During the soak after the third stage, the temporary collar cracked.
The sound was a flat report. Like a plank snapping. It came up out of the well under the heart, sharp and short, and every head in the chamber turned toward the port.
Then a creak. Long. A groan of metal moving under strain, running for two seconds, rising, and then stopping. As suddenly as it had started.
Silence.
Nobody moved. Mara could hear her own heart, very loud, in her right ear. She could hear Eshel’s pencil, which he had stopped mid-figure, tap once on the desk as his hand opened.
“Where?” Mara said.
Nobody had moved yet.
Eshel was already at the rack. “The collar,” he said. “Not the manifold.” He read the seams. The manifold’s: all at neutral, all steady. The collar’s: eleven steady, one moving. “Between sections nine and ten.”
