The grout battery in the lower staging gallery was roaring at five thousand pounds of pressure.
Four massive positive-shifted weight triplex pumps, powered by dedicated high-pressure steam pistons, hammered in rhythmic syncopation.
Each stroke of the heavy steel plungers forced eighty gallons of high-alumina expansive high-pressure cement and finely crushed water-setting melted rock waste into the high-pressure injection pipe hub.
It wasn’t ordinary stonework mortar.
The grout slurry had been prepared in three cavernous underground mixing pits half a mile to the west.
There, giant steam-driven paddle wheels churned four thousand tons of crushed fiery volcanic cement, calcined limestone, and ultra-fine white chalk-stone into a smooth, gray cream.
Mistress Pippa the Fermenter had even contributed a specialized surfactant additive derived from fermented barley starch, designed to reduce water’s skin and allow the dense slurry to penetrate tiny fissures thinner than a sheet of parchment.
“Specific gravity of the mix is two point two,” Toby Karr reported, checking a hydrometer vial taken from the pump feed line.
