Arthur Zirul: Final Exam

“O.K. by me,” Cakna shrugged as he opened the map. “I’ll play it your way, but let’s do some local checking first. According to this map, I’d say we’re a long, long way from rendezvous. If we don’t get rolling soon, we’ll never make it in time.”

“Maybe we can pick up something from that one,” Druit suggested as he waved a tentacle towards Ilitch, who was still slumped in the doorway.

“Won’t hurt trying,” Cakna said as he folded his map and slipped the safety off on his blaster.

“Tch , tch , such nerves,” Druit chided.

The three creatures approached Ilitch slowly, alert for any movement from the unconscious Russian.

“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.”

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.

“All right now!” the sergeant shouted as soon as his men had taken adequate cover. “Come out of those things, keep your hands folded behind your heads, and move slow!”

There was no answer.

“Come out or we’ll blow you out!” the sergeant shouted as he raised the machine gun.

The aliens still did not reply. Which wasn’t too surprising, since they could make no sense at all of the policeman’s speech.

“O.K., you asked for it!” The stuttering roar of the sergeant’s gun climaxed his threat.

As the slugs spanged off his armor the captain decided to take a little positive action, on the chance that he could frighten what he considered mad creatures into a more reasonable state of action. He unlimbered his blaster and fired through a port in his armor. The atomic-headed slug vaporized the sergeant’s tree stump and hurled him about twenty feet closer to the parked cars. Miraculously unhurt save for minor contusions he scrambled grotesquely for cover.

“Call headquarters!” he screamed at the radio cars. “Tell them to get a riot squad down here, and to call the army on it. These things are hot!”

Major Andrews reread the teletype he had just been handed. He pulled his mustache thoughtfully, put the message down, and picked up his desk phone.

“Hello, connect me with Captain Conner at G-2 please.” He spoke quickly, almost stumbling over his words as he massaged the worry lines in his forehead.

“Hello, Captain Conner speaking,” the phone announced.

“Conner?” The major sat up in his chair. “This is Andrews. I called to find out if you have received that report on those things we picked up near Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn.”

“Yes I did,” Conner said. “I understand your boys had a job bringing them in.”

“Certainly did, we lost an armored car and a couple of acres of scenery before they ran out of ammo. We finally came up behind them with a landing barge and bulldozed them inside. The boys at Ordnance opened them up a few hours ago. The report covers what we found inside.”

“Huh, this ought to fill a few Sunday supplements,” Conner said.

“That’s what I called you about, Conner.” The major began to doodle nervously on his desk pad. “What’s chances of keeping this out of the papers?”

“Too late,” Conner said emphatically. “A couple of news camera men got there before the army did. The story is smeared over the front page of every daily in the country by now. What’s up?”