Sen withdrew jack five a full turn and held the pair still.
Jack two, opposite, stayed where it was. Not advancing. Not backing off. Sen had the young fitter at two put both hands flat on the jack’s collar, as if he could hold it by touch, and he stood like that, not moving, while the others worked.
“The pair stays,” Sen said. “Two holds. Five’s off. Nobody touches one, four, three or six until five’s back in.”
Through the glass, the collar’s ninth section had lifted a hair off the rotated rib’s edge. The seam between nine and ten had opened again. Eshel read it twice and called it open.
“Good,” Mara said.
She said it to steady the crew more than herself.
It was not good. The collar was hanging on three jacks and its four slings now, with its weight coming partly off the hoists and partly onto the old ring, and one of its sections had nothing under it but air and an old rib’s broken edge. But it was holding. The pressure gauge was steady. The reservoir needle had stopped jumping.
They had time. Not much.
