When she returned, her tight ponytail had been released and her hair fell softly around her face. The little jacket she’d been wearing was gone. He didn’t know what’d happened to her blouse. It was the same one but somehow looked softer, less businesslike.
She seemed… smaller, more delicate.
How’d she do that? he wondered. When she soundlessly crossed a section of tile floor, he realized with an “aha,” that she’d taken off her shoes. I should’ve taken mine off too, he thought, making an abortive reach for them.
Softly saying, “Don’t worry about your shoes,” she sank gracefully down beside him.
Right next to him.
And leaning gently against him.
She handed him a tiny glass with a light brown liquid in it, “Bailey’s Irish cream,” she said. “I think you’ll like it.”
She took a sip of hers, so he took a sip of his. He did like it. What do we talk about now? he wondered.
She leaned her head on his shoulder and spoke dreamily, “Thanks for hiring me… I thought I had a dream job at Space-Gen, but it didn’t hold a candle to this one.”
“Um, it wasn’t just me, you—”
She interrupted, “But you’re the one who mattered.”
Somehow her right arm had made its way behind his back. When he turned to look at her, she was looking up at him, lips slightly parted. She stretched her neck and their lips were in contact.
Then her left hand pulled on his neck and he found himself being tilted over on top of her. What do I do with my Bailey’s?! he wondered frantically.
Her left hand pulled the glass out of his right hand and reached back to unerringly place it on the coffee table. Then his attention became highly focused on the new sensations rushing over him…
***
Emmanuel watched as Vinargy’s crane swung the dry cask over the circular plate of Stade Emmanuel’s team had welded to the foundation screws. His crew boss was signaling the crane operator to guide the cask in over the plate. Emmanuel felt somewhat superfluous. But “a good boss knows how to delegate tasks,” he paraphrased to himself from his reading on leadership.
The Stade under-plate had been formed first. Then six long, angled, Stade screws—shaped like the twisted auger blades on a post hole digger—had been screwed in through holes in it. They’d used a rented, heavy-duty post-hole-digging machine to screw the screws thirty-two feet deep into the ground. The screws were so long that they’d had to be inserted in segments because the post hole digger could only screw in an eight-foot section at a time. Each segment had been Stade welded to the one behind it. Finally, the Stade plate had been welded to the screws.
The crew boss called out to him, “Mr. Seba, you want all the weight lowered onto the plate?”
Emmanuel nodded. No matter how many times he tried to explain the impossible strength of Stade, the crew boss continued to feel like the tiny welds holding everything together were bound to fail. When the chain to the hook holding up the cask relaxed, Emmanuel waved at the bucket truck Vinargy had loaned them for the job. The guy in the bucket skillfully guided his bucket in over the cask and released the hook.
The crane swung the chain and hook out of the way.
The crew boss guided the hook over what Emmanuel thought of as their Mylar “tent,” a capped cylinder of Mylar just big enough to fit over a cask. The crane lifted the tent up over the cask and, with a little guidance from guys pulling on cords attached to the bottom edge of the Mylar, the opening at the bottom of the tent was started over the cask. Then the tent was lowered down over the cask until the Stade plate inside the top of the tent settled onto the top of the cask.
The crew moved in, clipping the Mylar snugly to the Stade plate at the bottom. Emmanuel hooked up the cables from the big stazer to the tent’s connectors. He booted the controlling laptop and started entering the numbers Kaem had provided him. It’ll be a pisser if Kaem screwed up these numbers and they don’t work, he thought.
Everything entered, he looked up at the crew boss. “Ready?”
The man nodded.
Emmanuel hit enter. After he’d heard the loud snap of the big capacitors, he went over to feel the Stade beneath the Mylar—even though he already had the sense it was hard. It was. He turned to the crew boss, “Unclip the tent and pull it off.”
Emmanuel disconnected his cables while they were unclipping the Mylar. Stepping back, he powered down the stazer and the laptop. When he looked up, the crew boss was motioning the crane to pull the tent up and off. A voice behind him said, “You’re Staze’s person in charge?”
Emmanuel turned, recognizing Art Turpin, the head of the Surbury nuclear reactor from his picture on their website. “Yes, Mr. Turpin. How may I help you?”
Turpin was studying his face, “Are you related to Kaem Seba?” he asked curiously.
“Yes, sir. I’m his father.” Emmanuel grinned, “He managed to talk Staze into hiring me against their better judgment.” Emmanuel hoped his flip comment hadn’t betrayed his nervousness. “We’ve finished stazing the cask. Do you want to look it over?”
“Oh,” Turpin said, turning to look at it, “sure.”
They walked over, Emmanuel praying they wouldn’t find a defect in the Stade. Supposedly, the medium stazer had the power to staze the entire thing, but he couldn’t help worrying it’d leave a gaping hole somewhere. Or that a gap in the clips holding the Mylar tent to the underplate would result in a failure.
He and Turpin walked around the circumference of the huge Stade, looking up and then back down at the bottom. Emmanuel was bothered
