The silver coin didn’t fall.
It stood on its thin, milled rim, balanced on the curved, painted surface of the forward bearing cap.
Two inches below the coin, twenty-two inches of forged chrome-nickel steel was rotating at thirty-six hundred turns a minute. A hundred tons of alloy blades and shaft were generating three hundred and twenty tons of internal heavy outward pull, slicing through cave air with faster-than-sound tip speeds.
Yet the silver coin stood motionless as a monument in a desert.
Not a shiver blurred the embossed profile of the Founding Age emperor stamped on the metal face. Not a single wobble disturbed its upright balance point.
Giles stood beside the stone stand with his arms crossed. He watched the coin with deadpan builder satisfaction.
Behind his eyes, the test model screen was certifying the clockwork balance of the machine with gold-bordered achievement ribbons.
For seven nonstop hours, the turbine had been spinning under backup steam, undergoing its forced pre-commissioning heat soak.
