She shaped the heart from the cradle, because the field needed the pulse.
Orison explained it as she stepped in: the shaping field pressed the metal, but the metal would only take the pressure evenly if it was alive, carrying the heart’s own beat, so that the grain could settle under the field into its final order. Without the pulse, the field would press dead metal into a shape that would not hold. So she stood in the cradle with the rests at shoulder and hip and knee, and the tongs in both hands, and the heart in its fixture in front of her, and the pulse came up through the floor, and she began to guide the field along the spiral.
Sera was not behind her. Sera was at the control room, at the brake, because the shaping had no use for the brake and Caldris had asked for the pilot to be at her post. The rescue line ran from Mara’s belt to a ring on the cradle’s frame, and Lisan stood beside the ring with his hand near it. Sera’s voice came through the intercom on the cradle’s rail.
“Count,” Mara said.
“Counting,” Sera’s voice said. “Ten. Green.”
