And Then the Town Took Off, Richard Wilson [story reading txt] 📗

wondered whether the redhead appreciated the demonstration her boss, the flying Senator, had put on for her.

The woman behind the desk shook her head. "You're two of the people from the train, aren't you? Well, you're all supposed to report to the dining room at two o'clock."

"What for?"

"You'll find out at two o'clock."

It was obvious he would get no more information from her. Don left the building. It was half-past one. He crossed the near-deserted campus. His legs still felt heavy and he assumed Superior was still rising. It certainly seemed to be getting increasingly colder.

He wondered how high they were and whether it would snow. He hoped not. How high did you have to be before you got up where it didn't snow any more? He had no idea. He did recall that Mount Everest was 29,000 feet up and that it snowed up there. Or would it be down there, relatively speaking? How high could they be, and didn't anybody care?

The frosty old receptionist seemed to be typical in her business-as-usual, come-what-may attitude. Even Ed Clark didn't seem as concerned as he ought to be about Superior's ascent into the stratosphere. Clark was interested, certainly, but he'd given Don the impression that he was no more curious than he would be about any other phenomenon he'd write about in next week's paper—a two-headed calf, for instance.

Don remembered now that the conquerors of Everest had needed oxygen in the rarefied atmosphere near the summit and he experimentally took a couple of deep breaths. No difficulty. Therefore they weren't 29,000 feet up—yet. Small comfort, he thought, as he shivered again.

He picked out a building at random. Classes were in session behind the closed but windowed doors along the hall. From the third door he saw Alis Garet, sitting at the back of a small classroom. Her attention had wandered from the instructor and when she saw Don she smiled and beckoned. He hesitated, then opened the door and went in as quietly as he could. The instructor paused briefly, nodded, then went back to a droning lecture. It seemed to be an English literature class.

Alis cleared some books off a chair next to her and Don sat down. "Who turned you loose?" she whispered.

He realized she was referring to his de-handcuffed wrist and grinned, indicating that he'd tell her later.

"I see you've been outfitted for our new climate," she went on. A student in the row of chairs ahead turned and frowned. The instructor talked on, oblivious.

Don nodded and said "Sh."

"Don't let them intimidate you. Did you see the planes?"

More students were turning and glaring and Don's embarrassment grew. "Come on," he said. "Let's cut this class."

"Bravo!" she said. "Spoken like a true Cavalier."

She gathered up her books. The instructor, without interrupting his lecture, followed them with his eyes as they left the room.

"Now I'll never know whether the young princes got out of the tower alive," she said.

"They didn't. The question is, will we?"

"I certainly hope so. I'll have to speak to Father about it."

"He's locked up in his lab, they tell me. Where would that be?"

"In the tower, as a matter of fact. The bell tower that the founding fathers built and then didn't have enough money to buy bells for. But you can't go up there—it's the holy of holies."

"Can you?"

"No. Why? You don't think Father is making all this happen, do you?"

"Somebody is. Professor Garet seems as good a suspect as any."

"Oh, he likes to act mysterious, but it's all an act. Poor old Father is just a crackpot theorist. I told you that. He couldn't pick up steel filing with a magnet."

"I wonder. Look, somebody's called a meeting for us outsiders from the train at two o'clock. It's almost that now. Maybe I'll have a chance to ask some questions. Will your father be there?"

"I'm sure he will. He's a great meeting-caller. I'll go with you. And, since you have two free hands now, you can hold my books. Maybe later you'll get a chance to hold me."

Among the people sitting around the bare tables in the dining room, Don recognized the conductor and other trainmen, two stocky individuals who had the look of traveling salesmen, an elderly couple who held hands, a young couple with a baby, two nuns, a soldier apparently going on or returning from furlough, and a tall, hawk-nosed man Don classified on no evidence at all as a Shakespearean actor. All had been on the train. He didn't see Geneva Jervis anywhere.

An improvised speaker's table had been set up at one end of the room, near the door to the kitchen. A heavy-set man sat at the table talking to Mrs. Garet, the professor's wife.

"The stoutish gentleman next to Mother is the president of Cavalier," Alis said. "Maynard Rubach. When you talk to him be sure to call him Doctor Rubach. He's not a Ph.D. and he's sensitive about it, but he did used to be a veterinarian."

They sat down near the big table and Mrs. Garet smiled and waved at them. Mayor Civek came in through the kitchen door, licking a finger as if he'd been sampling something on the way, and sat down next to Mrs. Garet.

At that moment Don's stomach gave a hop and he felt blood rushing to his head. Others also had pained or nauseous expressions.

"Ugh," Alis said. "Now what?"

"I'd guess," Don said when his stomach had settled back in place, "that we've stopped rising."

"You mean we've gone as high as we're going to go?"

"I hope so. We'd run out of air if we went much higher."

Professor Garet came in presently, looking pleased with himself. He nodded to his wife and the men next to her and cleared his throat as he looked out over the room.

"Altitude 21,500 feet," he announced without preamble. "Temperature sixteen degrees Fahrenheit. From here on out—" he paused, repeated "out" and chuckled—"it's going to be a bit chilly. Those of you who are inadequately clothed will see my wife for extra garments. I believe you have been comfortably housed and fed. There will, of course, be no charge for these services while you are the guests of the Cavalier Institute of Applied Sciences. Thank you. I now present Mr. Hector Civek, the mayor of Superior, who will answer any other questions you may have."

