Doss stood at the release lever with a dead weight on the track and practiced.
It was evening. The trials were done. The swap was set for the tenth hour, an hour before the packet would reach Hearth’s internal bridge. The crew had gone down the service stair to eat: broth from the yard’s pot, carried up in a can by Pell’s runners, and bread. Tavin had gone down with them, on the bad knee, slowly. Anwen was at the console in the outer hall checking the arm’s card. Eshel was asleep on a bench with his slate on his chest.
Doss had stayed.
Nobody had told him to. Nobody had told him not to. Mara, who had stayed too because the doctor’s sling meant she could not carry broth cans down a stair, watched him look around the empty chamber once, as if to be sure, and then go to the hoist.
He had put the old cold weight back on the carriage at the housing end, alone, with the chain hoist. He had set the counterweight. He stood at the lever.
And he pulled.
His hand shook as he did it. Mara saw it from the bench by the frame plate, where she sat with her dressed arm in her lap. A tremor in his wrist and fingers as he gripped the iron bar and drew it back. Small, but there.
