Ysol asked in the evening, after the buffer’s tenth cycle, when the crew had gone up to eat.
Mara was alone at the bench with Eshel. The relay sat on its cloth beside the eighth module, its small screen lit, and Ysol’s image stood in it as it always did: small, grey-haired, cup in hand. But fainter tonight. Mara had noticed it through the afternoon. Each time the test line ran, each time the buffer’s heaters warmed the second chamber to keep it from freezing on the cold-shell setting, the image thinned a little, and came back a little less.
“I have a request,” Ysol said.
Mara turned from the bench, wiping the filing dust off her hands onto her apron.
“For the operating map,” Ysol said. “The one you’ll run the manifold by. With the three limits on every branch.
“I’d like a limit on it. To protect the old Sable station.”
“The station?”
“Where my archive is,” Ysol said. “What’s left of it. The console, the stores, the lines in the walls.” She looked at her cup. “You know what happens when a heater draws power at Sable.”
