Aminah was already there, her tablet glowing with cascading red graphs. "We hit a void," she said, not looking up. "It's not rock. It's a gas pocket. Temperature at the drill head just spiked to nine hundred degrees. The alloy liner is crystallizing."

He lit a cigarette, then radioed the office. "Vargas to HQ. Borehole Seven stabilized. Send the next work order."

At the ninety-minute mark, the temperature stabilized at two hundred degrees. The void was sealed. The gas was a solid plug of frozen perma-silicate.

A sound like a dying god tore through the valley. The injection head bucked, screaming as supercooled slurry rocketed into the borehole at five hundred liters per second. Pipes twisted. Gaskets blew. A geyser of frozen mud and steam erupted fifty meters into the air.

Elias looked at the injection rig. The first coolant tank was only now being latched into place. At the current feed rate, it would take three hours to inject enough slurry.

"On my way," he said, sliding down the embankment.