The rotary drill head had a width of eighteen feet.
Its hard dark metal face was studded with three hundred heavy-duty diamonds and heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron roller cones.
Corbin Cross engaged the air-powered clutches. Then, the floor of the southern bedrock trench groaned like a wounded iron beast.
Giles Croft stood on the steel watching narrow high walkway thirty feet above the digging pit.
He rested his forearms on the tubular railing. He felt forty thousand foot-pounds of rotary torque humming through his boot soles.
Beside him, Toby Karr checked the level bubbles on the sight posture transit.
“Drilling collar is plumb within two hair-thin degree marks, Lord Giles,” Toby reported. “Upright deviation across the first two hundred feet is less than a quarter of an inch.”
“Keep it plumb,” Giles said into the brass speaking tube. “Drilling speed is sixty feet per hour. Keep the bentonite wash circulating. If the slurry turns gray, you’re cutting through soft shale. I want blue granite before we set the load-bearing casing.”
