The Underground City by Anne Forbes

flight and, soaring upwards to get his bearings, immediately saw the dim outline of the Forth Bridge in the distance.
    The air was freezing and whistled past him as he flew. “Casimir! I’m frozen!” he yelled. “Doesn’t this outfit have central heating?” Casimir obviously obliged as a wave of heat shimmered through the black suit and he relaxed gratefully as it warmed him through.
    The news commentator choked into his microphone and did a double-take as the black, cloaked figure suddenly appeared out of nowhere and flew over the waters of the Forth, heading for the huge criss-crossed spars of the bridge.
    “What on earth!” he stammered. “I don’t believe it …”
    And as each and every camera swung round to follow his flight, Lewis swooped down to land on one of the great girders. Now that he had actually arrived on the scene, he suddenly felt very scared. Conscious that every eye was on him, he worried that he might make a mess of the whole thing. The bridge, for a start, was no longer the tiny meccano-like structure it had seemed on the television set. It was immense! Even the train seemed three times the size of normal trains, its tilted underside hung with row upon row of wheels like some enormous caterpillar.
    “Hey, you!” a policeman shouted, running up the railway line. “Get down from there at once!”
    Lewis looked at him through the slits in his mask. “I’ve come to get these people out of the carriages,” he shouted back.
    “Don’t be a fool!” the policeman yelled. “Get down from there at once!” Lewis ignored him and, before the policeman could get near enough to catch him, pushed himself off the girder and swooped to hover beside the dangling carriages. The people inside were as still as statues. Nobody needed to tell them what would happen if they made any sudden movement.They followed Lewis with their eyes and a woman started to sob.
    “This is absolutely unbelievable,” the commentator said excitedly. “We have some kind of Superman here. He’s hovering just above the stricken carriages …”
    Lewis scanned the train. Many of the windows had fallen out and he decided to try to lift people through them. Fervently hoping that Casimir had given him the strength of at least ten men, he hovered above one window and reached inside.
    “Hold your hands up and I’ll pull you clear,” he said to a young girl. “Just relax. And you be ready next,” he said to the woman beside her.
    A cheer rang out from the bridge as he soared upwards holding the girl by the arms and passed her into the care of a waiting ambulance crew.
    As he swooped back to the train, an engineer ran up the track. The cameras zoomed in on him as he stopped by the television news crew.
    The engineer was distraught. “Get off the bridge, quickly!” he said urgently. “The main bolts have snapped and the carriages are hanging only on a few links. They won’t be able to hold it for long! Get off the bridge at once!”
    “Clear the bridge! Clear the bridge!” The order drifted down to Lewis as he swung upwards with a mother and her baby.
    The ambulance crew stayed, however, the medics taking it in turns to carry the stretchers back to the ambulances as Lewis deposited more and more people by the side of the tracks.
    A little group of engineers stood watching at the end of the bridge; white faced, grim and staring. They, alone, of all the watchers, knew the weakness of the pitifully few links that held the carriages to the rest of the train and waited in despair for the inevitable crack that would signal the breaking of the last few bolts. The television commentator who had thought of askingone of them to come across and give his opinion in front of the cameras, took one look at their faces and decided against it.
    In the end, Lewis had to force himself to go inside the carriages to reach people, especially those that had been injured. The strength Casimir had given him made it easy for him to lift them but