"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 carried side-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 heard… 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 downside…
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. Works means 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.
"You can see your hand, bottom 360 display, you got to get used to the distortion. This is lock, this is gyros, this is free-movement, three position switch, first over, see the blinking display, right corner of your screen, tells you that's switch two, position B, that's stabilizing on, A is lock, C is free. Got that?"
"A is lock, B is gyros, C is free."
"Rig tends to feel like it's out of balance. Different center of gravity, but don't forget those big boots under you. Put it on B, the gyros keep your balance and you got to really fight it to kneel or fall down. I'd advise you keep it on B a while. Switch three's your sensitivity. I'd put it 85%. It's going to wear on you some, but better that than falling down. I keep mine at 150, amp to the rig's max at 300, but I been using these things twenty years. You don't need switch four, we got no base station, so that's no good.—Feel steadier at 85?"
"Cumbersome," Fitch said. "Stiff."
"You can designate sections for different amps, but it's overall sloppy. Put three up to 90, just up a point or two as you feel like it, but be careful when you start passing the hundred mark. Higher you set that amp-switch, that's the way the rig reads all your muscle twitches. At a hundred it'll move that much faster, hit that much harder, grip that much tighter. It's incremental. At 150, a guy can break a gunstock with a squeeze, and most guys never set the total rig over 250. You move gentle, handle everything like it was blown glass, don't jerk. Everything you do is amplified. Mass is more. When you get moving, you got to allow more to stop. Running stride's a float, light as you can, max-set walk's a lot the same. You got to be light on your feet. If you fall, don't fight it, don't jerk, fall won't hurt you, just take it and get back up.
—Going to take the gyros off, now. Relax. Just stand. Lift the arm. Gently."
"Damn!" Fitch said, when the rig hummed and flexed. A little jerk. Her arm and his crashed together and he broke a locker handle stumbling backward and forward.
She caught him, steadied him. She could hear the breathing, heavy gasps over the helmet-com.
Man not used to not being in control.
Man exhausted, mad as hell, and maybe a little scared.
He jerked, a rattle and stutter all up and down the joints, he lurched free and swung the arm further than he wanted, but he caught himself.
"That's pretty good," she said. "If you swing like that, you got to brace back harder than you would. Mass again. —Who're we supposed to use these on, you mind to say, sir?"