The three men beside Dan jumped forward.
Dan's left hand lashed out to smash the nearest of the three men in
the midsection. The flat edge of his right hand struck the second man
just below the nose; then Dan had thrown the first man back against the
third, had whirled around and seen the crowd start to surge across the
sidewalk to block his escape. He sprinted directly past this crowd, so
that when it completely blocked the sidewalk an instant later, he was
cut off from the view of the three men he had just knocked down.
Dan did not doubt that these three men were officials of the planet,
and he strongly suspected that they were armed and knew how to use
their weapons.
* * * * *
Across the street, at the edge of one corner of the green, was a tall
hedge of flowering shrubs, back of which was a grove of young trees.
Dan dodged past carts and small, square, silent automobiles, and ran
through this hedge. Behind him there was a shout of anger.
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.