Calder Voss sent 40 million bits on the first morning of the mid-term circuit and 40 million bits on Tuesday. The transfers were stamped Left Board and Right Board. Windfall Margin posted them six minutes apart on the public sheet, both drawn on Voss Terminal, both earmarked for the factory slate in the twelve sky seats.
By the week the second check cleared, the middle of the file was already full. Gale Report's donor table showed 29 patrons over a million bits and six over twenty million. Voss's pair closed around that table. It arrived as the ends.
Director Holm Vetch of the weather factory called the outlay support for lift. "What the public will see is a test of crews," he said, from a luncheon under the East Gallery awning, where the second check was read aloud before the sandwiches.
A north push scheduled for 15:40 out of the West Gallery went at 16:26. The hold was logged as a briefing overrun. Nim Pellick, crew chief on the late shift, kept the card.
"They had us stacked on the rail from 15:10," Pellick said. "The push was ready. The awning wasn't."
Union Resistance entered the slip as overtime: 46 minutes, twelve pegasi. The factory schedule lists the push as on time. Pellick's card has 16:26, wind out of the north at a working rate, line level by the rail yard and heavy over the lower stacks.
Galleries One and Two, both on the paid rotation, leveled at 16:51 and 16:58. Gallery Four was third, and it was the wet one. The week-one check had a sibling slip: a south cell out of the same gallery, held 22 minutes on the morning the Left Board transfer was read at the factory door. Same stamp. Different shift. Pellick was on that card too.
Soot Amberlin flew the reserve leg on Gallery Four. The poster flier, Harp Sill, stayed for the remarks. Amberlin is third alternate. The broadsheet Voss Terminal ran beside the transfers carried Sill's portrait. Amberlin took sectors 18 through 24, the wet band over the rail yard, and brought the line back level at 17:05.
"I got the card at the rail," Amberlin said. "The cloud was already heavy, and every suit at the awning was still on a chair."
The late board carried fourteen names. Amberlin's was the one added in pencil.
She finished with a strain in the left wing, reported at the Gallery Four shed and marked day-to-day, grade two. The injury sheet lists her sectors at 7. Sill's poster lists the portrait.
The Wonderbolt press office, which staffs the factory slate's flight demonstrations, sent a line at 18:02. It called the circuit a contest of form and said outside gifts would leave crew selection where it stood. A clerk at the office, asked which flier had taken Gallery Four, read the poster and answered Harp Sill.
Vetch, back from the sandwiches, said the bookend gifts would frame a season of effort and that patrons had always stood at the edge of the sky. Questions about the middle of the ledger stayed on the awning table. He talked about lift.
Between Left Board and Right Board, Windfall Margin counted 4,416 patron filings. The long names in that stretch sat above twenty million and ran past the width of one line on the Gale Report table. Private crews, still waiting on the progress the Canterlot Council has demanded, saw their rate held at 11.
The twelve seats post next month. The factory slate holds the broadsheets on nine. The other three are private crews on last season's card. Sector totals for the week of the second check are still blank on all twelve.
Pellick closed the late shift at 19:40 and filed the wind as a time. "Late is a clock," he said. "They want it written up like weather that changed its mind."
Amberlin's wing was iced at the shed. She is on the Thursday board if the grade holds at two. Sill is on for a second portrait. The caption on the proof includes the Right Board serial.
Voss Terminal's invoice back to the slate, for the broadsheet, the time, and that caption, was 17.4 million bits.
Pellick filed the twelve-pegasus overtime at 184 bits and left the card on the rail. The factory copy of the same push still reads on time.
A clerk at Windfall Margin, asked what share of the 80 million reached a wing, read the transfer codes and stopped at the slate account. The shed copy of Amberlin's pay line, sectors 18 through 24, was 6 bits.
