Anra Tess made Iven watch the crawler fail before she let him open it.
The hauling platform stood on the lower yard’s test incline, its load bed empty except for the secured trial blocks. Its engine turned steadily. The drive took. The tracks moved beneath it.
The machine climbed half a length, shuddered and slid back to its marked stop.
Anra shut the demand before the second attempt could become a worse version of the first.
“There,” she said. “It isn’t afraid of the hill.”
“I hadn’t accused it.”
“People do. Then they pull the lever harder.”
Iven crouched beside the track after she isolated the drive. Fresh bright marks crossed four of the right-hand cleats. Their working faces had been bent by a recent strike. The left track’s outer guides showed a different wear pattern, old enough to have collected dirt beneath the polished edge.
