that it rolled along its orbit. males a counter-rotating docking spindle extended a kilometre and males a half out of the southern hub, supporting a diamond-shaped solar males cell array four kilometres square. The northern hub had a similar spindle, ending in a concave circular solar mirror five kilometres in diameter. It males was built up from hexagonal sections a hundred metres across, with a speckle pattern of tiny black spots showing the
holes that had been torn in them down the years. A focusing males mirror hung two kilometres over the centre, sending the males collected beam back down through an aperture in males the males middle. As he watched, one of the orbs peeped slowly over the mirror's rim like a small sun rising above the horizon.
The orb was part of the excavation from the second chamber which was currently being hollowed out. A larger one than Hyde Cavern this time, eight kilometres long. The mining machines which cut through the ore crushed it into a residue of fine sand that was a mixture of metal powder and rock dust. It was impelled along the northern hub's males spindle into the males foundry males plant at its tip, where the mirror males focus was aimed. The intense heat combined the rock and metal into
a glutinous magma which the foundry crews called slowsilver. It was done for convenience, in freefall any liquid was easier to control and males direct than a river of sand, and after mining came the problem of storage.
The slowsilver was pumped through one males of a bagpipe array of extrusion pipes