To Dan's left were two young trees, growing close together. Dan still had with him two of his little mataform units, and he quickly thrust one of them between the two dark, slender tree trunks. An instant later, he was in the dark corner of the bookstore, hearing the angry shouts dwindle into the distance outside. The door of the store closed as the elderly woman who ran the store stepped outside, apparently to see what had happened. A moment later, Dan was in the shelter under the river. He worked quickly with a small brush and some dye, then got out another set of clothes. He checked his appearance swiftly and thoroughly. Then with more of a tanned look than he had had before, with much darker hair, and wearing entirely different clothes, Dan mataformed back to the bookstore. The elderly woman was standing by the front window as he came forward, to pick up a thin scientific volume lying on a table and say, "I believe you were outside when I came in." "Oh," she said, "the most frightful thing just happened." She then gave a highly inaccurate account of Dan's fight with the knife man, and described how the crowd was hunting him down right now at the far end of the park. Dan took his change and said, "I'll have to go look." He stepped outside and could see the path of the crowd with no difficulty. The flowering shrubs were flattened, and the ground under the trees showed the marks of many feet. Dan recovered his mataform unit and walked a short distance to look down toward the far end of the green, where the swimmers were all out of the pool--probably so that it could be searched for Dan. He turned around and noticed near the bookstore a large restaurant, built in a style that made him think of an old English tavern. Several men looking well contented came out. Dan realized he was hungry. He went in, and from a weird merry-go-round serving apparatus got a steak indistinguishable from those at home, and a selection of unfamiliar side dishes that looked good to him, but made other diners nearby wince. Dan paid for his selection and sat down. During the meal, someone at a nearby table began to talk loudly, and someone else shouted, "Spacerot!" There was a momentary hush in the restaurant, and two burly men in white jackets quickly crossed to the table and spoke firmly to the diners. Peace was restored, and the two burly men wove back through several parties just leaving the restaurant, and separated to stand quietly but alertly near the far wall. As Dan ate, he thought, "Kielgaard!" "Right here." "Do you make any sense out of what we've seen so far?" "I get the impression something's about to snap, but I don't know what. Or as my experts here tell me, 'It's too early to venture an opinion.'" "That," thought Dan, "is likely to be the trouble with this place. By the time we find out what's going on, it will be too late to do anything about it. We're going to have to play hunches to crack this one in time."