Moving like water through an irrigation channel, Kezra Venn and Fellis Dain slid forward along the four-foot brick tunnel, returning to Safety check Bay Three beneath the central pump sleeper.
The air in the underground channel was cold and dense with the sharp, stone tang of thirty years of evaporated salt water. Long, fragile whiskers of white chalk-stone efflorescence sprouted from the mortar joints between the glass-fused bricks, brushing against Kezra’s cheek with a faint, brittle dry crackle as she inched along the floor. Below her palms, the pavior bricks were greasy with ancient machinery animal fat, mixed with fine fiery grit that had sifted down through the floorboards over decades of mountain gales.
Above them, the box-shaped lattice of amber sunlight fell through the two-foot iron floor grating, lighting up the swirling dust motes in the cool underground gloom.
Through the two-inch square openings in the cast-iron casting, Kezra had a clear, upward view of the central hall. Eighteen inches above the floor level, resting against an empty tin grease pot on the rough pine surface of the workbench, her bonded survey notebook lay exposed in the sunlight. The waxed alum-tanned leather cover, embossed with the neat border of her ten completed circuits, sat within arm’s reach of the unpinned grating.
