The Grand Alluvial Arch Viaduct was four thousand feet of heavy water-setting concrete spanning the Maras Canyon.
Seven slender curved arches rose two hundred feet above the raging river below.
Across the deck ran two standard-gauge railway tracks and a four-lane macadam roadway.
Giles Croft stood inside the central arch control cabin. He tapped a brass dial gauge with his thumbnail.
“Pier bending is point zero two inches,” Giles said. “The spreading joints are floating freely on their bronze slide plates. Good. Now let’s see what thirty thousand men in heavy armor do to the approach spans.”
Kenneth Drake stood beside him. He watched the southern approach road through a pair of high-zoom field binoculars.
The morning sun had just cleared the eastern peaks.
Across the broad river-bed plain, the vanguard of the Holy Solar Orthodoxy was advancing in amazing, terrible array.
