The service entrance had three chalk marks and an impatient man in front of it.
Barnaby recognized all four.
He came to the approach post through the accessible reference arrangement, carrying the current route record. The junction crew had confirmed the capsule’s state and its handover. White Crown had answered. Falling Sea had answered within the actual smaller pool.
The lost minutes remained lost.
The operator laid the current interval beside the service buffer record.
“Viable inside the reviewed conditions,” she said. “Narrower. The crew needs to begin promptly.”
The operator read the remaining margin twice, once from the current record and once against the local buffer position. Both checks agreed. The reviewed route still fitted if the next accepted movements began without an invented detour.
Barnaby put White Crown’s acknowledgment beside Falling Sea’s. The two stations had answered different requests at different times. Their success had made this step possible. It had not made any future route safe merely because somebody famous wanted to use it.
