* * * * *

Later in the afternoon, Travis appeared at the Sheriff’s office.

“Winston,” Travis said, “I did the calculations, and Elaine checked them. She’s smarter than me, and more careful.  I also brought a map.  We need it back.”

Winston pointed at a large table and helped weight down the map’s corners.

“The penciled crosses,” Travis explained, “are points where someone accurately measured the edge of the heath.  The small hole,” he pointed at the map’s center, “is where we had a map pin, when we had this up on our wall.  It’s the center of a circle through all those crosses.  It’s also directly under the star, as accurately as we could measure it.”

“Need the Army Air Corps,” Winston said, “fly up to the star, invite the people to land and explain themselves.  That’s ‘invite’ with fifty-caliber machine guns.”

“Bit of a challenge here.”  Travis shook his head.  “World airplane altitude record is not quite 35,000 feet.  Balloons do no better. That whatever-it-is is hovering at 70,000 feet.”

“That’s…there’s almost no air up there.” Winston said dubiously.  “What holds it up? How are the people up there propelling themselves, holding in place against the wind?  For that matter, how are they breathing?  I think there’s wind at seventy thousand feet.”

“No idea.” Travis shrugged.

“This is a job for the Army, not the local sheriff,” Winston said.  “I’ll have to tell Gramps when he gets back.”

Soon enough Radnor Cooper returned.  He was not in a good temper.

“Damfool Governor”, Radnor said to the entire station house, “says there’s a panic in Phoenix, people packing and leaving town.  He says the Heath is perfectly safe, horses just got into a patch of locoweed, one those troopers and their sergeant didn’t notice.  And that got the men?  Crazy! Not to mention there are no plants anywhere on the Heath.  So, being an idiot, Governor’s going to march out into the Heath, take some state troopers along for company, set up camp, and spend three days there.  Legislature is in session.  He has to wait a few weeks for that to be over.  He’s going to come back in perfect health, he says, and that’ll put paid to the crazy rumors.”

“Panic?” Winston asked.  “People here are calm.  A bunch had friends who died, well, we think they died, on the Heath.  They want to string up the guilty parties, when they catch them.  I’m piling up a list of names, people who’re missing.”