Sal called before Mara reached the dock.
"Hour's up, Venn."
She checked the time. Fifty-eight minutes since he had said it. She had spent almost all of them doing useful work and had very little good news to offer him.
"I've got a viable deep destination on the drawing," she said. "I need to verify it. Colony needs its chemical supply and continuous exchange. The station's settlement is shifting load onto the service support. It can't remain here."
"That's the problem. Give me the plan."
Hester had turned her seat so Mara could use the main display without leaning over her controls. Mara sat, kept her mask beside her knee and opened the rail model.
"Refuge Bell. Three hundred meters away. Commissioned hull, independent power, water and food. It sits beside a similar seabed gradient. A spare exchanger was installed before the failure. We can move five people in the service tram with flow, move the exterior cradle along the rail and put the living source on the new gradient."
"Five."
"Kit's the fifth."
Sal was silent. Mara could hear a creak from the tender's operations room, some small familiar motion above a world she could no longer see.
"What do you need from me?"
"If it's viable, we need stable power and material support at the refuge after the transfer. Fresh food, water margin, replacement pumps. A tender that stays."
"For how long?"
She looked at Hester. The pilot's expression had not changed.
"I can't put an end date on that."
"I'll start with what I can do. Cable drum's aboard. Support package can be assembled here. Delivery's another descent, not a parcel over the rail. I need an intact separate dock."
"Refuge has one. Not verified yet."
"Then verify it. I'm not promising a blind hookup to people you've stranded."
Mara's jaw tightened. "They were stranded before we came."
"And we don't improve that by drawing a prettier place to strand them."
Hester glanced at Mara and looked away.
"Understood," Mara said.
"You stay on the clock. A real report when you've looked. No more than two hours without talking to me unless you're hands-on keeping someone alive."
"Agreed."
He remained on the line long enough to ask for Kit. Mara told him Kit was awake, angry, not ready to talk. Sal grunted. He asked her to give him something to be angry about that belonged to Sal. She promised to think of an appropriate offense and disconnected.
Hester handed her a sealed food pouch.
"Eat it."
"I just ate."
"You ate six hours ago."
Mara looked at the time again. It did not seem possible. She opened the pouch and tasted something sweet and artificial. Her stomach accepted it with a force close to pain.
"I can put enough power through your rig for a survey," Hester said. "Not a full cradle move until I've finished isolating my own return functions."
"I won't take it."
"Make sure Vale hears that from you. She's asked me three times whether the drive is ready."
Mara lowered the pouch.
"Three?"
"First I thought she was frightened. Third time she asked whether the console could be enabled locally. I disabled the station command permission."
A cold little detail joined the others: the hydraulic head requested by name, the primed branch in the pod, the refuge file already open. Mara swallowed the food and put the pouch aside.
"Can Leonie reenable it?"
"If she has station-level access and physically changes the patch. It won't take a casual button press."
"I'll talk to her."
She found the physician in the Bore Room, holding one of the refuge stock lists. Nessa had left a display running beside her. It showed the Bell's internal camera: darkness, a white bulkhead, six folded bunks on two walls.
Six.
Mara stood in the doorway. "Who stocked it?"
Leonie looked up. "We all did. Before the event. It was going to be an observation habitat."
"What about its air?"
"We brought the portable oxygen here the first night," Leonie said. "Spent it on the injured. The refuge atmosphere plant was never charged."
Mara looked back at the six empty bunks. She would still need her mask there.
"The medical circuit?"
"We put a spare exchanger there when we were studying the colony. It's the only other suitable site along the rail."
"The branch lines. The couplings. The return manifolds."
Leonie's fingers tightened on the stock list. "Nessa tested the tram."
"I'm asking what you planned."
The physician looked toward the exchanger, not at Mara. "I planned not to die in this room."
Mara stepped down and took the list from her. Water, material food, sanitation supplies, two weeks at design occupancy. Battery endurance measured for lighting and ordinary habitat functions. Extra load for pumps marked by hand. Bedding relocated after the failure. A medical equipment case prepared beside the tram. Enough fittings for more people than had been on the original circuit.
"You knew we weren't taking you up," Mara said.
"I knew it wasn't simple."
"You had somewhere else ready."
"I had somewhere we might live. Would you prefer I hadn't?"
Leonie's voice had gone sharp. The familiar warmth remained in her face, and Mara hated that most. The woman had not turned into somebody else. The same hands that had kept Imani alive were holding this plan closed.
"Why ask for the shear?"
Leonie licked her lips. "The station's going to have to be released from the support. You can see that."
"I can see it now. I couldn't see it when you called me."
"I sent the drawings."
"After I got here."
Leonie turned toward the cabinet beside the exchanger. "If you want the full medical record, I'll bring it."
"I want you to stop giving me something beside what I asked for."
The physician stopped with her hand on the latch. Jonah stood at the upper end of the passage. Mara had not heard him arrive.
"Leonie?" he said.
She looked at him, and for an instant Mara saw the fear without its coverings.
"We're discussing the transfer."
"I heard."
"There's a lot to organize."
He came down the steps and took the stock list from Mara. He read the handwriting, the added pump load, the number of medical branches. His thumb rested over a note written in Leonie's small precise script. Mara could not see the words.
"When did you do this?" he asked.
"We needed contingencies."
"When?"
"Over the last few days."
His eyes moved toward the tram. "You could have told me."
"I was going to."
He nodded as if she had answered a different question, then set the list on the workbench and walked out. Leonie made a little movement after him. She stopped it, pressed her hand against her own stomach and looked back at Mara.
"Don't do this now."
"When did you want it done?"
Leonie did not answer.
Nessa came down the passage with the refuge docking drawing. She stopped when she saw their faces, looked between them, and put the drawing on the bench without a word. Her hand remained on the drawing.
Mara let the silence stand. Then she sat at the console.
"Show me the Bell's dock."
They put the refuge camera on. Its lamps had to warm. The room emerged a patch at a time: bunks folded tight to the wall, floor tie points, a broad black window, a work surface with straps for securing containers. A kettle stood in a webbing loop. Somebody had left a yellow cleaning cloth on top of the battery cabinet.
Mara asked Nessa to move the camera. It traveled on a short internal rail and gave them the service collar, the pressure door, the condition indicators. Intact. The exterior camera showed a dock covered with a temporary protective plate. The same plate as the tram's mate. Equipment they could actually use.
They checked the battery. Less reserve than the stock list assumed, because several heaters had been left on to protect the exchanger. Enough for the transfer, not a permanent home. Mara marked the number for Sal.
"Food?" she asked.
Nessa turned on the cupboard camera. Stacked water containers, sealed rations, material nutrient packs. Six people's needs planned by somebody who had expected six people, although there had been only four altered when the list began.
Mara looked at Leonie.
"The design occupancy," the physician said.
"I didn't ask."
"You looked."
Nessa rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Can we finish this? If the exchanger's seized, none of it matters."
Mara went back to the camera. They ran the empty destination pump, checked the membrane housing pressure, confirmed the isolation valves. The spare exchange lattice was clean, ready to receive material across its protected boundary. The warm-up took longer than the check. Leonie gave the sequence and Nessa entered it.
At last Mara had a viable location, a dry route into it and finite supplies she could ask Sal to replenish. She took screenshots, saved the readings and sent them through Hester to the tender.
Sal answered with a list of loads he could support and a question about the service dock's handling limit. Mara went to ask Nessa.
Leonie was gone.
The patch cabinet beside the console stood open.
For one confused second Mara thought the physician had gone to fetch the medical file after all. Then the lift-drive light changed from amber to green, and something heavy began to move outside.