The two policemen were wandering around by the water's edge. We could hear the dogs howling. Several others had joined in now, but we couldn't see them. They were above us.
"Walk slow to ship," Blekeke instructed, tenseness obvious in his voice. "Casual. Like nothing. I right behind."
Maxwell and I glanced at each other and stepped from the aperture to the gravelly beach and started walking very slowly and casually toward the spaceship.
We had gone about ten feet when we heard, in the short intervals when the dogs weren't howling, the crunching footsteps of Blekeke behind us. They were faltering.
I couldn't resist a backward glance.
I saw about a half-dozen dogs on the hill behind and above Blekeke. They were squatting on their haunches, noses pointed at the spaceship, and they were creating the damnedest racket I had ever heard. Surely the cops would at least suspect something!
Blekeke was walking stiffly, slowly, keeping the blaster pointed at us, making a visible effort not to turn around.
"Hey, you goddam dogs!" one of the policemen on the beach shouted. "Shut the hell up!" He picked up a rock and threw it, but he was too far away. The missile whizzed low over my head. I ducked instinctively, turning to see where the stone hit. It missed the dogs by a good fifteen or twenty feet.
Other policemen were appearing from the direction of the road, running anxiously toward the dogs, looking in the direction the dogs were pointing.
And seeing nothing.