The signal arrived on the bridge console at the seventh hour of the evening, from Meridian.
Mara was at the console with Eshel, reading the four gauges for the second time that day. Lorn steady. Tal trembling. The outer ring broad and low. The fourth needle, the new one, reading the same figure it had read at noon. Repeats, Eshel had written beside it, and then, real, unplaced.
Hearth was at its evening peak outside the high window. Pell had sent word from the dormitory an hour before: the household network showed every stove in the Low Brace on, every lamp lit, the trains back to full. The hospital attendant’s ledger lay open on the bench beside the console, with an entry for every hour since dawn. The grid was holding. The light in the window was gold, with its pale edge, steady.
Then the console chimed, sharp in the quiet of the hall.
Mara had been about to write the second reading of the fourth gauge into the bridge log. Her pencil was over the Gauge column. She left it there.
It was a different tone from the bridge’s steady one. Sharp. Repeating. Three short and three long and three short, the same pattern as Sable’s old beacon, but faster.
