He didn't say anything for a minute. But she could hear the breathing.
"Suppose you just do your job," Fitch said, "explain the rest of these switches and stick to business."
"I got no problem with that, sir, except we got hundreds of switches, I take it our time is limited, and if I knew precisely what we got to deal with, I could figure out what functions you better know. Sir."
Silence. Then: "Suppose you don't be a smartass, Yeager, and you got a notion to stay alive. Let's just learn to move this thing."
"Yessir," she said hoarsely, with the wobbles in her joints and the readouts blurring and a real tight grip on her temper. "You got a good initial balance on your switches. Let's try walking."
He managed it fine at 95 and a hundred, upped it to 110 and did tolerably well—managed to stand the first time at 110 with the gyros when she hit him in the gut; didn't fare so well on the second try without—hit the lockers, but he didn't hit her hands hard when he bounced forward on the recovery.
"You got a real aptitude, sir." She adjusted her amp, shoved him at 130. He hit the lockers, bounced forward, she bounced him back, he got better at staying on his feet.
"You want to find out about the targeting, sir? Question of weapons?"
She kept after him, put her suit on lock finally and just rested, drilled him on the basics, droned through the standard new-skut lecture, sometimes with her eyes closed, but he couldn't know that.
"You got four settings, one's for right-handers, one's for left, some don't care, number one's autofire, skip that, we ain't got it, set it to 2, see the yellow bracket pop up on your foot there, sir, that's a fiber-optics in your right glove, gives you a fair idea what you got your gun generally pointed at. You can adjust the focus, rig understands spoken commands, you say Program On, Target, Manual, you say Cancel to stop it—" Flutter of grid and markers across her own rig's faceplate, that stopped with Cancel. "You can tell it left/right, up/ down, tell it Set when you're happy—"
"Got it," Fitch said. Fitch wasn't sounding real focused himself.
"Think we got the basics," she said. She hoped. "Give you the verbals next try if I got time. Toggles are more reliable, some voices the pickup just doesn't get a hundred percent, don't know why somebody can't make a programmable that can tell sit from shit.—You want to get out of that thing, now, sir?" She didn't wait for a confirmation, she didn't want to hear no, she just came up and guided his hand to the master release. "There's your tension-straps. Left is on, right is off, you let 'em up and you unlatch, ever'thing just exactly like a hard-suit, once she's built and mated, same direction on the latches—sleeves first, top, boots and breeches—hold on, there, let me get the hanging-hooks, sir."
She unscrewed the sleeve-rings, helped him unmate the right one, he got the left, got his own top-section off, helmet and all, once she had it hooked, and he ducked out of it, sweat and grease to the waist, while she got her own joints unscrewed and unmated, and her own hooks on the shoulder-rings.
Fitch looked like he was going to fall on his face, white and sweating and wobbly as he wiped off and started to get his clothes on.
No sympathy, you sum-bitch. Her back reminded her of old debts, and oh, God, she wanted a beer.
Fitch was mopping his face, standing there with his clothes half together while she was putting hers on. "All right, Yeager, you're off. You got maybe six hours."
She blinked, too stupid to find the catch in that.
"Get!" he said.
She zipped up. "Can I draw a beer, sir?"
"Screw any skuz you want, drink, get some sleep, any way you can, long as you can get your ass up here cold sober when I want you. Hear me?"
"Yessir! Thank you, sir."
"Get!"
She shoved her feet into her boots, wobbled her way out onto the bridge where Goddard was still on watch, got into the lift, propped herself against the wall and leaned there with her head pounding and her knees trying to melt under her.
She didn't even go to the locker where their quarters was set up, she went staggering on up the curve, into Engineering, up to where NG was working, and startled hell out of him.
"Got a six-hour," she said. "We got Fitch's sweet goodnight. How you doing?"
CHAPTER 27
She wasn't navigating well, was just about fit to lie there in the seat at number three boards, breaking a half-dozen regs—Bernie'd die, she thought, sipping a cold beer NG had gotten her out of Services, beer and not the vodka, because beer seemed more like food and there was more of it. Her hands would hurt if she weren't halfway numb, her back did hurt, she was afraid to take one of Fletcher's pills, as tired as she was, and she had the feeling a lot of things were going to hurt, if she sat still any time at all.
But NG was there. That was what she wanted most. NG was still speaking to her, he was standing there against the counter-edge with this desperate look, like he'd earnestly like things to make sense more than they did.
There was that lock downside, that was an option, one he'd risked his neck on.—"We've got a way out," he'd whispered to her, before he went down to Services for the beer. "It'll work."
And she'd said, not sure she wasn't wrong: "Not yet."
"When? When you're stuck topside?"
"Don't do it," she'd said. "Don't do it. It's not that simple. Something's wrong out there. Something is wrong, I got it listening to com up there."
NG didn't look happy. But he listened to her. He leaned against the counter now and said, "Better?"
"Lot," she said, and he just stood there. Waiting.
Because she said so.
Man, you never asked, did you, what ship I come from, what I've done, where I been? You never said about yourself, either.
So what're you thinking? That you can throw all that away? But past is never past, man, past is, that's all; all you can ever get at is now and will-be.
You find that so, out there, where you been?
I damn sure have.
She found the beer hard to hold onto: it took concentration to keep her fingers closed on the cup, she was that close to going out.
Crew was going to find out what she was, and there had to be a few with old grudges—on a spook ship, probably a lot of them. Terribly dirty trick, bringing NG out of his hole, getting him halfway acceptable, and then having it turn out she'd lied to everybody—
Where's that leave him? God—
But NG waited, he sat there on this ship that saner crew like Parker and Merrill were complaining about and ready to duck out on, the whole crew ready to mutiny if they hadn't done it already out there—and they were sitting still on her say-so, too, she didn't know why. They might be worried about the consequences of guessing wrong, but if NG decided to go eetee he didn't always think five minutes down the line, damn sure he didn't play team with anybody—
—didn't used to, at least.
Cup slipped. She clamped down numb fingers, got it to her mouth, drank off the last couple of mouthfuls of it and let her arm rest then, just staring at him.
Didn't ask me what I'm going to do.
Can't tell me anything either—what's going on out there, where crew is…
"Merrill and Parker," Goddard's voice said over general com. "Report to dockside."