The glassworks had settled into a comfortable rhythm.
Long before sunrise, the furnaces glowed with their familiar orange light while the first crews quietly reported for work. The apprentices no longer waited to be told what to do. One team gathered molten glass for canning jars. Another shaped milk bottles and medicine bottles. Window glass moved steadily through the annealing ovens before being loaded onto waiting wagons.
Every day, thousands of pieces left the factory.
Very few broke.
Jake stood near the entrance with a cup of coffee, watching the men and women work.
He smiled.
The factory no longer depended upon him every minute of every day.
That had always been his goal.
A good teacher eventually makes himself unnecessary.
Just then Samuel Yoder, Buck Rogers, Galileo Maestro, and Elias Hawking stepped through the large factory doors.
Jake removed his leather gloves.
"Morning."
Samuel looked around the busy building.
"I believe you've worked yourself out of a job."
Jake laughed.
"I've worked myself into a better one."
Galileo watched a young apprentice carefully remove glowing glass from the furnace.
"They've become craftsmen."
Jake nodded proudly.
"They're teaching the newest apprentices now."
Buck looked around the factory.
"So what does the master glassmaker do?"
Without a word, Elias unrolled a large drawing across a workbench.
Everyone leaned closer.
In the center of the paper was a perfect sphere.
Eight feet in diameter.
Jake stared at it for several moments.
"You want me to make the Earth."
Samuel smiled.
"We'd like you to."
Jake slowly traced the outline with one finger.
"I've spent my life making windows so people could look through glass."
He looked up.
"I suppose every glassmaker hopes for one masterpiece."
He folded the drawing.
"When do we begin?"
New molds were built.
Special furnaces were modified.
The clearest glass the factory had ever produced was poured, shaped, polished, and examined again and again.
No bubbles.
No waves.
No distortions.
If the Earth was to hover above the Planetary Roundtable, it deserved to be flawless.
When at last the final polishing was complete, the workers gathered around the great crystal sphere in complete silence.
It reflected the furnaces.
The rafters.
The workers.
Even the valley beyond the open factory doors seemed to float within it.
Buck finally spoke.
"I don't believe I've ever seen anything more beautiful."
Jake smiled quietly.
"We're only halfway finished."
Samuel looked puzzled.
"What do you mean?"
Jake pointed toward the enormous factory doors.
"We've built it."
He paused.
"Now we have to move it."
Silence filled the room.
No one had considered that the largest piece of glass ever made in the valley still had to travel safely to its new home.
Buck's pencil was already moving across his clipboard.
"I'll need the wheelwright."
"And the blacksmith."
"The carpenters."
"The leather shop."
"The road crews."
Samuel smiled.
"Looks like another community project."
For the next two weeks the settlement prepared.
The wheelwright built the largest wagon he had ever attempted.
Its wide wheels rolled on iron tires forged by Isaac at the blacksmith shop.
The carpenters fashioned a heavy timber cradle that held the crystal sphere without placing pressure on any single point.
Edward and the leatherworkers stitched broad padded harnesses and lifting straps.
Road crews walked every foot of the route from the glassworks to the Planetary Roundtable.
High spots were leveled.
Ruts were filled.
Small bridges were strengthened.
Nothing was left to chance.
Rebecca watched the preparations with amusement.
"I've never seen so many people worrying over one piece of glass."
Samuel smiled.
"It isn't the glass."
"What is it then?"
"It's what the glass represents."
The morning of the journey arrived calm and clear.
Word had spread throughout the settlement.
Families quietly gathered along the roadway.
Children sat on split-rail fences.
Milkmaids paused beside their wagons.
Even the sawmill stood silent for the morning.
The great crystal Earth rested securely within its wooden cradle.
Eight draft horses leaned gently into their harnesses.
Buck removed his hat.
"Let's bring the world home."
The wagon began to move.
Slowly.
Patiently.
No one hurried.
Every few hundred yards Buck stopped the procession while Jake examined the glass.
Not a single scratch.
Not a single crack.
The orb reflected everything around it.
Children waved at their own reflections.
Barns drifted across its curved surface.
Clouds floated inside the crystal as though another sky had been captured within it.
Galileo chuckled.
"It appears the Earth is carrying the valley with it."
By afternoon the procession reached the Planetary Roundtable.
The great circular building stood waiting.
High above its center, hidden within the timber framework, Elias and his crew had completed the magnetic support assembly weeks before.
The lifting frame was carefully positioned.
Leather straps tightened.
The crystal Earth slowly rose from its cradle.
No one spoke.
The only sounds were the creaking timbers and the steady commands of the rigging crew.
Higher.
Higher.
Until the sphere reached the exact center of the Roundtable.
Elias checked his instruments one final time.
He looked toward Samuel.
Samuel simply nodded.
The lifting straps slackened.
For one long heartbeat no one breathed.
The great crystal Earth remained exactly where it was.
Floating.
Not hanging.
Not resting.
Balanced perfectly above the Roundtable.
Jake slowly removed his cap.
"So that's what all those jars were leading to."
Galileo gazed upward, the floating Earth reflected in his eyes.
"We never built a monument," he said softly.
"We built a promise."
Around the circular table, no one could find words.
Above them, the Earth quietly waited for the first visitors who would gather beneath it, not as enemies or strangers, but as neighbors.