Dolphin Island (7 page)

There was only one way of dealing with both these emotions. Sooner or later, he would
have to follow Mick down that blue, mysterious slope.

“You’re right, Professor,” said Dr. Keith, “though I’m darned if I know how you could
tell. There’s no large school of dolphins within the range of our hydrophones.”

“Then we’ll go after them in the
Flying Fish
.”

“But where shall we look? They may be anywhere inside ten thousand square miles.”

“That’s what the Survey Satellites are for,” Professor Kazan answered. “Call Woomera
Control and ask them to photograph an area of fifty miles radius around the island.
Get them to do it as soon after dawn as possible. There must be a satellite going
overhead sometime tomorrow morning.”

“But why after dawn?” asked Keith. “Oh, I see—the long shadows will make them easy
to spot.”

“Of course. It will be quite a job searching such a huge area, and if we take too
long over it, they’ll be somewhere else.”

Johnny heard about the project soon after breakfast, when he was called in to help
with the reconnaissance. It seemed that Professor Kazan had bitten off a little more
than he could chew, for the island’s picture-receiver had delivered twenty-five separate
photographs, each covering an area of twenty miles on a side, and each showing an
enormous amount of detail. They had been taken about an hour after dawn from a low-altitude
meteorological satellite five hundred miles up, and since there were no clouds to
obscure the view, they were of excellent quality. The powerful telescopic cameras
had brought the Earth to within only five miles.

Johnny had been given the least important, but most interesting, photo in the mosaic
to examine. This was the central one, showing the island itself. It was fascinating
to go over it with a magnifying glass and to see the buildings and paths and boats
leap up to meet the eye. Even individual people could be detected as small black spots.

For the first time, Johnny realized the full enormous extent of the reef around Dolphin
Island. It stretched for miles away to the east, so that the island itself appeared
merely like the point in a punctuation mark. Although the tide was in, every detail
of the reef could be seen through the shallow water that covered it. Johnny almost
forgot the job he was supposed to be doing as he explored the pools and submarine
valleys and the hundreds of little canyons that had been worn by water draining off
the reef shelf at low tide.

The searchers were in luck; the school was spotted sixty miles to the southeast of
the island, almost on the extreme edge of the photomosaic. It was quite unmistakable:
there were scores of dark bodies shooting along the surface, some of them frozen by
the camera as they leaped clear of the sea. And one could tell from the widening Vee’s
of their wakes that they were heading west.

Professor Kazan looked at the photograph with satisfaction. “They’re getting closer,”
he said. “If they’ve kept to that course, we can meet them in an hour. Is the
Flying Fish
ready?”

“She’s still refueling, but she can leave in thirty minutes.”

The Professor glanced at his watch; he seemed as excited as a small boy who had been
promised a treat.

“Good,” he said briskly. “Everyone at the jetty in twenty minutes.”

Johnny was there in five. It was the first time he had ever been aboard a boat (the
Santa Anna
, of course, hardly counted, for he had seen so little), and he was determined not
to miss anything. He had already been ordered down from the cruiser’s crow’s-nest,
thirty feet above the deck, when the Professor came aboard—smoking a huge cigar, wearing
an eye-searing Hawaiian shirt, and carrying camera, binoculars, and brief case. “Let’s
go!” he said. The
Flying Fish
went.

She stopped again at the edge of the reef, when she had emerged from the channel cut
through the coral.

“What’re we waiting for?” Johnny asked Mick as they leaned over the handrails and
looked at the receding island.

“I’m not sure,” Mick answered, “but I can guess—ah, here they come! The Professor
probably called them through the underwater speakers, though they usually turn up
anyway.”

Two dolphins were approaching the
Flying Fish
, jumping high in the air as if to draw attention to themselves. They came right up
to the boat—and, to Johnny’s surprise, were promptly taken aboard. This was done by
a crane which lowered a canvas sling into the water, as each of the dolphins swam
into it in turn, it was raised on deck and dropped into a small tank of water at the
stern. There was barely room for the two animals in this little aquarium, but they
seemed perfectly at ease. Clearly, they had done this many times before.

