The shear’s first victim was a piece of chalk.
Lute had left it on the table while setting the stop. Senna picked it up before anyone brought the drive shaft round and held it between finger and thumb.
“Everything loose comes off the bed.”
“Even chalk?”
“Especially things you think are too small to matter.”
He cleared the bed, checked beneath the guard and walked to the starting position. Iven stood beside the drive with the coupling cover open. The hired engine waited beyond its belt fence, its operator watching him across the yard.
On the morning of day six hundred and seventy-five, the machine smelled of fresh oil instead of the intake’s old mud.
Iven turned the shaft by hand through the last cold cycle. The blade descended, passed the fixed edge and rose. Its guide stayed quiet. Senna checked the witness marks on the adjustments and held up two fingers.
