Rescue any minute--got to cover that--imperative--TRAPPED IN HOME BY
FREAK LAWN--and nail down your scientist at the same time."

I was very anxious myself to see what would happen here so I suggested,
since I could take him to the discoverer of the Metamorphizer any time,
that we'd better stay and get the Dinkman story first. With
overenthusiastic praise of my acuteness, he agreed and began practicing
his sleightofhand tricks to the great pleasure of some children, the
same ones, I suspect, who had plagued me when I was spraying the lawn.

His performance was terminated by the rapidly approaching firesiren. The
crowd seemed of several minds about the purpose of the red truck
squealing around the corner to a stop. Some, like Gootes, had heard the
Dinkmans were indeed trapped in the house; others declared the firemen
had come to cut away the grass onceandforall; still others held the loud
opinion that the swift growth had generated a spontaneous combustion.

But having made their abrupt face-in-the-ground halt, the truck (or
rather the firemen on it) anticlimactically did nothing at all. Helmeted
and accoutered, ready for instant action, they relaxed contentedly
against the engine, oblivious of grass, bystanders, or presumable
emergency. Gootes strolled over to inquire the cause of their indolence.
"Waiting for the chief," he was informed. Thereupon he borrowed a helmet
(possibly on the strength of his presscard) and proceeded to pull from
it such a variety of objects that he received the final accolade from
several of his audience when they told him admiringly he ought to be on
the stage.

The bystanders were not seduced by this entertainment into approval of
the firemen's idleness and inquired sarcastically why they had left
their cots behind or if they thought they were still on WPA? The men
remained impervious until the chief jumped out of his red roadster and
surveyed the scene napoleonically. "Thought somebody was pulling a rib,"
he explained to no one in particular. "All right, boys, there's folks in
that house--let's get them out."

Carrying a ladder the men plunged toward the house. Their boots trod the
sprawling runners heavily, spurning and crushing them carelessly. The
grass responded by flowing back like water, sloshing over ankles and
lapping at calves, thoroughly entangling and impeding progress. Panting
and struggling the firemen penetrated only a short way into the mass
before they were slowed almos