Don looked at Alis, who shrugged. The conductor stood and opened a notebook which he consulted. "I have a few questions, Mr. Mayor. These people have asked me to speak for them and there's one question that outweighs all the others. That is—are you going to take us back to Earth? If so, when? And how?"

Civek cleared his throat. He took a sip of water. "As for the first question—we certainly hope to take you and ourselves back to Earth. I can't answer the others."

"You hope to?"

"Earnestly. I turn blue easily myself, and I'm as anxious as you are to get back. But when that will be depends entirely on circumstances. Circumstances, uh, beyond my control."

"Who's controlling them, then? Your friend with the whiskers?"

Professor Garet smiled amiably and patted his beard. The portly Maynard Rubach got up and Civek sat down.

"I am Dr. Maynard Rubach, president of Cavalier. I must insist that in common decency we all refrain from personal references. Mr. Civek has done his best to give you an explanation, but of course he is a layman and, while he has many excellent qualities, we cannot expect him to be conversant with the principles of science. I will therefore attempt to explain.

"As you know, science has been aware for hundreds of years that the Earth is a giant magnet...."

Don saw Geneva Jervis. She was at the kitchen door beyond the speaker's table.

"... the isogenic and the isoclinic ..."

The red-haired Miss Jervis saw Don now and put her finger to her lips.

"... an ultimote, which is simultaneously an integral part of ..."

Now the redhead was beckoning to him urgently. He excused himself to Alis, who frowned when she saw the other girl; then he went back of the speaker's table ("... 1,257 tenescopes to the square centimeter ...") into the kitchen. Jen Jervis was by now at the far end of it, motioning him to hurry up.

"I've found something," she said. She was wearing a shapeless fur coat, apparently borrowed.

"Come on. You'll have to see it."

"All right, but why me?"

"Aside from myself you seem to be the only one from the train with any gumption. I know you've been spying around doing things while everybody else sat back and waited for deliverance. Though I can't say I admire your choice of companions. That tawdry blonde—"

"Now, really, Miss Jervis!"

"Tawny, then; sometimes I mix up my words."

"I'll bet."

She led him out the back door and across the frozen ground past several buildings. They reached what once must have been an athletic field.

"At the far end," she said. "Come on."

"Where were you when your boy friend and his daredevil aces came over?"

"I saw them."

"Did they see you?"

"None of your business."

He shrugged. They were at a section of the grandstand at the end of the field. Jen Jervis indicated a door and Don opened it. It led to a big room under the stands. "What does this remind you of?" she asked.

Don looked blank. In the dim light he could see some planking, a long-deflated football, ancient peanut shells and an empty pint bottle. "I don't know. What?"

"Stagg Field? At the University of Chicago? Under the stands where they first made an atomic pile work?" She looked at him with the air of an investigator hot on the scent.

He shrugged. "Never been there. So what?"

"It's a pattern. This is where they've hidden their secret."

"It looks more like the place a co-ed and her boy friend might go to have a little fun. In warmer weather, of course."

"Oh!" she said. "You're disgusting! Look over there."

He looked, wondering what made this young attractive woman hypersensitive on the subject of sex. This was the second time she'd blazed up over nothing. What he saw where she pointed was a door at a 45-degree angle to the ground, set into a triangular block of concrete. "Where does that go?" he asked.

"Down," she said as they walked toward it. "And there's some machinery or something down there. I heard it. Or maybe I only felt the vibrations. It throbs, anyway."

"Probably the generator for the school's lighting system. Did you go down and look?"

"No."

"All right, then." He opened the door. "Down we go."

At the bottom of a flight of steps there was a corridor lit by dim electric light bulbs along one wall. The corridor became a tunnel, sloping gradually downward. They had been going north, Don judged, but then the tunnel made a right turn and now they were following it due east. "I don't hear any throbbing," he said.

"Well, I did, and from way up here. They must have turned it off."

"How long ago was that?"

"An hour, maybe."

"While we were still rising. That would make sense. We've stopped again, you know. Professor Garet gave us a bulletin on it."

He had been going ahead of her in the narrow tunnel. Now it widened and they were able to walk side by side. There seemed to be no end to it. But then they came to a sturdy-looking door, padlocked.

"That's that," Don said.

"That's that nothing," she said. "Break it down."

He laughed. "You flatter me. Come on back."

"Don't you think this is at all peculiar? A tunnel starting under an abandoned grandstand, running all this way and ending in a locked door?"

"Maybe this was a station on the underground railway. It looks old enough."

"We're going through that door." She opened her purse and took out a key ring. On it was an extensive collection of keys. Eventually she found one that opened the padlock.

"Well!" he said. "Who taught you that?"

"Open the door."

The corridor beyond the door was lined—walls, ceiling and floor—with a silvery metal. It continued east a hundred yards or so, swung north and then went east again, widening all the time.

It ended in a great room whose far wall was glass or some equally transparent substance. The room was a huge observatory at the end of Superior but below its rim. They could look down from it, not without a touch of nausea, to the Earth four miles below.

Don, thinking of the surface of Superior above, thought it was as if they were looking out of the gondola slung beneath a dirigible.

Or from one of the lower portholes in a giant flying saucer.

V

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