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leaking blue fluids—a robot’s wound. The soft nugget of Mac Feya lay deeper inside, hidden but horribly endangered.
    Hayes needed Mac’s cooperation—or else he needed Mac safely unconscious. He queried Elam about the telemetry.
    â€œFar as I can tell, Tam, his vitals are as stable as we can expect. You want me to tell the suit to lighten his narcs?”
    â€œTake his drip down just a notch, please, Elam.”
    â€œSure you don’t want to splint him first?”
    â€œI’m already on it.”
    He unhooked a body brace from the nearest tractible and began Unking it to Mac’s upper-body armor. The tractibles could have done this themselves if they had been larger or more flexible. But this was Isis, and some Terrestrial kacho had written weight and size limitations into the robot inventory without thinking much about the practical consequences. Hayes worked from behind Mac, socketing the brace into chordal ports, the brace exchanging protocols with the suit’s surviving electronics.
    The link was almost complete when Mac woke up.
    His scream rang through Hayes’ helmet, a sound he did not immediately identify with his friend Macabie Feya. It was an inhuman roar, overwhelming the audio transducers. Elam shouted over it: “His vitals are spiking! He’s not stable—you have to override his armor
now!”
    Grimly, Hayes forced the last brace connector into its socket on Mac’s thrashing armor.
    He was still trying to latch the device when Mac’s elbow butted into him.
    Hayes staggered backward, hurt and breathless. His armor was bulky but in its own way fragile, designed to protect him from the biosphere, not from physical attack. His ribs hurt, the breath wasknocked out of him, and he heard the suit alarm clamoring for his attention.
    â€œTam, you have an outer-layer breach! Get back in the airlock, stat!”
    â€œMac,” Hayes said.
    The engineer’s wordless keening dropped to a lower note.
    â€œMac, you can hear me, can’t you?”
    Elam: “Don’t do this, Tam!”
    â€œMac, listen. You’re doing fine. I know you’re worried, and I know you’ve been out here too long, and I know you’re in pain. We’re about ready to haul you inside. But you have to relax, keep still a little longer.”
    There was a response this time, something about being “fucking trapped.”
    â€œListen to me,” Hayes said. He took a cautious step forward, keeping himself within Mac’s visual range, gloves forward and open. “There’s a brace on you, but it’s not socketed up. I have to make the connection before we can take you inside.”
    Elam, still hammering him: “I cannot guarantee your suit integrity unless you get back here
now
!”
    He took another step closer.
    â€œI think you broke one of my ribs, Mac. Take it easy, all right? I know it hurts. But we’re almost home, buddy.”
    Mac croaked something repetitive, choking on the words.
    â€œYou understand me, Mac?”
    There was a silence he took for assent. Hayes grasped the brace jack in one glove, taking advantage of what he hoped was a moment of lucidity.
    Mac reared back as the connection was made. Then the brace electronics overrode his voluntary functions, clamping his arms at his sides in full static lockdown. The motion must have been painful. Mac howled at his sudden new helplessness, an awful sound.
    Two small tractibles approached, clasped the wings of the brace, and tilted it neatly backward. Now Mac was a wheeledvehicle, already rolling toward the tractible bay’s outer decon chamber. Hayes kept pace, ignoring Elam’s voice in his ear, staying where Mac could see him, keeping the injured man company until the bay doors rolled down on the deepening blue of the Isian dusk.
    Hayes put his helmet against Mac’s as the harsh station lights came up.
    Mac whispered. The words—as nearly as Hayes could