Sera had put three cups on the practice bench.
One contained water. One held spare contact pieces. The third, judging by the colour and the smell, contained tea she had forgotten before supper.
Iven looked at it.
“Fresh?”
“No.”
“Good. I’d worry about the leaves if they’d done that quickly.”
She moved the cup away from the clean equipment.
Two Frame restorers waited on the other side of the bench. Mere was a narrow-faced woman with a graft along the inside of her upper arm. Sovil wore his at the base of his neck, where an old work scar disappeared beneath the collar. Iven knew both from the clinical loading crews. Neither had needed rescuing from a dramatic failure. They had spent three days making difficult ordinary work possible.
