And Then the Town Took Off Part 4

Smaller print on the sign said: _Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is sufficient to kill._ It was signed: _Vincent Grande, Chief of Police, Hector Civek, Mayor_.

"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don asked.

"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but n.o.body's allowed to swim."

"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"

"I don't know."

"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder what would happen?"

"I know one thing--I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you found out."

She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth below and to the west.

"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way over there?"

He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here as it used to down there?"

"We could tell by the sun, silly."

"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great Lakes--or Lake Erie, anyway."

They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was gone.

"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not answers, then transportation."

"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you like it here?"

"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into clean clothes, you're not going to like me."

"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"

she said, "before you deteriorate."

They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.

III

Much of the rest of the world was inclined to regard the elevation of Superior, Ohio, as a Fortean phenomenon in the same category as flying saucers and sea monsters.

The press had a field day. Most of the headlines were whimsical:

TOWN TAKES OFF

SUPERIOR LIVES UP TO NAME

A RISING COMMUNITY

The city council of Superior, Wisconsin, pa.s.sed a resolution urging its Ohio namesake to come back down. The Superiors in Nebraska, Wyoming, Arizona and West Virginia, glad to have the publicity, added their voices to the plea.

The Pennsylvania Railroad filed a suit demanding that the state of Ohio return forthwith one train and five miles of right-of-way.

The price of bubble gum went up from one cent to three for a nickel.

In Parliament a Labour member rose to ask the Home Secretary for a.s.surances that all British cities were firmly fastened down.

An Ohio waterworks put in a bid for the sixteen square miles of hole that Superior had left behind, explaining that it would make a fine reservoir.

A company that leased out big advertising signs in Times Square offered Superior a quarter of a million dollars for exclusive rights to advertising s.p.a.ce on its bottom, or Earthward, side. It sent the offer by air mail, leaving delivery up to the post office.

In Was.h.i.+ngton, Senator Bobby Thebold ascertained that his red-haired secretary, Jen Jervis, had been aboard the train levitated with Superior and registered a series of complaints by telephone, starting with the Interstate Commerce Commission and the railroad brotherhoods. He asked the FBI to investigate the possibility of kidnaping and muttered about the likelihood of it all being a Communist plot.

A little-known congressman from Ohio started a rumor that raising of Superior was an experiment connected with the United States earth satellite program. The National Aeronautics and s.p.a.ce Administration issued a quick denial.

Two men talked earnestly in an efficient-looking room at the end of one of the more intricate mazes in the Pentagon Building. Neither wore a uniform but the younger man called the other sir, or chief, or general.

"We've established definitely that Sergeant Cort was on that train, have we?" the general asked.

"Yes, sir. No doubt about it."

"And he has the item with him?"

"He must have. The only keys are here and at the other end. He couldn't open the handcuff or the brief case."

"The only _known_ keys, that is."

"Oh? How's that, General?"

"The sergeant can open the brief case and use the item if we tell him how."

"You think it's time to use it? I thought we were saving it."

"That was before Superior defected. Now we can use it to more advantage than any theoretical use it might be put to in the foreseeable future."

"We could evacuate Cort. Take him off in a helicopter or drop him a parachute and let him jump."

"No. Having him there is a piece of luck. No one knows who he is. We'll a.s.sign him there for the duration and have him report regularly. Let's go to the message center."

Senator Bobby Thebold was an imposing six feet two, a muscular 195, a youthful-looking 43. He wore his steel-gray hair cut short and his skin was tan the year round. He was a bachelor. He had been a fighter pilot in World War II and his conversation was peppered with Air Force slang, much of it out of date. Thebold was good newspaper copy and one segment of the press, admiring his fighting ways, had dubbed him Bobby the Bold.

The Senator did not mind a bit.