As she knew, having studied this maneuver for weeks, the two arklets were now joined together by a cable. They had flown right past each other, but the tension in that cable had spun them around so that they were pointing toward each other again—she verified this with a glance out the window, which gave her a view of the nose of Arklet 3 slowly receding as it "backed away" from them. The spool of cable mounted next to its docking port was in motion, unwinding as the two craft gained distance from each other. In the exact center, the cables of Arklets 2 and 3 were clasped together by a coupling device that could be remotely disengaged whenever they made the decision to go their separate ways.