The brass pointer on the wall-clock clicked down with the sound of a cocked pistol.
180 SECONDS REMAINING.
Julian Vance stood in the center aisle of Coach #404. Beneath his boots, the steel floorboards trembled with a steady, rhythmic vibration.
It wasn’t engine rumble. The Detroit Diesel was idling at seven hundred RPM.
The vibration came from below the chassis.
Deep in the black grease of Inspection Pit #4, four-inch pneumatic impact-wrenches were spinning at ten thousand revolutions per minute. The high-pitched whine rose through the heating ducts like a dentist’s drill against bone.
Outside, sixty-foot concrete columns rose into the darkness of the terminal roof. Massive mercury-vapor lamps buzzed at sixty Hertz, casting a harsh green-white glare across the oil-stained pavement.
Above the entrance to Bay 04, the three-foot brass clock face ticked forward:
