The manifold reached its seat with a faint grinding, and stopped.
Mara heard it. With her right ear, dully, the way it had heard everything for a long time; with her left, thin and far away. A low scrape of iron on iron as the trunk module’s foot met the collar’s center, and then a deeper sound, a settling, as the weight came off the catches and onto the seat.
On the frame above, the four pawls lifted out of their teeth and did not fall back. There was nothing below them to drop to. The load was on the seat.
“Seated,” Sen said. “Hands off.”
The crews took their hands off the cranks. Several of them sat down on the floor where they stood.
Mara did not sit. She stood at the port’s edge with the level still in her hands and looked down. The trunk module’s foot sat in the collar’s center. Round it, the seven branches hung over the collar’s rim, a hand’s width above their supports, not yet touching. The whole heart balanced on one point.
Eshel read the seat’s four sensors. The seat had moved again, a fraction, as the load came onto it. It was still within the margin.
