With thirty seconds leftover before the midnight tick, Lin Tao conducted the final physical fine-tuning.
He unhooked his lead line-weight bob from his belt. The six-ounce weight was suspended from a four-foot strand of high-pulling star-iron wire, attached to a sensitive brass spring scale that measured downward force in hundredths of a Newton.
He stepped to the total lip of the deep gap, holding the scale over the void.
“Watch the scale, Tie Shan,” Lin Tao instructed quietly.
The lead bob hung suspended in the blackness, hovering three inches beyond the dark rock lip at map point Y = 0. The dial on the brass scale read exactly zero point zero Newtons.
Lin Tao drew his land-mapper metal pen with his right hand.
He waited for the twenty-fourth frame tick. The green counter in his left eye pulsed. Then, he used the pure-crystal white-gold tip of the metal pen to tap the mid-air wire, imparting a tiny level speed of zero point zero two paces per second toward the northwestern void.
The lead bob moved forward by a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch.
