Robert E. Gilbert 12 min read

At 2:34 a.m. Patrolman Whedbee steps courteously off the curb, 'pardon me', before he registers that the huge man atop a truck is calmly cutting down the traffic light.

Robert E. Gilbert's 1955 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF comedy. Funny, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a droll small-town tale where an unflappably polite cop stumbles onto visitors from beyond, and Earth turns out to be little more than a stopover on somebody else's itinerary.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

12 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry