The inside of the Central Sluice House was a heavy-duty cathedral of iron, steam, and roaring pressure. The ceiling rose fifty feet into the darkness, crossed by huge web-roof beams of rolled forged iron that groaned under the huge heat strain. In the center of the vast chamber sat the Great Sluice Header. A sixty-foot metal tube of black cast iron, five feet in width. It was wrapped in crumbling asbestos lagging that hung like white rags from the weeping seams.
Steam was shrieking from twenty different seal ring joints, shooting jets of white, scalding vapor thirty feet across the hall like high-pressure hoses. Every breath through Tomas’s wet wool muffler was heavy, wet, and burning, tasting of sulfur and machine animal fat.
Through the swirling mist, thirty feet above the boiling floor, the dark shape of the upper narrow high walkway was faintly visible. Suspended from the central roof truss hung the massive iron balance weight. A solid cube of cast pig iron, four feet on each side, weighing eight hundred pounds, suspended above the upright bypass chute by two heavy forged chains.
Standing upon the narrow iron narrow high walkway beside the balance weight stood Vance Kegg, with three burly foundry guards armed with heavy iron pry-bars and valve wrenches.
