The Maras Estuary was six hundred yards of deep, tidal saltwater separating the southern farmland from the heavy-duty district of Haven-Hold.
Spanning the navigation channel was Giles’s masterwork of clockwork civil transit: the Four-Hundred-Foot Balanced Hydraulic Swing-Bridge.
The entire two-thousand-one-hundred-ton steel truss bridge rested on a single circular pivot pier set in the center of the deep water.
Beneath the deck sat a twelve-foot central bearing plate of glowing-bronze, floating in a bath of high-pressure stone oil.
Giles Croft stood on the upper running balcony of the central pivot house. He watched the southern approach road through his land-mapper’s transit.
Down below, the water of the estuary was running fast and grey on an incoming tide.
“Barge in sight,” called out Aldous Swift-Current from the hydro-storage tank room below.
The riverkin was watching the river mouth through an open bronze shutter.
