The ordinary release handle lay on the floor behind Mira.
Eli saw it through the open service doorway before he saw her face. Its mounting collar had been detached from the local control assembly, leaving a bright ring where old paint had protected the metal. Beside it lay a disconnected length of linkage. The mechanism had not broken by accident. Someone had taken away the ordinary means of operating this station.
Mira stood on the far side of the platform, one hand near the timer housing.
“You came without the crew,” she said.
“They went to people waiting at the annex.”
She frowned at the last word, then looked past him toward the approach. Juno remained at a protected inspection post with a local worker. She could see the platform and the first service walkway. Her task was current controls and structural observation, not listening to a private history carried between two people who remembered another world.
Eli kept his phone on push-to-talk. He did not bring a public channel into the conversation by leaving it open.
“Can the normal controls still operate from here?” he asked.
