South Thermal and the Old Works

'The old habitats ran beneath the newer settlement on a different alignment, so that the corridors met at angles nobody would have drawn on purpose' (The Surveyors, chapter 7). South Thermal is across the civic ground: 'South Thermal has nine doors and a loading yard and nobody on any of them, and it always has, because it's a plant and people go in and out of it at four in the morning to do their jobs' (Terminal Black, chapter 11).

1. G-SCHDOOR School vestibule door and stair head Fr 1–3 published Terminal Black, chapter 5 — 'The stair at the end of your corridor goes down into the old works. There are two volumes off the vestibule at the bottom, both dry, both shut, three metres down'; ch29:233 — 'Three doors with light behind them. The school stair head, the block seven vestibule, the south-arm store'

   The door watch: 'a woman off the Greenhouse called Delph was on the door watch with her name and her hours on a sheet' (ch22:367). Brooks's list 'on the wall of the school vestibule, in the same order, in the same hand' as the block two corridor's (ch19:273). Mae Sutter's colour cards on the shelf under the notice board (ch29:133).

2. G-TANK Settlement tank under the yard — 120 cubic metres Fr 4–12 published Terminal Black, chapter 23 — 'everything that came out of it went by gravity down a hundred-millimetre run under the south arm and out sixty metres north into a bermed concrete settlement tank under the yard, with a vent standing up out of the berm and a ladder to an inspection cover nobody had lifted in Ortiz's lifetime'

   'The tank was a hundred and twenty cubic metres. Everything a hundred and twenty-eight people put down a waste path on a five-litre ration came to about nine hundred litres a day, which is a hundred and thirty days, and that number was the only piece of good news in the entire business' (ch23:19). Capped when the mains went in; 'off every drawing except the 2311' (ch23:17); Ortiz recut the cap 'with two people and a hacksaw' about 19 March (ch23:19). Which yard is the drawing's — the school yard, with the chamber head.

3. G-CHAMBER Yard chamber head — the north trunk trench Fr 21–23 published Terminal Black, chapter 22 — 'The yard chamber head is forty metres from the school vestibule door. From there it's two and a half kilometres of concrete trench, walkable'; ch10:89 — 'The north trunk trench. It runs from South Thermal under the civic ground and out under the flats, and it's walkable the whole way, and there's a chamber in the yard about forty metres from that door'

   ⭐ Where Vasey went down with a lamp on the first night (ch10:89–93), and where the four came up the ladder on Saturday 26 March (ch22:225–275). 'The lid was proud. There was rime all round the rim and a bit of fog coming off it' (ch10:89). The far leg of the north loop runs in this trench (see the system).

4. G-ROOF The old works roof — the roof relay Fr 40–60 published The Surveyors, chapter 24 — 'On the roof of the works, where the concrete of the Spine sat on the original habitat shell, there was a seventh, and the seventh was the one that talked'; One Road Out, chapter 7 — 'the hatch had ice on the underside of the lip and the ladder went up through the'

   Position over the arm is the drawing's. 'Vance died on the roof of the old habitat before the light came' (The Surveyors, chapter 26). In One Road Out the roof assembly came down on a Thursday morning (One Road Out, chapter 7).

5. G-ROAD The road and the civic ground Fr 215–255 fixed spec ruling 2026-09-21; Terminal Black, chapter 27 — 'the only volume on the far side of a road'; ch29:233 — 'a long way off across the civic ground, the low glow of South Thermal's yard lamp'; ch08:13 — 'she went up to the old works'

   Ortiz's walks: 'up' to the works and 'back' to the plant (ch08:13,:175). Hot water 'carried three hundred metres by hand by whoever was standing nearest' from the draw-off to the works (ch23:83). The length of the crossing is the drawing's.

6. ST-YARD Loading yard — nine doors, the yard lamp, the drum drains Fr 255–260 published Terminal Black, chapter 11 — 'South Thermal has nine doors and a loading yard'; ch29:233 — 'the low glow of South Thermal's yard lamp, which had been on'; One Road Out, chapter 17 — 'Okonta was in the plant yard on the Thursday with a heater on a drum drain'

   The draw-off: 'two insulated drums off the South Thermal draw-off' (ch13:27). Falzon 'went off the South Thermal floor about nine and she took a coat and a bar and my spare set of loop keys' (ch11:69); 'Every pump house and every valve chamber on the freight road opens with those, and there are four of them between South Thermal and the Foundry gate' (ch11:83).

