Of a sudden, Wales' brooding was shattered as he drove into the town of Brighton Falls.
There was no town.
He pulled up, startled. In the moonlight, a blackened devastation stretched around him, a few ruined walls still standing, the rest a shapeless mass of blackened debris.
Wales, after a moment, got over his first shock. "Lightning could easily start a fire," he thought. "And with nobody to put it out—"
It seemed logical enough. Yet he still felt shocked as he drove hastily on out of the blackened ruins.
As the moon rose, he drove faster. Castletown was very near. He would soon know if he had come all this way for nothing.
In this old town, Wales had grown up with Lee and Martha Kendrick. In Westpenn College here, they'd been classmates. Lee, making astronomy his career, had stayed here at the small but famous Westpenn Observatory, to make finally the astronomical discovery of approaching Doomsday. And, Wales knew, Martha had stayed with him, keeping the old Kendrick house for him.
He knew too that the Kendricks had stayed on here, even after the whole region was evacuated. And then they'd disappeared.
Fairlie had said that his men had searched here and hadn't found them. But Wales clung to the conviction that his quest of them must begin here.
CASTLETOWN
A Good Place to Live