Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
what would happen?" "I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you found out." The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway." They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor. But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was gone. The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31. I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into clean clothes, you're not going to like me." over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where Superior had been. Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark, The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several the National Guard. 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. had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown 1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. 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. It said that Superior had seceded from Earth. cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat and riding boots. "You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying. "If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?" True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen. Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close. by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it. Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding. "You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I believe you would have had a two-mile fall." "Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime." "Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked. "No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town "What's the population of Superior?" "Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to "Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about anywhere." "No helicopters here, either." "Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning." "Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?" "I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie another night, then taken a plane to Washington." "I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting late." " to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry. "Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of this cuff." They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white laboratory smock. II Superior were up in the air. He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped "The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is, I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory." "How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't you get down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?" Superior Sentry "Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior," advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line. the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices. levitated Superior off the face of the demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age. On to the brink!" They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard. "What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down there?" Superior's water supply?" "That's funny. Come on let's follow it to the edge." The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight. with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended. "Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out." "Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people." "I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look." "Don't! You'll fall off!" "I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there, panting, head pressed to the ground. ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she said. edge!" "It isn't? Then where is it going?" "Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical tunnel, just short of the edge." "Why? How?" out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again. But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of

<question>:
Why did the citizens of Superior fear the edge of the town?

<options>:
A They feared that they would plummet to the ground because of gravity.
B They feared they would fall with the flow of the stream.
C They feared they would vanish if they left the edge.
D They feared they would be sucked into a vortex.

<answer>:

A