The second trial ran with the weights on the track.
Tavin had built it in under an hour, with every hand in the chamber on a spanner. One long rail of iron, from the old heart’s housing through its seat to the replacement’s mount, bolted to the Quiet Forge’s floor along the line Doss had swept. On the rail, a carriage: two cradles of iron bar joined by a frame, the old weight in the cradle at the housing end, the new weight in the cradle at the mount end. A stop at each seat. A counterweight on a chain over a pulley at the rail’s far end, hanging in a groove cut into the floor, set so that if the carriage was released, it would roll back to where it started.
Doss stood at the release.
The release was a lever on the carriage’s frame, at the housing end: an iron bar that held the counterweight’s chain. Pull it, and the counterweight dropped in its groove and pulled the carriage back. Doss stood with one hand on the lever and the other flat on the carriage’s frame, the way he had stood at the Tern’s harvest clamp at Sorrel.