7. ST-PLANT Plant room — north loop circulators three and four; the number two return Fr 260–280 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'It was the number three circulator on the north loop … at two in the morning it had stopped being a noise and become a bearing. She had two fitters on it and no spare, and what they were doing was taking the spare out of the number four circulator, which was not running'; ch15:43 — 'Ortiz was two hundred metres away in South Thermal with her hand on the casing'

   ⭐⭐ THE PUMP. 'She made that decision at ten past two and wrote it in the plant log and enjoyed no part of it' (ch08:7). From Tuesday 22 March at twenty to ten: 'Three. Two on the pump and one on the oil, all night' (ch15:61); 'you can run a bearing like that for a while if you keep it flooded and keep the load off it and keep somebody's hand on it' (ch15:57). Sorensen 'with a hand on the casing of the number three circulator and a slate on the bench beside him with the hours on it' for eleven days (ch27:427). 'The plant room at South Thermal was the loudest room Sarah had ever worked in' (One Road Out, chapter 20). 'The plant rooms at South Thermal were the only rooms on the settlement where a person took a coat off' (One Road Out, chapter 16). The Sutters live here: 'The ledge above the number two return in South Thermal ran at about thirty degrees all year and had done since 2311, and it was where the Sutters kept everything that mattered' (One Road Out, chapter 6). The tap the draw is walked from (One Road Out, chapter 20).

8. ST-ELEC Electrical side — the buried supply Fr 280–288 published Terminal Black, chapter 27–143 — 'what happened if South Thermal's electrical side went. Then Kim's floor stays up and the two fans stay up and one bench stays lit, and everything else in this settlement goes dark and cold at the same moment, and we would have about four hours of the concrete before it mattered'; ch22:285 — 'the buried supply out of South Thermal. Same one the trench lighting and the loop instruments come off … It has never once gone down, because South Thermal has never once gone down'

   Position is the drawing's.

9. ST-OFFICE The South Thermal office — the loop's alarm tree Fr 288–294 published The Surveyors, chapter 7 — 'the loop's alarm tree, which is in three documents, and one of them is a printed sheet in the South Thermal office because it was never entered'

   Position is the drawing's. The plant log lives with Ortiz (ch08:7).

10. ST-GALLEY Kettle, cupboard and the food printer Fr 294–300 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'South Thermal had a kettle and a cupboard, and the cupboard had what a cupboard in a plant room has, which is somebody's tea and a tin of something from before the summer'; ch27:203 — 'There are two food printers this settlement can actually run. One in the School Ring kitchen and one at South Thermal'

    'The old works had no kitchen. The school had a kitchen and the school was full of children' (ch08:91). The third machine 'in the school bay … has wanted a feed-pump diaphragm for two years and we cannot make a diaphragm' (ch27:203). Position is the drawing's.

11. ST-MESS The mess and the warm end Fr 280–292 published One Road Out, chapter 20 — 'The mess at South Thermal was two rooms with the wall out of the middle, and it was the warmest room anybody at Hart had access to, which was why there were people in it at eight at night who had nowhere to be'; One Road Out, chapter 16–131 — 'a bench going in the warm end … by noon there were people in the warm end who had no business in it'

    One Road Out texture; the rooms exist in March, the names are July's. 'Plant, and the eight who live in it' (ch27:355). Position is the drawing's.

12. ST-REVIEW Review room — the crèche in the first winter Fr 292–300 published One Road Out, chapter 22 — 'The review room at South Thermal was the one with the table, and it had been the crèche in the first winter, and there was still a strip of coloured paper glued along the bottom of one wall that nobody had ever got off'

    Where Navarro read the four statements on 8 July. Position is the drawing's.

