Dory Mabe had the morning watch on the forms. The chart locker on the ketch Merrin smelled of warm brine and the ink the Culture Office buys by the crate. She wrung a rag into a tin pail, peeled Tuesday's sounding sheet off the board, and held it to the lamp. The numbers had blurred. The page under them was still sharp.
A bowshot off Low Keel, the survey stood in the shallows. The island is a sand hook the charts draw with a dotted line and a printed apology for the line. Four ponies in new Las Pegasus vests had a curved piece of metal between them. Barnacles held one edge. A stamped 14 held the other. Nessa Pell's Gray Lark had worn a number. So does the fish trap the island still sets. Harlan Voss, the survey chair, had the junior photographer shoot the curve before anypony said which thing it was.
Pell left the west field at Las Pegasus years ago in the Gray Lark, a two-seat sky-craft built for a round-the-realm run and a radio that cut out over open water. The last logged line concerned a headwind and a fuel figure. She named no island. She offered no summing-up. Low Keel has held that hope since. It sits about where a craft with her fuel figure might have made sand. Two surveys have already worked the same arithmetic.
The Culture Office supplied the summing-up on its own. Its friendship report, "She Went the Long Way So We Would Not Have To," left the Las Pegasus bindery on Tuesday, eight days before Merrin cleared the harbor. Nine pages. Page one has the west field, the headwind, and the silence. Pages two through eight say what the silence is for. Page nine is a blank line labeled "What I Will Try." The office printed four hundred. Schools, stations, and the Ponyville City Council reading room took three hundred and twelve. The reading room stamped them and shelved them under Civic Weather. The other eighty-eight went into the waterproof case cut for the charts.
The charts went into a canvas sleeve. Mabe hung the sleeve on a peg above the pail.
Voss kept his own copy in the case. At the rail he told a junior, who was drying a slate on her own vest, "If the sand gives her back, the report becomes a witness. If it doesn't, the report is still the part ponies can use."
The patrons' circle in Las Pegasus underwrote the survey on a one-page contract. Findings must be "legible to a foal and a donor" by each evening. The circle's name is on the vests. The contract rode in the sleeve with the charts. Nopony moved it when the case filled up.
Mabe has filed eleven object sheets since the hook. The office added a box for this voyage: "Does this item improve a pony." She has written no in the box eleven times. For the curved metal she walked the length of the island shed and set the curve against the trap specification nailed to the post. The bolt holes match the stamp on the spec. She wrote the measurement in the margin, where the form had left a blank too small for a number. "I measured the holes twice," Mabe said. "Both times they fit the trap."
Sarn Utley keeps that shed. He rented the survey a dry corner and kept his brooms in the other. Two earlier surveys rented the same corner. Both left a friendship report. One holds a table leg. The other has been a shim under the spec post since the winter the post shifted.
"They can stand in the water as long as they like," Utley said. "I need the leg to sit still, and I need my corner back when the vests leave."
Voss scheduled a second photograph for first light. A runner had already carried the first plate's description to the patrons' wire: metal, numbered, consistent with a craft of the Lark's years, morale on board very high. The object sheet was still on Mabe's board. The Council proclamation, read aloud at Ponyville Market on Wednesday, had wished the sand "a cooperative spirit" and quoted page four. Page four quotes a short biography. The biography's source note names the friendship report. The report's source note names the biography.
Mabe pinned the eleventh sheet, wrote the tide, and moved the pail half a hoof so the sleeve would drip into it. The contract stayed clear of the drip. The waterproof case stayed shut. The curved metal stood against Utley's spec post, bolt holes lined up with the stamp, and the second photograph was still four hours off.
