II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case topull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whateverwas inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room tohimself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but hadhad to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, anddid what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. Abright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squatbuilding, and other people going in random directions. The first werestudents going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were facultymembers. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town ofSuperior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. Theothers had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he steppedoutdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came outvisibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go takea good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and hegot in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one heknew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled andgestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'mAlis--that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e--Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or didyou escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd beentwo of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife andfork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better orderthem scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory andthe latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be outof here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you getdown from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got uphere."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted awhole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely _fell_, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to bea matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the _Superior Sentry_, a weekly. This is anextra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She openedher purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
TOWN GETS HIGH
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of anapparently grave situation.
_Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today areadvised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded byOhio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line._
_A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but inthe meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law ofgravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful ifthe same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent oninvestigating...._
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it acrossto him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don'tget along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded histhanks, and read:
MAYOR CLAIMS SECESSION FROM EARTH
_Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand anddropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, saidtoday that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague ashis explanation._
_The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated againstby county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has beenheld up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspiredagainst the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices._
_The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology byProfessor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does notunderstand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociouslyhandwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator toset._
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands upto Father."
"Does your father claim that _he_ levitated Superior off the face of theEarth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, askeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had ascience teacher in high school--not in Superior, incidentally--who gaveme all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectuallyever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have describedthe figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouthof such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to bekissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much moredensely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are _you_, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll gowith you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead fromthe club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and thismorning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't beensolicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the _double entendre_," Alis said. "What I meant--fornow--was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached tothe rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm ademon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.On to the brink!"
* * * * *
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. Thetrain was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandonedexcept for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from downthere?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "Whatare you going to do?"
"What _can_ I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody'sgoing to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the trainstopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
&nb
sp; "South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was thatSuperior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, withthe withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was SouthCreek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followedhim, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited fora spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like atopographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out onhis stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, hecould almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers ofhis right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of hisankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," shesaid.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand andtossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from goingover the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnervedand had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on theend of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water _isn't_ going off theedge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a verticaltunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm comingback." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himselfoff. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowedin an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles togo, past South Creek Bridge--which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alissaid--past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ballout of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source ofthe creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alissaid.
The fence, which had a sign on it, WARNING--ELECTRIFIED, wassemicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind itso they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from underthe tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said: _Protecting mouth of South Creek, one oftwo sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence issufficient to kill._ It was signed: _Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,Hector Civek, Mayor_.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Donasked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowedto 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 wonderwhat would happen?"
"I know one thing--I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while youfound out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earthbelow and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana wayover there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. Imean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up hereas 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 nothigh enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the GreatLakes--or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of acloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UALon the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could seefaces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one ortwo people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and wasgone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we knowthat they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if notanswers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't youlike it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But ifI don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get intoclean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, stillholding 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 caseat the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.