Kielgaard said fervently, "_How_ we crack it makes no difference to me,
so long as we _do_ crack it."
* * * * *
While Dan ate, a considerable crowd of people went out the front door,
and two couples came in. The restaurant, however, remained very nearly
full.
"Something tells me," Dan thought, "that there must be a lot more to
this planet than meets the eye."
He got up and walked toward the back of the restaurant. What he had
taken for the rear wall turned out to be merely a wall that divided one
section of the restaurant from another equally large, where waitresses
served individual tables.
A flight of carpeted steps led down to men's and women's rest rooms and
a gently sloping, softly lighted hallway. People were coming up the
hall in considerably greater numbers than they went down, and Dan was
startled to see that they reacted to him exactly as the crowd outside
had, before he had gone into the bookstore to watch them unnoticed.
Dan went to the men's rest room, washed, and inconspicuously studied
himself in the mirror. He looked very much different than he had
before. Why, then, did the people react in the same way?
Dan concealed a mataform unit in the dimly lit lounge outside the
washroom, then went out and down the hall. He had gone perhaps thirty
steps when a lithe man coming the other way saw him, whipped out a gun,
and shouted, "_Death!_"
One instant Dan was walking down the right side of the hall. A split
fraction of an instant later, he had thrown himself to the other side
of the hall.
There was a swift, bright flash.
Someone screamed.
The gun went spinning and Dan had the man on the floor, both hands
locked at his throat. It was a severe struggle for Dan to loosen his
hands.
A crowd gathered so quickly that there was scarcely room to stand. A
man carrying a small box with a handle forced his way through. Dan had
his captive, half-unconscious, on his feet. Improvising rapidly, Dan
said, "I think that was unauthorized."
The man with the carrying case said grimly, "We'll soon find out." He
held the man's fingertips to plates in the case, flashed a small tube
in his eyes, and shut the case. There was a loud clang.
Two powerfully built men wearing armbands with shields stepped up. One
glanced at Dan and said, "Want to finish him? He's yours, by rights."
Someone in the crowd said, "_Question_ him! Find out which side is
behind this!"
The man with the carrying case said sternly, "That's neither here nor
there. The only question is, which side is _right_?"
There was a tense silence. It occurred to Dan that this planet might
not be called Truth for nothing. He was still gripping his captive by
the arms and wanted in the worst way to question him. But how, in this
crowd? And then he remembered that he still had one mataform unit with
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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