The sixth support was locked at the forty-first minute, and then there was nothing to do but wait for Eshel.
Doss had locked the third and the sixth. The call had gone round twice more. Mark three. Seated. Mark six. Seated. Every crew, every hand, the words passing from the screws to the gantry to the radio and back, until the last support’s mark had been said by everyone in the chamber and at the Lorn bench.
Then silence.
Long, and very quiet.
Eshel was at the rack, reading. All six supports’ strain sensors. All twelve collar seams. The seat’s four sensors. The trunk module’s inlet. Every module’s seam gauge. He read them in order, under his breath, and wrote each one on the slate.
The crews stood round the frame and waited.
The dock clock on the bench room wall had stopped mattering for the moment. The seating was done. The clock was the collar’s now, not the crew’s, and the collar was carrying the heart, and there was nothing anyone could do with their hands to make the clock go slower.
Eshel said it aloud a minute later, so nobody would misread the clock. “The vote figure assumed the collar carries the well alone, with no outlet,” he said. “From the first trial on, the branches take flow off it. Every minute they carry, the collar’s clock slows.” He looked at the dial. “After the trial I stop trusting that clock. I’ll read the jacks instead. They’ll tell…
