Put a little black crud on the braces inside the boot, clamp the boot shut and adjust until all three braces left a stain on the skin. Not neat, gugged up the suit-surfaces something awful, but if you had to fit a neo it was easier than asking did it touch: it always felt like it touched, till you knew better.
Besides, it was Fitch.
Left boot, right boot, left shin, right shin, knees and chisses.
While Fitch stood there with a com-plug in his ear listening to stuff she'd have given a deal to hear.
And with a damnable lack of attention to the discomfort, like what he was hearing was a hell of a lot more real to him.
Lower body. She flat had to sit down in a minute and take a break. Her hands were shaking so her fingers couldn't keep the driver in the damn little invisible slots.
And of a sudden Fitch moved, knocked the fragile driver out of her fingers, hurt, dammit, so she sat down hard on her backside, not sure for a second he wasn't coming past her.
But you couldn't walk fast in that weight. Fitch activated his com, said, "No answer,"
to whoever was listening, and repeated it, louder: "No answer, dammit, do what I saidc"
She picked herself up, rapped on the armor-leg to get his attention, started to work again—flex here, turn there, sir, holdit there, sirc
Pushit, sir, or it'll stop you therec
Damn, she'd like to set it about one tick looser.
But give Fitch one thing, Fitch had his mind on business and you told him to hold and he held, no twitches, no complaints. Fitchwasn't real rested either, eyes looked like hell.
"Think this thing's going to work," she confided in him, what little voice she had left.
"Ran a systems-check, it didn't blowc" And jumped to the question she was after. "We prepping for fire, hard vacuum—what?"
"Anything," Fitch said. "Anything it has to."
"You ever stood up in one of these, sir?"
Dead silence.
"Power goes on, you got to relax. That's the main knack to it. Minute you tense up, you got the rig taking orders, you twitch, like you're going to fall, rig's going to over-react and you'll lose it. Some like it set real loose, some want a hair-trigger react-time, you got your choice, sir—this one's set fast, I can take it down half."
"I'll take your judgment on it," Fitch said, downright civil.
"How much time you got to try this?"
"I don't know," Fitch said. He never looked at her while she was working, she never took liberties with the situation. "Maybe none." Fitch took a breath and let it go, said, into the com, "I got that."
"We got a weapons interface," she said. "We can patch right into the rig's systems, if you got a gun with an I/O plug, ranging, tracking, auto-fire, anything you got."
Pure smartass arrogance. Lucky if the ship carriedside-arms that good.
Hell if Fitch was going to let her near anything of the kind if they did.
"We got plain sidearms," Fitch said after a moment, "be lucky if we get a target."
Different Fitch than she'd ever heardc tired man, mostly civil man, with a muscle tic in his right arm and skin cold as a corpse right now.
Hell of a pair they made, Fitch complaining, finally, hoarsely, "What the fuck you doing, Yeager?" when she was shaking so bad she couldn't get the screwdriver seated.
"Sorry, sir," she said. She was shaking, he was shivering, the thing kept slipping, Fitch being turned at a godawful angle at the time, while she was trying to get the main body joints to max-set.
Somehow, she was mostly on auto by then, she got the plastron put together, got the right sleeve and gauntlet on, and she bit her lip and did little screws until Fitch himself made a com-call to Goddard for hot coca and sandwiches.
Breakfast or supper, she didn't even remember. Mike Parker brought it up, didn't say anything. She remembered dimly that Parker and NG were down there committing an act of mutiny, that all Fitch had to do was discover that somebody'd screwed with the lock downsidec
Five quick guesses who'd go up on charges.
She didn't have any appetite left. She just chewed and swallowed big lumps, washed them down with coca and wished it was beer.
Wished it was a good stiff drink of the vodka down in their makeshift quarters, most of all. But if alcohol hit her system right now she'd just be gone, out, zee'd in ten seconds.
Something came in that Fitch didn't like. She watched him listening to Goddard or whoever-it-was, frowning, shaking his head a little.
"I got that," he said to Goddard, which was as much as he had ever said.
"What's going on, sir?" she finally asked, just to have tried.
Fitch gave her a cold look, said, finally, "Just an on-going problem.—Let's get the rest of it. Promise you, if this thing runs, you get a sleep break."
If this thing doesn't run, she thought, thinking about pumps and servos blowing, filters going, all over the rig, I'd rather shoot myself.
"Let's get it then," she said, and picked up the right sleeve, to mate it up.
All those little joints, all those little screws, right down the elbow and wrist and finger-joints.
She was half-blind when she finished. She really thought about powering Fitch on without a warning, because Fitch was shaky-wobbly himself, and she had this vision what Fitch could do when the wobbles hit the body sensors.
But she didn't—didn't want to start a war where one wasn't, right now, didn't want to take a halfway civil Fitch and make a fool out of him.
"Tell you, sir," she said, in the croak of a voice she had, "you been standing long enough, if we got time, you better get some rest. If you power on when you got the shakes it'll throw you, don't want it to pitch you on your ass."
"Where's the switch?"
She showed him. He threw it, threw it back off damn quick, because it rattled.
"It runs," she said. "Wobbles is you." And being diplomatic, as Teo would say: "Most take a fall, straight off. Rather you didn't, sir. Better you get some sleep."
"When it runs," Fitch said. "Runs means when it works, Yeager. Worksmeans when it works for me, so you show me the switches, you show me the technicalities, you show me the systems, so we both know it works, then we'll both talk about getting some sleep.
Hear me?"
Damn you, I do, sir. "Yessir. I hear you."
First thing you did, if you were instructing somebody, you put your own rig on. Fitch objected. "No need," he said; and she said, "There is, sir. Or I can call out the instructions from outside this locker till you got that rig under control. Sir."
Do him credit, Fitch did get the idea what she was talking about. And Fitch listened when she said Relax, and stood there watching while she stripped down and got into her own rig the right way.
She rattled and chattered too, when she powered on. She damped it down. "That's your adjustment, number three switch, sensitivity on the pickups. If you get the chatters you just screw it tighter till it stops. If you rattle loud enough you can draw fire."
Fitch didn't think that was funny.
"You got gyros that keep your balance," she said, no missed beat. Fitch was a helmeted, faceless form, bracketed in green-glowing readouts from her faceplate display, 360‹ vision compressed and projected in a green shadow band on the top and bottom of her faceplate—Fitch's slight movement getting his hand and alternately his body bracketed in a stutter of yellow, his sounds amped up with a decibel readout ticking and flashing in her lower left. She took his hand and guided it to the first of the controls under the collar.