Geotechnical steadying was the ultimate expression of human will over raw world-size chaos.
For ninety-six nonstop hours, the ten-mile underground shield tunnel functioned as a roaring heavy-duty moving belt.
Down the thirty-pound steel rails, sixteen narrow-gauge slurry trains ran in an unbroken circular schedule between the surface batch plants of Haven-Hold and the end-post terrace at Milepost Ten.
Each train was hauled by a fifty-ton steam locomotive. It pulled ten specialized agitator cars loaded with warm, liquid water-setting cement.
At the surface terminals, Aldous Swift-Current directed the material feeds from the aggregate silos, coordinating with Millicent Reed to maintain a nonstop, twenty-four-hour delivery rhythm.
Through the tunnel’s self-running air-powered block signaling system, locomotives passed signal lanterns at five-minute intervals, their steam whistles echoing off the prestressed iron-hard metal tunnel rings with clockwork care.
At the portal terrace, Giles Croft stood upon the central survey platform, his brass transit leveled to within three seconds of arc.
A network of twelve four-inch flexible armored steel pipes snaked down from the railhead into the glowing ravine below. Suspended from heavy timber overhead frame cranes, the injection lances plunged eighty feet into the main earth-shaking fracture line where molten magma bubbled against the land-wide shelf.
