Returning to Entry hall 734, Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu went straight to work redeploying the Cyclopean Repeating Pneumatic Ballista. The forty-ton weapon rested upon its bronze crossing sled, its ten-round gravity hopper loaded with fluted star-fallen harpoons, ready to be moved along the railway into the forward firing gallery.
Qiao Ming unlocked the track dogs with a long bronze lever. Bracing his bare feet against the floor tread plates, he engaged the manual traction crank geared to the carriage flanged wheels. The forty-ton assembly moved forward along the bronze rails with smooth, nonstop driving force, rolling through the connecting archway into Entry hall 742: The Traversal Flume.
This was a high, narrow firing gallery forty arm-lengths long, situated directly beneath the northern ceiling vents of Entry hall 744. In the floor of the gallery was Bay Three. A heavy firing pit lined with six-inch plates of cast glowing bronze, fitted with heavy recoil bumpers of hardened rubber and locking clamps designed to anchor the weapon against forty thousand pounds of discharge shock.
Qiao Ming guided the carriage into Bay Three. With a deep, metal thud, the front wheels struck the bronze stops. He slammed the four corner locking clamps into their floor sockets, driving the wedge-pins home with his hammer until the giant crossbow was solidly united with the bedrock foundation.
