The sound of the Gate anchor uncoupling echoed through forty upright feet of solid dark rock like the dropping of a drop-gate five miles away.
Len stood on the lower iron landing of the spiral stair. His right hand gripped the cold handrail to support Bram as the older man stumbled up from the anchor vault. Beneath the soles of Len’s boots, the high-hum shaking that had thrummed through the rock since he had first crossed the border eight days ago vanished fully. The stone felt strangely dead, cold and inert, stripped of the man-made magnetic tension that had held the southern pass locked beneath twelve years of darkness.
Up above, in the main transit hall where the border highway entered the mountain, the heavy iron framework of the border canopy groaned in protest.
Len’s Road Sense traced the clockwork shock wave as it traveled through the foundation pillars. The eighty-ton steel canopy, built to withstand artillery shells and the pressure wave of a total lens blowout, was settling four inches into its cast-iron high-pressure stops. Without the nonstop fluid pressure from the central steam cooler, the balance weights had taken the load. It locked the overhead teeth in their lowered resting position.
