Mara opened the forge record on the bench terminal at the end of the afternoon shift, with the cracked seed ring still lying face up beside the keyboard.
The record was a day and a half old. It had begun the morning the first growth went in: a plain page on the terminal, with columns Sen’s crew chief had set up from the pump hall’s maintenance book. Date. Run. Gradient. Result. Cause. The ridge was on it, and the skin, and the third growth that held, and the cycles called in eight seconds. And now, at the bottom, the fourth: Seed ring cracked along cooling seam. Bus overload. Arms moved without command.
She scrolled back to the top.
At the head of the page, above the first run, the procedure. The way the crew grew a section. Gradient: half a degree per step at the root side for ten steps, then one. Call, answer, move. Eight seconds to a cycle. Two observers on each run. Stop authority: Mara.
Every line of it had changed since the morning before. The gradient had been one degree flat, until the ridge. The call had not existed, until the crew lost their place. The arms had been on the bus, until an hour ago.
