"Yeerk metal's mostly what I know," Myitt says, tugging the strings of the apron around her back, tying it awkwardly with gloved hands. "I was on the Hork-Bajir world when we were designing these babies."
With an appreciative slap of the metal hull, she hunkers down next to the welding mask and the tank.
"Jesus, when was the last time you used this thing?" she wonders aloud, inspecting the nozzle with the scrutiny of a mineralogist. She pats the apron, then fishes around on the gravel, poking a thin stick into the nozzle end.
"Guppy," she narrates, "in a minute there's going to be a ****ton of heat radiating off this thing. I mean, it's a welding torch, so...you know, that's a given. Just don't come near it, alright? I want to help save your eyesight, not melt your face off."
As she talks, she tightens the valves on the torch head, where the tubes from the twin tanks snake into the torch handle.
When she finally stands, she's dizzy. "Jesus. Maybe I shouldn't ****in' operate this thing after a day like today," she mutters, but proceeds to turn the oxygen nozzle.
"Oh," she adds, as the thing sputters and hisses gas, "there will be a lot of smoke, too. Don't breathe it in."
She turns the second valve, acetylene, and takes out a spark lighter - she had one tucked away in her jacket.
"I mean it," she warns, pulling the welding shield over her face. "****in' lot of smoke." Her is muffled and metallic.
Myitt lights the torch, which blasts out a bright red-orange flame, and she gets to work on the side of the ship with practiced ease.
The Bug's black, cool surface sizzles, then bubbles, then glows cherry red - but only momentarily, as the living metal congeals into a removable strip. The flame hisses a steady blue, until she squeezes the handle, and true to her word - acrid smoke belches from the places where the red-orange torch flame hits the metal surface.
It doesn't take long before she has a long strip of undulating metal, the size of a 2x4, stretched out on the gravel before them.
She doesn't pause, unable to talk above the noise of the torch and the gleeful buzzing in her head.
Welding was like a high. It was almost blissful as math, or sex, or oatmeal.
Jorek gives Keshin a distasteful look, annoyed at being interrupted - but then it's gone again, and he forces a smile.
"That creature," he says with a sneer, indicating the man in the Hawaiian shirt, currently ordering the Bar out of house and home, "tried to have me killed. He's a menace to my political pursuits, not to mention my life."