp posture with the graduated scale.
Beside her, twenty-year-old land-mapper apprentice Urel balanced on the narrow timber staging. His animal fat lamp was held close to the brass index plate. His woolen jacket was soaked through with sulfur water drops, his boots caked with white lime mud. His fingers shook so hard the yellow flame threw jagged. He leapt shadows across the damp stone ceiling.
