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.
At the moment, the two scientists had much more important matters to bother about.
After twenty-four hours of continuous work, Professor Kazan had translated the message that Einar had brought back—and it had placed him fairly and squarely on the horns of a dilemma. The Professor was a man of peace. If there was one phrase that summed him up, it was "kindhearted." And now, to his great distress, he was being asked to take sides in a war.
He glared at the message that OSCAR had typed out, as if hoping that it would go away.
But he had only himself to blame; after all, he was the one who had insisted on going after it.
"Well, Professor," asked Dr. Keith who, tired and unshaven, was slumped over the tape-control desk, "now what are we going to do?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Professor Kazan. Like most good scientists, and very few bad ones, he was never ashamed to admit when he was baffled. "What would you suggest?"
"It seems to me that this is where our Advisory Committee would be useful. Why not talk it over with a couple of the members?"
"That's not a bad idea," said the Professor. "Let's see who we can contact at this time of day." He pulled a list of names out of a drawer and started running his finger down the columns.
"Not the Americans—they'll all be sleeping. Ditto most of the Europeans. That leaves—
let's see—Saha in Delhi, Hirsch in Tel Aviv, Abdullah in———"
"That's enough!" interrupted Dr. Keith. "I've never known a conference-call do anything useful with more than five people in it."
"Right—we'll see if we can get these."
A quarter of an hour later, five men scattered over half the globe were talking to each other as if they were all in the same room. Professor Kazan had not asked for vision, though that could have been provided, if necessary. Sound was quite sufficient for the exchange of views he wanted.
"Gentlemen," he began, after the initial greetings, "we have a problem. It will have to go to the whole Committee before long—and perhaps much higher than that—but I'd like your unofficial opinions first."
"Ha!" said Dr. Hassim Abdullah, the great Pakistani biochemist, from his laboratory in Karachi. "You must have asked me for at least a dozen 'unofficial opinions' by now, and I don't recall that you took the slightest notice of any of them."
"This time I may," answered the Professor. The solemnity in his tone warned his listeners that this was no ordinary discussion.
Quickly he outlined the events leading up to Johnny's arrival on the island. They were already familiar to his audience, for this strange rescue had received world-wide publicity. Then he described the sequel—the voyage of the Flying Fish and Einar's parley with the deep-sea dolphins.
"That may go down in the history books," he said, "as the first conference between Man and an alien species. I'm sure it won't be the last, so what we do now may help to shape the future—in space, as well as on Earth.
"Some of you, I know, think I've overestimated the intelligence of dolphins. Well, now you can judge for yourselves. They've come to us, asking for help against the most ruthless of their enemies. There are only two creatures in the sea that normally attack them. The shark, of course, is one, but he's not a serious danger to a school of adult dolphins; they can kill him by ramming him in the gills. Because he's only a stupid fish
—stupid even for a fish—they have nothing but contempt and hatred for him.
"The other enemy is a different matter altogether because he's their cousin, the killer whale, Orcinus Orca. It's not far wrong to say that Orca is a giant dolphin who's turned cannibal. He grows up to thirty feet in length, and specimens have been found with twenty dolphins in their stomachs. Think of that—an appetite that needs twenty dolphins at a time to satisfy it!
"No wonder that they've appealed to us for protection. They know that we've got powers they can't match—our ships have been proof of that for centuries. Perhaps, during all these ages, their friendliness to us has been an attempt to make contact, to ask for our help in their continual war—and only now have we had the intelligence to understand them. If that's true, I feel ashamed of myself— and my species."
"Just a minute, Professor," interrupted Dr. Saha, the Indian physiologist. "This is all very interesting, but are you quite certain that your interpretation is correct? Don't get upset, but we all know your affection for dolphins, which most of us share. Are you sure you haven't put your own ideas into their mouths?"
Some men might have been annoyed by this, even though Dr. Saha had spoken as tactfully as possible. But Professor Kazan replied mildly enough.
"There's no doubt—ask Keith."
"That's correct," Dr. Keith confirmed. "I can't translate Dolphin as well as the Professor, but I'd stake my reputation on this."
"Anyway," continued Professor Kazan. "My next point should prove that I'm not hopelessly pro-dolphin, however fond of them I happen to be. I'm not a zoologist, but I know something about the balance of nature. Even if we could help them, should we?
Dr. Hirsch, you may have some ideas on that."
The Director of the Tel-Aviv Zoo took his time in answering; he was still a little sleepy, for it was not yet dawn in Israel.
