On the morning of day 1125, the second warning came through a wire that ended in a box of broken cups. Like the Three Steps line, it reached the separate message board, not a new control path through the three-machine comparison wheel.
Leth found it after pulling the storage shelf away from the wall. The box had been pushed over the old terminal years ago, perhaps to stop anyone touching the exposed contacts. Inside were six chipped cups, a spoon, and the remains of a paper label that had been washed nearly blank.
“No one thought to look behind it?” Iven asked.
“We were repairing the vent while people were shooting at us,” Leth said. “The cups weren’t the most urgent problem.”
“That seems like a judgment I shouldn’t argue with.”
The first warning, from Three Steps, used Heda’s newly agreed six-pulse water signal. Brin had confirmed it by return: the channel above the mill was rising again, though the local drain remained clear. Heda’s crew had checked the mill foundation and moved the seed sacks to higher ground.
The second signal was a rapid series of uneven pulses. It came from the terminal behind the cups. Leth’s old code card did not identify the pattern, and the terminal’s label was too damaged to name the sending station.
