Maud brought the mended cushion back on the morning they finished the crossover.
She laid it on the operator’s seat, smoothed its patched corner, and waited while Iven crawled out from beneath the cab. He had been following her new drawing through the actual control path. Every handle now appeared on it, including the tension lever the old sheet had treated as an accessory. Vela had added the stop positions in red.
“Does that mean you trust us?” he asked, nodding at the cushion.
“It means I don’t want a sore backside while I decide.”
He grinned. His cheek no longer hurt when he did.
Three days had passed since the loaded test. The old crossover lay dismantled in a tray, its sheared stop displayed beside the replacement. They had made a proper positive detent, so that the control could sit in manual or automatic and could not pretend to be one while feeding both. An external indicator followed the plug itself rather than the handle. A driver would now see which path was open.
That alteration mattered more to Iven than the polished new part. If the stop failed again, the machine would show what it had done.
Vela checked the tube connections. Rysa stationed her crews at the two landings. The test crates remained on the deck, lashed to the same marked positions as before. Nobody rode with them. Maud sat on her cushion, put a hand on each control, and looked through the open cab floor.
