Dolphin Island (8 page)

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 food, 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.”

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.