  There were clouds below that occasionally hid the Earth from sight. For a minute or more they gazed in silence at the magnificent view. "This wasn't built in a day," Jen Jervis said at last. "I should say not," Don agreed. "Millions of years." She looked at him sharply. "I wasn't talking about the age of the Earth. I mean this room—this lookout post—whatever it is." He grinned at her. "I agree with you there, too. I'm really a very agreeable fellow, Miss Jervis. Obviously, whoever built it knew well in advance that Superior was going to take off. They also knew how much of it was going up and exactly where this would have to be built so it would be at the edge." "Under the edge, you mean, with a downward view." "That's right. From a distance I'd say Superior looked as if someone had cut the end off an orange. The flat part—where the cut was made—is the surface and we're looking out from a piece of the convex skin." "You put things so simply, Mr. Cort, that even a child could understand," she said acidly. "Thank you," he said complacently. He had remembered that whoever was listening in for Military Intelligence through the tiny radio under his shirt could have only a vague idea of what was going on. Any little word pictures he could supply, therefore, would help them understand. He had to risk the fact that his companion might think him a bit of an idiot. Of course with this Geneva Jervis it was easy to lay himself open to the scathing comment and the barbed retort. He imagined she was extremely useful in her role as Girl Friday to Senator Bobby Thebold. "I don't think this is the work of those boobies at the booby hatch," she was saying. "I beg your pardon?" "The Cavalier Institution of Applied Foolishness, whatever they call it. They just wouldn't be capable of an undertaking of this scope." "Oh, I agree. That's why I let you drag me away from the meeting. It was a lot of pseudo-scientific malarkey. Old Doc Rubach, D.V.M., was going on about the ultimote being connected to the thighbone, way up in the middle of the air. Tell me, who do you think is behind it all?" She was walking around the big-sided room as if taking mental inventory. There wasn't much to catalogue—six straight chairs, heavy and modern-looking, with a large wooden table, a framed piece of dark glass that might be a television set, and a gray steel box about the size and shape of a three-drawer filing cabinet. This last was near the big window-wall and had three black buttons on its otherwise smooth top. Don itched to push the buttons to see what would happen. Jen Jervis seemed to have the same urge. She drummed on the box with her long fingernails. "I?" she said. "Behind it all?" "Yes. What's your theory? Is this something for the Un-Earthly Activities Committee to investigate?" "Don't be impertinent. If the Senator thinks it's his duty to look into it, he will. He undoubtedly is already. In the meantime, I can do no less than gather whatever information I can while I'm on the scene." "Very patriotic. What do you conclude from your information-gathering so far?" "Obviously there's some kind of conspiracy—" she began, then stopped as if she suspected a trap. "—afoot," Don said with a grin. "As I see it, all you do is have Bobby the Bold subpoena everybody up here—every last man-jack of 'em—to testify before his committee. They wouldn't dare refuse." "I don't find you a bit amusing, Mr. Cort, though I have no doubt this sophomoric humor makes a big hit with your teen-age blonde. We'd better get back. I can see it was a mistake to expect any co-operation from you." "As you like, Madame Investigator." Don gave her a mock bow, then turned for a last look down at the vast segment of Earth below. Geneva Jervis screamed. He whirled to see her standing, big-eyed and open-mouthed, in front of the framed dark glass he had taken for a television screen. Her face was contorted in horror, and as Don's gaze flicked to the screen he had the barest glimpse of a pair of eyes fading with a dissolving image. Then the screen was blank and Don wasn't sure whether there had been a face to go with the eyes—an inhuman, un-earthly face—or whether his imagination had supplied it. The girl slumped to the floor in a faint. COLUMBUS, OHIO, Nov. 1 (AP)—Sen. Robert (Bobby) Thebold landed here today after leading his Private Pilots (PP) squadron of P-38's on a reconnaissance flight which resulted in the loss of one of the six World War II fighters in a crash landing on the mysteriously airborne town of Superior, Ohio. The pilot of the crashed plane parachuted safely to Earth. Sen. Thebold told reporters grimly: "There is no doubt in my mind that mysterious forces are at work when a town of 3,000 population can rise in a body off the face of the Earth. My reconnaissance has shown conclusively that the town is intact and its inhabitants alive. On one of my passes I saw my secretary, Miss Geneva Jervis." Sen. Thebold said he was confident Miss Jervis would contact him the moment she had anything to report, indicating she would make an on-the-spot investigation. The Senator said in reply to a question that he was "amazed" at official Washington's "complete inaction" in the matter, and declared he would demand a probe by the Senate Investigations Subcommittee, of which he is a member. He indicated witnesses might include officials of the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and "possibly others." LADENBURG, Ohio, Nov. 1 (UPI)—Little Ladenburg, former neighbor of "The City in the Sky," complained today of a rain of empty beer cans and other rubbish, apparently being tossed over the edge by residents of airborne Superior. "They're not so high and mighty," one sanitation official here said, "that they can make Ladenburg their garbage dump." WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (Reuters)—American officials today were at a loss to explain the strange behaviour of Superior, Ohio, "the town that took off." Authoritative sources assured Reuters that no military or scientific experiments were in progress which could account for the phenomenon of a town being lifted intact thousands of feet into the air. Rumors circulating to the effect that a "Communist plot" was at work were greeted with extreme scepticism in official quarters. Bulletin COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 1 (UPI)—The airborne town of Superior began to drift east across Ohio late today. |
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