The maintenance board paid for the recovered drill frame but declined to pay for the time spent repairing the door.
“The repair wasn’t on the order,” the clerk said.
“It was on the route,” Iven replied.
The clerk had read his report. Iven knew because she had underlined the words temporary bolt in blue. She had also written a question mark beside his description of the bad air.
“If the door was damaged, why didn’t you submit a separate request?” she asked.
“We were being followed.”
“By creatures?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the question mark, then at him. “The board has asked for a follow-up inspection. The door can be included in that order.”
“Who’s going?”
“That hasn’t been decided.”
Iven rested his hands on the counter. “The bolt will bend farther if anyone uses the door. The vent cover is wired in place. Someone should know those are temporary before they send another crew.”
“They have your report.”
“Have they read it?”
“I have.”
He looked at the blue underline. “All right. That’s one person.”
The clerk did not smile. She opened a ledger and showed him the entry. The follow-up inspection had been assigned a number, but the line for the crew was blank. Beside the entry sat a note: drill records to be supplied by contractor.
“That’s the part we’re waiting for,” she said.
“Why?”
“So the next crew knows where the work was done.”
“Elian’s map shows it.”
“The board wants the contractor’s record as well.”
That was reasonable enough that Iven could not argue with it. He asked for a copy of the entry instead. The clerk hesitated, then let him write the number on a scrap of paper.
Outside, Elian waited beneath the weighing hooks with the map tube under his arm. He had been to the survey office and looked as if the office had not given him what he wanted.
“The original request is missing,” he said.
“Missing from the world or missing from the office?”
“From the office. It may still be in the contractor’s file.”
“Krail?”
“Not for the drill. The board used another crew. Krail supplied some of the support hardware.”
Iven thought of the bright replacement brace and the creature striking its base. “Did the contractor record the location?”
“The summary says the work was completed near the second housing. It doesn’t identify the exact surface.”
“That’s a large area.”
“Yes. The survey mark was copied from an older inspection.” Elian shifted the map tube. “I want to go back and measure the brace. If we know where it sits relative to the housing, I can put it on the map even without their file.”
“Is that what the board wants?”
“The board wants an inspection. I want a useful map. They can have both.”
They found Sera at the clinic, where she was changing the dressing on Kesh’s knee. The swelling had gone down. She could put weight on the leg, though she still used the hooked pole as a walking stick.
“I can go below,” she said when Elian explained the follow-up.
“You can walk to the end of the street,” Sera replied. “That isn’t the same thing.”
“I didn’t say I could run.”
“Then I can say you shouldn’t.”
Kesh accepted this with visible reluctance. She had made a list of questions for the next crew: where the bright brace touched the underlying surface, whether the marks around it were new, and whether the creatures appeared near the repaired door after the drill frame had been removed. She handed the list to Iven.
“Don’t go looking for a fight,” she said.
“I had enough of that one.”
“Good. If you see one of the large creatures, note where it goes before you decide what it means.”
“Assuming it gives me time to take notes.”
“Remember it first. Write it later.”
Before approving anyone, the board asked whether the previous crew had left a creature trapped behind the repaired door. Pellan answered that no one had seen one enter the narrow passage after the door was closed. That was different from a guarantee that none had entered by another route.
The board’s supervisor wanted a guarantee anyway. Sera asked whether the board had another entrance to the passage. It did not. Elian suggested sending a lamp on a line through the upper opening before anyone crawled inside, so the crew could check for movement while keeping a barrier between themselves and the floor beyond. The supervisor accepted the proposal after asking who would pay if the lamp were damaged.
“Put it on my account,” Iven said.
“You have an account?” Pellan asked.
“I’ve been paying for lamps lately. I might as well.”
The supervisor wrote the arrangement down. It was not courage that made Iven offer. A lamp was cheaper than putting a person’s head through an opening without looking. When Pellan later pointed out that the board ought to supply its own equipment, Iven agreed and told him to keep arguing after the inspection.
The board approved a smaller crew for the follow-up: Iven, Elian, and Pellan, with Sera joining as an independent observer. They would carry a proper hinge pin, replacement screws for the vent cover, and materials to clear the drain. The board agreed to pay for those repairs after Pellan pointed out that another crew would have to perform them if this one did not.
At the entrance lift, Pellan handed Iven a narrow bundle wrapped in canvas. “Hinge pin.”
Iven opened it. The pin was straight and matched the hinge’s diameter. He checked the retaining clip at one end, then passed the bundle back.
“You sound disappointed,” Pellan said.
“I was preparing a speech about wrong parts.”
“You can save it for the vent screws.”
The screws were the correct length. Iven put away the speech.
They descended in the late morning, with the route marked on Elian’s revised map. The first passages were quiet. The small scrapers remained near the damp filter housings, and the chalk marks from the earlier trip were still visible on the supports. At the flooded drain, the fibrous material had settled back against the wall. The line they had freed was gone.
“Someone came through,” Elian said.
“Or someone collected the line from the other end,” Pellan replied.
