"I got it, sir, but f'God's sake tell me I'm not the only one on that."
"You're not. I like more than one pair of eyes on it. Watch your screens, Yeager, and don't bother me, I got my hands full.—We're on count now. Start your trank."
She grabbed the pack and squeezed it, felt the sting in her hand and the old tension in her gut. She could see NG's station from where she sat, she could see NG reach after the trank and take his. His face was still calm, but sweat stained his jumpsuit and beaded on his skin.
Hard push now.
"Five minutes," Bernstein said.
Her thoughts wanted to scatter. Hughes; and NG; and Musa last night; and the containment readouts and the numbers; and the chance of trouble otherside.
Watch the damn numbers.
Only time for so. much.
Is NG all right?
How long's it been since he sat station on a jump?
Flash of the space behind the cans in the stowage; NG tripping wild, hand in the middle of her, hand bashing her lip—
He do that often?
And she thought, just as the final bell rang and they were bound for jump:
Does Bernstein know what he's doing putting a load on NG? Expecting him to work in jump?
Man could kill all of us—
Down again. She heard electronic chatter in her ear.
She tried to focus, sorted after the numbers in her recollection, remembered to watch the rate on number one. Saw the numbers falling away.
My God.
She hit the buttons, heart pounding.
"Got that," Bernstein said, "got it. She does that."
Sweat poured. She slumped, feeling the flutter in her muscles head to foot.
NG said: "Doing all right, Bet. Little slippage in one of the arms."
She felt like fainting. Breath came short for a little and she felt a cramp in her gut she hadn't felt in years, like maybe the treatment was wearing off.
Or it was advancing age, maybe.
V-dump, then. She felt the pulse through the ebbing trank, felt them come down again.
She fumbled after the c-pack, kept her eye on the screens while she pulled the tube out and got a sip.
Second dump, hard, God—hard…
The numbers—
"We got that drift again!" She had the button punched.
"Got it, got it," Musa said.
God!
She wiped sweat and took another sip, reminded herself they were used to doing this with one fewer. Old game of Scare the neo. Never a time that they weren't onto that system. But, damn! it was all tekkie problems, it was all garble, she didn't know what damn arm NG was talking about or what it had to do with the magnetics or what in hell somebody was doing just then that pulled the numbers back to safety.
The ship just worked, dammit, tekkies made it work, you never thought about the ship just blowing up or losing its braking because of some damn numbers on a screen.
She was shaking. She wanted a drink. She wanted a shower. She wanted to get to the head. She sat there watching numbers till her eyes ached. And NG just talked back and forth with Musa and Bernstein, calm and cold, until Bernstein said, "Bridge is giving us an all-clear to unbelt. Yeager, you want to take a five minute break?"
"Yessir." She had to pry herself out of the chair. She headed straight for the outside and the E-section head, between Engineering and the purser's office, not half scared about the ship changing its mind and moving, and making a Yeager-shaped dent in the paneling—not half the scare those damn numbers put in her, flowing away like the ship was bleeding to death right through her fingers and she didn't have a patch for it.
Damn, damn, if everybody else could sit there like that, so cold, if NG could sit there like that, just pick up and go on working with the shakes and all—
Damned if she couldn't.
Thirty-seven years old and starting over as a neo. So she got the shakes.
That was just adrenaline you didn't know what to do with. But you learned, damned if you didn't, you learned what to do with that charge-up nature gave you, and you got your head to working and you just did it, that was all, whatever it was. Bernstein wasn't going to hand her a damn thing real without checking her on it, and at least nobody was shooting at her while she was learning it.
Please God he wasn't going to hand her anything real and on her own.
What do I say if he does? I don't know what the hell you're talking about?
Questions about her papers, all the way to the captain's office, that was what honesty got her. They might forgive her being stupid, might just put her on plain scutwork; but then Bernstein could tell the captain she was too damn good at some things and too damn stupid at others and things didn't add up right, that was where it could go once the questions started.
You learned, was all you could do, and you said no when you had to, and you never agreed to anything you couldn't fix.
"Shakes?" Bernstein asked her, stopping by.
"Nossir," she said.
He patted the top of the chair. "Did all right. We just got a little play in a servo, always wanders a little when we drop out. You know why?"
She gave him a desperate look.
"Nossir."
"Suggest you ask somebody real soon, Yeager."
"Yessir," she said. "Thank you, sir."
Bernstein patted the chair back again and walked off on his business, and she just sat there a second. While her heart settled.
CHAPTER 16
Quiet evening in rec, vid going in the quarters, a lot of the shift just collapsed in their bunks.
There was a large run on beers in rec, but just quiet drinking: lot of headaches for tomorrow.
And their own little group of three collected at the end of the bench next the galley, nobody bothering them, while two good Systems engineers drew diagrams on a slate and tried to get what they knew through a dumb skut's head.
It made half sense. "Why's it do that?" she asked.
"God does it," NG said, exasperated. "Just believe it happens."
"No, no," Musa said, "fair answer, now."
NG erased the slate and started re-drawing his schematic of little labeled circles, patiently, meticulously.
"Boy's damn smart," Musa said, hunkering closer. "Never did get this part myself."
"The hell," NG muttered, giving Musa a dirty look, and went through it again, how and why the flare-off worked when a ship dumped V.
It made her sick at her stomach when she started figuring it in terms of what could go wrong. Or of what that number-drain was and what could happen if things just failed to go right.
"Well, are we going to fix that damn thing?"
"First chance we get."
"We got to put in for a fill soon," she said.
"Where we put in," Musa said, "they got no facilities. And we can't afford the sit."
"We can't afford to lose the—"
Musa shushed her. "Business, business don't go in rec. Drink your beer."
She took a sip. NG took a big one.
And seeing the look on NG's face she wished she hadn't said that about losing the ship in hyperspace.
Seeing the look on his face—
And beyond it, where Lindy Hughes and his couple of friends were sitting, talking, momentarily staring this way.
"Hughes is down there," she said with a second cold chill in her stomach.
"Hughes is on this shift," Musa said. "He's got a right."