The jet of vented steam screamed with the fury of a wounded dragon.
Scalding white vapor billowed from the fracture, stinging Lin Tao’s cheeks and coating his goggles in droplets of bitter salt water. Through the shrieking cloud of steam, Tie Shan moved with instant, unhesitating care. He dropped the steel hammer, kicked the star-iron wedge deeper into the fissure with the heel of his heavy boot. Then he drove the narrowed chisel end of his fourteen-pound pry-bar into the gap.
The metal bit into the fracture with a dull crunch of crushed quartz.
Tie Shan adjusted his grip, both hands clamped around the upper third of the four-foot iron lever. He planted his shoulder against the star-white-gold banded shaft, his feet digging into the slick quartz deck.
“Pivot point is set!” Lin Tao shouted, crouching low to inspect the pivot point against the massive bronze intake pipe rim. “The valve plate is seized on its bronze guide pins! You need to overcome forty-five thousand Newtons of static friction! Push down on the three-count!”
In classical mechanics, Lin Tao analyzed, his test sight calculating the vectors of force, a lever doesn’t create energy. It trades distance for force. Tie Shan’s four-foot star-iron bar gives him a six-to-one clockwork advantage. But to move that seized four-ton valve plate, he must output over seven hundred pounds of downward muscular force.
