SECTOR COUNTER — RAMP FOOT Two people in front of it. A clerk behind it, eating out of a tin.
| Ring | as given |
| Boundary | as given |
| Frame number | as given, off the plating |
| Hour | as given |
| Held | Third bell to the fourth |
| Clerk | name at the foot |
| Hour of issue | beside the name |
The address is the whole point
Four things make a place on the Cairn: ring, boundary, frame number, hour.
Not a room number. Not a street. The ring you are on, the boundary you are inside, the frame stencilled on the plating beside you, and the hour — because on a station where every volume can be sealed independently, where you are and when you are there are the same question. A door is only a door until the pressure decides otherwise.
It is also why this station can be drawn accurately at all. The Cairn numbers its frames exactly the way a ship does.
What it cost
About a minute and a half, across a counter, with a tin going back into a hand before the card was properly across.
That is not carelessness. A clerk who can issue this in ninety seconds has issued several thousand of them. The speed is the competence.
The two instructions
“Bring it back if you’re done early.”
“Don’t bring it back tomorrow.”
The first is courtesy: the hour goes back on the board and somebody else can have it. The second is the rule. A held bloc line is a sealable volume standing open on somebody’s authority, and the authority expires at the fourth bell whether the work is finished or not.