Sue eagerly went to the eyepiece. The telescope brought a city into very close range. It seemed as if she had only to reach out a finger to touch the tall spire of a building. Suddenly she gasped. She knew that building! It was the home office of her father’s place of work. The city was Little Rock, Arkansas, their own home!
“Steve, look!” she said excitedly to her brother and let him see for himself.
Steve was as thrilled as Sue. Together they moved the telescope lens over all the familiar spots of the great space city, which in this day had a million population. They were able to locate the wee speck that was their own home in the suburbs.
“I can almost see Mom hanging out the wash in the yard!” Steve said with a grin.
Before the children were through looking, they noticed several black hazy spots in different parts of the state.
“What are these, Dad?” Steve asked, showing them to his father.
“They’re tornadoes, Son,” Mr. Shannon replied. “There seems to be an unusually large crop of them this season. There are even some close to Little Rock. The Weather Control Bureau here has a way of dealing with them, though. They do many skillful things in Weather Control. They can make it rain in dry parts of the world and even melt snow drifts in blizzard areas.”
“What can they do about a tornado?” Steve asked.
“When one threatens a city they fire a guided missile—a bomb—that breaks up the twister before it can do any harm. We’ll visit the Weather Control Bureau as soon as we’ve been to the hub of the Wheel.”
Mr. Shannon led them out of the Military Lookout Room. Steve and Sue then found a job of climbing facing them. In order to reach the hub, they had to go through one of the spokes leading into the center of the Wheel. The children saw before them a nylon ladder stretching as far as they could see down a long corridor.