The trial pulse went through seven modules without a fault, and Eshel did not let anyone say so until every reading had been read twice.
He sat at the control desk with the eight levers in front of him and the slate beside them, and the trial’s figures going down the slate in two columns. His column: the governor’s position, and the flow the rack said had gone into each branch. And the crews’ column: the change each crew read at its own outlet, at its own sensor, with its own hands.
He read each figure aloud from his column. Then he stopped and waited for the crew to read theirs back. He did not move on until the two matched.
“Branch six,” he said. “A quarter. Rack says a tenth of rated.”
“Branch six,” the outer ring’s crew said. Their crew lead, a woman with a cold-roughened voice, from the agricultural ring’s outlet. “Sensor says a tenth of rated. A hair over.”
Eshel looked at his figure. He looked at hers.
“A hair over,” he said. “Which hair?”
She read it to the next decimal. He read his. They matched to the second place and differed in the third.