13. ST-WASH The wash line — off the back, where the water comes up hot Fr 294–300 published One Road Out, chapter 23 — 'The wash line ran off the back of South Thermal where the water came up hot without anybody doing anything to it, and it was the one warm room on that side of the settlement'

    'nine women and two men in it and the noise off the drums made everybody stand closer than they wanted to' (One Road Out, chapter 23). Position is the drawing's.

'The old habitats were not a habitat any more and had not been for a generation … The pressure shells were sound. The concrete was sound. Everything else in them was forty years of a settlement using a dry warm underground space for whatever it needed that year' (Terminal Black, chapter 8–19). 'Nothing was where the plan said, and every room cost them a second walk with the drawing in somebody's hand' (ch08:41). Block order within the arm is the drawing's.

1. OW-SCH School vestibule and the two volumes — the east volume Fr 1–15 published Terminal Black, chapter 5 — 'There are two volumes off the vestibule at the bottom, both dry, both shut, three metres down, and the School Ring heat lo[op]'; ch05:59 — 'The plan showed two volumes off the vestibule. The eastern one had the heat loop through the back of it'

   ⭐ Where the children were. 'At a quarter past ten there were nine children in the east volume, nine in the vestibule and on the stair' (ch05:69); 'Twenty-two under the School Ring, which was the eighteen children and their four adults' (ch20:223). The School Ring loop: 'a pumped water circuit that took waste heat off South Thermal and pushed it up through the school floors, laid in 2309 and patched every decade since' (The Surveyors, chapter 7).

2. OW-VEST Vestibule chain — to the block seven vestibule and its stair Fr 15–25 published Terminal Black, chapter 15 — 'The north loop was the school, the old works, the medical hall, the block two corridor, block seven, the vestibule chain, and the warm-water branch into block six'; ch23:11 — 'at the top of the block seven vestibule stair, with most of the block two corridor forty metres away'

   'Block seven and the vestibule chain next, because they were already occupied and already warm' (ch08:163). The vestibule bays: 'Buckets, lined, one to a household group, in the vestibule bays and not in the corridor, with a screen. Bell's section to build the screens out of costu[me racks]' (ch23:69); 'the block seven vestibule bay, which had a screen in it and a bench' (ch24:15).

3. OW-B7 Block seven — exchanger, store, warm line Fr 25–45 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'Ortiz sent three of them to sleep on the floor of block seven'; ch29:7 — '*Block two and block seven exchangers — defrost completion log, and the linkage marks. Daily, by the night watch.*'; One Road Out, chapter 17 — 'Brannan was inside the block seven exchanger and stayed inside it'

   'Fourteen in block seven and the vestibule chain' on the Thursday night (ch20:223). 'a bar out of the block seven store' (ch24:117); suits 'on the block seven warm line drying out from the yard' (ch25:217). In July: 'this one's got about two weeks in it, and after that it's a linkage that hangs at four in the morning and takes two people to work by hand. Four people a night and I have got two' (One Road Out, chapter 17); 'Brannan's got about a fortnight of air in block seven' (One Road Out, chapter 19).

4. OW-B2C Block two corridor — where people lie down Fr 45–95 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'Kim's twenty were in the block two corridor while she did it, because block two was the only warm volume with a door that shut and floor enough to lie people down on, and they had been there since four, cylinders for the gas and the three ventilators running off their transport batteries, with Ruane going down the line every twenty minutes'; ch20:223 — 'Fifty in the block two corridor and the two rooms off it'

   ⭐⭐ THE CORRIDOR. Brooks's list on its wall (ch19:273); 'a room, a reason and a route, which was what the sheet on the wall said' (ch29:35); the shower hours by the turn (One Road Out, chapter 7). The closets: four in the works, 'the second closet in the block two corridor' the lowest fixture (ch23:57), all four out of use from 27 March (ch23:67). The loop panel: 'June was at the block two loop panel, where she had been on and off since the first night, with the cabinet open and the tray at her knee' (ch29:171). 'The block two supply fan and the block four fan … were the settlement's air' (ch26:83); 'The block two damper linkage worked by hand at both ends, because it has a set in it and it will not go where it is told' (ch23:225). Forty-nine out of it for six hours on 27 March (ch23:73).

