The thirty-six-inch high-pressure steel slurry trunk-line stretched across Haven-Hold like an unbending iron spine.
Three hundred dwarven pipe-fitters and refugee ironworkers had worked in overlapping shifts under the blinding glare of acetylene flare lamps.
Master Duncan Stone-Splitter had walked the trench line continuously. His heavy iron measured tongs checking the edge on every forty-foot pipe section as it was swung into place by mobile steam overhead frame cranes.
“Watch the seating groove,” Duncan had bellowed, his voice echoing between the shuttered stone facades of the town district.
“If that Victaulic coupling doesn’t bite square into the pipe shoulder, three thousand pounds of pressure will blow the joint apart like a cannon shot.
Torque those bolts until the iron sings.”
Toby Karr and four survey apprentices had crawled inside the newly joined sections, checking the internal welds with dye penetrant and sound deep ring hammers.
“Joint forty-two is fully flush, Master Duncan,” Toby called out from the darkness of the pipe inside, his voice booming with hollow deep ring. “Zero internal melted rock waste.