“Einar and Peggy,” said Mick. “Two of the brightest dolphins we ever had. The Professor
let them loose several years ago, but they never go very far away.”

“How can you tell one from the other?” asked Johnny. “They all look the same to me.”

Mick scratched his fuzzy head.

“Now you ask me, I’m not sure I can say. But Einar’s easy—see that scar on his left
flipper? And his girl friend is usually Peggy, so there you are. Well, I
think
it’s Peggy,” he added doubtfully.

The
Flying Fish
had picked up speed, and was now moving away from the island at about ten knots.
Her skipper (one of Mick’s numerous uncles) was waiting until they were clear of all
underwater obstacles before giving her full throttle.

The reef was two miles astern when he let down the big skis and opened up the hydrojets.
With a surge of power, the
Flying Fish
lurched forward, then slowly gained speed and rose out of the water. In a few hundred
yards, the whole body of the boat was clear of the sea, and her drag had been reduced
to a fraction of its normal amount. She could skate above the waves at fifty knots,
with the same power that she needed to plow through them at ten.

It was exhilarating to stand on the open foredeck—keeping a firm grip of the rigging—and
to face the gale that the boat made as she skimmed the ocean. But after a while, somewhat
windswept and breathless, Johnny retreated to the sheltered space behind the bridge
and watched Dolphin Island sink behind the horizon. Soon it was only a green-covered
raft of white sand floating on the sea; then it was a narrow bar on the skyline; then
it was gone.

They passed several similar, but smaller, islands in the next hour; they were all,
according to Mick, quite uninhabited. From a distance they looked so delightful that
Johnny wondered why they had been left empty in this crowded world. He had not been
on Dolphin Island long enough to realize all the problems of power, water, and supplies
that were involved if one wished to establish a home on the Great Barrier Reef.

There was no land in sight when the
Flying Fish
suddenly slowed down, plopped back into the water, and came to a dead halt.

“Quiet, please, everybody,” shouted the skipper. “Prof wants to do some listening!”

He did not listen for long. After about five minutes, he emerged from the cabin, looking
rather pleased with himself.

“We’re on the right track,” he announced. “They’re within five miles of us, chattering
at the tops of their voices.”

The
Flying Fish
set off again, a few points to the west of her original course. And in ten minutes
she was surrounded by dolphins.

There were hundreds of them, making their easy, effortless way across the sea. When
the
Flying Fish
came to rest, they crowded around her as if they had been expecting such a visit;
perhaps, indeed, they had.

The crane was brought into action, and Einar was lowered over the side. But only Einar,
for, as the Professor explained, “There’ll be a good many boisterous males down there,
and we don’t want any trouble while Einar’s scouting around for us.” Peggy was indignant,
but there was nothing she could do about it except splash everyone who came within
range.

This, thought Johnny, must be one of the strangest conferences that has ever taken
place. He stood with Mick on the foredeck, leaning over the side and looking down
at the sleek, dark-gray bodies gathered round Einar. What were they saying? Could
Einar fully understand the language of his deep-sea cousins—and could the Professor
understand Einar?

Whatever the outcome of this meeting, Johnny felt a deep gratitude toward these friendly,
graceful creatures. He hoped that Professor Kazan could help them, as they had helped
him.

After half an hour, Einar swam back into the sling and was hoisted aboard, to Peggy’s
great relief—as well as to the Professor’s.

“I hope most of that was just gossip,” he remarked. “Thirty minutes of solid Dolphin
talk means a week’s work, even with all the help the computer can give me.”

