Moving clockwise around the outer wall of the chamber, the proof party examined each of the three human substitution sockets that Keth Or and Bel Sar had dragged clear of the rockfall after the final wave.
At the first recess lay the heavy bronze housing of Socket One—its outer ring cracked earlier by Vaska Ren at the lower shrine. Just then, he burned out the last of his voice to save Reth Mal from becoming a fixed anchor. Its baseplate snapped clean through on the Twelfth Night. At the second recess lay Socket Two, where Commander Keth Or had driven his own recovery blade into the test joint on the first breath of the window, shattering the bronze metal tube at the cost of the violent recoil up his injured right arm. At the third recess sat Socket Three, its inner bed of common test needles crushed flat where Bel Sar had driven the single leftover heavy end of his broken Ash Reed staff after the first two breaks reduced the load to a scale his Bronze strength could crack.
Masters Bren and Yul set the test lens over each of the three broken housings in turn. In all three recesses, the conducting seams that once translated living human heartbeats into stabilizing pressure for the hub registered as dead, disconnected scrap.
