Eshel went aft to the instrument rack and put his hands on it.
The rack was bolted to the cargo bay’s floor beside the gauge rack, a frame of grey steel holding the Tern’s own instruments and the ones Eshel had brought from Hearth: the pressure analyzers, the flow meters, the small independent gauge Anwen had built to Iona’s drawing, all wired to a common bus and from there to the cockpit. Beneath the cargo bay’s floor plates ran the cold plate, the Tern’s coolant reservoir, and the rack sat directly over it. The rack’s steel case was cold. As Eshel stood there with his bandaged hands resting on it, condensation beaded on the case around his fingers, tiny drops in the bay’s warmer air.
Mara had followed him aft. So had Sera, as far as the passage hatch, where she could see both the bay and the cockpit.
“I’m going to send him the signatures,” Eshel said.
“You sent him the survey.”
“I sent him the survey. The station’s record. That’s a cache on a console, and he can say the console’s old, or damaged, or that we edited it.” Eshel looked at the rack.
“An edited conclusion is somebody’s opinion of the readings,” he said. “I’ve had enough of my opinions called classified. I’ll give him the readings and let him form his own.”
