And Then the Town Took Off Part 12

"Is there any other?" Don asked. "The alternative is to kid ourselves that everything's all right and trust in Providence and Hector Civek.

What is it with you people? You don't seem to realize that sixteen square miles of solid earth, and three thousand people, have taken off to go waltzing through the sky. That isn't just something that happens.

Something or somebody's making it happen. The question is who or what, and what are you going to do about it?"

The bartender said, "The boy's right, Ed. How do we know they won't take us up higher--up where there's no air? Then we'd be cooked."

Clark laughed. "'Cooked' is hardly the word. But I agree that things are getting out of hand." He set down his gla.s.s with a clink. "I know the man we want. Old Doc Bendy. He could stir things up. Remember the time they tried to run the pipeline through town and Doc formed a citizens committee and stopped them?"

"Stopped them dead," the bartender recalled, then cleared his throat.

"Speak of the devil." He raised his voice and greeted the man who had just walked in. "Well, Doc. Long time since we've had the pleasure of your company. Nice to see you."

Doc Bendy was an imposing old gentleman of more than average height and magnificent girth. He carried a paunch with authority. His hands, at the ends of short arms, seemed to fall naturally to it, and he patted the paunch with satisfaction as he spoke. He was dressed for the cold weather in an old frock coat, black turning green, with a double line of oversized b.u.t.tons down the front and huge eighteenth-century lapels. He wore a battered black slouch hat which long ago had given up the pretense of holding any particular shape.

"Salutations, gentlemen!" Doc Bendy boomed, striding majestically toward the bar. "They tell me our peripatetic little town has just pa.s.sed Pittsburgh. I'd have thought it more likely we'd crossed the Arctic Circle. Rum, bartender, is the only suitable potable for the occasion."

Clark introduced Don, who saw that close up Doc Bendy's face was full and firm rather than fat. The nose had begun to develop the network of visible blood vessels which indicated a fondness for the bottle. s.h.a.ggy white eyebrows matched the fringe of white hair that sprouted from under the sides and back of the slouch hat. The eyes themselves were alert and humorous. The mouth rose subtly at the corners and, though Bendy never seemed to smile outright, it conveyed the same humor as the eyes.

These two features, in fact, saved the old man from seeming pompous.

Don noticed that the rum the bartender poured for Bendy was 151 proof and the portion was a generous one.

Bendy raised his gla.s.s. "Your health, gentlemen." He took a sip and put it down. "I might also drink to a happy voyage, destination unknown."

"Don here thinks we're in danger of drifting over Europe."

"A distinct possibility," Bendy said. "Your pa.s.sports are in order, I trust? I remember the first time I went to the Continent. It was with Black Jack Pers.h.i.+ng and the AEF."

"Were you in the Medical Corps, sir?" Don asked.

Doc Bendy boomed with laughter, holding his paunch. "Bless your soul, lad, I'm no doctor. I was on the board of directors of Superior's first hospital, hence the t.i.tle. A mere courtesy, conferred on me by a grateful citizenry."

"The citizens might be looking to you again, Doc," Clark said, "since their elected representatives are letting them down."

"But not _bringing_ them down, eh? Suppose you tell me what you know, Mr. Editor. I a.s.sume you're the best-informed man on the situation, barring the conspirators who have dragged us aloft."

"You think it's a conspiracy?"

"It's not an act of G.o.d."

Clark began to fill an ancient pipe, so well caked that the pencil with which he tamped the tobacco barely fitted into the bowl. By the time the pipe was ready for a match he had exhausted the solid facts. Don then took over and described the underground pa.s.sage he had seen that afternoon. He was about to go further when the old man held up a hand.

"The facts only, if you please. Mr. Cort, what you saw in the underground chamber fits in remarkably with something I stumbled on this afternoon while I was skating."

"Skating?" Clark said.

"Ice skating. At North Lake. It's completely frozen over and I'm not so decrepit that I can't glide on a pair of blades. Well, I was gliding along, humming the _Skater's Waltz_, when I tripped over a stump. When I said I stumbled on something I was speaking literally, because I fell flat. While I lay there, with the breath knocked out of me, my face was only an inch from the ice and I realized I was eye-to-eye with a thing.

Just as you were, Mr. Cort."

"You mean there was something under the ice?"

"Exactly. Staring up at me. Balefully, I suppose you could say, as if it resented my presence."

"Did you see the whole face?"

"I'd be embroidering if I said yes. It seemed--but I must stick to the facts. I saw only the eyes. Two perfectly circular eyes, which glared at me for a moment, then disappeared."

"It could have been a fish," Clark said.

"No. A fish is about the most expressionless thing there is, while these eyes had intelligence behind them. None of your empty, fishy stares."

Clark knocked his pipe against the edge of the bar so the ashes fell in the vicinity of an old bra.s.s cuspidor. "So, since what you and Don saw were both under the surface, we could put two and two together and a.s.sume that some kind of alien beings have taken up residence in Superior's lower levels?"

"Only if you think two and two make five," Doc Bendy said. "But even if they don't, there's a great deal more going on than Civek knows, or the Garet-Rubach crowd at Cavalier will admit. It seems to me, gentlemen, that it's time I set up a committee."

VII

Miss Leora Frisbie, spinster, was found dead in the mushroom cellar of her home on Ryder Avenue in the northeastern part of town. She had been sitting in a camp chair, bundled in heavy clothing, when she died. She had been subject to heart trouble and that fact, coupled with notes she had been making on a pad in her lap, led the coroner to believe she had been frightened to death.

The first entry on the pad said: _Someone stealing my mushrooms; must keep vigil_. The notes continued:

_Sitting in chair near stairs. Single 60-w. bulb dims, gravity increases. Superior rising again? Movement in corner--soil being pushed up from underneath. Hand. Hand? Claw!_

_Claw withdraws._

_Head. Rat? No. Bigger._

_Human? No. But the eyes eyes ey_

That was all.

Photostatic copies of the late Miss Frisbie's notes and the coroner's report became exhibits one and two in Doc Bendy's dossier. Exhibit three was a carbon copy of a report by the stock control clerk at the bubble gum factory.

Bubble gum had been piling up in the warehouse on the railroad siding back of Reilly Street. The stock control clerk, Armand Specht, was taking inventory when he saw a movement at the far end of the warehouse.

His report follows:

_Investigated and found carton had been dislodged from top of pile and broken into. Gross of Cheeky brand missing. Saw something sitting with back to me opening packages, stuffing gum into mouth, wax paper and all, half-dozen at time. Looked like overgrown chimpanzee. It turned and saw me, continuing to chew. Didn't get clear look before it disappeared but noticed two things: one, that its cheeks bulged out from chewing so much gum at once, and other, that its eyes were round and bright, even in dim corner. Then animal turned and disappeared behind pile of Cheekys.

No chimpanzee. Didn't follow right away but when I did it was gone._

Exhibit four:

_Dear Diary:

_There wasn't any TV tonight and I asked Grandfather Bendy what to do and he said "Marie, when I was young, boys and girls made their own fun" and so I got out the Scrabble and asked Mom and Dad to play but they said no they had to go to the Warners and play bridge. So they went and I was playing pretending I was both sides when the door opened and I said h.e.l.lo Grandfather but it wasn't him it was like a kangaroo and it had big eyes that were friendly._