Below deck, the engines of the
Flying Fish
roared into life, and once again the ship lifted slowly out of the water. The dolphins
kept up with it for a few hundred yards, but they were soon hopelessly outpaced. This
was one speed contest in which they could not compete. The last that Johnny saw of
them was a frieze of distant, dark bodies, leaping against the skyline, and already
miles astern.

Johnny began his skin-diving lessons at the edge of the jetty, among the anchored
fishing boats. The water was crystal clear, and as it was only four or five feet deep,
he could make all his beginner’s mistakes in perfect safety while he learned the use
of flippers and face mask.

Mick was not a very good teacher. He had been able to swim and dive all his life,
and could no longer remember his early troubles. To him it seemed incredible that
anyone
could fail to go effortlessly down to the sea bed, or could not remain there in complete
comfort for two or three minutes. So he grew quite impatient when his pupil remained
bobbing about on the surface like a cork, with his legs kicking up in the air, unable
to submerge more than a few inches.

Before long, however, Johnny got the right idea. He learned
not
to fill his lungs before a dive; that turned him into a balloon and gave him so much
buoyancy that he simply couldn’t go under. Next, he found that if he threw his legs
clear out of the water, their unsupported weight drove him straight down. Then, once
his feet were well below the surface, he could start kicking with his flippers, and
they would drive him easily in any direction.

After a few hours of practice, he lost his initial clumsiness. He discovered the delights
of swooping and gliding in a weightless world, like a spaceman in orbit. He could
do loops and rolls, or hover motionless at any depth. But he could not stay under
for even half as long as Mick; like everything that was worth doing, that would take
time and practice.

He knew now that he had the time. Professor Kazan, although mild-mannered, was a person
who wielded a great deal of influence, and he had seen to that. Wires had been pulled,
forms had been filled in, and Johnny was now officially on the island establishment.
His aunt had been only too eager to agree and had gladly forwarded the few belongings
he valued. Now that he was on the other side of the world and could look back at his
past life with more detachment, Johnny wondered if some of the fault might have been
his. Had he really tried to fit into the household that had adopted him? He knew that
his widowed aunt had not had an easy time. When he was older, he might understand
her problems better, and perhaps they could be friends. But whatever happened, he
did not for one moment regret that he had run away.

It was as if a new chapter had opened in his life—one that had no connection with
anything that had gone before. He realized that until now he had merely existed; he
had not really
lived
. Having lost those he loved while he was so young, he had been scared of making fresh
attachments; worse than that, he had become suspicious and self-centered. But now
he was changing as the warm communal life of the island swept away the barriers of
his reserve.

The fisherfolk were friendly, good-natured, and not too hard-working. There was no
need for hard work, in a place where it was never cold and one had only to reach into
the sea to draw out food. Every night, it seemed, there would be a dance or a movie
show or a barbecue on the beach. And when it rained—as it sometimes did, at the rate
of several inches an hour—there was always television. Thanks to the relay satellites,
Dolphin Island was less than half a second from any city on Earth. The islanders could
see everything that the rest of the world had to offer, while still being comfortably
detached from it. They had most of the advantages of civilization and few of its defects.

But it was not all play for Johnny by any means. Like every other islander under twenty
(and many of them over that age), he had to spend several hours a day at school.

Professor Kazan was keen on education, and the island had twelve teachers—two human,
ten electronic. This was about the usual proportion, since the invention of teaching
machines in the middle of the twentieth century had at last put education on a scientific
basis.

All the machines were coupled to OSCAR, the big computer which did the Professor’s
translating, handled most of the island’s administration and bookkeeping, and could
play championship chess on demand. Soon after Johnny’s arrival, OSCAR had given him
a thorough quiz to discover his level of education, then had prepared suitable instruction
tapes and printed a training program for him. Now he spent at least three hours a
day at the keyboard of a teaching machine, typing out his responses to the information
and questions flashed on the screen. He could choose his own time for his classes,
but he knew better than to skip them. If he did so, OSCAR reported it at once to the
Professor—or, worse still, to Dr. Keith.