The dark rock ledge behind the central discharge baffle shuddered with a deep, grinding hum that rattled the loose gravel against Len Vey’s boots. He was lying flat on the cold flat stone slabs. His back was pressed hard against the curved iron housing of the third cooling bypass. Every shallow pull of air dragged across his left ribs. There, two separate fractures stabbed inward with the sharp, sickening pinch of displaced bone. The canvas sling holding his left forearm had turned greasy and black with coal soot, soaked through with sweat and foul water from the burst steam cooler sprayers overhead.
Beside him in the narrow clearance, Edda remained crouched on her haunches. Her left hand, wrapped in dirty wool bandages over two splintered cedar slats where her outer fingers had been crushed during the nursery feeder emergence three days earlier, held the backup clockwork trip-line in a rigid grip. Her knuckles were white, the sinews in her wrist standing out like wet cords beneath the grime. She kept her head tilted back, her eyes fixed on the angled copper mirror bolted to the high arch of the gallery. In the polished metal sheet, the glow of the upper instrument platform hung upside down: two mercurial pressure columns, their silver fluid quivering near the red threshold scratch, and the dark shape of Ivara Quill leaning over the brass stone railing.
