Four hundred degrees Fahrenheit smelled like scorched hydraulic oil and roasted library glue.
Julian Vance climbed the iron rungs of the maintenance ladder leading to the upper drive gantry, the soles of his work boots sizzling against the superheated metal. Above his head, the twin six-ton steel cylinders of Steam Calendering Press #1 revolved against each other with a heavy, rhythmic groan: whir-crunch, whir-crunch.
The machine was an industrial monster built in 1972 by the Allis-Chalmers Heavy Machinery Works under municipal contract for the Department of Public Works; it stood twenty-five feet tall, its cast-steel side frames ribbed like the ribcage of a blue whale. The cylinders were four feet in diameter and eight feet wide, machined from solid chrome-molybdenum steel and polished to a mirror finish. Heat radiated off the metal in visible, shimmering waves that warped the amber glare of the sodium-vapor lamps into swirling mirages.
Clouds of dense, acrid vapor belched from the nip-point -- the narrow, high-pressure gap where the two rollers met under four hundred pounds per square inch of hydraulic clamping force. The vapor was laced with vaporized bisphenol-A, scorched bone collagen, and synthetic resin solvents that tasted like battery acid on the back of Julian’s tongue.