"This is a hot potato you've handed us," he grumbled. "And I doubt if you've thought of all the complications. In the natural state, all animals have enemies—predators— and it would be disastrous for them if they didn't. Look at Africa, for example, where you've got lions and antelopes sharing the same territory. Suppose you shot all the lions— what would happen then? I'll tell you: the antelopes would multiply until they stripped all the f
ood, and then they'd starve.
"Whatever the antelopes think about it, the lions are very good for them. Besides preventing them from outrunning their food supplies, they keep them fit, by eliminating the weaker specimens. That's Nature's way; it's cruel by our standards, but effective."
"In this case the analogy breaks down," said Professor Kazan. "We're not dealing with wild animals but with intelligent people. They're not human people, but they're still people. So the correct analogy would be with a tribe of peaceable farmers who are continuously ravaged by cannibals. Would you say that the cannibals are good for the farmers—or would you try to reform the cannibals?"
Hirsch chuckled.
"Your point is well taken, though I'm not sure how you propose to reform killer whales."
"Just a minute," said Dr. Abdullah. "You're getting outside my territory. How bright are killer whales? Unless they really are as intelligent as dolphins, the analogy between human tribes breaks down, and there's no moral problem."
"They're intelligent enough," Professor Kazan answered unhappily. "The few studies that have been made suggest that they're at least as intelligent as the other dolphins."
"I suppose you know that famous story about the killers who tried to catch the Antarctic explorers?" said Dr. Hirsch. The others admitted ignorance, so he continued: "It happened back at the beginning of the last century, on one of the early expeditions to the South Pole—Scott's, I think. Anyway, a group of the explorers were on the edge of an ice floe, watching some killer whales in the water. It never occurred to them that they were in any danger—until suddenly the ice beneath them started to shatter. The beasts were ramming it from underneath, and the men were lucky to jump to safety before they broke right through the ice. It was about three feet thick, too."
"So they'll eat men if they have the chance," said someone. "You can count my vote against them."
"Well, one theory was that they mistook the fur-clad explorers for penguins, but I'd hate to put it to the test. In any case, we're fairly sure that several skin-divers have been taken by them."
There was a short silence while everyone digested this information. Then Dr. Saha started the ball rolling again.
"Obviously, we need more facts before we come to any decisions. Someone will have to catch a few killer whales and make a careful study of them. Do you suppose you could make contact with them, Nickolai, as you have with dolphins?"
"Probably, though it might take years."
"We're getting away from the point," said Dr. Hirsch impatiently. "We've still got to decide what we should do, not how we do it. And I'm afraid there's another thundering big argument in favor of killer whales and against our dolphin friends."
"I know what it is," said Professor Kazan, "but go ahead."
"We get a substantial percentage of our food from the sea—about a hundred million tons of fish per annum. Dolphins are our direct competitors: what they eat is lost to us. You say there's a war between the killer whales and the dolphins, but there's also a war between dolphins and fishermen, who get their nets broken and their catches stolen. In this war, the killer whales are our allies. If they didn't keep the dolphin population under control, there might be no fish for us."
Oddly enough, this did not seem to discourage the Professor. Indeed, he sounded positively pleased.
"Thank you, Mordecai—you've given me an idea. You know, of course, that dolphins have sometimes helped men to round up schools of fish, sharing the catch afterward? It used to happen with the aborigines here in Queensland, two hundred years ago."
"Yes, I know about that. Do you want to bring the custom up to date?"
"Among other ideas. Thank you very much, gentlemen; I'm extremely grateful to you.
As soon as I've carried out a few experiments, I'll send a memorandum to the whole Committee and we'll have a full-scale meeting."
"You might give us a few clues, after waking us up at this time in the morning."
"Not yet, if you don't mind—until I know which ideas are utterly insane and which ones are merely crazy. Give me a couple of weeks, and meanwhile, you might inquire if anyone has a killer whale that I can borrow. Preferably one that won't eat more than a thousand pounds of food a day."
Chapter 11
Johnny's first trip across the reef at night was an experience he remembered all his life.
The tide was out, there was no Moon, and the stars were brilliant in a cloudless sky when he and Mick set off from the beach, equipped with waterproof flashlights, spears, face masks, gloves, and sacks, which they hoped to fill with crayfish. Many of the reef's inhabitants left their hiding places only after dark, and Mick was particularly anxious to find some rare and beautiful shells which never appeared in the daytime. He made a good deal of money selling these to mainland collectors—quite illegally, as the island fauna was supposed to be protected under the Queensland Fisheries Act.
