The gauge reached a hundred and seventy-two before Iven had finished reading the previous line.
He stopped.
Sera checked the contact, the source reference and the book beside her. Then she took the reading again.
“A hundred and seventy-two.”
He smiled so suddenly that she smiled back.
The morning frame stood behind them with its weights returned to their stops. He had kept the conditioning turn through the past month, increasing the held interval gradually while leaving the peak work inside what he could repeat cleanly. The small earlier gains were in the book. So were the ordinary repairs, the field work and the rested checks that kept a tired day’s result from becoming a story about permanent capacity.
Today, the four hundred and fifty-second day, the new full reading held.
“Six,” he said.
