Strike.
“Eighteen minutes early,” Mia replied. There was a smile in her voice. 5g weld position
“Yeah,” he muttered. He knelt—wincing at the knee—and ran his gauge across the gap. 3/32 of an inch. Perfect. The line-up clamps were tight. The backing ring was clean. He’d already preheated the joint to 300 degrees, watching the Tempilstick melt like butter. Strike
The wind howled across the frozen North Dakota plain, carrying a cold that bit through Carver’s triple-layer jacket. He was forty feet up, straddling a steel I-beam that served as a temporary walkway. Below him, the new natural gas pipeline—a forty-two-inch beast of chromium-molybdenum alloy—snaked toward the horizon. “Yeah,” he muttered
His breathing slowed. His heart rate dropped. He was no longer a man on a beam in North Dakota. He was just a pair of hands, an arc, and a puddle.
The weld was beautiful. A deep, royal blue color along the toes, shading to silver at the center. That blue meant the shielding gas had done its job, and the cooling rate had been perfect. In the 5G position, that color was a medal.
Carver Oldham grunted an acknowledgment. He was fifty-three years old, with a bad knee, arthritis in his right hand, and a reputation that stretched from the Permian Basin to the Alberta oil sands. He was here for one reason: the .