They cut the neck at the eighth hour of the morning, with the gantry already holding the collar’s weight.
Sen had rigged the gantry in the night, while the last sections settled: a steel frame bolted across the growth chamber’s ceiling inside the shield, with four chain hoists hanging from it and four slings cradling the collar at its quarter points. When the neck went, the boundary’s pull would come off the collar all at once. The slings would take the weight. Nothing would fall.
That was the plan. Mara had read it back three times and made the crew read it back twice.
Sen set the saw arm against the neck. Not the fine blade of the inspection cut; a heavier one, with coarse teeth, for raw metal. She looked at Mara.
“On my count,” Mara said. “Then hold.”
She counted three. The saw went in.
The neck was a finger thick and it took most of a minute. The saw’s note was low and steady. Near the end, it rose sharply, and Sen eased off, and the last hair of metal parted on its own with a small dry crack.
The collar swung. Not far. A hand’s width on the slings, and then back, and then still.
