The verification interval was a full network cycle, and for the length of it nobody in the chamber left their place.
Mara stood at the observation port.
A second one, apart from the shielded port in the floor, in the chamber’s east wall, beside the walkway doors. A small round window of thick glass looking out across the cold side and through a slit in the well’s outer wall, onto the dark. Sen’s crews had cleaned it the night the walkways went in. Through it, if you put your face close to the glass, you could see out past Meridian’s outer ring into the old route.
Mara put her face close.
Far out, in the dark, three faint lights.
Not stars. Not lamps. Soft. Broad. Dim violet-grey, like coals under ash. Sable, nearest, the largest. The second shell beyond it, smaller. The third, faintest of all, so faint she was not sure at first that it was there.
The retired shells, glowing in their empty systems.
She did not describe it to anyone.
