By the end of the full cycle, Ysol’s station was warming along the whole shell.
Mara watched it on the board. The slope that had begun at thirteen seconds had not stopped. It had climbed, slowly, steadily, for most of an hour, and now it had become a curve: a clean rising curve, the line bending up from its rest mark in a long smooth sweep, exactly the shape the survey had drawn for a cold shell taking in heat.
“The dark metal’s expanding,” Ysol said. From the relay. “Along the shell. I can read it at the station’s anchors.” A pause. “It’s taking in energy. The way the survey said it would. The way it was built to.”
Eshel read the curve against the survey’s figure.
“Matches,” he said. “Within the survey’s own error.” He read it twice. “The shell’s answering.”
The other six branches had reached their working shares within the twelve minutes and held through the hour. Step by step, each one counted, each station calling its branch before the next moved. The collar had its relief from six branches. Jack four had stopped bending at the agreed reading and stayed there.
And at the end of the cycle, with the slope still rising and the curve clean, Mara had taken her hand off the red release and let the guard down over it. And Eshel had released the eighth governor’s hold. The cam’s slow answer let go. The Sable branch opened to its working share and…
