loading-aperture

Updated: May 21, 2025

Somebody had wound a piece of wire around it, back of the hammer and through the loading-aperture in front of the cylinder; as the hammer was down on a fired chamber, there was no way in God's world, short of throwing the thing into a furnace, in which it could be discharged, but Kirchner was shrinking away from it as though it might jump at his throat. "I put the wire on," the coroner said.

H. Beam Piper - Murder in the Gunroom