Power Play by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page A

He squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them. Nothing had changed, and yet …
    Younger was beaming. He turned to Rogers and they slapped a high-five.
    “Forty-eight megawatts!” Jake heard Younger’s delighted shout, but it was smothered, as if his ears were swaddled in cotton.
    The technicians all looked happy, big grins as they flicked switches and pecked at buttons on the control board.
    Rogers had pulled out a pocket calculator. He looked up and down the controls, tapping on its keypad.
    Jake’s ears were ringing. He remembered going with Louise out to a pistol range, years ago. Even with earphones clapped to his head the noise of the guns firing kept his ears ringing for days afterward. Louise had been impressed that Jake hit the target nearly dead-center with most of his shots. She punched three holes through the tin roof of their shelter when she tried to fire an automatic.
    “Seventy-two percent,” Rogers yelled, showing his calculator’s tiny screen to Younger. It sounded to Jake as if the man was speaking from the bottom of an echoing well.
    Younger was all smiles. “We’re getting there,” he said. “We’re definitely getting there.”
    The outer door swung open, sudden sunlight flooding into the test cell. Glynis Colwyn rushed in, obviously distressed about something.
    “I heard the noise from a half mile up the road,” she shouted. “Don’t tell me you’ve run the test already!”

GLYNIS COLWYN
    As Glynis hurried across the test cell toward the control booth, Younger shot a sly grin at Rogers. Once she entered the booth his expression grew stern and he said to her, “Hey, I told you we’d run at one o’clock.”
    Looking upset, she said, “It’s only a quarter past one.”
    Younger shrugged. “The checkout went smooth, so we fired her up.”
    “I wanted to see the run!”
    Another shrug. “Then you should have been here on time.”
    Glynis frowned at him. She was dressed in a pair of deep blue slacks, with a white short-sleeved pullover that reached to her hips. Jake noticed she had a necklace of turquoise around her throat, and a turquoise bracelet on one wrist. Her long dark hair look disheveled, windblown.
    “We’ll probably run it again, around three, four o’clock,” Younger said.
    She looked from his face to Rogers and back again. “I’ve got to be back at Professor Sinclair’s office at three thirty.”
    “Too bad,” said Younger.
    “Damn! I nearly broke my butt getting here. My blasted car’s having ignition troubles again and I had to get it checked out this morning before I left.”
    Younger said nothing; he simply turned away from her and started fiddling with some of the knobs on the control board. Rogers looked embarrassed.
    Clearly unhappy, Glynis said, “I might as well go back, then.”
    Rogers made an apologetic, “It’s a shame you had to come all the way out here and miss the run.”
    “Yes,” she replied, eying Younger. “Isn’t it?”
    Jake could feel the high-voltage tension between Younger and Colwyn. Rogers seemed to be in the middle of it.
    Colwyn glared at Younger’s back, then turned and headed out toward the door.
    Once she’d left, Jake half whispered to Rogers, “What was that all about?”
    With an uneasy smile, the physicist replied, “Tim thinks she’s a spy.”
    “A spy?”
    “From Sinclair.”
    “But this is Sinclair’s program, isn’t it?”
    “It’s my program,” Younger snapped, looking up from the control board. “I run this fucking show. It’s my responsibility. When something goes wrong I get the blame. Okay. But I won’t have his fucking snoops sticking their tits into my work!”
    Jake involuntarily backed away from Younger’s blazing anger.
    The engineer muttered darkly, “She sleeps her way into the fucking program and now she’s coming up here snooping around.”
    Rogers gripped Younger’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Tim. After all, Sinclair is the head of this program.”
    “So he gets to bed her, big