 Why did the citizens of Superior fear the edge of the town?
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then sped off to a telephone. The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into the Ohio countryside. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not stop at Superior at 11:58. Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was the witching hour. A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit, having found a spot that seemed navigable. The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes had been over the state. The Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret experiments. A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November 1. The object loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed course to avoid it. A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern: It said that Superior had seceded from Earth. One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first day. Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered, with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully. Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher. Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was covered with every imaginable kind of warning device.
 They feared that they would plummet to the ground because of gravity.
 They feared that they would plummet to the ground because of gravity.  They feared they would fall with the flow of the stream.  They feared they would vanish if they left the edge.  They feared they would be sucked into a vortex.