It is certainly curtains for Smedley Bavelpang Jr. His bullet-ridden corpse will be found later that day, sprawled between the bins and the fractured statuette of the martyred space-dog.

The death of his favorite son will compel Papa Bavelpang to investigate the murder, and in doing so it will cause him to question his own prejudices.

The turning point will come when he falls in with the state-circus of a foreign socialist junta whose mascot, it is revealed, is a descendant of Laika.

Emboldended and with new allies, Papa Bavelpang returns to the village and beats the thug to a bloody pulp.

The end