Big pipe, half an inch thick, 4-feet across, 800 miles long. A strong but supple artery rising up over three mounts passes, crossing 800 streams, paralleling flood plains of five major rivers. A daring pipeline, tacking back and forth over earthquake zones and burrowing beneath avalanche basins. Engineered for safety and with respect for an almost sacred land. Stepping lightly and carefully over miles of delicate tundra and permafrost. Hot crude oil moving silently through a steel pipeline: pumped, metered, computerized. This is a story of the trans-Alaska pipeline, the men and women who built it and the design technology that will take it into the twenty first century.