The growth began again at the first hour of day twenty-five.
Everything was different from the first time, and almost nothing looked it. The same interface chamber. The same shield with the depth beyond it and the small lights that would not hold their distance. The same probe frame with its six arms and the seventh with its hammer tip. The same two banks of levers on their stands.
But the arms answered the gauge rack now, and only the gauge rack. The bus cable lay coiled on the cabinet’s top with a strip of tape over its brass collar and NO written on the tape in Eshel’s small hand. The socket in the cabinet was taped shut too.
And the map on the slate was the corrected one. Gauge seven reading true at last, with the habitation figure subtracted, so that the reservoir head on the rack and the reservoir head on the slate agreed. The gradient was the one in the record: half a degree at root for ten steps, then one. The record’s revision column had been read at the change of shift by Breda, who had written her name at the bottom of it and a question mark beside one line, which Mara had answered.
