The first line rose before Rook did anything.
Juno watched the receiver’s narrow strip darken, then held up her hand. Across the public enclosure a woman had opened a quest window to check the time remaining on an ordinary delivery. Two spectators leaned toward its light. The public barrier remained the same dull blue it had been since morning.
“Mark that,” Juno said.
The independent operator had already put his pencil down at the start of the rise. He did not ask whether she meant the reading or the woman. He recorded both, and the uncertain interval between them.
Eli stood behind the boundary with an empty carrying case against his leg. He had been waiting for a result that would make the morning’s argument easier to explain. Instead, the first result resembled their feared result too closely.
The settlement engineer bent to the receiver without touching it. “Nothing in the defense changed?”
“Nothing we measured,” the operator said.
“Then this could be ordinary traffic.”