They crunched across the exposed coral, with their flashlights throwing pools of lights ahead of them—pools that seemed very tiny in the enormous darkness of the reef. The night was so black that by the time they had gone a hundred yards there was no sign of the island; luckily, a red warning beacon on one of the radio masts served as a landmark.
Without this to give them their bearings, they would have been hopelessly lost. Even the stars were not a safe guide, for they swung across much of the sky in the time it took to reach the edge of the reef and to return.
In any event, Johnny had to concentrate so hard on picking a way across the brittle, shadowy coral world, that he had little time to look at the stars. But when he did glance up, he was struck by something so strange that for a moment he could only stare at it in amazement.
Reaching up from the western horizon, almost to a point overhead, was an enormous pyramid of light. It was faint but perfectly distinct; one might have mistaken it for the glow of a far-off city. Yet there were no cities for a hundred miles in that direction—only empty sea.
"What on earth is that?" asked Johnny at last. Mick, who had gone on ahead while he was staring at the sky, did not realize for a moment what was puzzling him.
"Oh," he said, "you can see it almost every clear night when there's no Moon. It's something out in space, I think. Can't you see it from your country?"
"I've never noticed it, but we don't have nights as clear as this."
So the two boys stood gazing, flashlights extinguished for the moment, at a heavenly wonder that few men have seen since the glare and smoke of cities spread across the world and dimmed the splendor of the skies. It was the Zodiacal Light, which astronomers puzzled over for ages until they discovered that it was a vast halo of dust around the Sun.
Soon afterward, Mick caught his first crayfish. It was crawling across the bottom of a shallow pool, and the poor creature was so confused by the electric glare that it could do nothing to escape. Into Mick's sack it went; and soon it had company. Johnny decided that this was not a very sporting way to catch crays, but he would not let that spoil his enjoyment when he ate them later.
There were many other hunters foraging over the reef, for the beams of the flashlights revealed thousands of small crabs. Usually they would scuttle away as Johnny and Mick approached, but sometimes they would stand their ground and wave threatening claws at the two approaching monsters. Johnny wondered if they were brave or merely stupid.
Beautifully marked cowries and cone shells were also prowling over the coral; it was hard to realize that to the yet smaller creatures of the reef, even these slow-moving mollusks were deadly beasts of prey. All the wonderful and lovely world beneath Johnny's feet was a battlefield; every instant, countless murders and ambushes and assassinations were taking place in the silence around him.
They were now nearing the edge of the reef and were splashing through water a few inches deep. It was full of phosphorescence, so that with every step, stars burst out beneath their feet. Even when they stood still, the slightest movement sent sparkles of light rippling across the surf
ace. Yet when they examined the water with the beams of their flashlights, it appeared to be completely empty. The creatures producing this display of luminescence were too tiny, or too transparent, to be seen.
Now the water was deepening, and in the darkness ahead of him, Johnny could hear the roar and thunder of waves beating against the edge of the reef. He moved slowly and cautiously, for though he must have been over this ground a dozen times by day, it seemed completely strange and unfamiliar in the narrow beams of the flashlights. He knew, however, that at any moment he might stumble into some deep pool or flooded valley.
Even so, he was taken by surprise when the coral suddenly fell away beneath his feet and he found himself standing at the very brink of a dark, mysterious pool. The beam of the torch seemed to penetrate only a few inches; though the water was crystal clear, the light was quickly lost in its depths.
"Sure to find some crays here," said Mick. He lowered himself into the pool with scarcely a splash, leaving Johnny standing above, half a mile from land, in the booming darkness of the reef.
There was no need for him to follow; if he wished, he could remain here until Mick had finished. The pool looked very sinister and uninviting, and it was easy to imagine all sorts of monsters lurking in its depths.
But this was ridiculous, Johnny told himself. He had probably dived in this very pool and had already met all its inhabitants. They would be much more scared of him than he would be of them.
He inspected his flashlight carefully and lowered it into the water to check that it continued shining when submerged. Then he adjusted his face mask, took half a dozen fast, deep breaths, and followed Mick.
The light from the torch was surprisingly powerful, now that both he and it were on the same side of the water barrier. But it revealed only the small patch of coral or sand upon which it fell; outside its narrow cone, everything was blackness—mystery—menace. In these initial seconds of Johnny's first night dive, panic was not far away. He had an almost irresistible impulse to look over his shoulder to see if anything was following him…