Chapter 39 - The Torque of Survival
The concrete floor beneath our feet began to shudder violently. A hairline fissure cracked across the slab between my boots, spraying a fine jet of freezing reservoir water three feet into the air.
"It's cracking!" Lily shouted, dropping to her knees beside the digital telemetry panel. "The intake manifold is at ninety-eight percent failure limit! Dad, you have less than two minutes!"
Harlan vaulted down the steel ladder, his heavy boots clattering against the metal rungs, landing beside me with a grunt. "What do we do, Art?"
"Under this plate!" I drove the point of my breaker bar into the seam of the heavy iron inspection hatch. Harlan jammed his iron beside mine. With a synchronized roar of effort, our veins bulging against our forearms, we heaved backward.
The heavy steel plate flipped open with a deafening crash.
Beneath us was the heart of the 1974 mechanical bypass—a massive, six-foot cast-iron wheel connected to an enormous worm gear and an oil-immersed drive screw. Decades of hardened grease and dried mineral crust coated the iron teeth.
"The screw is seized!" Harlan yelled, shining his light into the pit. "We'll never turn it by hand!"
"We don't turn it by hand," I said, unscrewing the heavy chain from my lifting come-along tool. "We link the arbor to Turbine Three’s auxiliary starter axle!"
"Art, if you engage the starter while the manual gear is locked, the torque will rip the chain apart or snap your arms like dry twigs!" Harlan warned, terror in his eyes.
"Then pray the chain holds!" I barked.
I dropped into the pit, the icy water already swirling around my knees. I wrapped the heavy forged-steel chain around the spokes of the cast-iron bypass wheel, then threw the other end up to Harlan. "Loop it over the auxiliary driveshaft pulley! Now!"
Harlan moved with terrifying speed, wrapping the heavy links around the driveshaft.
Up at the control pulpit, Lily slammed her fingers onto the auxiliary power override. "Turbine starter engaged in three... two... one!"
The electric starter motor groaned—a high-pitched, terrifying whine of raw mechanical power fighting against fifty years of rusted resistance.
The chain snapped taut with a sound like a rifle shot. The links screamed, stretching, shedding flakes of rust.
The wheel didn't budge.
The starter motor began to smoke, the smell of burning copper windings filling the freezing vault.
"It's not turning!" Harlan screamed, shielding his face. "The chain's going to snap!"
I leaped out of the pit, grabbed my fourteen-inch pipe wrench, and wedged the heavy hardened steel jaw directly into the seized teeth of the worm gear. I didn't think about my age. I didn't think about the seventy-one years of hard labor that had worn down my spine. I thought about the little girl who had given me a notebook when I felt like trash. I thought about the town that had stood with me against Harrison Bell.
With a primal scream that tore my throat raw, I drove my entire weight down onto the wrench, throwing everything I had left into the frozen iron.
*CLANG-CRACK.*
The seized mineral crust shattered.
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The worm gear jumped forward half an inch. The starter motor found purchase. The massive cast-iron wheel began to spin with a deafening, groaning roar of moving steel.
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