In the quiet, gas-lit basement workshop of the Harrowby Municipal Pumping Station on the outskirts of Leeds, the morning light was just beginning to touch the tall frosted windows. The air smelled of clean steam metal tube oil, bituminous coal smoke from the boiler house. The sharp, comforting warmth of boiled tea steeping in an enamel pot beside the radio bench.
Jo Saye sat wrapped in a thick wool cardigan, her feet resting on a braided rag rug. He held a mug of strong Yorkshire tea with both hands. Her hair was still damp from the morning drizzle she had met on her walk from the Leeds tram end-post. But her face was fully untroubled. Beside her on the workbench lay the red emergency tab that had brought her across thirty thousand miles in thirty seconds.
Ada Morland was hunched over the copper-wound power-coil coils of the main transceiver. Her horn-rimmed glasses reflected the soft amber glow of three empty pocket tubes. With steady, delicate movements, she turned the brass fine-scale dial. She listened to the high-pitched heterodyne whistle that hummed through her Bakelite headphones.
‘The ringing carrier is solid, Jo,’ Ada said without looking up, a faint smile touching her lips. ‘One hundred and forty-two point eight kilohertz. The bronze arch in Lowbank was acting as an amplifier. But the deepest shaking is carried by the bedrock and the water itself. Hal Rook bedded his foundations so deeply into the granite that the whole valley acts as a tuning…
