While Korr Var mapped the control lines, Pella climbed onto the slippery bronze casing of the Station Two bypass water chute. She held her brass measuring tongs and an ivory-scaled rule to measure the spreading joints.
Across the Courtesy Bridge, Jo Saye was standing at her drafting board in the Harrowby depot, receiving the dimensions in real time over the audio link. ‘Pella, what is the outside width of that water chute pipe rim?’ Jo’s voice crackled through the horn.
‘Twenty-four and three-eighths inches,’ Pella called back, reading the measuring tongs under the yellow light of Eren’s lantern. ‘Fourteen-bolt circular pattern on a twenty-eight-inch bolt circle. But the pipe rim is cast iron, Jo, and the faces are pitted with rust. A rigid bronze spool-piece will never seal on that surface.’
‘You can’t use rigid metal anyway,’ Jo answered from Yorkshire. ‘When you open that gate under sixty thousand tons of head, the pipe is going to kick three inches to the left from high-pressure recoil. If you have rigid bronze, it will snap the pipe rim bolts and flood the narrow high walkway. You need flexible spreading sleeves—heavy multi-ply canvas vulcanized with rubber or dipped in boiled linseed oil, heavy with helical steel wire.’
