USA. NASA visitor center. A retired engineer in a polo shirt pinched a bead of water off a tube. The bead floated above his palm like a tiny confused planet. I dropped to one knee. "You good, sir?" "This is a Divine Orb," I said. "A sign from Heaven granted to your house." "That's just surface tension, man." Surface Tension. A holy name. An angel, possibly. I bowed to Surface Tension. "My uncle worked Marshall thirty-one years," he said, pinching another bead. "He used to do this at Thanksgiving. Grandma hated it on the rug." The Rug of Trial. The Grandmother of the Rite. I tightened my grip on my helmet. "What rug holds such a relic?" "Just a rug, buddy. Sears, like 1987." The Sacred Sears Rug of 1987. I bowed again. He did not bow back. Engineers do not bow back. They pinch off another drop and gesture for you to try. I tried. My bead came out enormous, because I was earnest. It hung there for one second. Then it committed treason. It split into four smaller orbs and drifted in four directions. I froze in the posture of a man whose four sworn duties had just walked off in separate directions. "Yeah, light hand. Like you're catching a moth your kid showed you." A moth my kid showed me. I had no kid. I had once been shown a beetle by a child at a festival. I treated the orb like the beetle. I held my hand the way you receive the last onigiri from a tired clerk at midnight, both hands forward, eyes lowered. One orb landed on my sleeve and politely stained me. "My uncle would say water in zero-g is honest." Honest Water. A second angel. I now had two. "Sir. It's a physics demo. You can stand up." I did not stand up. A man does not stand up halfway through a ceremony involving two angels and one Sacred Sears Rug. A boy and his father waited their turn behind me. The father had a Saturn V model tucked under one arm like a baguette. "Take your time, partner. It's worth doing right." I tried once more. Smaller drop. I held my hand under it the way you hold a paper boat under a smaller cloud, and waited. The drop drifted. Deliberated. Chose my palm. "There you go. That's how he taught the new guys." The New Guys. I was a New Guy at Marshall, 1968, taught by an uncle I had never met, through a nephew I had no claim on, at a bench I had not earned. I rose. I stepped aside. The boy came up. He pinched a drop. It floated. He laughed. His father said quietly, "Just like your great-uncle, kid." I stood off to the side, sleeve damp with somebody else's holy water, and let them have their bench. "Hey," the engineer called after me, without turning around. "Come back next Thanksgiving, hon. We open early."