 Why did Don want to walk by the creek?
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. Calmly they accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor. A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then sped off to a telephone. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. A pilot who flew over it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into the Ohio countryside. 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. He was gone a long time but when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave, relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes had been over the state. The object loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of. 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. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying plaintively: " Cold up here!" Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye Cannonball when the train braked to a stop.
 to learn more about the levitating town
 to see if they could get off of Superior via the creek  to learn more about the levitating town  to get to know Alis better  to help get rid of the handcuff