The third shell absorbed its share, and Eshel read the pressure down, all the way.
He did it aloud. Every reading, as it came, from the third shell’s line. The figure on the board, falling, each one a little lower than the one before: the excess still going down into Tal’s cold grid, and the third shell itself now taking more and more as it woke.
“Falling,” he said. A figure. “Falling.” Another.
The stop limit sat on the board above the line, in red, where he had written it. The pressure had come within a hand’s width of it on the slate before Bren’s crew opened the grid. Now the gap between them widened. A hand’s width. Two. Three.
“Falling,” Eshel said. “Slowing.” He read the next. “Slowing.” The next. “Steady.”
He read it again.
“Steady,” he said. “There.” He put his pencil on the figure. “A clear distance short of the stop limit. Holding.”
He read it a third time.
