The granite peaks of the Iron Range were shifting six feet to the west every hour.
High above the northern mines of Haven-Hold, entire ridges of dark hard speckled rock stone groaned under huge underground shifted weight.
Rockslides roared down the scree gullies like tumbling waterfalls of grey shale. It sent up vast clouds of choking stone dust that drifted across the mining railway depots.
Giles Croft stood on the wind-whipped rim of the northern quarry bench, wearing his heavy woolen greatcoat and heavy steel safety helmet.
Beside him, Toby Karr held an eight-foot ash target rod. Meanwhile, Captain Kenneth Drake surveyed the shifting mountain faces with his spyglass.
“Look at the level shifted weight across Station Four,” Giles said, adjusting the tangent screw on his brass transit.
“The entire eastern shoulder of Mount Grey Crag has moved three point eight feet since sunrise.
The subsurface shifted weight isn’t random ground-shaking fracturing. It’s the water-flow bow-wave of a fifty-mile living metal tube moving through solid rock.”
