While Pella was recovering her breath, Imran Bell was leaning out the southern low roof wall with his brass field glasses and bimetallic contact line, scanning the granite cliffs that bordered the western side of the gorge.
“Look here, Korr,” Imran pointed with his brass sighting rod. “The main narrow high walkway is a death trap—live lightning and sulfur steam. But down along the Roman stone support prop, eighteen feet below the bridge deck, there’s an ancient upkeep ledge forty yards long that runs straight to the technician’s nook on the central platform.”
“What’s the heat reading, Imran?” Korr asked, leaning over the low roof wall.
“Forty-four degrees Fahrenheit,” Imran replied triumphantly. “Cold as a cellar floor. The lantern beetles are nesting along the sedge roots right on the ledge face. If the beetles are sitting there eating moss, it means there’s zero electric charge and zero poisonous gas. It’s a fully cold hall.”
Eren Tal examined the Roman stonework with his practiced carpenter’s eye. “The ledge is eighteen inches wide, Korr. Dressed granite with a lead drip-edge. We can lay two ash planks across the narrow gaps, anchor our safety hawsers into the old mooring rings, and slide the timber sled straight across to Varo without touching Sorell’s live grid.” The alternate route was found.
