Pella held Ada’s sound stethoscope against the hot rock face. She listened to the hidden machinery of the College of Summoners. Through the stone came the clear, terrifying roar of white-hot water escaping through a fractured bronze casting.
‘It’s the backup superheater return line,’ Korr Var identified, consulting Hal Rook’s service maps under the lantern light. ‘Three years ago, Sorell installed a four-inch bronze return pipe behind this cut stone facing to pre-heat the intake water. He never inspected the joint after the first pressure test. The pipe rim has cracked, and sixty pounds of boiling steam is eroding the limestone backing.’Behind the thin facade of dressed stone, twelve cubic feet of ancient rock had already been dissolved into a pocket of boiling mud and scalding vapor. If the wall blew out. Meanwhile, a worker was running the karst passage, they would be engulfed in an instant cloud of four-hundred-degree steam.
‘We can’t cross this bend until that line is isolated,’ Pella said. Her face was pale in the cyan beetle light. ‘Ada, can you trace the solitude valve on Sorell’s upper drawings?’
‘I have it right here, lass,’ Ada answered from Harrowby, the sound of parchment unrolling over the audio link. ‘Look for Valve Twenty-Two-B on the upper tracking data gallery, twenty paces north of the main winch. It’s a three-inch bronze gate valve with an iron wheel painted white. If Korr Var can reach that wheel and close it three full turns, the steam supply to this fractured…
