The Corridor Schedule — Under Glass

The arithmetic a whole station did on a wall. One serviceable anchor chain, and an evacuation corridor held open across it: two hundred and forty scheduled chain-hours, a passage window of twelve of those hours, twenty possible windows, a hundred and twenty places to a hull. The Warden had it posted in the same words at every counter it reached — the throat counter under the glass, joint-security, the executive's office, and the room where the evacuated would sit and say where the hulls go. If anybody wanted it explained they could have her hour, and not a summary.

THE SAME WORDS AT EVERY COUNTER IT REACHES · NOT TIDIED WARDEN'S SCHEDULE · FOUR COPIES · ONE UNDER THE THROAT COUNTER'S GLASS

The schedule, as the Warden gave it to her clerk, slowly, with a rule put under it:

Two hundred and forty hours are scheduled on chain four against this corridor. A passage window is twelve of those hours. That is twenty windows. A hull carries a hundred and twenty places.

And then, in her own words, with the instruction that they not be tidied:

A window takes the chain from its first hour to its last with nothing across it. Between windows, four may be booked to whatever the counter books it to, and it will be, because there is one chain on this station that turns and everything else is standing behind it. Every hour that goes on four for anything else comes out of the two hundred and forty. Twelve of them is a window that is not flown, and a window that is not flown is not made up afterwards.

She had the last line read back, and kept it as it was.

Where it went

Four copies, the same words on all four: to the throat counter, under the glass; to joint-security; to the executive’s office; and to the room at the fourth, where the people who had come up the corridor would sit and say where the hulls go. If anybody wanted it explained, they could have the Warden’s hour and not a summary.

The schedule is why the arithmetic belonged to everybody under it. A window flown was twelve hours of the only chain that turned, and a hundred and twenty places off the far side; a window spent on anything else was a hundred and twenty places that did not come home. When a surveyor wanted chain-hours for a cutting job of her own — two hands and one drum off a stores rack — the Warden would not weigh it for her: then it is a window. She was sent to put it to the people coming up the corridor, in her own words, and to hear what they said. The counters kept the count. Every entry came off the two hundred and forty like everything else, and at the end the clerk ruled the figure so the next person did not have to add it up again.