Dolphin Island (9 page)

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 surface. 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 flashlight 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 flashlight 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….

After a few minutes, however, he got control of his nerves. The sight of Mick’s exploring
beam of light, flashing and flickering through the submarine darkness a few yards
away, reminded him that he was not alone. He began to enjoy peeping into caves and
under ledges and coming face to face with startled fish. Once he met a beautifully
patterned moray eel that snapped at him angrily from its hole in the rocks and waved
its snakelike body in the water. Johnny did not care for those pointed teeth, but
he knew that morays never attacked unless they were molested—and he had no intention
of making enemies on this dive.

The pool was full of strange noises, as well as strange creatures. Every time Mick
banged his spear against a rock, Johnny could hear the sound more loudly than if he
had been in air. He could also hear—and sometimes feel through the water—the thudding
of the waves against the edge of the reef only a few yards away.

Suddenly he became aware of the new sound, like the patter of tiny hailstones. It
was faint, but very clear, and seemed to come from close at hand. At the same moment,
he noticed that the beam of his flashlight was beginning to fill with swirling fog.

Millions of little creatures, most of them no larger than grains of sand, had been
attracted by the light and were hurling themselves against the lens, like moths into
a candle. Soon they were coming in such countless number that the beam was completely
blocked; those that missed the flashlight made Johnny’s exposed skin tingle as they
battered against him. They were moving at such a speed that he could not be certain
of their shapes, though he thought that some of them looked rather like tiny shrimps
about the size of rice grains.

These creatures, Johnny knew, must be the larger and more active of the plankton animals,
the basic food of almost all the fish in the sea. He was forced to switch off his
light until they had dispersed and he could no longer hear—or feel—the patter of their
myriad bodies. As he waited for the living fog to drift away, he wondered if any larger
creatures might be attracted by his light—sharks, for example. He was quite prepared
to face them in the daytime, but it was a very different matter after sunset….

When Mick started to climb out of the pool, he was glad to follow. Yet he would not
have missed this experience for anything; it had shown him another of the sea’s many
faces. Night could transform the world below the waves, as it transformed the world
above. No one knew the sea who explored it only by daylight.

Indeed, only a small part of the sea ever knew daylight. Most of it was a realm of
eternal darkness, for the rays of the sun could reach only a few hundred feet into
its depths before being utterly absorbed. No light ever shone in the abyss—except
the cold luminescence of the nightmare creatures who lived there, in a world without
sun or seasons.

“What have you caught?” Johnny asked Mick when they had both clambered out of the
pool.

“Six crayfish, two tiger cowries, three spider shells, and a volute I’ve never seen
before. Not a bad haul—though there was a big cray I couldn’t reach. I could see his
feelers, but he backed into a cave.”

They started to walk homeward across the great plateau of living coral, using the
beacon on the radio mast as their guide. That bright red star seemed miles away in
the darkness, and Johnny was uncomfortably aware that the water through which he was
wading had become much deeper while they had been exploring the pool. The tide was
returning; it would be very unpleasant to be caught here, so far from land, while
the sea went pouring in ahead of them.

But there was no danger of that; Mick had planned the excursion carefully. He had
also, quite deliberately, used it to test his new friend, and Johnny had passed with
flying colors.

There were some people whose nerves would never allow them to dive at night, when
they could see only the tiny oval of a flashlight beam and could imagine anything
in the remaining darkness. Johnny must have felt scared, as everyone did for the first
time, but he had conquered his fears.

Soon he would be ready to leave these safe and sheltered pools and to do some
real
diving off the edge of the reef, in the ever-changing, unpredictable waters of the
open sea.

It was two weeks before anyone on the island saw the first of the Professor’s ideas
in action. There were, of course, many rumors, for as soon as the details of the dolphins’
request were released, everyone had his own theories about what should be done.

The scientists of the research station were, as might be expected, actively pro-dolphin.
Dr. Keith summed up their views when he remarked, “Even if killer whales do turn out
to be the more intelligent of the two, I’ll back the dolphins. They’re much nicer
people, and you don’t choose your friends for their brains.” When Johnny heard this,
he was quite surprised, as he still did not care for Dr. Keith’s patronizing attitude
and regarded him as a cold fish with few human emotions. However, he must have
some
good qualities for Professor Kazan to have made him his assistant; by this time,
anything that the Professor did was, as far as Johnny was concerned, beyond criticism.

The fishermen were divided. They, too, liked dolphins, but recognized them as competitors,
for they knew at first hand the arguments that Dr. Hirsch had put forward. There were
times when dolphins had torn holes in their nets, stolen most of their catch, and
made them say things about his friends that Professor Kazan would have been very unhappy
to hear. If killer whales kept the dolphin population from getting too large, then
good luck to them.

Johnny listened to these discussions with interest, but he had already made up his
mind; no mere facts were going to make him change it. When someone has saved your
life, that settles the matter; nothing that anyone else can say will turn you against
him.

