An unfair vote blocks contact with aliens

Something was wrong with the sky again. There were many people around me on the beach watching. Soon the spaceships came in great number. The occupants filed by along the water's edge, close enough to touch. There were some humans, their hairy forearms exposed through openings in their space suits.

As they were still arriving, lots of us were suddenly out in the water on sandbars trying to get back to the shore. When I arrived back, a man with a beard had assembled a group of ten to vote on whether the space people could stay. The vote was seven for and three against which according to the bearded man's rules meant they couldn't stay. Almost everyone wanted them to stay; one of the no votes was a young impressionable boy. Another man became angered and used a large polished wood board with an inlaid Christian cross to trap one of the adults who had voted "No" in an energy beam which sent him far up into the sky to be run over by one of the leaving space ships.

As the space people left, I heard one say as if through telepathy, "Let's give them a good one," meaning to leave with a spectacular aerial maneuver so people on Earth would know they had been visited.