The reserve began to warm at the second hour of day twenty, and the forty minutes began.
Mara was back in the lowest chamber. At the well’s screen. Eshel had built a shared gauge for the sink: a single panel on the screen, live, carried to every neighborhood representative’s slate at the same moment, showing the basin’s east half temperature, the valve’s state, the sill gate’s state, and the central lattice’s pressure. Four lines. One display. Everyone reading it at once.
The valve crew’s supervisor reported on the service handset. “Sill gate closed. West half isolated. Opening the return valve.”
On the shared gauge, the valve’s line changed. Closed. Then opening. Then open.
The jacket’s hot return began to flow into the east half of the basin.
Mara watched the lattice’s line.
The reservoir’s pressure. The central lattice behind the command well. It had been climbing all night, in pulses, each pulse bigger, the bow deepening. Eshel’s needle on the bow mark.
For a minute, nothing.