Iven inspected the drain. The grate was still bent. He and Pellan lifted it with bars and set it aside. Beneath it, sediment had collected around a narrow outlet. They scooped the material into a bucket, careful not to push it farther down. When the channel cleared, water ran through with a low gurgle.
Sera watched the surface beside the drain. It rose and fell slightly with the movement of water beneath it. She touched it through her glove, then withdrew her hand.
“It’s warm,” she said.
“Everything here is warm,” Pellan replied.
“This is warmer than the pipe.”
She took a small temperature strip from her case and held it against both surfaces. The strip darkened more quickly against the curved wall.
“Does that matter?” Elian asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
Iven replaced the grate after straightening its bent edge. The repair did not feel like a new pattern. It was a drain, doing what a drain should. He was beginning to understand that the graft noticed functions he had restored, but the work itself still mattered whether or not it gave him anything.
At the vent, the wire remained in place. The cover had shifted slightly but had not fallen. Pellan held it while Iven removed the wire and fitted the new screws. They replaced the damaged lower tab with a short metal strap that spread the load across the frame.
When the cover was secure, Sera held the temperature strip near its edge. Warm air still moved through the intended slots, but it no longer poured directly into the passage.
“Better,” she said.
“Can we put that on the report?” Pellan asked.
“You can put the temperature and the direction of flow.”
“That’s a longer way to say better.”
“It tells the next person what changed.”
The narrow opening to the repaired door was dry. Pellan tied the spare lamp to a line and slid it through first, using a long pole to turn its light across the far end. Nothing moved in the illuminated space. He drew the lamp back and checked the glass for cracks.
“Still yours,” he said.
“Until the board reimburses me.”
“Don’t make plans for the money.”
Iven crawled through first with the hinge pin, followed by Pellan. On the far side, the heavy door was still barred. Iven checked the temporary bolt. It had bent farther but had not come loose.
“No one used it,” he said.
“Or they used it carefully.”
“That’s optimistic.”
Pellan helped lift the door while Iven removed the bolt. The proper pin slid into place after he cleaned the hinge. He secured its retaining clip and tested the door through a small arc. It moved more smoothly than before.
Then something tapped on the far side.
Pellan froze with both hands on the edge of the door. Iven held the pin in place and listened. The tapping came again, not a blow but a series of light contacts moving across the metal.
“Scraper?” Pellan whispered.
“Maybe.”
Sera came through the opening behind them. She listened, then pointed to the small gap under the door. A pale feeler appeared, touched the threshold, and withdrew.
“A small one,” she said.
Pellan let out a breath. “I preferred it when everything pale was dangerous. It was simpler.”
“It can still bite,” Iven said.
“That doesn’t help.”
They left the door closed. Elian measured the location from the raised passage and marked it on the map. The door was not their destination; the bright brace lay farther along the original route. To reach it they would have to use the passage where the creatures had appeared.
Kesh had asked them not to go looking for a fight. She had not asked them to stay away from every place where a creature might be. Iven considered the distinction while Pellan checked the lamps.
“We go as far as the bend,” he said. “If we hear movement, we stop.”
Elian nodded. Sera did not object. Pellan took the lead with his bar held low.
The passage beyond the bend was empty. The bright brace remained in place, though one strip had been torn from its base. The metal lay against the wall where the third creature had dragged it. Scratches crossed the surrounding surface, some shallow and some deep enough to expose darker material underneath.
Iven crouched beside them. The new marks overlapped older tool cuts. He could not tell which came first without examining the edges closely.
Elian measured from the housing and wrote the distance on the map. “The brace is farther from the inspection mark than the report suggests.”
“How far?”
“Enough that another crew could look in the wrong chamber.”
Sera examined the dark fluid dried along the base. She took another sample from a place untouched by Iven’s tools. Pellan held the lamp while she worked.
A dull impact sounded farther down the passage. Everyone stopped. Another impact followed, then a long scrape.
Iven looked at the torn strip of metal. “Do we have what we came for?”
Elian checked the measurements. “I need the distance to the upper junction.”
“Can you measure it from the map?”
“Not accurately.”
Pellan pointed to a row of evenly spaced support bolts. “The bolts are two feet apart. Count them from here.”
Elian counted, checked the spacing with his own measure, and wrote the result. It was not perfect, but it was sufficient to locate the brace on a revised drawing.
The scrape came closer.
“We’re done,” Sera said.
They left the strip of metal where it lay and returned through the narrow opening. The repaired hinge moved cleanly when Iven closed the door. From the other side came a single hard contact, then silence.
Back at the surface, Elian spread the map across a crate. The revised position of the brace put it beneath a section marked as an ordinary circulation channel. Beside it, in a different hand and older ink, was a small symbol Iven did not recognize.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Elian studied it. “It used to mean a line whose movement had to be measured before work began.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The symbol was retired before I joined the office.”
“Retired because the line stopped moving?”
“Perhaps.” Elian traced the mark without touching the paper. “Or because someone decided it no longer needed to be recorded.”