By this time, Johnny had become quite a skillful diver, though he knew that he would
never be as good as Mick. He had mastered the use of flippers, face mask, and snorkel,
and could now stay underwater for periods that would have astonished him only a few
weeks ago. Though the healthy, open-air life was making him bigger and stronger, this
was only part of the story. The first times he had dived he had been nervous, but
now he felt as much at home undersea as on the land. He had learned to move smoothly
and effortlessly through the water, and so could make a single lungful of air last
much longer than when he had started his lessons. Whenever he felt like it, he could
stay underwater for a full minute without straining himself.

He was doing all this for fun, and because diving was a skill worth acquiring for
its own sake. Not until Professor Kazan called for him one afternoon did he learn
how quickly his hobby would be of use.

The Professor looked tired but cheerful, as if he had been working night and day on
some project that was going well. “Johnny,” he said, “I’ve a job for you, which I’m
sure you’ll enjoy. Take a look at this.”

The piece of apparatus he pushed across his desk was something like a very small adding
machine, with twenty-five buttons arranged in five rows of five each. It was only
about three inches square, with a curved, sponge-rubber base, and was fitted with
straps and buckles. Obviously, it was intended to be worn on the forearm, like an
overgrown wrist watch.

Some studs were blank, but most of them carried a single word engraved in large, clear
letters. As he ran his eye across the face of the little keyboard, Johnny began to
understand the purpose of the device.

The words he read were: NO, YES, UP, DOWN, FRIEND, RIGHT, LEFT, FAST, SLOW, STOP,
GO, FOLLOW, COME, DANGER! and HELP! They were arranged logically over the face of
the keyboard: thus UP and DOWN were at top and bottom respectively; LEFT and RIGHT
actually on the left and right. Opposing words like NO and YES or STOP and GO were
as far apart as possible so that the wrong stud could not be pressed by mistake. The
studs marked DANGER! and HELP! were covered by guards that had to be slipped aside
before they could be operated.

“There’s a lot of neat solid-state electronics inside that,” explained the Professor,
“and a battery good for fifty hours’ operation. When you press one of those buttons,
you won’t hear anything except a faint buzz. A dolphin, however, will hear the word
which is printed on the button, but in its own language—at least, we hope it will.
What happens then is what we want to find out.

“If you’re wondering about the blank studs, we’ve kept them until we decide what other
words we need. Now, I want you to take this gadget—we’ll call it a Mark I Communicator—and
practice swimming and diving with it until it seems part of you. Get to know which
stud is which, until you can find the one you want with your eyes shut. Then come
back here, and we’ll move on to the next experiment.”

Johnny was so excited that he sat up most of the night pressing buttons and memorizing
the layout of the keyboard. When he presented himself to the Professor immediately
after breakfast, the scientist looked pleased but not surprised.

“Get your flippers and face mask,” he said, “and meet me at the pool.”

“Can I bring Mick?” asked Johnny.

“Of course, as long as he keeps quiet and doesn’t make a nuisance of himself.”

Mick was intrigued by the communicator, but not too happy that it had been entrusted
to Johnny.

“I don’t see why he’s given it to
you
to try out,” he said.

“That’s obvious,” Johnny answered very smugly. “Dolphins like me.”

“Then they’re not as intelligent as the Professor thinks,” retorted Mick. Normally,
this would have started a quarrel, though not a fight, for the simple reason that
Mick was almost twice as heavy as Johnny and more than twice as strong.

By a coincidence that was not particularly odd, Professor Kazan and Dr. Keith were
discussing the same problem as they walked down to the pool, heavily laden with equipment.

“Sputnik’s behavior toward Johnny,” said the Professor, “is right in line with the
cases in the history books. When a wild dolphin makes friends with a human being,
it’s almost always with a child.”

“And Johnny’s exceptionally small for his age,” added Dr. Keith. “I suppose they feel
happier with children than with adults because grownups are big and possibly dangerous.
A child, on the other hand, is just about the same size as a young dolphin.”

“Exactly,” said the Professor. “And the dolphins who make friends with bathers at
seaside resorts are probably females who’ve lost their young. A human child may be
a kind of substitute.”

“Here comes our Dolphin-boy,” said Dr. Keith, “looking very pleased with himself.”

“Which is more than one can say for Mick. I’m afraid I’ve hurt his feelings. But Sputnik’s
definitely scared of him. I let him go swimming in the pool once, and even Susie wasn’t
happy. You can keep him busy, helping you with the movie camera.”

A moment later the boys had caught up with the scientists, and Professor Kazan gave
them his instructions. “I want complete silence when we’re at the pool,” he said.
“Any talking may ruin the experiment. Dr. Keith and Mick will set up the camera on
the east side, with the sun behind them. I’ll go to the other side while you get into
the water and swim to the middle. I expect Susie and Sputnik will follow you, but
whatever happens, stay there until I wave you to go somewhere else. Understand?”