And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In whatwas undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simplypicked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. ButDon Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect thatnothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly theyaccepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their localtownspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obviousthat the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was upto Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of hisdays on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He hadbeen highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spentover a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. Ifhe'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit whereSuperior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which washis first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, thensped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from severaldirections. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, theyconfirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call tothe National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand wereneeded—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew overit reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten intothe Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trainswas missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but notstop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of thedisappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discoveryshortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight wasthe witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civildefense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shookit and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time butwhen he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found nopeople, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planeshad been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the AtomicEnergy Commission denied that they had been conducting secretexperiments.
Nor had there been a