By the fourth run of the evening, the crew had started to lose their place.
It was the slowness. Half a degree a step, then one degree, each step held for its count, and between steps nothing to do but watch six needles and wait. Mara at the root set, Sen at the seam set, Tavin at the turntable’s hand wheel, and on the link Anwen reading the gauges from Lorn. Four people, three places and a voice, and every step needing all of them.
At step eleven, Sen moved the seam side’s cooling a beat before Mara had finished the root side’s heat.
At step fourteen, Tavin turned the ring a quarter before either of them had called it.
Neither did any harm. The probes swung and settled. But Mara saw both, and saw Sen see them, and on the seventeenth step she saw her own hand start for the lever before the count had come round, and stopped it.
It was the waiting that did it. Mara knew the feeling from the bench at Lorn: a long heat, a piece that would not be ready for another minute, and the hand wanting to do something, anything, because standing still felt like falling behind. Smiths learned to keep their hands busy on something else. Here there was nothing else. Only the lever and the needle and the wait.
