The All-Herd Ledger set haul growth for the year ahead at 2.6 percent. The Gale Report left the Canterlot Institute at 11:40, four pages and one decimal. This season closed at 2.9. The ten-year pace is 3.2. On the Canterlot Council's east wall, painted in the spring for the bond buyers, the figure is still 3.1.
The pages reached the Cloudsdale lift yard, which is where a haul clears the ground or sits in the siding. Second watch had closed. The night board, written in chalk, read 1.9.
Windfall Margin keeps the model. He called the missing tenth "ordinary drag from a long front," named the border levies, and named a thin card at Arcane Express Sparks Rail. He said 2.6 was "a serviceable wind." The briefing ran nine minutes. The banner went up before the questions.
The banner belongs to the Wonderbolt press office. Poster Gloss said the squadron will fly a lane over the Institute on First Fair, "conditions supporting." The office booked that lane in early spring, against the wall at 3.1. Gloss brought the spring card to a harvest number.
Bram Holster has kept the late shift for eleven years. He spread the Gale Report on the west rail beside his own sheet.
"We moved 186 cars on a card of 240," Holster said. "Eleven lifts scrubbed for wind that never got a slot. The cars I did not move are still in the siding. Your decimal has them somewhere else."
Page three of the Gale Report calls that somewhere else scheduled sky. A storm that was rostered and never flown goes in as stored product. Three systems have sat on the shoal since the last moon. The yard sheet by the stairs says one. The Ledger's table says one delivered and two on inventory. The inventory is 0.7 of a point. Subtract it and the printed year lands on the chalk.
Holm Vetch, director of the lift works, stood under the banner and called the inventory "prudent weather." A storm unsold, he said, is a storm in hand. The late shift's chalk "lags the method." He went to a lunch the press office had labeled a working session. Twelve sat down. Holster's board still held their freight.
Union Resistance nailed the night count up before dawn: 186 cars, 11 scrubbed lifts, 640 overtime hours off the current ticket. A clerk at the Institute called the union board "a parallel instrument." A car, Holster said, is in the siding or it has gone.
Ness Calder flew the leg the card had sold twice. She is the reserve. Her name is absent from the First Fair card. Poster Gloss's list holds eight fliers and a blank substitute box. Calder took lift seven after Hedd Mallow, the rostered wing, turned an ankle on the wet stair at 18:10. The cart was grain for the south shelf, four tons. The left sail tore on the second gust over the shoal.
"I put the grain on the shelf at 21:05," Calder said. "They will mark it late. The slot they sold me was the same storm they had already put in the cupboard as stock."
The works' injury book has two lines this week: Hedd's ankle, Calder's sail. Vetch's note to the Council lists neither line. The note says "tempo maintained."
Sparks Rail filed at 06:20. Of 240 carded cars, 186 rolled, 40 waited on a levy stamp at the border cut, and 14 never left the yard. The weather slot and the rail slot missed by forty minutes. Demurrage on the 14 stood at 220 bits by morning. The Ledger books the intention.
The Council met at nine and took no vote. A chair's note said the Gale Report would "guide the bond language." The east wall stays at 3.1 until the painters come. The painters sit on Holster's roster. They have no date.
Vetch, asked for the chalk figure, called chalk "a shift habit." He told the press to use 2.6 until the method had been briefed to the crews. Holster had briefed the crews at 05:40. He read both numbers, then handed the scrubbed lifts to whoever was upright. Calder was upright. Her sail is in the loft. The replacement cloth is twelve days out.
Poster Gloss sent one line at 13:05: "The exhibition lane is unaffected." The lane is a circle over the Institute, eighteen minutes, empty of cargo.
Tonight's card is 230. Holster has bodies for 190. Calder flies if the loft finds cloth. Hedd is down seven days. The shoal has not moved.
Page nine of the renewal packet sent to the Council gives Holm Vetch's floor at 2.75.
