The Telenizer, Don Thompson [first color ebook reader txt] 📗

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.

Other dogs were appearing, too, some well within the vision of Blekeke—but another quick glance showed me that he was staring rigidly ahead and walking steadily.

We were entering the shadow of the spaceship. Less than twenty feet to go. Even in the dim light, I could almost distinguish the features of the Martian waiting there to haul us aboard.

The policemen on the beach were now walking back to join the others. The one who had yelled and thrown the stone now whistled shrilly, and shouted, "Commere, you lousy, flea-bitten mutts, and shut up!"

He whistled again. Insistently.

One dog stopped howling and slunk forward timidly, then halted.

The whistle was a shrill command.

I heard a soft gasp, perhaps a sob, from Blekeke.

The dog trotted slowly, reluctantly, forward, tail between its legs, growling and whining at the same time.

"Running! Running! Hurry!" Blekeke screamed.

Instead, I turned around to watch, and so did Maxwell.

The policeman continued to whistle. Another dog, a large, shaggy collie, left the pack. But it was not timid, and it paid no attention to the policemen—it had seen Blekeke, and it rushed at him, snarling and yapping.

The Martian made a gurgling noise. A shudder shook his frame, and he turned and fired.

I was watching, without really comprehending what I saw, the policeman who had been whistling. Abruptly he stopped whistling. He was looking. But not at the dogs, nor at the other policemen. Not even at the shaggy collie that vanished suddenly in a blinding flash.

He was looking at the spaceship. And seeing it. He rubbed a hand across his eyes.

When the collie was hit, the terrier which had slunk forward turned. At five feet from Blekeke, it growled and leaped at him.

Blekeke collapsed. The blaster dropped from his hand, and he crumpled into a trembling, twitching, sobbing lump on the ground.

I rushed to grab the blaster, and Maxwell kicked the snarling, frightened dog away.

At the same time, the policeman yelled, "Jupiter! It is a spaceship! I knew I seen somethin'. I may have had a drink, but I ain't crazy!"

He fired while he was yelling, and the Martian who had been leaning from the port ducked inside. The ship shuddered and rose quickly, with a rumble that was almost drowned by the racket the dogs were making.

The policeman rubbed his eyes. "Huh?... I coulda swore I saw a spaceship. Right there. Just now. Just a second ago."

"Man, you really are drunk," his companion said.

The house blew up an instant later. No policemen were killed or injured in the explosion. They were all gathered on the beach to see why the dogs were howling.

It took a bit of explaining.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Telenizer, by Don Thompson