At exactly ten minutes into the overtime crossing, Ada Morland was kneeling on a dry pine board beside the Third Gate bypass trunk, her Sheffield pressure gauge clamped securely to the brass test petcock. Around her, the spray from the turning basin fell like heavy hail, drumming against her oilskin coat. But her eyes never wavered from the trembling glass tube of liquid silver.
“Sixty-eight pounds,” Ada read aloud, shouting over the underground roar of the water. “Down twenty pounds from when Sorell slammed Notch Twelve. That turning basin water chute is drinking six thousand gallons a minute. The backing-up pressure in this baked-clay trunk has dropped into the safe margin.”
Pella knelt beside her, checking the brass dial of her father’s tell-tale. “The liquid silver has settled at 3.8 marks, Ada. It’s still in the yellow sector, but it’s not jumping anymore. The water is flowing instead of battering.”
“Aye, she’s flowing,” Ada agreed, wiping her greasy thumb across the brass dial. “But don’t start cheering yet, lass. The river has only given us an inch of breathing room. Sorell’s extraction cage is still drawing twenty drams of unvented strain from Senn’s throat. If we don’t start venting through Jo’s offering sleeve in the next five minutes, the pressure will climb right back up to eighty.”
