"Seven! Move that plate in straight next time! And you, Four, keep your guides straighter!" His voice rang clearly and concisely in the huge room. "Eighty-four! Don't wait so long before you hit that welder! As soon as Nine moves his left away from the shell, hit it!"
Little things, small savings of time, but they added up to greater efficiency in the long run. Klythe watched for every wasted motion, every fumble, every tiny error in timing or spacing, and corrected it with a whiplash voice.
When they had put the model completely back together, they folded their hands and looked at Klythe. Klythe jammed his finger down on the stop button and set the machine to erase the tape they had just made.
He scowled at the men. "I have seen more fumble-fingered recorders," he said acidly, "but they were trainees." He sighed as though his burden was too much. "All right. Rip her down and let's try it again."
The next time through, he was even more vituperative. If a man made an error the second time, Klythe was not above insults—personal ones.
An emergency call came in for Crayley. Something wrong on the second level. He stepped out the door in the middle of one of Klythe's high-tension blasts at a technician.
All the way down to the second level, Crayley was happy.
It took three days of hard work to pound all the kinks out of the recorders' technique. Not all, actually; Klythe still expressed dissatisfaction.
Crayley was in Klythe's office on the morning of the fourth day, sitting on Klythe's desk and smoking one of Klythe's cigarettes.