5. OW-B2 Block two — feed store, the cage, the exchanger Fr 45–95 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'Block two was a feed store. There was a livestock cage welded across the corridor at the far end of it, and the weld was old and good and nobody was going to cut it tonight'; ch08:163 — 'Block two first, because it had two doors and its own return. More of block two if anybody ever cut the livestock cage'

   Brannan 'on the block two exchanger' from 28 March (ch24:361); by July 'Block two's a bare casing on the floor because I thawed it in March and it never came back right' (One Road Out, chapter 17). The eleven sacks are not here — they are in the south-arm store.

6. OW-B3 Block three — fabrication bay, then Medical Fr 95–125 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'Block three had a working three-phase supply, because somebody had once needed one for a bench mill, and it was the only place in the old works that could take a serious load without new cable'; ch08:85 — 'She had it moved by five. It took nine people and it made everybody's night worse'

   ⭐ Kim's floor: 'Nineteen on Kim's floor, thirteen patients and six staff' (ch20:223); 'Medical and the bay, with a wall and a door in it by the end of the week' (ch27:351). The cold cabinet 'Four degrees, in the corner of the fabrication bay, off the block three supply' (ch19:235). The first block on the Grange was 'the fabrication bay bench and one light over it' (ch26:231). The bench mill 'went out into a corridor a week last Saturday' (ch22:331). '*June — block three charge point — continuous*' (ch29:193). 'Rhee's shelf was a shelf in a corridor at the Greenhouse Ring end of block three' (One Road Out, chapter 7). The trestle at the end of the bay where the works ate (One Road Out, chapter 3).

7. OW-B4C Block four corridor — the cold length; the run beneath Fr 125–160 published Terminal Black, chapter 27 — 'Block two and block seven are on the good end of that run. Block four is the cold length'; ch23:29 — 'The run went under the block four corridor'; ch23:81 — 'It was a hundred millimetres of 2311 clay under a slab, eleven metres in from the block four door, and it had a plug of ice in it about a metre and a ha[lf]'

   ⭐ 'Between the two doors. About eleven metres in' (ch23:41). 'I've got a floor plate up in the block four corridor and a rodding eye open, and I'm about to put six hundred litres down a run that's been shut for f[orty years]' (ch23:213). 'Eleven metres of hundred-millimetre clay under a corridor with no heat in it … I can't heat a corridor I have no coil for' (ch27:55).

8. OW-B4 Block four — costume store; a hundred and ten square metres Fr 128–134 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'Block four had been a costume store since the school got its stage. There were racks in it, and the racks were full, and the door at the top of the stair into it opened outward into the racks, which meant that until somebody moved four hundred school costumes by hand into a corridor, block four had one usable door instead of two'; ch23:97 — 'block four, which was a hundred and ten square metres'

   'no plant, no coil and no intake, and on Friday afternoon four hundred school costumes had come out of it' (ch23:31). 'Block four never becomes a sleeping volume. Everything I put in it I take out again … a permanent condition' (ch27:69). Eli's stack test here, 'above freezing and below ten and has a door' (ch26:39,:59). Drawn at six stations by nine metres; the stair door is at the corridor end.

9. OW-B6 Block six — the air plant, and the duct that is a wall Fr 160–180 published Terminal Black, chapter 8–35 — 'Block six was the one Ortiz wanted, because block six still had its air plant. Block six also had, according to the drawings, a return duct along the east wall. "There's no duct," said Sorensen … "There's a wall with a patch in it about two metres wide where a duct used to be"'; ch15:43 — 'Ortiz was two hundred metres away in South Thermal'

   ⭐⭐ 'Then it's lost its designed return, and I don't know what it actually does with a room full of people in it, and I won't know until somebody runs the plant and measures it … Write it on the drawing. In front of me, now, so it's there when somebody who isn't us reads it' (ch08:39). 'Block six last and lightly, because of the duct that was a wall, and not at all until the plant had run four hours with somebody watching what came back' (ch08:163). On the warm-water branch (ch15:55). ⚠ SPOILER (Terminal Black, chapter 15 Tuesday 22 March): 'Block six opened at four. Condition written on the drawing at four, in front of four people … Plant run four hours. Return forty-one at five, six, seven and eight. Forty-one people in at eight. Number three changed note at twenty past nine … Strainer basket recovered at twenty past five, packed solid. Room at minus four at twenty-five past five. Twenty-seven standing, fourteen not' (ch15:161).

