Sera was sitting beside the signal organ with both hands in her lap.
Iven stopped at the observation line. The lamps had been lowered, leaving the outer frame in soft bands of light and the deeper chamber mostly dark. Through the upper pipes came the distant murmur of the night service. Nearer, the damaged membrane moved with its familiar interrupted rhythm.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“No. Look below the scar.”
He came beside her.
A small fold of tissue had drawn away from the old human housing. It was not the membrane that tried to carry a call. It lay beneath it, a flexible sheath around the point where the later support would have to reach the damaged connection. Earlier, the sheath had covered the access with a tight, pale edge. Now there was room beneath it for Sera’s smallest observation mirror.
She had not put the mirror in.
“What changed?”
