He picked up the policeman’s revolver, examined it closely for a minute, opened the cylinder, and shook out the shells. He sniffed at the discharged cartridge case, rattled one of the unfired shells, and then finally, with extreme caution, he pried the slug out of its case with a pair of pliers from his belt. He spilled the powder out onto the sand and studied it for several seconds.
“All clear, sir!” he shouted as he turned to his companions. “Just a chemical explosive that propels a solid slug. Primitive, but deadly enough to kill us. I suggest we get back into our suits for safety’s sake till we’re a little surer of our ground.”
“You’re right,” the captain said as he holstered his blaster. “For all I know, we’ve landed in the middle of an insane asylum. There may be more of those maniacs running around.”
The trio returned to the armored spacesuits they had left by the edge of the sea, and climbed back inside them. They had barely locked their entrance plates and finished the operational check on their equipment when two police cars skid-marked to a stop in front of the beach sidewalk.
The schoolgirl had run home and had half frightened her mother to death with the story of what she had seen. The mother had immediately phoned the police who had responded with remarkable swiftness. Especially since they had already received two other calls from hysterical passersby who had seen the action on the beach from afar.
The police sergeant in charge of the operation was a tough old bird who had come up against many an unusual adversary in his day, but never anything like the three space-suited aliens who confronted him now. He cocked the bolt of his sub-machine gun, and with two other policemen covering him, he and his car companion slowly walked towards the beat patrolman who lay unconscious on the sand. They kept their eyes riveted on the three metal suits, ready to swing into action at the slightest movement from them. As they came abreast of the patrolman the sergeant’s companion knelt to examine the man.
“How is he?” the sergeant asked anxiously.
“Seems to be O.K., just out,” the other one said. He shifted his gaze back to the aliens, “What do we do now?”
“Get him back to safety,” the sergeant ordered with a jerk of his thumb. “Then we’ll see what we can do about opening them cans.”
As the sergeant crouched behind a dead tree stump the other man carried the unconscious policeman back to the squad cars.