“Big, isn’t it?” Drul observed as they halted beside the man.
“Sure is!” Cakna said. “But why doesn’t it move? None of us took a shot at it, and yet it lays there as if it had been hit by a cruiser-size paralyzer.”
“You’re ship’s doctor, Drul,” Druit said, “what’s with it? Dead?”
“I doubt it, my guess is that it suffered a temporary nervous collapse when it first saw us. I guess we’re pretty hard to take for an alien mind. Especially one that has had no experience with interstellar races. It’s my personal opinion that it’ll be coming around soon; at least I’m reasonably certain it isn’t dead—too much body activity for that.”
“In that case, I guess the best thing we can do,” Druit proposed as he sucked his legs into his body till he was sitting on the ground, “is to stay put until this one wakes up or the other two return. We’ve got to make contact with someone if we’re to get to rendezvous, and these are as likely candidates as any.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Cakna sighed resignedly as he and Drul sat beside Druit. “Our best bet is to wait it out.”
When Hitch’s wife thundered irreverently into the office of the village commissar screaming her wild story, that worthy gentleman was sorely tempted to have her taken away to a State liquidation center for the insane. He even considered sending her husband along with her. He never did like Pilitrovsky anyway; besides he strongly suspected that Ilitch had been holding out grain. However, as the woman became more coherent, the commisar began to see that perhaps she had something there on her farm after all. He decided to investigate. If it turned out to be something big, he was sure to get a medal; if not, there was always Pilitrovsky to vent his rage upon.
And so it happened that a squad of pop-eyed Russian soldiers came upon Cakna, Druit, and Drul seated in a semicircle before a groggily conscious Pilitrovsky, drawing geometric figures in the dirt.
The captain and the navigator covered the first officer with their blasters as he slowly approached the prone policeman. He studied the man for a while and then turned to the others.
“It’s out cold,” he reported. “But you’d better stay back till I examine its weapon; never can tell what’s in these things.”