The world shrank beneath the lift cradle until mountain ranges looked like wrinkled burlap sacks cast onto a blue floor.
By the time the five-hundred-ton Harmonic Core crossed forty thousand feet height, the warm, wet air of the southern valleys had vanished fully.
In its place came the dry, brutal cold of the middle troposphere. It dropped steadily toward fifty-five degrees below zero.
Giles Croft stood on the mobile check outrigger suspended fifty feet above the climbing core.
His quilted canvas flight suit was cinched tight with leather straps at the ankles and wrists, a wool scarf wrapped three times around his throat beneath his fur-lined collar.
Across his eyes, he wore tinted brass aviation goggles. He wiped away a thin crust of rime ice every three minutes with the fleece thumb of his mitten.
“Ascent speed holding at four point nine knots,” Giles spoke into his throat microphone, his breath frosting in thick white clouds against his chest.
“Drum bearing heat at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The kerosene heat traces on the runway rails are preventing ice buildup on the guide faces.”