10. OW-STORE The south-arm store — three volumes deep, one route in Fr 180–200 published Terminal Black, chapter 19 — 'The store was the south arm of the old works, three volumes deep, and it smelled of cardboard and cold concrete and, faintly and inexplicably, of oranges'; ch19:115 — 'It's in three rooms in the south arm on one corridor off one vestibule with one route in'; The Surveyors, chapter 24 — 'The stores were in the old habitat's south arm and had been sealed since 2331'

    'Brooks opened it in July and took four pallets of ration and every blanket in it and padlocked it again' (ch08:95). 'Eleven sealed sacks in the south arm and whatever's left in the school hopper, and that's about six days of everybody' (ch26:91). The second media drum: 'one in the store at the old works, and they're both full and they'll both stay full until somebody breathes them' (One Road Out, chapter 19). One of the three doors with light behind them (ch29:233).

11. OW-CIST Service cistern — end of the south arm Fr 200–210 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'The south arm ended in a service cistern sunk under the floor, hatch and ladder and a gauge board nobody had read since before Ortiz came to Hart. Eighty cubic metres, put in with the works to hold the old habitat's water back when the old habitat was the whole settlement. It was dry'

    'Sorensen got the hatch up and put a lamp down it and said it looked sound and that he was not going down a ladder into it at three in the morning to find out, and Ortiz agreed with both halves of that and wrote *cistern, south arm, dry, uninspected* on the drawing' (ch08:25). Off every drawing except the 2311 (ch23:17). In use by the end: '*Header at Tolliver, cistern here, and the container set counted against the list. Every run.*' (ch29:9).

'There's a reactor down there. Landing pattern. It came off the original works and it sat under the old habitat when they built the Spine over the top, and nobody ever tied it into the settlement grid because by then they had the grid' (The Surveyors, chapter 24). Position under blocks three and four is the drawing's — 'Eli Sutter's south arm had one more thing in it' (The Surveyors, chapter 24).

1. GR-ACCESS The access Fr 95–105 published Terminal Black, chapter 8 — 'Ortiz came down the access at five-thirty and found him sitting on an upturned crate with the manual open on his knees'; ch26:221 — 'The access was concrete and cold and had a string of lamps down it now that had not been there the first time'

   Comes down from the works corridor: 'Sarah went up out of the access into a corridor that was exactly the same as' (ch26:309).

2. GR-CONV Converter room — the stack, the link, the switchgear Fr 105–120 published Terminal Black, chapter 26–223 — 'The converter room at the bottom had the stack in it on a frame — dry, warm, connected — with the meter sheet taped to the wall beside four days of corrected numbers going the right way. June was on the link side behind the isolator with a lead into the switchgear'

   ⭐ 'It needs the stack, and the stack is on a shelf in the fabrication plant, and there is one of it' (ch08:133). 'a direct-current link at a voltage the old works had used when they were new and stopped using not long after the mains went in' (ch26:71). 'there is a fused link between me and that stack, and Mr Sutter sized it off a table in a room w[ith]' (ch29:191).

3. GR-REACT The reactor — landing pattern, a ninth Fr 120–150 published Terminal Black, chapter 8–121 — 'It's fuelled. Shielding's intact. It turned over eight years ago and whoever signed for it did it properly … Coolant loop's been dry eight years'; ch08:143 — 'Even when it's up it's about a ninth of what the school used to draw. It can't carry this settlement's heat. Nowhere near. South Thermal is the heat and it stays the heat. What you get is a floor'

   'Instrument rack's 2303 pattern … Landing-pattern set. Puts out at a voltage and a frequency nothing on this settlement has used since before I was born' (ch08:129). 'it turned over in 'forty-one when I was down there for something else' (The Surveyors, chapter 24). 'It's a ninth that sits underneath us and it doesn't care what the sky does' (ch26:367).