"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?"
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.