The check water chute for Sluice Twelve lay at the end of a narrow backup gallery that branched off from the main sump tunnel. He drove directly toward the roaring heart of the discharge works.
Here, the air was no longer merely damp. It was a fine mist of high-speed spray that smelled intensely of crushed river stone and crushed iron. The noise was a total physical presence. A nonstop, bone-shaking thunder that hit Tomas’s chest like the flat of an oak paddle. That made his breastbone vibrate in time with the water.
They stopped before a massive, riveted iron inner wall door.
The steel plate was covered in a thick crust of brown rust and blistered red lead paint. Across the center of the door, four heavy forged dogs were screwed tight onto threaded bronze studs. Two small check ports, each fitted with a circular disc of four-inch-thick cast plate glass held in a heavy brass bezel, offered a view into the discharge under-road drain beyond.
Water cried from the edge of the bronze bezels, atomizing into a freezing mist that coated Tomas’s woolen sleeves in tiny, icy beads. He wiped the moisture from his eyebrows with the rough cuff of his coat. He smelled the bitter stone tang of powdered slate and sulfur that soaked the humid air. Beneath the soles of his boots, the steel grating of the access walkway hummed like a saw blade cutting through dry hickory.
